Ron Liepert

[The Budget, April 14th, 2016]

You bet I have some comments, Mr. Speaker.

One of the reasons the economy in Alberta is struggling today is that member and his party continue to stand in the way of pipelines being constructed. Let us be honest about that.

Will the member stand up in this House and say that his party will get out of the way and approve a pipeline or help approve a pipeline?

We will stand behind the people of Alberta to get a pipeline to the west coast.

I ask that member, will he do that? Will he stand up in this House and say, “Yes, I will support a pipeline to the west coast”?

[The Budget, April 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I too have spoken to a number of the member's constituents who used to work in Alberta in the oil patch. Their hope was that the government would get out of the way and approve a pipeline.

This budget does nothing for those unemployed people from the riding of Fredericton who used to fly out to Alberta every week and had a good quality of life. They are not going to benefit from any kind of tax break, because they are unemployed.

That particular member could push on behalf of his constituents to get that pipeline built and get the government out of the way. Then his constituents would be back working, not sitting in Fredericton with hope.

[The Budget, April 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand in the House today to convey a few of my thoughts about the federal budget, but more importantly to convey the feelings of the residents of Calgary Signal Hill. I am also delighted to be sharing my time today with the member of Parliament for Calgary Nose Hill.

I am privileged to represent a riding where about half of my constituents used to either rely directly or indirectly on the energy sector for their livelihood. As has been stated many times, inside and outside of the House over the past six months, our energy industry has not had such a dramatic downturn in close to 30 years.

When I was door-knocking last fall, just about on every street I would run into at least one person who was unemployed as a result of the downturn. If that election were taking place today, I am sure that number would be more like two or three people on every street. In almost all instances, these were highly educated and highly trained men and women, many with young families. Many have moved into my riding over the past number of years from other provinces and from other countries. They did so with high hopes and high expectations for the future.

“Hope” is a word that members will hear me refer to on many occasions in my few minutes this afternoon. It is a word that is important to the folks I just talked about, the next generation of CEOs, community leaders, and probably some political leaders. They were not expecting the budget to solve the current economic conditions, but they were looking for hope. The budget failed badly in that respect.

The budget leaves each and every Canadian deeper in debt. It means more money for their children to eventually pay back, and there is a strong likelihood of higher taxes in the future. This is especially disappointing because many Canadians, including a lot more than I thought in my riding, voted for this Prime Minister because he seemed to be giving them hope. Instead, it has been one broken promise after another, and the budget is more of the same.

Instead of a $10-billion deficit as promised, this budget deficit is much higher, in fact three times higher. It is three times higher, not in a recession but in a growing economy. While Alberta is clearly in a recession, the overall Canadian economy is growing. However, the government is proposing to plunge our country a further $150 billion into debt over the next five years. Even worse, there is no plan to get out of debt.

How can my constituents have any hope for their future? What could the budget have looked at that would have given some hope to my constituents? The government could have said, as an example, that all efforts will be made to get out of the way and let the private sector create jobs for the future. It is a simple statement, one that would have cost nothing, but it would have provided some hope. Instead, we have more regulations and more spending on government programs.

We hear time and again from the government that running a huge deficit is necessary to creating jobs by investing in infrastructure spending. Now on the surface I could support those types of expenditures, but I want to break those numbers down a bit.

The budget provides $10 billion over the next two years for infrastructure. When that money is spread across the country on a per capita basis, that means about $1 billion for our province over the next two years. In contrast, the infrastructure budget of the Province of Alberta over the last half a dozen years has averaged $5 billion annually, almost 10 times what this federal budget is going to spend in Alberta on infrastructure. I have heard members across the way talk about it creating thousands and thousands of jobs. I think they are going to be in for a big surprise.

Second, the government could have said it made a mistake by extending the timeline for a decision on pipelines and LNG projects. It was going to speed up the process so that a project that was approved by the National Energy Board would receive immediate cabinet go-ahead. If the government had said that in this budget, my constituents would have felt some hope.

We all know that immediate approval of a pipeline will not put constituents back to work in the short term, but there were some temporary measures that could have been included in the budget. Let me give an example. While the government is throwing around billions of dollars, it could have thrown a little toward an environmental clean-up initiative in western Canada for abandoned oil well sites.

The Prime Minister committed $2.5 billion to a UN fund that will not create a single job in Canada. An environmental cleanup of oil well projects would have not only been a good environmental initiative, it would have been good for job creation.

I want to briefly touch on the middle-class tax cut, which we hear a lot about, and the math is not difficult. We can do it without a calculator.

