Pierre Poilievre

[Business of Supply, December 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, yes.

[Business of Supply, December 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, yes, that electrician can heat schools and hospitals because he has exceptional powers thanks to science and knowledge, which I admire. That is why I spoke so poetically and eloquently of tradespeople. My colleague cited one of my extraordinary odes to them. Once again we see that the Conservative Party loves art.

We are prepared to write more poetry to help the Bloc Québécois understand common sense and our solutions. They include eliminating taxes that force the provinces to fire nurses and teachers so they can pay heating bills. We will eliminate those taxes and we will support teachers and nurses.

[Business of Supply, December 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the member can distort my record instead of defending his own.

He is a part of the government, this former corporate lobbyist and party staffer who spent his time making money off the political system, and he can explain why he and his government have presided over the largest number of strikes in the last 40 years of Canadian history. Never have there been more strikes than since 1983.

The Liberals, with the help of the NDP, have consistently overpowered the rights of workers to carry out those strikes and used their legal authority to rob workers of their autonomy and their independent decision-making. That is their record.

By the way, it is the first time in our history that people with good union jobs cannot afford homes. It is the first time in history that, en masse, union workers are lined up at food banks. That is the tragic record of the broken government. That is why we need a common-sense Conservative government. We will bring home the country we knew and loved.

[Business of Supply, December 5th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, for him to dismiss the foreign affairs minister in that way is outrageous. The reality is that she is the one who chose to go to a photo shoot in a studio with the New York Times in an article about how she was the possible successor to her own boss. We would expect a foreign affairs minister, of all ministers, would be busy fighting tariffs with our biggest trading partner. Instead, she is fighting to replace her boss.

We would think that the Minister of Foreign Affairs would be busy fighting tariffs, but no. She went to the New York Times to be part of a big article presenting her as her leader's potential replacement. That is a sign of weakness.

The leader of the NDP is right. The Liberal Prime Minister is weak. Is the Prime Minister selfish? Well, what else could we call it? He has treated himself to illegal vacations to private islands, lavished himself with constant gifts and benefits, shut down Parliament numerous times to cover up scandals, refused to allow Canadians to have accountability for the missing $400 million in the green slush fund scandal, and protected his own trust fund from the tax increases he has imposed on everyone else. One can only think that this is selfish. Most of all, he stays in power after seeing the devastating consequences this is having on the lives of everyday Canadians. That is nothing if not selfish.

Then, we can move on to the charge the NDP leader makes that the Prime Minister is attacking the rights of workers. Of this, there is no doubt. We have seen the leader of the NDP. He has gone to rallies at places where courageous workers are striking to recuperate many of the lost wages that have resulted from government-induced inflation. We know we had more strikes last year than in any year since 1983. That is a 40-year high.

We have Canada Post workers on strike. That strike now is lasting a long time and doing incredible damage to small businesses. Hopefully, it will come to an end soon. The NDP leader showed up at these strikes and said, “If there is any vote in Parliament that in any way impacts your rights, we are going to vote no.... Whether that vote is a confidence vote or not, whether it triggers an election or not, I'm telling the Prime Minister and the Liberals right now, ‘You're never going to count on us if you're going to take away the rights of workers. Never’”. What a powerful and absolutely categorical statement that was.

Therefore, surely, the NDP leader will vote on this motion, keeping his word to those workers, or was he looking them straight in the eye and telling them a plain falsehood? Will he go back to them after this vote and tell them that, when it came down to putting his vote where his words were, he just did not have the courage, that he was under too much pressure, that the fear of losing an election and facing the music, for his own record was too much for him, and therefore, he backed down and turned his back on those workers and left them out in the cold? Is that what he is going to tell those union workers? If so, how would they ever believe anything he says to them again? The answer is that they, of course, could not.

However, if the NDP leader does decide to vote against his own words, it would mean two things. One, it would mean that he does not want to take responsibility for his own record and that he does not want voters to have the ability to judge his record and his plans because he fears that they would render a verdict that is not in his favour. Two, it would reveal that, in the next election, there are not five or four parties running. There would be two parties running. There would be the NDP-Bloc-Liberal coalition, which taxes people's food, punishes their work, doubles their housing cost and unleashes crime and chaos in their community, and there would be the common-sense Conservatives, who would axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. That is the choice. It is a binary choice. If they vote for the NDP, they would get the Liberals. If they vote for the Liberals, they would get the NDP. If they vote for the Bloc, they would get both the NDP and the Liberal Party.

If they are among the grand majority of Canadians who are unsatisfied with the downward spiral of our country, with broken borders, broken immigration system and broken economy, and if they want to bring home Canada's promise again and restore a country where hard work earns a powerful paycheque and pensions that buy affordable food and homes in safe neighbourhoods, where anyone from anywhere can do anything in the freest nation on earth, in Canada, then let us bring it home.

