Bev Shipley

[Small Business, November 23rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to give a shout-out to all the amazing small businesses in my riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex. Every day they work hard and greatly contribute to our communities.

Two young hockey-player entrepreneurs, Matt Laberge and Dan Black, created Clap Balm, a hand deodorizer that gets the smell of hockey gloves off players' hands. They saw a hole in the market for a necessary product and took a shot at it, with great success. This is just one example of the ingenuity and initiative I see all the time in our small towns and rural areas.

My colleagues and I continue to encourage the government to stop raising taxes on small businesses. Rather, assist these people who provide so much in our rural communities.

[Petitions, November 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the citizens of Canada acknowledge that current impaired driving laws are really too lenient. In the interest of public safety, the petitioners want to see tougher laws. They want to see the implementation of new mandatory minimum sentences for persons convicted of impaired driving causing death and they want the Criminal Code of Canada changed to redefine the offence of impaired driving causing death as vehicular manslaughter.

[Petitions, November 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have two sets of petitions.

First, ultrasounds have been used in Canada to tell the sex of an unborn child so that expectant mothers can choose to terminate the pregnancy if the unborn child is a girl.

Polls have suggested that 92% of Canadians believe that sex selective pregnancy terminations should be illegal.

As we know, there are some 200 millions girls missing worldwide, and gendercide has created a global gender imbalance plus violence against girls and human trafficking of girls.

The undersigned petitioners are asking members of Parliament to condemn discrimination against girls occurring through sex selective pregnancy termination.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, November 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talks about how the Liberals changed things and how they put the question forward. They have a backhanded way of doing things. He listed all of the ways in which they think they may have actually helped people. Then they turn around and bring in a Canada pension plan increase, an increase in EI premiums, and a carbon tax that will increase the taxes paid by Canadians.

They will not reduce the business tax on businesses, but who is it that business people in small businesses hire? It is the people. Therefore, the little they give on the one side they then scoop from these people in another way with their backhanded ways.

Who will be most affected by the carbon tax? It is the seniors, the low and middle-class income people and, as I live in a rural riding, the farmers. Every time they fill the combine up it will cost them another $100. That is not good for the middle-class income people or for Canadians.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, November 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, that is a great question. I do not know if the member was here when we were in government in 2008, but we went through the greatest recession this country had seen since the Great Depression of the thirties. At the time, I walked through how we would go into that in terms of the economy, as well as an exit plan on how we would come out of it. Interestingly, the current government is not in a recession, but appears to be content with and driven to creating a recession in Canada with its spending.

Is it easy to balance a budget the way the Liberals did by cutting all the transfers to the provinces, by cutting health care transfers? Absolutely. If we download everything onto someone else, it is easy. We did not do any of that. We increased our transfers, we cut taxes on Canadians to the lowest in 50 years, and we increased transfers to the provinces. We had a great record.

On top of that, in the last year no net new jobs have been created. Coming out of a recession in 2008, some 1.2 million net new jobs were created, 80% of which were full time and 80% in the private sector.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, November 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, indeed it is always good to stand in this place, particularly after the bit of confusion that we just went through in the voting. I can say that with Bill C-29, the budget implementation act, there is no confusion; it is actually a train wreck. It should not be called an implementation bill. It maybe should be referred to as a renovation bill, because when something is as disastrously wrong in the economy of this country as it is now, it takes not only severe renovations but also a change of culture within a government.

The riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex is in southwestern Ontario, and is very much a rural riding made up of small and medium-sized businesses. Quite honestly, in the riding I do not have a large business. We are made up of hard-working, middle-income folks and families who get up every day and go to work. They are strong entrepreneurs who generate wealth and employment, something that is hard to find in this budget. These folks in my riding actually stimulate jobs. That is because they have endured some hard times but have been able to buckle down and survive, up until some of these proposals in this budget.

Something that rang strong in a riding like mine and those across this country was the talk in the campaign by the Liberals about what they were going to do. Actually, the Liberals did not talk about what they were going to do, but actually made promises.

We were in the riding last week during Legion Week as we celebrated and thanked our veterans across this great country of Canada. We thanked the veterans who are alive, but we also recognized with our hearts the work and the commitment of those who gave their lives so we could be in a place like this and be able to have free discussion about topics that are important to Canadians. We celebrated Legion Week and thanked those who gave their lives for us in this great country and the veterans who were there. We always comment on and commend those who are in uniform, who stand up for us not only in our great nation of Canada but also abroad in many countries.

