Kevin Sorenson

[Privilege, April 11th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this question of privilege. I also want to commend the Speaker for the precedent-setting decision today, in which he recognized that, yes, debate had been shut down by the government on the question of privilege, which prevented the House from having a vote, taking the next step, allowing every member to stand to voice his or her yea or nay on the subject of the question of privilege and the next process.

I have been a member of Parliament for 17 years and I have seen many questions of privilege come before the House. The question of privilege that was brought forward was on budget day, and that was unusual. When the member for Milton brought forward her question of privilege and spoke to it, and she said it again on April 6, she quoted former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau saying that 50 yards from the parliamentary precinct the MPs were nobodies. I think what Prime Minister Trudeau was saying at that time was that although we were involved in the running of government and bringing forward legislation on the Hill, when we were away from Parliament, we were really just average Joes, that we were really just, as he said, nobodies.

When members of Parliament go back to their constituencies, they understand they need to earn the respect of their constituents. They cannot believe that respect will be afforded to them until they earn it. They earn it during the election, but they need to earn it between elections. The Speaker knows the work we do as members of Parliament. Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau may have believed that we were nobodies away from Parliament, but make no mistake, there are certain privileges given to members of Parliament in the parliamentary precinct.

There are certain privileges we are afforded because of our position. For example, members have immunity in the House. We can say pretty well anything we want to say in the House with complete immunity. It may not be in order and the Speaker may cut us off, but we are given immunity for the things we say in the House. Many times one member will tell another member to say something outside of the House, because members know that outside of the House they do not have that privilege. In the House there is privilege.

When a prima facie case of breach of privilege has been found, it is a very serious thing. On budget day, there was another ruling. The member for Don Valley East, though she has been in the House for a long time and ran for Speaker, was snapping pictures in the House. The Speaker rightfully said that was not in order and shut it down. Also, that very same day, the budget was handed out early. The Liberal Party received the budget early. We know that was out of order as well.

However, when two members are on their way to the House of Commons to vote and are prevented from doing that, this becomes, as my colleague said, a very serious matter. It is typically a matter that is then studied and if there are certain reasons it occurred, it is prevented from happening again.

On budget day, when the prima facie case was brought forward, the member for Beauce said that he had missed the vote, as did the member for Milton, because they were holding the buses on account of the empty motorcade, or the cars for the Prime Minister, needing to return in order for them to be brought to the House of Commons.

He said that when he was on the bus, they were being stalled. He got out and asked security why they were being held up. The security guards, who were using walkie-talkies and radios, said that it was because the Prime Minister's empty motorcade was waiting. The members had to wait and, consequently, missed the vote.

There are a couple of other times where we have seen this happen. I remember a former colleague, as will some of my colleagues here, Yvon Godin. We remember him well. In 2014, on the day the German president or chancellor was here, he tried to get to the Hill and was prevented from that. Mr. Godin said that he was a member of Parliament, that he had to get on to the Hill. The security officials, at the time, the RCMP, said that they did not care whether he was a member of Parliament. Members in the House cared. Mr. Godin cared. He stood in the House and the old temperature was rising. His face was getting redder and he passionately spoke about the privileges of a member of Parliament. It made us all feel pretty good that he was defending our rights as members of Parliament.

What happened? The Speaker found there was a prima facie case. It went to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and proper measures were put in place so security realized the importance of members getting to this place.

In 2012, again, the access of members to the House was impeded when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was on the Hill. I think all of us would understand that massive security measures had to be in place when he was here. Again, a number of members of Parliament were impeded from getting up to the Hill and, again, the Speaker found a prima facie case of a breach of the privileges of members.

Why? Because we are here not only to collect a paycheque, but to do the business of the people of Canada. We are here to represent our constituents. We are here to stand up and make a difference. We are here to hold the government to account. We are here to ensure we bring things forward that are in the best interests of Canadians.

The other day the government prevented this from going to PROC. It prevented us from having a vote to ensure this went to the committee.

Why? Right now PROC is taken up by a government that is trying to push through changes to the Standing Orders that give opposition members privileges, that lay out the rules and groundwork for those privileges. For these types of changes, historically, prime ministers, whether it be Prime Minister Harper, or Prime Minister Chrétien, or other prime ministers, have said that we need unanimity to do this. Because we are elected members of Parliament, we cannot unilaterally change everything in the House. Again, members are expected to represent their constituents and to hold the government to account, a government in waiting on this side and the government in power on that side. However, that does allow the current government the privilege of changing, unilaterally, the Standing Orders in the House.

