Ron Liepert

[Finance, February 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, we will see if the government can live up to this commitment.

During the election campaign, the Prime Minister promised that we would have a slight budget deficit over the next couple of years to fund infrastructure, but then by the end of the mandate in 2019, the budget would be balanced. However, standing in the House the other day, the Minister of Finance said the government would work towards “a balanced budget by the end of our mandate”.

I ask the Minister of Finance, is this another in the string of broken promises of the government?

[Natural Resources, February 5th, 2016]

Turn it over, the right answer is on the other side.

[The Economy, February 1st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, generally a member of Parliament is pleased to stand in his or her place in this House and say positive things about his or her riding, but unfortunately, today is not that day.

In the past year, more than 100,000 Albertans have lost their jobs and much of their pride with it, and many in my constituency. Many more job losses are expected in 2016.

We all recognize that many of these job losses are due to the significant drop in world oil prices, but there are things the government could do to mitigate some of these job losses. Government infrastructure money or a $250-million special equalization payment will not put these folks back to work. What is really needed is for the Liberal government to show some leadership and come out publicly in support of pipeline construction projects. Members of the government could do that tonight by voting for our motion, which was debated last Thursday.

Several pipeline proposals that would move more than one million barrels of oil safely to market are in the hearing process. However, instead of showing support, the current government has introduced more red tape and extended the timeline for making decisions.

I challenge—

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I could do that. It has been well documented by all of my colleagues who spoke today. However, I want to make another comment.

About five years ago, when serving as the minister of energy in Alberta, we hosted the energy ministers from across the country. We went up to the oil sands because none of them had been there. I happened to be sitting next to the NDP minister of energy from Nova Scotia at the time, and we were about to land in Fort McMurray.

He looked out the window and said, “Where is this boreal forest I always hear about?”

I said, “That is it.”

He said, “That is not boreal forest; those are scrub pines.”

I said, “Yes, that is the boreal forest.”

That is the kind of stuff that we have been misinformed about. The NDP is the biggest offender of misinformation. Even the NDP government at that time said that was just a bunch of misinformation.

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, again I would like to congratulate the member for his election in Edmonton Centre. We will do everything to ensure that he is a one-term member but while he is here we will have to deal with him.

It is a matter of opinion. I can say that I have over 100,000 constituents who are proud of the industry they worked in. They would be absolutely appalled to have that member stand there and say that somehow they worked at an industry that is meaningless, because some environmentalist, some movie star in Los Angeles decided to give some kind of phony award away.

Getting to budget round tables, we had the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons stand in this House about a month and a half ago now and name the finance committee that was supposed to hold public hearings around this country. I happen to be one of the names on that finance committee. The current government is so inept it cannot even get a committee approved. Now it wants to study multi-billion dollar projects for years on end and we cannot even get a committee approved from the government to go out and consult with Canadians on the budget.

[Business of Supply, January 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to stand today in the House. I think I am if not the last then close to the last speaker to this motion. That has both good and bad repercussions. I get the last word, but unfortunately, an awful lot has been said. A lot was said on this side of the House. I did not hear a lot that was said on the other side of the House that I would want to repeat, but I am going to try to do the best I can to summarize some of the comments I heard today and to try one final time to see if we can get a very well-attended government caucus to support our motion.

I want to make a couple of comments first about the Minister of Natural Resources and his attentiveness today. I want to congratulate him for being part of this debate and for sitting through all eight hours of this debate. I could not help but watch him and the Minister of Environment and Climate Change on CPAC last night. It was a very uncomfortable minister making this announcement. It was a minister who knows that he has to deal with industry, and he was very uncomfortable in his skin, in my view, because he would like to move this industry forward.

I believe that he would like to address some of the issues we have talked about today, but he is continually outvoted by all of those members of his own government, many of them new, who were elected under a view that was uninformed about western Canada. I hope that they are much more informed today about what has made this country work over the past 148 years. I do feel for the Minister of Natural Resources.

The same thing is going to apply when the Minister of Finance tries to prepare a budget. We have a Minister of Finance who is probably going to want to try to do some of the right things, but he is going to be outvoted by the taxers and spenders who are around him. It is not a government that wants to work with the private sector to create jobs.

All I heard in all the talking points in the debate today was how the government is going to create jobs through this magical infrastructure program it is going to come forward with. That will be nice, but it is not going to solve the problems of the Canadian economy.

I am shocked that my two colleagues from Calgary, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, the member for Calgary Centre, and the member for Calgary Skyview, have not participated in this debate today. Frankly, I was looking forward to being refreshed by the Minister of Veterans Affairs. After his speech the other day, I actually wanted to ask him some questions about his speech, but unfortunately, he elected not to take part in this debate. He did not stand in the House and say that he supports the industry in our province. He did not raise his voice in the House to say that he supports energy east.

