Bob Zimmer

[Emergencies Act, February 19th, 2022]

I will try not to do it again, Madam Speaker.

I will go back to the article entitled “Goldstein: [The Prime Minister] can't unite us because his strategy is to divide us”, which states, “This because [the Liberals] divided Canadians up into little slices of political support and opposition across the country, in order to extract the maximum number of seats from the minimum number of votes cast.” This is by design. The Prime Minister ran on sunny ways. Conservatives lost that election and hoped that he would at least be a positive Prime Minister, but what we have seen over the last four years is a Prime Minister bent on, shamefully, dividing the country.

I will continue to quote:

From riding into office on the promise of “sunny ways,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s embrace of identity politics has led to an incredible failure of governance, resulting in him becoming just the fourth prime minister to invoke the Emergencies Act (or its predecessor) and notably the first to do so outside an actual war or insurrection. It is a shocking fall, with a witches brew of wedge politics, incompetence and identity politics to blame.

It further states:

Then, imperceptibly at first, the great scourge of our political age began to make appearances within the Trudeau Liberals: identity politics. With—

[Emergencies Act, February 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I just wanted to say, first of all, I appreciate all Canadians' prayers right now. I have been getting messages that they are praying for us in this place to make good decisions. I covet them and we are thankful for them, especially at this very trying time for our country.

Today, we are debating the Prime Minister's Emergencies Act. We have already heard about the thresholds and whether they have been met. The Liberals will argue that they have been. However, across the board, across the country, we are hearing that they have not. Clearly, if I read them out to us today, we would see that they have not been met.

This statement is from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association:

The current emergency orders place significant limits on peaceful assembly across the entire country. They require financial institutions to turn over personal financial information to CSIS and the RCMP, and to freeze the bank accounts and cut off financial services provided to anyone who has attended, or who has provided assistance to those participating in, a prohibited assembly—all without judicial oversight.

It is in light of all these violations of civil liberties that we will be taking the government to court....

This becomes a great concern for that mother or grandmother who donated $20 for the cause of freedom to the truckers convoy. What started off as a simple protest for truckers' mandates has developed into something much larger, into a defence of freedom in Canada. Is the grandmother that donated $20 on some Liberal list now and cannot travel after this? We do not know. We do not know how far and how wide this act will go or what the Prime Minister is trying to do.

I figure it is important that, while we often refer to our freedoms, I will read them out. Section 2 of our fundamental freedoms reads:

Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;

(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and

(d) freedom of association.

Section 6 reads, “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain and leave Canada.”

Section 7 reads, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

Section 8 reads, “Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.”

Section 9 reads, “Everyone has the right to not be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.”

The Emergencies Act really allows the Prime Minister to push those aside and do whatever he wants. Some ask me how we arrived here. That is the question I would ask all Canadians. How did we get here? This is the Prime Minister that has been leading up to this. This will be his crescendo.

Does everybody remember the Prime Minister's values test that was given to summer student jobs a number of years ago in 2017? In December of that year, the government introduced an attestation that if someone did not adhere to the Prime Minister's beliefs or his values, the funding was not going to come to them.

I remember many times fighting this in my MP office, fighting so that all members of our community would have access to those summer student jobs. Over 1,500 applications were denied because they did not meet this values test. On March 19, 2018, we tabled a motion. Former Liberal MP Scott Simms voted against the government. He was put on the back bench because of that. This is the Prime Minister four years ago. We have seen this developing for many years now.

I think what Canadians are becoming, sadly, aware of is that this is really who the Prime Minister is. I wrote a column a couple weeks ago and this is the quote from the actual Prime Minister's mouth. This is a man who is supposed to unite the country, not divide it. He said that they are extremists who don't believe in science, that they're often misogynists and also racist. He said that it is a small group that muscles in, and that we have to make a choice in terms of leaders, in terms of the country, “Do we tolerate these people?”

This quote is not from some far left-wing or far right-wing individual. This is from the Prime Minister's own mouth. This is the person invoking the same act we are debating today and it is shameful.

Some would ask why. It would seem to make more sense to unite the country than divide it. Here is an article from Lorrie Goldstein, who writes, “Trudeau can't unite us because his strategy is to divide us.” This is what it is all about—

[New Blueberry River First Nation Chief, February 15th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, today, I congratulate a very dedicated member of northern B.C., Judy Desjarlais. Last month, Judy was elected chief of the Blueberry River First Nation and just yesterday served her very first day as chief. Judy said she is dedicated to “bringing unity back” and “building a prosperous future for her nation”.

For almost two decades, Judy and her husband Boomer have owned Top Notch Oilfield Contracting, providing good jobs and opportunities throughout our area. Judy has been a very vocal advocate for her community and for developing our abundant natural resources in northern B.C. She is a busy mom to Trinity, Angel and Dawson, and deeply loves and respects her 81-year-old granny, Elder May Dominic.