Again, we know the Prime Minister would like to show up and answer questions in question period for one day instead of throughout the week. We know he wants to shut down Fridays so members of Parliament are not here holding the government to account. The more we carry on with this Parliament, the more we see it is really just an inconvenience to the Prime Minister. He would like to go on without being slowed down in any manner.

Before I conclude my speech, I move:

That the motion be amended by adding the following: “and that the committee make this matter a priority over all other business including its review of the Standing Orders and procedure of the House and its committees.”

[Committees of the House, April 11th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 22nd report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in relation to the committee's study of the main estimates for fiscal year 2017-18.

[Privilege, April 6th, 2017]

You made him stop in an unsafe place.

[Privilege, April 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the Liberal speeches today, which tended to focus on the one line of the Speaker's ruling that said the cameras showed the media bus went through, basically an itinerary of what happened. I am glad we have that report. However, when the member for Beauce went to the place where the security people were gathered, they were on their radios talking to other people. He was told that the reason the buses were not allowed through, even though the media buses went through, was the Prime Minister's entourage of vehicles was getting ready to leave. Then they waited and waited.

That is why this needs to go to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. We do not disagree with the Speaker's comments, but we also understand that when there is a difference of opinion and security tells us that, we need to get into a little deeper study, and that is what the PROC committee does. That is the role of the committee.

As the member for Sarnia—Lambton suggested, votes take place here all the time. It is vital we make certain this type of action does not happen again. To me, the vehicles of the Prime Minister is not the problem of the Prime Minister's or the Liberals; it is those who would not allow the buses through so members could vote.

[Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, April 3rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand in the House and have the final say in debate on my private member's bill, Bill C-307.

The creation of my private member's bill came about from having a wife and a daughter who are registered nurses. Especially, my daughter came to me and said, “Dad, something has to be done.” I live in a small rural riding where we typically do not believe we have the same problems, difficulties, and issues that are faced in cities such as Vancouver, which we heard the member of Parliament talk about this morning, but the issue of prescription and illicit drug abuse has touched every riding in our country.

This is an issue that we all face in the communities we represent as hon. members of Parliament. It is an issue that has ravaged some communities, destroyed families, and has taken far too many lives. Most tragically, it has taken a disproportionate number of lives from young and indigenous Canadians.

I listened as the New Democratic member of Parliament from Vancouver stated that 20,000 people in Canada have died from opioid abuse over the years. There were 156 call-outs in that one community in Vancouver to the fire department or to 911 dealing predominantly with fentanyl and opioid abuse. Canadians expect that we would respond to numbers and issues like that.

Can any member of the House forget the headline on September 17, 2016, in the National Post, which read: “Eight overdoses in 13 minutes and one devastated suburb”? That article stated that they did not have enough responders to get out to the various eight overdoses in that span of 13 or 15 minutes. It was one small-time drug dealer who contaminated a batch of cocaine he made with fentanyl that caused the tragedy. The alleged dealer said that he had no idea what he had done.

Right now—and I do not even have it printed out yet—the CBC is carrying a story. In New Brunswick, an individual's former physician—and they name the individual—is being charged with drug trafficking. It is alleged the 35-year-old doctor wrote prescriptions for 50,000 OxyContin and OxyNEO pills, picked them up herself, and did not give them to the patients.

We have a crisis in the country. Emergency responders know that when there is a fentanyl overdose, they use naloxone to save the lives of victims, but in this case we do not know where those 50,000 pills were going.

Tragically, as we have already heard this morning, far too often when we open the papers in the morning—especially in British Columbia and the west, but more and more across into the east—the papers are reporting the deaths of those who have used a drug without knowing that it had been laced with something like fentanyl. Bill C-307 would help prevent so-called dealers from breaking into medication that is available to Canadians from pharmacies. It would prevent these clandestine drug manufacturers from adding the active ingredients from prescription drugs to another drug and causing them to be deadly. The bill would give the health minister the power to quickly act and remove some of these from their availability to people who would abuse them.

No one should be using drugs, yet we live in a society where peer pressure, life stresses, and many other factors cause people to abuse drugs. These people do not factor in the possibility of dying when they try those drugs.

It is time that Parliament responded.

