David Anderson

[Business of Supply, December 1st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent, and I am very proud to do that. I notice we have members who want to speak. I see the members opposite can hardly fill in their list. They have members speaking for 20 minutes and do not have anyone to share with.

This is an interesting debate today. I am fascinated by the fact that the NDP is neutral on this one, and I suspect that it is probably because they have never seen a socialist or communist dictator they did not love, so they are having a hard time getting involved in this debate.

I just heard the NDP member talk about how the Cuban people are going to manage the transition. That is how far removed they are from this discussion. I could talk for hours about the damage socialists and communists do wherever they are found, but we do not have that time here today.

It would have been better if the Liberals had been neutral on this issue as well. If they had been, the eulogy that was presented probably would have gone unnoticed, but that is not what happened. The comparison they are making today is a bit ridiculous, but they will go ahead and continue to make it.

It is probably the language of such strong personal support that Canadians and people around the world have noticed. When our Prime Minister referred to “Cuba's longest serving President”, I think that caught people's minds, because they knew how it was that he served. He served at the point of a gun.

The Prime Minister said that Fidel Castro was larger than life. I know that he was larger than life to the people who were on the ground in front of him. He talked about how Castro served his people for half a century. Well, he oppressed them for half a century, ruled over them, and dominated them. He did not serve them for half a century. Our Prime Minister talked about how he is a legend, supposedly. It was more of a nightmare for the Cuban people. He talked about his tremendous dedication and love for his people, and I say especially for those folks who had to go before the firing squad.

We get to the nub of the issue later in the eulogy when he talked about what an important person Fidel Castro was to his family. He called him his father's friend and offered condolences to the family, friends, and many supporters of Mr. Castro. Certainly he was not talking about the Cuban people at large in that eulogy. He concluded with another adjective of admiration, talking about him being a “remarkable leader”.

It is not surprising that we had eulogies around the world, #Trudeaueulogies they were called, for people like Mussolini, Pol Pot, John Wilkes Booth, Kim Jong-il, Genghis Khan, and Darth Vader because of the Prime Minister's foolish choice of words.

Perhaps the Cuban hardships should have been recognized by the Prime Minister rather than his private loss.

I do not think the debate is actually about the eulogy. It is about leadership. It is about a failure of leadership and about much more than just a few words on a piece of paper that came out of the PMO, because there are so many issues the government faces on which it is failing to lead Canadians in a proper way.

At question period just two hours ago, we had to listen to the electoral reform minister stumbling all over the place after she put a committee of all parties in the House together that worked hard for six months. I could not believe the amount of time people dedicated to that committee through this summer and fall. They went into the evenings. She stood and basically mocked the work they have done. That is an example of the failure of leadership we see in the government.

We saw failure two days ago when the Liberals made an announcement on the pipeline. They were trying to tell Canadians that they based one pipeline on science and will approve the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline and then said that they will not approve the northern gateway pipeline. They set science aside. Science has said that there is nothing wrong with approving the northern gateway pipeline, but the Liberals took it off because of politics. That is just another example of a failure of leadership Canadians have to put up with from the government.

Certainly the whole carbon taxation discussion is turning out to be a huge disaster for the government. Liberals knew nothing about carbon taxation, carbon pricing, or cap and trade issues when they started, and they are finding out that it is not working out the way they planned. It is going to be a disaster. We are going to find ourselves in the same situation as Ontario in the last few years, where the leadership has now had to apologize for its own carbon taxation schemes that have just about driven the Province of Ontario into bankruptcy.

There are all kinds of things. Can I mention fundraising? Can I mention how inappropriate it is? All of us do fundraising. It is inappropriate to have cabinet ministers, who are the ones making the decisions, charging $1,500 a ticket for people to get access to them.

The finance minister is selling access to people involved in the financial industry. The justice minister is selling access to lawyers when she has the power to appoint them as judges. We watched the innovation minister hosting fundraisers for people who want to come to him for funding. Is that appropriate?

Canadians are getting sick and tired of this. It was good to see on the weekend that this foolish statement that came out of the PMO highlighted to Canadians once again the failure of leadership we see in this country.

