Andrew Scheer

[Committees of the House, March 22nd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, if we just replay what happened on Monday, if the NDP had just indicated that it was going to support our motion right from the beginning, the Prime Minister would have realized it was inevitable and we could have addressed—

[Committees of the House, March 22nd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place to represent the interests of the good people of Regina—Qu'Appelle and represent my caucus as the opposition House leader.

We need to frame what is going on here because what we saw over the last few weeks was a despicable display at committee, a mockery of the parliamentary process. We found out that the Prime Minister has known for years about allegations of foreign interference from the Communist regime in Beijing, specifically helping the Liberal Party. Chinese representatives of that Communist regime here in Canada said they preferred a Liberal government, and there are reports coming from The Globe and Mail, citing CSIS reports and national security committee reports, indicating that there is a large “clandestine network” of funding of candidates that is coming from the Communist regime in Beijing. Conservatives have been trying to shine a light on this at committee. We have all seen the lengths that the Liberals have gone to.

Today is what is called an opposition day. Today is the supply day when opposition parties are allowed to introduce a topic and have a debate on something. Normally the government gets to set the calendar. This is its right, as it brings forward legislation, but a certain number of days throughout the year are allocated to each opposition party. For today, the Conservatives put forward a motion to call on the government to abandon its plan to increase taxes on beer, wine and spirits. That is what we are supposed to be debating right now.

On Monday, we had a fulsome debate on this whole issue of foreign interference, and I should point out that Conservatives, at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, indicated to the NDP that we are totally fine with expanding the scope of the investigation. We believe that if there are allegations of foreign interference coming from any country, they should be investigated. We were willing to work with the New Democrats on that. We were hoping that they would vote in favour of our motion on Monday calling on the Prime Minister's chief of staff to testify at committee. The problem was that they did not let us know. They kept ragging the puck. It was a very simple question. It was the exact same motion that we had proposed at committee. Even the NDP House leader had indicated his support at committee.

It kind of reminds me of something that happened a little while ago. I was in the chamber and I saw the NDP House leader get up and try to indicate that the NDP opposed certain amendments at committee when it was dealing with Bill C-21. Of course, Bill C-21 is the piece of legislation that would massively expand the power of the government to take away lawful firearms from Canadians. I am not trying to mix topics too much, but the reason I am talking about this is that Conservatives recognized instantly what was going on. We saw it at committee. We said it was going to make unlawful so many firearms that hunters and indigenous communities use every season for their long-held Canadian heritage and history of using firearms legally.

What happened was that Conservatives at the committee saw that not only were these bad policy amendments, but they were also out of order, beyond the scope of the bill itself, so at the committee, almost immediately, we asked the chair to rule those amendments out of order. The chair said no. The Liberal chair said that the amendments were in order.

Why do I bring this up? At committee, the Conservatives challenged the chair. We asked our colleagues in the Bloc and the NDP to please support us on this as the amendments were out of order. The NDP voted no. The NDP voted to keep those amendments in Bill C-21, yet the NDP House leader came to this chamber and asked the Speaker to do what his team actually voted against at committee. He tried to take credit, saying they were bad. It was only after their MPs heard from their constituents, who told them how terrible it was. This is exactly what we are facing here today.

We have tried to give the opportunity to the NDP members multiple times to hold this government to account and yet, time and time again, they are showing Canadians that they would rather prop up Liberal corruption and help keep the truth covered, instead of shining a light. It is very disappointing. It is very disappointing that we see the NDP here on an opposition day move this motion. They are trying to come up with this phony story.

Conservatives want a public inquiry. We have called for it. We were trying to get this report back in the House; we could have dealt with this last week. They are the ones playing procedural games and we are not going to let them get away with it. We are going to highlight to Canadians the hypocrisy that the NDP has been showing.

I just want to indicate that I am splitting my time with the hon. member for St. Albert—Edmonton.

In closing, I want to make a couple of points about this. I hear from colleagues across the way who are throwing all kinds of baseless allegations that are just not backed up by facts. Conservatives have been calling for a public inquiry. The first time the Leader of the Opposition raised this issue in the House, the Prime Minister said that he did not know anything about it, so we started to press. We started to call for this. We started to call for a full, independent public inquiry. What did the government do? It appointed a special rapporteur.