[Business of Supply, December 5th, 2024]

moved:

That,

(i) whereas the Leader of the New Democratic Party said he "ripped up" his supply and confidence agreement with the Liberal government,

(ii) whereas the NDP Leader said, "the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people",

(iii) whereas the NDP Leader said, "the Liberal government will always cave to corporate greed, and always step in to make sure the unions have no power", in response to the Liberal Labour Minister's referrals to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board that ordered the workers of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference and the ILWU 514 to resume their duties, violating their right to strike",

therefore, the House agrees with the NDP Leader, and the House proclaims it has lost confidence in the Prime Minister and the government.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today, in the spirit of non-partisanship, to put our differences aside and take a good idea and a good perspective, no matter where it comes from. Too often in this place we refuse to accept ideas or input from other people. I thought I would remedy that by taking the words and the message of the leader of the NDP and put them in a Conservative motion so that all of us could vote for the very wise things he said.

Allow me, in the spirit of this non-partisan spirit, to read the motion that we have here, a common-sense Conservative motion:

(i) whereas the Leader of the New Democratic Party said he “'ripped up' his supply and confidence agreement with the Liberal government,

(ii) whereas the NDP Leader said, “the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people”,

(iii) whereas the NDP Leader said, “the Liberal government will always cave to corporate greed, and always step in to make sure the unions have no power”, in response to the Liberal Labour Minister's referrals to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board that ordered the workers of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference and the ILWU 514 to resume their duties, violating their right to strike,

therefore, the House agrees with the NDP Leader, and the House proclaims it has lost confidence in the Prime Minister and the government.

We all applaud the NDP leader. I know that he is enjoying the praise we are giving him.

I am splitting my time, Mr. Speaker, with the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry.

Let us go through this point by point to prove the charge of the NDP leader. He says that the Liberals are too weak. He is right about that. The economy is weak, having lost $500 billion of net investment to the United States; having shrunk the last eight quarters in a row, on a per capita basis; having seen the productivity per hour worked in Canada drop for six quarters in a row. Our economy is now smaller than it was 10 years ago. We have gone from having median incomes equal to American median incomes to the present, where the American worker makes $22,000 more.

Our economy is shrinking in per capita terms. The cost of living is out of reach. We have two million people lined up at food banks. We have double the housing costs and the worst housing price inflation in the G7. Vancouver and Toronto are the most expensive housing markets in all of North America. We recognize that, economically, the Liberals have made the country weak. Then there is politically weak.

The Prime Minister has lost the support, not only of Canadians, who overwhelmingly want to fire him, but of his own party. In fact, the Liberal leader in Ontario has said that his carbon tax is wrong. How could she not say that? It will quadruple over the next five years, bringing economic nuclear winter to our country, emptying our shelves of groceries, driving even more people into starvation. The Liberal Premier of Newfoundland has said that the Prime Minister's energy cap will kill jobs in that province. Then 20 Liberal MPs want to fire him. However, it has also gone to his own cabinet. Right in the middle of a potential trade dispute with incoming President-elect Trump, we would assume that the foreign affairs minister, of all ministers, if she were to appear in the New York Times, would be doing so to fight against the tariffs. Instead, she was in the New York Times with the following headline, “Tapped by [the Prime Minister] to Steer Foreign Affairs, She’s Now His Possible Successor.” That is the foreign affairs minister—

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, December 4th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is the head of the government, responsible for monitoring who comes in our borders and who leaves our borders. Surely he will be able to answer a very simple question.

How many are in Canada illegally?

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, December 4th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, he is the head of the government, which is responsible for monitoring who enters and leaves the country. I have a very simple question.

How many people are here in Canada illegally?

[Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, December 4th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, this Prime Minister has lost control. He has lost control of our border. He has lost control of immigration. He admits it, in fact. He did an about-face on immigration. We want to know if he is going to regain control by answering a very simple question.

How many people are staying here in Canada illegally?

[Natural Resources, December 4th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, that is factually false. The industry's emissions have been regulated for decades. He just wants to shut down their production and give more of the money and jobs to Donald Trump and the United States of America. Then there is the electricity tax. He calls it a regulation, but now we know that it is a tax because the independent Ontario energy operator says that this new regulation tax will drive up costs for families by $175 a year and will drive factories, mines and mills south of the border.

Why is the Prime Minister killing jobs with high electricity prices?

[Natural Resources, December 4th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, his party does not agree. He is so weak that the NDP keeps him in power while the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador is attacking his energy cap. The Liberal premier says that this reduction of 35% in Newfoundland's energy production is already sending investment away.

We understand that President-elect Trump wants to take our money and jobs, but why is the Prime Minister standing against his own Liberal premier in Newfoundland and Labrador to help Trump do it?