Michelle Rempel

[Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021, February 9th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for raising one of the key economic engines of his riding, the wine industry. I certainly know that our party has several ideas for tax relief, around the escalator tax, to incentivize growth in that sector.

I believe that all Canadians, particularly low-income Canadians right now, should be afforded some measure of tax relief, but particularly low-income Canadians to ensure that they can make—

[Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021, February 9th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, who is always bright and good to work with. We need to have a much more robust response from the government on addressing Canada's broken health care system. Funding is certainly a large component of that. We need to make sure that the provinces are adequately funded.

We also need to look at some of the significant learning that has occurred, and at the cracks that have been exposed in our health care system throughout the pandemic with a level of honesty and determination in order to fix it. We cannot sweep these problems under the rug.

The Conservative Party of Canada had several ideas, in the last election, of what we needed to do. In the spirit of bipartisanship, I look forward to working with members of all political parties to see how we can fix this because we—

[Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021, February 9th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I just want to thank my team and my caucus for standing behind me for over a year as I stood in the House as the official opposition critic for health. In the role of the opposition, during that time, we held the government to account. When we were not getting vaccines and other countries were, every day we were in the House, asking questions as to when they were coming, as well as in committee meeting after committee meeting. That is the role of the opposition: to put pressure on the government to make sure that it is delivering results for Canadians. In a functional Parliament, that is what we should be doing.

I want to thank my colleagues in the Conservative Party for lifting me up during some tough times, and lifting my team up to get that job done. I am proud to say that.

My colleague spoke in the past tense about measures that the government had taken, such as vaccine passports and these things. We have to be talking in the future tense. We have to be saying where we are, going forward. We cannot be looking in the—

[Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021, February 9th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, today we are debating a bill related to the fall economic update. I think we have to realize that the situation we are in right now is the context in which we are debating this bill.

I have never seen our country more divided in my time in office, and I have never seen us in the kind of national crisis that we are in right now. We are now in year three of COVID. Every one of us in this House and every member listening has constituents who are tired, who are facing mental health crises, who want stability and certainty, who have lost jobs, who are trying to find labour. We have a big problem in this country right now. We are seeing civil unrest.

I just feel that the legislation that the government is putting forward right now and the tone that the government is taking with these problems are not treating these things seriously. It is really easy for us to just assume that Canada is always going to be this place of wonderful, vibrant, inclusive pluralism that sees constant economic growth, but we cannot make that assumption. It actually takes work and it takes effort, and that effort is not deep political polarization and it is not making political hay out of crisis situations; it is actually trying to work with each other to come up with solutions. This bill does not recognize that point right now.

My constituents are seeing out-of-control cost of living increases. I was just at the grocery store last night in my community, and I watched a woman pick up a container of chicken breasts and then put it back. She picked it up again and then she put it back. She picked it up again, and then she put it back and walked away. That is happening across demographics. People do not know if they can afford to pay for basic necessities, and this has changed in such a rapid period of time.

This bill does not address that, because we are not addressing the underlying causes of inflation. We are not addressing the continued deficit spending that we have seen over the last couple of years during the pandemic. I really think that now is the time for a new approach. I believe we should not be debating any new budgetary measures without having a plan to end pandemic restrictions.

I understand why we looked to restrictions at the very start of the pandemic. I think we did that for several reasons. The government needed time to figure out what COVID was, particularly as we were watching the body bags pile up in different parts of the country. There was a desire to try to contain COVID. We now know that is not possible. COVID zero is not possible. It is not a thing. We have to learn to live with it.

Restrictions were supposed to buy us time to get vaccines and therapeutics. We have both. Thank God we have both. Restrictions were supposed to incent people to get vaccinated, and very many Canadians have been vaccinated and have been boosted, and I want to thank them for that. However, I would argue that after six months under many of these restrictions, the people who have not been vaccinated to this date have probably made a choice, and frankly, the political rhetoric around vaccination that we saw during the federal election campaign did nothing to help raise vaccination levels. All it did was divide our country further.

My last point is that restrictions were ostensibly put in place to buy politicians at all levels of government time to build up capacity in our very broken health care system.

On the first four points, we do not need restrictions anymore to do those things. On the fifth point, to build up capacity and deal with Canada's broken health care system, restrictions are not going to do that; only political will gets that done.

This bill misses the mark, and I would like to see the federal government immediately put forward a plan to end pandemic restrictions. I think that would take the temperature down across the country, and it would also serve to give us a starting point to think about how we are recovering as a country from what has been collective trauma across our nation. That needs to be the starting point.

The thing this bill does not address, which it really should have, given the amount of spending in it, is that point number five I just mentioned: how we are addressing Canada's broken health care system. I know a lot of this fourth round of restrictions was to do with worry about whether a few hundred emergent patients suffering from COVID would overload our ICUs across this country. I know health care is provincial jurisdiction. The federal government also has a convening role in a national crisis to ask provincial governments how we can help, how we can fix this problem and how we can support the doctors and nurses, who are rightly asking for solutions from all of us.

We cannot point fingers at each other across levels of government and then expect Canadians to continue to sacrifice through restrictions and continued impingements on our freedom. We cannot keep expecting to divide Canadians, so I really hope the government will turn its attention to those types of forward-looking measures, when it comes to moving into a state of endemic management for COVID, figuring out how we can unite each other and figure out how we can have common ground and understand one another, rather than just using political rhetoric to try to drive wedges.

