Bradley Trost

[Questions Passed as Orders for Return, January 30th, 2017]

With regard to court ordered firearm prohibitions and administrative orders related to firearms: (a) how effective is the government’s enforcement of court ordered firearms prohibitions including court orders that restrict the ownership of firearms and other weapons, such as restraining orders, protection orders, peace bonds, persons on parole or conditional release and specifically, (i) how many times in the last ten years has a person subject to the above orders acquired a firearm or other prohibited weapon illegally, (ii) how is information about these firearms prohibition orders, conditions, and restrictions transmitted to the Canadian Firearms Information System and police forces across Canada, (iii) what is the average number of days it takes to get information about these firearms prohibition orders, conditions, and restrictions into the hands of the Canadian Firearms Information System and front-line police personnel responsible for actual enforcement of these orders, (iv) what is the average time it takes from when information about these firearms prohibition orders, conditions, and restrictions gets into the hands of the police until the firearms and weapons are removed from the person’s possession, (v) for convicted offenders, who are subject to firearms prohibition orders, conditions, and restrictions, are periodic police searches conducted of their homes to ensure that they haven’t acquired firearms or other weapons illegally, (vi) once firearms prohibition orders, conditions, and restrictions are rescinded or expire, how long does it take to cancel them and how long does it take before this information is passed along to the Canadian Firearms Information System and front-line police personnel responsible for actual enforcement of these orders, (vii) are persons subject to firearms prohibition orders, conditions, and restrictions required to turn in any documentation related to their current or previous firearm ownership, usage, or licencing, and, in particular, are they required to turn in their Firearms Possession and Acquisition Licences, Authorizations to Transport, Authorizations to Carry and Firearms Registration Certificates to authorities, (viii) if the answer to (vii) is in the affirmative, what follow-up action is taken to ensure they have complied; and (b) how effective is the government’s enforcement of administrative orders such as firearms license refusals and revocation and specifically, (i) how is information about these license refusals and revocations transmitted to the Canadian Firearms Information System and police forces across Canada, (ii) what is the average number of days it takes to get information about these license refusals and revocations into the hands of the Canadian Firearms Information System and front-line police personnel responsible for actual enforcement of these orders, (iii) what is the average time it takes between the time information about these license revocations gets to the hands of the police before the firearms and weapons are removed from the person’s possession, (iv) are periodic police searches conducted of the homes of individuals, who are subject to license revocations to ensure that they have surrendered all their firearms and haven’t acquired firearms or other weapons illegally, (v) are persons subject to firearms license revocations required to turn in their documentation such as: Firearms Possession and Acquisition Licences, Authorizations to Transport, Authorizations to Carry and Firearms Registration Certificates to authorities and, if so, what follow-up action is taken to ensure they have complied?

[The Environment, December 1st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, this week the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment listed 84 municipalities and reservations that are under drinking water advisories or boil water orders.

It is unacceptable that in 2016, many families in Saskatchewan and across Canada do not have reliable access to clean drinking water. Yet, despite this deplorable situation, the government spends millions of dollars in pursuit of an abstract climate change policy that has no foundation in real science.

The people of Saskatchewan and all Canadians need and deserve an environmental policy that focuses on real problems, such as providing access to clean drinking water. Instead, Canadians are being threatened with a tax on carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide tax will kill jobs, but more importantly, it will drive up the cost of living for everyone in Canada, especially middle class and low-income families, the people who can least afford it.

The people of Saskatchewan want the Liberal government to end its war on Canadian oil, gas, and coal and instead focus on delivering clean air and clean water.

[November 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, labour and capital are some of the basic inputs into business. The way CPP is structured, it has the effect of a payroll tax, which is a tax directly on labour. This means it is a tax on productivity. As we tax productivity, it makes productivity naturally less productive, because the tax is slowing it. Therefore, it is making it more difficult for businesses to hire, it drives up the unemployment rate, and lowers businesses' profits. It makes a business more difficult to succeed, and therefore makes people less likely to take risks.

This is bad for the economy. Taxing productivity is the worst thing we can do if we want to grow the economy. We should target consumption, but instead the Liberals here are targeting productivity, and we are all losers for it.

[November 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, let me suggest that the hon. member has some dated information, because the Fraser Institute did a study, and like I said, for people my age, people born in the 1970s and later, this has been an awful rate of return.

I understand that some people prefer the security of a system where everything is more clearly laid out for them. However, different people have different views, and that is why we should give them the choice and not continually force everyone to put the entirety of their savings into the Canada pension plan. There are other things out there, like RRSPs and TFSAs.

