Ryan Williams

[Committees of the House, November 5th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the member did not mention Stephen Harper, so I will do it for him. Stephen Harper signed the CETA agreement. Stephen Harper was the main one who signed TPP and set that up for the Liberals to tee off of. We can talk about who led trade development and what industries led it, and it was oil and gas. Oil and gas, which the government has declared war on, led trade export growth for Canada.

We can look at what happened for CUSMA in the last round. The member talks about their success, but it was complete incompetence. Three months before CUSMA was signed, Canada was kicked out of those agreements. Mexico went back into the negotiations, and I will ask members to guess which country is now the U.S.A.'s number one trading partner. It is Mexico. China is number two and Canada is number three. That is the record of the Liberal government: failed trade policies. We would fix that.

[Committees of the House, November 5th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to serve in this place with the member for Northumberland —Peterborough South.

A Liberal walks into a bar and says, “Drinks are on me. Who's paying?” Who is paying are the Canadian people right now with higher taxes, fewer jobs and a struggling economy.

We just have to look at the facts to see what has happened over the last nine years. With respect to the Canadian per person GDP, the average U.S. worker is now making $22,000 more than the average Canadian worker. We have a struggling economy with high unemployment; the unemployment rate for the U.S. is almost 1.5% lower than it is for Canada. The U.S. has an actual problem as it has seven million jobs it cannot fill. In Canada two years ago, there were a million high-skill jobs we could not fill. That number is now plummeting; there are fewer than 400,000 right now.

The average personal household debt per person in Canada is at 180%, whereas in the U.S. it is just under 100%. There are Canadians who nine years ago felt that they could pay their mortgage, pay their rent and afford groceries.

Of course, Canada and Canadians have been really focused on the environment. When the government came in nine years ago, it promised that it would be able to better the middle class and better the environment for Canadians. After nine years of the government's mismanagement of the climate and the environment, as well as a bad environmental plan, Canadians have found out now that it has cost them. That is the thing we hear when we hear talk about an environmental plan.

The Prime Minister said that the government will reward those who do the right thing and will punish those who do not do the right thing. However, all Canadians want to do the right thing for their family. They want to be able to get a job. They want to be able to get to work. They want to be able to ensure that their family can go to school and get a good education. They want to ensure that they grow up and are able to afford a home in a safe neighbourhood free from crime and free from corruption.

What Canadians are finding now is that all those things have disappeared, and the government still cries climate and environment over everything else. What that means is that we have only a carbon tax that punishes its citizens and punishes its workforce.

Yesterday there was an announcement to reduce emissions by 30% in the oil and gas sector, a sector which is already seeing disparity at a time when Canada is going the wrong way. If we want things to go the right way, we should not take out the environmental question but change the way we deal with it. There are good companies in Canada doing great things, but they are growing. The government's environmental policies are like saying they are going into a hot tub and will not pee in the hot tub, but everyone else is. We might think that we are doing a great thing, but we do not exactly have crystal clear water. This is what is happening across the world.

We have implemented punishing regulations for all of our sectors across Canada. We have a carbon tax that is punishing our citizens, but if we look to the south of us, the Americans are not doing that to their citizens. They are not punishing their workforce. The Americans have an economy that is performing five times as well as Canada's is.

When the U.S. implemented the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, it was supposed to entice clean competition and investment into America. We have seen what has happened: The U.S. gets the supply chains and is getting the results from that. It has clean companies that have decided to put their production in Canada.

We were doing a smidgen of that from electric car battery manufacturing or assembly stations in Canada. We were not including our supply chains and we were not including vehicle production. Even when we thought that the only thing we were getting out of it was workers, what ended up happening was that the workers were not even Canadian. For 2,500 jobs at Stellantis in Windsor, 1,600 workers came from South Korea.

We have not been doing the right thing to help Canada and to ensure that we are working within a worldwide phenomenon to help the world when it comes to the climate and environmental policies. That is exactly what we are seeing. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, a favourite book of the finance minister, talks about how some countries prosper and others fail.

Countries that focused on ensuring that their citizens have savings and can innovate and invest, while at the same time ensuring that they are free, in a capitalist society, to develop their businesses, innovate, invest their IP and find ways to expand their businesses to provide good-paying jobs are the nations that were wealthy and well off, with good democratic systems. Nations that restricted and coerced their industries, and set targets or decided what industries those nations should be in, and I am thinking of the old Soviet empire, failed miserably, with their citizens finding it hard to pay for rent, have good-paying jobs and ensure they had good wealth that they were able to transfer not only to their own generation but also to the next generation. That is exactly what we are seeing now.

