Statements by Members
Mr. Speaker, today we honour the life and legacy of Philip Roderick MacAulay, a long-time president of the Royal Canadian Legion Calgary No. 1 Branch, who passed away on June 11. For more than 50 years, Phil dedicated himself to the Legion, serving veterans, supporting his community and working tirelessly to ensure that the branch remained a vibrant place. A proud navy veteran, Phil spent decades …
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Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask the member if she can just tell us what the $1.7 billion would accomplish, because we have already thrown a lot of money at the situation. We have empty condos now that do not suit the market in Toronto. Now we would give the development industry more money when there are empty lots to be developed once the actual economics make sense. We keep aiming for these proble…
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Mr. Speaker, it is great to be here, and I am thankful this debate is allowed to continue. I am surprised that it has to go through this last half hour of questions for the minister, but it is an interesting bill we are debating here today. We want to make sure that we get to the bottom of everything that is happening in the House of Commons. Of course, we know it is springtime. It is actually a g…
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Mr. Speaker, the minister knows this because I met him when he first got elected here on the floor of the House of Commons, and when he was named the housing minister, I told him that the first thing he had to do was to get rid of the people who have led us into this trap in the first place. Those are the people in his department, the ones whose advice he is following now to spend another $1.7 bil…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my friend from Quebec a question about government spending, because an additional $1.7 billion is to be spent on housing across the country. Quebec households are paying the cost of interest on both the federal and provincial deficits. For each household, that amounts to $3,400 a year in federal government debt and $3,000 a year in provincial government debt. That money …
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Mr. Speaker, last week, Calgary's Royal Canadian Legion Branch No. 1 hosted and was addressed by the leader of the Conservative Party on the importance of building a strong Alberta within a united Canada. It was exactly the right place for that message. Built in 1922 as Memorial Hall, it was Calgary's primary tribute to those Canadians who served and sacrificed in the First World War. For more tha…
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Madam Speaker, I think, in my speech, I addressed that very clearly, but I will give another data point for the hon. member. All of the government's investment tax credits for clean energy production amount to the expected spending of $103 billion, between when it started a handful of years ago and 2035. In fact, because it is a misguided approach, only $22 million of that money has been spent, Th…
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moved that Bill C‑269, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (heat recovery tax credit), be read the second time and referred to a committee. Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me acknowledge the help I have received in the conception, analysis and presentation of this bill. Janice Tran, the CEO of Kanin Energy in Calgary, provided me with the inspiration, and numerous alternative energy experts have pro…
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Madam Speaker, that is a complex question, but I appreciate it, because we have to model this somehow. We talked about the credits that exist. The government expected $103 billion for its investment tax credits. Of that, only $22 million has been allocated so far. This one would bring about 83 megawatts of power into the grid. The production of extra power for this would probably offset the credit…
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Madam Speaker, it is important to clarify that this is not a credit for oil and gas production. It is a credit for manufacturers that use mainly natural gas, but also other types of fuels and sources that can produce heat. They are the ones who would benefit from this bill.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his responses to many of the questions being asked of him today. This is an important question, because Canadians have seen over the last number of years, and increasingly so, the limits of debate in this House in terms of how we address government bills. When Canadians elect a Parliament, they elect a government, with the most seats, and they elect an oppos…
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Madam Speaker, the thing about this tax credit is that it is manufacturing. It is across Canada. I mentioned some of the industries across this country that would benefit enormously from this as it would reduce their costs and give them an electricity source they can actually gain some revenue from. Every tax credit should have a benefit as well, at the end of the day. With this benefit, there wou…
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Mr. Speaker, I am getting a great deal of great questions on the subject today. Answering the question goes a little deep into the weeds, so I apologize ahead of time to my colleagues on both sides of the House. The reason the government is setting up all these Crown corporations right now is that Crown corporations have their own balance sheets at the end of the day, and those balance sheets are …
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Mr. Speaker, when the current Parliament started, I had the opportunity to meet in the middle of the floor with the new housing minister to talk about what his new portfolio would entail. At that point in time, I told him very clearly that he should just throw out what he had and start over anew, because all the advice he had been given, and what I have seen over the last six years since I have be…
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Mr. Speaker, I do not appreciate the narrative that we are denying Canadians a solution. The Liberal government, for 11 years now, has made several attempts to resolve this issue by addressing the problem that they see with homelessness and with housing in Canada, and they have only made matters worse over the last 11 years. The Liberals have to accept failure at some point in time and realize tha…
