Mr. Speaker, it is an absolute delight to present my first speech in the 43rd Parliament. To begin, I have to thank the people of Elgin—Middlesex—London for re-electing me.
Just to take a moment, I would like to thank my incredible campaign team. They were out there knocking on doors, putting up signs and having a great time spreading the word of what we can do here. I know I got back here because I have the most incredible office staff. They know about my constituents, they know what their needs are and they are always there to serve them, so a special thanks to Cathy, Jena, Scott, Jill and Charli.
I would like to thank my family. Without the support I have from my family, my mom, dad, sisters, brother and of course my husband Mike, I would not be here. We know this job, especially for any of the newer parliamentarians, is not a job. It is a life. When members take this role on, it is not just a career choice. We live and breathe being a member of Parliament trying to always work for our constituents, and making sure what we are doing is in the best interests of our community and the country.
Following the election, I lost two dear friends. One was my former campaign manager, Brian Clements. May Brian rest in peace. He was my uncle, my dad and everything under the sky and I will miss him forever. The second was Dave Dillon, our regional coordinator, who I worked with as part of the Conservative Party for over the last 16 years. I thank Dave for always having that smile and crazy giggle.
It is because of people like them that I am here today and have the courage and strength to talk about what the throne speech mentioned and listen to the debate on how Canada needs to move forward.
It is very simple: We have returned to a minority government. Within Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces we saw huge changes. However, we also saw the wiping out of the Liberal Party in the west. When we talk about Saskatchewan and Alberta, we are all Canadians, so it does not matter where my friends are living. It is my job to worry about them as well.
One thing I have to say is that, throughout this debate, I see division is so strong. It is very hard to listen to my colleagues from the Calgary area talk about job losses and suicides and the fact that no one is taking those issues seriously because they need to diversify. Yes, that is fine, but let us please have compassion for those people in the west being impacted by some of these laws and regulations being made by the government. It is great to say that, but we are not losing friends and neighbours like people from Alberta and Saskatchewan are. I ask for a bit of compassion.
For the last number of weeks, I have been fortunate to work on many files. One of the big files I worked on was the CN Rail strike. The reason I am mentioning this is that one of the big things that the Liberals have said is that they are going to work with people. I wanted to bring up the CN Rail strike because it impacted Ontario a great deal, especially southwestern Ontario.
I received a call from Dowler-Karn CFO Dan Kelly, who is also the chair of the board for the Canadian Propane Association. He let me know that they were going to stop delivering all propane to any farmers who were going to be drying their crops. Last year in Ontario, we had bad mould on our crops and this year we have grain that cannot be dried. Whether it is soybeans, wheat or corn, they cannot be dried. With that, farmers are going to have a lot of damage and financial loss.
I received the call on a Thursday night, and by Friday morning we were working with our team and the member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington. We sat down with about 50 farmers and stakeholders and pushed this issue.
The next thing I did was reach out to my Liberal counterparts, and I would like to say a very special thanks to the member for London West, who actually picked up the phone and told me that the Liberal government was going to pick up the phone, call people and find out from stakeholders what was going on.
She did not know until she had that conversation with propane stakeholders what the impact was to our farmers and what the impact was to people who did not have natural gas flowing down their pipelines because they live in rural parts of Ontario. She was willing to take that phone call.
She was one member of Parliament from the Liberals who took my call. No other members returned my call and others sent messages saying they were not getting involved.
If we are going to work together, my stakeholders are everyone's stakeholders. That is why I am telling people that when I want to do something, I am going to make that phone call and I want my stakeholders to be heard. If I am wrong on something, please have the Liberal stakeholders contact me too. I want to know the whole picture. Instead of slamming the door and saying this issue is not important, please remember it is important.
The reason I bring this up goes back to what I am hearing from Calgary. It went viral on Facebook, and we saw a lot of comments on this. People from Alberta and out west were saying, “We do not care about Quebec. Who cares if they get propane?” People from Quebec were saying a different thing, recognizing that propane is heating their homes. We heard about nursing homes that were one day away from not having propane.
The reason I bring this forward is because I did not hear a single word from the government. We knew that our grain producers were going to lose money, and we knew that people were having problems with home heating but that the government would not stand up for them. If not for Conservatives, we do not know what would have happened when it came to some of the grain farmers because their voices were not heard.
One of the other things I hear a lot about is climate change, and of course that is going to be a theme throughout the current government. I do not think there is a person in this room who does not talk about climate change with his or her constituents. For me, it is one of those things that, as we are moving forward and talking about it, we all have different ways of looking at climate change.
I was talking about the carbon tax in Elgin—Middlesex—London. If people are talking about the carbon tax in downtown Toronto, they are not going to talk about what my farmers are talking about in Elgin—Middlesex—London. They are not going to talk about the carbon tax that was put on their propane bills or put on their energy bills.
People had a $400 carbon tax when they were trying to dry their tobacco. How are they going to go forward if they have a new $400 tax that is already put on that? Those are the things we are seeing all the time, and they are extremely concerning to me.
People in cities do not understand the impact. I should not say that, but people who are in downtown ridings may not understand as well as those people who receive the bills what a carbon tax looks like when trying to dry grain, when loading up kids and going to a grocery store that is 20 minutes away, when people are buying grocery items and know a carbon tax has been applied to them because the cost of transportation has been increased. All of these things impact us.
A carbon tax is the decision that the Liberals have gone with, though there are many other ways we can look at this and other technologies that we need to address. I am asking the current government to please be listening.
I ask the Liberals to listen to our farmers, listen to our agricultural producers and the agricultural businesses that are wrapped around that. I ask that they make sure they understand, when the farmers are drying corn, how much it actually costs and what the carbon tax adds to that. There are lots of things that farmers are doing throughout this country to make farming work. We know that when the cost of inputs becomes higher, at the end of the day farmers are not going to be able to succeed. I ask the government to work very closely on that.
Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to be in Aylmer at an event with about 700 people from the Bradley Street Church of God, and I can say that when we speak to Canadians there is a lot that we agree on. In this church assembly there were 700 people, families who were gathering for the Christmas season. Their issues were the top three for many of us here. It is about seniors. It is about veterans. It is about our drug epidemic. Those are some of the social issues that we need to address as well.
We know our seniors are having a tough time. We know that with interest rates not being as high as they used to be, seniors are relying on their old age security and on their Canada pension plan, and some of the savings they have are drying up. We have to be cognizant of that. We have to ensure housing and make sure seniors have a good way of life. We need to be there as a government.
For our veterans, I applaud the government on the fact that we are looking at veterans' homelessness. That is something that we all need to do. We need to do that together, so I appreciate that.
Also, I am asking about the drug epidemic. We have had over 10,000 people die in this country and we could be doing better. It is not just the fentanyl that we are talking about. It is the crystal meth and it is all of those drugs. We need to work with all levels of government. Therefore, I ask the government to learn how to work with all levels of government, learn how to work with the Conservative Party, learn how to work with the provincial Premier of Ontario, unlike what it has done over the last months, and to please work with our municipalities. If the Liberals really want to get something done, I ask them to please work with us.
