Discussion · Government Orders
Blaine Calkins Conservative
“I do not support this budget bill. It wastes time setting up new offices that another bill already replaces. The government has doubled Canada's debt, and paying the interest now costs about $6,000 per family. Instead of creating more rules and offices, the government should cut debt, lift the west coast tanker ban, and let Alberta sell energy to our allies.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am going to take a page out of the book of my colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola and say it is a pleasure to rise today on behalf of the good, honest and hard-working people of Ponoka—Didsbury. Ponoka—Didsbury is in central rural Alberta, just about 45 minutes north of Calgary and 45 minutes south of Edmonton. This is the heart of Alberta, and it is truly a pleasure and an honour for me to rise to speak on their behalf. As an Albertan, it also gives me pleasure to stand here in the House of Commons to talk about the great things Alberta contributes to this great nation of Canada. I am going to take this opportunity to just mention to everybody listening in the House that, this year, every single man, woman and child in Alberta will contribute $4,000 more to the Government of Canada than it gets back in services. For the constituents of Ponoka—Didsbury, that is about a half a billion dollars, just under $500 million. I know nobody in this place is rushing forward to give thanks, and in 21 years, I have yet to hear many people say it, but just in case they are thinking it, I am going to say that they are welcome, on behalf of my constituents in Alberta, who simply want the government to get out of their way to let them do what they do best. We know from our industrious spirit and our can-do attitude, particularly in rural Alberta, that we can grow the food, get the resources like oil and natural gas out of the ground and harvest our timber. Like I said, we can grow our food. We can do the industrial and commercial development we need to create prosperity. There are mod yards in the constituency of Ponoka—Didsbury that build massive pieces of infrastructure, which are shipped up the road to places like Fort McMurray, either by truck or by train. We know that the workers we have in rural and central Alberta, and even in our larger urban centres, have all of the capacity, technological capability, experience, engineering, knowledge and know-how to build out even more of our resource extraction, resource processing and resource shipping machinery. I know a lot of that happens right in my constituency, in Ponoka, Blackfalds and other places, in the industrial yards that we have there. I am looking forward to, someday, those yards being as busy as they used to be about 11 years ago. The reason I am standing here today is to talk about the government’s budget implementation act from the previous budget. Here we are, at just the report stage. We are not even at third reading yet. We are just at report stage on the budget implementation legislation, which is largely housekeeping legislation, on a budgetary policy that was passed last year, and we are two days before the next budget, which is going to be presented this coming Thursday. It is a really interesting piece of legislation. Let me tell the House how Liberal logic works. It works the same way on a lot of different things, yet here we are. We are talking about division 16 of part 4 of Bill C-31. I am just going to talk about this a bit for the folks back home. Division 16 deals with the creation of the Defence Investment Agency, which was, in the last budget, the government’s newfound bureaucracy that was going to somehow do procurement for our men and women in our armed forces. Let me be absolutely clear that the people of Ponoka—Didsbury 100% stand behind the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces. Many of the people in my constituency, like it is for anybody else in the House, have served in the Canadian Armed Forces. We are very, very proud of the men and women who stand on guard for us each and every day, but we have a procurement problem in Canada. We cannot get things done on time. We have lots of red tape and lots of bureaucracy. This budget implementation act is just at report stage. It is not even at third reading two days before the next budget is to be tabled. Division 16 in Bill C-31 would establish the Defence Investment Agency as a body with its own minister, which is, by the way, yet to be named. This piece of legislation would actually to be replaced by another bureaucracy in Bill C-40, which is also currently before the House. We have a bill to create a bureaucracy that is so late coming to this place that the new bureaucracy to replace this bureaucracy is being stood up in another piece of legislation currently before the House. We cannot even make this stuff up. If there was a gold star for building government, every grade 5 teacher in Canada would be asked to surrender their gold stars to the Liberal government in Ottawa for all of the gold stars it would get for creating more bureaucracy. We have never had more government than we do right now. The Liberals are so busy making government here that they do not even have time to ratify legislation that creates one bureaucracy before they get around to ratifying another piece of legislation to replace that bureaucracy. That is how fast they are growing government here. Our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces need the tools, technology and equipment to defend us, but really, all we are doing right here in Parliament is creating one bureaucracy after another bureaucracy. Like I said, they get gold stars for creating bureaucracy, but that is not the bigger point I want to make in my comments today. I think Canadians would be shocked to find out just how in debt Canada actually is. I am not just talking about our federal debt, which is massive. It is more than double what it was in 2015. I think we are at $1.5 trillion in national debt, which is up from just over $620 billion. Every government and every prime minister in Canada, up until 2015, in 150-some years