Ed Fast

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 2, November 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased that my colleague from Cariboo—Prince George has highlighted the legacy of failings of the Liberal government. Also, I very much appreciate that he highlighted that this is not about serving Canadians, it is about branding the Prime Minister. In fact, in the question just a second ago from the Liberal member, she commented on what a great legacy taking selfies was to leave behind. Can members imagine that being one's legacy?

I want to ask the member this. The long-lasting legacy of the current Liberal government will be imposing upon the next generation an unbearable debt load because of the Prime Minister's profligacy in spending. I would ask the member to comment on how our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay for our spending today. This is spending that is for our benefit but that future generations will have to pay.

[Health, October 31st, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the minister should be restoring the tax credit for diabetics.

This past Friday in Abbotsford, within a 10-hour period, five different residents died of opioid overdoses. This kind of tragedy is playing out in hundreds of communities across our country, yet the federal government's silence on this health crisis has been deafening: no response, no strategy, no plan.

When will the minister wake up and realize Canadians are dying on her watch? When will she act?

[Salaries Act, October 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, as the father of four wonderful grown daughters who have their own careers and who have really blessed our lives and blessed the lives of people around them, I know how important gender equality is, but it cannot be artificial gender equality and that is what happened here with the Liberal government. The Liberal government is great at photo-ops. It is great at using slogans, but when it comes to addressing the underlying reasons why women are not rightfully taking their place in our society, the Liberals are an absolute failure.

We need to empower women to understand that they can aspire to anything in this country, whether it is to be in the House of Commons, whether it is to be the CEO of one of the most powerful corporations in our country, whether it is to be the principal of their school, or whether it is to be in their home providing leadership as a mother, as a mentor, to their kids.

I concur with the member. Even though Bill C-24 pretends to be a bill that would strengthen the Liberal government's reputation for gender equality it actually undermines it, because it is fake.

[Salaries Act, October 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, we see the disingenuousness of that question when we think about energy east. Energy east was strongly supported in the Atlantic provinces but the Atlantic provinces did not have a regional minister who could advocate for them. What happened? The federal government stuck its finger into the pie, messed around a bit, interfered in the process, and energy east threw up its hands and said it is no longer going to invest in Canada. That is what comes from a Liberal government, a top-down, centralized government not in tune with the regions.

[Salaries Act, October 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill for pointing out the vacuousness of the Liberals' position on gender equality. It is all show and very little tell when it comes to their position. I thank her for that very gracious yet succinct effort to expose what the Liberals have really done on gender equality, which is very little.

I want to go to the other part of this bill, which addresses the regional economic development facilities we have across the country. Bill C-24 effectively does the following. It abandons a decentralized decision-making process and replaces it with a highly centralized top-down decision-making process when it comes to the regions of our country, to my region of the country, British Columbia, in the west, to the northern areas of our country, to eastern Canada, and to the Atlantic provinces. What this bill does is effectively create eight new Liberal ministerial positions, which reflects the five minister of state roles that were filled after the 2015 election. It also does something else. It adds three Liberal ministers yet to be named. I will get back to that in a moment, because it comes down to transparency. I can say that, after 12 years in this House, it is the first time I have seen legislation come forward that creates undefined ministerial posts without any idea of what purpose they will serve.

Also, Bill C-24 formally eliminates the positions of the six ministers for the regional development agencies across the country, agencies like Western Economic Diversification Canada, FedNor, and ACOA in Atlantic Canada. That must be concerning to everyone in this House, because it reduces the accountability of government to the regions and the communities across this country.

In my early years as a politician, I was a member of city council. It has been said, quite correctly, that city council is the level of government closest to the people. When I was sitting on city council, we had residents of our communities come forward and make their concerns known. They would bring us their proposals as to how they wanted to see our city develop. We could make decisions that very night or day, and the next day we could start implementing those decisions. What was great was that, as a municipal councillor, because we were from that very community, we could hear directly from the people affected by our decisions, and we could tailor our policies and programs accordingly.

