Ed Fast

[Business of Supply, May 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know what study the member is referring to, but I suspect it is probably the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. There are some very left-leaning organizations out there that are virulently opposed to trade, ideologically opposed to trade.

Studies that have been done by, for example, the Peterson Institute, which the member knows, have estimated that the benefits to Canada once the agreement is fully implemented on an annual basis is somewhere between $9 billion and $10 billion. The Fraser Institute has come out with a study that apparently says that the benefits to Canada from the TPP are even greater than that, so I do not know what study the member is referring to.

We rely on well-respected, unbiased think tanks, which do this kind of work, review exactly what the benefits are, and come up with a realistic assessment of what Canada stands to gain. They are very clear that Canada will be a big winner under the TPP.

[Business of Supply, May 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, that is simply not true. In fact, before Canada ever embarks upon trade negotiations or investment agreements and negotiations agreements we post our intentions in the Canada Gazette, which is a public statement that we are inviting input into the consultation process. There is not one Canadian who was prevented from submitting his or her views on the TPP or any other trade agreement that Canada has ever negotiated.

However, I also travelled across the country. I have met with so many organizations that are on both sides of this issue. There is a small group of Canadians who are ideologically opposed to trade. We understand that and they have a voice. They have an opportunity to submit to government their concerns. At the same time, across Canada, industries and industry organizations overwhelmingly supported Canada being part of the TPP and supported the outcome when we announced it.

[Business of Supply, May 12th, 2016]

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, given the importance of trade to Canadian jobs and long-term growth, as well as the government’s commitment to strengthen ties within North America and the Asia-Pacific region: (a) growing protectionism threatens the global economy; (b) the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the best opportunity to strengthen the multilateral trading system and develop rules that protect Canada’s economic interests; (c) the government should send a strong signal to Canadian businesses and its closest allies that it supports international commerce; (d) Canada’s position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership should not depend on political developments in the United States; (e) the government should stop prolonging consultations on this important agreement; and (f) the government should declare Canada’s final position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in time for the North American Leaders’ Summit in Ottawa on June 29, 2016.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the trans-Pacific partnership, the largest trade agreement in the world, one in which Canada can show leadership. I have always believed that Canada must be a leader, not a laggard, on trade.

Why trade? We have to ask ourselves that question. I think most Canadians understand that Canada is one of the great trading nations of the world. We operate today in a globalized trading environment, a globalized marketplace. Whether one believes in globalization or not, no one is going to be able to turn back the hands of time on globalization. It is a fact and Canada needs to adapt.

If we were going to promote trade, the first place we would want to do that of course is under the World Trade Organization, which is the pre-eminent forum in the world for rules-based trade. However, with the rise of emerging economies, there has been a significant shift in the economic balance within the global economy. Emerging economies are flexing their muscles and it has become much more difficult to actually make headway in establishing new rules for trade at the World Trade Organization.

As that organization has become somewhat comatose and unable or unwilling to move forward with new rules to adapt to a rapidly evolving global trade environment, Canada has to seek new ways of promoting its trade interests around the world. How do we do that? There are a number of different ways.

We can certainly negotiate bilateral trade agreements and investment agreements. We have done that with many countries around the world.

We can get involved in plurilateral negotiations. Canada is involved in those as well. There are three I am thinking of specifically. One is the environmental goods agreement, where like-minded willing partners are negotiating a global agreement on services, technology, and environmental goods.

We can also get involved in regional trade negotiations. If we are not going to make headway in the short term or medium term at the World Trade Organization, the best way to do this is to bring together like-minded trade partners and like-minded investment partners and negotiate an agreement that not only eliminates tariffs on goods, but also eliminates many of the non-tariff barriers behind the borders, the ones that frustrate our exporters so much. That is essentially what the trans-Pacific partnership would do.

What is the trans-Pacific partnership? It is 12 like-minded partners. It is not only Canada. It is the United States and Mexico, our NAFTA partners. Our free trade partners, Peru and Chile, are members of that partnership. Then there are countries that we do not have free trade agreements with which are now part of the TPP, countries like Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, and I would be remiss if I did not mention the third largest economy in the world, Japan.