I want to talk about the people of Cuba. Across the way today, members kept talking about the people of Cuba.

A friend of mine sent me an email. He said that he was holidaying in Cuba and decided to spend some extra time wandering around to see what it was like away from the resort. He said that he talked to people, and all he saw was basically the economic devastation that has been caused by Fidel Castro's communist regime.

I have heard all week from the Liberals celebrating the free health care in Cuba. The reality, he said, was that there was nothing on the shelves. He could not even find an aspirin on the shelves. That is what the Cuban medical system was like when Fidel Castro and his brother were done with it.

My friend said that when he went to the government grocery stores, there were only three things on the shelves, and they are subsidized: rice, beans, and rum. That was on the shelves he found in the government grocery stores.

He said that it was obvious the government provides labour to the resorts, and the people who are working there get paid about $20 a month to do this work, while the government takes the rest of those wages.

People keep talking about the Cuban medical system, but medical doctors in Cuba are earning $25 a month. My friend said that as he toured the country, he saw abandoned farmland growing nothing but weeds. Where is the help? Where is the assistance? Where is the aid that is supposed to come in to help people learn how to farm? That regime has taken all of it. He talked about farming still being done with animal power, and we all know that it is pretty easy to find a 1957 Chevrolet in Cuba, but we will not find a car much newer than that.

There has been a history of political repression and a history of internment. The firing squads were hopefully from years ago, but that is part of the history, the legacy, of Fidel Castro.

We know that there is continuing political repression. It has one-party rule. My friend talked to me about walking around Havana and seeing how many pimps there were pimping out teenage girls for tourists to come to take advantage of them. Cuba has become known as one of the leading places for child sexual exploitation in the world.

Are those the kinds of things we are talking about to celebrate the regime of Fidel Castro? There is ongoing religious pressure and persecution in Cuba. That is what the Prime Minister is celebrating, and it is wrong.

The member opposite wanted to talk a little bit about foreign affairs and global affairs. We can talk about that as well. There is a failure of leadership, and not just on this Cuban issue.

Last spring, the foreign affairs minister, on one of his junkets, went to Myanmar. He walked in there and said that we will give it some money, $44 million, and then he flew out again. Since then, the situation in Myanmar has completely disintegrated.

There is a democratically elected government there, but it is dominated by the military. In the last month, in the Rakhine state, there has been a conflict that has gone on, and it is escalating. We hear nothing from the Liberal government. It started with a border clash, where nine Myanmar police were killed by militants. The army has moved in there and has been controlling the area. It has shut down access to the area.

We have heard nothing from the Liberal government. Canadians are getting tired of this failure of leadership in every area.

In terms of what is going on in Myanmar, the head of the United Nations Refugee Agency said that as far as it can tell, the troops are “killing men, shooting them, slaughtering children, raping women, burning and looting houses, forcing these people to cross the river” into Bangladesh. There are 30,000 people who have left the country and fled to Bangladesh. What do we hear from our government? Nothing.

Another issue, of course, is the persecution of the Baha'i in Iran. It is a good example of a place where the current government is silent one more time. The government has decided it wants to normalize relationships with the regime in Iran. There is cradle-to-grave persecution going on there. The Baha'i are the largest non-Muslim minority in Iran. They are being persecuted. Their businesses are being stripped from them. They are being shut down. We just had someone shot in the street strictly because he was Baha'i. What do hear from our government? Nothing. We want normal relationships with Iran, and we are not speaking out.

Therefore, when the member opposite talks about the government defending human rights, that is not happening. It is one more indication of the failure of leadership that was just indicated by the example we saw last weekend.

[Foreign Affairs, November 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, this past week the world's longest-ruling tyrant died. Canadians were appalled to hear the Prime Minister state, “It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest serving President.” He was Cuba's longest-serving president because he persecuted, oppressed, and killed those who opposed him. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs should have condemned his legacy rather than mourning their loss.

How could the Liberals celebrate such a vicious reality?

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, November 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the government has failed energy workers and it is failing farmers as well.

Too many agriculture decisions are made a long way from the field and yesterday the Liberals did it again. They announced that neonic chemicals are being removed for pest control. These products have been used safely and effectively for years. There has been inadequate science, no cost analysis, and competitors have not made this move.

