Ron Liepert

[Life Means Life Act, June 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I believe what I was mentioning was the fact that in neither of the presentations by the parliamentary secretaries was there recognition of the victims of these particularly heinous crimes. What we have in all instances is victims having to go through that parole process time and time again.

One of the concerns that I have is that I know that the parliamentary secretary for justice, in his remarks, referenced the fact that this particular initiative is supported by neither the Elizabeth Fry Society nor the John Howard Society. From what I have seen of these two organizations, the bill is absolute evidence to me that this is on the right track.

One of the other things that was mentioned today by the parliamentary secretary for natural resources and I believe was also mentioned by the parliamentary secretary for justice was the fact that there would be increased costs associated with this. After sitting through the debates we have had on this particular budget that the current government brought forward, it seems to me that costs are the last thing that the government is concerned about.

They are hiding behind a bunch of weasel words in order to defeat what I believe is a bill for which the time has come. As has been mentioned by some of my colleagues, clearly the Liberals will oppose this because it is, in their words, another tough-on-crime initiative by the Conservatives. Yes, it is another initiative by the Conservatives to be tough on crime. However, it is time that the Liberal government stopped being soft on crime and allowed a free vote by its members to approve the bill.

[Life Means Life Act, June 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank everyone who participated in this debate, whether supportive of the bill or not. I certainly would, however, like to recognize my colleagues who in some cases poured their hearts out relative to why this kind of action is necessary.

It is obvious, through the previous remarks by the parliamentary secretary for justice and today's remarks by the parliamentary secretary for natural resources that the government will not be supporting the bill. Even though it is a private member's bill and generally private member's bills are subject to free votes, we have seen consistently in the House, as recently as two days ago with the organ donation bill, that the Liberals do not allow their members to have free votes on virtually anything, and they certainly are not going to let caucus vote on this particular bill in a free vote. I am resigned to that fact, even though we have significant views by people, including a number of my constituents, that this is the right way to go.

In both the presentations by the parliamentary secretaries, there was mention of a number of things, but they were very consistent. There was the concern that the bill would not survive the charter issue. We have just dealt in the House extensively with a particular piece of government legislation that has been criticized many times that it would not withstand a charter challenge, yet the government went forward with that particular legislation. On one hand, the Liberals hide behind the fact that this bill would not be charter compliant. On the other hand, they refuse to consider that of a bill that they bring forward. Instead, they say they will just take their chances on the Charter of Rights.

The other thing that I found quite disturbing by especially the two parliamentary secretaries was this. I do not recall any recognition of the victims in this particular case. In all of the speaking notes that both of them were delivering, there was—

[Income Tax Act, June 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy the member understands it was not just an NDP proposal to reduce the small business tax. We clearly campaigned on that and so did the Liberals. The Liberals broke their promise, so it is one thing we probably share with the NDP.

Let me make sure the member is clear. There were 1.3 million net new jobs created during the Conservative government's administration. When the member says that health care and education jobs are all public sector jobs, he is wrong. Thousands of people work in the private sector. I do not believe there is a doctor in Quebec who works for the public health care system. He or she is a private businessperson.

It is wrong for New Democrats to say that we would not have any teachers or health care officials if we allowed the private sector to create the jobs.

[Income Tax Act, June 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to get really worked up about this. We talk about being a country. The Prime Minister has said that as Canadians we help each other. Yet when we have projects of a national nature, we have people playing politics with it, whether it is our friends from the Bloc Québécois who keep raising issues in the House about energy, or the mayor of Vancouver who comes to Ottawa to campaign against Kinder Morgan.

There are things that need to be pointed out in the House, and they need to be put on the record. As energy minister in Alberta a few years ago, I had an opportunity to tour the Kinder Morgan facility at Burnaby. One of the things that was mentioned to me was that the current pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia, to Burnaby, provided all of the fuel for all the vehicles that operated in the Lower Mainland. It is okay to ship Alberta oil to Vancouver to refine, to service the Lower Mainland, but all of a sudden, for Vancouver's mayor, it is not good enough that we can ship additional oil to export.

Why is that fair? How Canadian is that? It is good enough for us, but it is not good enough to sell.

[Income Tax Act, June 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague and I have had some good debates at the finance committee on these issues.

As I said earlier, I did not campaign on a tax cut for myself or those who are in our income category. The member raised a good question. At the finance committee, we tried to ask the Minister of Finance to please explain to us what “middle class” meant.

I am quite offended by the term “middle class”. When I hear a term like “middle class”, I think about the class structure of Britain of thousands of years ago. I like to refer to people in income groups. I do not think we have a middle class, a lower class or an upper class. We have an income class.

From day one, when the Prime Minister talked about the middle class, it offended me. I do not consider myself to be in a class system, and he has placed me there simply by the amount I earn.