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Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I wonder if the time allocation was given correctly. How are we getting a minute and a half for the member? With everything going on, could the hon. member have the chance to actually deliver her speech, if she starts right now? We would appreciate that. There is too much noise here. We were not listening carefully.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question from my colleague. That is exactly the issue. If an application comes from a Province of Alberta or City of Calgary organization, it has to have support from the provincial government. After that, there is another form at the federal level. It requires the organization to put in a lot of time, effort and money. It is a waste of time, human resources and mo…
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Mr. Speaker, there is a memorandum of understanding that some provincial governments say is a change in direction in the Liberal government but a change in direction on paper only. When we actually analyze that paper, as many of us have, we see that those changes in direction are not clear enough to actually indicate that people want to invest here. Ask the private sector entities that are impacte…
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak about an economic matter in the House of Commons today again. Before I actually get into my speech, I want to talk about the broader terms we are talking about here. We are talking about what a recession is. Of course, there is a technical definition of a recession, but the real indication is usually in the rearview mirror. It is an indication that th…
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Mr. Speaker, that actually was an excellent question, because people ask me all the time, “What would you do differently?” I think we need to be very clear. We would make sure that those rules are very clear, unlike the muddled rules we keep coming up with where we are talking out of one side of our mouth to this group of people and the other side of our mouth to another group of people. There wil…
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Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the member on the other side. He gave a speech about what the opposition is doing right now. I am a little dismayed, because I think he needs to speak to what the motion is, which is about the recession that Canada is very clearly heading into now. There are a number of data points we have to give here, but the member has to identify, and probably has to own, qui…
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from my colleague. I know that Alberta, frankly, has a very robust social welfare system, the envy of many provinces across the country. Whether those funds come from the federal government or the provincial government, they are stacked and actually represent a level of sustenance across the economy that people in need actually require. That includes money fo…
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Mr. Speaker, today the CEO of the spaceport described questions about this $200-million giveaway as a “clueless meme”. He is in good company. The Minister of Defence has similarly responded to questions about the egregious lease terms as being “stupid”. Let us review. The minister signed a lease gifting $20 million of taxpayers' money in arrears to a near-bankrupt company. Insiders immediately cas…
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Mr. Speaker, before the member goes too far defending this boondoggle, let me refer him to the publicly disclosed documents. A year ago, the spaceport's auditor indicated it was near bankruptcy. Nothing indicated the potential windfall of a $20-million lease with the government. Overpaying is one thing. Gifting $20 million to one's friends is an egregious abuse of taxpayer trust: Liberal insiders …
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Mr. Chair, does the minister know how long it actually takes, on average, to approve a major energy or infrastructure project in Canada?
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Mr. Chair, can the minister tell us how long it took for the government to get the TMX pipeline built?
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Mr. Chair, TMX took five years and went over budget five times, by $28 billion Canadian taxpayer dollars, to triple the size of a pipe on a pathway that already had a pipeline. That means no new pipe and no new land. Where did the $28 billion go?
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Mr. Chair, it took five years for TMX to get built, and it was $28 billion over budget. The Liberals just announced a memorandum of understanding with the Government of Alberta to build a pipeline that is going to be a projected deliverable seven years from now. Why is that going to take so long if there is an energy emergency around the world?
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Mr. Chair, it takes five, six or seven years. These tracks keep getting longer, and the minister does not seem to recognize that this is the problem. Is that timeline shorter than it is in the United States?
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Mr. Chair, Shell made an acquisition, not an investment. I will make the minister cite that difference. How much private sector capital has left Canada for U.S. projects over the past five years?
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Mr. Chair, that is interesting, because most global CEOs are investing in the U.S. and Mexico, including in infrastructure, where it takes about one-third of the time to get a project built than it does here in Canada. Does the minister believe legislation like the Impact Assessment Act has made it easier or harder to build major projects in Canada?
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Mr. Chair, is it the minister's view that investment in Canada's resource sector has increased or decreased since 2015?
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Mr. Chair, attracting private investment and advancing major projects is critical to economic growth and government revenues. Will the minister agree with that?