Let me end by saying this. The Liberal government said in the last budget that it was going to have an innovation budget. These are exactly the things that happen when research and development goes out with innovation money, looking at a problem, and asking whether it can be made abuse-deterrent, whether it can be made in a formulation that cannot be misused by those who get their hands on it. Therefore, I would encourage the governing party to allow the bill to go to committee—not to make it law today, but at least to allow the bill to go to committee, where it can be studied and the benefits of this measure can be seen.

I thank every member of Parliament for their consideration of this bill. I encourage everyone to support it Wednesday evening, allow the committee to do some work on it, and report back.

[The Budget, March 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it should not surprise anyone that the Liberal government's budget is not a budget that will help agriculture, and it will certainly not help farmers. In fact, it gives nothing new to agriculture or farmers except by taking something away that they have already.

On page 28 of the Liberals' tax measures document, they talk about a consultation process they are now doing to take away the cash purchase tickets for grain. When a farmer delivers a listed grain, whether it is wheat, canola, barley, oats, rye, or anything, they can sometimes deliver it in the fall to beat the winter rush and not get a cheque but have it deferred to the new year. The government says that farmers may be avoiding some taxes by doing that.

Farmers are delivering grain. They are not getting the money yet but are having the grain company hold the grain. We call it deferral. We need to discuss this, because if they paid it in the last year, they may have been in a high-tax year. Of course, the Liberal government is trying to grab every tax dollar it can. The Liberal government does not get it when it comes to agriculture.

There was a slight mention in the budget of the Alberta beef farmer. That is what the minister said, and then he said nothing else about agriculture. Shame on the Liberals. Agriculture feeds our country, and the Liberals have abandoned it.

[The Budget, March 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question is a good one. It is twofold. First, he correctly observed that many of the promises in this budget are back-loaded. They are loaded down the road. We will see very little benefit in the very short to medium term, but we will see this investment in the long term.

I was speaking to our member who is our defence critic, the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, and he said that for some of the defence spending, although the Liberals announced a big amount, when we look at the small print, it will be over 30 years. I have been here when we have done budgets, and if we did something over five years, members would say, “That is not for this year, that is over five years.”

The Liberals have said two things. First, for much of their budget today, we would see benefits just before the next federal election. It was announced today, and it will be re-announced maybe in 2018 and again in 2019, just before the federal election. Again, the Liberals back-load these things. They make promises so far down the road that we may not be here 30 years down the road. That is the Liberal plan.

On the program my friend from the New Democratic Party talked about, the eco-energy retrofit program, it was a program to encourage Canadians to have upgrades in their homes or other places, and the government would help with some of those costs. I had, and I am sure other members had too, constituents, seniors, who said that maybe they could get a new furnace or better windows and really save some money and save some energy. In my riding, they were more concerned about saving money in their pocketbooks than about the energy thing, but we all want to save where we can. When we start hitting people in the pocketbook, that is when they really are incentivized to do something.

Again, we see nothing, really, in this budget. In fact, I heard one Liberal member say that the last budget was the economy budget and this one is not. I think we would all agree that there is very little here for anyone in this budget.

[The Budget, March 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, infrastructure is very important. That is why we brought forward the Building Canada fund when we were in government. We brought forward a number of infrastructure programs that were the largest at that time.

Yes, the Liberal government has piled on more infrastructure funding—or should I say announcements? The announcements have been made, but the funding is not happening. The announcements have been made, but the shovels are not in the ground. The announcements have been made, and remade in some cases, but people are not being hired to fill the jobs for that infrastructure.

Do we have an infrastructure deficit in this country? I think we do. We have an aged and growing infrastructure deficit, unquestionably, but in all fairness, we have to make sure that it is not only the federal government that is providing for infrastructure; we have to make sure that we are also including the private sector in the infrastructure deficit. The private sector needs to be involved to add funding and provide efficiencies so that projects can be completed on time and on budget.

I do not know if the current government has a plan on its infrastructure, other than being Santa Claus. I am not certain there is a strategy on how it wants to do it, unless it is a political one. However, I do not see a lot of money being put into a driving economy where there would be that growth that we need. My home province of Alberta is a prime example. Ontario has its manufacturing sector, but Alberta is a driving economy that needs to be kick-started again.

We have problems with the provincial government there. We need something that will get people working again. There are over 100,000 oilfield workers out of work. That is totally unacceptable, yet we see infrastructure dollars going here, there, and everywhere. In fact, in the oil sector we see some of the incentives for exploratory drilling being taken away.

