House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2021, with 47% of the vote.
Questions Passed as Orders for Returns November 4th, 2016
With regard to government telecommunications: what is the total amount of late-payment charges incurred in each month since December 2015 inclusive, in respect of cellular telephone service and service for all other wireless devices other than cellular telephones, broken down by (i) department or agency, (ii) service provider?
Questions Passed as Orders for Returns November 4th, 2016
With regard to contracts under $10,000 granted by Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency since January 1, 2016: what are the (i) vendors' names, (ii) contracts' reference and file numbers, (iii) dates of the contracts, (iv) descriptions of the services provided, (v) delivery dates, (vi) original contracts' values, (vii) final contracts' values if different from the original contracts' values?
Petitions September 28th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, I wish to present a petition from many people in my riding.
Among other things, the petitioners request the government pass a resolution to establish measures to stop the Chinese Communist regime of the crime of systematically murdering Falun Gong practitioners for their organs and to publicly call for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
Questions Passed as Orders for Returns September 19th, 2016
With regard to existing or planned government IT projects over $1 million: (a) what is the list of each project including a brief description; and (b) for each project listed in (a), what is the (i) total budget, (ii) estimated completion date?
Patrick Sobeski April 14th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Patrick Sobeski, who recently died on March 17, ironically, St. Patrick's Day.
Pat was a member of Parliament from 1988 to 1993. After the 1993 election, Pat returned to private business until 2001 when he returned to his birthplace of Woodstock, Ontario, to be with his elderly mother.
Pat was then elected to the Woodstock City Council in 2003, serving two terms as councillor and then one term as mayor of the city in 2010. He was dedicated to his community and always did his very best when serving the citizens of Woodstock.
Pat died at the age of 64, which is far too young.
I offer my condolences to his family and friends.
Income Tax Act March 7th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, there is no difference. When the money is taken out of someone's pocket and we build up a debt, it is just not beneficial to anyone.
Income Tax Act March 7th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting time, when we talk about Bill C-2. I come from a very strong rural riding, but it is also a riding that is one of the few in Canada that has two auto plants not related to each other. Therefore, I have a broad cross-section of Canadians. When people ask what is middle income, nobody seems to know, but one consensus is that it is always somebody who makes $10,000 more than I do. The difficulty, when we start to talk about what we are doing for middle-income people, is that there is no real definition of it.
We talk about what the Conservative Party did, and I think you, Mr. Speaker, might have been here when we reduced the HST from 7% to 6% to 5%. I think members would agree that everybody benefited from that.
This change being brought forward was to be revenue-neutral. Revenue-neutral would mean that they would take from Peter and give to Paul, but it would not cost Mary anything in the middle. As it turns out, the Liberals abandoned the promise and according to the PBO, Bill C-2's changes would cost Canadians $8.9 billion over the next six years.
I think members recognize that when governments accumulate debt, and when we are in a position that we are in now when the economy is not that bad—it is fragile but it is still growing—it does not mean we will pay it. It is not like a mortgage when we buy a house and intend to pay it off in a certain length of time. Government debt always ends up being paid by the next generation or generations. When I look at it, I recognize that we are putting this debt not only on my grandchildren but on their heirs. The debts that we build up in our time here are very important.
By taking the debt and doing what they would do for a small benefit to some people, and it would be so small that they would not be able to retain it, the Liberals have not shown us what the real advantage would be to the economy, other than we know we would add $8.9 billion to debt. This does not make sense.
Those good people in Oxford who are the farm people, the people who work in the auto assembly plants, the firemen, the policemen and the teachers, are they the middle-class people? I do not know, but they are concerned that these debts will be added on to their children and grandchildren. We need some transparency that goes along with this.
When we said that we would reduce the HST from 7% to 6% to 5%, everybody knew what that meant. It meant that everybody was going to save on their tax dollars. We recognized that tax dollars were not for the government; they were for the people. It is not for the government to decide that the tax money should be taken from pockets of people and to spend it willy-nilly. It is to do things for the government.
