Ron Liepert

[Alberta Economy, March 24th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, last week I attended the annual presentation of APEGA, which is the organization in Alberta that represents engineers, geologists, and geophysicists.

What I learned about the unemployment situation in this category was even more dire than I had realized. In Calgary, 20% of engineers today are unemployed, 30% of geophysicists are not working, and as many as 50% of geologists do not have jobs.

What did the federal budget do to help these highly trained professionals who work in the energy sector? The budget slashed the drilling incentive program, which encourages companies to hire these professionals and go out and drill new wells.

Combined with the carbon tax and the NDP policies in Alberta, we will have continued high unemployment. Remember that Alberta was the driver of the Canadian economy for the past decade. It is obvious the Liberals want to continue to drive the Alberta economy into the toilet, and the four Liberal members of the Liberal Party—

[Finance, March 10th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his hard work on this file.

The member is absolutely correct that the finance committee has no work to do. The Liberals have proposed no agenda and no bills. Conservatives put forward two motions to study jobs and to study the long-term financial impact of this budget, and the Liberal members on committee voted those Conservative motions down.

Canadians sent Conservatives here to do work. Unfortunately, Liberal members on that committee do not think that way.

[Housing, February 17th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, the Liberals' new mortgage rules have denied thousands of young Canadians the opportunity to purchase their first homes. The new rules smack of a government that thinks it knows better than the taxpayer.

This week at committee, the president of the CMHC said, “It's like you're at a party, and the party has gotten too strong, and you remove the punch bowl”.

Does the finance minister agree with the president of CMHC, who compared Canada's young working class, struggling to buy a first home, to a punch bowl party that has gotten out of control?

[Calgary Signal Hill, February 8th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I stand today to recognize two outstanding Calgarians who were both members of my board, and unfortunately passed away all too soon recently.

Hugh Fergusson was a businessman, a volunteer in the community of Bowness, and unfortunately died in his sleep while on a cycling vacation in Greece.

Bev Reynolds was a public relations icon in the city of Calgary. She recently died peacefully, after a long struggle with cancer. While her PR career spanned more than 30 years, working with the homeless through the Knox United Church was probably one of her most satisfying accomplishments.

Both will be missed.

As members of Parliament, we make decisions which hopefully result in a better life for Canadians, almost every day. But Bev also wanted each of us to know that in this place, on occasion, we also make decisions which make facing death much more dignified.

[Questions on the Order Paper, January 30th, 2017]

With regard to the Free 2017 Parks Canada Discovery Pass Program offered by Parks Canada: (a) how many passes have been requested as of December 7, 2016; (b) how many passes were requested by (i) individuals residing in Canada, (ii) families residing in Canada, (iii) individuals residing outside of Canada, (iv) families residing outside of Canada; (c) what has been the cost to produce the passes, broken down by (i) staff time, (ii) staff overtime, (iii) printing, (iv) design, (v) mailing, (vi) postage, (vii) other costs, indicating nature of such costs; (d) how many passes have been provided to other agencies, such as the Canadian Automotive Association or Alberta Motor Association, identifying which agencies received passes and how many passes each agency received; (e) how many passes were purchased in the 2015-2016 fiscal year and what was the total gross revenue from purchased passes; and (f) what was the cost to produce the passes in the 2015-2016 fiscal year broken down by (i) staff time, (ii) staff overtime, (iii) printing, (iv) design, (v) mailing, (vi) postage, (vii) other costs, indicating nature of such costs?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, December 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, I did mention small business a couple of times during my remarks. This is about the third or fourth time I have spoken on this bill. While I thank the member for Edmonton Strathcona for her question, I have been a strong advocate for small business every time I stand in the House.

As I said earlier during my remarks, it is small business that creates jobs, not the government. The Liberals think the government can create jobs, but it is the private sector, whether that is small, medium, or large business. The private sector creates jobs, not the government.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, December 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I have some interesting exchanges at the finance committee. I say “exchanges”, because rarely do we have agreement.

Again, the best way to put this is that this is a sleight. The Liberals stand in the House and say that during the last 10 years, the Conservatives have never built one mile of pipe to tidewater. We all know that is incorrect. However, we do know that during those same 10 years, a number of projects, including northern gateway, were approved to be built. Where we are today is no further along than where we were under the Conservative government.

Yes, we applaud the government for finally approving Trans Mountain. However, approval and getting it built are considerably different things, as we saw with northern gateway. For the member to stand there and say that the government had anything to do with Keystone, well, I rest my case.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, December 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand in this House today. I feel privileged because I will be one of the members who will have the opportunity to speak on third reading on this bill. We know that most of the members will not be able to speak on it because, as we are well aware, the government has brought in time allocation, more commonly known as closure, the guillotine measure, and so I am privileged to have the opportunity to say a few words today.

I also would like to congratulate my colleague, the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, for a terrific speech this morning. I think he touched on a lot of the issues that I would probably normally touch on. They are also the kinds of issues that I know my constituents certainly can relate to.

And of course, as always, the member for Calgary Shepard is an eloquent speaker. I just wish I could have done as well when I was his youthful age.