I understand. I understand the hon. government House leader and I am hoping to have a discussion with him in a few moments, but it is important to set the stage for it.

I will wrap it up with this. It is impossible to restore the confidence that has been shaken by the Prime Minister's inaction on this file without a public inquiry, not a special rapporteur with close family ties to the Prime Minister, not someone on the Trudeau Foundation board. We support the call for a full public inquiry and we are just disappointed that it took so long to drag the NDP kicking and screaming to ensure that the Prime Minister's chief of staff testifies at committee.

[Committees of the House, March 22nd, 2023]

On a point of order, I have a quick question, Mr. Speaker. It has been a while since I occupied the Speaker's chair and oversaw the House administration. I know that the hon. member had a “check for context” label attached to his last week. Does Hansard do that when an hon. member misleads the House?

[Income Tax Act, March 21st, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure for me to rise in support of this excellent piece of legislation from my colleague from Essex, which is a great part of Canada. The good people of southwestern Ontario have gotten behind this hon. member, and our leader, the new leader of the Conservative Party, visited that part of the world. There are lots of skilled trades workers in southwestern Ontario, and a massive rally came together for our leader's visit there. Over 1,500 people came out to hear the positive Conservative message about making sure that work always pays. There are so many people in this country right now working so hard, juggling different jobs, often more than one job, trying to pick up extra shifts and always looking for new ways to earn a little more.

People will always want to do better for their families. People will always want to leave more for their children and give their children the types of things they never had when they were growing up. That is a pretty standard, constant human emotion, especially here in Canada, but with the inflation crisis that the Liberals have created, the need to pick up extra shifts and to have a little more money at the end of every day is even more pronounced, because the dollars people are earning are not going far enough anymore. As the Prime Minister devalues the value of the paycheques people bring home, more and more Canadians are forced to work more, for longer and longer hours, and work harder and harder at their jobs.

Construction workers and skilled tradespersons often have extra costs that office workers do not. We all know that people in the skilled trades have to spend a lot of money on tools, for example, and various governments understand that. The previous Conservative government wanted to recognize that cost for skilled trades workers and brought in special tax measures for tools that skilled trades workers have to spend their money on.

This bill, though, would not be a tax credit. This bill would be a great way to recognize the costs that are often associated with travelling to work by allowing those workers to deduct those costs from their income altogether. If someone goes to a restaurant and pays for a burger, maybe it costs five dollars. We know that the restaurant owner does not have to pay tax on the full five dollars, because that five dollars of revenue first has to go to pay the cost. It has to pay the cost of the meat that is in the burger, the bun and the worker who cooked it and put it together, so the business owner has to pay tax only on the profit from that five-dollar cheeseburger. We are kind of applying the same logic to the skilled trades here. When workers have to travel a long distance, the payment for that work should not ignore the reality that the workers had to pay money out of their own pocket to get where they had to go.

A great example is in the province of Saskatchewan, which I am so proud to represent. We have lots of large-scale infrastructure projects, mining projects and natural resource projects that take place far away from large urban centres. We have potash mines where big companies are investing big dollars. They are desperate for workers to fill those jobs, and there are workers who would love to go and work there, but they cannot relocate their families for a short period of time. They do not want to pull their kids out of school, sell their house and move to, in come cases, a very small town that may not even have housing available to them, so what do they do? They commute. They might rent a place nearby or they might literally drive there and back every day, and they are doing that to work. They are doing that to fill a need in our economy, like a project or a job that needs to get done, and they are doing it for themselves, but their paycheque and the taxes that are charged on that should reflect the cost they had to spend to do the very job they are qualified to do.

This, by the way, happens in the corporate world. Companies that have to spend money on transportation to fly their staff to various parts of the country or to transport materials are allowed to deduct those costs against their revenues and pay tax only on the difference.

I view this measure as tax fairness for skilled trades workers. One point of differentiation between the Liberals and the Conservatives is that every time we hear the Liberals talk about tax fairness, we can be sure of one thing: They are raising taxes. That is literally the only way the Liberals know how to even think about tax fairness.

