Robert Sopuck

[Canada Labour Code, February 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the fact that the public sector unions are so adept at determining, in many cases, who forms the government, and that they worked very hard for the Liberal Party in the last election campaigns, tells me that our bills provided the true rebalancing between the rights of Canadians citizens at large, Canadian society, and the democratic rights of voters.

[Canada Labour Code, February 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to follow my esteemed colleague regarding the Liberals' intent to repeal Bill C-377 and Bill C-525.

Both of these bills were about transparency. As my colleague talked about earlier, the first bills we introduced as a government were about increasing transparency, and one of the first acts of the Liberal government is to introduce bills to reduce transparency.

Bill C-377 had an important purpose. The purpose was to extend the principle of public disclosure to a group of institutions that enjoy substantial public benefit: labour organizations. This is key. Public disclosure would increase the confidence of Canadians that unions spend their money wisely and effectively.

Regarding Bill C-525, which dealt with the issue of voting rights, it replaced a system called “card check”. The card check system allows for a workplace to be unionized without allowing all employees to express their opinions. In fact, the unionization of a workplace could occur without a significant portion of the bargaining unit having been made aware of it.

Again, both of these bills dealt with improving transparency. In our strong view, Canadian union workers have the right to know how their mandatory union dues are spent. That is why our government passed Bill C-377 and Bill C-525.

Repealing these laws sends a very clear message: the Liberal government cares more about thanking union bosses, who did everything in their power to help them get elected, rather than the thousands of hard-working union members whose dues were spent without consultation. Union leaders need to be held accountable and tell their members and the public how their tax-advantaged income is spent.

The Conservative Party will continue to support union transparency and stand up for union workers. As I have said in a couple of my other speeches, it is becoming quite clear that the only party that cares about Canadian workers and workers' families is the Conservative Party of Canada.

Even some labour organizations are very strongly in favour of our bill. The Christian Labour Association, Dick Heinen, the executive director, in February 2014, said:

Now fundamentally, CLAC believes in competition in the labour relations environment in Canada. We think that workers should have the right and be free to make their own choices when it comes to which union represents them or whether they want to be represented by a union at all.

As well, John Farrell, executive director of the Federally Regulated Employers, Transportation and Communications, in his testimony to the Senate committee, said:

FETCO members prefer a secret ballot vote to a card-check system for the purpose of determining if a union is to become a certified bargaining agent for employees. A secret ballot vote is the essence of a true democratic choice and is entirely consistent with Canadian democratic principles. It allows each and every employee to express their true wishes without undue influence or disclosure of how they cast their ballot. This is the mechanism that is used for the electoral process in Canada, and it is the fairest process.

It is no coincidence that the public sector union bosses worked hard to get the Liberal government elected, and now, quite frankly, it is payback time. The first thing that the Liberal government is doing is repealing these two very important bills, Bill C-377 and Bill C-525.

In addition, the President of the Treasury Board made a point of announcing that he is restoring the sick leave benefit to the public sector. That is a cost of $900 million a year. That is $900 million that is not available for health care, the environment, agriculture, and infrastructure. However, again we can see it is definitely payback time. Now we have a government that is beholden to public sector union bosses.

Quite interestingly, what I am seeing in the House and in government is a merging of the ideology of the Liberals and the NDP. We have the champagne socialists riding with the limousine Liberals. Quite frankly, the NDP has not changed. It is still the party of bad ideas and toxic policies. What is changing is the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party is moving very quickly to the left, and their alliance with public sector union bosses against the interest of Canadians in general is proof of that.

I actually would like to call up a committee on the status of endangered wildlife in Canada so that we can list a species called the “blue Liberal”, which is now in danger. They are the Liberals who actually cared about business. They were the prominent blue Liberals who were talking in favour of pipelines, economic development, and free trade. However, they are being completely ignored. I think the Species at Risk Act needs to look at the blue Liberal.

Given that it is payback time, let us imagine what is going on in the negotiation room between the government and the public sector unions. Do members not think for a minute that the public sector unions do not point their finger at the relevant Liberal negotiators and say, “Look, we got you elected and you better deliver”? The Liberal Party is bargaining with the same group that helped bring it into power.