Why are the Liberals once again putting our agriculture producers at a disadvantage?

[Agriculture and Agri-food, November 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, this morning ranchers in southern Alberta were at the agriculture committee to talk about bovine tuberculosis.

Lives and livelihoods are being destroyed. They need help. They need funding to cover the additional feed costs caused by the CFIA's mandatory quarantine. They need the CFIA to use local vets to speed up testing. They need the CFIA response centre to openly and directly involve producers, but this morning, Liberals stopped us from calling the CFIA to committee.

What are the Liberals afraid of, and why are they failing to address these issues?

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 21st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I do not know about the incident on Denman Island last weekend, but I think we all need to recognize the sacrifices that emergency response personnel make. I was fortunate enough, before I was here, to be able to serve seven years on a volunteer ambulance at home, and so I understand the commitment that people make.

On the weekend, I had the chance to go to the opening of an emergency response centre in my riding, which is a small community. The centre decided it needed to have a much better building to put the ambulances, fire trucks, or whatever in, and worked very hard to put that project together. We were able to celebrate the opening of that. These people do not do this for money. It does not matter what the money is, they do it because they want to make a commitment to their community and to serve their community well.

Quickly on the other issue, CETA does not change the length of the pharmaceutical patents in Canada. I understand there is a patent restoration mechanism in there if the regulatory delay has taken place on approval of drugs. My understanding is that it will not necessitate a hike in pharmaceutical prices in Canada.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 21st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I am excited to see the member join our bandwagon here. Obviously, the Liberals have a new-found enthusiasm for trade deals and that is great, because they can join with us at any time. There were two agreements, and that long focus on Doha, which is kind of their history, and that is okay, because at least they were taking a look at it at the time and they were trying a little bit here and there.

The fact is that we signed 46 agreements in less than 10 years. We were the ones in 2007, 2009, and 2014 who that put CETA together and brought it all the way to the point of where it was signed. It was just a matter of finishing it off and signing the ratification part of it. Then the establishment of the TPP and the distance that we came on that relationship I think is a tribute to the commitment of the Conservatives on their focus on trade.

We welcome the Liberals, particularly the parliamentary secretary across the way, to join with us and to celebrate trade and the history of trade in this country.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 21st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, we have a good and enthusiastic debate going on here today. I have to compliment my colleague who just spoke. He talked about encouraging the Liberals to keep their foot on the gas with respect to this. However, often watching the Liberals and the way they are doing things is like watching teenagers go joyriding. We see their hair blowing in the wind, but there does not seem to be any purpose in what they are doing. Sometimes we wonder if anybody is steering over there. They are racing all over the place, but we do not think anybody is steering.

It is certainly not about getting attention. Providing leadership in Canada is important. It is about giving direction. We would encourage the members opposite to begin to do that for Canadians. Thankfully, the Liberals have us to depend on. We delivered a trade deal for them. We gave them a trade deal that was pretty much negotiated and signed. It was all ready to be wrapped up and presented, and the Liberals did everything they could to mess it up by tinkering with it. Thankfully, they were not able to wreck it, and now we are here today with them actually supporting it.

We are excited to see the Liberals actually supporting one good thing this year. CETA has certainly been that. It is a trade deal that gives increased access to the world's largest economic unit. It gives us the opportunity to begin to mature our trade relationship with the European Union. Any country that gets access to a market of 500 million people, almost 30 countries, needs to take that opportunity.

This is the world's largest import market. I did not know this until today, but their imports are of a higher value than the entire GDP of our country. It is a huge market that we are able to access. We look forward to being able to do that. Every year, they have economic activity of $20 trillion. I certainly think Canada can find a place, somewhere in there, to be able to benefit from this agreement.

Obviously our side of the House has a history of pursuing trade agreements. The Conservatives have been champions of that over the years, and less so on the other side of the House. We will maybe go into that a little. NAFTA, from the 1980s, has turned out to be probably the most successful trade agreement ever made. We do about $2 billion of trade a day now with the United States. It is an incredibly effective and efficient trading relationship.

