Michelle Rempel

[Business of Supply, October 3rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I could speculate about Kyle's question of why he is being punished and say that is because we have a government that believes fundamentally that the state can run the country better than small business owners and individuals can. That is the macro level philosophy of the government. It is why it has increased the deficit to the point where I am not sure if we will ever, especially under a Liberal government, be able to pay it back or get it back to balance. It has done that without any discernible metrics or growth. All it has done is increase the size of government in and of itself. It feels that someone like Kyle should not have the independence and ability to run his own future. That is really what this tax is about. It is about stealing the entrepreneurial spirit of Canadians.

This is not just about farmers. This is about doctors, dry cleaners, people with small convenience stores, or someone who started a home-based business to stay at home with the kids and was super-excited that he or she was able to hire another employee. The fact is that Kyle was duped, because the government claims to stand up for the middle class, but what has it done instead? All it has done is punish the middle class.

[Business of Supply, October 3rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I just want to clarify for people who are watching that the motion before us today states:

That, given the proposed changes to the taxation of private corporations as outlined in the Minister of Finance's paper “Tax Planning Using Private Corporations” will have a drastic negative impact on small and medium sized local businesses, the House call on the government to continue, until January 31, 2018, its consultations on these measures.

Many of my colleagues today have made the point that they have heard that this proposal would be detrimental to small business and the middle class in Canada, but I want to focus on the substance of the motion and hopefully convince some of my colleagues to vote for it, because I do think that a reasonable motion to extend the consultation period is something that would cross party lines and that many Canadians watching this today would find reasonable. I will try to go through all of the reasons.

The government cannot and has not communicated the actual impact of this tax hike on the Canadian economy in real terms. The Liberals have not communicated the impact of this on small businesses that will not of this be able to take on new projects, that is, the small businesses that will not be created, or the employees that will be let go because of these measures. They have not calculated that or communicated it. They have not talked about the resulting drain on our social assistance programs when people who have put in place retirement savings under this tax regime right now would have to draw upon social assistance if they cannot access their retirement savings, thanks to these draconian tax measures.

The minister cannot say how much net revenue it would create and on what assumptions the Liberals are basing that revenue. The fact that they have not been able to communicate how much revenue this would generate is problematic. We need to consult Canadians to make sure that they buy into a tax hike from which the finance minister and Prime Minister cannot even say how much revenue would result from it. We also do not know how much it would decrease tax revenue for the government. We know that in our former Conservative government, we saw the lowest federal tax burden in over 50 years, yet something interesting that happened was that government revenue went up. That is because the economy was growing. What is concerning for me is that today we heard from the Macdonald–Laurier Institute that we have had the fourth straight month of weak growth. Their report was done by senior and lauded economists. If we look at the federal budget this year, we see an increase year over year in deficit spending and debt, and a decrease in projected economic growth.

The fact that the finance minister cannot say what this would do is a problem. He also cannot say how much this would cost the government. We do not know how much government revenue would decrease and we do not know how much this would cost to administer. How many more bureaucrats will we have to hire for the CRA to chase small business owners as a result of these punitive new tax measures?

The government has also not explained why it is raising taxes. The Liberals use vague, very discriminative, very terrible, divisive terms like “tax cheats” and “tax on the wealthy” to describe hard-working small business owners who form part of the middle class, but they cannot tell them why they would take this money from them. There is no discernible benefit for the Canadian economy from their deficit right now. It is over $30 billion, and for what? I have not seen any increases in growth. In my province, the economy has certainly continued to worsen.

In sum, the Liberals cannot say how much revenue the government is going to bring in from this and why they are doing this. Why are they taxing Canadians? Why are they bringing this up? The fact that this has not come out begs the question of more consultation.

The Liberals also cannot explain why they broke their promises to small business owners. Not only did they break their promise to not increase the small business tax rate, but they are also raising taxes on small businesses. The reason we need more consultation is that the Prime Minister should be able to explain that broken promise to the many small business owners who gave him the benefit of the doubt in the last election.