The President of the Treasury Board is making a sham trying to talk tough, but we know what will really go on behind closed doors. These negotiations are fundamentally flawed. There is another word I could use, but it is quite unparliamentary. The negotiations will be all about how much they can fleece the taxpayer.

Unfortunately, the public sector unions have become an entity unto themselves. We see the evolution of public sector unions as powerful political entities that in some cases can determine who forms a government. The public sector unions will always remind the Liberals who got them elected, and the public interest itself will be left behind.

This is bad for democracy and it is bad for our country. The public service is supposed to be neutral and carry out the wishes of the duly elected government of the day, but the trends I am seeing make me very uneasy.

Again, I want to reiterate that as this session evolves and the legislation evolves, it is becoming quite clear that the Conservative Party of Canada is the only party that stands up for the workers of Canada. We defend the natural resource industries. We defend the oil sands. We encourage the growth of pipelines. We are the only people who care about working families in this country.

[Income Tax Act, January 29th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, our financial plan worked perfectly. In 2008, we did what we had to do, with the concurrence of the other parties. We spent on infrastructure. The plan by the late Jim Flaherty, the finance minister at the time, was at that point to gradually reduce the deficit. In 2014-15, the deficit was to be at zero or we were going to be in a small surplus. That plan worked to perfection. That is exactly what happened. The member could look at the graph and at the “Fiscal Monitor” from the Department of Finance today, in black and white. We left the Liberal government a surplus.

[Income Tax Act, January 29th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's sentiments, but I do not appreciate his lack of understanding of economics.

Study after study has shown that as minimum wages rise, jobs are lost. All one has to do these days is go to a supermarket and see the automated checkouts that are in place. They are there for a reason.

A government needs to put in place policies and programs that would enhance the natural resources sector and create those high-paying jobs that under the Liberal government are sadly being lost by the thousands.

[Income Tax Act, January 29th, 2016]

Some mess, Madam Speaker. The OECD consistently rated Canada as having the best economy in the world under our government.

I was part of the minority government for a little while, back in the day of the so-called deficits the member talked about. We heard a lot of whining from the Liberals and the NDP in those minority years. Their basic complaint was that we did not spend enough.

Paul Wells wrote an article in NewswatchCanada. In a quick summary, he said that in this government's first 100 days,

some patterns have been set; Ministers talk to media anonymously, afraid to be quoted; trouble abounds and surrounds; from free-falling oil to terrorism, to shots in feet, the Liberal Govt faces both external and self-inflicted woes.

Has the government melted down so fast in so short a time? I do not think so.

[Income Tax Act, January 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have already committed the cardinal error of public speaking, which is following a terrific speech. I want to thank my colleague for her wonderful maiden speech. She is a welcome addition to the Conservative family in the House. I think we will all have to run like crazy to keep up with her, and that is a good thing.

Before I talk about the subject at hand, I would like to refer to something that came up in question period, which quite vexed me.

The member for Prince Albert talked about Ukraine and said that the government was crying crocodile tears for Ukraine. I remember in November 2014, I had the honour of accompanying the then prime minister to the G20 meeting in Brisbane, Australia. At that particular meeting, the prime minister had to shake hands with Vladimir Putin. He said to Mr. Putin, “I'll shake your hand”, and then he looked him right in the eye and said, “You need to get out of Ukraine”.

Imagine those on the other side, with the leader they have, ever doing such a thing, standing up for Canada, standing up for principle. He would probably want to take a selfie.

As well, the other side downplays the human tragedy that is occurring because of the economic downturn. Often anecdotes and personal experiences are as important or more important than numbers and statistics.

There is a gas station just outside of Winnipeg that I stop at when I drive back and forth between Winnipeg and my constituency. I chat with the proprietor. We have become friends. We were talking about the low price of gas and he was quite worried about it. I asked him why. He said that every day there would be a person or a family stop at the gas station. These people were heading back home to the Maritimes. With the Alberta economy collapsing, they have lost just about everything and their only alternative is to return to the Maritimes. The Maritimes are a wonderful part of the world to be sure, but they are economically stressed. However, these people have to pack up everything, leave secure, well-paying jobs, and go back home to live with mom and dad, trying to rebuild their lives.

The Liberal and NDP war on the resource industries is a war on rural communities as well. These have real and dire human consequences that we lose sight of at our peril.