The finance minister says that she admired this book, but I think she forgot to read it or needs to read it again. The carbon tax punishes our citizens and, more importantly, our workforce. Emissions targets and reductions are being placed on what Conservatives already consider the cleanest energy in the world. People are going to move away from that energy and go to the dirty energy that is not only from dictators but also from nations that do not have any environmental standards.

We take 15 years to develop mines in Canada for the critical minerals we need for the future of batteries, no matter where they are, yet other nations are doing it in less time. China has 86% of all the mined material needed for batteries across the world. Let us not even talk about the failed trade policies.

There is an important election today, and the news is going to be dominated by the election down south. Politico said this is the day for the government to release all the bad news because there is going to be no more room for other bad news. There is so much bad news when we look at what is happening across the world and what Canada's workers and citizens could benefit from.

We are at third base, and we act like we hit a triple. We have the oil and gas that the world needs. We have critical minerals that the world needs. We have great farms and food production, yet we punish our farmers. We have great IP institutions and universities that create great ideas, and if we just learned how to commercialize those ideas, we could get those ideas out and become a leader in the world in technology.

We have some of the greatest people in the world who come up with the greatest ideas, so entrepreneurs and small businesses that need a leg up can grow and create jobs. Small businesses make up 98% of businesses in Canada, and they are creating jobs in this country. We need to do more for them. Nations fail because they do not invest in their citizens and they punish them for decisions they are unable to provide alternatives for.

If Canadians had the ability to create a different fuel source for their car, they would. If Canadians had the ability to go to a different place of work and get paid a higher wage, they would, but right now they are struggling to keep the jobs they have. If Canadians could figure out a way to afford their mortgages or their rents and make sure they were cheaper, they would want to do that, but because of the housing crisis in Canada, they cannot.

This is all because of the government and its government-knows-best approach, which says that it knows better than the Canadian people and that it can control the environment and the economy. The result, we know, is an economy that is running away much faster from the Americans and other countries than any other nation on earth. We have trade deals that are not helping Canadians or putting Canadians first. We have workers who are struggling to find a decent wage and keep that decent wage.

The Liberals may be saying that the drinks are on them, but the reality is that Canadians are being left to foot the bill. It is time for a real plan, one that empowers Canadians, bring jobs home and positions Canada as a leader in both economic prosperity and environmental stewardship. We need a government that would axe the tax, fix the budget, build the homes and stop the crime.

[Forestry Industry, November 4th, 2024]

That is amazing, Mr. Speaker, because Liberal candidate Mark Carney moved his company to New York.

Let me tell everyone what is happening in the Canadian economy. Some 90,000 jobs have been lost since 2015 in the softwood lumber industry, 40,000 of them in B.C. alone. The last prime minister figured out a softwood lumber deal in 79 days. It has been nine years and three U.S. presidents.

How many jobs have to be chopped before the Prime Minister figures out that high taxes and a weak, soft spine will not bring jobs back and paycheques to Canadians across the softwood lumber industry?

[The Economy, November 4th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the Liberal-NDP government, Canada has become the caboose to America's high-flying economic engine. The GDP per capita has become so stark that the average American worker is now making $22,000 more than the Canadian worker. Why? Well, because Americans do not pay a carbon tax. They do not have high-flying capital gains taxes and they do not have soft trade policies.

When will the Prime Minister finally admit that his high taxes and soft trade policies have derailed Canadian prosperity or is he content in keeping Canadian workers riding in the back in the caboose?

[Mental Health and Addictions, October 31st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, while Belleville is waiting for any dollars from the federal government, the city has been paying dollars to the federal government. The City of Belleville council this week released a report. It showed that, over the last five years, the city has paid $1.5 million to the carbon tax, and it is getting no refund. This money could have gone to supporting mental health. It could have paid for the renovations for its hub for mental health. Not only that, but when the Prime Minister quadruples that tax, Belleville is going to pay $5 million in five years.

Why would the Prime Minister not give that money back to Belleville, or better yet, call a carbon tax election so Belleville and its residents could decide how to spend their money on mental health?