By the government's own admission, the average annual benefit to a middle-income couple—let us call them Kevin and Kelly—would be about $540. Stop and think about that for a minute. Three hundred and sixty-five divided into $540 works out to an extra $1.25 a day. Kevin and Kelly could not even go to Tim Hortons and buy a coffee for that price.

I will conclude by saying that it was two years ago that I decided to return to public life. The Alberta economy was booming. We had a stable government in Alberta that was balancing the books and a solid Conservative government in Ottawa that was headed for a surplus after steering this country through one of the worst global recessions in 50 years. Optimism was everywhere.

Today as I stand here, however, as the representative for Calgary Signal Hill, many of my constituents have been laid off, and fear and pessimism have replaced hope and optimism. As I stand in my place in the House to respond to the budget, an NDP finance minister is standing up at the same time in the Alberta legislature and presenting a budget with the largest deficit in the province's history, some $10 billion. How things have changed. However, I remain an optimist and believe that the economic situation in Alberta will improve, because Albertans are a creative and entrepreneurial bunch.

There has never been a time in history when my constituents have had so little faith in their governments, both in Ottawa and in Edmonton. However, I am confident it is going to get better, and that alone gives me some hope.

[The Budget, April 14th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is important, as part of this budget debate, to ensure that we do remind our friends across the way of the very generous surplus that we left the Liberal government after November 1.

I wonder if the member could talk a little about the evidence that has been presented that would show that the Liberal government actually inherited a surplus and is now delivering a budget some three or four months later that has a $30 billion deficit.

[The Budget, April 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the remarks of the member for Scarborough Centre and, as always, I listened very attentively to the question posed by the member for Winnipeg North to the previous speaker. I continue to hear about this middle-income tax cut.

This morning we had finance officials at the finance committee, and we broke down the numbers. The hard numbers are this. For single income earners in that so-called middle class, it is a $330 increase in their pockets annually. For couples, on average it is $540 annually. When we do the math, it comes out to about 90¢ a day.

I am sure that this member has a number of Tim Hortons in her particular riding. I would like to ask the member for Scarborough Centre how many cups of coffee she could buy for 90¢ on a daily basis, because that is what the middle-income tax cut actually works out to be. What will 90¢ a day buy and thereby enhance this consumer spending that these folks keep talking about?

[Income Tax Act, March 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, one of the ironies of this whole debate is that we have proven on this side of the House that this so-called tax cut the member refers to ends up being a saving of $1 a day. However, the government is taking away the ability for Canadians to make some of their own choices around saving for the future.

I would like to ensure the member has his facts correct. During the term of the Conservative government, multiple pipelines were constructed and the northern gateway pipeline was approved.

I want to challenge the government now. Will the Liberals uphold the ruling of the National Energy Board, which has approved the northern gateway pipeline, or will they stick to their Prime Minister's word, which is that we will not have any tankers on the west coast?

I challenge that member to encourage his colleagues to support the northern gateway pipeline when that particular pipeline is ready to go.

[Income Tax Act, March 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have a fair representation of those who are on retirement pension plans, as all members have. When I was door knocking, one of the things I found was that people who were retired and on a pension plan today were not that concerned about their own particular situation, but they were very concerned about their grandchildren. Time and again I heard that they were concerned that their grandchildren probably were not doing enough to save for themselves and that the typical pension plan they were comfortably retired on today would not be there when their grandchildren needed it.

There was a broad range of responses, which further exemplifies the fact that we need several options for people to save for their future, not just one defined Canada pension plan.

[Income Tax Act, March 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I could say it is my pleasure to stand today and speak to this piece of legislation. Unfortunately, it is not, but it is important to put some views on record. These are the views of my constituents that I talked to during the election campaign.

As I went from door to door through various communities, the issue of the tax-free savings account was seen as a very creative way that as we move away in the future from defined benefit plans, the tax-free savings account was something that they could contribute to and rely on as they went through their retirement years.

We have seen, in the 150 or so days that the government has been in power, promise after promise being broken, but this is one promise that I wish the government had broken.

I have reflected on how some of these decisions were made by the Liberal campaign team. I envisioned that when the Liberal plane was flying over Sault Ste. Marie, the Liberal leader decided he did not have a promise to make when he landed in Winnipeg, because everywhere he went, he wanted to promise something. Some bright staffer said, “Let us give a middle-class tax cut.” Nobody really knows what the middle class is, and I will come back to that in a minute.