What is happening now federally is the exact opposite. The ministers who were appointed to the various economic development agencies in the main regions across the country were the ones who had their ear to the ground. They were the eyes and ears of the government when it came to that region of the country. What the current Liberal government has done is quite arbitrarily said, without any consultation with the regions, that it will not have any ministers for the regions but will simply get rid of them and appoint a minister from Toronto to make all major decisions relating to those regions. I do not want to begrudge Toronto and Ontario with a minister responsible for economic development, but I can say that once we get out into the other regions of the country they will be saying, “What happened? What about us? There is somebody in Toronto making decisions for us out here in the region.” That should be embarrassing for the Liberal government.

What should be even more embarrassing is this. In the last election the Liberal Party elected 32 members of Parliament from Atlantic Canada. One would figure that out of 32 members of Parliament, the Prime Minister could find one who would be the representative for ACOA , and represent the interests of Atlantic Canada.

He just could not get his mind around that and said that it would be better, rather than having an Atlantic Canada minister, to appoint someone from downtown Toronto to make these decisions. I think of our democratic process, about the accountability that governments should be focusing on, and about responsiveness to the very people whom each one of us serve when we are establishing ministries that are focused on ensuring that every region of our country benefits from economic development. We should make sure we also appoint people to represent those regions and to be the voice in cabinet of those regional development agencies and of the people who live in those regions.

How do I know there is a lot of concern? We just have to ask the people from Atlantic Canada. For example, Conservative leader Jamie Baillie, said, that appointing an ACOA minister from Toronto, “is yet another sign that the Liberals are taking Atlantic Canada for granted.” We saw that with the appointment of a Supreme Court justice from that region and how long it took for the current Liberal government to finally understand that Atlantic Canadians needed to have a voice on the Supreme Court.

We go on to Éric Tétrault, president of the Quebec Manufacturers and Exporters. He indicated that he hoped that the situation would not be a total loss and that a Quebec MP might be put in charge of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the regions of Quebec. Did that happen? Of course it did not. He went on to say, “We have quite a few development programs with them [being a government] in areas such as innovation and skilled labour. We are afraid they'll get mixed up with a national policy that won't necessarily work for Quebec. If we have to deal with officials as far away as Toronto or Ottawa to get the government to pay attention to problems with the Quebec economy, we're in trouble.”

We are hearing that across the country.

Let us go back. I was reading the Cape Breton Post, and this is what it said:

The more you push...out to big centres, like Toronto, Ottawa, or maybe, Montreal, as the base of decision-making for those organizations, the less in tune they are with the regions that they're trying to help the most.

As we focus on developing an economy that is truly going to share the prosperity of this country with every Canadian, with every community across this country, and with every region, the government has to understand that the government members need to have their ear to the ground in each of those regions. It is not enough to say, as the member across the way just suggested, that they have 32 MPs from the area. Do the Liberals have any representation when it comes to economic development?

The previous government understood full well how important it was to have a member of cabinet who was also designated the person to represent the interests in that person's region. That is why there were not a lot of complaints heard across Canada. One of the concerns I have is that this decision was taken because the Prime Minister has completely capitulated to our public service. We know that for years our public service has not necessarily been a big fan of these regional economic development agencies. Now of course the public service has the Prime Minister, who will do its bidding, and has eliminated the key ministers who could have provided the ears to the ground and the eyes in the region that would have allowed the government to make good decisions for economic development in every part of our country.

I have one last thought. Bill C-24 also lacks transparency. As I mentioned earlier, the bill would appoint three mystery ministers for whom the job description has not been defined. That is a lack of transparency. The government, by stealth, is trying to introduce ministerial positions and Canadians have no idea what the positions are going to entail.

Therefore, this bill, Bill C-24, is very disappointing to me, to our Conservative Party, and certainly to Canadians across this great country of ours.

[Ethics, October 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the minister conveniently forgot to disclose the company with the French villa.

