House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2019, with 55% of the vote.
Questions on the Order Paper September 17th, 2018
With regard to the comments by the Commissioner of Lobbying in an interview with the Canadian Press that “If we want to be able to modernize, there is no way we will be able to do it with the current budget”: will the government increase the budget of the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying and, if so, by how much?
Ethics September 17th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, in their summer of failure, the Liberal government and its ministers reminded us that they are just as willing to break their own rules as the Conflict of Interest Act. Caught in big-ticket cash for access fundraisers, the Prime Minister promised strict new rules, but today we learned that registered lobbyists are still buying their way into exclusive Liberal fundraising events to mingle with ministers and PMO power brokers.
Why does the Prime Minister not stop the double talk and simply order an end to this highly unethical practice?
Canadian Heritage June 18th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, the Harrington Lake official summer residence of Canada's prime ministers is in need of repair, but a few recent improvements might raise eyebrows among the middle class and those, burdened with new taxes, struggling to join it.
The Prime Minister bought a new personal sauna, but taxpayers paid $4,000 to plug it in. Taxpayers paid an extra $17,000 to groom cross-country ski trails. A new swing set cost $7,500. There are new canoes and kayaks. How does the PM justify these particularly personal benefits to taxpayers?
Main Estimates, 2018-19 June 14th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, I know the answer came from the other side, “Just watch us.” The glaring problem that not only we in the official opposition and the NDP, but all Canadians see is the manner in which the Liberal government disrespected accountability and transparency in committee. A member seemed to celebrate when I made the point that, when questions came around to the $7.4-billion slush fund, the Liberal committee members actually left the committee, killed quorum, and refused to answer questions, which they and the President of the Treasury Board still refuse to answer today.
Main Estimates, 2018-19 June 14th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy my hon. colleague's introduction of humour and folk stories, very often some with a Yiddish origin. The lesson of the parable of the older brother that he has just reminded us of is a very good analogy to what the President of the Treasury Board is trying to get away with by explaining that the government knows best. It will take money from the national treasury, again with the force of the majority, the tyranny of the majority, and then it will spend that money in ways that will never be fully accounted for.
Main Estimates, 2018-19 June 14th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, in the wake of getting rid of the ineffective, unworkable, and unsubscribed Kyoto treaty, which the Liberals signed onto and then they raised emissions by 35%, our government signed the Copenhagen Accord and committed to responsibly balance reducing emissions and protecting our economy, lines which, as I said, have been appropriated by the current environment minister.
As I noted in my speech, and as has been noted by my colleagues any number of times, Canada contributes far less than two per cent of the world's annual global emissions, while China, the largest emitter, has an over-the-horizon commitment to do something someday, while still generating billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere through coal-fired generating stations, which we have banned in this country.
We have balanced what the Liberals claim to balance, and it must be noted that when they went to Paris, they adopted our Copenhagen standards.
Main Estimates, 2018-19 June 14th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton West.
Here we are, in the final moments of debate, the penultimate opportunity to speak to the 2018-19 main estimates. I am delighted to have this opportunity. For the benefit of folks looking in from home, the main estimates are supposed to list and outline the resources required by individual departments and agencies for the upcoming fiscal year, in order to deliver the programs for which they are responsible. The main estimates are supposed to be allotments of dollars and cents, many dollars and cents, aligned with specific spending plans, laid out by the government in the budget for the fiscal year.
As we know, budget 2018 was not an economic document. It was a virtue signalling, social engineering, shamelessly pandering, ideologically preoccupied pitch to what one respected national commentator described as “every conceivable Liberal client group and policy cult”.
This year, in budget 2018 the government told Canadians that total government revenues this year, taxes primarily, would amount to about $324 billion. Total expenditures by the government and its agencies and departments would be about $339 billion, leaving the budget in a deficit of more than $18 billion. Let us remember, this major deficit is much more than the modest deficits promised by the Liberals, and that their promise of a balanced budget by next year will also be broken, along with so many of their original 2015 campaign promises.
Getting back to the main estimates and how they are supposed to work, the various spending authorities are called “votes” with the amounts to be included in future appropriation bills that Parliament will be asked to approve to enable the government to proceed with its spending plans. That is the way it is supposed to work.
Members may recall the days when finance ministers explained in detail the planned expenditures to Parliament and to Canadians. Not here, there are scores of unknown and undetailed spending elements in the main estimates for 2018-19. That is why so many of my colleagues have shared with the House and Canadians their concern that the Liberals are changing the rules to suit their own suspect agenda.
Is “suspect” too extreme a characterization? I do not think so. After hearing so many opposition speakers, I am sure the Speaker shares our concerns regarding the unacceptable way the Liberals are trying to hide their spending intentions from Canadians. For example, we have the oft-referenced $7.4-billion example. Vote 40, a $7.4-billion vote, is either an attempt to hide next year's election year goodies funding, like the many million dollars dumped into the Quebec riding facing a by-election in just a very days, or it was a very large contingency fund to cover the President of the Treasury Board's unidentified spending priorities, as set by the direction of the Prime Minister and cabinet to avoid parliamentary oversight.