[Income Tax Act, June 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I and the hon. member for Gatineau are on the finance committee, and we have had a good working relationship over the past six months. I quite often do not agree with the member, but he is open to listening.

Therefore, while he is listening, I did not campaign in the election in 2015 to give myself a tax cut, and that is what the government has done. It has given every member over there a tax cut.

I would have campaigned on the ability to give all Canadians fairness when it came to a tax system. My fellow colleague on the finance committee is probably going to ask me about those Canadians who earn under $45,000 a year, many of whom live in the member's riding I am sure. They get nothing from this budget.

[Income Tax Act, June 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to this particular bill one more time as this session of Parliament winds down.

Certainly we have had extensive debate on this particular bill. We have had committee of the whole, and we even had a session the other night with one of our colleagues presenting what I thought was one of the better speeches of this particular session, on If I Had a Million Dollars.

I will be a long way from being as entertaining as my colleague from Red Deer—Lacombe, but it is probably helpful to put on the record a number of things this budget would do, and more importantly, what this budget would not do.

First, we have to go back to the election of October 2015. Leading up to that election, our current Prime Minister, who was the Liberal leader at that time, was promising Canadians that we were going to go into debt just a bit, by about $10 billion, to pay for infrastructure, which Canada needs. If this budget had in any way reflected that we were going to go into deficit to spend on infrastructure significantly, I believe that there would have been wider acceptance of this budget. However, to date, what we have seen in infrastructure spending is only about $1 million on the office of the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities.

If what we are going to do with this budget is continue to spend money, and when we create jobs they will be public-sector jobs, that is hardly going to be a budget that will encourage growth in our economy.

As a member of Parliament from a province that has seen incredible growth, growth that is significantly reduced today, I can say that it is not government that makes things happen, and it is not government that creates jobs. It is the private sector. It is unfortunate that in this budget, the current government has taken it upon itself to feel as though it can take Canadians into debt for the next four years, at least, to the tune of about $150 billion, to try to create jobs.

Clearly, it would be my view, and I believe that of most of my colleagues in my caucus, that if we were to work this hard creating a tax structure that created jobs, rather than the government trying to create those jobs, we would be far better off at the end of the four-year mandate. However, it is the current government that will have to answer for that at the end of four years.

Quite honestly, while I do not support this budget in any manner, I believe that it is this kind of budgeting that will ensure that after the next election, we will be rid of the current government and we will have a Conservative government back that will allow the private sector to create jobs.

I want to take a few minutes to look at what this budget would and would not do. As I said, it is a budget that we were promised was going to rebuild Canada. As I say, besides the office of the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, we have not seen an awful lot of rebuilding in Canada yet.

Again, we have some promises out there. We have heard a lot of good talk. However, there are a lot of needs. When it comes to infrastructure and infrastructure spending, one of the things I am disappointed in is that the current government seems to be again shifting away from the P3 model. In fact, it is probably not using it at all. It is having public servants in Ottawa and elsewhere across the country deciding how best to spend these infrastructure dollars.

Let us be very clear that while this particular budget would take Canadians $30 billion into deficit in this year alone, only $10 billion would be spent on infrastructure over the next two years.

This budget has significantly increased public spending on programs. We have seen it in a number of areas. I am not even going to start to list them, because there are so many. It will create jobs, more public sector jobs, more people who will be working for government. That is not going to create economic growth.

I also want to talk a little about the so-called tax cut the Liberals have in this particular budget. We have heard the parliamentary secretary stand in his place in this Parliament on at least three or four dozen occasions to talk about this middle-income tax cut that is so significant to Canadians. This is how significant it is. It is $1 a day for working Canadians.

I guess the member for Winnipeg North and the parliamentary secretary, because they fall into that middle-income category, feel as though the members of this Parliament should have a tax cut while low-income earners should not get anything, and high-income earners should pay that $1 a day so that the member for Winnipeg North and the parliamentary secretary can have their coffee paid for every morning by the taxpayers of this country.

That tax cut was supposed to be revenue neutral. It took about 24 hours to change that. When the government finally introduced that objective in a motion in this House in December, we found out that the middle-income tax cut that was going to give Canadians $1 a day was going to cost all Canadian taxpayers $1 billion a year. That is hardly revenue neutral.

If we are going to start having tax cuts, they have to be meaningful tax cuts. This so-called middle-income tax cut is hardly meaningful.

At the same time, the government also took away from middle-income Canadians the ability to save in a significantly enhanced tax-free savings account. This is typical of the Liberals' policies: take on one hand, give back with the other, and then turn around and take what they gave back. The net difference is that taxpayers have less in their pockets than they would have had under a Conservative government.

I want to talk a little about retirement and about future plans the government has. Tax-free savings accounts are a way Canadians can save for retirement. What we have now is a Liberal government that has taken away that ability to save via tax-free savings accounts. We also have a Liberal government that is going to be meeting with the provinces on Monday. Let me make this very clear. It is meeting with a whole bunch of Liberal and socialist finance ministers.

