Government Orders
Madam Speaker, it is interesting. I am not really sure the member actually listened to my speech. I said that the government is not planning to increase health care transfers, but if we want to talk about the $2 billion and all the other money that is provided to provinces with strings attached, this budget drips with paternalism. There are no more fearful words to hear in a province than when the…
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Mr. Speaker, these good fiscal managers are increasing government spending by 25% over prepandemic levels, but guess what? The government is benefiting from inflation. It is making $170 billion more than it projected just last year, but who is getting the benefit of that? It is not Canadians. There is no relief for food or higher gas prices. What does the government have to say to struggling Canad…
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Mr. Speaker, this budget adds about $1,400 in debt for every person in the country. Why is the answer to the government's problems always to add spending and debt? Canadians are waking up today without relief from higher food or gas prices, and to find out they owe $1,400 more per person. Why do the Liberals want to saddle the future generation with this extra debt?
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Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my friend. I very much liked my hon. colleague's speech. I thought he did very well, especially in the first half of it. I would like him to expand a little more on the paternalism that we saw in the budget. We could be excused for thinking that the Prime Minister might want to be a premier of a province after reading the budget. He is getting involved in the jur…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his intervention and his comments, especially as they relate to greater co-operation in the House and the tone that we take. I think that is very important. I would like to mention that I have enjoyed working well with my colleague on the finance committee. As he referenced, we did make an amendment to government legislation. I hope I can look for…
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moved that the third report of the Standing Committee on Finance, presented on Monday, March 21, 2022, be concurred in. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to members this afternoon. I would like to mention that I am splitting my time with the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes. The world is different now than it was just a year ago. We have an unprovoked invasion and …
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Madam Speaker, I certainly hope we can have an honest conversation about health care. The government campaigned in 2015 that the health care funding formula was broken. What do we have? We have the continued use of Prime Minister Harper's health care funding formula. It is time we have a good conversation with our provincial colleagues about that, and I look forward to hearing more about that in t…
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Mr. Speaker, last week, the former parliamentary budget officer indicated that this is not the environment in which we want to do deficit spending. The economy is in recovery, and unemployment is low, while the Bank of Canada is struggling to deal with inflation we have not seen in 30 years. Does the Minister of Finance realize that additional spending risks making inflation worse, yes or no?
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Mr. Speaker, I guess if everything is so good, why do we need to keep spending? The government's only answer to every problem is to spend more money, but now the chorus of warnings is growing. Just last week, Scotiabank said that spending commitments undermine the government's ability to tackle inflation. Even Stephen Poloz and a former Liberal finance minister agree that now is not the time for s…
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Madam Speaker, the question is not whether child care is good or not. We had a debate in the last election about different child care policies. The question is, what are the priorities of the government? If it has so many priorities, then it really does not have any at all. If we want to talk about how to fund child care, we should not be taking on additional debt to fund operational costs of gove…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for talking about this issue again in the House of Commons. Of course, it is very important that we think about our fish harvesters and those who are very close to insolvency. We absolutely need to be there to help those who are nearing bankruptcy. At the same time, there are Canadians across the country who are very close to bankruptcy, so when…
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Mr. Speaker, do members know who benefits from inflation? It is the government. Next week the federal government is going to announce record revenues from higher taxes, higher oil prices and inflation. Canadians want to know how the Liberal-NDP government is going to use this windfall. Will it provide relief to Canadians through tax holidays? Will it reduce the size of the deficit, or will it just…
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Mr. Speaker, it is estimated that this new NDP–Liberal agreement will cost taxpayers upward of $40 billion by the end of the term. Last week, Scotiabank said, “The finance minister risks further undermining Ottawa's credibility in...tackling [runaway] inflation.” That is because when inflation is more than double the 2% target, and with where we are in the business cycle, additional spending will …
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to answer this question again. We look at the federal budget from 2017 and it talks about how much revenue was gained from the tax increase on the wealthiest Canadians. It was one-third of what the government projected, so it received far less revenue than it thought it would because people left. If we increase taxes on large businesses that can easily shift profits and…
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this motion put forward by my colleagues and the member for Burnaby South. Before I begin, I would like to mention I am splitting my time with the hon. member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup. I was very encouraged when I heard about this motion today and that we were going to talk about a public beneficial ownership registry, which is ba…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question, which allows me to point back to his own government's data. In 2016, we raised the top marginal rate on the highest income earners in Canada. What happened? The government told us that we were going to get about $3 billion in extra taxes. What did we get? We received less than $1 billion, which is a third of what we were expect…
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Madam Speaker, to clarify, while I find some portions of the NDP motion acceptable, I do not think we can support the motion in its entirety as it is currently written. I do not believe that growing the size of government is going to address the cost-of-living crisis. My submission would be that we need to let consumers take these excess profits from companies in the form of lower prices. In fact,…
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With regard to the Shared Equity Mortgage Providers Fund that launched on July 31, 2019: (a) how many applications have been (i) received, (ii) approved to date; (b) what is the total value of funds distributed to date through the program; and (c) how many units have been built under the program?
