Phil McColeman

[National Defence, March 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, we learned last week that defence plans on how to deter a 9/11 cell terrorist attack were inadvertently leaked to the CBC. On one hand, the minister puts a lifelong gag order on bureaucrats who are directly involved in executing his political orders, while on the other hand, the minister's department is openly sharing national security documents.

When will the minister stop playing politics with the defence department and take seriously the responsibility for Canadian security?

[Taxation, March 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the government has admitted in its own “Report on Federal Tax Expenditures” that lower-income Canadians are disproportionately harmed by consumption taxes like the Liberal carbon tax.

Documents have demonstrated that the Liberals have already done the analysis to determine how this carbon tax would hurt the budgets of Canadians, but they refuse to release that information. This includes higher prices for home heating, gas, electricity, food, and just about everything Canadians purchase.

What are the Liberals trying to hide, and what is the real cost of the Liberal carbon tax on lower-income and middle-class Canadians? The Liberals have the answers. Why are they not releasing them?

[Business of Supply, February 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the previous Conservative government set out realistic targets that could be achieved. We went about it sector by sector, putting incentive programs in place for people to move toward those targets. It was the stick and carrot idea. We believe, as Conservatives, that the way to move forward is to get people to do it in a way they agree with and that they agree to build into their cost structure, be they individuals or businesses.

We went down that road. We implemented a number of initiatives that were working. The rhetoric that we did nothing is absolutely false, and the record shows that. What more do I need to say?

[Business of Supply, February 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to correct some of the information the member talked about. It was actually the Conservative targets the current government used for the Paris agreement. We set out a plan, sector by sector, to make progress toward achieving those goals, and they were put into effect.

That is rhetoric that nothing was happening and that we do not care about climate change. Of course we do. We just believe that there is a better way to do for the 400-plus people in my community who will have no income and will be on the list of the unemployed when $9000 is added to the overhead at their factory, making it uncompetitive, and that factory relocates to Michigan. We need to care about those individuals.

[Business of Supply, February 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the provinces that have implemented them are putting them into their budgets as estimated revenues. In Ontario, the estimated revenue from the cap and trade system is $1.9 billion. That money is not going back to taxpayers. In British Columbia, the federal government charges GST on top of the carbon tax. We are getting income in our revenue stream through the GST. The government is taking that additional funding and putting it into operational funds.

My idea is that we not put a carbon tax in place, because it makes us uncompetitive and it affects people with the lowest incomes the most. We should not go down that road at this time.

[Business of Supply, February 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to get up and speak today.

What we are calling for today is pretty simple. As my colleague just articulated, we are asking for transparency, and I will quote from the motion itself:

...the Liberal election platform states that “government and its information should be open by default”....

Therefore, if there were no reason not to provide the data, then the data would be provided by default.

The question the government is facing is why. Why are the tables blacked out and redacted from the report that we are requesting? We simply want to show the effect of the carbon tax on various income levels of individuals in our society and also on business in terms of the effect it will have on competitiveness.

In that regard, I would like to talk about some of my constituents who employ a lot of the people in the manufacturing sector within my community. I will talk about some of the meetings I have been having with constituent business owners about the rising energy costs, and what the carbon tax will mean from their own rudimentary calculations based on the percentages that the federal government has dictated to the provinces and has said that will be phased in over time.

One such company manufactures very large pieces of stainless steel product that go into large installations, such as dam gates and things that are very unusual. These are one-off projects around the world. It employs just more than 400 people in good, well-paying jobs. On the production floor it has six enormous furnaces. These furnaces heat and shape the metal to make it into the final product.

Back in the 2008 election, we had been threatened with a carbon tax by the Liberals. In that election, they campaigned that they would bring in a carbon tax. The owner of that business came to me at the time and calculated the effects of what that carbon tax would mean, and it was at basically the same rates that exist today. The way he explained it to me was—because of the amount of natural gas he uses in heating the product to shape it, which is an enormous amount of money—that if a carbon tax like this came into existence, it would mean $9,000 per employee per year in extra overhead costs.

This company happens to own two other manufacturing facilities, one in Michigan and one in Ohio. Some 400 well-paying jobs in my community are at threat over a carbon tax, if we just do the basic thinking on this and use common sense. Therefore, I am talking about the impact that this tax will have on business, and already businesses are facing the prospect of competitive rates that will start to come into effect in the United States. They will start to look at their options, because basically they have to compete on an international level.

We do not know what the effect of the carbon tax will be on the Canadian population at large and on businesses. It is absolutely wrong that we cannot get that information when it is available in writing from the finance department in terms of what it will do.

This is probably the most damning quote that, again, forms part of what we are asking for today. The Department of Finance indicated that the federally mandated carbon tax will cause higher prices to “cascade through the economy in the form of higher prices” for everything.

This means exactly what my colleague was driving at with the examples of individuals who are disproportionately affected because they are at the lower end of the income scale. There are many people right now in Ontario, and my friend said 60,000, who have had their hydro cut off by Hydro One.

Over the last week, we witnessed in the legislature of Ontario people trying to get answers to questions like why the CEO of that corporation makes $4 million a year while in the same type of corporation in Quebec the CEO makes $400,000. There is no answer to those questions, because the government does not know why.