In a downturn, we should incentivize jobs and job creation. However, the Liberals take them away. I am not going to go into this long list of the bad things that they have done in this budget, but I can say that when we are not including infrastructure dollars or helping create exploration in the oil sector, we cannot expect to get new jobs in that sector. Maybe that—

[The Budget, March 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to stand in the House and debate the issues that governments and Canadians face, and that Canadians have to deal with.

There was great anticipation about the budget around the country. People were looking forward to a second fiscal strategy put forward by a government that failed, most people would say, with the first one. When we look at the growth rate, the job numbers, and all those, certainly there was failure. There was a hope: I think an expectancy among Canadians that they would see something in the budget that would give them a degree of optimism and hope.

We know some of the problems Canadians are facing. They are facing high household debt. Their hope was that perhaps there would be something in the budget that would help in that regard. We know they are facing skills and training deficiencies, and perhaps there would be something in that regard. We know that Canadians are not saving to the degree they should be, and perhaps there would be something in the budget that would help them. The day after the presentation of the budget, I think all of us would agree there is great disappointment out there. For Canadians, there is no increased hope, no increased optimism, and no increased drive because of things they find in the budget.

What do we know about the budget? We know there is a $23 billion deficit from last year. It was originally projected to be higher, but because the Liberals were unable to get much of their money out of the door, it is a little lower. We know the budget is again written in red ink. It takes Canadians deeper and deeper into national debt. It will increase our debt service charges. It will increase revenues that will go only to service debt, which the government continues to pile up.

Being involved somewhat in former budgets, I can say that we put in place strategies to bring us back to balanced budgets. When the world went into a global recession, Canada was the last to enter into that recession and we were the first to leave it. Why was that? It was because we had a strategy to come back to balanced budget. We understood the importance of keeping our economic house in order, of taking fiscal responsibility for our country. We understood that Canadians expected that of us.

It seems that, even with this budget, Liberals do not seem to care if the federal books are balanced anytime soon. They have gone beyond “budgets will balance themselves”, a quote our Prime Minister gave Canadians, to a frame of mind that is not even concerned about the debts that are being amassed and left to our children and grandchildren to pay off.

I want to be clear. In our 10 years in government, in the first two years we paid down national debt. We took surpluses and paid down just under $40 billion to our national debt. When the entire world went into the worst downturn and recession since the Great Depression, many countries were in massive trouble. We saw that their currency was failing, that their banks were failing, and that their whole plans were failing. We know about Greece and many of those countries, like Iceland and others. There were massive problems. However, Canadians knew they had people at the rudder who understood economies and knew what they had to do.

Although we were opposed to debt and deficit spending, we realized that in the worst recession since the Great Depression we would invest to kick-start the economy, and we did, as every G7 country did. We make no apologies for that. The largest infrastructure spending, the largest infrastructure program in Canadian history, was brought forward by a Conservative government to kick-start the economy. Therefore, the question should be asked, and it is fair to ask because we will ask it of the Liberals. Did that strategy work? The answer is obviously an unequivocal yes. It did work.

We saw that Canada was the first to leave that recession. Out of all the G7 countries, Canada was the very first to leave that recession and come back to growth. We saw that those investments were in long-term infrastructure that would be around for decades, that would help grow economies, and it worked. We know that we came back to our surplus and balanced budget, as we had promised. In fact, some would say it was a year earlier than we had promised. We paid down that $40 billion and went on to watch our economy grow.

I listen to questions being posed by Liberals here, and many of them are new, as the Liberals had 30 seats before and they have 160 now. The Liberals have a majority government, but many of them are first-time MPs. They say we ran up a big deficit; we ran up debt. The answer is yes, we did, but we had the plan to come back.

The Liberals had a plan to come back. They spent, went into deficit and massive debt, but they had a plan to be back to a balanced budget in 2019. However, now our parliamentary budget officer is saying that it is going to be 2030 or 2035. It will be 30 years down the road before we see any kind of plan that can feasibly bring us back to balanced budgets.

We cannot do that. We cannot fall into that trap. We cannot become a country that has that type of massive debt, and we must do what we can. I think in the next election, the very first main plank in coming back to balanced budgets will happen, and I am very optimistic going into that.