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his long question. I think I got the gist of it. It is important to have support for stakeholders in the Canadian economy right now. I wonder how the federal government will measure success when we are losing so many jobs to the United States. It is important to keep jobs here in Canada. What measures will the government put in place to mitigate the effects of…
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Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned the whole issue of a new electricity system across Canada to double our electricity. The thing I like best about this approach is that for years, the government, including this member, who has been here for years, as I have faced her for over six years now, has hobbled our electricity system across this country. Now it is flying in at the last minute saying, “Oh m…
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from New Tecumseth—Gwillimbury. This has been quite the spring economic statement or spring economic update, whatever the government wants to call it. A lot goes into every financial statement the government puts forward. It seems that there is no shortage of money to keep pouring out, but there is a re…
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Mr. Speaker, if I have said something that upset my colleague, I apologize, because I know they are working hard, but as I said in my speech, I think it is very clear that we need to measure these outcomes. At this point in time, we have signatures on letters of intent and everything. I am saying that the Liberals should bring these paths forward to the House of Commons. Let us pass all these docu…
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Mr. Speaker, it is very important. The government talks about training people, but it does not talk about how that is actually going to fit into the economy. I know the Prime Minister made an announcement while we were not sitting in the House of Commons last week about building our electricity system across Canada. Talking about the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, we know they ar…
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Mr. Speaker, let me explain "stupid" to the minister. He gifted $20 million, backdated to a company on the brink of bankruptcy. The company's chairman, someone with a history of securities infractions, made millions on a quick pump-and-dump sale of shares. The lease that taxpayers are paying for is nowhere in the company's previous regulatory filings. The company's Liberal insiders met with offici…
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Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask my colleague a question, because the questions coming at her all the time from the Liberal side are about how we should not be talking about this in the House of Commons because Canadians are uninformed. I want to ask my colleague if it is incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to raise issues, discuss the issues and get the facts on the table about how we deal with …
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Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Defence signed a $200‑million contract for access to a spaceport that the company itself leases for just $14,000 a year. That is $20 million a year for a decade. Worse, the contract is backdated by a full year when no lease was being negotiated and while the company's own auditor warned it may be bankrupt. After the deal was signed, the company's stock surged and a wel…
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Mr. Speaker, one thing the member missed in his speech that I think needs to be brought here very clearly, and I know the member will be able to address this, is the extra $3 billion put forward by this government, in a horrendously overstretched deficit, for international climate initiatives around the world. Does the member really think that Canadians can afford an extra $3 billion, and what doe…
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Mr. Speaker, that is a good question. At the moment, I do not agree with investing Canadian taxpayers' money in projects carried out by other investors in Canada. The problem with Canada right now is that regulations are too focused on investment in the sector that is the most important part of the Canadian economy. We need a regulatory system that works better for the whole country.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague very much for that, because there is a part of my speech I did not get to: the cost of debt. The more that is borrowed, the higher the cost of debt goes up. It is not just linear but actually exponential. He will know that because he is a good financier as well. The issue, of course, is that the more the government piles on, the more it is borrowing money. It want…
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Mr. Speaker, in recent town hall meetings, I heard clearly that people do not feel safe downtown. Residents told me they avoid going out at night. Some leave their homes only to step directly into an Uber. Drug paraphernalia litters our streets, and open drug use is now a common sight on the CTrain. A Fraser Institute study shows that Calgary ranks 27th out of 334 municipalities for property crime…
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Mr. Speaker, I am splitting my time today with my hon. colleague from Regina—Lewvan. I first heard the announcement on Monday morning that the government was starting a sovereign wealth fund. The first thing I thought, I have to admit, was that the government was putting up a big smokescreen because it was going to have a miserable day the next day with the budget announcements. Yes, the budget is…
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Mr. Speaker, the Canada Infrastructure Bank is a government stood-up instrument that had to change its mandate because it did not have anything to do. It changed its mandate to step on other funds that were already in the market. It was a government institution looking for a market that was not there, so it morphed into one that was. These projects would have been funded more efficiently with less…
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Mr. Speaker, at first glance, Bill S-3 looks like one of those technical bills that only policy specialists would read cover to cover, but the truth is that it touches something Canadians care about very deeply: fairness in everyday transactions. Measurement is money, and we cannot manage what we do not measure, at the end of the day. The two go hand in hand. When a family pulls into a gas station…
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Mr. Speaker, I am going to correct something that my colleague across the way mentioned in his speech. He mentioned that his party was the one that was for all sorts of energy, and that the party across the way was the one that was stuck on only one form of energy. I will directly contradict that, because my party, this opposition party, His Majesty's loyal opposition, believes strongly in all for…
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Mr. Speaker, before I start my speech, I would like to make sure that I get unanimous consent from the House to split my time with the member of Parliament for Edmonton Southeast.
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