The goal from the government's perspective is to keep people out of poverty, not to provide a middle-class income with pensions, and allow people to decide how they want to do their savings. Do they want to spend their money now or do they want their money later for retirement? This is why we give people the freedom, because everyone's situation is different.

[November 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am not arguing for the scrapping of the CPP altogether, and one of the reasons is the basic inertia of the system. To redesign something purely from scratch is not necessarily the best idea. What we did in government was, instead of expanding something that was not the best, we chose other vehicles, like TFSAs, to give people better rates of return, more freedom, and more flexibility.

Therefore, while CPP was really a great deal for people who got in early, it is a bad deal for people of my generation. The entirety of CPP is a bad deal for people of my generation. However, to unwind something that substantive and large is very difficult, and there are better ways to do it, but we are where we are and so we will go forward.

[November 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak in this debate and discussion on the CPP, something which affects almost all Canadians. I spoke to this bill at second reading, and it is interesting to see at report stage how the debate has gone forward, or in some cases not gone forward.

Before I get to the main body of my speech, I want to deal with an issue that the parliamentary secretary has continuously repeated, that all of the provinces have come onside to support this change, and citing the Conservative premiers, of which there are very few. It should be noted that the premier of my province, Mr. Brad Wall, said very clearly that the reason he was backing this was because he was concerned that a worse agreement was going to be put in place. This was not exactly a ringing endorsement.

As he said, he was more concerned that a more aggressive Ontario Liberal plan would be put in place. He signed on to the Liberals' changes, not because he thought it was a good idea, but to prevent something worse from happening. When someone endorses something because the person fears the government will do something worse, I do not know if the government can honestly claim that as a ringing endorsement, as was presented to the House. I wanted to note that. I am sure the parliamentary secretary will address that in questions and comments.

When looking at the overlying issue with the CPP, the Conservative Party has objections to it, and the government is pushing it forward. The reasoning is very similar on both sides, but comes to very different conclusions. The government is arguing that for the cost of living and people's retirement, this is a good bill. The Liberals are saying that the cost of living for seniors is too high and it is difficult for them to make ends meet. It is difficult for seniors to make a living, so we therefore need to make these changes so that future seniors should benefit.

Interestingly, we in the opposition, in some respects, are arguing a similar issue. The cost of living makes it difficult, and people need every cent they can get. The Conservative Party is arguing that people should be allowed to keep doing what they are currently doing with their funds and decide for themselves what they should do with their money. As has been noted, this could end up being an $1,100 hit for the average person, assuming the average person pays the maximum. While, for some people, $1,100 a year is not significant, for people whose budgets are tight, that is very significant.

As has been noted frequently in debate, there are studies by the Fraser Institute and other institutions that have noted that almost all of the increased premiums will come from savings. However, some of it will come from consumption. One way or the other, Canadians have a problem. They have a problem because they do not have enough money to pay for their necessities of life, now or in the future. Every circumstance is different, but this needs to be noted.

We are not dealing with abstracts for people at the high end of the income scale, and, frankly, this does not target people at the really low end of the income scale, because the OAS, and particularly the GIS, are used to deal with that. That is how the current Liberal government and past Conservative governments have dealt with the issue of poverty. The CPP deals more with middle-class Canadians, the broad swath, the centre, economically and socially, of our society, and their cost of living.

The question we are really debating here today is how we can make things more affordable for Canadians now and in the future. How can we make things more affordable and create a better standard of living for Canadians in the present, in the future, and in retirement? This needs to be underlined in this whole debate. The largest cost for all Canadians across the board is taxes. In Canada, over 40% of our GDP ends up getting sucked up into taxes. That is the size of it when we put everything together.

One of the reasons why seniors are struggling and having a difficult time today and why the Liberals are arguing that they need increased CPP benefits in the future is because we continually have taxes that are too high. The Liberals like to talk about the one element of tax changes that was positive in their budget, but they do not talk about the positive tax changes from the previous government that they eliminated: income splitting and assistance to families. Parents with children is one particular group that is going to be under fiscal pressure due to these changes with the CPP.

Just think about when in life people have the greatest expenses. When is the time that they have a mortgage? It is also a time that they frequently have their children. People's children are growing up, spending more money, wanting to do sports, and to do things with their schoolmates. Those are the years when people are trying to earn their peak amount of money. It is not their retirement, but their earning years.

Along came the Liberal government. First it eliminated income splitting, which was again a policy that benefited Canadians at the middle of the spectrum of our society. Most Canadians, depending on where they are in life, would have benefited from that for a good portion of their life because we know that as they go through their lives they are all in different income strata for different seasons.