On jobs, our focus as a government during the recession was how we would hold on to the jobs we had and how we would create new ones. We invested in innovation and skills development. We invested in making sure we had the best labour force in the world.

However, we did something more than that. We said we had to make sure our tax regime was such that we could be competitive around the world, first of all. We need to sell our goods into a global market, and we have to be certain that we could be competitive. There is no use trying to have a job, make a gadget, and try to sell it if it was be so over-priced that nobody would be willing to buy it. Therefore, we made sure that our taxes kept going down. In fact, we lowered our taxes more than 160 times. We had the lowest tax rate among the G7 countries. Bloomberg said that we were the second-best place in the world to do business. That is why we came out of the recession early.

We sat down with employers and business and asked what it would take to have them hold the jobs they had or create new ones. They were very clear. They said not to do things like raise payroll taxes or increase their level of taxation. Therefore, with what I thought was agreement of all parties, we said we would lower the small business tax rate from 12% to 11%, and we did, and then from 11% to 9% phased in over three or four years. We were committed to that. In fact, all parties were committed to that. However, right after the current Liberal government was elected, it made sure that was one promise it would not keep. The Liberals would say to our small business sector, “Why would we ever lower taxes?”

We consulted with Canadians. We consulted with businesses. We hoped to save jobs and secure economic growth during that difficult time. This is why we incurred budgetary deficits. It is also why we created opportunities for young Canadians and saved jobs during an economic recession.

There was a very fragile economic recovery that followed the recession around the world. Too many nations had a difficult time recovering from the recession. It was painfully slow. However, our government immediately pursued getting back to balanced budgets, showing Canadians and the world confidence in our dollar, showing Canadians and the world that we were getting our fiscal house in order, and our dollar reflected that.

Canadians understood that the difficult economic times were over. By 2015, we had brought forward a surplus in the federal budget. Canada was ready to confront another global crisis.

Governments normally only go into deficit if there is a crisis confronting their nation. Governments with budgetary surpluses or balanced budgets have the ability to combat something new. I really fear that with the level of debt we are seeing the Liberal government piling on Canadians, we would not have the capacity to react effectively if there is another massive crisis or global downturn.

In the last budget, the Liberal government said it would be investing in infrastructure. I think all Canadians know the story. During the election the Liberals promised that there would be an itsy-bitsy deficit of $10 billion. The Prime Minister said, “We can do a lot with $10 billion. It sounds big, but we can do a lot with $10 billion.” Then when he came to power, we found that the $10 billion had grown to nearly $30 billion. That was the concern then.

That money was supposed to raise growth. It was also supposed to get the jobs market and the building sector going. It has been a failure all around. The government has had a hard time getting the money out, and the growth has not been there. In fact, there has been less growth. Growth is happening in the United States and all around the world, but it is certainly not happening very quickly here in Canada, in spite of all the measures that the Liberals took in their 2016 budget.

Why would Canadians have hope in this budget? What is in the budget that they could find some hope in? Well, we can listen to the media. I am not one to encourage people to do that too often, but even the media recognize that the budget is probably one of the weakest budgets ever. I spoke to a former Liberal member of Parliament yesterday; he said that this is the most nondescript budget that he has ever seen. That was coming from the Liberals' own benches.

Where should Canada be? Canada should be in its third year of budgetary surplus. This year the Government of Canada should have a surplus of tax dollars to spend without borrowing. The interest payments on Canada's national debt should be decreasing, but the budget book shows us that the interest Canada will have to pay is increasing. We know that when we service debt to the degree that the Liberals will have to service debt down the road, that money is not going to go anywhere else. That money is not going to social programs. That money is not going back into education or health care. The Liberals seem to feel that they will just print more money or that they will just go deeper into deficit.

There are consequences to the actions we take. I warn the Liberal government that there are massive consequences to not having a plan to come back to balanced budgets. There are consequences to increasing deficits and national debt. This generation may not face those consequences, but for our children and grandchildren it will be difficult.

The 42nd Parliament should be in a position now to pay down Canada's national debt. Instead, the Liberals are not spending money to create jobs or grow Canada's economy. They are actually adding to the national debt instead of paying it down. They are leaving their debt for future generations.