Last week, I was in Maple Ridge and heard the outrage residents had toward their missing-in-action MP over his government's hypocrisy on taxes. Small businesses are angry that the Minister of Finance, who is asking them to pay more taxes, receives tens of thousands of dollars per month from a company that he owns and regulates and that is registered in an offshore tax haven.

Why did it take him two years to admit that he failed to uphold the ethical standards expected of a finance minister?

[Ethics, October 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, today the Minister of Finance admitted that his ethical standards were in tatters. Ministers are not supposed to directly own shares in companies, especially those they regulate. To get around that, the minister hid his mega-million dollar fortune in an Alberta numbered company, dodging ethical guidelines and paying less tax than other law-abiding Canadians. Only a wealthy and entitled finance minister could pull off such a stunt.

With his integrity in shambles, will the minister now admit that he is still in a conflict of interest?

[Carbon Pricing, October 18th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Motion No. 131, which is sponsored by my good friend from Oshawa. He has done a great job highlighting the fact that the Liberal government lacks the transparency it promised during the last election.

Effectively, what the motion does is to instruct the Standing Committee on Finance to undertake a study to ensure that the cost of the Liberal carbon tax is disclosed to consumers, and that the government annually reports the financial impact of it on Canadian households and employers. This is important because, quite frankly, Canadians have no idea how it will hit them. They have no idea that the national carbon tax that the Liberal government has imposed will undermine Canada's prosperity, and undermine Canadians' ability to purchase the consumer goods that they have become accustomed to.

If the Liberal government is going to move forward with imposing a national carbon tax, Canadians deserve to know how much it will cost them. It was the Liberal government that promised to be transparent with Canadians. When it comes to the carbon tax, they are doing no such thing.

I refer the members to the mandate letter that each of the cabinet ministers received from the Prime Minister. It is the Prime Minister's instructions to each cabinet minister. Of course, there is a section that deals with conflict of interest, which we know the finance minister is breaching so flagrantly, as we remind the government every day here in this House. However, there is something else that is written in the mandate letter from the Prime Minister that is directed to the environment minister. It states:

We have also committed to set a higher bar for openness and transparency in government. It is time to shine more light on government to ensure it remains focused on the people it serves. Government and its information should be open by default...Canadians do not expect us to be perfect—they expect us to be honest, open, and sincere in our efforts to serve the public interest.

That is the letter directing the environment minister to be open and transparent in the job that she is doing for Canadians. Has she done that? Of course not. The Liberal government and the minister have repeatedly denied requests to provide Parliament with basic information on the impacts of a carbon tax on Canadians.

I have provided a specific request to the minister's office to provide me with any analyses that may have been done on its impact. I got a response, but it was not what I expected. It was basically a whole bunch of nothing because the attached report was almost wholly redacted. For those Canadians who do not understand what redaction means, it means purging documents of their content. Our request for some information about analyses that have been done on the impact of the carbon tax was completely purged of anything substantive in the response I got from the environment minister. We have nothing to go by or to share with Canadians.

Where do we go from there? The government is not being honest, transparent, and open.

We went to another report that The Conference Board of Canada issued. The Conference Board of Canada is a private sector think tank that has thoroughly analyzed the impact of the Liberal government's pan-Canadian framework on climate change, and the impact that carbon taxes will have on Canada. What is painted is a grim picture of what is to come. It provided a variety of scenarios and it confirmed that a carbon tax will not create jobs, and will not foster investment, despite the repeated claims made by the minister herself. In all of the scenarios that The Conference Board of Canada paints, the impact on real GDP or, in other words, economic growth in Canada, is negative, and its environmental impact negligible.

On the one side we have a negligible impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and The Conference Board of Canada says that on the other side it will suppress economic growth in Canada.

The report says a carbon tax is “insufficient...to achieve Canada's Paris accord commitments.”

The study also found that a carbon tax would weaken real household income through lower wages. It also found that business investment and trade volumes would be eroded. Canada is a great trading nation. To think that our ability to trade with other countries and to remain competitive with them when it comes to trade and investment will be eroded is a thought I do not want to countenance. I am surprised the Liberal government is going down this road runs that very real risk.