When they are students they are technically very poor, maybe living in their parents' basement. Most of their income may go to pay for tuition, but they get by. They are considered poor.

The years when people are paying the maximum in CPP premiums are often when they have the greatest expenses. They need to take care of their house. They perhaps have parents to take care of. Generally that is when they have children. This is when the government again is coming after people with tax hikes and, as I noted earlier, the elimination of income splitting.

That is why we in the opposition have been referring to the CPP hike as a tax hike. It would take money directly from people, reduce their freedom, reduce their choice in what they could do with it, and give them a worse rate of return than they would otherwise have if they had invested it in private savings plans. This is something that has been documented by researchers looking at this.

For my grandpa, the CPP was a marvellous investment. He paid into it for practically the minimum number of years, and since he lived to be 92 years old he collected well above the average amount. It was fantastic, better than a 20-some per cent rate of return, which was the average for people. He made way more on his investment than he could have anywhere else.

But for people of my age, a generation Xer born in 1974 and younger, the rate of return after inflation for CPP that is invested is barely 2%. That is horrendous. People could do better. That is why we are referring to it as a tax. The government takes the money and people ultimately lose money. It drives up their cost of living.

What could people be using this money for if the Liberals were not taking it away? Electricity prices are going up, in many cases due to the wrong-headed environmental policies of federal and provincial governments. Property taxes are going up, again something that often hits people in their prime earning years with children and families the most. Inflation and various other expenses are all going up. Here we are, taking away more of people's money.

The basic argument is this. If the government is taking money away from people, not returning to them the amount that they should have and could have earned had they been able to invest and control their money privately, it is definitely a tax hike, because what people are doing with this money is subsidizing the government. It allows the government to get away with lower OAS premiums. It allows pension plans that are integrated with the CPP to get away with lower premiums. People are losing money. That is why it is a tax hike. It is a tax hike that raises people's standard of living and, as has been noted, taxes are the most expensive thing that we have to deal with in our society.

That is why I and my fellow Conservatives oppose this bill. It is the wrong policy for Canadians. It is a bad investment. It takes money out of people's pockets. That is why we as Conservatives are opposing it.

[Canada Pension Plan, November 14th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, overall poverty rates among seniors dropped under the Conservatives. CPP deals with people who already have jobs paying into it. For low-income people, we need to deal with the guaranteed income supplement. CPP only affects people who are working and contribute over many years.

[Canada Pension Plan, November 14th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, in the 1970s, 20-some percent of seniors lived below the low-income cut-off line. That number has now dropped to 3.7%. As members have pointed out to the House, the previous decade was the most successful in Canadian history for bringing people above the low-income cut-off line, the real poverty line. The best anti-poverty program in the world, by far, historically is free enterprise. It has worked. We are talking about CPP, which is people's own money. Let people spend their money how they see fit.

[Canada Pension Plan, November 14th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party believes Canadians should decide what they want to do with their own money. They should have the freedom to do it. That is why we are the low-tax party and we believe taxes should only be implemented for absolute necessities. The government and the NDP seem to have the attitude that they know how to spend people's money better than people do themselves. There is a fundamental point of disagreement and we debate it every election.

[Canada Pension Plan, November 14th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, one of the things I like to do when I address an issue is always lay out the philosophical principle grounds as to why I am addressing it and where my conclusions come from. One thing I have noted in this House, over the years, is members do a fairly excellent job of going through the details. However, when we are in this House, we are not just speaking to other members, explaining details, we are laying out our basic understanding to our constituents and to the broader Canadian public as to why we are voting for or against something. I always consider it very wise to lay out the basic principle as to why I will be voting on a piece of legislation in one particular way or another.

However, with respect to this particular legislation, the CPP tax hike, as we the Conservatives are noting Bill C-26, the reason I am particularly voting against it is that the government is taking away freedom and choice from Canadians. Let us be fairly clear with what the government is doing by raising the CPP premiums: it is taking away people's choice. This is not some money that is coming from somewhere else into people's accounts. It is not money falling from heaven like manna. It is people being forced to take the money, which they may very well need now, and to delay it for some future benefit some day, as the data and research shows for Canadians of my age and younger, at a very poor rate of return.

Let us go through the basic objections as to why the Liberal government's CPP hike would be bad for Canadians, would give them less freedom, and, in the final analysis, would not be good for our economy or people's individual lives.