[Mental Health and Addictions, October 31st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, nine months ago, Belleville, Ontario, was rocked by an opioid crisis, with 36 overdoses in only 48 hours. The Prime Minister said he would be there for Belleville, Ontario, but after nine months, there has not one more dollar for infrastructure. There are no more treatment beds, and just last week in Belleville, there were 11 overdoses in only two hours. How many more months does Belleville, Ontario, have to wait for any support for mental health from the Prime Minister?

[Committees of the House, October 30th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, with privacy as a fundamental human right baked into Bill C-27 and our privacy laws, this is where it is supposed to reside, and I know my colleague and the NDP have supported that at committee.

More importantly, what I am really concerned about is that in this report on facial recognition technology, which his party supported, a moratorium was supposed to be levied on the use of this technology until we get the Privacy Act finalized. The government has not done that. Maybe of all the other reasons to bring down the government, this is the reason we bring down this government.

[Committees of the House, October 30th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, China is a huge concern in terms of what it wants to do. President Xi has said on the record he wants the decline of the west and the growth of the east, and wants to see a disruption in NATO.

When we look at the mercantilism, the unfair trading practices that China displays, China has uncompetitive behaviour. It oversubsidizes its industries, and we have seen that with the EV sector; it is using forced labour and pretty much subsidizing 100% of the vehicle to try to disrupt our auto industry, which is 500,000 jobs and of incredible worth to North America's economy.

We believe in free nations that allow us to compete against the world with great competition, good innovation, lower tax policies and the ability for businesses to grow and scale.

[Committees of the House, October 30th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, Conservatives are standing up for their people and their country in this place. It is not just Conservatives but NDP and Bloc members who are demanding that the government hand over unredacted documents. Parliament made a motion and you, Madam Speaker, supported that; they had to do it because that is the power of this place. The precedent that would be set if the government did not hand over the documents would mean this place would have no power and, more importantly, the people would not have any power.

The ethics committee has been the busiest committee in Parliament because the current government, time and time again, runs roughshod over the Canadian people, their values and democracy, and it thinks it can play its own game, but people have had enough. We stand up for people in the House and in this country, and we will continue to do it. Let us go for another election and see how far it goes.

[Committees of the House, October 30th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for giving a great speech. It seems like nine years ago that we sat on the ethics committee, but I think it was only three years ago. We use the number nine a lot in the House.

Today, I want to speak about why nations fail. To quote Acemoglu and Robinson, “Nations fail today because their extractive economic institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, invest, and innovate.” As a whole, that also includes privacy: the right of businesses to operate and the freedom of citizens to operate.

We can go all the way back to something I am very fascinated with. North America and South America were founded around the same time, but how did North America end up becoming so rich and wealthy and South America did not? It comes down to those same pillars. We allowed freedom to operate. We allowed freedom for patents to be developed, especially in the Industrial Revolution. We allowed people the freedom to have their own land, to have privacy on their own land and to own businesses with patents, allowing privacy for those businesses to operate, to get investments and capital and to grow.

What we saw from that was a tremendous amount of wealth, more wealth than the world had ever seen. It formed a capitalist society that allowed wealth to be owned by individuals. People who used to be poor became wealthy, and that allowed a nation like Canada to have socialist capitalism. With this tremendous amount of wealth, there was the ability to have socialist programs like a universal health care system.

When we do not follow the narrow corridor, and it is a very narrow corridor, not only with liberty but also with capitalism and socialism, and we stick with the fundamentals of privacy, investment, free capital and patents, we lose the wealth of the nation. With that, the citizens suffer.

After nine years, we are seeing that reality here in Canada. We have the worst housing crisis this country has ever faced. Rents have doubled. Mortgage payments have doubled. The amount needed for a down payment has doubled. Nine million Canadians are now food insecure. That is one-third of Canadians, and that number in the U.S. is barely 13%.

We see the problem with businesses fleeing this country. We talk a lot about what that means for AI and having great ideas. We also talk about IP, the currency of innovation. When we look at what happens in Canada, the numbers are startling. Canada files 40,000 patents annually compared to the 374,000 the U.S. files, and only 13 out of 100 patents are owned by Canadians. That means we give away over 87% of our patents to foreign nations; we give that data away.