However, when the government breaks that promise, as the current government has done in so many ways, it takes a bit of the heart out of people. The broken promises did not happen three or four years after the election; they happened within days and weeks of the government being sworn in. It takes away the credibility not only of the government but, quite honestly, of all of us who are elected people, because people say they just do not trust any elected people. That is very unfortunate. Let me just say a bit about what happened with the breaking of promises and why that was so detrimental to people in my riding and, I am sure, across the country.

In the election campaign, the current Prime Minister talked about a teeny-weeny modest deficit that the Liberal government was going to hand to Canadians. They said it would be a $10 billion deficit. We have heard that time and again. Not within a year but within weeks, the $10 billion escalated to $30 billion.

That is 300% or three times what the projection was. When we talk about billions of dollars, ordinary Canadians really do not wrap their heads around what a billion dollars is, but they can wrap their head around what it actually means.

Let me give a little example of what it means, because this is what happens when the Liberals do not do what they say they will do and expect ordinary Canadians to believe them and then understand that when they break the promise, it does not mean much. That is really what the Liberals want us to think.

A small business guy goes into the bank with a proposal and a business plan that goes with it. He tells the bank or the lending institution that this is his business plan, that he needs a million dollars, that this is how he will bring it forward and this is how he will pay it back. His business plan talks about the growth. He thought about it. In six weeks he went back to the bank and tells the banker that he still has the same business plan and the sort deficit projection that I just mentioned, so that he needs not $1 million, but $3 million now.

I do not know if anyone on that side has ever had a business. Maybe no one on that side has had to put together a business plan and then take it to a financial institution. However, if an individual from a small business did what I just described, and it could have been any business in my riding, the banker would show them the door.

The difference is that the banker cannot show the government the door today, because the taxpayers are the lenders. Maybe in four years they will be able to show them the door. The Liberals promised they would cut taxes for small business. No, they never want to lose a revenue source from a tax.

The other promise was to make the tax plan revenue neutral, with the Liberals taking from the top earning rich and giving it to the poor, the lower income group. That was supposed to be revenue neutral. It took about three weeks to discover it was not revenue neutral. It was actually about a $2 billion hit to the taxpayers of Canada.

My point is that the government right now has absolutely no credibility. It now has a debt that is escalating. The Liberals have no plan for how they will pay it back. When the Prime Minister was asked when he would balance the budget, as was the Minister of Finance in question period today, they actually did not know. The Prime Minister indicated earlier that he did not know what the deficit would be.

I say to Canadians and to small business people and their families that we have a serious concern. We have a growing deficit and a debt that has escalated to what some say will cost us another $5 billion a year in interest payments. Where I come from, when we are in a hole, it is best to quit digging

However, I get the sense that is not the culture of the Liberal Party. They are on a glorious trip of big deficits, thinking they will just spend their way out of debt. I do not know where that has worked. From a business perspective, it just does not work.

I see that I am at the end of my time and I will be more than glad to take questions, but I am just concerned that with this budget the Liberals have betrayed Canadians and have broken their promises to them. This budget implementation act, unfortunately, will not be supported by me or my party.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, November 14th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I believe integrity is important to Canadians. When we make a projection or promises, we try to follow through on them.

Could the member comment on the record of the present Liberal government in its first year, in terms of its integrity, bad management, and looking at its balanced budget?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, November 14th, 2016]

With regard to federally owned or operated restaurants, cafeterias, canteens, or other food service provider, broken down by department, agency, crown corporation or other government entity: (a) what is the location and description of each; (b) since January 1, 2016, have any of these establishments served non-Canadian beef or pork; (c) in each instance where non-Canadian beef or pork was used, why was Canadian beef or pork not used; and (d) what directives are in place regarding the use of Canadian beef or pork in the establishments referred to in (a)?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, November 14th, 2016]

With regard to travel claims submitted by Ministers and their exempt staff, broken down by Minister’s Office, since November 4, 2015: (a) how many times were hotel or other commercial accommodation expenses claimed where the total cost, including taxes and other hotel fees, was over $500 per night, or over the equivalent of $500 CAD per night, if the expense was in a foreign currency; and (b) for each expense in (a), (i) what was the title of the individual who incurred the expense, (ii) what were the dates of each stay, (iii) what was the name of the hotel or other commercial accommodation, (iv) how many nights were the hotel or accommodation used for, (v) what was the total amount spent on each stay?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, November 4th, 2016]

With regard to federally owned or operated restaurants, cafeterias, canteens, or other food service provider, broken down by department, agency, crown corporation or other government entity: (a) what is the location and description of each; (b) since January 1, 2016, have any of these establishments served non-Canadian beef or pork; (c) in each instance where non-Canadian beef or pork was used, why was Canadian beef or pork not used; and (d) what directives are in place regarding the use of Canadian beef or pork in the establishments referred to in (a)?