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola. It is wonderful working on the finance committee, and I am learning a lot from him. With respect to the interest charges on debt, we absolutely need to worry about this. One of the justifications for the government's spending using deficit financing early on in its mandate was that interest charges were so low. They to…
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Mr. Speaker, it is very nice to see you in the chair. I hope we will see more of you there. It is a pleasure working with you at committee, but it is nice to see you in the chair today. It is nice to intervene with my colleagues on Bill C-8, the economic and fiscal update implementation bill, but before I get to that, it seems rather appropriate to acknowledge the devastation that we see in Ukrain…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for that very good question, and I agree with her. I think that the government is underfunding health care transfers to provinces. In 2015, the incoming Liberal government ran on a platform to increase provincial transfers, but it has not. In fact, it has increased certain amounts of money, but then tied strings or attached some conditions on what that money …
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Mr. Speaker, I understand that the hon. member makes a number of interventions and I find many of them helpful, because it allows me to answer some of these questions quite clearly. We would not know where all of the money is that is collected, because the government does not really, in a transparent way, show us this. It also does not indicate the cost of administering the carbon tax and rebate p…
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Mr. Speaker, according to Angus Reid, 53% of Canadians cannot keep up with the cost of living, and things are going to get worse. The next budget will introduce significant amounts of new spending and make inflation worse for Canadian families, and on April 1, the government is increasing the carbon tax on gasoline by almost nine cents a litre. Every day, we hear more stories of Canadians telling …
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Mr. Chair, I have been hearing from some constituents, including one who actually just passed through one of the border crossings from Ukraine into Poland, and one of the things he mentioned to me was the lack of supplies and necessities to support people at the border, such as blankets in the cold elements. Many of the individuals fleeing are women and children. I am wondering if the hon. member …
Read full speech →Orders of the Day
Mr. Speaker, it is discomforting to stand here today. It is a sad and dark time for our country. Unfortunately, this does not overstate current events. I have watched with concern the lawlessness paralyzing Ottawa and key border crossings in Ontario and other provinces. Never before has the Emergencies Act been invoked. It has sat on the shelf during some quite challenging moments in our country. …
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Mr. Speaker, I listened to the same press conference yesterday, and what I heard the chief of police say was that it was helpful to have the emergency measures act. I know we like to debate semantics a lot in this House, and I am sure we will for the rest of today and into tomorrow, but something that helps to accomplish something is different from something being absolutely necessary to use. I th…
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Mr. Speaker, I say thank you to the hon. member and I look forward to the day when I can stand in this House and respond in the member's first language of French. I hope to be able to do that by the time I leave this place. It is very important for all Canadians to recognize that we have become very polarized in the media. My hon. colleague brought up the media. We can choose which views to insula…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the question and for mentioning the great work of the former member for Simcoe North, Bruce Stanton, whom I hold in great respect. Again I think it comes down to proportionality. We saw court injunctions used quite effectively. A young woman went to court and received an injunction to stop the trucks from honking their horns, and that day it stopped for a…
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Mr. Speaker, our hon. colleagues in the NDP raised that this was an issue back at least in July of last year. An election was then called and now the senior citizens who are waiting for help have to wait until July of this year. Does the parliamentary secretary feel like this is a quick enough remedy for these seniors?