When the Conservatives think about tax fairness, we think about lowering taxes and getting government out of the way. One thing that has been so inspiring to watch is how the leader of our party is showing Canadians how many barriers and obstacles to growth and prosperity exist all around the country.

We just had a fantastic announcement. The Leader of the Conservative Party announced that a Conservative government would bring in what is called a blue seal program. It would allow highly skilled, trained medical professionals to travel from one province to another, or move from one province to another, to fill a need. For people who have credentials from outside of Canada, credentials would be recognized so they could fill badly needed positions in our health care sector all across the country.

This type of initiative builds on that. This type of initiative to encourage workers to go to where the work is, removing the impediment, the obstacle to prosperity, is an incredible method to get people working and to get big projects built again. This initiative is needed, because the investments that go into a lot of these large-scale construction projects are cyclical. If we build a bridge, we do not need to build another bridge for many years, but another municipality might need a bridge. Our skilled workforce has had to become very mobile and very flexible. Workers need to be able to go to where the work is.

Let us take mining companies, for example. They can only do so much exploration every year. They can only do so much drilling. They can only do so much infrastructure building because of their equipment barriers. They tend to rotate and move around where they focus their investment. One year it might be in Saskatchewan and the next year it might be in British Columbia.

We need to ensure that our workforce can be flexible too and that we remove this barrier. If we do not, there may be a job that goes unfilled. There may be a worker who could do it, but with the salary offered for it, they think that by the time they fly in and out several times a year or drive the long hours, their costs will become more and more significant, as the Liberal carbon tax makes the cost of fuel go up. The worker might say they are not that much better off if they take the job. At the end of the day, by the time they pay for all those out-of-pocket expenses and pay their taxes on the money they have earned, they are not even further ahead, even though they have done all this work and spent all this time away from their family.

This bill removes that barrier, that obstacle, and makes it that much easier for a worker to say, yes, they will take the job and take the skills they have learned over the years and apply them to the job that needs to be done. Everybody wins. The worker wins, our overall economy wins and Canadian pension holders win as Canadian companies do better and better. My colleague from Essex has found a win-win-win solution to help all aspects of our economy with this great initiative.

I cannot say how shocked I am that the Liberals are going to vote against it. I say that and then I realize that I should not be shocked at the hypocrisy. When the Liberals say one thing and do another, it is more disappointing than shocking because we see it all the time. They talk a good game. They like to make announcements. They like to go to conventions full of workers whose votes they are trying to win over. They like to have fancy meetings with the heads of some of the unions. However, when it comes time to actually do something and deliver, the Liberals say no.

The Liberal excuse for saying no is so flimsy. They claim they have another type of solution, but it is not going to benefit workers in the same way this bill would. Because of how my colleague from Essex has designed this bill, it would allow workers to deduct expenses right off the top and would be a massive tax savings for them. However, overall, it would not be that much of a cost to the economy. Instead of looking at it as a reduction of revenue for the government, we should be looking at this as an expansion of the work that is going to be done all over the country. That economic activity is going to lead to even more economic activity.

Once again, I am disappointed but not shocked that the Liberals have said one thing during an election and done another thing after the votes were counted. That has been the story of the Prime Minister and the government. However, the Conservatives have shown the way again. We are showing how we are going to bring home better jobs and better paycheques, and the money left over in Canadians' pockets will go farther when the Leader of the Opposition becomes Prime Minister of Canada.

[Business of Supply, March 20th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague can read the motion, look at the terms within it and decide for himself whether he thinks it is worthy of support. I hope he does support it.

It is easy to call for things. We can walk outside in the foyer and we can call for whatever we like, but tomorrow there will be a vote, and that member and his caucus will have to show action. The difference between being the fourth party and being the opposition party, and the future governing party, is that we have to back up our words with action.

[Business of Supply, March 20th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, that is a very good question. It is the question that all Canadians are asking themselves at this time.

What is going on? Why is the Prime Minister so afraid to launch a public inquiry? When there is nothing to hide, it is very easy to provide documents to be reviewed because there is nothing to fear. Given that the Prime Minister is going to such great lengths to block the committee's investigation, we can only come to one conclusion: He has something very serious to hide.