One of the staffers pipes up and says, “That will cost us a lot of money. How are we going to make up that revenue?” The leader says, “Well, we will just put this little tax on the rich, and in addition we will roll back that promise of the TFSA from $10,000 to $5,000 which should make this revenue neutral.”

Of course, we have seen in the House that it is not revenue-neutral. It was a broken promise. It was an ill-thought-out promise, and now we are going to be paying for it.

What my constituents want to see is logical planning going forward. They do not want to see programs that were designed on the back of a napkin, and that is what we have seen too much of with the current government.

I want to talk about this new terminology of the so-called middle class, a term that has been glommed onto by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance. When the finance minister appeared before the House of Commons finance committee, I asked him to explain what his definition of middle class is. He did not answer, and I do not believe the Liberals know what they are referring to when they talk about the middle class.

I asked the finance minister, “If I am not middle class, what am I?” Am I lower class, upper class? What am I, if I am not middle class? I call on the government to start to define some of the terminology that it uses, because in this country we do not have a class system. We have a system whereby we can work and improve our standard of living. I am frankly one who is offended by continuing to hear this term “middle class” thrown around as though there is a particular level of Canadians who might be better than other Canadians. That is one of the problems that I have with these bills that have been thrown out and designed to appeal to a segment of the voting population.

We all know that the TFSA is a program that has been incredibly successful. On this side of the House, we have tried to impress that some 11 million Canadians have in one way or another contributed to the TFSA. I would dare to say that if the government left the commitment to move to a $10,000 level alone and even looked at increasing it further down the road, many more Canadians would be contributing to a TFSA, and we would not have some of these unfunded pension liabilities that we are starting to face with our baby boom population.

I would appeal to those members who are so disposed to think about this. We have a vote coming up fairly soon, and I would appeal to a couple of my colleagues from Calgary, the member for Calgary Skyview and the member for Calgary Centre, who is the Minister of Veterans Affairs. I know they have taken a lot of heat over the past couple of weeks because they chose to be whipped and vote against supporting the energy east pipeline.

When the vote comes and the Speaker asks the House who would oppose this motion, this is a great opportunity for the member for Calgary Skyview to stand to vote with his constituents, not to vote the way the whip nods his head up and down or sideways.

We also have the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence, with whom I have had many a discussion. I know his constituency very well. I know many people who live in his riding. I know for a fact that they support what we did with the TFSA increase.

This is a great opportunity for the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence to raise his hand and say that he probably made a mistake in not supporting the energy east motion put forward by the Conservatives and that there is an opportunity to amend that vote with his constituents. I throw that challenge out to my colleagues from Calgary and I hope they take up that challenge when we vote later tonight, or whenever the vote is called.

I would like to come back to the whole idea of savings. It has been well-documented that we are in a situation where far too many people are over-leveraged and far too few people are saving for the future. As government, as legislators, we need to ensure we have models in place that if a third of Canadians want to save for their future and not rely upon some unfunded pension that may or may not be there, as our baby boomer population starts to increase in age and if we nurture the TFSA well, there is clearly no reason why it could not continue to succeed. This was a positive first step, with the increase to $10,000. I would strongly encourage some of those members on the other side who have said that they support the TFSAs to take this opportunity to show their leader and Minister of Finance that we need to ensure we have in place programs that will allow Canadians to make some of their own decisions.

One of the concerns I have as we ratchet back the TSFA program is that we will find ourselves increasing the amount that small business will have to pay into the Canada pension plan. It will give retirees less opportunity, less ability, to manage their retirements funds. That is a wrong-headed approach under this plan.

With those few words, I would encourage some members of the government to send a message to their finance minister that this is wrong legislation. I will not be supporting it.

[Life Means Life Act, February 24th, 2016]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-229, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts (life sentences).

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to introduce the bill today. The bill would ensure that judges and juries would have the option in sentencing to ensure that those who were convicted of heinous crimes would not walk the streets of our country again.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Ron Southern, February 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the passing of an Alberta and Canadian icon.

In the late forties, Ron Southern, along with his father, invested some $2,000 and started the Alberta Trailer Company to house oilfield workers after the Leduc discovery of oil. That company, now known as ATCO, is now operating in five continents around the world, and employs over 8,000 people.

Ron Southern's legacy in Calgary is more for his philanthropic endeavours, which most people know as Spruce Meadows. Ron and his wife Marg took a piece of land, an old feed lot, on the south end of town and turned it into a world-class equestrian centre.

For the next number of decades, Calgarians will enjoy Spruce Meadows on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in late September. That will be the legacy of Ron Southern.