Randy Hoback

[Government Business No. 30—Proceedings on Bill C-56, November 23rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, actually, it is not up to government to build houses. It is up to the marketplace to build houses. It is up to government to actually set the stage, to put the environment in place so houses get built. It is up to government to make sure the platform is there so developers and homeowners who want to build a new house can actually do that. What have we done here? We have taxed them. We have taken away all of their disposable income. We have made it tough to actually even afford groceries, so how are they supposed to build a house? Talking about revenue properties and social housing, there is a role for government in social housing; there is no question about that for municipal, federal and provincial governments. Let us have a proper game plan to see that happen.

Do members know what? It is pretty tough when the cupboard is bare because the money was spent on things we cannot find.

[Government Business No. 30—Proceedings on Bill C-56, November 23rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, yes, we ran deficits, and I know why. It is because we were in the greatest global meltdown of our banks that Canada and the world had ever seen. Where did that money go? I can tell the House where it went in my riding. It went to lift stations, to water treatment plants and to sewer lines. It went to things that Canadians actually needed. It was spent to actually create jobs and employment. It was returned to the economy and came back in taxes. That is where that money went.

Tell me where the Liberal government's money went. Where did the billions of dollars go? I do not know. We got the ArriveCAN app; maybe some of it went there. Where else did it go? It is like the $40 million; nobody knows.

[Government Business No. 30—Proceedings on Bill C-56, November 23rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, Canadians are being divided, and when they are hurting, they get divided even more. When one starts picking winners and losers, it gets even worse.

The government just spent $30 billion on two companies for electric batteries. It is probably $35 billion from what we are hearing now. It does not mean we should or should not do it, but that is $30 billion. Let us make sure that investment is going to happen, that it is done in such a way that Canadians are going to benefit from it. We do not know, as we cannot see the agreement. Canadians do not know what is in it. It is hidden. Why is it hidden? Maybe there is a reason to have foreign jobs. Maybe they are training the trainer and things like that; I could live with that, but I do not know. The government should show the agreement to us and to Canadians so they understand. It has spent a lot of money at a time when Canadians do not have a lot of money. It has tried to build the next sector of industry with huge government subsidization. Did it try to create a competitive environment here in Canada so businesses want to be here? Did it want to take advantage of the natural advantages we have in Canada: our diverse population, our multiple languages and the abilities we have? Those are the things it has to look at.

If we look at the Canadian GDP per person, since 2017, it stagnated and now it has dropped. Basically, our standard of living compared to that in other parts of the world is going down. When we compare it to that of the U.S., ours has dropped 2.5%, and the Americans' has been rising 5.5% this last year. If we look at the graphs, theirs is going up and ours is going sideways and down. The government has to change that. If it continues, our families are going to get into worse problems.

Canada is at a crossroads right now. Canadians are hurting. They are in pain. The government has done nothing to relieve that pain and has shown no compassion or empathy in regard to that.

[Government Business No. 30—Proceedings on Bill C-56, November 23rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, what a great presentation that was from my colleague from of British Columbia. The common-sense ideas that he presented just reflect the common sense of a young Conservative Party that is ready to take over the reins here in Canada and bring about some new ideas to help Canadians as it progresses, goes forward and brings back the Canadian dream of home ownership.

When I first read Bill C-56, I thought that it was not that bad and that there were some things in it that looked pretty good. Then I remembered: I know why they look good; it is because they are actually Conservative ideas. They are actually things the Conservatives talked about six years ago, and I am glad the Liberals copied them. I am very flattered they copied our ideas. That is great.

Then I looked at it and thought, “Wait a minute, the bill is regarding GST on rental properties.” If we are really looking at this and at affordability across Canada, we are dealing with such a small part of where there are affordability problems. Let us take, for example, the young family who owns a house. Let us say they have a mortgage of $250,000. They bought their house three or four years ago. The mortgage is coming up for renewal now, and they are going from a 1.9% or 2.5% interest rate to roughly an 8.5% or 8.7% interest rate. Their monthly mortgage payment is going from $1,200 a month up to $1,800 or $1,900 a month. They have to find another $700 a month, so that is $8,400 a year of after-tax dollars just to pay the interest increase. That is an affordability problem. Is there anything in the bill that would address that? No, there is not. Is there anything in the Liberals' ideas they talked about yesterday, moving forward, that would address helping those people out? Have there been any ideas to work with the banks to say they could extend things out? Have there been any ideas to work with institutions to say that we could actually help people manoeuvre so they could actually afford to stay in their house?

I can see why the Liberals talked only about rental properties in this piece of legislation, because what will happen is that people are going to give up their house because they cannot afford it, and they are going to have to have a place to rent. Let us look at the legislation again. Okay, we would build lots of apartments. When would they be done? Would it be two years or three years from now? People lose their house next month, and they have to wait three years for an apartment? Where do they go? What do they do?

