Ted Falk

[Points of Order, November 7th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. After I asked my question, you indicated that the question should be directed through you to a minister of the Crown and not just to any random Liberal. In fact, I was asking my question to the member for Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, who is a minister of the Crown. He is the Minister of Northern Affairs, and he did not vote in favour of reducing home heating bills for his constituents. It was actually a—

[Carbon Pricing, November 7th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, after eight years we now have the socialists, the separatists and the Prime Minister, who is just not worth the cost. They are all part of this costly carbon tax coalition that is leaving Canadians out in the cold.

The rural affairs minister recently told Manitobans that, if they wanted the tax break, they had to elect more Liberals. The folks in Saint Boniface—Saint Vital elected a Liberal, but they are still paying the carbon tax. Yesterday, the member for Saint Boniface—Saint Vital had a chance to vote to keep the tax off and the heat on for his constituents. Why did he choose to leave the people of Saint Boniface—Saint Vital in the cold?

[Business of Supply, November 7th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the member's speech. We all know that primarily the biggest beneficiaries of this carbon tax pause on home heating fuel are those from Atlantic Canada. In fact, the minister from Newfoundland and Labrador clearly said that other areas of the country could have had the same exemption had they voted more Liberals in. I am sure the constituents in Liberal-held ridings in Atlantic Canada said, “Oh, goody, we get a tax break.” I am sure they were excited.

Why would the Liberals have given a pause on the dirtiest, the most carbon-intensive home heating fuel there is, and given a break on the carbon tax? Why not the other cleaner-burning fuels?

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, November 6th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Brandon—Souris does a tremendous job for his constituents in the western part of the province of Manitoba. They are very well represented. He operates with a lot of integrity and gives a lot of insight into all the issues being considered by the House. I want to commend him for the good work he is doing here.

In so far as answering the question goes, I will talk a little more about the negative impacts the carbon tax has had. It affects investment here in Canada, because it increases the cost of everything. It is not like GST, which is only applied to the end-user once. The carbon tax is applied to the producer, the transporter, the manufacturer, the transporter again, the distributor, the transporter again and finally the retail outlet, which then serves the consumer, Canadian constituents. Those are the people who pay quadruple in carbon taxes, and it is wrong.

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, November 6th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's honest, thorough, well-thought-out question.

This is something I raised in my speech, which is whether the responsibility for conducting the necessary reviews regarding protecting the integrity of our country from foreign influence and outside investment that would not promote the safety and security of Canadians should not be held by cabinet or, in other words, Governor in Council. It absolutely should be, but it only would if it were to get referenced there by the minister.

That is why, through this bill, a lot of the power would be shuffled over into the seat of one individual, whoever the minister of industry, science and trade would be. The member appropriately identified an area of concern here, which is that this should be a Governor in Council decision and not just a ministerial decision.

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, November 6th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, the member asked a good question.

I ask why we continue to allow Chinese state-owned companies to invest in Canada when even President Biden, who we often consider as being at the far left or the extreme left, has banned Chinese state-owned companies from operating technology in the United States. The question really is why, here in Canada, are we not seeing the same thing?

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, November 6th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, to carry on, in a so-called capitalist system where the Prime Minister picks the winners and the losers and stacks the deck to ensure a select few friends get rich while everyone else is pushed to become reliant on government for everything from housing to basic income, the general trend, and I believe the endgame of the government, will inevitably collapse.

Likewise, so would a democracy that has been left unprotected and consistently undermined by the actions of the Prime Minister and his friends in Beijing. Beijing had spies, scientists with ties to China's bioweapons program, in our National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, which is one of our most secure facilities. Now, they are nowhere to be found.

The Prime Minister took the former Speaker of the House, the person who sat in Madam Speaker's chair, to court and sued that person to prevent the truth about what was happening at the Winnipeg National Microbiology Lab with those Chinese spies from coming out.

There is hacking and espionage against Canadian infrastructure, academia and industry. The list goes on and on. It is always China. What has the government done so far? In eight years, what has the Liberal government done? It has done nothing up until today, unless of course we include cash for access with Chinese billionaires and donations to the Trudeau Foundation.

However, now the Liberals have a plan, which is Bill C-34. What is the solution government members have put forward? Are they proposing to ban Communist Chinese acquisitions of Canadian companies or to take China to the World Trade Organization? Would they expel Beijing-run spies and state police from Canada? No, they would not. Their solution is more government, more bureaucracy and specifically for more power concentrated in the minister. This would not be the Minister of Public Safety or the Minister of National Defence, but with the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. It is bizarre. One cannot make this stuff up.

In almost case with the government, it is the same minister who created the problem tasked with fixing the problem. In this case, we have the minister of industry, who I actually like. I wish him all the best in his leadership bid. In 2017, before his time, the minister of industry failed to request a full national security review of the acquisition of B.C.-based Norsat International and its subsidiary Sinclair Technologies by Hytera Communications, which is owned by the People's Republic of China.

Then, in December of 2022, under the former public safety minister, the RCMP awarded a contract to supply sensitive hardware for its communication systems to Sinclair Technologies, which was then owned by a Beijing company and major supporter to China's public security ministry. Then it was revealed, also in December of 2022, that since 2017, the CBSA had also been using communications equipment and technology from Hytera Communications.

Hytera has been charged with 21 counts of espionage in the United States and has been banned by President Biden from doing business in the U.S., but it has not been banned here in Canada, not under the Liberal government. How did the minister respond to these acquisitions? He thought it was cool.