The Liberal government has even failed to achieve the economic and employment objectives presented in its last year's budget. Budget 2017 needed to include no further tax hikes on Canadian families, businesses, seniors, or students, but instead needed immediate measures to encourage companies to hire young Canadians and to address the youth unemployment crisis. It should have included a credible plan to return to a balanced budget by 2019, as promised to Canadians. This budget has failed Canadians. The Liberals have failed Canadians with their second budget. There are no new job creation incentives. There are only more education opportunities.

Young students I know are coming out universities and colleges hoping for a job, but the government says, “We'll see if we can get you to take more education after that.”

There is no plan to balance the budget.

According to the parliamentary budget officer, budget 2016 did not meet employment targets because infrastructure investments were delayed, and there were many other reasons. The Liberals get an F. They get an A for announcements, always—Liberals are great at that—but when it comes to delivery, they are looking at a D or an F, because Canadians end up paying the costs.

In Alberta, the new Building Canada funding that was promised to municipalities was withheld by the NDP provincial government. Five rural municipalities have been told to wait or have been left behind altogether. I will even give it to the Liberals in that I think when they sent that infrastructure money to the province, they expected the province would send it out to where the priorities were, but the provincial NDP party said, “No, we're putting it into our general revenues, and then we will pick the priorities sometime down the road.” I think even the Liberals would shake their heads at that one.

No wonder there is no growth. No wonder there is no incentive. No wonder there are no kick-starts in Alberta. The province has the latitude to use the large majority of those infrastructure dollars as it sees fit, but the funds did not go where they were expected to go. It is a massive loss of opportunity for those municipalities, and in some cases the rural municipalities seem to be having the majority of the problems in that respect.

The Liberals also failed to grow the economy with their budget. The economy grew by 1.4% in 2016, which is 0.5% lower than what they had anticipated and claimed it would be in their 2016 budget. They believed it would grow by over 1.8%. They would kick all this money into it and see this massive growth. The previous Conservative government had economic growth of 1.8%, so the Liberals thought they could at least count on that with these extra massive spending measures. When we were investing in infrastructure, the Liberals claimed that we were not investing enough, that we were not spending enough money. They spent a lot more and they realized a lot less growth in the economy. They got less bang for the buck. They had less success. They had lower results. That is the record of the Liberal government.

What did the Liberals do with the $30 billion? What did they accomplish? Well, it is not in jobs and it is not in new revenues coming in.

I want to conclude with two things.

First, I want to talk a bit about our neighbours to the south, the United States. I want to talk about our relationship with them. I think the Liberals backed off on a lot of measures and I think they would have put it to Canadians even more than they have with this budget if it were not for the Trump administration and the knowledge that the U.S. is going to very quickly lower its corporate tax rate.

When we came into power, we lowered our corporate tax rate from 22% to 15%. That created jobs. Our business sector said, “We will create jobs”, and it did, coming out of that recession. Now the Americans are talking about taking it down from 35% to 15%.

We need to be very concerned about businesses making the trip back to the United States, businesses settling down again in the United States. We need to have a plan.

When we lowered that tax rate, we saw head offices and companies, especially in manufacturing, coming into Ontario and across Canada. We need to be cautious. The Americans are here and they are going to compete, and we need to be certain that we are competing at an equal level. We cannot compete at an equal level if we continue to raise the tax burden on them. We cannot increase our manufacturing sector and our business sector if we increase EI and CPP and say, “Here are some extra taxes for you to pay.” Then there is the carbon tax and things like that.

The Americans are competitive. We had better be competitive. The Liberal government's budget nickels-and-dimes Canadians, but it really hits business.

Mr. Speaker, I see my time is up. I thank you for the opportunity to speak, and I look forward to some questions.

[Chambers of Commerce, March 22nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, our thoughts and prayers are with the British Parliament today as well.

Tomorrow the Drumheller and District Chamber of Commerce will hold its 2017 annual general meeting. I wish the Chamber of Commerce members all the best during their deliberations.

We know that the citizens of Drumheller and surrounding communities, like many places in our province and country, count on the work of a strong local chamber of commerce. The hard work accomplished by members of local chambers facilitates prosperous businesses and helps provide jobs and economic growth in the communities where they serve.

It is important for all of us to work together in the current difficult economic times. All across my large and mainly rural riding of Battle River—Crowfoot, the folks in many small towns, villages, and hamlets benefit from the work of our local volunteers, who provide their time and effort in support of their local economies, both large and small. All members of Parliament in the House should make an effort to acknowledge the good work of their local community leaders who contribute to the work of local chambers of commerce.