On the topic at hand, I would like to point out that the Conservative approach is very much one of encouraging personal growth and development through our taxation and financial policy systems. Our goal is to ensure that people are as independent as they possibly can be, that they have fulfilled their ambitions, and that they are allowed to chart their lives in a way they choose. Government policies can encourage that kind of independence or can discourage it.

As Conservatives, we firmly believe that government's role is to enable self-sufficiency and reduce the reliance on government so people can chart their own course, and TFSAs are exactly in that mould.

I hate to say it, but I think it is true, and the record bears it out, that both the Liberals and the NDP on the other hand want more people dependent on government, and I am not sure why. The policies and programs that Liberal and NDP governments have put in place at both the provincial and federal levels across the country result in more and more people becoming dependent upon government. The creation of that kind of dependence, in my view, creates grave problems for society.

Canadians have a lot of pride, and charting one's own path in life enhances that pride. Government has a role to provide mostly a hand up as opposed to only a hand out.

Again, I would like to bring in the personal here. When we brought in our last budget with income splitting, the universal child care benefit, and all those great benefits for families, I received an email from a single mother from the town of Swan River in my constituency, from Ms. Mackenzie Danard, and she gave me permission to use her name.

She wrote to us to thank us for our tax policies. Keep in mind, this is a single mother on a very low income. She wrote, “This helps a lot for single parents”. She also added, “Thank you for helping us raise our children”. So much for the idea that Conservative budgets are for the rich. As I said in my speech yesterday, Conservative members of Parliament are the party for the working people of the country. No one should ever forget that.

TFSAs, tax-free savings accounts, are exactly in line with our philosophy of promoting independence. Again, I am not one who thinks government does not have a role in society. It certainly does. I have never been shy to encourage the spending of government resources on projects and programs that help people. We certainly need tax resources to ensure the health of our society, but they should be kept at a minimum.

The tax-free savings account is kind of a companion to the RRSP. It helps people to become independent. TFSAs are open to all citizens over 18. Let us contrast this with the Canada pension plan. Many members opposite want to see the Canada pension plan contributions increase.

The Canada pension plan, in and of itself, is a pretty good program. However, it is a matter of degree. TFSAs are complementary to the Canada pension plan. Unlike the Canada pension plan, tax-free savings accounts introduce choice in how one invests their money. They also accumulate in one's own personal account. If people contribute to CPP, even an added CPP, and they unfortunately happen to pass on before the eligibility date, there is nothing left for the family. At least with a TFSA a legacy is left that can be passed on to the next generation.

The attacks on the tax-free saving plan are completely unwarranted. My colleague who spoke before me listed chapter and verse the number of groups across the country, including seniors groups. I am in the over 60 club, if the truth be known . My generation is strongly supportive of the approach our government put in place.

I would like to go to the personal about TFSAs. On May 13, 2015, in Hansard, I quoted a constituent of mine who sent me an email. She gave me permission to use her name. Ms. Wendy McDonald is a hard-working wife from Newdale, Manitoba. Her husband farms, and they have children. They were visiting in Ottawa. They said:

The reason we were able to afford our trip to Ottawa was due to our income tax refund, which was larger than expected due to income splitting law...our family chooses to put the child care benefit money we receive directly into RESP for our 2 children, and I will be one of the Canadians that will benefit from the increased allowance on TFSA accounts because saving is important to me and allows me to be fiscally responsible in my own household

This is a family, the McDonalds from Newdale, that is charting its own course in life. These people are independent, saving money for their kids and for their retirement, using the tools our government put in place. These are tools the new government is trying to take away.

My last point is in regard to the so-called tax hike on the wealthy. A typical Liberal, NDP trait is to always penalize success, always envious of people who do well, always thinking that people who succeed in life are just lucky. Most people succeed in life because of hard work and governments should have policies in place that support and reward hard work.

I have The Fiscal Monitor from the Department of Finance. It is very clear. For the April to November 2015 period of the 2015-16 fiscal year, the government posted a budgetary surplus of $1 billion. What could be clearer than that? Our government left a financial legacy of which I am very proud. It is a government that I was certainly proud to be a part of, and in four short years we will be back.