The other part of that equation is that all the people who work at Hydro One in Ontario have been taken off the sunshine list. In other words, there is no transparency with respect to the incomes they are earning as employees. Again, it is Liberals hiding transparency. This is another huge broken promise. It is exactly what they promised Canadians they would not do during the campaign in the last election.

We found out early on that the $10-billion deficit was just thrown out the window, because they had a majority and could do whatever they wanted, so it is $30 billion. Electoral reform is the same; promise made, promise broken. We can go on about the types of promises the Liberals made and how they were broken.

I will talk a little bit about the projected effect on seniors. It would be $1,208 per person from a carbon tax. This is the statistic that was given to us by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. It estimates that it will be$1,028 per person, or $4,102 per family of four, when fully implemented in 2020. Does the government agree with this figure? Is it higher? Is it lower? Why will it not say? Why will it not release the data it has that should be open and transparent, by default, for all Canadian to see? What is being hidden? That is what we are driving at today in the motion. We are driving at being transparent, exactly what the Liberals said they would be, and now they have had a change of heart and are doing it differently.

When we look at this in every community, people will actually have to decide whether they can afford to even have an automobile or afford groceries to eat over paying their hydro bills. Another example of this was asked, again, in the legislature of Ontario. It was about an individual whose hydro bill had arrived, and he had consumed $4 worth of hydro in the period measured in the hydro bill, which is generally 30 days, yet there was a charge of $100 for all the other charges, including the global adjustment fund and the delivery charge. How was this individual charged $4 for consuming a certain amount of hydro and $100 that was not. The Wynne Liberal government will not answer that question.

We are in a crisis situation in the province I come from, a crisis situation that is real for the people who are at the lower end of the economic scale. What we are striving to do today in opposition is ask the Liberals to be transparent, to do what they said they would do and provide us with the data, because we believe that the data is being covered up and hidden by the government. We are asking today for the support of all parliamentarians to live up to that promise.

[Government Services, February 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, during the last election the Prime Minister promised only modest deficits, but, alas, that promise was broken. Since then, Liberal ministers have been looking for ways to raise taxes on hard-working Canadians to pay for the Prime Minister's billions of dollars in broken promises.

We now learn that the President of the Treasury Board is planning to raise user fees, which is just a tax by another name.

Will the President of the Treasury Board tell Canadians which fees are going up, by how much, and when?

[Forest in Brantford, February 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, there is a new forest in my city. For the last five years, Brantford businesses, community groups, schools, charities, and residents have worked together to turn 65 unusable acres of land in the middle of an active industrial park into a forest of more than 50,000 trees. It is a healthy, burgeoning forest with more than four kilometres of walking trails, a thriving stream supporting aquatic life, abundant mammals, birds, and flourishing plant life. Prairie tall grass planted in elevated areas assists in sustaining the endangered ecosystem.

However, most important is the hard work of so many Brantford residents to make this happen. To the Brant Tree Coalition founder, Jim Berhalter, and Chuck Beach and his team, I give a huge shout out and thanks.

I invite all Canadians to stop by and take a walk through Brantford's beautiful forest in the city.

[Statistics Act, February 7th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned how thin the legislative agenda of the government was when we were spending this much time debating the redesign and re-engineering of a few procedural things for Statistics Canada to help it be more independent.

We have some concerns with the fact that certain regions of the country will not be represented in the oversight in governance and that there would be no ministerial accountability, hence, nothing from the House of Commons that could hold the government to account on these changes.

I come from Ontario, a province that is suffering from an energy expense crisis. Premier Wynne has taken it upon herself to redesign and re-engineer how we deliver and pay for our electricity. This means people right now, in the coldest weather of the year, are having a hard time just paying their electricity bills. I bring that to this debate simply because we know the government has imposed a carbon tax, but the analysis of who it affects the most has been redacted on the documents we have given to show the effect on some of the middle and low-income earners and how they are trying to cope with that expense.

I ask my colleague again to not only comment on how thin this legislative agenda is, but on some of the more pressing issues, especially from my province.

[Statistics Act, February 7th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I tried to articulate in my speech the large concern for the fact that this was an oversight body that currently represented every province and every territory, with 13 individuals. That is part of what goes into bringing in the right data from all parts of the country in terms of advising the chief statistician.

When we move to what the legislation proposes, it opens it up to all kinds of potential for abuse. The potential for abuse largely is that the Liberals have a list of friendly people they would like to see put on a board so they can reward them.

People might say that is very cynical and that never happens. After my almost nine years here and watching all types of governments, this happens. Look at provincial governments where this is happening today. Look at Ontario, my province, and the kind of outright patronage that is going on through the Wynne government and the kind of abuses of power that we are witnessing. This should be one of the most prosperous, best run, most resourceful provinces in the country and instead has been turned upside down, accepting transfer payments and looking as being the poor brother or poor sister.

I digress, but the reality is that when we change something as fundamental as the governance structure as proposed in the bill, that is what happens. It opens it up to that. Will it happen? I do not know. Does it happen? Absolutely. Ask any member here and he or she would have to reply that in all honesty it does happen. That is why we should not change this.