House of Commons photo

Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was transport.

Last in Parliament October 2015, as Conservative MP for Essex (Ontario)

Lost his last election, in 2015, with 36% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Infrastructure December 4th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, the bridge to strengthen trade bill will ensure the successful and timely construction of one of Canada's most important infrastructure projects, a new bridge between Windsor and Detroit.

This legislation is critical as it would provide certainty to the private sector this project will not be delayed by lawsuits from a certain billionaire. Shockingly, the NDP and the MP for Windsor West who should know better are putting politics before progress and have introduced a motion to delete this from Bill C-45 and stop this bridge from moving forward.

Would n the minister explain to this House and to the member for Windsor West the importance of voting for Bill C-45 tonight?

First Nations Financial Transparency Act November 20th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. it may just have been a lack of clarity on the part of the member and maybe he will want to bring some clarity to it, but he did use the phrase that we are trying to strangle first nations. I do not want that to leave a bad impression that somehow there is strangling going on. The member may want to clarify what he means by that statement.

Transport November 7th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, by defeating proposal 6 yesterday, Michigan voters have cleared the way for construction of the Detroit River international crossing. This is good news for travellers, good news for workers and good news for industry, on both sides of the border. Everyone supports this project, except the NDP.

The mayor of Windsor came to our committee yesterday to show his support. Could the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities update the House on the latest victory for a new public bridge over the Detroit River?

Jobs and Growth, 2012 October 30th, 2012

Mr.Speaker, of course nothing could be further from the truth. We have demonstrated time and again through our measures that we have not only been able to support those who are unemployed and have lost their job through no fault of their own, but also that we have been working as quickly as possible with a low-tax plan to try to create the jobs so they can get back to work in the long range.

However, while we are talking about employment insurance and Bill C-45, I would point the member to page 272 of Bill C-45, division 15, dealing with the Employment Insurance Act and the extension of the small-business hiring credit. Can the member say today whether he will stand in this place in just a few minutes and vote yes to Bill C-45 so that small businesses can get the relief they need to hire more workers and get them back to work? Or does he want them on employment insurance as well?

Jobs and Growth, 2012 October 30th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, the member should have been here in 2008 to attend these committee hearings, because when we were looking at the Navigable Waters Protection Act and the kind of regulatory regime that stakeholders were looking for, we were not talking about a third world regulatory regime. We were and are talking about applying approaches, for example, that are in other major jurisdictions like the United States. We are not far off the mark in that. We are looking for efficiency in the regulatory environment.

We have other laws and other means of capturing environmental concerns, for example, if those are the concerns of the member opposite. However, for navigation on particular waterways, we are applying a common sense approach to whether or not an issue should be granted a navigable waters permit or not.

I would encourage the member to support the approach of the government and vote yes to Bill C-45.

Jobs and Growth, 2012 October 30th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member. I take it in the good spirit that the member intended it of course. It is very collegial in the House and Canadians who are watching at home should understand that is how we do business in the House.

I would just like to finish my thought on the economy. If we exclude the quantitative easing measures, the recent second stimulus of the U.S., its growth failed to meet expectations in the last quarter. We are watching that economic development and responding to it. We understand there is more work to do and that is why we are doing it.

Bill C-45 continues our low tax trajectory. The extension of the EI hiring credit, for example, is a measure specifically against taxes incurred by small businesses. We continue on that low tax trajectory for creating jobs and growth.

Contrast that with the opposition. Those members like a high tax trajectory. Their plan is full of it. The member for Nickel Belt, on October 25, lamented that the government was not collecting enough taxes from Canadians. They support a much different approach, but it is one that would kill jobs, not expand economic growth. We cannot increase the cost of doing business as significantly as those members have proposed and expect that businesses will somehow create jobs.

We support many measures in Bill C-45 and I wish opposition members could bring themselves to stand on their feet and support them.

One measure is our attempt to extend the EI hiring credit for small business another year. It benefited over half a million businesses last year and stands the prospect of doing similarly in this current context as well.

I would think the NDP would oppose our shift from oil and gas tax preferences to bio-energy, but that does not seem to be the case.

There are two major issues I want to talk about with respect to Bill C-45, which I wish the NDP would support.

The first issue is the changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act. I have been a member of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities since 2007. We looked at this issue extensively for many months back in 2008. We are seeking to clarify the intent of the bill first of all. It is about protecting navigation. It was that way in 1882 when the bill was brought in and it was, quite frankly, that way up until the mid-1990s. It is a series of court interventions that have broadened the definition of a navigable water to the point where it is no longer useful. If a canoe or a kayak can be floated in four inches of water for a small distance that is considered a navigable water even if one has to portage that canoe or kayak five times over the course of a kilometre. They consider that a navigable water. Most of us in terms of applying common sense would know that is actually not the case.

We are looking to clarify that act, and that is important for a number of reasons. One is the infrastructure projects that roll out across the country, building critical infrastructure. We need to have a regulatory environment that focuses on allowing those projects to move forward. We are applying scrutiny where we need to apply scrutiny, which is where navigation has a serious likelihood of impairment. Our approach does that.