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the member just proved my point yet again, making a comment about the state of Canada's environment under our previous government, with not a single measurement, not a single number, not a single example. It was nothing but hyperbole. That is what the other side does. The Liberals have no mathematical, quantifiable evidence regarding the environment. They are afraid to talk about it because the environment improved considerably under our watch.

Could my colleague elaborate on the very human cost of the decline in the energy industry, not just in Calgary and Alberta but across the country? Could he talk about what it means to families and their futures, their incomes, and their hopes and dreams with the current decline in the energy industry? The decline, I might add, has partly been caused by bad public policy by the current government.

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I really thank the hon. member for proving my point. Notice how in the questions she asked there was not a single quantifiable item. There was nothing about the state of water quality, nothing about air quality, nothing about biodiversity. It was all about process.

I was on the fisheries committee and the environment committee for my four years. I had a front row seat in the changes to the legislation there. I challenge any member of any party in the House to prove that any of that had any negative environmental effect, because it did not.

By the way, the Navigable Waters Protection Act is not a conservation of environment act, it is a navigation act that was written in 1895 and we modernized the act.

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, in response to his first point about New Brunswick, all I can say is that talk is cheap. These are real consequences. I will accept that the minister's intentions are good. However, good intentions are not enough. It is all about policy, process, programs, and the signals they send in the street to encourage them to grow and develop. The wrong policies, the wrong programs, and excess delays due to lengthened environmental processes result in the closure of towns and projects that are not built.

In terms of fixing the National Energy Board process, quite frankly, all environmental processes should focus on the environment. The members opposite are implying that somehow the environment was degraded under our term. I have proven with my numbers from Environment Canada that the environment improved mathematically on our watch. Environmental processes should focus on the environment.

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Calgary Signal Hill.

I am very proud to speak in favour of the motion to support the energy east pipeline. I am also very proud of the environmental record of the Conservatives when we were in government.

Let me give hon. members some numbers, because too often numbers are forgotten. Members on the other side speak with passion and emotion, but never with numbers. Under our watch, there was a 9.5% decrease in per capita C02 emissions. There was a significant decline in sulphur dioxide, significant declines in nitrogen dioxide, and a very significant decline in the concentrations of volatile organic compounds.

In 2010 the United Nations said Canada had the second-best water quality ranking among selected industrialized countries. All our protected areas increased by 95%, and our government designated over 135,000 square kilometres of new protected areas since 2006, the largest increase in history. There was the Sydney tar ponds cleanup; Hamilton Harbour remediation; Lake Simcoe cleanup; the habitat stewardship program; Great Lakes cleanup; the recreational fisheries partnership program; and 800,000 new hectares of habitat conserved under the natural areas conservation program. In my own jurisdiction, significant improvements were made to Lake Winnipeg with our Lake Winnipeg cleanup program,

Our government had a tremendous environmental track record, one that I am very proud of, but I am very frightened of the way the new government is operating in terms of the environment.

It is very shameful that the Liberals and the NDP have literally declared war on Canada's natural resource industries and the people and communities who depend on those industries. It is shameful, and I have the honour to represent communities and people who are supported by the natural resources industries.

Natural resources account for about 20% of the Canadian economy, and the health of these industries affects all of us. Look at the recent decline in the stock market. Look at the recent decline in the value of pension funds. Much of the stock market and most of Canada's pension plans are supported by the natural resource industries, those same industries that the Liberals and the NDP actually want to kill.

Energy is Canada's most valuable export, and in addition to creating hundreds and thousands of jobs, these energy exports fuel social programs, support transfer payments, and contribute very strongly to Canada's balance of payments.

Although natural resources are important to all people in Canada, as I said, they are especially important to rural communities, the kind I represent, where most resource harvesting and extraction is done. In fact, I could even go so far as to say the Liberals and the NDP have declared war on small-town Canada.

When a natural resources company closes down, as recently happened with the potash mine in Sussex, New Brunswick, the affected community itself literally closes down. The Minister of Natural Resources and the House leader were there to watch this, crying crocodile tears for that community, but as a person who lived in a community where a paper mill closed down, I know these are literally life and death events.