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Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of COVID, all the parties came together to support relief programs for Canadians and businesses. Now the economy is opening up, but the government's money printing press is still humming. Experts are now warning the government what members of this side of the House have been warning for some time: that the government’s future spending plans will lead to more inflation…
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Mr. Speaker, I feel like a baseball player who steps up to the plate after somebody has hit a home run, but I will do my best to follow the hon. member for Carleton. It is my honour to rise today and speak to Bill C-8, which is the economic and fiscal update implementation act of 2021. The bill touches on several different topics, but I would like to focus on a few critical elements related to far…
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Mr. Speaker, I do not know if it was just luck, but I am quite happy to answer another question from the hon. colleague, as he asked a question of me on my last speech. Talking about carbon tax is really cold comfort to a farmer who is paying $13,000 a month in carbon tax. Where is that money coming from? I would like to ask this member about the farmers he has spoken to. This is what we are talki…
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Mr. Speaker, when we are talking about subsidies to the oil and gas industry, we need to have a much more fulsome and honest debate about what represents a subsidy. The truth is that the oil and gas sector represents a significant economic driver for this country and has provided much of the wealth, economic progress and productivity that we have seen in this country over the last generations. I w…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for all of her hard work on this topic and making sure that it is rightly addressed. This was a mistake by the government, in a fairly complicated system, that imposed on seniors a difficulty in terms of the GIS clawback. I definitely support the proposals put forward in the House to right that wrong. However, it should be done very quickly, and it needs to be …
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Mr. Speaker, white-collar criminals from around the globe love to launder their money in Canada. Experts say it is a billion-dollar-a-year industry and growing, and much of it ends up in our real estate, which drives up the cost of housing. In 2021, government agencies, including FINTRAC, reduced their real estate money laundering audits by 64%. Does the government take money laundering seriously …
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With regard to the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy: (a) which companies received payments through the subsidy; and (b) for each company in (a), what is the time period for which the subsidy was claimed?
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With regard to programs which provided money or financing to businesses, sectors, or communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy, the Tourism Relief Fund, and others, and broken down by program: (a) what is the total amount distributed to date in the riding of Simcoe North; (b) what was the total number of applications rece…
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With regard to the February 9, 2021, announcement from the government that self-employed individuals who applied for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and would have qualified based on their gross income will not be required to repay the benefit, provided they also met all other eligibility requirements: (a) how many CERB recipients had their repayment obligations waived related to this…
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Mr. Speaker, over the weekend, the former CEO of CMHC claimed that the government should tax Canadians' primary residences to cool the housing market. This policy would devastate millions of Canadians and many in my riding who rely on their home equity to fund their retirement. Will the Minister of Finance commit today in the House to Canadians that the government will not impose new taxes on prim…
Read full speech →Speech from the Throne
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Carleton. I want to thank the voters of Simcoe North for placing their confidence in me to advocate on their behalf in this special place. I thank all the volunteers who helped out on my campaign. I want to recognize my fellow candidates and their volunteers for supporting the political process and making our democracy stronger. I will…
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Madam Speaker, those who have too many priorities probably do not have any priorities at all. I suppose the former leader of the Liberal Party was correct when he said that it was very difficult to make priorities. That is why we need to choose what we want to spend our money on wisely. If we were standing here talking about wanting to trim down in one area because we think that child care is real…
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Madam Speaker, it would be nice to talk about Bill C-2 at committee if we could get it up and running. Of course, we need to step up and help Canadians. However, we also need to make sure that the Canadians who need the most help are the ones getting the help. We would know this if we could get a discussion on Bill C-2 about who is falling through the cracks. I mentioned a few individuals in my sp…
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Madam Speaker, this is exactly the kind of discussion we need to be having about a bill like Bill C-2 so we can talk about who is falling through the cracks. The start-ups and those individuals who cannot prove revenue prior to 2019 or 2020 are having a difficult time getting support from the government and have been throughout the pandemic. I agree with the point that my hon. colleague has raised…
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