There has been no imagination in the government. The Liberals are out of ideas. They are old and tired, and they have no concept of what is actually going on in this country. They have done nothing to work with the municipalities and the provinces to ask how they can make things more affordable and whether there are things they can do together and leverage among themselves to make life easier for Canadians. There is nothing. We have a few examples where maybe they worked with one city here and one city there, but generally, across Canada, have they worked with anybody? No, they have not. They have picked a targeted approach based on political will and political expedience.

We saw it with home heating when the Liberals removed the GST on oil. Did they apply that to propane? Did they apply it to natural gas? Did they apply it to wood or coal? I come from Saskatchewan. We still use coal; that is way worse than diesel. We still use wood; that is probably still worse than diesel. Was there any relief for that? No, there was not. We use propane and natural gas, which are better than diesel, but the cost has gone up so much because of the carbon tax that it is really hurting. People are saying to us all the time, “I cannot pay my bills.” They are going into winter now and are asking what they will do. They are saying, “My mortgage is going to go up. My heating is now going up. My property tax is going up. What do I do?” What does the government say to them? It says crickets. It tells them to pay it, and if their wallet is empty, to borrow more money at a higher interest rate and pay it. Is there any relief there? No, there is not. Has there been any compassion shown? No, there has not.

That is the reality of what the government has done, and do members know why? The government is tired. It is out of ideas. It has no imagination. It does not understand economics. The reality is that this is very true, because if the Liberals understood economics, they would have realized five years ago, when they started borrowing money like drunken sailors, that it was not a good idea. When they started putting money into things that did not have any type of return on GDP or efficiencies, that was a bad idea.

When we look at things now, we have to pay those interest rates. It is a tremendous amount of interest we are now paying on our debt. It is more than what we pay in health care. I was around before, when people had to wait two years to get surgery. My mother had cancer. She had to wait before she could get diagnosed, because those were the days when we were paying a higher amount in interest than we were paying for health care. It took a Liberal government, in co-operation with a Conservative government and the Reform Party in opposition, to get that tackled and under control.

Did we learn from history? No, we did not. What did the Prime Minister do? He started borrowing, not just a small amount like he promised in 2015, not just $10 billion, but $40 billion, $60 billion and $100 billion. The numbers are staggering, and now, we cannot get that back. How do we get back to a balanced budget? It is going to take a tremendous amount of effort.

Not only did we spend more, but we also brought in legislation that starves businesses. We brought in legislation that kicks people out of Canada so they invest everywhere else. We kept our natural resources in the ground. We did not defend our forestry sector when it was unfairly hit with tariffs out of the U.S. What has the government done? It has done nothing. It has shown no imagination. When we talk to it about this, it blames everybody else.

Affordability is the basis of what is going on here. Let us look at things in a more macro and holistic sense. Let us break it down to a family that buys groceries. Groceries are more expensive. The inflation rate for groceries is tremendous. There is the war in Ukraine and a variety of things that have brought commodity prices up through the roof, no question about it, but there are things the government could do to alleviate some of the pain.

I have no issues with change to the Competition Bureau. I have a few concerns, but no issues. Again, when would we get the results from the changes? Would they help us next week or next month, or a year, two years or 10 years from now? There are no deadlines. There are no time frames for allowing us to see any type of reduction in prices based on the changes. There is nothing there that would immediately help the family that needs the help today, so has the government done anything on affordability in the legislation? No, it has not. It has laid out some good targets to move forward in the future, four years or five years down the road when it is no longer in government, but what has it done today? What it has done is spend more money on things Canada cannot afford. It has put money into programs that do not help Canadians at this point in time. It has taken money out of their pockets that they need in their pockets.

This is why we asked the government to just freeze the GST. Never mind the quadrupling, even just freezing it would alone at least help Canadians. If the government reduced it, it would show compassion. If it reduced it for all Canadians, it would show that it genuinely cared about this country and did not pick favourites on one side or the other based on political expediency. If you showed some consistency, we would be in better shape and in a better position in this Parliament, but you have not; you have divided Canadians by region, by different sectors—

[Government Business No. 30—Proceedings on Bill C-56, November 23rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am kind of curious. This is basically a bill to address affordability in Canada.

For young families that have a mortgage right now that is coming up for renewal in the next month, and it is going to from 2% to 8%, what is in here that is going to help? What is in any type of Liberal legislation at this point in time that is actually going to help that family renew that mortgage, take the hit on the increase of the mortgage payment, and be able to heat their homes and put food on the table?

[Raiders Wall of Honour Inductee, November 1st, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate Mr. Bruce Vance of Prince Albert, who was inducted into the Raiders Wall of Honour.