Pipelines are critical to the energy industry, and it is critical that Canada gets our crude oil to tidewater. As many people know, there is a two-price system for oil in the world, and since Canada has no pipeline access to salt water, we are essentially a captive supplier to the United States, where we receive the lower West Texas price, as opposed to the higher Brent price.

The difference was very significant four or five years ago when oil prices were very high, and from the figures I saw, we lost about $20 billion per year because we could not access the higher Brent price. This is why the energy east project is so important. That is why I am so proud to support this particular motion. Not only will this diversify our oil markets and get us higher prices, but it will generate over 14,000 jobs in the nine-year construction phase, much-needed jobs, many of them in economically depressed areas. We are talking about 2,3000 construction jobs in New Brunswick alone, which is reeling from the loss of the potash mine, as I described. Western producers, eastern refiners, and all levels of government would benefit from this.

Furthermore, this would replace imported Saudi oil, which is currently being refined in New Brunswick, with Canadian crude oil instead. Who in their right mind could be against that? If that is not enough, most of this pipeline is already in place, and all that we are talking about over most of the length is a substitution of gas with oil. Who in their right mind could be against that?

It must be noted that pipelines are the safest mode of oil transportation, with 99.999% of oil shipped through federally regulated pipelines arriving at its destination without incident.

What goes into building a pipeline? When I was fresh out of graduate school with my fisheries degree, my first job was in the Mackenzie Valley, way back in the 1970s, with the first proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline. I had the honour of serving the entire pipeline route, along with engineers, wildlife biologists, ecologists, and land use specialists. I will never forget flying in a helicopter over the proposed pipeline route, dropping in at various streams, sampling the streams for fish and benthic invertebrates, looking at the quality of the habitat for spawning, over-wintering, and so on. The wildlife biologist did the same thing for wildlife, and the engineers looked at the capability of the land to support a pipeline, the depth of the hydrology of the stream to ensure that the pipeline would be buried deep enough and so on and so forth.

This was some 40-odd years ago, if not more. Even then, Canada was a world leader in the construction of pipelines. What was interesting is that back in the 1990s, when the price of gas went back up again, the environmental process of the day required that all of that be repeated all over again. Nothing had changed up there, but another 10-year process was put in place to do all the same surveys that we did in the 1970s, and again, ultimately, that particular pipeline was not built because the price of gas declined.

I want to talk about the environmental process. Much of what the Liberals are talking about putting in place will actually be of no benefit to the environment itself. At the briefing yesterday, I asked the staff to quantify any environmental effects that the process we had put in place had. I wanted numbers and measurements of the real environment. The staff people could not do a thing. All we are doing is talking about a process here; we are not talking about the environment itself.

The problem with these processes that the Liberals are going to put in is that delay of a single pipeline project that could improve market access could cost up to $70 million per day, not to mention the foregone benefits of property taxes, jobs, and social benefits.

I also asked the officials yesterday if there were any intent to do an economic impact analysis of the proposed process, and what I heard was basically crickets. There will be no analysis of the cost of these delays, but we do know that every day's delay costs the Canadian economy about $70 million.

One of the things that it is important to realize is that the energy business is a people business. People work in the energy industry to put their kids through school, to buy homes, and now with the energy industry in decline, these people are really suffering.

Again, going back to the environmental process that the government announced yesterday, these changes are not improvements. They are all about interference. In fact, this charade should really be called “five steps to get to no”. Under this particular process, we can easily see that after all is said and done, the answer will clearly be no. Again, Canada's oil will stay in the ground, and many of the members on the Liberal and NDP sides want Canada's oil to stay in the ground, regardless of the human cost.

I had the honour of working in the oil sands in the winter of 2009-10. I worked at a camp doing environmental assessments. I got to know a lot of the energy workers from all across Canada who worked at the camp, including moms and dads wanting to put their kids through school or to put a down payment on a house, or a young person wanting to pay their university education, or seniors working to ensure that they would have a dignified retirement.

This is the cost of what the Liberals are proposing. This is what will really happen. I find their lack of concern for the working people in this country truly appalling. It is quite clear that the only party that cares about working Canadians is the Conservative Party of Canada.

That is why I call upon all members of the House to support this vitally important project. It will contribute to nation building, provide much-needed jobs and economic benefits, and guarantee it will be done in an environmentally sound manner. This motion must be supported.