Mr. Speaker, have no fear, I will get back to “markergate”. The government seems to be sponsored by Sharpie because it only produces documents that have black ink. There is so much black ink on these documents that the printers have stopped working until they get an apology from the government. It comes back to the point that there are documents the House required and we have been sitting here for six weeks. With the amount of time that this member across the way speaks, I would think that he would love an opportunity to speak about something other than this privilege debate in the House.
Of course we can go back to privilege, but that means we are not dealing with the bigger issues today, including tariffs. What is happening outside these borders does matter. Maybe the member would be delighted to know there are bigger things we would love to be talking about, including the fact that these tariffs on our most important trading relationship in the whole world are going to affect this economy, the Prime Minister does not have a plan to deal with the President-elect and he is weak when it comes to standing up for Canadians and what we require in this country.
The whole premise of that is we have an open border. We have more and more documented border incidents. The U.S. customs border agency looked at those numbers and they were pretty phenomenal. The Globe and Mail today talked about the number of incidents at the border in 2021 versus 2023; the number has gone up 1,000%. Last year alone there were over 24 documented incidents. These are not incidents where people are crossing the border and are caught, someone is trying to bring something in or has the wrong documentation; these are people not using a border crossing and crossing into the U.S.
When we talk about a porous border and the problems we have with immigration right now, our American counterparts are saying that the longest undefended border in the world is not keeping fentanyl out of their country or our country. It is also not preventing illegal immigration going south. We know the big problems when we look at the news of what is happening from the northern parts of Mexico into the U.S. Americans are saying that it is no longer safe and that our border is allowing some of those instances as well, which is very concerning.
We have to protect our borders, but we also have to ensure that we look at how we are protecting ourselves. One of the biggest problems in Canada right now is that we do not put enough money into our military. The government has planned to cut a billion dollars out of the military budgets at a time when we are not even coming close to meeting our NATO budgets.
When we talk about security we have to link that to trade, and when we talk about trade we have to link that to security. They are intermingled. If we are at the table with NATO, we are not going to find ourselves at the trade table. It is not just looking at our defence and military, it is also defending our borders and ports, where we have massive breaches of cybersecurity. Almost every day in our ports we have cybersecurity attacks.
It is also the Arctic, our northern border of North America, which we all know we have to defend. In Fortress North America, it is Canada's obligation to defend the Arctic because Russia is located in the Arctic.
When we talk about the immigration problem, we also talk about what is happening with the drug problem in Canada. We have 47,000 Canadians who have died from overdoses since the Prime Minister's drug liberalization policies, more deaths than in World War II. We need to emphasize the need for stricter drug policies, border security and prosecuting fentanyl traffickers to save lives and to protect communities. I come from one of those communities. Belleville, Ontario was ground zero for the opioid epidemic; the Municipality of Belleville declared a state of emergency that is still in place. We had 47 overdoses in only 36 hours and just one month ago we had 11 overdoses in two hours. This is an epidemic happening not just in our big city centres, but also in our rural city centres.
When we look at preventing fentanyl and drug abuse in Canada, it means we have to protect the borders. What our trading partners are saying is that we need to protect the southern part as well.
We talk about the need to look at what our trading relationship looks like and why we need a strong leader. Canadians believe that we need a strong leader. There was a poll out this week that said 47% of Canadians believe the Leader of the Opposition would be the best leader for dealing with President-elect Trump, while only 17% thought that the current Prime Minister would be best.
Donald Trump wants our businesses. He wants our jobs and he wants our resources. He probably wants the current Prime Minister to stay in place, because under him, the Americans have gained investments and jobs. The Prime Minister is putting a tax on carbon, which taxes our farmers and truckers. That puts the price of production up and means that our competitiveness against the Americans is down. They are able to compete against us because we have more taxes. Every time the Prime Minister raises a tax or blocks resource production, the Americans win. That is why they want the Prime Minister in and why it is so imperative that in the future, we have a new prime minister who can stand up for Canadians.