We all congratulate Judy on her election, and I look forward to working with her. May God continue to bless Judy and guide her, as the mantle of leadership at the Blueberry is placed on her very capable shoulders. May Judy lead on.

[Government Business No. 8—Proceedings on Bill C-10, February 14th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, the member is supposed to be speaking to this particular motion. He has called out different members for talking about something other than what he thinks they should be talking about. In this case, all he can talk about is what we Conservatives are saying.

[Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021, February 7th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, tonight we are debating Bill C-8 and another tax-and-spend bill by the current Liberal government, which does not seem to understand a lot of things. The Liberals do not seem to care about people's privacy. They do not seem to care that there is record inflation in our country. We hear the Deputy Prime Minister go on about it not being a big deal, and that it is not the government's fault. Blaming the world and blaming COVID is the typical go-to. The Liberals are blaming COVID for everything, but it is far more than that. We have an out-of-control-spending government.

We are at $1.2 trillion in debt, and it is growing. A lot of Canadians may not know that a big part of the reason why we have that inflation is in the Parliamentary Budget Officer's fiscal update. Everybody out there would presume, based on the Liberals, that it is all COVID spending.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that over a period of seven years, from 2019-2027, the Liberals plan to spend $541.9 billion. That is a lot of money. Of that, $176.6 billion is not even COVID-related. Here we are, at a time when we are being hit with inflation, when Canadians are already being hit with massive increases in food prices, which I will give some examples of in a minute, and the Liberals are trying to say it is all COVID. Meanwhile, they are padding a whole bunch of projects and doing a bunch of things that are completely unrelated.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that we have the Peace River Bridge in my neck of the woods. It is the main artery on the Alaska Highway, and it is hugely at risk. It has been failing for the last 20 years and it has to be repaired. Workers are welding on it almost nightly. It needs to be replaced, but sadly we do not see any plans to replace such an important piece of infrastructure in this spending. However, we see spending going into a whole bunch of mysterious places. I guess we will find out more about that after we understand what was spent on COVID.

What I should do is illustrate some of the costs. We have heard that 4.8% is the number for inflation, but it really is a deceptive number because there are many things for which inflation is a lot higher than 4.8%.

An article from CTV says, “The biggest single increase was gasoline, rising 38.4 per cent over July of 2020.” In one year, it had gone up by 38.4%. It was not the only double-digit increase that Canadian consumers faced either. The article states:

“There's always a lot of moving parts to the electricity market,” said Rob Roach, deputy chief economist with ATB Financial. “But there certainly has been a lot of demand over the summer, and that just naturally pushes up prices.”

Even electricity is affected, and this is in an age when we want electrification to happen, with electric cars and all the rest. The article continues:

Electricity is up 21.1 per cent, with natural gas up 30.9 per cent. The hot summer has been at least a partial driver of the increase, Roach said.

I have even seen that. I buy the odd groceries, such as bread and different things like that, and I have noticed quite a spike in prices. They have gone up quite dramatically. I have four adult children and a daughter who is just about to graduate, and this is hitting them broadside. They realize that by the end of the month the money has run out. They even have decent jobs. My daughter works at Dairy Queen. Normally the money lasts, but it is not lasting anymore. She has a vehicle that she has to buy gas for and buys food the odd time.

This is what is catching a lot of Canadians off-guard. They wonder why they are running out of money. What it comes down to is that a government that is as much of a spendthrift as the Liberals are drives up inflation, which makes that dollar last less than it used to.

Another example of the increases in food prices is from a CBC article from a month ago:

Kendra Sozinho, a manager at the Fiesta Farms grocery store in Toronto, says costs from suppliers are going up faster than she's ever seen.

This is while the minister across the way says that it is no big deal. It is not the Liberals. The article continues:

“We're seeing almost every single supplier increasing their pricing which then increases our pricing,” [Kendra] told CBC News in an interview. “I've been here for 20 years and I've never seen a jump like this.”

Here we go. We are seeing record amounts of inflation. I would say that our economy is at risk. People ask me if we are beyond the point of no return and I say, “No, we have hope in Canada.”

In my neck of the woods, we develop our natural resources. We develop natural gas. A big part of the natural gas will make it to the coast through a well-known pipeline from my riding. We have oil, forestry, agriculture and mining. We have so many things. If we started actually appreciating the natural resource sector in this country, really started developing those resources and fostering trade like we used to from 2011 to 2015, when is when I was here with the previous majority government, the revenue would come with it. Let us hope we get there again.

There is typical thinking that the Conservatives have to clean up all the Liberal misspending over the past number of decades. We will do it again, though, and it is possible. To say that the Liberal government is not going to take credit for that is just wrong.

This is what another colleague of mine, the member for Carleton, said, according to the same CBC article:

Conservative finance critic...placed the blame for high inflation squarely at the foot of the federal government, noting that as a country with abundant energy and food resources, Canada should have a built-in advantage when it comes to keeping a lid on prices.