This agreement is truly the largest trade agreement of its kind in the world. It represents somewhere in the order of 800 million consumers and somewhere around $29 trillion of the global economy. Canada needs to be part of this. What we are suggesting to the government is that rather than hiding behind the skirts of further lengthy consultations, the government should now stand up and declare its support for the TPP. That is what this motion does.

Just to be very clear, I would like to repeat the motion for the information of not only members in the House but also the many viewers who are watching these proceedings. The motion states in part:

(a) growing protectionism threatens the global economy; (b) the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the best opportunity to strengthen the multilateral trading system and develop rules that protect Canada’s economic interests; (c) the [Liberal] government should send a strong signal to Canadian businesses and its closest allies that it supports international commerce; (d) Canada’s position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership should not depend on political developments in the United States; (e) the [Liberal] government should stop prolonging consultations on this important agreement; and (f) the [Liberal] government should declare Canada’s final position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in time for the North American Leaders’ Summit in Ottawa on June 29, 2016.

The Liberal government has gone out of its way to try to proclaim its bona fides on trade. The Liberals' record is quite poor. Members may recall that over 13 years under the Chrétien and Martin governments, they got virtually nothing done on the trade file.

It was only in 2006 that our former Conservative government embarked upon the most ambitious trade agenda Canada had ever seen. We not only embarked upon that plan, but we actually executed on that plan. Over a short period of less than 10 years, our Conservative government was able to conclude negotiations on trade agreements with an astonishing 46 different countries. The previous Liberal government's record was three small trade agreements. We got left far behind within the global trading environment. Under our government, of course, we caught up very rapidly, but we are not finished.

Now the torch has been passed to the Liberal government. The Liberals have claimed that they are supporters of free trade and supporters of trade agreements, but let us see them stand up in this House and support this agreement.

One of the reasons it is important Canada be part of the TPP is that if we are not part of it, our North American trading preferences with our NAFTA partners, Mexico and the U.S., will very rapidly be undermined. Right now we have highly integrated supply chains across our borders, where we trade freely among ourselves. That is a platform also for us exporting goods to the rest of the world, because not only do we compete with the United States and Mexico, but we also do business together. When we look at the auto industry, in the typical car that comes off the assembly line, there are parts that have crossed the Canada-U.S. border and the Mexico border more than seven times. We can see how these parts, these manufacturing inputs, flow across borders seamlessly to create prosperity for our country and for our NAFTA partners.

If we are not part of the TPP, very quickly it will be the United States and Mexico that pick up many of our trade opportunities within the Asia-Pacific region. We will lose out. We will also see our investment preferences disappear very rapidly.

Think about it. If Canada is not part of the TPP, but the United States and Mexico are, and Mexico already has a trade agreement with the EU, and the United States will very quickly have one under TTIP, think of where investment would flow. Someone making a decision to, say, invest in the auto industry is going to invest in a jurisdiction that has the best access, free trade access, to markets around the world. The United States and Mexico would have access to the European Union. They have access within the North American marketplace under NAFTA. They have access now to the Asia-Pacific region. Canada would not have that kind of broad access.

Where is investment going to flow? Not to Canada. There is a huge risk of Canada being on the outside looking in, seeing its trade opportunities rapidly eroded around the world, seeing our investment advantages rapidly eroded. Let me give an example of where this happened and why Canada has to be so assertive in staying ahead of the curve when it comes to trade.

Members may recall that the United States, the European Union, and Canada were all negotiating a free trade agreement with South Korea. We were doing it at the same time. Then something happened in Canada. We had the BSE crisis, which hit our cattle and beef industry. South Korea and countries around the world closed their markets to us temporarily, until we could assure them that our beef was safe, that it was healthy to eat. Then those markets opened, except for two markets, Taiwan and South Korea. South Korea said, “No, we don't think that your beef is safe to eat“. It was wrong. Ours is the best beef in the world. However, South Korea, for its own purposes, probably protectionist purposes, chose not to open up the market, so we had to take it to the World Trade Organization and we had to do dispute settlement.