I also think that the Liberals have not explained why they are raising taxes on the middle class instead of getting their spending under control. I am the official opposition critic for citizenship and immigration. This year alone, not including social assistance payments, any sort of welfare scheme, or deportation, just the cost of processing people who are legally crossing the U.S.–Canada land border will be half a billion dollars.

The Liberals cannot explain how much revenue the government is going to bring in or how much this would hurt the Canadian economy. They cannot say how much this would benefit the Canadians whom they are taking this from and they cannot explain why they are not getting their spending under control.

I could list hundreds of other measures the government has taken in which it has just blown the federal budget, and on what? Liberals should be talking about this and explaining their lack of spending controls to Canadians before they go back to them to try to raid their pockets for more money.

The government should extend the consultation period because people are furious and this is not a partisan issue. This is about people who voted Liberal in the last election, who hoped in the Prime Minister and are now saying, “No, I do not think so”, because the Liberals broke their promise and are now not even listening to the people. The Prime Minister owes it to these people who gave him the benefit of the doubt to hear their concerns.

I have had over 1,000 Canadians write to me or contact me at my office, either by email or phone. I had over 300 people who showed up at a town hall with virtually no notice. I have had tens of thousands of messages on social media. In a one-month period, over 43,000 Canadians signed a petition that I sponsored, e-1239, against these tax measures. That is unheard of. People are furious and the Prime Minister owes it to them, given his lack of detail on this, to hear them out because this is the future of the Canadian economy.

A further consultation period would also create an opportunity for the Liberals to correct their divisive, insulting rhetoric about small business owners. That is something that I have heard in virtually every email that has come into my office. They say: “Why is the Prime Minister calling me a tax cheat? Do you know how much extra I pay as a small business owner to employ tax lawyers, to prevent auditors from coming in and looking at me? And you are calling me a tax cheat? Now you are going to call me wealthy, like somehow he has no understanding that small business owners are actually part of the middle class.”

An extended consultation period would give the Liberals and the Prime Minister an opportunity to perhaps correct the record in this regard. It would also give us a further opportunity in the House to say what we value as a country. Are we going to punish small business owners for the fact they take on risk and create jobs without the safety net of sick days, vacation time and guaranteed pensions? Are we going to say to them that we as their representatives want to take away their entrepreneurial spirit, tax them, and change the rules such that they cannot see further out? That is something that could also be addressed in a further consultation period.

It would also be an opportunity for the Liberals to clarify the following egregious statement by the Minister of Small Business and Tourism: “The longer we're talking about this, the more people are concerned that they will be impacted, which is really raising a fear and not allowing people to be as productive as possible.” That is an old fearmongering canard. It is fantastical.

The Liberals have been taking so much heat on this that every single Liberal member of Parliament is getting called by everyone in their riding. What did the small business minister do? Imagine being a Liberal backbencher and watching the small business minister say that if we're consulting, we're fearmongering. It is kind of crazy. I would love to have a little more time for the small business minister to go out, correct the record on this, clarify what she meant, and perhaps take more heat from the small business community.

This also came out in the dead of summer when farmers were at their busiest. There were floods in Quebec and fires in B.C. The Prime Minister owes it to people in these communities to extend the consultation period. It would also allow us to fully examine the regional consequences of this proposal.

My province of Alberta has been struggling with the detrimental policies of the government with its changes to the rules for downstream regulations on emissions for our pipelines when the government does not do the same for Saudi oil. My province has been struggling with the minimum wage increase and municipal property tax increases. The government has made political decisions to block the build-out of northern gateway pipeline and has worked against the energy east proposal. This small business tax hike is kicking Alberta while it is down and I would love it if the Prime Minister came to my riding to hear how my constituents feel about it.

I wish I had time to read all the messages that were sent to my riding, but to anyone watching at home today, we need them to amplify their concerns and their voice. Canadians do not have a lot of time on this. They need to pick up the phone and call every single Liberal backbench MP and hold them to account for the fact that those MPs will be voting against something as simple as extending the consultation period. The Liberals are a government that consults on everything. Canadians should get out and call a Liberal MP.

