Arnold Viersen

Mr. Speaker, Greeting · 20 wordsit is my privilege to rise today on behalf of the good people of Peace River—Westlock to discuss Bill C-39.Greeting Claims · 26 wordsThis bill comes on the heels of Bill C-5, ¹which was passed over a year ago and, in my opinion, proposed to do something very similar.² The question · 33 wordsI do question why we are here to do this if Bill C-5 was the solution to all of these problems. Why are we back again, passing another piece of legislation around this? Claims · 42 wordsI want to go back a little, back to about 2005, 2006, 2007, when a gentleman named Stephen Harper featured large in Canadian politics.Partly on point He was making the case back then that we sold 90% of our product to the United States.³ Reasoning · 34 wordsWhile this relationship was a good one, it was a major risk to Canada in the event that, should something happen to that relationship, we would be then held ransom, essentially, by the Americans. Claims · 62 wordsHe also pointed out that we often sold our energy products at a dramatic discount to the United States because they were our only customer. We were basically a captive market, so we were stuck selling those products to them for whatever we could get, which was often at a $10 to $18 discount per barrel.⁴ Stephen Harper pursued an ambitious agenda, Positioning · 17 wordswhich seems to now have been adopted by the Liberals, to turn Canada into an energy superpower.Positioning Claims · 25 wordsHe tried to streamline the approvals of major projects in general across the country. He worked hard to build free trade agreements around the world. Positioning · 35 wordsWe will often hear the Liberals tell us about the agreements the Prime Minister has now signed with other countries for X, Y or Z products. However, those are essentially just really nice photo ops, PositioningClaims · 34 wordsbecause we already have free trade agreements with 60% of the world’s GDP because of the work of Stephen Harper, ⁵which he started way back in the mid-2000s. He signed 43 free trade agreements, ⁶Reasoning · 26 wordsand did that because he said we needed to diversify our markets from only selling to the United States to selling to others around the world. Claims · 27 wordsThe two notable ones he never got across the finish line were CETA and the TPP, but shortly after Justin Trudeau took power, those two were signed.⁷Off point Procedure · 8 wordsThose were not the only things he did.Procedure Claims · 53 wordsStephen Harper also worked to solidify our money, to make sure our money was worth something. I remember particularly the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, when our dollar was actually worth more than the American dollar, ⁸because Stephen Harper had worked hard to ensure we worked towards a balanced budget. Positioning · 39 wordsHe was making sure our fiscal house was in order and that we were not robbing our old people and the labourers in this country by making their money worth less and less each year, unlike the current government.Positioning Claims · 9 wordsThe other thing he did was flatten the taxes. Positioning · 26 wordsHe worked hard to make sure that the harder we worked, the more of our money we got to take home, not the other way around.Positioning Claims · 6 wordsHe worked on the tax rate.Off point Reasoning · 12 wordsThe tax rate is fundamental to getting things built in this country.Partly on point Claims · 19 wordsThe other thing about our money and making the money worth something was that the interest rate went down. Reasoning · 10 wordsWhen the interest rate went down, that spurred economic activity. Anecdote · 14 wordsI have a story about a cousin of mine. He builds houses in Edmonton, AnecdoteClaims · 121 wordsand he was telling me about how, during COVID, when the interest rates hit about zero, they built 400 units in Edmonton that year.⁹ He said that was entirely a function of the interest rate. He said that this year, they built 75 houses, ¹⁰and that is only because they could not carry any more houses than that because of the interest rate. He said he discovered what his company is capable of building at zero interest rate. We have the capacity in terms of manpower, skills and logistics to build 400 houses a year, but because of the higher interest rate, we are only capable of building 75 houses since we cannot carry that amount of debt over the year. Reasoning · 16 wordsAn interesting thing to think about is how interest rates affect building things in this country. Claims · 42 wordsWhen builders are building things, they are often paying interest on the materials they put into a product they are building for