At the end of the day, of course, Canada won, but in the meantime, we lost a couple of years in negotiations on a broader trade agreement. Of course, the European Union and the U.S. got their deals in place. Those deals were in effect in 2012.

In the subsequent year, when Canada did not have a trade agreement with South Korea, but the EU and the U.S. did, Canada lost 1.5 billion dollars' worth of exports in South Korea. That is the cost we pay when we do not actively negotiate open markets around the world for Canadian exporters and for Canadian manufacturers.

That is the risk that the Liberal government takes by not declaring its support for the trans-Pacific partnership. We want to stay ahead of the curve. We want to be leaders not laggards on trade. That is our reputation over the last 10 years. Very quickly, we see that reputation waning under the new Liberal government.

We have had strong support from stakeholders across Canada. When we were in government, we worked very closely with the provinces and territories to make sure they understood what it was we were negotiating in the TPP, to make sure they understood the benefits to each one of their provinces and territories.

We also consulted broadly with stakeholder groups and industry organizations across the country. Overwhelmingly, they supported Canada being part of the TPP. Overwhelmingly, they supported the outcome of the TPP when it was finally announced, even the supply-managed sector, which many had said were going to go to the barricades on the TPP, that they were going to hate this agreement because we were providing some marginal extra access to the Canadian marketplace for products such as chicken, eggs, turkeys, hatching eggs, and dairy.

At the end of the day, when we announced it, and we had provided them with assurances that this was not going to decimate their industry, they saw the deal in front of them and said that the Conservative government actually negotiated a pretty darn good deal. The access was limited to very small amounts coming across the border, in addition to what access they already had. In fact, I have spoken to those organizations since, and they will very quietly admit that the agreement actually ended up being much better than they had expected, and that we had done a phenomenal job of negotiating an outcome that services their industry interests.

Members may recall that we were not only able to minimize the impacts on those industries, but we also provided two packages. One of those was a compensation package to compensate those industries for any loss in quota value suffered as a result of opening the market a little more for those products. The industries embraced that.

By the way, the compensation that we announced, which we believed was fair and which those industries embraced fully, is now in doubt under this new Liberal government, which has always stood up and said that it supports supply management. The Minister of Agriculture, almost daily in the House, is asked about supply management and about compensation. He stands up and says that they strongly support supply management, but the government will not actually commit to the compensation package that was negotiated as part of the TPP outcome.

The same thing is true on mitigation measures. Our American friends are very good at exploiting loopholes in our trade laws. For example, they could not get large amounts of broilers, chicken, into Canada, so what they would do is create sauce packs. The World Trade Organization rules in our NAFTA agreement are not 100% clear on whether sauce packs are included or are prohibited. The Americans would send these sauce packs across the border, circumventing the spirit of our custom controls.

There are many other loopholes that our friends to the south were exploiting. We said to the industry that we were going to do everything we could to plug those loopholes. We came up with a package, a set of promises that we were going to undertake to address those challenges.

No sooner had the new Liberal government been elected, then it was questioning whether, in fact, it would be implementing those mitigation measures. Again, the industry, the supply-managed five are very upset. They will not get assurances on the compensation package, and the federal government has not been moving forward with addressing the mitigation measures that had been promised to them.

The Prime Minister has boasted that his government is a champion of trade. Over the last six months, sadly, we have seen virtually no progress, no clear pronouncement on whether the Liberals support the TPP. In fact, I have been looking for any new trade agreements that the Liberals have started negotiating, and there are not any that I can tell. I am looking for new international investment treaties that the Liberals might be negotiating; I am not aware of any. Where is this claim of being champions of trade?

What the Liberals have done is they have sent a chill into our Canadian investment market and into the international investment market. They have increased taxes on Canadians. They refuse to reduce the taxes on small businesses in Canada, breaking an election promise. What they have done is add more red tape. Even yesterday in the House I spoke about how the current Liberal government and a private member are trying to impose additional red tape on our small businesses. What is the result? Despite the low dollar, our exports have lagged terribly.