[Business of Supply, October 3rd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, in response to the question my Liberal colleague just asked, does he not find it absolutely ridiculous that the only defence a Liberal member of Parliament has against the hundreds of thousands of people who have, across party lines, spoken out against this issue is to ask if the Conservatives will repeal it? Would my colleague not think that a better response would be for the Liberals to not do it in the first place? Would he care to comment on the fact that the Liberals' only response to this is to ask what a Conservative government would do better with respect to taxes? Does he not find that to be possibly the most ridiculous thing ever said in the House of Commons?

[Public Safety, October 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, reports say that the suspect involved in the Edmonton terror attack was granted protection by Canada under our asylum system. My previous question was important because when officials become aware of threats to the public, the minister has the authority to label as a danger to the public those individuals who have this protection and have committed serious crimes, and to subsequently remove them from Canada.

Will the minister be exercising his authority in this regard if this individual is found guilty in a court of law?

[Public Safety, October 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the RCMP previously investigated the Edmonton terror suspect on a tip that he espoused extremist ideology.

Did the RCMP provide details of this investigation to the immigration minister's department, and does the immigration minister support the creation of a formal information-sharing agreement between the RCMP and IRCC designed specifically to alert immigration officials when the RCMP starts an investigation on someone who has entered Canada as a refugee or asylum seeker?

[Ethics, September 27th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I think a lot of Albertans who would listen to that and listen to the question I asked would wonder how the member opposite can justify the Prime Minister's lavish vacation, and the Ethics Commissioner's investigation, with this massive word salad of spin, which is blatantly false and does not apply to them. Albertans are not fooled, and that was just a foolish response. It was not even respectful.

My colleague opposite has been a parliamentarian for a long time. He has done a lot of work in the House. His daughter is running for a senior position in the Manitoba legislature.

How does the member live with himself when he has to stand up and defend the Prime Minister's lavish vacation, when the Prime Minister will not defend it himself in the House, given all of the tax increases the Liberals have put in place, and especially given the constituents he represents? Very simply, how can the member opposite defend the Prime Minister taking a lavish Caribbean vacation, which he is now under an ethics investigation for?

[Ethics, September 27th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the question I am asking tonight has to do with the Prime Minister's vacation that he took, I believe last Christmas, which now is subject to an investigation by the federal Ethics Commissioner, related to his use of private aircraft.

The questions I raised, though, were more to get a sense of where his head space was at in this. I will try to make it relevant to the people in my community.

Alberta is going through a really hard time right now. There are many people out of work in Calgary, and many things have happened in the last two years that have essentially been a kick while they are down. We have seen a carbon tax put in place. We have seen punitive policies from the federal government on the energy sector, such as changing the rules for an environmental assessment midstream.

They are very political decisions, essentially designed to shutdown the energy sector. There are municipal property tax increases, changes in the wage floor in Alberta, and now the small business tax increase. Many people in my community are saying the government is taking a lot from them, but the Prime Minister was taking a vacation. I wanted to know why the Prime Minister thought it was okay to do this, and to give him a chance to explain to my constituents how he thought this was right.

The response that I got was nowhere close to satisfactory. If the Prime Minister was going to take those sorts of actions, he should be able to explain them, and he did not do that. When I told a friend about this situation, he said, “Wow, that's a real super-Gucci vacation that the guy took”, and I agreed with him. It is a bit out of character.

The Prime Minister has asked Canadians to make many sacrifices, and they have not gotten much to show for it. He is kind of saying, “Do as I say, not as I do”, with the Caribbean vacation thing. I am trying to make this very serious.

I know the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary will be responding to this question. Could the parliamentary secretary tell me how he feels about this? I know he also represents a large number of constituents.

Does he feel like he can stand up in this place, and defend the Prime Minister's actions with regard to this vacation, especially in the context of the small business tax? The data is showing the federal debt is increasing, our GDP is not growing, and people are not getting more jobs.

What is it like for the parliamentary secretary to have to defend a Prime Minister who is under investigation by the Ethics Commissioner, will not answer questions about it, and frankly, took a very expensive and high profile, super-Gucci vacation on the taxpayer's dime?