Let us look at another example. In March 2021, the minister updated and enhanced guidelines for national security reviews for transactions involving critical minerals and state-owned enterprises, but in January 2022, he failed to follow his own guidelines when he fast-tracked the takeover of Canadian lithium company Neo Lithium Corp by, once again, Chinese state-owned Zijin Mining Group, without a national security review taking place.

Then, in November of 2022, the minister ordered three Chinese companies to divest their ownership of three critical mineral firms, but guess who he forgot to mention? It was Neo Lithium. The list goes on.

I am not sure what is more astounding: that it is always China with the Liberal government or that the minister can put forward this legislation with a straight face. How can he expect the House or Canadians to trust him to solve this problem when his own lack of oversight has been so instrumental in creating the problem?

As I wrap up, I will say that the member for Kingston and the Islands always asks whether there is nothing positive in the legislation, and if we cannot say one positive thing. Even he needs reassurance that the Liberals are not completely dropping the ball.

Therefore, I am happy to inform him and his—

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, November 6th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, that is very good advice. I was paving the pathway to this bill on how this carbon tax is negatively impacting investment in Canada.

The Liberals today had an opportunity to reduce the cost of living for Canadians from coast to coast to coast and failed to do that. They were joined by the Bloc. The Bloc members had an opportunity to speak for Quebeckers to make sure their cost of living was also being reduced and they failed to do that.

The members for Winnipeg North, Winnipeg South, Winnipeg South Centre, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, who are Liberal members, could have reduced the cost of home heating for their constituents, but voted against this motion to expand the carbon tax pause to all Canadians. It is very disappointing that their constituents cannot even count on them to represent them adequately here in the House.

Let me now dive headlong into my speech and carry on with that.

We have seen before where the current government subjects a bill to being discussed, even this critical one here, and this is something we should have seen long ago. It requires legislation of course on the whole issue of Invest in Canada, but this legislation presented by the government lands so far from what is needed, so far from the reality of the problem that it seeks to address, that it is really difficult to see a common-sense solution here. This is the kind of stuff we continually get from the Liberals. We see this on their approach to the environment, immigration, the economy, guns, drugs and the list goes on.

There is a common series of steps the Liberals go through when they encounter these various problems. First, they deny there is a problem. Once that stops working for them, then they start to blame the Conservatives. Then they start blaming Canadians. Finally, when they run of out people to blame, once the PM's wizards and the PMO finally recognize that something needs to be done before even the CBC starts dumping on them, then they put something like this forward. However, it takes all of those things to happen before the Liberal government takes steps to address real issues. When they do finally present something, it is unremarkable, as members will see later in my speech.

For years, the Communist dictatorship of Beijing has been taking advantage of Canadians, of our weak acquisition laws, Canadian industry and our proprietary technology. Why is that? Part of it seems to be the bizarre fascination that the Prime Minister has with China. We all remember his comment about admiring Beijing's basic dictatorship, though at the time few thought he was naive enough to believe that and throw open the doors to Beijing, but it turns out that he actually has that fascination.

When the former environment minister visited China in 2018, she too gushed over China's leadership on climate change and its ability to “scale like no other country”. In her address to Boston's Northeastern University this past May, the Deputy Prime Minister “said the fundamental question of our time is: 'Does capitalist democracy still work?'” I think it would be better if the minister were here working for Canadians, but that is what she said.

She stated:

That is the question being posed around kitchen tables, in my country and this one, as parents wonder if our children can count on capitalist democracy’s essential promise of a future more prosperous than our present.

These comments, of course, raise the spectre of what she considers a viable alternative. That would be China's basic dictatorship perhaps. To read between the lines, her thought process seems to be that Canada's current economic woes are not the result of her government's incompetent management, but rather the fault of capitalism and democracy.

As one journalist recently noted, if we are talking about what passes for capitalism and democracy in Justin Trudeau's Canada, not unlike those of China, where capitalism has come to be characterized by close—

[National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act, November 6th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in the House.

Before I really dive into my speech on Bill C-34, I just want to acknowledge Marilyn Bouw, the president of the Springfield Agricultural Society, for hosting my wife and me at their annual banquet. She is a tremendous advocate and supporter of agricultural communities in her riding of Springfield and broader.

I also want to mention Mayor Myron Dyck from Niverville, Manitoba, who also hosted my wife and me this weekend, together with his wife Shari, at the Niverville Heritage Centre annual fundraising banquet. The Niverville Heritage Centre does a tremendous amount of good work in the community, especially supporting our vulnerable seniors.

I thank Niverville Heritage Centre very much.

The interesting thing about what came up this past weekend at both of those events was the issue of the carbon tax. Folks at both venues talked to me about the carbon tax vote that we had here earlier in the House today. They said, “How is it going to go, Mr. Falk? Is this a confidence vote? Will this actually bring us into an election?”

We know that the Liberals want to quadruple the carbon tax and we know that, already, Canadians right across the country are experiencing significant increases to the cost of living and affordability is top of mind for almost all Canadians.

They asked me—

[Carbon Pricing, November 2nd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, it has been eight long years, but on Monday, the NDP members have a chance to show whom they work for. Is it for the Prime Minister, who is just not worth the cost, or for Canadians, who want the tax off and the heat on? It is cold in Manitoba. It gets down to -40°C. It should not be a luxury for folks to keep the heat on. The member from Churchill and her NDP colleagues will have a chance on Monday to show whom they work for.

On Monday, will the NDP members vote with the Liberals, or will they vote for Canadians, to axe the tax for all forms of home heating?