In fact, I have the most recent statistics from the Minister of International Trade's own department. In January, exports were $35 billion. That is just exports to the U.S. In February, those went down $2 billion. In March, those exports went down $2.5 billion. It is a terrible record over the last six months for the current Liberal government.

We know that the Prime Minister has been hobnobbing with President Obama. We know that the Minister of International Trade has been travelling all over the United States, going on talk shows—embarrassing herself there—and talking supposedly about trade. If her performance is any indicator, Canadians would be well served if she actually stayed at home and focused on the work that has to be done here to promote our trade interests because she is not getting the job done internationally. There is a tremendous failure on the part of the current Liberal government to live up to its promises on trade.

Beyond that, when we look at some of the other challenges facing Canada around the world, we see that we cannot count on a low dollar to sustain our competitiveness. We have to ensure we continue to open up markets all around the world. Let me say this. For the Liberals to wait for the U.S. to ratify TPP is an abject abdication of their responsibility to be leaders not laggards in trade. What we are doing is calling upon the current Liberal government to move forward and to boldly pronounce at the three amigos summit on June 29 that Canada will be supporting the TPP. President Obama has done that. The Americans have already said they support the TPP.

Here we are as Canadians, and our government just will not tell Canadians where it stands. Can members imagine the leadership we could show by standing up and saying that we believe trade is good for Canada; that we believe open markets around the world are good for Canada; that we support this largest trade agreement of its kind in the world and we are part of it; and, that we are setting the rules for 21st-century trade within the Asia-Pacific region? Would that not be an amazing pronouncement to make?

Right now, it is not looking good on the Liberal side when it comes to trade, with declining trade performance and declining investment performance. This is one thing we can do to actually generate this thing that is perhaps the most significant driver of economic prosperity in Canada.

It is no longer appropriate for the current Liberal government to hide behind the skirts of consultations. There were comprehensive consultations that took place before the agreement was signed. There have been comprehensive consultations that have taken place post-TPP being concluded. It is time to step up and let the world know, let Canadians know, and let our partners and allies know where we stand on trade.

What would this achieve? It would assist the U.S. in its own ongoing work of ratifying the agreement. It would restore waning public confidence in the Liberal government's commitment to a robust trade agenda, and it would restore Canada's reputation as a trustworthy global leader on trade, not a laggard.

I am very pleased to be able to promote this agreement. It would be a transformational agreement for Canadians and for exporters. It would also be a transformational agreement for Canada's consumers, who would benefit from lower prices because of the elimination of tariffs.

I strongly encourage the Liberal government to step up, speak to this agreement, and say, “Yes, we support the TPP.”

[Department of Public Works and Government Services Act, May 11th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to the bill.

I think we should start by understanding what Bill C-227 would actually do.

It is a classic case of the Liberal government getting its backbenchers to do its dirty work, because we know that the government has already betrayed small businesses in Canada by not reducing the tax rate down to 9%, and the bill before us would impose additional burdens on our small businesses across Canada. Therefore, the Liberals have a private member, one of their backbenchers, bring forward the bill. It provides the Liberal government with plausible deniability. The bill gets passed here in the House, and they blame the House for it rather than themselves. We know what is up.

Essentially, Bill C-227 would allow the minister to require bidders on federal projects to provide information on the community benefits that a federal project would deliver. We have no idea what benefits would be sufficient, which, of course, introduces greater uncertainty into the bidding process.

However, it is not just information that the minister would be able to require. The bill would also empower the minister to demand bidders provide a formal assessment as to whether community benefits have indeed been provided.

Who would conduct this assessment? Is it the minister at his or her discretion? Is it some independent party? What is the threshold or standard that must be met? Is there a value of contract that would be captured? We do not know. Would bidders compete with each other on who could best meet the community-benefit test, or is it whether the appropriate balance between community benefit and value for money has been met? Who makes that decision?