Bruce spent 14 years with the Raiders and was responsible for bringing many special events to our community. He is also the former president of the Crescent Heights Community Club, the former co-manager of the Mann-Northway Northern Bears and co-founder of the Girls Prairie League Softball.

Despite being diagnosed with colon cancer for the second time in 2020, Bruce continues to take on whatever challenges life may throw at him. Just this past year, the Northern Bears hosted an event with his team jerseys. They auctioned off the jerseys and raised $23,000 for the Victoria Hospitals Foundation and the Cancer Foundation of Saskatchewan.

Bruce is an idol in our community. We thank him for his service and ask him to please keep up the good fight.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, October 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I will not ask him that question, because I do not want to put him on the spot. He is speaking after me, so he gets the last word.

Looking at the agriculture sector in grains and oilseeds, the soil is phenomenal. The member talked about that beautiful soil. As a farm kid and somebody who grew up on a farm and farmed myself, when I was over there, I was just drooling. It has such a basket to grow crops in and a variety of crops, from beans to wheat, canola and tomatoes. I think there is probably some good technology transfer between Canada and Ukraine on tomato production. I am sure the member will talk a bit about that tomorrow when he is speaking.

On the grains and oilseeds side, as well as carbon capturing on the no-till side of things, there is some great technology there that we can share with our Ukrainian friends. If we were to look at the University of Saskatchewan or University of Guelph, the University of Saskatchewan's agronomics is phenomenal; the University of Guelph is great at genetics, especially dairy genetics.

Again, I can see all sorts of ways we can work together to not only take care of each other, business-wise, but also to feed the world.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, October 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Windsor West brought up another really good example. There are so many examples showing where Canada and the Ukraine can work together and use the knowledge from Ukraine and Canada. If we package that together, it will be a great partnership.

I am no cybersecurity specialist. However, when looking at cybersecurity, I would assume that Ukraine, with what it has been going through in this war and the cyber-attacks from Russia, is probably getting up there. It probably understands and knows a lot more about the actual implications of cybersecurity in its fashion. That is knowledge we could probably use back here in Canada. I would encourage those types of exchanges to happen. If an FTA can actually facilitate that to make it even easier, that is just another reason why we should do it.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, October 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, in theory, I would say yes. We still have to see what is really in the agreement to make sure it will actually meet the requirements of Ukraine and Canada. It has to be a partnership. Any trade agreement, at the end of the day, will not work if it is not a partnership between the two countries.

I like the idea. I like the notion of Canada standing behind Ukraine and fast-tracking it, but we still have to do our due diligence as a government and as an opposition party.

I think we would have to look at this very closely. However, I think we should try to get it to committee as quickly as possible so that the committee can do its job and then go from there. If it comes out of the committee, the committee is happy with it and all parties say that is the way we should go, then we should explore those options just to show that support.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, October 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.

The trade agreement with Ukraine was done in 2015 and was originally negotiated under the Conservative government. It removed tariffs on 86% of all exports. That agreement really showed support to Ukraine when it needed it. It was there to give it a hand up. It laid the groundwork for creating perfect and good partnerships with Canada and Ukraine and for building on our relationship, which has been going on for years and years.

My riding of Prince Albert has a strong Ukrainian community. Ukrainians are very active in the community. In fact, there is a big festival coming up in a couple of weekends, at which they will be celebrating their heritage again. There are also a lot of Ukrainian refugees in the riding who contribute to our economy. They have basically fit right in and are pulling their weight. I am sure they would rather be back in Ukraine with their families, but we are glad to have them in Saskatchewan, in the riding of Prince Albert. We are making them feel at home, and we are there for them.

This new agreement lays out what I expect in a trade agreement. I am not going to lie. I was actually surprised we made an agreement while the war was ongoing, but looking at Ukraine, I thought we should think about it in a practical sense. Ukraine is going to win this war. I think everybody here believes that Ukraine will win this war. It is going to have to rebuild after the damage that Putin has caused in Ukraine. There is no question about that.

Who is in the best position to help it do that? That would be Canada. That is why we make an agreement like this. We position ourselves to be there not only during the war but also after the war to partner with the Ukrainian people to rebuild their country, to make it the modern country it can be and make it a progressive part of the EU, which I think it will ascend to one day.

We say that is what we expect out of a trade agreement. I expect a trade agreement, first of all, to take advantage of the Canadian skill sets we have. Let us look at the agriculture sector. I used to be the marketing manager in eastern and western Europe for Flexi-Coil, which was owned by Case IH at the time, and for a brief stint, Ukraine was my marketplace. It was one of the areas that I covered.