When I was thinking about my remarks today, I got thinking back to when I was a young person, growing up in Saskatchewan. That would have been in the sixties. We had a Liberal premier in Saskatchewan named Ross Thatcher. Of course, everyone knows that Saskatchewan is sort of endless skies and, in some way, endless roads. There was a saying back in the sixties, when the Liberals were in office in Saskatchewan, under Ross Thatcher, “If it moves, tax it; if it doesn't move, pave it”. It kind of reminds of this particular budget. In fact, in Saskatchewan, when they did pave it, they were known as “Thatcher's patchers”.

What I think I would like to hear in 2016, again, is “If it moves, tax it; if it doesn't move, we'll call it infrastructure”.

I just wanted to put that on the record.

What I would like to do, though, is talk a bit about where we are. I guess it's six months, now, after the government introduced this particular budget. There were some statistics that were released in the last few days. I know the Liberals were twisting their arms, trying to pat themselves on their backs with the November job numbers: 10,700 new jobs.

There used to be a guy on the radio called Paul Harvey. He had a program that was called The Rest of the Story. I think that is pretty applicable, as well, to this particular situation because of those 10,700 new jobs, 18,000 are part-time. I know even the Liberals' math does not quite equate when we divide 18,000 into 10,700, but what it really amounts to is the fact that we lost 8,700 full-time jobs in the last month.

That now brings the number of full-time jobs that have been lost in this country, in the last year since the government took office, to over 30,000 full-time jobs.

A lot of those jobs are in the member for Calgary Shepard's riding, my riding, and other Alberta MPs' ridings. Calgary has just, I think, hit an all-time high in the unemployment rate at 10.3% for the month of November and as my colleague, the member for Calgary Shepard, made the point, that is only what Statistics Canada is able to measure. We all know that there are a number of others that simply do not fall into those statistics.

Also, the government members were trying, last week, to pat themselves on their backs for a slight increase in GDP in the third quarter.

The Minister of Finance, in answer to a planted question from one of his backbenchers, stood in this House and said that one of the reasons the GDP increased in the third quarter is because of the rebuilding in Fort McMurray after the fires. That minister should stand in this House and apologize. Not only was that the wrong answer, in terms of how we are creating GDP, but he had the facts wrong.

The reason the GDP increased in the third quarter was because oil production from the oil sands resumed. I know the anti-oil government cannot quite accept that fact, but the third-quarter GDP numbers were specifically attributable to the fact of the resumption of oil out of the oil sands. The Liberals have no reason to take credit for anything.

It is one thing to say that the government should be doing something, but it is another thing to say what could it be doing that it is not doing. We all know about some of the things the government did not do, like keep its election promise to reduce the small business tax rate. That is evident. That would have significantly helped a number of small businesses in Alberta. Again, we have to remind the government that small business in our country creates jobs and not government. I know government does not believe that, but that is a fact.

Another thing we have mentioned is that if the government had allocated some of those dollars in budget 2016 to a program to clean up abandoned oil wells in Alberta, that would have been good for the environment and it would have put thousands of laid-off oil field workers back to work immediately. We are all pleased that the government has finally made a decision on Trans Mountain, but the reality of it is that construction, at the earliest, will not start for another year, and that is provided we do not have protestors and environmentalists holding up that project.

Those are a couple of examples of what the government could have done.

It is typical for the parliamentary secretary to government House leader to rant on about the budget deficits under a Conservative government. I would like to remind the government that one of the first things the Conservatives did when they took over as a government was to reduce the GST from 7% to 6% and then 5%. The Liberal government does not quite remember that. It should take a lesson from when the Conservatives took over government some 11 years ago. Their intent was reduce taxes on the taxpayer, not increase taxes as we see from the Liberal government.

I will just conclude with a couple of comments, and will try to encapsulate what I have said today. Statistically, real earnings in our country from a year ago are down 1%. The Liberals can talk all they want about bringing folks out of poverty and working on behalf of the middle class, but in reality real earnings are down 1%. Again, 30,000 full-time jobs have been lost since the government was elected a year ago.

I will repeat, again, that the Calgary unemployment rate is at 10.3%. What did the Liberals do? They said that they were going to give Alberta a one-time equalization payment of $250 million. That is in contrast to Alberta contributing some $20 billion to equalization for the past 10 years. It is nothing more than the proverbial spit in the bucket.

I will conclude with that. I look forward to any questions that may come as a result of those comments, and will try to elaborate in response to questions.

[Taxation, December 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, as a former provincial health minister, I know full well the challenges that are facing health care today and to meet those challenges our highly trained professionals have formed partnerships so they can work in teams and Canadians can get the service they need. These partnerships are taxed as small businesses, but we all know what the Prime Minister thinks about small businesses. He thinks they are just a tax dodge. Now the finance minister is changing the tax rules, forcing these health care specialists to likely move to the United States.

Will the health minister today stand in the House and confirm that she will tell the Minister of Finance to reverse this policy before it negatively impacts Canadian families?

[Canada Pension Plan, November 29th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, no one knows about young people who are unemployed more than us as representatives of the city of Calgary, so I am not going to take any advice from someone from the Liberal side who has every opportunity to help some of these young people who are not employed, to create jobs in this country by doing some things that we have mentioned such as cutting the small business tax. If Liberals cut the small business tax as they promised in the election campaign, then businesses would create jobs, not the government and thereby people would be working and saving for their own future.