Government Orders
Mr. Chair, this is a very serious issue. Since 2016, 183 companies in the forestry sector have gone bankrupt, and tens of thousands of Canadians in British Columbia, Quebec and all over Canada have lost their jobs. Tonight, in this debate, we have heard the critic from the Bloc Québécois speak to this matter and we have heard the Conservative trade critic speak to this matter, but we have not hear…
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Madam Chair, it was wonderful to hear PMO speech number two. It is interesting that we are debating softwood lumber, which is something that has been going on for eight years. It has cost tens of thousands of Canadian jobs, and the United States is holding 10 billion dollars' worth of duties, which is crippling our softwood lumber industry. The minister of international trade does not participate …
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Madam Chair, I am going to be sharing my time with the member for Prince Albert. What we have here with the softwood lumber dispute is—
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Madam Chair, what we do is look at the softwood lumber dispute, but not in the vacuum of the dispute itself, because this is now an eight-year dispute. Within 79 days of Prime Minister Harper being elected in 2006, the softwood lumber dispute was resolved, and we had lumber peace for nine years. That agreement expired, and then the current incompetent government took over. We are now eight years d…
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Madam Chair, the trade minister has not participated in this debate. It was not she who led off debate for the government. It shows us how important this issue actually is for the government, that the trade minister does not lead off debate on a simmering eight-year softwood lumber dispute. It is worse than this. We have declined as the United States' trading partner, but we also have continuous o…
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Madam Chair, the team Canada approach is one part of that, which should take place. The Liberals are failing miserably on that because they are not getting that groundswell of support in the United States to bring that pressure upward. The real issue is that, ultimately, the American president has to force the United States softwood lumber industry into an agreement because it has legal rights to …
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Madam Chair, the Liberals keep coming back to the possibility that they maybe might win a dispute here or a dispute there, and that would resolve the issue because it has resolved it in the past. What the member does not know is that the United States used to group these disputes together. If one was won, it would say that it would resolve all of them. However, it is not doing that now. It is sayi…
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Madam Chair, I fundamentally disagree. We had a good deal that returned almost all of the countervailing and anti-dumping duties to the softwood lumber industry. It was able to use that money to innovate. In addition, we secured market access in the United States and had lumber peace for nine years. That is a great deal. It is a deal that the Bloc Québécois will never sign because it will never be…
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Mr. Chair, I want to thank the member for reading PMO speech number six. Where we are is that this is catastrophic for the softwood lumber industry in Canada. While these members talk about how the wheels are in motion and how the dog ate their homework, 183 companies in the forestry sector have gone bankrupt since 2016, with tens of thousands of jobs, real livelihoods. In 2016, we had the expirat…
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Mr. Chair, I have never seen a government try to polish failure like I have watched members of the Liberal government today in this debate try to polish their failure. It has been almost nine years of this dispute. The last time there was a dispute it was resolved by Prime Minister Harper in 76 days. We are now at nine years. There have been 183 bankruptcies in the forestry industry and tens of th…
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Mr. Speaker, he cannot even defend what I said, because he knows the report he is citing is two years old. It is out of date and it is false. Here is Liberal math: The average person in Ontario, including Dufferin—Caledon, will pay $1,674 in carbon tax and they will get a rebate, a fake rebate, of $1,047. Even Liberals can do the math. That costs $674. That has consequences. After eight years of t…
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Madam Speaker, we cannot spend our way to prosperity. That is an absolute, very clear maxim, and it is even clearer for governments. I will tell us why. Governments do not have any of their own money. They have two mechanisms with which to acquire money. One, they can tax and raise taxes. Two, they can borrow or print money. Unfortunately, after eight years of this incompetent NDP-Liberal governme…
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Madam Speaker, as the member surely saw, I did not use any notes for my speech, unlike most Liberal members who come in and read PMO speech number one or number two, or they have their potted-plant questions during question period like “Prime Minister, you appear to be the best prime minister who has ever been prime minister. Why are you so awesome?” That is what we get from the Liberal government…
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Madam Speaker, we all know that Canadians needed support during the pandemic. That is why we, in good faith, voted for that support. Little did we know that this money would go to well-connected Liberal insiders in hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts. Little did we know that 40% of the COVID spending would have nothing to do with COVID. Little did we know that there would be boondoggle af…
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. That statement is patently false. A free trade agreement with Canada cannot be used to enter the European Union. Those two things—