Bill C-227 would turn what is usually an objective process, which is value for money, in other words, getting a project, product, or service at the best price and the best quality, and turns it into a largely subjective determination by the minister. This is another example of a Liberal government overreaching and interfering in matters it should stay out of.

Last week, I spoke to Motion No. 45, which was another Liberal initiative that essentially interfered in the ability of municipalities to do contracting. Now the federal government wants to force every municipality to run every single infrastructure project over $500,000 through an assessment of the greenhouse gas emissions that will be caused both upstream and downstream. Again, it is a horrific cost to municipalities. There are 4,000 of them across Canada, multiply that by two or three projects a year, and think of how much money that is going to cost municipalities across the country.

This is all about layering red tape upon red tape upon red tape, and undermining and underappreciating the value of small businesses to our economy.

As I mentioned, the Liberals have already hammered Canadian small businesses by breaking their promise to lower the small business tax rate to 9%. That was a very clear broken promise. That decision alone is going to cost our businesses somewhere in the order of $2.2 billion over the next five years, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs across this country. Now they are hammering them with even more government red tape, increasing the cost of doing business, and further discouraging smaller businesses from bidding on government contracts.

The bottom line is that Bill C-227 would hurt small businesses. It would add a massive amount of additional regulation on top of the ones that already exist. It would dissuade small businesses from bidding on government contracts, and it would require small businesses to assess matters other than price and quality, which, of course, will drive up the cost of government and drive up the cost to taxpayers in this country.

Of course, these companies, if they are going to bid, are going to have to build in these additional risk considerations into the price that they bid. We are talking about additional costs to taxpayers across this country.

Then there are, of course, the additional powers that would be given to the minister under the bill. Bill C-227 would expand the minister's discretionary power and allow the minister to unnecessarily politicize the contracting process.

There is no clarity as to when an assessment would be required. It could be in the middle of the contract, after the contract had been let, or maybe after the bids have been received. There is no clarity in the bill at all. It is very broad in scope. It is highly ambiguous. It is vague. It leaves everybody here in the House, the contracting community, the sub-trades, and the workers in the dark.

I asked a question of the proponent of the bill earlier on. Given the fact that he claimed he had broadly consulted on the bill, had he at the very least consulted with the key business organizations across the country that represent small business? I am talking about the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, the Canadian Association of Importers and Exporters. The member said that he had consulted with unions across the country. Really. Why not with the businesses themselves that actually pay that price? He said that he had consulted with academics. What about consulting with the very Canadians who would be most impacted by the bill?

The bottom line is this. The bill would do a few things. It would impose an increased burden on our companies. It would impose additional costs on them and uncertainty for small businesses that have already been betrayed by the Liberal government. The bill would also replace what in the past was a clear process, value for money, ensuring we get the best quality at the very best price, with a process that would be unpredictable and highly subjective and dependent upon the discretion of the minister and his or her officials.

In his speech, the sponsor highlighted all of the things the bill intended to achieve. It is clear to anyone who heard the speech that this is about social engineering at significant cost to the taxpayer. The bill would drive up costs to taxpayers to try to achieve some social engineering goals that the Liberal government suggests may be reasonable objectives.

The best response we should have when businesses are contracting with the federal government is to ensure that they understand what the rules are, ensuring Canadian taxpayers get the best value for money.

Then of course the proponent referred to Ontario, of all places, as being the role model of these community benefit agreements. A Liberal government in the province of Ontario has mismanaged the economy so much and has driven that province into such debt that today it has the highest sub-federal cost, the highest sub-federal debt not only within Canada, not only within North America, but in the entire world. Is that a role model we should be following? Absolutely not.

No one should be surprised that the bill is coming from the Liberal side of the House. We can also be certain that Liberals' will find new ways of increasing costs to taxpayers, interfering with the private sector, and clearly giving themselves more and more power over time. On that basis alone we should reject the bill.

I ask the Liberal government, the Liberal members of the House, the NDP members who have highlighted significant shortcomings of the bill, to reconsider their support of the bill, let business do what it does best, which is provide contracts, services, products of the very best quality and at the very best price. By doing so, we would be serving the taxpayers of our country.