Unfortunately, in this case, we are past that point. We are looking at adding billions of dollars, and I am not sure whether anybody has calculated exactly what that will be. Some economists have said it will be $150 billion over the Liberals' term in office. That is a lot of money.
We just went through the worst downturn in the Canadian economy since the Great Depression, and we know that cost money. The deficit went up and the debt went up. However, we handed over a surplus. We should be looking at starting to pay it down, as we did in our first three years in government. Canadians are starting to see the sunny ways turn into dark cloudy days, and we are handing that big debt to our children to pay.
The tax-free savings account is one area that has been focused on a great deal. I know, when I talk to people in my riding about the tax-free savings account, they see no benefit in reducing the contribution limit. We have not heard why it is so important to reduce the contribution limit, other than if the Conservatives did it, it must be bad so we will go back to where it was. I hear from young people who say that they want to save that money to buy a house. There is a difference between RRSPs and tax-free savings accounts. When people want to buy a home out of an RRSP, it just means they have another debt. They can take their money out, but it has to be paid back or they have to pay the tax on it.
These young people, who are smart enough, and there are many of them, recognize that they can put the money into a tax-free savings account. It will not grow by leaps and bounds, but it will grow. They can take the money out to purchase a home. They do not have to put the money back in, but they do have an opportunity to put that same amount back into the tax-free savings account. It is a totally different scenario, so many are looking at that.
Many middle-aged people are looking at the TFSA as an opportunity to build for their retirement. They are not anxious to take part in the new scheme in Ontario, for instance. The Ontario government wants to have its own pension plan, something like the CPP, but we do not know exactly what it is. These middle-aged people are not interested in that. They want to save for themselves, to put that money away for when they retire.
To think that it would make sense to cut back the TFSA is illogical. It does not cost anything. The government's losses in revenues from that would be minimal. It is just a slap in the face of those people who felt the need to put the money away.
As we know, the vast majority of people who put their money in a tax-free savings account would perhaps be deemed to be in the lower half of the income brackets. They are not high-income people. This is a penalty on people who can least afford it, people who would like to save for their future, who do not want to be part of a nanny state. They want their own money they have saved for their retirement. In many cases, it also includes young people who want to save for their education or to go back to school. They may want to buy a house or a car. They may want to start a business.
Therefore, when we look at it, we wonder why the government would want to cut this back. What is the harm in leaving it where it is? It is a big harm to the people who wish to save, but no harm to the coffers of the federal government.
To turn around and have the tax break we are talking about today, which we know will be minimal—I heard a number today of $1 a day—what is the benefit in that? One cannot even buy a coffee with that, although there is one chain that is giving away free coffee now, but it is rather difficult to see how that $1 or $2 a day would make a great deal of difference to the average Canadian. It is different from when the HST was reduced. We knew what it would do for the auto industry, the recreational industry, and the equipment industry, all of those.
We have not heard what this is going to do. No one can say “We'll see an increase in productivity”, or “We'll see an increase in opportunities for manufacturers.” It just is not there.
However, what we do know from the PBO, and I am sure everyone on that side agrees with the PBO now, is that it will cost $8.9 billion over the next six years. That is just a number that gets added to the growing deficit that we hear about.
We heard during the election campaign that we would have a $10 billion deficit. That $10 billion deficit was one of the 300 promises made. Now that $10 billion deficit seems to have grown to $30 billion. When we put $30 billion here and there, I know it is just a number and that budgets will balance themselves eventually, but somehow they get balanced by our young people, our families, our grandchildren. It is just not fair that we push this on to them. We have been doing it for far too long as a nation and a province.
I am from the province of Ontario, so when we put our debt here, along with the Province of Ontario's debt, we can just imagine the kind of money that our young people will have fished out of their pockets to pay for what we have not paid for. It just does not make sense in the big picture of society.
I am really puzzled as to why we would want to support taking away just one little thing, the tax-free savings account. It just does not make any sense.
I can see, Mr. Speaker, that you are getting anxious to stand up, so I do not want to take away your time when you stand up and tell us we are finished.
