Philip Earle

“Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House to contribute to the debate today on Bill C-31. The bill is back from committee at report stage, and it is our last chance to amend it before third reading. A budget implementation bill is where promises meet the actual commitment in law, and the test is rather simple. Would it make life more affordable? Would it build what the country needs? Would it respect the House’s duty to examine how money is spent and how power is used? On every count, the answer is, sadly, no. Budget 2025 is the costliest budget outside the pandemic, with the biggest deficit, at least for the next two days. What did it buy? It bought record food bank usage and rising insolvencies. This morning, the Welland Tribune reported that one in 10 Welland residents used a food bank last year. That is one in 10. This Saturday is the Welland food drive, and I urge residents to give generously. It is likely that one of their neighbours needs some help because of food insecurity. The government’s so-called affordability plan is fundamentally a plan to stabilize the problems it created in the first place, and herein lies the difference between Conservatives and Liberals. Liberals have spent a decade ignoring the structural inefficiencies of government and failed to recognize that we need to actually fix the machinery of government rather than subsidize the problems it creates. The government cut 10¢ off a litre of fuel and called it relief. We asked to remove all federal fuel taxes for a year, which would save a typical family about $1,200. Ten cents is a gesture, but $1,200 is a month of groceries. At second reading, our critics moved a reasoned amendment naming what is missing: full fuel tax relief; less tax and red tape on homebuilding; an end to the industrial carbon tax, which touches everything in the food chain right to the family at the checkout; and an end to the waste that feeds inflation. Conservatives voted for it. The government did not. There is a better way: repeal Bill C-69 so major projects only take a few years, not decades; repeal Bill C-48, and if the Prime Minister is serious about his pipeline memorandum, put it in law; eliminate the industrial carbon tax; and cap spending. The government cannot fix affordability by subsidizing scarcity. I want to turn to a few things closer to my home, my riding of Niagara South. My riding is an economic zone where this budget could have a real impact. There is a gap between an announcement and actually building, and it sits right along the Welland Canal. I will take the government’s own words. Division 16 would create the Defence Investment Agency. Clause 12 would require the minister to consider the efficiency of defence and security procurement and the promotion of investment in the defence and security sectors. By this bill’s own test, the Welland Canal corridor belongs in it. It was left out at tabling, and the bill came back from committee with it still left out. At the north end of the Welland Canal sits the Port Weller Dry Docks, with a sister yard in Hamilton. Both are run by Ontario Shipyards, the largest Canadian-owned ship repair and construction company on the Great Lakes. Port Weller has built more than 80 vessels, including icebreakers. The company has invested $107 million there and already fabricates components for federal ships built on the west coast. The company has struggled to get a reasonable share of federal work. A Globe and Mail piece from about a month ago reports that its bid to join the national shipbuilding strategy failed, with Davie being chosen instead. Its hopes now rest mainly on federal corvette work. If the company does get that contract, the CEO says, the corvettes will be built at the Port Weller Dry Docks in Ontario, on the Welland Canal. This is a shipyard with a proud history and a promising future, but it needs to be integrated into the federal shipbuilding strategy. In February, Hanwha Ocean signed an agreement with Ontario Shipyards to bring large-scale shipbuilding back to Ontario, with a training hub in the Hamilton yard alongside Mohawk College. The province has put $11 million into Ontario Shipyards and more than $8 million into Allied Marine in my hometown of Port Colborne. Everyone has stepped up except Ottawa. The government’s own defence industrial strategy promises 70% of defence acquisition to Canadian firms. The navy will need yards to build, maintain and refit its fleet. Right now, coastal yards carry order books measured in decades, and Port Weller is able to step up. Capacity in Niagara and Hamilton would not be a favour to this region. It would be an insurance policy for the navy. The bill would give the new agency up to $1 billion in standing authority and says nothing about these yards or the canal that connects them. At the south end, in, again, my hometown of Port Colborne, which I love to talk about in the House, sits Wharf 18. Ottawa built it, Ottawa owns it, and it has been out of service for close to 20 years. In January 2023, the government announced $22.7 million to rehabilitate it, but there was a catch. It was dependent upon a private sector partner to ante up the next $20 million. Three years on, that money still depends on a match no one will provide. A seaway official confirmed to me at the transport committee that there are no plans to rebuild the wharf, and now the funding is at risk. I have been looking for examples where the St. Lawrence Seaway required the private sector to invest in wharf rehabilitation on property it can never own. There seems to be an evolving plan to move in this direction, but inherently, there are incredible barriers to moving to a P3 business model. The conundrum here is that we cannot ask the private sector to rebuild a dock it can never own. It probably cannot finance it. Ottawa does not ask the private sector to co-fund repairs to federal bridges. The engineering on Wharf 18 is done. It is shovel-ready, and the balance of capital needed could actually lead to year-round shipping through the Great Lakes. The money needed is the equivalent of a rounding error in the billions of dollars allocated to major projects. Sometimes minor projects like this can turn into game-changing opportunities, particularly in short sea shipping. Here is where the government has looked at this project with limited scope rather than at the long-term economic development opportunities, including year-round shipping. However, this also illustrates that many of the problems could be fixed through this legislation like stubborn bureaucracy. I will give an example. The City of Port Colborne needs to acquire about a half-acre along the canal to be merged into a parcel it already owns. The land is useless, both to the seaway and to Transport Canada, which has refused to reclassify the land so it can move through what might be a 10-year disposal process and then be acquired by the city. The city has been waiting decades to move forward with economic development projects but continually hits brick walls with federal bureaucracy, including duelling departments and agencies. The absurdity of bureaucracy drives me crazy. If we could get the seaway and transport to fix this silly problem, the City of Port Colborne could move ahead with a multi-use facility that would dramatically improve tourism, including berthing for over 100 cruise ships per year and expanding industrial and commercial activity along the waterway. This should be easy, but everyone knows dealing with Transport Canada often takes more than a career timeline can handle. A working Wharf 18 would add about a million tonnes of capacity to Port Colborne, and Port Colborne is the only point on the canal that has the potential to move to all-season shipping. Put together, a federal wharf with the engineering done, dry docks that are working and expanding, a training hub on the way and a fabricator backed by the province are not a wish list that needs another study. This is a corridor that needs a federal commitment. Every tonne moved port to port inside Canada does not pay a tariff. Here is my ask, and I admit that it is close to home for me: delete division 16 at report stage, send defence procurement to the defence committee and include Great Lakes shipping and repair capacity in the study; bring back a budget bill that lowers the cost of living, with full tax relief, full fuel tax relief, no industrial carbon tax on food, fewer taxes on new homes and a spending cap; fund Wharf 18 in Port Colborne, with a construction schedule and a completion date; and treat the Welland Canal corridor from Port Weller to Port Colborne to Hamilton as the defence and trade asset that it is. If we do that, we will start to make progress that puts Canada first.”