the period of time between when they build the product, invoice it and get paid for the thing they built.Off point Procedure · 5 wordsThat is an interesting thing.Procedure Claims · 17 wordsAs to the tax rate, we have been talking about building and Canada becoming an energy superpower.Partly on point Positioning · 28 wordsThe Liberals have adopted Conservative language on this. They are sounding like the Conservatives, but they are not doing the things it takes to make sure things happen.Positioning Claims · 134 wordsOne thing that affects the tax rate is around what we have talked a lot about today: the price of diesel fuel.Partly on point We talked about how we need to make sure we get our products to market, but also about how we need to be able to refine our own product here in Canada. The reality is that no company is going to come to Canada to refine because of the industrial carbon tax.Unearned certainty Fertilizer companies have already complained to me bitterly about the fact that they are paying a tax that no other jurisdiction in the world has to pay. They have to compete with fertilizer coming in from out of the country that does not have these taxes. They said they are under water every month because of the industrial carbon tax. Reasoning · 24 wordsIf that is what our fertilizer producers are saying, no companies are going to come to Canada to build refineries, only to lose money. The ask · 18 wordsThat is why the government needs to incentivize companies to come here by removing the industrial carbon tax. Positioning · 5 wordsThe Liberals sound like us.Positioning Claims · 9 wordsWe battled against the carbon tax for 10 years, Positioning · 22 wordsand the Liberals finally came to their senses after the Canadian population was about to punish them severely over the carbon tax.Positioning Claims · 6 wordsThey removed the consumer carbon tax, ¹¹Positioning · 29 wordsbut we are not going to be an energy superpower, with all the great projects the Liberals keep talking about and insinuating will happen in Canada, without addressing that.Positioning Claims · 15 wordsThe other thing I want to talk about is Bill C-69 and the approvals process. Positioning · 45 wordsWith Bill C-5 and now this bill, the Liberals are trying to build a workaround to Bill C-69.¹² We have been saying for years that they are not going to get pipeline projects, major energy infrastructure and railways, all of those kinds of things, built.Positioning Claims · 55 wordsThe big projects that everybody thinks they are going to build are not going to get built while Bill C-69 is in place. I have not heard one member of the Liberal Party mention Bill C-69 tonight. They have not said anything about the barriers that have been put in place by the Liberal government. Positioning · 40 wordsIt is super frustrating for me to see the Liberals stand here as if they are the heroes of their own story, as if they are solving the problems of Canada, while they are the ones who created those problems.Positioning Claims · 7 wordsBill C-48 killed the northern gateway pipeline.¹³ Anecdote · 30 wordsI remember driving across northern British Columbia and seeing excavators on the ground. The pipe was laying in a field ready to be put in for the northern gateway pipeline.Anecdote Claims · 74 wordsThen the Liberals dropped Bill C-48, saying people could not take petroleum product off the shore of B.C. and put it on a boat.¹⁴ People could build the pipeline, the Liberals said. People were welcome to build the pipeline, but they were not to take the product that was in that pipeline and put it on a boat. That was what Bill C-48 did, and when the Liberals did that, it ended the pipeline. The ask · 12 wordsThose two bills, Bill C-48 and Bill C-69, have to be repealed. Reasoning · 17 wordsWe have to do that to match the rhetoric that we are hearing from the Liberal side. The ask · 7 wordsThe Liberals need to work on that. Claims · 91 wordsUnder Stephen Harper, we built six major pipelines across this country.¹⁵ In 2014, we had 14 LNG projects proposed.¹⁶ I want to remind Canadians that these projects were entirely proposed by private industry. They were going to be tax-generating projects. Canadian public coffers were going to be filled with the revenues generated by these projects. The Canadian taxpayer would not have had to pay for them. The Trans Mountain pipeline was going to be a $6-billion project.¹⁷ By the time the government was done building it, it was a $36-billion project.¹⁸ Positioning · 11 wordsThis bill is, I am afraid, another smoke and mirrors thing.Positioning Claims · 14 wordsI am looking forward to hearing what the Liberals have to say about it.