[Department of Public Works and Government Services Act, May 11th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's comments. I will not be supporting this bill.

I do have one specific question. The member made quite a bold statement that he had consulted extensively. I would like to know the range of that consultation. Were the key industry associations across Canada consulted, the ones whose members would be most impacted, for example, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, and I.E. Canada?

Were these organizations that represent small and medium-sized businesses, and that would have to bear the burden of this additional red tape, consulted, and what was their response?

[Government Expenses, May 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, when I first asked the minister for a list, it had 155 delegates on it. The second list had only 121 names. What happened to the missing delegates?

I remind the minister that her mandate letter says:

We have also committed to set a higher bar for openness and transparency in government.

Yet the minister refuses to tell us what the Paris vanity trip cost Canadians.

Again I ask the minister, what happened to the higher bar for openness and transparency, and what is she hiding?

[Government Expenses, May 9th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, following the UN climate change conference, I asked the Liberals about the cost for each one of the hundreds of Canadian delegates who were flown to and lodged in Paris, all on the taxpayers' dime. At the time, the minister provided a list of expenses for each delegate, but refused to identify the name of each one.

I followed up with a further written request for the identity of the delegates. This time, the minister provided the names without attaching the expenses for each delegate. Canadians smell something fishy. What is the government hiding?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, May 6th, 2016]

With regard to Canada's delegation at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21): (a) what is the first and last name of each delegate; (b) which organization did each delegate represent; (c) what is the total cost for using government aircraft to transport delegates to and from Paris; and (d) broken down by each delegate who stayed in Paris, for how many days and on which dates did the government cover costs?

[Infrastructure, May 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to engage in this debate. For viewers of this debate and other MPs in this House, I want to begin my comments by framing what the motion is all about .

The motion does two things. First, it calls upon the federal government to impose a full greenhouse gas emission impact study for every single federally funded infrastructure project over the value of $500,000. Second, it calls upon the federal government to give priority to infrastructure proposals which specifically mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, notwithstanding the clearly expressed preferences of municipalities or provincial governments.

I do not question the motive behind this motion. It has to do with ensuring governments at all levels exercise wise environmental stewardship. We can all agree on that.

Sadly, the wording of this motion is reflective of how Liberal governments cannot resist the urge to overreach and increase red tape by interfering in the affairs of cash-strapped local and provincial governments, and in the lives of ordinary Canadians.

What this motion is about is essentially a big government solution for a perceived local government challenge. Essentially, when we talk about big government, we are talking about big costs. Who bears the cost of this? That is where my criticisms are focused.

First, these additional costs for municipalities will be imposed without guaranteeing any value for the money that is spent.

Second, the decisions on local infrastructure priorities will no longer be made exclusively on the merits of the projects and the needs of local communities.

Third, what the motion really does, if the government follows through on it, is it indirectly intrudes on provincial and municipal jurisdiction. Why do I say that? Most of these projects will be cost-shared, either fifty-fifty between the federal government and the municipality or the provincial government, or a tripartite funding agreement, one-third, one-third, one-third.

Most of these projects will actually be funded one-third, one-third, one-third, with the federal government only contributing one-third of the cost and yet imposing upon municipalities the requirement to embark upon a very expensive greenhouse gas emission assessment process.

The large majority of these projects, of course, are going to take place in the 4,000 municipalities across this country. I asked a question earlier of the sponsor of this bill, whether he had actually consulted with those municipalities and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. He did not actually give me a straight answer, but it was pretty clear that the answer was a big resounding no. It was the same thing with the provinces and territories. Were they consulted? It appears they were not.

Who bears the expense and cost of this? It is going to be the provinces, territories, and the municipalities across Canada.

We talked about partnerships. I will talk a little about Abbotsford, the city I represent.