I also want to make a couple of comments about some things that have been said here today. The member for Gatineau said something along the lines of if we vote for this motion, we are asking them to approve the energy east pipeline. That is not what the motion says. The motion says very clearly, “express its support for the Energy East pipeline”. I Googled “support”, and it says help, aid, assist. It has nothing to do with approve. The member from Gatineau did not even read the motion. If he did, all he did was to do what his whip told him to do, and that is vote against the motion.

We also heard from the member for Saint John—Rothesay, who talked about his issues and unemployment in Saint John. We heard the member for Portage—Lisgar quote the member from Saint John on the campaign trail.

We heard our colleague talk about the Prime Minister and his promises on the campaign trail, and now stands in the House without even hearing the debate, without even giving his members of caucus an opportunity to express opinions and say that they are going to oppose this motion. That is hardly a new sunny way of governing our country.

However, I have never been so proud to be a member of a team listening to our presentations today, whether it was the somewhat lighthearted presentation but very serious one by the member for Red Deer—Lacombe, or the very passionate speech that was made by our member for Chilliwack—Hope. My colleague next to me talked about the real people issues.

All I heard from the other side were Xerox talking points, starting with the Minister of Natural Resources, who was incredibly uncomfortable making those comments today. He knows he has to go back and sell this dog food to the people of Calgary.

On the remarks that I will talk about briefly tonight, much of it has been said, but I will repeat so we can correct some of the untrue facts that have been said across the way.

We hear about no pipeline approvals during the Conservative administration. We have proven that four pipelines have not only been approved but they have been built and they are producing. They are moving oil 100% of the time safely.

In addition to that, during the Conservative government's time, the National Energy Board had very serious hearings on the northern gateway pipeline, and it gave its approval to that pipeline. That project should move ahead, except we have a government that talks about dealing with facts, and about scientific evidence. Then we have a Prime Minister who, in the middle of night, says that we will not allow tankard traffic on the west coast. Well what is the scientific evidence? That is just a joke.

I also want to remind our friends in the Liberal government that every day of delay, as my colleague for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa in Manitoba says, is $70 million per day. We have now seen 40 to 70 days of delay on these projects,

I was a farm kid from Saskatchewan at one point in time, but I like to put things in fairly simple perspective. We produce a product in western Canada called oil. It is a product that we all use in many ways. I would venture to say that there is not one member of the Liberal government who does not have a constituent who is not directly affected one way or another by the production of oil in our country.

We take that oil, put it into a pipeline, and ship it across the country, 99.9996% safe, and we create jobs in a refinery in Saint John and in Quebec. It does not get any more simple than that. Then we lay on top of this that we do not buy foreign oil to refine in these refineries. It seems pretty simple to me, but they cannot quite figure it out on the other side of the House.

I am old enough to have lived through something called the national energy program. It was introduced a former prime minister named Trudeau. That program caused wreckage in our part of the country and it took 10 to 15 years to recover from that.

I remind members of the House, especially the member for the Northwest Territories, about something called the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. There was delay after delay because of interference, because of consultation, more consultation, more study, and more consultation, until the time that gas was worth nothing, and that investment dried up and went nowhere.

If we do not move on something as straightforward and basic as the energy east pipeline, then we are absolutely missing out on a tremendous opportunity. It is a $15 billion investment. That is about equal to what I think our budget deficit will be. That is private money. Why would we not put this money in?

In my riding, NEP now stands for “no more energy pipeline” because that is what people there think the current government is going to do. Far too many people, I am hearing, are saying it is time for NEP, in their mind, to stand for “no more equalization payments”.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, December 7th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, frankly I despise that term “middle class”, but we will use it since it is a term that the government wants to use. However, a tax cut for middle-income folks is hardly of value if they do not have a job. That is one of the issues we have in Alberta today.

All I am saying is that in the throne speech we needed to ensure that the energy industry was recognized, and the government failed to do that in either its throne speech or in the Prime Minister's remarks in the House today.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, December 7th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, as was mentioned several times, the federal budget deficit is increasing by the day. The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is bang on. The Liberals are going to be looking for money wherever they can, and the easy way to do it and the history of past Liberal governments has always been to cut funding to the military. I would not be the least bit surprised. Would it be the right thing to do? Absolutely not.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, December 7th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, they will never get me standing in the House and agreeing with very much of what President Obama says or does. Let us forget Mr. Obama and talk about the British House of Commons.

The British House of Commons, just two weeks ago, with the support of the Labour Party, agreed that the British were going to start air strikes in the Middle East. That is the House of Commons of Britain that I want to ensure we emulate, versus a president of the United States who does not have the courage to do a lot of things, including improving the economy by approving a pipeline to the United States. I am never going to be agreeing with that particular president, but with the members of the British House of Commons.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, December 7th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to stand in this House today as the newly elected member for Calgary Signal Hill. I will talk a bit about the riding in a few minutes. Before I do that, I would like to congratulate you, Mr. Speaker, the member for Simcoe North, and the member for Halifax West for your new roles in this assembly in trying to ensure that we maintain those so-called sunny ways referred to by our leader this morning. I would also like to congratulate all 337 of my colleagues who were successful on October 19. We all know that it was a long campaign and it is truly an honour to be representing our constituents. Congratulations to each one of us.