[Business of Supply, March 20th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, it is the Prime Minister who has done such a disservice to the former governor general. That is who should be apologizing to Canadians for dragging David Johnston into this. The fact of the matter is that David Johnston sits on the board of the Trudeau foundation. This is the very foundation that is at the hub of allegations of money flowing from the Communist regime into Canada. Do not take my word for it. The foundation itself admitted that when it repaid part of the money it received.

David Johnston himself talks about being a close family friend of the Prime Minister. Just because he may have been qualified to serve in one role years ago, as governor general, which is a non-partisan role and one that rises above the back-and-forth, does not mean he is suitable for this role. It is that point the Conservatives are highlighting when we talk about the conflict of interest.

[Business of Supply, March 20th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to follow my esteemed colleague from St. Albert—Edmonton, who has really been leading the charge along with several colleagues trying to shine a light on what the Liberals are trying to hide. One thing we know by now is that it must be really bad because the Prime Minister has gone to such great lengths to keep the truth from coming out.

One does not go to such great lengths if it is just some kind of a minor technicality or if it is a small point of difference between two political parties. They send in their members of Parliament to embarrass themselves at committee and carry on a filibuster, insulting the intelligence of Canadians and other parliamentarians and denigrating the institution of Parliament, which is meant for the one fundamental purpose of holding the government to account. When they do that and the government throws up all kinds of contrived barriers to that investigation, it tells us something, and that is that the Prime Minister must be hiding something really big.

We need to know who knew what and when about allegations of the Communist regime in Beijing interfering in Canadian elections. Canada is a wonderful country with a proud heritage and history, and Canadians are well served by strong democratic institutions that, over the course of years, we have refined and improved. Because it is run by individual human beings, it will never be perfect, but Canadians can have great confidence in those institutions if the politicians who hold those public offices treat those positions with respect because there is nothing magical in the air, the water or the trees of our wonderful country that will keep those institutions strong if politicians who undermine them get away with it. That is why every generation of Canadians, both voters and elected officials, have to treat those positions with respect and hold individuals accountable when they do not.

We did not come to the House today to debate this motion based on rumours, and we did not come here to debate this motion based on what we overheard in committee proceedings. We are basing this motion on the fact that high-level national security officials have taken the unprecedented step of blowing the whistle on the government. For someone who works at CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, to go to journalists with sensitive information puts themself, their family and their career in grave jeopardy.

There are serious consequences in law, and well there should be, for people who divulge sensitive information, but as we learned over the weekend from the official who took the extraordinary measure of explaining his actions to the Globe and Mail, this individual was so compelled to blow the whistle because of the inaction of the government.

For multiple years, our intelligence security officials, who often put themselves in real imminent danger when they carry out their duties, have been warning the Prime Minister. We have multiple reports. I am reading here from a Global News story of March 8 highlighting a special report prepared by the Privy Council Office for the Prime Minister's government that was date-stamped January 2022, well after the 2021 and the 2019 elections. The memo was also finalized, suggesting it was intended to be read by the Prime Minister and his senior aides.

Global News also learned of an earlier high-level warning about clandestine funding of China's “preferred candidates” that came from a bipartisan panel of parliamentarians two months before the 2019 election. The information came from Canada's National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, which reviews national security matters and promotes government-wide accountability.

Who does that committee report to? Who reads those reports? That committee reports to one person: the Prime Minister. It is inconceivable that the Prime Minister did not receive that report, yet on multiple occasions the Prime Minister has stood in this place and claimed he had no knowledge about funding coming from the Communist regime in Beijing flowing to candidates here in Canada, despite at least two reports that highlighted exactly that, which went to him personally.

That is why we need this motion. That is why we need to break the logjam the Liberals have imposed upon members of Parliament at committee by filibustering, delaying and pulling out every trick in the book, including reading the phone book into the record, just to prevent important key officials from testifying.

Some people might ask what would be the cause of this. We know that the Prime Minister admires the Communist dictatorship in China. He was asked once, other than Canada, which country he admires the most. He did not say he admired China because of its natural beauty. He did not talk about the history of China. He talked about admiring the basic dictatorship of China. Those were his words.