The study goes on to say that a carbon tax would depreciate the value of the Canadian dollar. It would disproportionately impact industries with a domestic focus, such as residential construction, finance, insurance, and real estate sectors. Chemical manufacturing, primary metals, wood, paper production, food manufacturing, plastics and rubber production all would be negatively impacted by a carbon tax. That comes from the Conference Board of Canada.

The study found one final thing and that was that a carbon tax and the plan the Liberal government wanted to impose on Canadians would result in federal deficit increases due to a decline in personal and corporate income tax revenues. Imagine that. This is not declining revenues because the Liberal government has found ways of reducing taxes on Canadians. This is a decline in tax revenues due to a decline in economic activity due to the fact that people will lose their jobs because of carbon pricing. That is the message of this report.

Let me quote one more piece out of that report. A carbon tax “not only creates downside economic risk, but also means that domestic policies that are designed to reduce emissions could simply result in those emissions occurring in another jurisdiction.” Essentially, that is called carbon leakage. The government imposes these heavy carbon taxes on top of all the additional business taxes the Liberals have imposed on Canadians recently, on top of all the payroll taxes they have imposed on Canadians.

Eventually Canadian companies that do business here and want to expand will decide they can no longer operate here because it is not profitable in Canada. They will decide to move to the United States or China and do business there where environmental standards are much lower than in Canada. We lose the jobs but overall global greenhouse gas emissions go up. Imagine the folly of this kind of plan, yet that is what is happening.

Today I met with stakeholders from the Canadian chemical industry. They say that they have somewhere in the order of $12 billion that is waiting to be invested in Canada. The told me that this investment was now at risk. This is a fast growing industry, with $53 billion worth of shipments in 2016. It is also a great job creator in Canada. They said that they were paying salaries of around $147,000 for highly trained Canadians to do the work. It is globally the best in class.

Canada's chemistry industry is already a world leader in low intensity carbon chemical production and an employer of a highly skilled workforce. This industry is considering moving either to the United States or to China to do its manufacturing. Guess what. We will be buying those same products, the very products that are helping us to reduce our carbon footprint. We are chasing all these jobs out of our country, yet greenhouse gas emissions will rise in the rest of the world. Why do we not do it here at home where we have sustainable practices, where we have strong standards with which our companies have to comply?

This is a sad story of another Liberal failure. The Liberal government is a disaster when it comes to tax planning and not understanding the consequences of imposing increased tax burdens on Canadians. We are all going to pay the price for that and for that, the Liberals should apologize.

[Jack Robertson, October 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, Abbotsford has lost a community champion. On October 1, my good friend Jack Robertson died at the age of 91. Jack loved our community and did everything he could to contribute to its success, but he never sought recognition for his own accomplishments.

A former city councillor, he spearheaded the creation of Rotary Stadium, which remains the jewel of Abbotsford's sports facilities. Jack was the founding president of the Abbotsford Sports Hall of Fame and chaired the highly successful 1995 Western Canada Summer Games. He also co-founded the Abbotsford Police Foundation on which he sat as a director until his death. Jack was the recipient of the Order of Abbotsford and is a member of the Abbotsford Sports Hall of Fame.

What I will miss most about Jack is his willingness to inspire and encourage the next generation of community leaders. I am among that ever-growing cohort, and those public servants are perhaps the most enduring legacy he has left behind.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jack's wife, Jean, and their family. I thank them for sharing him with us.

[Oceans Act, October 16th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from the west coast for understanding how important it is that we consult with those most impacted.

The member talked about establishing minimum standards for the oil and gas industry. Canada is a world leader when it comes to the oil and gas industry and the technology we bring to bear when we operate in the field. We will find this time and time again with some of the companies that have leading-edge technology that not only protects our environment but also reduces the footprint of a barrel of gasoline for example that is taken out of the ground.

Canada is doing well as a country but we can do more. More protection is necessary. We need to ensure that we meet our Aichi targets, not the ones the Prime Minister set, but the ones that were established beforehand.