[Situation in Myanmar, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I did ask several human rights lawyers in New York last week what their suggested approach would be on resettlement as a tool to assist in this situation. Many expressed the sentiment that they are concerned that should the world focus on resettlement at this point in time, it would essentially be carrying out the ethnic cleansing, in a lot of ways, for the Myanmar government, because they would be removing people from a situation rather than reinstating their rights. It is a difficult situation.

Certainly Canada needs to look at how it brings internally displaced persons to Canada. There are calls within the broader Canadian community to have a specific standing committee in the House of Commons on internally displaced persons. That is something I would support in Parliament, given the number of cases like this we have seen escalate over the last 10 years.

[Situation in Myanmar, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is important for the government and the Prime Minister to perhaps be more vocal, more formal, and more structured in their requests in this matter. There is much conversation in the international media as well as in international human rights circles right now about what actually can be done in Myanmar, given the complexity of the situation. The reality is that when ethnic cleansing is occurring, and I think a case could be made for genocide, the words “never again” begin to ring hollow when we see months of unending discussions without action.

I would like to see the Prime Minister raise, in a formal international forum, a request to the global community as well as to the Government of Myanmar, again a formal request, to enter the state, both in an observer capacity and from a coordinated aid-delivery perspective.

Something more tangible that will perhaps lead to a solution over a longer period of time would be a repeal of the 1982 law that renders the Rohingya people stateless and without citizenship and unable to access the same services and laws that their countrymen have, simply because of their faith and their ethnicity. I also think the government needs to be stronger in its language about what is happening in the area with regard to ethnic cleansing and needs to acknowledge the atrocities committed under the two-child law, as I described earlier in my speech.

[Situation in Myanmar, September 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Flamborough—Glanbrook.

Many of my colleagues, of all political stripes, have risen here tonight to outline the extreme, dire humanitarian crisis the Rohingya people are facing in Myanmar. What is up for debate tonight is Canada's response.

What is disappointing to me is that many people in the House are aware of the situation, but we just missed a huge opportunity. That was the Prime Minister's speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week. As the minister just mentioned, the Prime Minister purports to have a feminist policy. He purports to stand up for human rights, yet when in front of the world, he failed to mention this crisis. The entire world was gathered in New York. This was the opportunity for Canada to raise this issue and to put forward a strong, coordinated response that many people in the world would look to from Canada to follow. That did not happen.

I want to congratulate my colleague, the member for Sherwood Park, for raising this issue in debate in the House tonight, and of course, the Speaker, for granting it.

The question really becomes where we go from here. First, I want to express my extreme disappointment that this did not come up in the Prime Minister's speech to the UNGA. I do not know why he bothered, to be honest. This is one of the most dire humanitarian crises facing the world, and he failed to mention it in his speech.

Second, a lot of people have raised the question of whether Canada should seek to revoke the citizenship bestowed on of one of Myanmar's senior political leaders by Canada.

I would hope that at the end of this debate today, we would agree on two things. First is that the Liberal government would take it upon itself to immediately encourage her, and not only her but the entire global community in echoing the sentiment, to allow observers, journalists, and aid workers into Rakhine State to adequately assess the situation. We are only hearing a smattering of what I think is the full picture of the atrocities that are happening there. Aid is not being delivered appropriately. We should impress upon the government of Myanmar that this is the absolute least it can do. We should also shame the government. If the government has such deeply held racist beliefs that it cannot be delivered to their fellow humans, then the entire world is ashamed of it. That would be ask number one that I hope we would agree on.

Second, a lot of the situation, but not all of it, is due to the fact that in 1982, there was a law passed in Myanmar that stripped the Rohingya people of their citizenship. This left them without the same protections and safety nets that those living in Myanmar with citizenship have access to. Allowing the Rohingya to have the same protection as others by giving them their deserved citizenship would signal to the international community that the Myanmar government is ready to end this persecution.

