Mel Arnold

“Madam Speaker, that was a rookie mistake. I talk about issues in my own riding. I would like the Tyndall Park Community Centre to get an expansion. I would like to see the Seven Oaks General Hospital get its emergency services restored. I am going to fight to ensure that it does. I am convinced that I will get the federal government to step up, and I want to see the province also step up on that issue. If we take a look at health care, there are thousands of projects that the federal government is working on that will lead to houses being built, hospital capital investment and infrastructure across the province. What we are talking about in addition to that are the major projects worth multiple billions of dollars, not millions of dollars. That is what we passed shortly after the last federal election. Over the summer, we created the Major Projects Office, where there are more than a couple of dozen projects. When we take a look at the projects, we are talking about, for example, LNG in the province of British Columbia. We are talking about copper mines in the province of Saskatchewan. We are talking about nuclear energy expansion in the province of Ontario. We are talking about the expansion of ports in Montreal. We are talking about mines in Atlantic Canada. We are talking about infrastructure and transportation expansion in northern Canada. We are talking about infrastructure in every region of the country. Those are major projects getting close to half a trillion dollars. Speaking of half a trillion dollars, let us think about when the Prime Minister of Canada hosted the world to get investment coming into Canada just last month. We saw premiers, indigenous leaders and many other stakeholders, along with multibillionaires and people who are responsible for billions of dollars of potential investment. It was a historic meeting, where Canada received, through an investment summit chaired by the Prime Minister, half a trillion dollars because of the relationships he has developed and the efforts of our ministers and members of the caucus. That is completely unheard of in Canadian history. I have not even talked about the issue of international trade. We have passed legislation for Indonesia, Northern Ireland and England. We have other deals in the works with the Philippines and India. We have 20 other trade and security agreements with other nations. This, and a whole lot more, has all been done in the last 500-plus days that Canada has had a new Prime Minister and a new government. This includes all of the initiatives that I talked about. That is why I say with confidence that I do not have a problem comparing the current Prime Minister to any other prime minister I have had the opportunity to work with in terms of growing a stronger and a healthier Canadian economy.”