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Mr. Speaker, this is how desperate and pathetic the Liberal government is. The ministers who repeat these talking points quote a two-year-old PBO report. It is two years old. The PBO was just at committee two weeks ago and debunked everything they have to say, because the carbon tax costs Canadians, and we know it. Orangeville, my hometown, is now predicting that, in a few years, 5,000 to 6,000 re…
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Pursuant to Standing Order 43(2)(a), I would like to inform the House that the remaining Conservative caucus speaking slots are hereby divided in two.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, we know they are not worth the cost. We know they are not worth the corruption. We now know they are a risk to Canadians' safety. Just a few years ago, thinking back, the Prime Minister mused about how he admired the basic dictatorship of China. We now know that Beijing's agents infiltrated a top-level lab to steal sensitive secrets, in…
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Mr. Speaker, on February 17, the Republic of Kosovo celebrates its 16th year of independence. Kosovo's path to independence was not easy. During its fight for freedom in 1999, tens of thousands of Kosovar Albanians were killed, and tens of thousands more became refugees. Their stories of tragedy and suffering are really hard to hear. However, the Republic of Kosovo has always had a friend in Canad…
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's arrive scam app is not worth the cost and is absolutely not worth the corruption. The arrive scam app was supposed to cost $80,000, but it ended up costing at least $60 million. We say “at least” as no one knows for sure because of the complex web of corruption that was engaged in. Wait, it gets worse. There was $12 million that went to well-connected Liberal insi…
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, Canadians are literally living in housing hell. Rent has doubled. Mortgage payments have doubled. The cost to buy a house has almost doubled. It takes 25 years now to save for a down payment. It is no wonder there are tent cities all across this country. When will the Liberals realize people cannot live in an announcement, a photo op or…
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Mr. Speaker, one knows the Liberals' housing plan is an utter disaster when the only support they can find for it is to misquote a member of the opposition. That is how bad it actually is. Here are the facts: Housing investments in December were down another 18%. There are all these fake Liberal announcements and photo ops, and guess what? Fewer houses are getting built. The Liberal Prime Minister…
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Mr. Speaker, every day the Minister of Housing rises in the House, he has a new program, a new announcement. The cheque is in the mail. All of these things—
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Mr. Speaker, all of that leads us to exactly where we are today: nowhere. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment is up 12% to $1,900, and rent for a two-bedroom apartment is up 9.8% to $2,300. Rent is now at a record high across Canada: $2,100, up 8.6%. Why is that? It is because all they have are phony announcements and photo ops. When will he finally admit they have made the mess that Canadians are su…
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Mr. Speaker, every day, the housing minister pops up and has a new program, a new plan—
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Mr. Speaker, every day, the housing minister pops up and celebrates his new announcement, his new project or his new scheme, but the sad thing is that the Liberals do not actually build a single house. Meanwhile, in the real world, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, rents are skyrocketing. In fact, asking rent is now up 22%. Donna's rent in Orangeville is going up again and she canno…
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With regard to the $26 million for defending the Canadian softwood lumber industry in both the 2023-24 and 2024-25 fiscal years, as laid out in budget 2023: what is the itemized breakdown of how this funding has been spent to date, and will be spent, including who has received or will be receiving the funding and how much each recipient has received or will be receiving?
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Madam Speaker, I am now going to, assuming that I have the unanimous support of the House, move that, notwithstanding any—
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Madam Speaker, I move that, notwithstanding any standing order or usual practice of the House—
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Madam Speaker, I am trying to get there, but I keep getting interrupted by members of the Liberal Party. I was saying that only the government can choose bills to come forward for debate. It has stated that Bill C-57 is a bill it urgently wants to be concluded in the House. It has not called it for debate today, so—
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Mr. Speaker, with that statement, this radical carbon tax-loving environment minister has basically proven the point. His carbon tax has not stopped any of the effects on farms. Instead, farmers are left paying this punishing carbon tax. A chicken farm pays $15,000 for one barn this year in carbon tax. After this ideologically obsessed minister quadruples the carbon tax, it will be $60,000 for one…
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Mr. Speaker, unlike that minister, I actually spoke to farmers from Dufferin today. One farmer, from Burnett Farms, is going to pay $40,000 in carbon taxes this year alone. After this incompetent Liberal-NDP government quadruples the tax, it will be $160,000. They do not need another government program. They need the carbon tax cut. How is this farmer supposed to pay for it? Should farmers cut pro…
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Madam Speaker, it is Standing Order 30(6), which sets out that the government is the only one that can call bills for debate. I have a point of order on that.
