Bob Zimmer

[Proceedings on the bill entitled An Act relating to certain measures in response to COVID-19, September 29th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, I respect the hon. member across the way. We have worked together in the past and what I am trying to do is make the case that if Bill C-4 is going to pass and every party in this building wants to help Canadians, but I want to provide the other argument that if this is going to get a yes to supporting the bill we need to explain to Canadians how we are going to pay for it. That is what I am trying to do right now.

I am talking about indigenous companies in my neck of the woods and the signals that the government does not give in the Speech from the Throne, and we see this increase in protected areas. Again, that is not really favourable to any resource sector. If anything, it restricts the resource sector a lot. It is tightening the resource sector up when we need to be giving it our blessing to keep going. We need logging companies to keep logging. We need the oil and gas sector to keep going, in a good way, but to keep going.

I know my time is short, but an article in the Macdonald-Laurier Institute talks about how indigenous people should be allowed to make their own decisions. In a response to the Speech from the Throne, Chief Theresa Tait-Day from the Wet'suwet'en says, “Most unusually, the intervention of the Governments of Canada and British Columbia have made a difficult situation much worse. The two governments [the Liberal government and the NDP government in B.C.], perhaps to avoid an escalation of environmentalist-led conflict, opted to negotiate only with some of the Hereditary Chiefs.”

She continues, “The communities were not consulted, and the negotiations were not endorsed or supported by the Wet'suwet'en Nation.... Remarkably, the governments chose to meet only with a self-selected group of Hereditary Chiefs, even though any final agreement must be ratified by members in...[a] transparent and inclusive manner by Wet'suwet'en members”.

The governments could have talked to 99% of the Wet'suwet'en community to see this project go ahead, but instead they only talked to the ones who were against the project. Again, we are talking about signals here. Are they really going to get one million jobs going while all the efforts and the Speech from the Throne signal the exact opposite?

[Proceedings on the bill entitled An Act relating to certain measures in response to COVID-19, September 29th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, we are here tonight talking about Bill C-4. I have the document in front of me; it is fairly thick. The government wants to ram it through after only four hours of debate. This is unfortunate because there is a lot there. I guess we are supposed to speak to it, so I will speak to it a bit.

A highlight for me is the repayment part of it, where it says:

If a person has income of more than $38,000 for 2020 or for 2021, the person must repay an amount equal to 50 cents for every dollar of income earned in that year above $38,000 of income....

That is a credit to the Conservatives, who really wanted to make sure that those repayment amounts were not just dollar for dollar, that people were not penalized for working more. To me, that is a credit to us as Conservatives.

A bigger conversation that my constituents are having is whether this is affordable. The Liberals are trying to make it sound like we do not want to help Canadians. Absolutely we want to help Canadians. We know there is help that is necessary in times of crisis, such as what we are in and what we saw in March. There is no question that we support that.

I will use a logging company as an example. My son works for a logging company as a heavy-duty mechanic. If those particular owners, Wayne and Marie Harder, and I just saw her on the plane on the way out here, are going to buy a bunch of trucks for their business, they need to make sure they have a business afterward to pay for those trucks.

Likewise, when we have such massive expenditures from the current government, unprecedented amounts of money with $400 billion this year alone in deficit spending, we have to ask what our ability to recoup that money for Canadian taxpayers is. It is all taxpayer money. Even our Parliamentary Budget Officer, Yves Giroux, speaking about the current Liberal government, said:

It's without a doubt that we cannot afford deficits of over $300 billion for more than just a few years.... So if the government has plans for additional spending, it will clearly have to make difficult choices and either raise taxes or reduce other areas of spending. Because it's clear that we cannot afford to have deficits of that magnitude for even the medium term.

Again, we support expenditures, but it is the Liberal government that wants to just hand people the fish and not help them to get fishing again. That is the great analogy. The Conservatives have compassion. We would do it in a different way, but ours is sustainable; theirs is not.

This is from John Ivison today. It is not just Conservatives who are saying that we need to have fiscal responsibility to taxpayers. He said, “This points out an inconsistency that is even more apparent - the [current] government's concern about the impact of climate change on future generations but indifference about the threat of massive debt.”