There are tens of thousands of jobs that are tied to the trade that goes back and forth. It probably has the strongest economic ties in the world, even given the European Union and its structure. It is probably the most positive trade relationship in the world, and we look forward to continuing that. We hope that is something that the government cannot mess up.

I guess we were surprised, when the president-elect in the United States was even suggesting that he wanted to talk to Canada about NAFTA, that the government would get down on one knee and ask him if he would possibly renegotiate that with them. It seemed like a very strange position to take, and yet our government moved ahead with that. I think it was naive. It was far too premature to be able to make those suggestions, but the government has done that already. We hope that will not impact NAFTA in any negative way.

Our government was also responsible for 46 trade agreements. I was here early in the 2000s when Doha was the big thing. That was the one trade initiative that everyone seemed to be focused on. I remember going to Geneva in 2003, representing our party, and seeing the negotiations that were going on there. It gradually faded out. The government was not able to get an agreement.

One of the things that concerned me and others in our caucus at the time was to understand that the Liberal government had no trade capacity in terms of putting these deals together. It was not that interested in looking anywhere else for trade agreements. It did not get it done. It did not pursue them. I think there were maybe two agreements over the entire time that the Liberals were in power. Trade was not an important issue to the Liberal government.

We came in, and it took a couple of years to build that trade capacity. It took a while to get it up and running, so that we could actually do the negotiating. In the seven or eight years after that, it was remarkable that we were able to get almost four dozen trade agreements done. I do not know if there has been any record of success like that around the world.

Now we are sitting here with CETA, and thankfully the government is supporting that. Hopefully it will not do anything further that would hinder that, and will move ahead as quickly as possible.

We also want to encourage the government on TPP. TPP has been a good initiative. It is something that we hope the government will be supporting enthusiastically. I know the trade minister said almost a year ago that it was not her job to promote those kinds of things, specifically the TPP, but we certainly hope that attitude has changed.

We saw an initiative on the weekend by six countries to try to put together an agreement like the TPP and move ahead with it, even if the United States is not going to go. We do not know if it has made a decision on that yet. We have heard some rhetoric. That trade agreement between countries would be phenomenal, whether the United States was in it or not. We need access to that part of the world, and the arrangements that have been made so far with respect to the TPP and the negotiations that have been done would be only good for Canada. We look forward to seeing the TPP move ahead as well. I would ask the government to keep its foot on the gas. On this one, we ask that it steers in the right direction and gets it done as well.

Trade is critical to my area. I have talked about this previously, but I probably need to highlight again for my constituents that we have a number of things going on in our riding that are very important and critical not only for our riding but for supporting the economy of this country.

Agriculture is a big thing there. We have dryland grains and oilseeds. We have pulses and lentils. Pulses and lentils grown in my riding go around the world. The majority of those pulses and lentils grown in western Canada now are exported. We need an export market to continue to develop those agricultural industries.

In these trade agreements, agriculture is always the biggest trade impediment. The biggest trade barriers are set up around agriculture. We encourage the government to take that seriously and to try to remove those barriers so that our folks can trade around the world.

Beef and pork, as well, come from our area. Beef always has a lot of trade barriers around it. We encourage the government to take a strong stand. The former minister of agriculture, who is my seatmate now, was instrumental in pushing back the COOL legislation in the United States. We worked on that for almost 10 years, and we were able to win those battles at the WTO and finally begin moving our beef more easily into the United States. We hope this issue will not raise its ugly head, or any other part, in the near future.

Energy is obviously important to all of us, particularly those of us who have oil and gas in our ridings. We would like to see pipelines moving these products. We know that they need to go to export markets like the United States. We need some markets in Asia and Europe. We encourage the government to continue to develop those types of export markets.

Potash is important in our province. We mine potash, and it goes around the world. It grows food to feed people around the globe. Again, it is an export-dependent product.

We have a lot of manufacturing, particularly agricultural manufacturing, that we need to move around the world. There are lots of markets in the European Union that we would like to develop and continue to access and grow. We look forward to CETA assisting with that as well.