This $7.4 billion has been quite properly characterized by our shadow finance minister, the member for Carleton, as nothing more than a Liberal election-year slush fund. At committee earlier this month, departments that had received major allotments were unable to give meaningful answers about millions of dollars they were to receive or how the spending of those millions will be reported, if ever at all.
Instead, in something of a puppet show, Treasury Board officials stepped in to offer their answers for the department officials who could not. When it came time at that meeting to ask questions about how the mysterious $7.4 billion apparent slush fund would be spent, the Liberal members of committee walked out. Their abandonment of committee killed quorum, leaving those questions unanswered, as they are still unanswered today.
Among the scores of unanswered questions is another glaring question, which was debated in the House earlier today. That question involves the Liberal refusal to tell Canadians just how much the carbon tax obligations they have downloaded on the provinces to collect will cost the average Canadian family.
The Liberals know the answer. They will not tell us, and they will not tell Canadians. They have provided a document that quite clearly focuses on the potential impact of a carbon price on household consumption expenditures, but when the document comes to key findings, there is a blackout. Most segments of the rest of the document are redacted, hidden behind solid ink black blocks.
Members will recall that under our previous Conservative government, Canada worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by regulation. Even though Canada generates less than 2%, now far less than 2%, of the world's annual emissions, we acknowledged that we would work with the provinces to carefully reduce emissions while at the same time ensuring that we protected the economy, even as we protected the environment, lines that have since been taken by the Liberal minister and reiterated, by rote, in question period almost every day. As a result, our Conservative government was the first in history to achieve tangible, significant reductions of greenhouse gases.
We started with the transportation sector, the largest-emitting sector, and we created, in partnership with the United States, tailpipe regulations, which are reducing car and light-truck emissions and will, by 2025, reduce those emissions by 50%, and which will consume 50% less fuel. We set new regulations for heavy-duty trucks and buses that are seeing emissions from these vehicles, by this year, reduced by up to 23%, which means a saving of up to $8,000 a year for a semi-truck operator driving a newly purchased 2018 model vehicle.
We set marine emission guidelines, began work with the aviation and rail sectors, and then moved on to the next-largest emission sector: coal-fired electricity generating plants. We set emission-reduction regulations, and our former Conservative government imposed a ban on the construction of any new coal-fired units, the first government in the world to implement such a ban.
In every one of those emission-reducing regulations, scientists and economists at Environment Canada conducted a cost-benefit study, and in every one of those situations, we were able to show that the benefits of the regulations outweighed the costs. The regulated sectors and the provinces and the consumers knew what careful, reasonable regulation would cost. That is why we are so concerned by the Liberals' refusal to come clean on the estimated cost to the average Canadian family of their carbon tax.
I would like to end with just a couple of statements by past and present parliamentary budget officers. Former PBO, Kevin Page, said, of the unaccounted billions in the main estimates, “Financial control and ministerial accountability are being undermined.” He said that of the current government and the main estimates and the budget. Mr. Page said, “This is a new low for our appropriation system.”
The current PBO said, “virtually none of the money requested in the new Budget Implementation vote has undergone scrutiny through the standard Treasury Board Submission process.” In effect, the current Parliamentary Budget Officer is saying that the government is getting the money through its majority, without proper scrutiny and accountability to this elected House.
Therefore, we in the official opposition will, in the coming many hours, stand so many times, proudly, to oppose the Liberals' unexplained, undocumented, and unaccounted removal of billions of dollars from the national treasury, to be spent in ways that can only be described as highly suspect in the coming election year.
Foreign Affairs June 14th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' moral equivalence with Israel and its enemies is notorious, and when they had an opportunity to stand against a one-sided motion against Israel at the United Nations yesterday, and in direct contradiction to votes in the House this week, they did it again. The Liberals directed Canada's diplomats to sit on their hands, to abstain from standing with the only democracy in the Middle East.
The Liberals always show up for the annual Walk With Israel, as fair-weather friends would. Why did the Liberals refuse to stand with Israel yesterday?
Employment June 12th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, hundreds of worthy Canada summer jobs employers were denied funding for thousands of young people this year because they refused to accept the Liberals' imposed values. Now, the Islamic Humanitarian Service of Kitchener ticked the box and funding was personally approved by the Liberal House leader. Well, Sheikh Shafiq Hudda of this organization now calls for genocide, the eradication of Israelis, and says, “You will leave in body bags.”
Does the minister not believe those words clearly violate the Liberal values attestation?
Employment June 11th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, thousands of young Canadians have been denied summer jobs because the groups that would have hired them refuse to bow to the Prime Minister's imposed values test. One group that ticked the PM's attestation box is the Islamic Humanitarian Service. At the annual al-Quds' Iranian hatefest at the Ontario legislature, Sheikh Shafiq Hudda, of this same organization, called for genocide, the eradication of Israelis. The minister claimed that the Liberals' imposed values would protect rights. What does she say today?