Kyle Seeback

[An Act Respecting Regulatory Modernization, May 3rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I would suggest that that is exactly why I have said the bill is not ambitious enough. That is a great example. We should not just randomly cut regulations. We have to streamline regulations in a way that protects consumers and protects the environment but also protects those small and medium-sized businesses so they can grow and add to the economic prosperity of the country.

[An Act Respecting Regulatory Modernization, May 3rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I feel like I am preparing for the LSATs and this is a logic games test.

If we are bringing in a new regulation, we actually have to eliminate one. However, if we are just eliminating regulations, which is the plan, we take out a whole bunch. That is the difference. That is the trick that the member did not pick up on. We would actually take a whole bunch out, but if we do have to bring in a new one, we would also take one out. Regulation in this country would always shrink under a Conservative government.

[An Act Respecting Regulatory Modernization, May 3rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, it is a good question. It would actually make some difference, and I did say that. The challenge is that it is not ambitious enough. As I pointed out, the Government of Canada's forward regulatory plan from 2021 to 2023 is to actually bring in 270 new regulations. Therefore, if it is going to take out 30, as the member said, or 46, as I said, and then bring in 270 new regulations, it is defeating the purpose. The government should be more ambitious. The government should be working harder to reduce red tape, and that is the real problem with this piece of legislation.

[An Act Respecting Regulatory Modernization, May 3rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, when I first thought I wanted to get into politics I was about 14 years old, and it was always my dream to speak to regulatory modernization. I was one of those kids who said that if I could make it to Parliament to talk about regulatory modernization, I would know I really succeeded in life. I want to talk about this, because I think it is an important issue for Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

When I meet with farmers in my riding of Dufferin—Caledon, which is the number one producer of economic growth for our GDP, and when I speak to small businesses, I ask them, “What things make your lives more difficult?” Members would think the farmers might say they have to get up at 5 a.m. and have to do this and that, and that there are always more things for them to do than they have time for. However, what the farmer will say is that the regulatory and tax burdens in this country keep them up at night and take up so much of their time. The same thing is said when we talk to small businesses.

I think the real disconnect is that when regulations get passed by the Liberals, they assume that somehow, much like in a minister's office, 1,000 people will be there to make sure someone checks box A, circles things in the right direction and does all these kinds of things. However, most small businesses, which are the driver of economic activity in this country and truly the lifeblood of the Canadian economy, are very small organizations. It is often one or two people working hard to understand what the regulatory burden is for their business, on top of trying to make their business successful and profitable. That is the challenge we have all across this country.

I want to divert momentarily, because the other big thing they talk about besides regulations is the carbon tax. The carbon tax is such a punishing thing for Canadian businesses, especially in the farming sector.

I had the opportunity to visit farms on our last break week. I met with a number of farmers and I asked them, “How much carbon tax did you end up paying in the last year?” The first farm I went to said they paid $17,000 in carbon taxes. Can members imagine how much this impacts that family's bottom line? That is $17,000 that they do not have for investing in a new combine, for investing in more sustainable agricultural practices or for putting food on the table.

These are the kinds of difficult things being experienced. However, when we add to that the difficulty of complying with regulations from across this country, it is a burden wearing down Canadians. That is why it was so great to hear my colleague talk about the plan to cut red tape. It is something a Conservative government would absolutely do.

One interesting thing is that the bill would make 46 slight changes to regulations. I had the opportunity to look at the Government of Canada's forward regulatory plan for 2021-23. While the bill is going to nibble around the edges of 46 slight changes, the plan is to bring in 270 new regulations. This is exactly the problem: We are going to nibble around these 46 things and then bring in 270 new ones.

Now, I am not very good math, but I would say that is approximately 234 more regulations going in than are potentially coming out, and that is how this government works. Somehow it thinks that adding to regulatory burden, making things more complex and more difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to understand and implement, is the way forward for economic success. However, we know it is not, and we see that in projections for Canada's economic growth going forward. We are continuously moving down.

We are moving down on the productivity scale as well. We are becoming less and less productive. I suggest that people are less productive because they are spending more time in the office trying to navigate through the myriad of red tape regulations than they are in putting productive effort into their businesses. This is the challenge we have after eight years of the Liberal government: more regulations, more all the time.

The other problem with the regulatory process from the government is that it is regulate first and ask questions after. It does not do the hard work of seeing whether there is a way to promulgate regulations that would not be so burdensome and that would not be so hard for businesses to comply with.

I am going to speak very briefly to one example of that: film plastic regulations. The Government of Canada just said it thinks we should get to 60% recyclable content there. However, the technology does not exist. It is not even close to existing. The government is therefore bringing forward a regulation, which may be well-intentioned, to add recycled content into plastic film, but it has not taken the time to figure out whether or not it is actually possible. What does that do? Imagine being in a business and finding out that the business now has to comply with this regulation, but its own scientists and its own R and D are saying they have no idea how this is possible. This is just one tiny example going on across the country from coast to coast to coast.