CETA has an interesting history. It started back in 2007 with discussions. It is interesting that it was only a year after the Conservatives came in. Our cabinet saw the possibilities and the real benefits of an agreement like that, so it started having discussions. It took a couple of years to get the negotiations going. They started in 2009, and by 2014, five years later, we were able to negotiate the agreement and basically signed it in principle in 2014. There were two years to settle the legal issues and get the translation done, and we are at that point now.

It is interesting to hear the government opposite trying to take credit for that. When we look at the timeline, we understand who actually did the work and who got the work done.

As I mentioned earlier, the Liberals insisted on tinkering with the agreement, and they almost lost it. Thankfully, we are at the point where we can see the beginning of ratification in Europe. We hope that the implementation will soon come. We need to see the agreement come into effect fairly quickly.

I want to talk a bit about the consequences of this agreement for our economy. This agreement will bring a potential 20% boost in bilateral trade and a $12-billion annual increase in the Canadian economy. We encourage the government to remember that in its discussions and negotiations. We need to see this finished as quickly as possible. The economic equivalent of this agreement is like adding the equivalent of $1,000 to the average Canadian family's income and up to 80,000 new jobs to the Canadian economy.

Everyone in the House needs to get behind this agreement, see it as something really good for the future of our country, and move ahead with CETA.

[Committees of the House, November 16th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the member is exactly right. The frustration that Canadians are feeling with having to deal with the government is reaching limits that we have not seen in decades, probably since the time the Prime Minister's father was prime minister of the country.

The reality is that we are spending our time talking about CPP premium hikes that are going to impact every employer and employee across the country. These hikes will not come into effect for another 20, 30, and 40 years before people will be directly impacted by them. It is going to cost a lot of money, and it will slow down the economy.

During the worse economic downturn since the recession, our government had the best record of job creation and economic growth among all of the G7. We reduced taxes to their lowest point in 50 years, with a family of four saving almost $7,000 a year as a result. After running a targeted stimulus program that created and maintained approximately 200,000 jobs, we kept our promise. We balanced the budget. We left the Liberals with a surplus, and now we have this disaster that they have brought in after only one year.

[Committees of the House, November 16th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the obvious answer is that the best thing for Canadians would be if this agenda never saw the light of day. It is unbelievable what has happened since the government has taken over. It has not created one full-time job yet. The Bank of Canada says the government's new housing rules will cost the economy $6 billion by the end of 2018. Our bank economists around the country are publicly calling out the government, telling it to quit adding additional spending. We see that GDP growth is going to be 10% lower than had been projected, down from 1.4% to 1.2% in 2016, and from 2.2% to 2% in 2017. What more do Canadians need to hear than that this government's agenda has been a complete and total failure to this point?

[Committees of the House, November 16th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I did want to take a bit of time to talk about the impact that the current government has had on my area.

As members know, Cypress Hills—Grasslands is a large part of southwestern Saskatchewan and agriculture has been a big issue. Agriculture has done well over the last few years. Prices have been up. We have had some fairly good crops. Obviously, the snow and the weather this fall has impacted agriculture in a huge way. There has also been quite a change in cattle prices over the last year, so a lot of the cattlemen are facing pressures that they have not faced over the last couple of years.

Certainly, one thing that has helped over the past few years has been the previous government's commitment to trade agreements. It signed over 35 trade agreements around the world, which has impacted agriculture directly in our part of the world. It is good to see that CETA did not fall apart under the current government. It appears that it did everything it could to create problems with respect to having CETA implemented but we see that there was a step taken here in the last couple of weeks, and it looks like it will be implemented at some point in Europe, and that is a good thing.

There is a question I guess on what the future of the TPP is. We have seen a change of government in the United States. President-elect Trump has made it very clear that he does not support TPP. We in this country believe that the trans-Pacific partnership generally is a good thing for Canadians and that having that partnership with those specific nations would only benefit us in terms of trade.

The second area in my riding that is of great importance to me is oil and gas. The energy sector has been a major factor in our part of the world and it is unfortunate to see the government, and the Alberta government in particular, create so much uncertainty for the oil and gas sector in western Canada. I am from Saskatchewan. I am very thankful that we have had a strong government there, one that is committed to natural resources, and a premier who was willing to speak his mind and who in many ways led the way around the world in terms of leadership on this issue. I should mention the carbon capture and storage project that is in place in southeastern Saskatchewan. It has had a huge impact and is an example of what we can do in terms of innovative technology with respect to carbon.