This is not just about the economy; it is also about entrepreneurship. This week at the trade committee, we had Ms. Dickinson from Dragon's Den. She was talking about the economic gap in Canada. We were asking her if the government really looks after entrepreneurs and investments in Canada and she said no. She said that the increase in capital gains seemed like just a cash grab. She felt that new tax increases on entrepreneurs hurt entrepreneurs like her, women entrepreneurs who are struggling hard to make Canada the place that they invest in, that they take risks in and that they ultimately grow and scale a business in. She said it is not just bad policy; it is economic vandalism. As she put it, there is no plan and no strategy, just tax grabs.
Canada needs to stop relying on government band-aids. Entrepreneurs need incentives, private investment and a clear vision for growth. We have to empower innovation and bring prosperity home. That is why we have an economic gap in Canada. When we look at the money needed to invest in businesses, we need to look at what is happening with venture capital. The Americans generate $200 billion of venture capital a year. Venture capital is the money that private investors invest in small, medium and large businesses. In Canada, it is only $6 billion. It used to be $15 billion. We have a problem of generating the capital needed to invest in businesses.
We could go further to talk about the bigger problems we have. We could have open banking in Canada. We have the capacity for not just the five to six big banks that have 95% of all the banking business in Canada. We could allow financial tech organizations to start up, giving access to capital to Canadians and the Canadian entrepreneurs who want to start, scale, innovate and provide great Canadian paycheques.
We want to talk about those things, but we are stuck in a privilege debate because of a green slush fund of $1 billion, $400 million of which, or 40%, was locked into 186 instances of conflicts of interest. Because of that, the public accounts committee decided to make sure we got all the documents related to this $400-million slush fund and provided them to the government as a whole and ultimately to the RCMP. That is why it came to the House. The House decided. It was not just the Conservatives. The government loves to say that the Conservatives are filibustering, but it was Conservative, Bloc and NDP members, who make up a majority of the House, who stated that the government needs to hand over these documents to the police.
People would not believe the excuses we have heard here about why the Liberals would not. For the first couple of weeks, it was that we were violating the Charter of Rights, that somehow Parliament was underneath the charter, even though Parliament is supreme to it. Then, for some reason, the Liberals said the police did not want the documents; they were conducting their own investigation. The third iteration was to say that we should just flip this matter back to committee. Even though it came from committee, they think the answer is for it to go back to committee.
Ultimately, what this comes down to is that none of those answers hold any water. The only answer the government can give to this place is to answer the authority of Parliament and give the unredacted documents over. That is the only reason we have been here for six weeks locked in the longest privilege debate in Canadian history. The government should be ashamed of itself.
When we look at the problems across this country, we could be sitting in the House debating a lot of different items and issues. We could be talking about tariffs, how we are going to approach trade and how we are going to fix it. We could be talking about how to help entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs, who only want to invest, innovate and save in a free Canada. However, we are not. We are in this place debating privilege.
The answer could not be more clear: On behalf of Canadians, the Liberals should hand over the documents, unredacted. The Liberals should get rid of the black ink, lose their sponsorship with Sharpie and give over the documents that Parliament has asked for. If they do not, here is the big problem: It sets a dangerous precedent in this place. If Parliament's authority is wiped out, the people's power in the House is diminished.
When we all look around, we see that we have a green House of Commons. Does anyone know why it is green? It is supposed to signify the fields when democracy was handed over to the people from royalty, and we are supposed to represent the common people. That is why it is called the House of Commons. When we walk in here, the ultimate power does not rest with the government, the prime minister or the ministers. All the power of this place rests with the people.
When the people and Parliament ask for something of the government, the government has to hand it over. It is not “maybe”, it is not “yes, but” and it is not “let's put it to committee”. The Liberals have to hand the documents over. The failure to do that is a failure of democracy. It is a failure to listen to the people of the House, and it shows a government that is tired, a Prime Minister who is weak and, ultimately, a dead government walking.
We know that the only answer for that is a carbon tax election, where the people would have the ultimate referendum to decide who should be in power in this place and who should represent them. That is what we are looking for at the end of the day. We are looking for a prime minister who will stand up and put Canada first when it comes to the economy, Canada first when it comes to trade and, most importantly, Canada first when it comes to democracy, putting the people in power and ensuring that the people are in control of the House of Commons. As Laurier said, “Canada first, Canada last, and Canada always.” Let us bring it home.