We have a finance minister in Alberta who, frankly, is taking our province into much higher debt than the Liberals. It is hard to imagine that there could actually be a government that would go deeper into debt than the Liberals, but come to Alberta, and we will show people one.

Here we have the Minister of Finance meeting with his provincial counterparts on Monday to take more money out of the pockets of taxpayers and more money from small business taxpayers by way of increasing our Canada pension plan contributions.

I happen to sit on the finance committee. I see that my colleague from Gatineau is here today, and he also sits on the finance committee. He has heard the same evidence we have had presented at the finance committee that the number of low-income seniors is down to single digit percentage points.

The government is saying that we need to take more taxes from Canadians, and let us be clear: increased Canada pension plan contributions are a tax on small business and on working Canadians. This Minister of Finance is going to go to Vancouver on Monday and negotiate a deal with his provincial counterparts, almost all of whom are Liberals and socialists, to take more money away from taxpayers and small businesses to solve a problem that, frankly, does not exist.

If the Liberal government had kept the tax policies that were in place under the previous government, if it had left the TFSA alone, that would have allowed Canadians to save money on their own and not have a bigger bureaucracy take money allegedly to have more benefits for Canadians down the road.

In addition, we had an absolutely unthought-out position. Like so many promises that were made by the Liberals during the campaign, we had a Liberal leader running around the country, making a promise at every stop. There was one particular visit where he was not quite sure what to promise, so he said that the Liberals would drop the eligible age for benefits from 67 to 65. I do not think they really thought they would form government, but when they did, they had to try to keep all those promises. This was one promise they should have broken.

Of the litany of promises the government broke, it should have added that to the list of promises broken. There is no way we should be lowering the age from 67 to 65, some 10 years into the future, because that will cost Canadian taxpayers an extra $11 billion a year. Let us just put that into perspective. That is 30% of the equivalent deficit that the government is putting us into right now. There is a campaign promise that should have been broken.

I would like to spend a few more minutes talking about some of the things the government could do, which could be important for my province of Alberta, for the neighbouring provinces of Saskatchewan and British Columbia, and clearly for Newfoundland and Labrador. I would also venture to say that it is important for other Atlantic provinces. I know we have at least a couple of members in the House today from Atlantic Canada. I hope they will take up the challenge of putting pressure on the government to speed up the process and at least give an indication that it will take seriously the hearings that started yesterday on the energy east pipeline. We know that in 2019, if the government decides not to approve that energy east pipeline, members like the member for Saint John will not be sitting in the House because they will be thrown out of office.

Liberals members from British Columbia are also going to have a very difficult time because the Kinder Morgan pipeline to the west coast is absolutely essential for our country.

If the government listens to that socialist mayor of Vancouver and does not listen to Liberal members from British Columbia, who should be advocating on behalf of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, a whole bunch more of them will not be back here in 2019.

I believe the government will make some bad decisions over the next couple of years. It has exhibited that in the first six months of being in office. If it continues to make those bad decision, I will look forward to 2019 when the government can be a Conservative government again, allowing the private sector to create jobs, not driving us into deficit, and not taking money out of the pockets of taxpayers and small businesses.

Let us also put on record that the government broke a promise to small business in Canada. It promised, like all parties in this Parliament did, to reduce the small business tax. It broke that promise. The finance minister came before the finance committee and clearly stated that this promise would not even be considered in the government's mandate.

I could go on for quite some time, but I will allow my friend, the member for Gatineau to ask me a question.

[Business of Supply, June 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer is that, if we were to start with a blank sheet of paper and start with no trade barriers among provinces, I think we would be quite surprised to find out how many particular industries we do not even recognize today are being impacted by some regulation that is buried somewhere within the system.

As an example, the member raised the issue of industries in her riding. I know, for instance, that things like the labelling of particular products, whether they are dairy products or other farm products, vary from province to province, and that does not make any sense when we are all part of one country.

[Business of Supply, June 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, that is a good question. We could also ask why it was put in place in the first place and why it was not resolved many years ago. That is exactly why this particular motion is before the House today: for reference to the Supreme Court. We would get a decision that way and it would take it out of the hands of politicians to be making these kinds of decisions. That is why I would encourage the hon. member to support the motion before the House.

[Business of Supply, June 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a very good question that the member raises.

The TILMA model is one that I would hope we could maybe expand upon across the country. It does not necessarily have to just be a western initiative.

I must admit that it has been a while since I have been involved in the administration of TILMA and how it is unfolding. What I think is important is the framework that was established. I would like to see that possibly work as a framework elsewhere in the country, but also for other industries in the country.

I am sorry I cannot answer the question more thoroughly than that. I know it provides an excellent framework from which to work.