Why is it so hard for the government, if it is going to bring in a new regulation, to consult with businesses that are going to be affected before it brings in the regulation? That is how to find a path forward if it is going to bring in a new regulation. Instead, what the government does is it decides the path forward, and businesses need to comply whether they can or cannot. If they cannot, that is too bad; they will just leave the country. This is incredibly disturbing to me as a way to move forward with regulatory reform.

Another thing I want to talk about is giving the Minister of Transport the ability to make interim orders. This is a very broad discretion being granted to the Minister of Transport. We know the Minister of Transport. He is the jolly fellow who has been governing the country with the chaos at our airports over the last two years. I do not know about other people in this chamber, but air travel in this country is not an enjoyable experience anymore. If our flight is on time, which is rare, there is some kind of chaos at the airport where we are landing, and we are sitting for an extended period of time.

In my own recent experience when flying from Toronto to Ottawa, I showed up at the airport, got to the gate when it was time to board and then was told the pilots did not show up. Did they only know that 15 minutes before? Then there was a problem with the plane. Then the crew timed out. Then the flight was delayed even more. This is happening all over the place, and the number of complaints being filed with respect to this is astronomical.

My submission is that the last minister who should be getting any authority to make new regulations on anything is the minister who has governed during the chaos at our airports. It is all across the transportation sector too. This affects our supply chains. We know that part of the cost of living crisis in this country is a result of challenges with our supply chain. Who could fix these things? Maybe the Minister of Transport could, but clearly he cannot. Why are we going to give the Minister of Transport any more authority to make things worse than they already are in this country?

There is a bright future, though. The Conservative Party has promised that if any new regulation comes in, a regulation has to go out. This would not be 46 minor changes while bringing in 270 new regulations. It is going to be a bright new future. We are going to consult with businesses. We are going to reduce red tape and get the economy of Canada moving.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, May 3rd, 2023]

With regard to asylum claims received by the government, in total and broken down by province or territory where the claims were made: since 2012, what is the number of asylum claims processed each year by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, April 25th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, child care is important. That is why we were the first government to actually send money directly to parents for children. That was back under former prime minister Harper.

While $10-a-day child care sounds like a great idea, the problem is about how many spots and access people have to them; there are not very many. There are also lots of people who do not want to put their children into institutional child care. They want to take care of the children themselves or they want to put them into a family member's home or a neighbour's home.

To me this is so exclusionary. It is only open to a very small number of people. It is just not going to help enough.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, April 25th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am always happy to talk about deficits. What every prime minister up until this point accumulated to the national debt, the Prime Minister and the current government have doubled over the span of eight years. Think about that. All the history of previous prime ministers, a certain amount of debt, has been doubled. What has that done? It has significantly reduced the fiscal capacity of the government just on interest payments alone, I would suggest.

What could go into transfer payments to the provinces if the national debt was not causing $50 billion a year just to service the debt? That is interest on the debt. Imagine what that could do to help the fiscal situation of the provinces. The growth of the government is contributing to that, $176 billion a year more, and it is still not transferring enough to the provinces. It is a remarkable disaster.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, April 25th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, this is incredible. I just read two emails from the hundreds I have been getting about how tough life is even after all the spending. What does this member stand up to say? He asked if they know about the spending.

Of course they know about the spending. They know that all the spending has made their lives worse. That is what they know and this member stands here, effectively gaslighting Canadians, asking how dare they say things are so tough; look at all the money being spent.

They have spent the money in such a way that it has made Canadians' lives worse. We had a member just before who said the exact same thing. It was actually enlightening to hear that housing is unaffordable and all those kinds of things. However, their answer is to spend more money on things that are not going to make life better.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, April 25th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, who is actually my neighbour. His riding is right beside mine.

In talking about the budget, we should look at some numbers. The first number I want to talk about is $176 billion. Government spending is up $176 billion since 2015. That is a 63% increase in government spending in eight years. We might ask ourselves what all this spending has done for Canadians. It is a very reasonable question. That is a massive increase.

If I increased my home budget by 63%, I am going to guess my spouse and children might look around and ask, “Since the budget is way up, what is better? Have things gotten better here?”

Let us look at what all this spending has done for Canadians. Right now, there is a $176-billion growth in government spending per year, and one in five Canadians is now skipping meals because life is so expensive and unaffordable. I was not an A student when I went to university, but I am smart enough to understand that this is a problem.

Let us look at this other number: 1.5 million Canadians are now using the food bank. Let us go back. There is $176 billion more in government spending, and the result is that 1.5 million Canadians are using the food bank. We can take that part out of the equation. Affordability is actually being able to buy groceries and live. We know that the affordability question is awful after all this government spending. Every Canadian we talk to would say that life is unaffordable. However, we can put that aside for just one second.