Let us look at the policies of the Prime Minister upon coming to office. The Chinese government has invested heavily in something called the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. This is a development bank that pays for large-scale infrastructure projects throughout Asia. Many security experts and foreign affairs experts call this Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank the development arm of the foreign affairs policy of the Communist Party in Beijing. The Prime Minister decided to take $250 million of Canadian taxpayers' money and give it to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to help promote the national interests of the Communist Party in Beijing.

We know the Prime Minister took years to make a decision on Huawei. When all our major trading partners and security partners were banning Huawei from the next generation of telecommunications, the Prime Minister dragged his feet.

The Liberals have not kicked out a single diplomat. We have heard about illegal police stations operating on behalf of the government of Beijing, and reports of intimidation and harassment of people from China, the coercion and pressure upon them to vote the right way to support a certain nomination candidate. These are serious reports that do not come from other political parties, they come from our national security experts.

The Prime Minister has known about this for months. The Liberals have not closed down a single one, and they have not expelled a single official of the Communist regime.

What did the Prime Minister do last week in the face of mounting pressure, backlash, and more and more Canadians asking the tough questions about what the Prime Minister knew and why he has done nothing about it? He appointed a special rapporteur. I can just imagine the marketing department of the Liberal Party. Maybe the Liberals whiteboarded “interlocutor”, and then thought that nobody would go for that. Maybe they thought about calling that person an “inspector general”.

They landed on rapporteur, and they picked a close family friend of the Prime Minister himself. The Prime Minister who has proven to be allergic to preventing conflicts of interest has appointed a family friend, someone who brags about their growing up together, as families, in the ski chalets of the Laurentian Hills. Could there be anything more emblematic of the Laurentian elite here in Canada than the Prime Minister appointing a family friend from his background in the Laurentian Mountains, at his ski chalet, to investigate whether or not there should be a public inquiry into his handling of the foreign interference? It is unbelievable.

Not only is he a close family friend, but he is also someone who sits on the board of the Trudeau foundation, the very foundation that accepted money that flowed from the Communist regime in Beijing and has only paid it back seven years later.

Today is about something else. This motion would shine a light. It would ensure that the ethics committee could shine a light on what the Prime Minister knew. This is a very important decision for the New Democrats. The NDP used to believe in things. I come from Saskatchewan. Many people consider Saskatchewan to be the birthplace of the NDP. We can look back at the history of leaders of the NDP, whether it was Jack Layton, who I served with, Ed Broadbent, or someone before that. We may have disagreed on principles, but we at least recognized that the NDP had principles. We would disagree over policy, but we could respect that they believed in something.

One of the things the NDP used to believe in was openness and transparency. For some reason, over the past few weeks, the New Democrats have decided to put their own partisan interests ahead of the national interests.

I challenge the NDP members today, if they are serious, and if they want to look Canadians in the eye to say that they believe in ethics, openness and transparency, then they must vote for this motion. If they do not, they will be signalling that they are okay with Liberal corruption.

[Business of the House, March 9th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the traditional Thursday question, where the government House leader updates the House as to the business for the rest of this week and for the week after next.

Next week, of course, is a constituency work week, and I would like to wish all Canadians of Irish heritage, and those who enjoy being Irish for the day, a happy Saint Patrick's Day, which will take place on the Friday of next week. Being someone of Irish descent, I will be celebrating with my friends and family.

I also want to point out to the government House leader that the last time the House leaders were given a House calendar, there two days next week that he had not informed us of what the business would be. I hope he can inform us today of that Thursday and Friday.

I would signal to the government House leader that, were the government to table legislation to establish a registry for agents working on behalf of a hostile state government, the official opposition would look upon that very favourably and work to facilitate the passage of such an act. It has been months since the Prime Minister has been briefed on the threat that poses to Canada and our democratic institutions, yet they have done nothing. I hope the government House leader will take advantage of those two days and bring forward legislation that protects Canadian democracy.

[Business of the House, February 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the government House leader could update members as to the business for the rest of this week.

Also, as members of Parliament go off and enjoy Family Day in many parts of the country with their loved ones, as well as get back to work in their constituencies, could the government House leader update the House as to what we can expect with respect to legislation when we return from those constituency work weeks?

While I am on my feet, because his own colleague asked members of the Conservative Party to read the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report, I was wondering if you would allow me to table the report, especially the part that says that most households will see a net loss resulting from federal carbon pricing under the Liberals' plan.