Bob Zimmer

[Petitions, November 18th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions today on two very serious subjects. One petition wants the government to formally recognize that the Uighurs in China have been and are being subject to genocide, use the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act and sanction those who are responsible for the heinous crimes being committed against the Uighur people.

[Christmas Greetings, November 17th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, as December 25 and Christmas quickly approach, I am reminded of the true meaning of Christmas: God sending his only son, Jesus, to save the world. Perhaps now more than ever we all need to be reminded of the joy of the very first Christmas:

Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

From my family and staff to everyone, may we remember the true joy and everlasting meaning of the season. Merry Christmas.

[Fisheries and Oceans, October 29th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal strategy for Fraser River chinook salmon has been an utter failure. Instead of implementing an effective recovery strategy for our iconic Pacific salmon, the Liberals chose once again to place unnecessary restrictions on fishing opportunities for British Columbians.

The minister has closed the fishery where there are a lot of fish and impeded the efforts of groups trying to restore salmon stocks in areas with low numbers of fish. The Liberals have ignored balanced proposals and the advice of experts, including their very own scientists.

When will the minister stop scapegoating British Columbian fishers for her failing to protect our B.C. salmon?

[Criminal Code, October 28th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I am the son of two elderly Canadians. My dad is 86 and my mom is 76. I am very concerned about our seniors' access to health care and that they will be put in a position where they have to make a decision between care and maybe ending their lives as a result of this pressure. This concerns me deeply, as it concerns many Canadians across the country.

Would this proposed legislation adequately protect those individuals in Canada?

[Natural Resources, October 27th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, here in Canada we produce the most sustainable and environmentally responsible natural gas in the world. A company called West Coast Olefins wants to make value-added products right in northern B.C. with its very own northern B.C. natural gas. Its CEO, Ken James, is trying to create manufacturing jobs right here in Canada instead of another country.

Will the government support the West Coast Olefins project, which will benefit so many of our communities, workers and their families, or just put up more roadblocks?

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

Madam Speaker, the great part of my answer is that we are very likely going to be supporting some of the measures within Bill C-4, because we do believe in support for Canadians during a crisis.

The member across the way has had many words in this chamber, so I feel honoured to be able to reply to his question again tonight. We agree with some of the supports. The key part of this problem is that we have to have a sustainable economy afterward. I think most Canadians understand that too. That would require being supportive of our resource sector and making sure that impediments to those sectors are out of the way so we can get the economy firing on all cylinders again.

I think that is the key difference between the two parties. Conservatives want to teach people to fish, so they can catch fish for themselves and get back to their jobs and provide for their families. The member across the way would prefer to give out handouts, and as the PBO has already said, that is unsustainable.

[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. We have had many conversations on the flights here and back. He is a fellow British Columbian. However, taxing the wealthiest is going to have a negative impact on our entire Canadian economy. Most of us understand that the people who make this kind of money also have businesses in Canada. They employ a lot of Canadians. We can threaten to tax them more than a reasonable rate and these companies and people will move. They often go to jurisdictions that are more favourable to their incomes and businesses. The last thing we want to see is Canadian businesses go to other countries and set up shop.

I want to touch on the debt and shouldering it all equally. I have a simple calculation. If Canada has spent $400 billion spent this year, does the member know how much that is per man, woman and child based on 36 million Canadians? That is $11,000 each, just for the deficit this year. That is what just got added to our credit card bill. If we want to look at the total of national federal debt, it is $27,777 for each man, woman and child. Each four-person family now owes almost $112,000. To me, it is all taxpayer money and it is all taxpayer debt as well. We need to be responsible on how we spend their money.

[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.