Let us talk about something else that is important for Canadians. We can talk about rent. Rent has almost doubled since 2015. There is $176 billion more being spent, and one needs to pay twice as much for rent. We can imagine what that does to a family's ability to make ends meet. Families are now paying twice as much in rent. Have their paycheques gone up? Have they doubled? No, they absolutely have not, but the rent has.

It is the same thing if one wants to buy a house. Since houses are now so expensive and have gone up so much under the government, one now needs to put twice as much down as a down payment. People are thinking that their rent is terrible and unaffordable; maybe they should get out of the rental market and buy a house. What happens then? Now they need to have twice as much money as a down payment to buy that house.

Again, after eight years of the Liberal government, $176 billion more is being spent per year. When we look at affordability, or the ability to make ends meet, Canadians are skipping meals and going to the food bank. On that metric, it is an F.

Let us look at what else is going on, such as with housing. Housing is extremely important. Rents have doubled. If someone wants to buy a house, they find that down payments have doubled. A recent survey showed that nine in 10 Canadians who do not own a house think they never will. We can let that sink in for a second. That is how bad it is. This is after eight years of a Liberal government and increasing government spending by $176 billion.

To go back to my own house, if my budget had gone up by 63% and my spouse and children looked around and everything was more expensive, they might be asking me what is going on. They might ask what all this spending was for.

That is the incredible thing about it. Right now, we are in the middle of a massive public service strike. The Liberals massively increased the size of the government over the past eight years, as well as spending on the government, and still somehow managed to have 100,000 public servants go on strike. We are now on day nine. This is stunning incompetence.

Everything is more expensive. People cannot buy a house, and they can barely pay their rent. Government workers have walked off the job. That is the Liberals' record. It is astounding. When we look at all this, it has been financed with deficit spending, which adds to the debt. The debt is now $1.2 trillion. Interest payments on the debt have also almost doubled to $44 billion a year, soon to be $50 billion a year.

Many Canadians, from coast to coast to coast, find it hard to get medical appointments or specialist appointments. We can imagine for a second what $50 billion per year would do for health care. It would help to remove the lineups that Canadians are stuck in. When so many Canadians do not have access to a family doctor, it would help to hire more family doctors. Again, this is Liberal Canada after eight years.

The Liberals may not believe me; I find that often happens in this place. They seem to say they were spending all this money and ask why the Conservatives are talking about the problem. I will tell members why. It is because I get emails from people like Kim.

Kim sent me an email that says, “I am stretched so thin. I either pay bills or buy food because I can't afford both.” Again, we should let that sink in. There is $176 billion more spent per year by the government, and Kim is choosing whether to eat or pay bills. It is a disgrace what the government has done to this country and what it is putting Canadians through. Canadians deserve so much better than what the government has done. Kim goes on to say, “Food costs are ridiculous. Gas and heating keep going up. Is life better under this government? Not by a long shot.”

Can we guess what the government's answer to the affordability crisis is? It is that the carbon tax is going up. The carbon tax makes everything more expensive because the farmer who pays the carbon tax on the fuel to run the farm passes that cost on to consumers. Then the truck that takes the product from the farm to be processed has a carbon tax. That is more expensive. The plant that does the processing has a carbon tax. That makes it more expensive. It then gets trucked to a grocery store, and there is a carbon tax. It makes it more expensive. The grocery store has a heating bill with a carbon tax. That makes it more expensive. If we wonder why Canadians cannot afford to eat, it is because the government just increases the carbon tax at every opportunity.

I visited a farm two weeks ago in my riding. Guess what its carbon tax bill was? It was $17,000. The Liberals say the carbon tax is revenue-neutral, but it is not. The PBO has made clear that the carbon tax is making the lives of Canadians less and less affordable all the time.

I want to finish with an email from Daina. I got it just the other day. They said, “I want to express concerns for two full-time, very hard-working adults, one of which is a small business owner and in our home, so the home tax rebate doesn't assist us. We can't afford to bring a child into this world because of the costs.”

This is from a young couple that somehow managed to buy a home. It says she bought it five years ago, so things were not as bad then. They are choosing not to have children because they are barely making ends meet. I know what the member is going to jump up and say, “What about $10-a-day day care?” They know about it, and they are still making this choice. For one thing, it is just not available for everybody. Not everybody gets it.

The government spends $176 billion more per year, and everything is worse in this country. People are going to food banks. People are choosing between heating their homes and eating. People are choosing not to have children. That is the Liberals' legacy, and it is disgraceful.

[Carbon Pricing, April 21st, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, it is astounding how the Liberals gaslight Canadians. Kim knows about the grocery rebate because Kim looked into the budget. Kim says, “Despite the grocery rebate, I have to choose between heating my home or buying food”.

The answer from the member and the arrogant, out-of-touch government suggests that Kim does not have a problem and that we should not be asking the question. It is audacious and despicable of people to gaslight and diminish Canadians who are struggling to make ends meet. Will they finally show they actually give a damn about Canadians and cut the carbon tax?