We had to consider two options. One is do we narrow the definition of a navigable water or do we take an exemption approach or a list approach as to which waterways we look at and which ones a navigation permit will not apply.

Witness after witness for weeks could not come up with the definition of a navigable water. It is incredibly complex and the nature of waterways across the country are exceedingly complex. That makes it difficult to come up with a workable definition of what a navigable water is. We had the municipalities come before committee. Representatives of seven provinces and two territories were at committee. They agreed with the approach that we are taking, which is to look at which waters we apply this to and which ones we do not.

Where are navigational interests to be protected and navigational rights to have that additional scrutiny, and where will they not? When we debated it back then, we had three parties supporting that approach. Sadly, that is not the case as we debate this measure today.

I gave the example earlier when asking the member for Prince George—Peace River about a forestry company going into an area where navigability is not an issue. If one were to take a kayak somewhere, according to the way the courts have defined navigable water, it would take one, in some cases, hundreds of kilometres to get to that particular area, if one even dared to go there. These are areas where logging companies go in and cut on a regular basis. However, for every temporary bridge across a creek, even if it were an intermittent creek, there would have to be a separate application to get a navigable waters permit. If there are 200 temporary bridges, it would take 200 applications. If an inspector from Transport Canada has to go there and do a site inspection, we can imagine how unwieldy and difficult it would be for one to develop a plan when navigability is not even a remote issue at all. We are moving to a risk-based approach and one that makes a tremendous amount of sense.

The second item I want to talk to is the bridge to strengthen trade, DRIC. The new Detroit River international crossing is this government's single most important infrastructure priority. We have not only said so here but have consistently proven it in this place, whether via the establishment of the borders and gateways fund in 2006, or the International Bridges and Tunnels Act in 2006, or the budgetary measures to support the parkway and the DRIC in 2007 and beyond. This act would insulate the DRIC from frivolous lawsuits. We already have 10, including three NAFTA challenges, aimed not at ensuring that the project is compliant with Canadian laws but to slow it down and kill it. The opposition stands for that delay and it should not. Its members should get behind this and Bill C-45 so that we can get jobs going.

Some 10,000 construction jobs and thousands more will be created from the necessary long-term business investment that will come because we have predictability at that corridor. Our trucks can move our goods across the border. Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are waiting for this to go ahead. Opposition members stand for delay. Shame on that party. The members should instead stand up for it.

Jobs and Growth, 2012 October 30th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, I waited eight minutes into his speech to raise a point of order. I am 60 seconds in on setting the general tone of the economy as the context for the budget measures, which will continue to improve economic growth. The member should at least allow me seven more minutes.

Jobs and Growth, 2012 October 30th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, to finish off the last debate on the foundations put forward by Jean Chrétien, the member for Cape Breton—Canso sat there while that government took $53 billion from workers and businesses from the EI surplus.

Bill C-45, the jobs and growth act, 2012, is about the budget implementation act, part 2, which would implement some extremely important measures from the March budget. There are many provisions to improve our economy, which continues to be the primary focus of this government.

The results are beginning to speak for themselves in terms of the economy. There are over 820,000 net new jobs since the worst of the great recession in July 2009. Of those jobs, 90% are full-time, which speaks to strong private sector job growth.

The World Economic Forum said that our banks were the soundest in the world. Forbes magazine ranked Canada as the best country in the world in which to do business. The OECD and IMF predict that our economic growth will be among the strongest in the industrialized world over the next two years. Our net debt to GDP ratio remains the lowest in the G7 by a country mile or two. All three major credit ratings, be it Moody's, Fitch, or Standard & Poor's, have all reaffirmed Canada's top credit rating.

The global economy obviously remains fragile. To look at the European Union, the newspapers yesterday were filled with stories about Spain and its continued problems. Also, the U.S. growth, if we exclude the quantitative easing measures by the current administration—

Jobs and Growth, 2012 October 30th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, again, the member said he was going to get up and speak about EI and the budget implementation bill.

The only two measures contained in here are the extension for one year of the EI hiring credit and the rate setting for the EI finance board, the continued mechanism for setting the rates for employment insurance. Working while on claim was in a different bill.

I would ask that some modicum of relevance be enforced in that regard.

Jobs and Growth, 2012 October 30th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, let me congratulate the member. The member who represented that riding before was an esteemed member of the House and I think the current member is doing a fine job. His constituents should be proud of him.

He talked about the importance of streamlining regulations. The Navigable Waters Protection Act has been causing tremendous problems and cost delays, especially for the forestry industry. I point the member to some testimony at the Standing Committee on Transport in 2008, where one official testified that the forestry industry would go into an area, say every spring, that they would typically cut and they would have to, at times, seek individual approvals for up to 3,000 temporary bridges over creeks that no one could even get to with a canoe or a kayak.

That will now not be the case. What does the member think about that, particularly for the forestry industry in his riding?