I would like to take a moment and talk about my constituency of Calgary Signal Hill and the support that I received and continue to receive from my family and the volunteers of my constituency. I was fortunate to have sat in the provincial legislative assembly of Alberta for two terms, and those same volunteers and constituents were there when I asked for their support on October 19. I am extremely grateful.

Calgary Signal Hill is a riding that has a new name, but it is primarily made up of the former riding of Calgary West. It has always been a Conservative riding, but we have a little different representation today than we may have had in the past. I look forward to working with each member to ensure that our constituents feel as though they are represented in this House.

On November 11, I participated in the celebrations at Battalion Park. For those who do not know, our constituency of Signal Hill is one of the many foothill ridings I have the pleasure of representing. However, 100 years ago our young troops were being assembled at Camp Sarcee, by the Elbow River. Prior to leaving our country, they had a remembrance of the battles they were going off to fight. They carried 16,000 stones all painted white and marked across the side of Signal Hill. The numbers on the side of Signal Hill are 137, 113, 151, and 51, which are the battalions of those soldiers who went off to war, many of whom did not come back.

We celebrated on November 11 not only to recognize the contributions our soldiers made to preserve the freedom that we enjoy here today but also to recognize the 100th anniversary of this park. There is an initiative to designate it as a national historic site. I would ask the government to seriously consider endorsing this initiative to declare Battalion Park a national historic site.

Standing there on November 11, I just could not help thinking about those soldiers who gave up their lives for the freedom we enjoy today, and then turn that clock ahead 100 years when we have a government that is steadfastly refusing to defend our country against the thugs who are wanting to kill people in this world. We are withdrawing as defenders of freedom where those young men and women were the fighters for freedom 100 years ago. It is shameful. The throne speech, in my view, is shameful. It is shameful for what it does not say.

We had a Prime Minister stand in this House earlier today who had the opportunity to fill in those blanks. Yes, we could have missed some things, he could have said. He could have talked about, as we have mentioned, agriculture, forestry, the economy, pipelines, energy, or any number of things, but no. What did we hear? We heard all this fuzzy good news stuff.

I am really happy that it is not me who has to go back to Calgary and sell this throne speech. I would not want to be the member for Calgary Centre, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, or the member for Calgary Skyview and have to go back and sell this throne speech in a city that has lost 110,000 jobs in the last year. It is shameful.

In some of the response to the throne speech on the other side of the House, there seems to be a view that somehow if we just spend more taxpayers' dollars, we will fix the economy. I even heard a member say in this House that all we need to fix the unemployment problem in the member's riding is to create more federal service jobs. I was shaking my head wondering if I heard correctly. That is hardly the way we are going to fix the economy.

We can fix the economy by working as a government to get out of the way of the private sector doing its job. We can start tomorrow, ensuring that we get access to tidewater for our products from western Canada.

When the price of oil is at $100 internationally, a $20 differential is workable, but when the West Texas crude is selling at $40 a barrel and we in western Canada are getting half that, that is not right. The main reason for that is because we are not moving forward on getting pipelines to the coast, because we are advocating to the environmental groups that continue to stand in the way. All I heard from the Prime Minister today was more support for that kind of standing in the way of development of the private sector.

I am going to conclude by saying that the Minister of Finance will be in for a rude awakening when he starts preparing his budget in a few months. We have heard about taxing the rich crowd. We heard the Prime Minister talking about it again. That so-called rich crowd lives in my riding. A whole bunch of the so-called Liberal-designated rich crowd members are not working today. They do not have jobs.

This particular finance minister has his work cut out for him to bring in a budget that is going to cover all the expenses that we already see in that throne speech. I am not sure where the money is going to come from. As has been mentioned by both the deputy leader and the leader this morning, that deficit is already rising. By the time the budget comes in, I do not know what the number is going to be but it is not going to be pretty.

The Liberal government is going to have to answer for it. It is all the promises that the Liberals are making in that fairytale world that they are living in over there, that world where that bunch actually out-NDPed the NDP in the election. Now, how bad was that?

I will conclude by saying this. Albertans made a decision last spring to elect an NDP government in Alberta. Members should hold the applause. We are in a mess in that province. Unfortunately we elected a couple of those Liberals in the last federal election on October 19.

Thank goodness the majority of the province came to its senses and elected a large number of Conservative members of Parliament who are going to fight to ensure that we have jobs in this province, created by the private sector and not by a bunch of government programs on green technology and stuff that will create nothing. We have seen what has happened in Ontario with hydro. I think there is more of that coming.