I went to Ukraine once, and its potential to grow crops was phenomenal, but it did not have the technology. We shipped it air seeders and tractors and got it new genetics. I know other companies go there with cattle genetics and dairy genetics. Canada had all these resources that we shared with Ukraine to build it up, and what did it do? It helped feed the world. Now, with this war, people in northern Africa and places like that may die of hunger because Ukraine is not there to help feed them.

In a scenario like that, with the war and the amount of damage being done, Canada can step in again on the agriculture side to be there for Ukraine, to help rebuild its agriculture sector, its food production and food manufacture. If we look at our manufacturing sector, we have some of the most efficient manufacturers in the world. They have to be. With the carbon taxes and everything they have here, they have to be efficient to compete on the global stage. They are that much better than anywhere else in the world. Canada would be a natural ally to go into Ukraine to help it rebuild its manufacturing sector and their facilities and plants.

We can look at uranium power generation and nuclear technology. Saskatchewan is where uranium is mined, and it is processed in Ontario. When we look at the facilities we have in Canada and what we offer for sale around the world, there is a great partnership to offer to the world. Canada and Ukraine working together could provide green power moving forward. That makes so much sense. I expect a free trade agreement to start to facilitate those types of partnerships and that type of growth.

When I was in western Europe this spring with the foreign affairs committee, one of the discussions was about how to rebuild Ukraine and make sure it has the skill sets, the plumbers, the electricians, the people who would go back to that country after the war to rebuild it. We have talked about how we could use the education system in Canada with the women who are here right now. How can we give them the skill sets so that when they go home, they can contribute to rebuilding their country?

That is something the province of Saskatchewan is looking at very seriously. It is saying that, through its education system, it can do that, making sure people have the proper skill sets, the technology and the know-how to do that, but they also need the resources to do it. They are going to need the lumber, the cement and all the things to finish those projects.

What of those things can come from Canada? Which items can actually be imported from Canada, or maybe from somewhere else, but where the technology and knowledge are transferred into Ukraine? I think there is a tremendous amount of potential there.

As we look at the Canadian Ukrainian community working together, just think about how that partnership can be in the world. When one sees a business that has Ukrainian strengths and Canadian strengths put together, if we think about it, it will compete anywhere in the world.

Ukrainians have one little hurdle, which is Mr. Putin. They have the war to overcome; I am amazed and maybe speechless about just how well they have done and how they have been there, pushing back the Russian forces and fighting for their country and for their people.

One thing I have to say is this: We had a staff member in my office who was from Ukraine, and when the war broke out, she left my office to go back. There is no question of the commitment from people in Ukraine to their country.

Not only Ukrainians from Ukraine but also Ukrainians from around the world are saying the exact same thing: They want to free Ukraine. They want to see their country grow and prosper. Can we give them a hand up and do that?

Can this free trade agreement actually do that? Can it give them a hand up? Can it provide the tools for a prosperous Ukraine after the war?

We need to be there. We cannot neglect things. We cannot say that there are other issues in the world, so we have to water down our support for Ukraine. No, we have to be steadfast, with our chin out, with Ukraine. We have to do what we can to get it through this crisis, this war, and get it back on its feet afterward.

I will tell everyone this: If Canada can do that, we are going to have a good ally and friend for years to come. I just see us building on those strengths. The trade agreement is a great way to do that.

In a trade agreement like this, I expect the markets to be open, with goods coming out of Ukraine. I expect goods to come out of Canada and go to Ukraine. I expect the exchange of technology, labour, knowledge and education systems.

As I said, I expect the uranium sector, the nuclear sector, to be focused on, as well as the commitment to bring that sector together, to actually grow it and to offer that technology throughout the world. We can take our strengths, bring them together and put them on the marketplace.

An FTA can do that. If it is written right, it can do all those things. One thing about an FTA, even now, for the people of Ukraine, is this: They can look at that and say, hey, if it is written right, it is a good agreement.

It is just another reason why we need to fight, to steel our resolve and actually push the Russians and Putin back and get back to some normalcy. I think this FTA could do that. I am looking forward to seeing that as a possibility.

If I look back to the riding and people of Prince Albert, they are free traders. Saskatchewan is a trading province. We export. We produce so much that we have to export. Therefore, we are always in favour of trade and good trade agreements.

With Ukraine, we have technologies that are so common and that have so many advantages we can work together on, and we can work for each other's benefit. It could be a really good relationship moving forward.

I look forward to seeing what is in this agreement. I like the idea of a trade agreement with Ukraine; I always have. I have always liked the idea of giving Ukraine a hand up and being there for them, not only during the war but also after the war. I think there is a possibility of a win-win, if it is done properly.

I think the Ukrainian people will look at us and thank us for being there, both during and after the war. I think they will thank us for being there all the time and consistently.

We have been there since the early 2000s. When the wall came down in Berlin and the Communists left, Canada was one of the first countries to actually start throwing resources into Ukraine. After the war, we will be there to help it again.