I hope the federal government somehow uses its convening role to see how we can support the provinces and fix our broken health care system so this does not happen again. I hope the federal government commits to ensuring these types of restrictions we have seen over the last couple of years are not normalized and that we put safeguards around when the federal government can actually use these, so that Canadians are not sort of sitting is a state of suspended terror or uncertainty on when they are forward again. I hope the federal government actually puts some resources into ramping up the pandemic warning system. We should not have to be relying on data from the WHO and other areas. We should be having our own data to be able to figure out how we can best manage our borders.

There are so many things we could be doing, but I feel this bill is a continuation of the status quo in the middle of a national crisis, rather than saying how we get out of that crisis and heal the rifts from the collective trauma our nation has gone through, and then focusing our efforts on rebuilding.

The last few days and weeks have been difficult on every Canadian. I have gotten so many emails and calls from people of all political stripes and proclivities panicked and worried about the future, and it is our job here to give that stability and that sense of hope moving forward. I watched question period today, and we all have to do a lot better.

The interim leader of the Conservative Party of Canada asked the Prime Minister to meet and has proposed a meeting across party lines with all the party leaders to figure out not only how we can move forward and how we can ensure that critical infrastructure is not being blockaded, but also how we can ensure that pandemic restrictions are removed. These are both reasonable to move forward, and they are what we are here to do. That is our jobs. We cannot keep trying to take a side one way or the other and try to think something is going to happen. There has to be an acknowledgement of an issue on both, and I do not see that happening here.

This is less of an admonishment and more of an encouragement to all of my colleagues who are listening today, and to anyone who is listening at home. If we do not start taking these things seriously, we are going to keep seeing this spiral and disintegration. So many different generations have worked so hard to build our country up, not tear it down. It is our job here to make sure we do so.

With that, I encourage my colleagues to work together across party lines to come up with solutions, take the temperature down and invest in our future.

[Encouraging the Growth of the Cryptoasset Sector Act, February 9th, 2022]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-249, An Act respecting the encouragement of the growth of the cryptoasset sector.

Mr. Speaker, right now, Canada should be attracting billions of dollars of investment in the fast-growing cryptoasset industry. Right now, we are seeing government officials discuss and set policy related to cryptoassets. At the same time, many officials and lawmakers are not deeply familiar with what cryptoassets are, how they function or their big potential for economic growth.

To be a world leader, Canada needs to ensure cryptoasset experts and investors are telling us what policy they need or what policy they do not need. The bill would require the Minister of Finance to formally ensure their voices help lead policy development. It would also require the minister to develop a framework using their expertise that would ensure Canada attracts investments and talent related to cryptoassets while protecting those who work with them.

The bill would create a mechanism to formally engage the expertise of cryptoasset innovators and investors in policy development and create a framework for growth.

This effort is the first of its kind in Canada and I am pleased to introduce it today. I thank everybody who has been involved in it, including the drafters, and I look forward to working across party lines in this innovative area of policy to make this effort happen.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Health, February 4th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, COVID has painfully proven that Canada's health care system is not capable of handling a high volume of emergent patients, particularly over a sustained period of time.

Today, in year three of COVID, provincial governments are still closing businesses and imposing restrictions because of this. Even with these restrictions, doctors and nurses tell us that this approach does not reduce their burden. Business closures and restrictions on gathering and movement will not fix our health care system. As of today, there is still no coordinated, funded plan to do so.

On behalf of my constituents and health care workers, I call on the federal government to immediately act as a convener and establish a framework to support provinces and ensure that this problem is permanently rectified, because shutting down our way of life to reduce the burden on hospitals without a plan to fix the problems that have been persistent for decades must end.

[Natural Resources, February 2nd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians know what “Justinflation” looks like: higher prices and less stuff on the shelves. Let me tell the House what “just transition” looks like: higher greenhouse gas emissions and more offshore jobs.

The Prime Minister has seen greenhouse gas emissions rise under his time in office. He has seen us spend billions and billions and billions of dollars on debt, all while erasing good-paying Alberta and Saskatchewan jobs in the energy sector. Instead of giving our jobs to Saudi Arabia, he should be working with the energy sector to reduce its reliance.

Why has he not done so?

[Natural Resources, February 2nd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, that is really interesting, because he has asked the natural resources minister, in his mandate letter, to end energy sector jobs. That is actually in the natural resources minister's mandate.

Instead of diversifying our energy mix, he should be trying to ensure that Canadian energy workers have jobs, not offshore it to Saudi Arabia.

Will he say today that he will commit to ending the tankers of Saudi high-carbon, high-fossil fuel oils and instead commit to protecting energy sector worker jobs in Canada?

[Natural Resources, February 2nd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I actually did not expect him to know the answer. Why would he? The answer is 30%. Thirty per cent of Canadians rely on foreign imported energy to heat their homes. Energy prices are out of control. When he talks about transforming our energy mix, he should be talking about transforming it to sovereign-produced Canadian energy that is rapidly decarbonized instead of offshoring our jobs.

Will he commit to ending Canada's reliance on high-carbon imported foreign energy?

[Natural Resources, February 2nd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, could the Prime Minister please update the House and tell us what percentage of Canadians currently rely on foreign imported energy to heat their homes?