The first point is that increases to the Canadian pension plan, hikes to the premiums, have not over the long term increased savings. The government is naturally going to argue, “Of course, this is forcing people to put money into the future that they will get back from the CPP when they retire”, but the empirical data and research that has been done, in the past, shows that whenever we have hiked the rates on premiums the number one place where Canadians tend to take the money from, when the government takes it from them forcefully, is their savings. It is almost a 1:1 ratio.

That means every time there is a hike, the government requires more in contributions, be it directly from people's paycheques or indirectly, although it still comes from people, ultimately, under the guise of taking it from their employers' contribution share. What do Canadians do? They put less money into mutual funds; they put less money into RRSPs; and now, with the introduction of the tax-free savings account, we will see less investment and less savings there.

What is happening is not that Canadians are getting a larger sum of money for their retirement, but that the government is taking away options from Canadians, taking away flexibility, and putting money into a pension plan for them, which may or may not be in their best interest.

Canadians are at different points in their lives, with different interests.

I am married. I have a 20-month-old daughter. All members of the caucus who know me know I am very proud of her. My wife and I, rather than wanting to put more money toward our pension plans, are looking to start a registered educational savings plan for our daughter. We hope some day she will grow up, graduate from high school, and go forward for further education. That is the priority for us. However, when the government begins to engage in things like the CPP hike, it takes away people's freedom to make those choices and, instead, decides for them, “This is where your savings need to go”.

There is an issue right now with affordable housing across the country, and in Vancouver and Toronto in particular. One of the greatest places where people save money is in their real estate. It is very difficult for young people now to get a foot on the ladder. The argument is, “Well, these aren't great sums of money, but a dollar is a dollar, and every little bit makes it more difficult”. To top it off, with the government's changes to mortgages, it continues to make it more difficult for young people who want to get on the housing ladder. The point is that by taking away people's freedoms, the government does not increase and encourage more savings for retirement, it just changes the vehicle for how it is done.

The second point is this. There might actually be some benefit to Canadians if the rate of return was that much greater. There was an interesting paper done by the Fraser Institute that analyzed, depending upon what year people were born, the actual rate of return, in real value, for the average Canadian. For people born after 1972, it is barely over 2%.

I am 42 years old and was born in 1974. For me, the rate of return on my retirement plan is absolutely lousy. For people from my grandpa's generation born before 1920, it was an absolutely fabulous rate of return. It was incredible. He lived to be 92 years old, he paid for approximately 10 years, and it was amazing.

However, this is the issue. For young Canadians going forward, an increase to the Canada pension plan is not great. It is a poor return on investment. If people put money in, say, a low-cost indexed fund or something like that, historically, it is shown to have greater returns that one can control. Let us say that, unfortunately, someone passes away early. Their heirs would receive extra benefits. The government's plan would instead provide weaker returns for younger Canadians. It is not helping people. It is deciding for Canadians when they need their savings, now or later, and at an inferior rate of return. That is the second point that the government needs to note.

What problem is the government addressing? Again, this needs to be dealt with. When we discuss retirement, we talk about replacement income. This really is not the issue when it comes to retirement income. The question is more one of whether Canadians are living in poverty at certain times in their lives. I am sure that when most hockey players quit playing in the NHL, they do not get retirement replacement income of 70% of their previous earnings. That is not the point. The question is whether their incomes will drop to a point where they will live in poverty. They have a choice. They have their bulk earning years and they can move things around. That is an extreme example.

I found this statistic earlier today on the Fraser Institute's website, which is that only 3.7% of Canadian seniors live in poverty, whereas it is more than 10% for working-age Canadians 18 to 64. For young people trying to put money into their educations, which for many people is the best investment by far, it is going to be difficult. Again, the government is taking away people's flexibility and making decisions for them, so that, in the end, they will not have the best return on their investments for their lives.

Instead of concentrating on replacement income, retirement policies, from a federal government perspective, should zero in on people who have low incomes. Those are almost always people who have not contributed to the Canada pension plan, because they have not worked over the years or were self-employed and not able to save money.

As my time has just about expired, I will mention another point that can be discussed in questions and comments, which is the cost of CPP versus other low-cost options available for savings. What it comes down to is that we will lose our freedom. We lose our freedom when we allow the government make decisions for us.

Let me reiterate that this bill would not solve the problem for low-income seniors, which is the real problem in retirement. It would provide a poor rate of return for people who view it as an investment, and it would displace savings from one portion of life to another portion of life by taking away people's freedoms. I will be voting against this legislation because it is bad policy. It is bad policy for Canadians now and in the future.