Again, this is what my constituents ask questions about. They see in their own lives that unsustainable deficits and debt are exactly that. They are unsustainable. Even the PBO said it can go on a couple of years, but if we keep doing this we are in big trouble.

I had hoped to see a signal in the Speech from the Throne that would speak to the revitalization and the million jobs, which was quoted by the other side, that they were going to re-establish and get those million jobs back.

Typically in the past, Canadians have had resource development to get revenue to pay for health care and all these other programs that we so value in Canada. Resource development has always been the anchor of our Canadian economy, but did we see any resource development in the Speech from the Throne?

This is all we got: “Canadians need good jobs they can rely on.” I agree with that. It is on page 11 of the Speech from the Throne. The speech continues, “To help make that happen, the Government will launch a campaign to create over one million jobs, restoring employment to previous levels.” That sounds great.

I will speak to this is a bit. Unemployment in my neck of the woods in northern B.C. is about 13.7%. It may be higher in certain sectors, obviously, but that is the average. Usually we are record-setting in my part of the province. We have been down to four per cent even. It is almost unseeable, the employment rate is so low. Everybody has a job. We are quite the opposite right now.

If the Liberals are talking about bringing employment back, how do we re-establish that? We have to do it through resource development. However, this is the Liberals' answer: “This will be done by using a range of tools, including direct investments in the social sector and infrastructure, immediate training to quickly skill up workers, and incentives for employers to hire and retain workers.”

There is nothing about resource development. It sounds good if we are training apprentices such as my son, who is a third-year apprentice, if that is what the initiative is. It is absolutely supportive, but there is nothing specific to resource development as being the answer to getting us out of this huge debt and deficit spending that we are in.

Then we see quite the opposite. On page 24 of the Speech from the Throne, rather than signalling this is a government that really wants to get that resource economy firing on all cylinders again, we hear, “This pandemic has reminded Canadians of the importance of nature. The Government will work with municipalities as part of a new commitment to expand urban parks, so that everyone has access to green space.”

I love it. I was fishing on the weekend and I do not get much time to do that, but I absolutely love the idea. It is a great idea, but then it continues, “This will be done while protecting a quarter of Canada’s land and a quarter of Canada’s oceans in five years”.

That is 25% of ocean closures and 25% of land closures within five years. Can the members guess where we are at right now? I am sure there are a few dozen Canadians watching us here tonight. Right now we are around 11%. We set the goal at 17% and we are only at 11% now. To get where the government wants to go, those protected lands and oceans would have to double.

What lands are the Liberals trying to protect? It is areas in northern B.C. like my own, and the caribou closures, where there is not really any scientific basis for making these closures, but they are closing out mines, closing out logging and so on. It is all done on the basis of hitting this target.

Now we are going to double that, so where they are going to get all this land from? All those areas where normally those from indigenous communities find jobs in the resource sector. I have many indigenous friends with indigenous companies. They are finding it hard to find work right now with some of the closures that are already being implemented—

[Petitions, September 29th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to table a petition that recognizes an article by the Associated Press that revealed an ongoing campaign of Uighur birth suppression by the Chinese Communist Party.

The petitioners state that they would like to recognize that Uighurs in China have been and are being subjected to genocide, and ask that the government use the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, the Magnitsky act, to sanction those who are responsible for the heinous crimes being committed against the Uighur people.

[Government Business No. 9, July 22nd, 2020]

Madam Chair, I want to ask my colleague about the current situation in Parliament and the fact that some media and reporters have done a great job of shedding light on this. I would like to also add Vivian Krause to that mix, and some of the statements she made with respect to WE. I just saw on social media that WE had somehow been involved in getting party lists and information for the Liberal Party before the last election. Those kinds of things do not come to light unless we have people investigating them.

Bringing it back to where we are in the House of Commons, the fact is we have only had so many sitting days. Even this version, for those out there watching, is not a real Parliament; rather, it is called a committee of the whole. This is a committee meeting. It is not a real Parliament. We do not have the normal number of people in the House to really bring these issues to light.