He is right. Internally, we should be doing fine, but we have seen the spike in natural gas prices. We produce the stuff, and we do it the best in the world. In the article, my colleague from Carleton continued:

“The biggest increases for consumer products have been those that we source right here at home, not those that depend on foreign supply chains,” he told reporters in Ottawa.

“Home price inflation is a home-grown problem,” he went on, arguing that record government spending under...[the Prime Minister] is to blame for inflation. “The more he spends, the more things cost”...[he] said.

That is the long and the short of it. Despite what the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister try to say, the credit completely lands in their lap about inflation and where we are today as a country.

The Prime Minister has been the prime minister for the last six-plus years. If we continue to have a prime minister like this, who seems to have no end when it comes to spending, it becomes very concerning. I look at the future of our children, given that our national debt has doubled in just under eight years.

I will finish with something that I talk to my constituents about a lot. The debt obligations are already $20 billion per year. That is just paying off the debt obligations, interest and the like to service the national debt. Those obligations will double within the next five years to $40 billion. That seems to be a mystery. It is a big number.

The average Canadian wonders how it will impact them, but the way the government pays its bills is through taxes. The concern that we have, especially on this side of the House, is that the credit card bill the Prime Minister is racking up will end up in all of our mailboxes. They are talking about things like home equity taxes and taxing the sale of homes now. They will deny it, but I have seen where it is actually being talked about with the CMHC.

One thing with Ottawa is that usually, when rumours are floating around, there is usually some truth to them. My concern, anyway, is that the government is out of control. It does not know how to control its spending. Again, we see the evidence in the $176 billion that is not related to COVID. It cannot just be placed at the lap of COVID.

We need a responsible government once again that manages its spending wisely. That will be a future Conservative government.

[Committees of the House, February 7th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I thank our opposition members who are very concerned about privacy. Again, as a former member of that committee, we did a lot of work around the world. Somebody mentioned Shoshana Zuboff and many of our other colleagues globally who care about this issue. This simple, nonchalant approach the government has with people's privacy and data is illustrated in the decisions it is making and not making. We talk about Huawei. We are calling over here to have a pause on Huawei in Canada, but the Liberals are just saying not to worry about it and that it is okay. It is a big deal for us.

Is the member confident that the government takes Canadians' privacy seriously?

[Committees of the House, February 7th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I was the former chair of the access to information, privacy and ethics committee. One thing we learned there is that privacy is a big deal. Most of us in Canada believe that. However, apparently the member across the way does not think it is a big deal. He is saying it is no big deal and telling folks not to worry about it.

With the new quantum computing capacity, de-identified information can potentially be reidentified. This depends on who gets access to the information. My concern with the member across the way is that I wish he would respect our Privacy Commissioner and all the work he has done in the past and all the work we have done with the International Grand Committee involving half a billion people concerned about Canadians' privacy. I wish he shared my concerns, and the concerns of the opposition, that this is a big deal.

When is the government going to treat the privacy of Canadians with the effort it deserves?

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, February 7th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, my office has been flooded with meetings, calls and emails about Immigration Canada and the buildup of almost two million applications that have not been processed. This has led to processing times of more than two years, and the applicants are running out of time. These delays are costly and highly stressful not only for the people applying but for many workplaces too.

We had a great reputation as a country for international students and those seeking citizenship and permanent residency. What is this government doing right now to stop victimizing some of the world's most vulnerable?

[Petitions, February 3rd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I bring forward today a petition from people who are concerned about the Liberal Party of Canada, as promised in its 2021 platform, denying charitable status to organizations that have convictions about abortion and that the Liberal Party views as dishonest. Further, this may jeopardize the charitable status of hospitals, houses of worship, schools, homeless shelters and other charitable organizations that do not agree with the Liberal Party.

I spoke to somebody at the Pregnancy Care Centre, Linda, who is very concerned about this very thing occurring. Therefore, petitioners call upon the House of Commons to protect and preserve the application of charitable status rules on a politically and ideologically neutral basis, without discrimination on the basis of political or religious values and without the imposition of another values test, and affirm the rights of Canadians to freedom of expression.

[Questions on the Order Paper, January 31st, 2022]

With regard to the impact of border closure and border restrictions related to COVID-19 on the hunting and outfitter tourism industry: (a) what are the government's estimates on the loss of revenue for the hunting and outfitter tourism industry during the COVID-19 pandemic; (b) what specific measures will Destination Canada take to promote hunting and outfitter tourism to an international audience as part of tourism recovery; (c) how much has been budgeted by Destination Canada to promote hunting and outfitter tourism as part of tourism recovery; and (d) what are the details related to how the promotional money in (c) will be spent, including a breakdown by type of advertising and which international markets the advertisement will target?