We have a recently completed project, funded under our previous Conservative government, the Mill Lake Spray Park. It was a small project. It does not have serious greenhouse gas emission impacts, but that project would be captured by this motion and would have to go through the expensive review process. We are talking about not only upstream, but downstream greenhouse gas emission impacts as well. This is horrifically expensive. We are talking about a significant amount of research that has to be done. We are talking about a lot of time spent putting together the information to make this assessment, and tremendous costs to local communities.

We have to understand that the priority setting that takes place for these projects, the design and engineering, the costing, and all of the other fundamental work on these projects is done at the local level. They will be the ones who will have to pay the cost for this ill-advised motion. These requirements capture most of the infrastructure projects that will be built by municipalities across Canada.

I am a former city councillor. I spent nine years as a city councillor, as well as five years on a local school board. I have become keenly sensitive to the pressures that municipalities face. They are stretched to the max. Many of them no longer have any ability to raise tax revenues to meet the demands of their residents.

In fact, this all goes back to the 13 long dark years of the former Liberal government under Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. What did they do? After years of accumulating national debt they realized there was a problem. However, instead of making the tough decisions, controlling spending, as we in the Conservative government did, and controlling the growth of government, they looked for an easy target. That easy target was the provinces and territories. They downloaded billions of dollars. It was somewhere around $20 billion a year of federal government transfers, which were intended to support the provinces in providing health care, social services, and education. The provinces were left with this crater in their budgets. What did they in turn do? They looked for the next target, which was municipalities.

I remember, in one year alone we had approximately $3 million of cutbacks of provincial transfers dumped on us in the municipality in Abbotsford. The impact was so significant. Many municipalities across the country have yet to recover from that. In fact, our former Conservative government tried to address that. We actually went out of our way to double the amount of gas tax funding for municipalities. On top of that, we made that gas tax program permanent to try to help our municipalities grapple with these demands for services but a declining tax base.

We can see where this all comes down. I asked whether the motion's sponsor had actually consulted with our municipalities across the country. It is pretty clear he did not. The reason I wanted him to advise us of that is that our municipalities across the country have made it very clear. In fact the 2015 Federation of Canadian Municipalities' report on local climate action across Canada highlighted the disparity between municipalities with capacity to undertake detailed environmental analyses and those that lack the human resources, scientific, and planning expertise to afford to do that.

That is the case here. The motion is imposing additional burdens on our municipalities, and many of the projects that are captured under the motion should never actually require these assessments to be done.

This is an example of top-down government, a failure to respect the knowledge and wisdom of local communities. It is all being done in the absence of the long promised pan-Canadian framework on climate change, which the Prime Minister promised in Paris he would deliver within 90 days in Vancouver. I was in Vancouver. Was it delivered? No, it was not.

We have these ad hoc environmental initiatives and greenhouse gas emission reduction initiatives being implemented by the Liberal government willy-nilly without an overarching national climate change plan. In fact, they are spending $2.65 billion in foreign countries, without us even having a national climate change plan in place.

Therefore, the bottom line is this. All Canadians expect their government to take action on protecting our environment and meeting our environmental challenges. However, those efforts should never displace investment in critical infrastructure driven by the priorities of the municipalities, the provinces, and the territories. As governments address those environmental commitments, we need to be selective in determining which projects merit greenhouse gas emission assessments and which do not. Otherwise, we are wasting taxpayers' dollars. Of course, the motion does not in any way contain those safeguards.

I will conclude. It is very simple. Of the many effective tools government has available to address greenhouse gas emissions, this motion is not and should not be one of those tools.

[Infrastructure, May 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member's motives are pure here, however, I did want to highlight the fact that his Prime Minister has made a clear commitment to a new era of co-operative federalism.

As the member will know, there is somewhere in the order of 4,000 municipalities across the country that would be implicated with this decision. There are 13 provinces and territories across the country. Before one would embark upon a motion like this, which would have significant implications for municipalities and the provinces, one would think the member would have consulted with all of those organizations.

There is a pre-eminent association across Canada that reflects and represents most of Canada's municipalities: the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Has the member consulted with the FCM? Does he have its written support for his motion, given how significant the impact would be on municipalities? Has he also consulted with the provinces and territories and secured their support for the motion?