Mr. Speaker, at a time of global conflict and energy insecurity, Canada should be part of the solution by providing ourselves and our allies a secure and reliable source of energy. Instead, the Prime Minister continues to block Canadian energy development while our allies search elsewhere for supply, leaving us vulnerable to Trump's unjustified tariffs. Today, none of Canada's oil reaches Europe because Liberal laws have made it nearly impossible to build pipelines or the export facilities that are needed to get it there. The consequences are serious.
Amid the conflict in the Middle East, the Trump administration continues easing sanctions on Russian oil. Every barrel that Russia sells means more revenue to Putin's war machine. Instead of supporting Canadians, that money is funding a dictatorship that continues to terrorize Ukrainian civilians. Canada cannot control global conflicts, but we can control whether our resources reach the world market. It is time for the government to remove the barriers holding Canadian energy back.
There has been photo op after photo op, with dozens of police officers as a backdrop, to announce empty promises. The Liberal Prime Minister and public safety minister pledged to improve safety with 1,000 new RCMP officers. The Auditor General delivered a damning report recently that said the RCMP is now short 3,400 officers. Recruitment is failing. With only 1,500 spots available, the training positions are still not being fulfilled. After a year-long wait to get processed, only 6% of applicants are making it through the process. The RCMP is failing to recruit, train and retain the officers we need to protect our communities, and the government continues to turn a blind eye to the problem.
In rural communities, like the ones I represent in Yellowhead, police are stretched to a breaking point. They cannot keep up with the wave of crime while the Liberals delay real bail reform. Even with the announcements, there have been enough photo ops. It is time to stop the illusions, put real boots on the ground and actually protect Canadians.
The Auditor General has made it clear that after nearly a decade, billions of dollars and countless promises, the Liberal government has no credible plan to fix the Phoenix pay system. Over 133,000 public employees remain trapped in a backlog of pay errors, with many afraid to retire because they do not trust that they are actually going to get their correct pay. The government is now preparing to move forward with a replacement system while the underlying problems remain unresolved. The Auditor General warned that without fixing the existing data and the backlog, the same errors will simply be transformed into the new system.
What has all this cost? The Phoenix system cost $4 billion, and now the government is planning to spend another $3.5 billion on a replacement system that risks repeating the same mistakes. Public servants have been overpaid, underpaid or not paid at all. It is no wonder the bureaucrats in Ottawa and across the country do not trust the Liberal government, let alone Canadians who lost confidence years ago.
I ask the government this. Why is it prioritizing a rushed transition to a new pay system instead of fixing the existing backlog, cleaning up the data and ensuring that the same costly mistakes are not being repeated?