This discriminatory and unjust law passed in 1982 must be repealed immediately. This is something the Liberal government, through Justin Trudeau, should be asking the global community to put pressure on the Myanmar government to undertake.

These are two simple things I think there would be a lot of consensus on in the global community. These two actions I think would begin the path of providing needed assistance, understanding the true scope of the humanitarian crisis, and allowing the Rohingya people to become full participants in their society.

The Minister of International Development mentioned her feminist policy. I want to speak specifically to something I believe is an element of genocide, not just ethnic cleansing, in this particular case. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has rightfully called the acts against the Rohingya a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

There is something further I would like to highlight tonight. It is a policy of Myanmar that sheds light on the full persecution of the Rohingya Muslims in the state. It was noted in a 2014 report by an organization called Fortify Rights that since 2005, Myanmar has imposed a two-child policy on the Rohingya in two particular townships in northern Rakhine State. This policy has been described as a violation of human rights law. This policy, known as regional order 1/2005, is not only concerning because of its violation of human rights but because of the effect it has had on women and their reproductive health. Reports have shown that because of this policy, women have had to undergo illegal and unsafe abortions. These have led to health problems and even death, in some cases. Frankly, if Canada truly cares about protecting women's rights, and if the Prime Minister truly is a feminist, he will do something now to end this injustice.

Not only is this an injustice toward women and their rights, it is an element of genocide. When one removes the ability of a people, a specific ethnic or religious group, to have children to prevent them from propagating, that is an element of genocide. It is trying to end their race. To me, this is something the world and the Canadian government should be drawing attention to, given the severity of the impact it has had and will continue to have on the Rohingya people.

Many stakeholder groups in Canada have asked for specific declarations of action from the Canadian government, and I would like to echo them here, into the record, today. These organizations are calling on Canada to condemn the human rights abuses in northern Rakhine State and to call on State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi to provide access to Myanmar, including Rakhine State, for the Human Rights Council's fact-finding mission. This should have been mentioned by Canada in the statement to the UN General Assembly last week.

We should also continue to call upon both the State Counsellor and military commanders to protect all civilians and to grant the restoration of full humanitarian access to northern Rakhine State as an issue of urgency.

I want to re-emphasize the need for the repeal of the 1982 citizenship law so that these people can participate fully in their society and their economy with the same rights afforded to other people in their group.

In situations like this, I think North Americans are so blessed. Certainly there are elements of extreme poverty and things we need to overcome in Canada, but sometimes I think we really forget how bad it is.

I would like to read the testimony of someone in the region. This is why it is so important for us to act beyond pretty, vacant words, as we saw at the UN this week.

“I gave birth to my daughter 10 days ago, but she's starving and I've not eaten for four days. The day after she was born, I came to Bangladesh, along with my family. There are eight of us under one tarp now. The army cut people and raped women. It happened to my close relatives in our village. All women are fleeing to protect themselves from being raped. My husband also told me the army is not sparing pregnant women. The army is killing and slaughtering people everywhere so that our full family ran away carrying only our clothes, leaving all of our belongings behind. They are shooting people in groups, with women being threatened at gunpoint. I heard they are throwing bodies in the river. I saw a pile of dead bodies. In the daytime, we hid behind trees far from the house when we heard the army was coming and returned in the evening. The day after we left, we heard our house was also burned. My child was born only hours after getting on the boat.”

This testimony was provided to an aid agency in Canada that asked me not to use its name for fear of being associated with the testimony of this group and not having access there. That is how bad the situation is.

We cannot purport to stand for human rights in this country without acknowledging the atrocities there and demanding that the world act. I would also like to see the government, in the spirit of the UN Secretary-General's call for UN reform this week, go further, on a more macro level, and request that the United Nations' budget, of which only 2% goes toward protecting human rights, be allocated so that we have more direct funding through this very bureaucratic organization to help the people we are discussing. The UN should not be about cocktail parties. It should not be about hollow speeches to empty chambers. It should be standing up for what is right. That did not happen in New York last week. The government has an opportunity to rectify that this week through this debate. I echo my colleague's call for action on this very terrible and dire humanitarian crisis.