We would expect that the government would have a bit more interest in the kinds of things that will allow our oil and gas industry to develop responsibly, one of which is the Keystone pipeline. It has been very important to many of us. There has been pipe lying in my riding now for almost 10 years for the Keystone pipeline. I think some of it has been re-coated once already because it had been lying out long enough that it needed it. I would certainly like to see that pipeline laid underground rather than sitting on top of the ground. Hopefully, that will happen soon. So far, the government across the way has said that it will not interfere with the Keystone pipeline construction. We can only take it at its word. We hope that it is not misleading Canadians on this. We look forward to the revival of interest in Keystone across the border and the movement of several hundred thousand barrels of oil a day down into the United States to the gulf, which actually does give us an opportunity to export some of our product and to find new markets as well. Therefore, when I hear the natural resource minister say that the government is not really that interested in Keystone anymore, we need to remind him that this is an important part of economic development in western Canada and that he does need to continue to support that. It will be interesting to see whether that pipeline and growth in that sector will be supported by the government because it has already been approved in western Canada and it needs to move ahead. We do not believe that the government should stand in the way. Hopefully, it will keep its word when it said that it would not do that.

Western Canadians are becoming disenchanted with the current government and are somewhat tired of feeling like they are not being heard at all by the government, particularly on natural resource development.

The government will need as much help as possible with economic growth. We are over a year into its mandate and it has yet to create one single full-time job, which it should be apologizing to Canadians for instead of bragging about its economic platform. Its spending is ballooning, getting larger all the time, and growing at an incredible rate. Its deficits are skyrocketing. It does not seem like that long ago that we thought it was ridiculous that it was promising $10-billion deficits, and people in our part of the country even rejected that notion. We are now looking at deficits in the neighbourhood of $30 billion, and perhaps more, extending out as far as we can see into the horizon and out to the future. People are tired of broken promises and they are already tired of stagnant federal leadership. It has only been a year and they are already getting tired of what they are seeing.

It is just incredible that after all of this and all the noise that we have heard from the Liberals, there has not been one full-time job that they can show has been created in this country by their economic plan. Their economic plan has failed. Canadians are already paying for it. We find out that the Liberals are borrowing an extra $32 billion over the next five years, with no reason to believe that things are going to get better.

Speaking of $30 billion takes us somewhat into the area of this new infrastructure investment bank that the Liberals are proposing and suggesting moving about $35 billion, I believe, into this bank. It does not appear that it would be very useful or helpful for Canadians to have a large-scale infrastructure bank that protects billionaire investors who would come perhaps from other countries and from Canada. Their liabilities would be limited while the taxpayers' liabilities would be infinite. It does not seem like a fair way to treat Canadians; it does not seem like a fair way to treat taxpayers.

We had a very successful infrastructure program going. The Liberals just seem bound and determined that they are going to wipe that out just because they can.

There are a lot of other things that are taking place. There are the Liberal tax hikes that Canadians are facing. Red tape is increasing. It is just making things even worse for Canadians. We remember things like the fact that the Liberals cancelled the family tax credit for sports and arts classes; they cancelled small-business tax cuts. That was significant across the country because at the same time they want to increase CPP premiums so businesses and individuals would be tagged for up to $2,200, perhaps even more than that, in order to cover those increases that the Liberals think they need. That CPP tax hike is something that Canadians need to be paying attention to because it would not actually impact this generation. It would take 20 to 30 to 40 years before it would be fully realized. Some people would be paying into this for a number of years and would never get anything out of it. They do not seem to understand that is the case.

The carbon tax is another issue. I spent six years on the natural resource committee, and we talked a lot about carbon, carbon dioxide, carbon taxes. We talked about carbon exchanges and we talked about putting a price on carbon. It seemed like every one of these schemes that is being suggested in Canada has been tried somewhere else and it has failed somewhere else. Now we come late to the game and we insist on then being part of this whole process.

I move:

That the House do now adjourn.