I know that on this side, we do not understand why the government would deny people the opportunity to save their own money. That is really what it is: they are saving their own money.
Life Means Life Act June 19th, 2015
Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to take a moment to thank all of my colleagues in the House for this last four years and a bit. This has been a great session of Parliament. I know a number of people have made a decision not to come back, but I would also recognize some of those people who have made decision to come here, in spite of ill health, to serve the country and their constituents. It has been a real pleasure to be here with them.
I rise today to talk about our government's highest purpose. What should that purpose be of any government? It is the protection of Canadians, ensuring our streets and communities, and our country are safe for honest, law-abiding people as we live, work and raise our families.
At all times, our government has endeavoured to ensure that our system of criminal justice reflects both this high purpose and the values and priorities of Canadians more broadly. For example, to give victims of crime a stronger voice we introduced and passed our Victims Bill of Rights Act. For too many years the welfare of the criminal was held up as a highest priority of criminal justice. This historic legislation, the Victims Bill of Rights, puts innocent victims back to where they should have been all along, at the very heart of our system of justice.
We have also changed laws regarding people deemed not criminally responsible for violent acts, ensuring that while dangerous offenders with mental illness receive the care they need, we also take care of the safety of the public.
Reflecting the values of Canadians also means that both the gravity of the offence and the need to protect Canadians must be considered in sentencing. That is why we got rid of the faint hope clause that allowed killers to apply for early parole. That is why when the criminal kills more than one person, under our law, judges can now impose consecutive sentences and take every lost life into account. That is why we have made it easier to deport foreign criminals from Canadian soil and have made it more difficult for them to enter the country in the first place. That is why we have made it easier to remove dangerous foreign criminals from Canada's shores and to make it more difficult for them to even get here in the first place. That is why we have toughened penalties, including creating mandatory prison sentences for many serious violent offences, in particular sex crimes against children.
When we say all of these things, let us be clear: we desire the rehabilitation of all criminals. However, certain criminals are too cruel and too dangerous to be released. When people break the laws and pay their debt to society, our hope is always for permanent rehabilitation. No one wants to see anyone degenerate into a lifetime of crime, but there are some criminals, the most dangerous and violent offenders, whose actions mean we cannot risk putting them back on our streets. However, as the law stands, sometimes we do.
Bill C-53 would end this practice, specifically for criminals who prey on society's most vulnerable, plotting kidnapping or sexual assault that ends in murder; criminals with such contempt for law and order that they kill correctional or police officers charged with that protection; criminals who so despise our values and our way of life that they carry out deadly acts of terrorism and high treason; and criminals whose crimes are so horrific that they shock the conscience of the entire community. The freedom of these criminals would compromise the freedom of everyone around them.
The suffering of the victims of such horrific crimes and the suffering of those who love them is bad enough. However, when the whole truth is known, they find out that the crime could have been prevented in the first place, that the crime should have been prevented but it was not, that the perpetrator was someone who could have been, should have been, securely behind bars. When that is discovered, at that moment their anguish, compounded by disbelief, becomes outrage, not just to them but to the entire country. Then we are all left to wonder what justice really means.
Canadians ask, rightly, why the most dangerous killers once in prison should ever be free again only to threaten our children, our families, our friends, our neighbours and our fellow citizens. It is very hard to argue with that, and our government has no intention of arguing with it. This sort of thing must end in our country.
The fact is that there are certain criminals who should never be allowed to walk the streets, where we and our neighbours live and work, or in the streets where our children play.
ZERO TOLERANCE FOR BARBARIC CULTURAL PRACTICES ACT June 15th, 2015
Mr. Speaker, I believe, if you seek it, you will find agreement to apply the results from the previous vote to this vote, with Conservatives voting yes.
ZERO TOLERANCE FOR BARBARIC CULTURAL PRACTICES ACT June 15th, 2015
Mr. Speaker, I believe if you seek it, you will find agreement to apply the results from the previous vote to this vote, with the Conservatives voting no.