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Madam Speaker, the government House leader said that they would give “priority to the bills that are now in their final stages of debate in the House, including Bill C-57”, so you can imagine my surprise—
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Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 30(6), it is only the government that can bring bills for debate. In her statement on Thursday last week, the government House leader stated that the government would give priority to bills in the House “in their final stages of debate” including Bill—
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Madam Speaker, I have a point of order and then I am going to move a motion.
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Mr. Speaker, Conservatives support Ukraine. It was a Conservative government that was the first western country in the world to recognize an independent Ukraine. It was a Conservative government that negotiated the existing Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement. It was a Conservative government that commenced Operation Unifier. It was Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper who said to Vladimir P…
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Madam Speaker, coming to Parliament, table-dropping a 700-page trade agreement and expecting Parliament to just immediately rubber-stamp it is the kind of arrogance one gets with the Liberal government. It believes that, somehow, it is so infallible, so perfect, that it has brought to us, as we approach Christmas, something like the birth of Christ. Here it is: the perfect child. In fact, we get t…
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Madam Speaker, of course we support Ukraine; that is absolutely true. We voted against the fall economic statement because we have absolutely no confidence in the incompetent, corrupt Liberal government. The member is talking about munitions. That is great; good for him. We had a motion at committee to support expanded munitions productions in Canada, increase munitions exports to Ukraine and supp…
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Madam Speaker, what we find is that the hyperbole coming from the Liberals does not match reality. Their criticism is deeply hypocritical. We all know it. They have done things that have directly harmed and continue to directly harm Ukraine with their decisions. They have become the party of disinformation by suggesting that we do not support Ukraine, disinformation that somehow our opposition to …
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Madam Speaker, it is amazing to me that the member who complained about points of order during his speech continues to rise to interrupt me when I am giving my speech about continuing to talk about motions that were brought forward to try to make the trade agreement better. Again, a motion was brought at committee for expanded munitions productions in Canada to increase munitions exports to Ukrain…
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Madam Speaker, the party that complaints that points of order are disruptive makes a ridiculous point of order. I will go back to my point, which is that my decision as a Conservative to vote against this agreement is a principled decision. I will not stand for trade agreements having carbon pricing or taxes, because who knows what the Liberals are going to do next time. I get to do that. As we kn…
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Madam Speaker, as I rise for this third reading debate, I have to express my deep disappointment at the inflammatory rhetoric that we hear from the Liberal government. Its members are desperately trying to change the channel from the misery that they have brought to Canadians, whether in terms of the millions of Canadians visiting food banks or the 800,000 people in Ontario who have to rely on a f…
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Madam Speaker, for the member to suggest that I support Russia is despicable and—
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No, giving the turbine to Russia—
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Madam Speaker, what actually has harmed Ukraine was the government's decision to grant a waiver to export a gas turbine. It is interesting. The Liberals use President Zelenskyy's name all the time in support of their cause to try to score cheap political points. President Zelenskyy had a few things to say about that waiver. If a terrorist state can squeeze out such an exemption to sanctions, what …
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With regard to the government’s approach to a digital services tax (DST): (a) will the DST still go into effect as of January 1, 2024, as planned; (b) how much revenue is the government expected to receive as a result of the retroactivity of the tax back to 2022; (c) how much DST revenue is the government projected to receive in 2024; (d) has the government done a cost-benefit analysis on the DST,…
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Madam Speaker, with respect to that point of order, the—
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Madam Speaker, opposition parties oppose, and they oppose legislation that they think is bad. That does not cause harm to anyone. The parliamentary secretary's argument that somehow voting against a bill is bad makes no sense. However, something that was bad was the current government's granting—
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