When we look at what that means for the Americans, we see they generate 12 million jobs and $2 trillion from patents and IP. Of course, AI is among that. In Canada, that number is less. The best way to look at it is by using GDP per capita or income per capita. The GDP per capita for Canada is $53,000, compared to $80,000 for the U.S., more than a 36% difference. We have seen less capital and less ability to invest, save and innovate.

We can couple that with the problems with the business investment and productivity we have seen in Canada and the lack of privacy. Of course, the government has tried, but as with a lot of things, it has tried and failed. It presented Bill C-11 before the last Parliament and could not get it through. In this Parliament, it submitted Bill C-27, and at the last minute, it threw AI legislation in it called the AIDA. What happened at committee? I know the Conservatives get blamed for this, but at committee, the Conservatives, the Bloc and the NDP all came together to say this bill was terrible in the way it was presented. Even the Liberals were filibustering it in committee at one point.

We need these bills to work. The Conservatives have been steadfast that privacy is a fundamental human right, and not only privacy for individuals in Canada but privacy for our children. We know the results of not having the right legislation come forward and not having privacy protection in Canada. We saw it at the ethics committee two years ago when we faced the daunting speculation of privacy in facial recognition technology.

This technology was misused. A company called Clearview AI scraped images off the Internet, and we know how many images are on the Internet. It scraped everyone's face off the Internet and sold those images, which should not be owned by anyone.

Privacy is a fundamental right. However, the thing we have come to also understand about AI, which was discussed at committee but was not in the legislation, is that it should never be able to use someone's face or likeness without their permission. Those are the biggest problems we are having. The biggest thumbprint we have, the most unique thing about us, is our face. Our colleague from the NDP brought this up, but the main point that came up at committee about facial recognition technology was this: When this technology was used by the RCMP and our police forces in Canada in terms of marginalized and minority groups in Canada, Black women and Black men, the technology misread their face and misidentified them 30% of the time. That is terrible.

Technology is supposed to make things better, and we could not believe what we were hearing. Police representatives were at this committee multiple times and testified that it misidentified these groups 30% of the time. That is a failure; it is ridiculous. This is something that should not be used. We went through all the reports on ethics and brought the final report to Parliament two years ago, in October 2022, with the recommendation to outlaw this technology until it gets better.

Here we are today, two years later, and this technology has not been outlawed. It has been in place for two years since the ethics committee found that there were these breaches. It is terrible that these breaches have been happening for so long. Today, as we stand in Parliament, facial recognition technology, which we call digital racism, is still allowed to be used in this country.

Again, it follows the bigger problems we have with the government, and not only with the recommendations that come from committee. The government always talks about filibustering. These are recommendations in a report that could have been done without Parliament's consent, because it was enacted by Parliament and came to the House to begin with. Here we are two years later, and that has not happened.

Let us talk about all the other things that have not happened either. With respect to privacy, Bill C-27 is still in committee based on, again, the fact that the Liberals are filibustering their own bill. It is just terrible and needs to be redone. I think we all agree on the first part of PIPEDA and how that is going to be done. The Liberals do not, but we agree that the tribunal should be eliminated and that more power should go to the Privacy Commissioner. Again, those privacy breaches and the rights should be governed by the Privacy Commissioner as a whole.

We looked at the proposed AIDA as a whole. AIDA was riddled with delays and inefficient guidance. It failed to provide the necessary oversight, allowing technologies such as facial recognition to remain largely unregulated. It was supposed to be prioritized legislation, yet it was wrong. The industry minister brought the legislation to the committee, and three months later, he brought 60 different amendments to his own bill. We had never even heard of that before, and it certainly was not a good bill.

I want to talk briefly about what is happening because we do not get privacy investment right in Canada. This is going to have long-term impacts. The capital gains tax hike is expected to reduce Canada's capital stock by $127 billion, resulting in 414,000 fewer jobs and a $90-billion drop in GDP. We cannot afford to lose control of our most valuable ideas or allow unchecked technologies to undermine our freedoms. Nations fail today because their extractive economic institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, to invest and to innovate.

The consequences are already visible. Nine million Canadians are food insecure. Two million Canadians are visiting food banks, and this rate is 36% higher than that in the United States. It is time to reverse course. Let us regain control over our privacy. Let us make sure we give those fundamentals back to save, innovate and invest back into Canadian businesses. Let us bring home capitalism once again, where people can make a good wage, have a good job and bring home savings for them and their families.