One more thing, before I ask the question, is this. I was the former chair of the ethics committee, and we wanted to have the Ethics Commissioner come and read his Trudeau II Report. We had it all lined up and ready to go, but the Liberals on the committee actually shut it down. This week the member for Winnipeg North said it had already been addressed in a previous Parliament, but it was not addressed because the Liberals buried it there as well.

My question for the hon. member is this. Does he think this kind of setting is conducive to really holding the government to account? That is our job. We are paid very well to do that and we are not really being allowed to do that. I saw one of the members in his RV. Good for him, as he is on holidays, but that is not the way it should be. Parliament has sat through world wars in the past. We have seen many democracies around the world function regardless of the crisis. Does he think the current situation is the way it should be?

[COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters, July 22nd, 2020]

Madam Chair, the recently released Senate report on the federal government's COVID-19 response recommends that the government work with the territories to ensure that northern airlines have sufficient financial support and access to gateway routes.

Could the Minister of Northern Affairs please outline what further action the government will be taking to protect this vital transportation network, given this recommendation?

[COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters, July 22nd, 2020]

Madam Chair, that was a question about WE, not about what the government was supposedly doing.

Airlines in the north provide critical services to remote fly-in communities, including supplying food and providing access to health services. To help ensure these services continue uninterrupted, the Northern Air Transport Association has recommended that the government suspend federal excise and carbon taxes.

Is the Minister of Finance considering this recommendation, which would help alleviate the negative financial impact the pandemic has on this vital industry?

[COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters, July 22nd, 2020]

Madam Chair, I will be sharing my time with the member for Beauce.

The list of questions about the Liberal government and its relationship with the WE organization grows, and here is another one.

In 2017, the Liberal government paid over $13,000 to the WE organization to help secure the appearances of Canadian talent at WE California that year. One of the speakers at the event was Canadian Lilly Singh, who in 2015 called the Prime Minister her dashing Prime Minister on Facebook and proclaimed to have a #mancrush on Instagram.

This begs the question: How many friends of the Prime Minister have been paid by taxpayers thanks to his government's relationship with the WE organization?

[Fisheries and Oceans, July 21st, 2020]

Madam Speaker, two weeks ago I was honoured to speak to a group of recreational fishermen and women at the Public Fishery Alliance rally in Vancouver. I give special thanks to organizers Peter Krahn, Dave Brown, Fred Helmer, Chris Bos and many others.

According to Phil Morlock of the Canadian Sportfishing Industry Association, more than eight million of us fish recreationally every year and spend $10 billion annually, yet we have a federal government bent on shutting us down.

The Prime Minister and the fisheries and oceans minister must stop punishing British Columbians for their failures. The government's June 19, 2020, decision to further restrict fishing opportunity is another blow to British Columbians and their communities. Its 2020 Fraser chinook plan ignored viable, balanced proposals and ignored input from experts with years of experience that would have upheld conservation values while providing public fishing opportunity.

Instead of acting on measures that can make a real difference to restore fish stocks, the Liberals are scapegoating B.C. anglers who are just trying to put food on their tables. The Prime Minister and the minister need to remember that we fish, we hunt and we vote.

[Further COVID-19 Measures Act, July 20th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North talked about how great an economy the Liberals were a part of before COVID hit. I would like to remind him of our reality, where we are now.

For Canadians out there who are watching today, we have seen our debt increase by one-third within four months. This is at a time when our natural resource sector is on its knees, as my colleague for Red Deer—Lacombe mentioned, and is being pummelled even harder by the government. What we need for the future of our energy workers is a positive future so that those workers can get back to work and our natural resources can help to start paying off the debt.

Does the hon. member think the economy is better today, or was it better before?

[Tourism Industry, July 20th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, with an annual economic effect of over $5.5 billion and over 37,000 jobs supported nationally, the guide outfitters sector is vital to Canada's rural and remote communities. In Canada, it typically welcomes over 300,000 fishing and hunting clients from outside of Canada, with the vast majority from the United States.

With the border now closed at least until August 21, an entire season has been lost and many outfitters are struggling to keep their businesses afloat. The outfitters I have spoken with are saying that wage subsidies alone are not helping. What is the government doing to ensure our fishing and hunting guide outfitters survive?