of the existence of our country, managed to amass a grand total of about $620 billion in debt. Since Justin Trudeau and this new Liberal Prime Minister have been to office, that has more than doubled, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer has projected that, in the next five years, it is going to go up another $700 billion to well over $2 trillion. That is just the federal debt, and the interest on that debt is now becoming one of the highest budget line items we have, to the point where we are getting up to $6,000 for every family. All the taxes they pay to the Government of Canada are just going to pay the interest, not the principal. It is like just paying the interest on the credit card without ever paying down the principal or the amount that is owing. Right now, we are at $6,000 per family before any service is paid, before any doctors are paid, before any teachers are paid, before any schools are built, before anything is done, before any police officer is paid, before any Crown prosecutor is paid, before anybody at our corrections services or anybody at our border trying to protect our country is paid, and before our men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces are paid. Before any of that gets paid, we are dealing with $6,000 just in interest. We also have all the sub-sovereign debt from all of our provinces and then all of the business debt. I am not even talking about what our financial institutions are on the hook for when it comes to lending. I am just talking about business debt, such as businesses that take out a line of credit, a farm that has a loan with Farm Credit Canada, or something like that. This debt is now added on to the personal debt of every Canadian, and we are looking at 385% debt-to-GDP. I am not even talking about the money financial institutions have lent out that they owe. I am just talking about personal debt, credit card debt, business and commercial debt and government debt. The entirety of our economy has to service all of that debt, and we are not getting the economic questions in this country right. We have a Prime Minister who gets up every time he speaks and has a doomsday scenario for Canada, yet one simple little request we had was to remove the tanker ban off the west coast. If we are on a war footing economically, we could be shipping another 250,000 barrels a day by rail to Prince Rupert to give to our friends and allies. I just got back from a trip to Japan with several Liberal colleagues, not the ones who are smirking at me on the other side right now, and Japan would take every drop of oil, natural gas and propane we have, but we will not get out of the way. We will not remove a tanker ban to allow a simple little thing to grow our economy so that, hopefully, we could pay some of this debt. I shudder to think why this is. It makes no sense.”
Mr. Speaker, I am going to take a page out of the book of my colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola and say it is a pleasure to rise today on behalf of the good, honest and hard-working people of Ponoka—Didsbury. Ponoka—Didsbury is in central rural Alberta, just about 45 minutes north of Calgary and 45 minutes south of Edmonton. This is the heart of Alberta, and it is truly a pleasure and an honour for me to rise to speak on their behalf. As an Albertan, it also gives me pleasure to stand here in the House of Commons to talk about the great things Alberta contributes to this great nation of Canada. I am going to take this opportunity to just mention to everybody listening in the House that, this year, every single man, woman and child in Alberta will contribute $4,000 more to the Government of Canada than it gets back in services. For the constituents of Ponoka—Didsbury, that is about a half a billion dollars, just under $500 million. I know nobody in this place is rushing forward to give thanks, and in 21 years, I have yet to hear many people say it, but just in case they are thinking it, I am going to say that they are welcome, on behalf of my constituents in Alberta, who simply want the government to get out of their way to let them do what they do best. We know from our industrious spirit and our can-do attitude, particularly in rural Alberta, that we can grow the food, get the resources like oil and natural gas out of the ground and harvest our timber. Like I said, we can grow our food. We can do the industrial and commercial development we need to create prosperity. There are mod yards in the constituency of Ponoka—Didsbury that build massive pieces of infrastructure, which are shipped up the road to places like Fort McMurray, either by truck or by train. We know that the workers we have in rural and central Alberta, and even in our larger urban centres, have all of the capacity, technological capability, experience, engineering, knowledge and know-how to build out even more of our resource extraction, resource processing and resource shipping machinery. I know a lot of that happens right in my constituency, in Ponoka, Blackfalds and other places, in the industrial yards that we have there. I am looking forward to, someday, those yards being as busy as they used to be about 11 years ago. The reason I am standing here today is to talk about the government’s budget implementation act from the previous budget. Here we are, at just the report stage. We are not even at third reading yet. We are just at report stage on the budget implementation legislation, which is largely housekeeping legislation, on a budgetary policy that was passed last year, and we are two days before the next budget, which is going to be presented this coming Thursday. It is a really interesting piece of legislation. Let me tell the House how Liberal logic works. It works the same way on a lot of different things, yet here we are. We are talking about division 16 of part 4 of Bill C-31. I am just going to talk about this a bit for the folks back home. Division 16 deals with the creation of the Defence Investment Agency, which was, in the last budget, the government’s newfound bureaucracy that was going to somehow do procurement for our men and women in our armed forces. Let me be absolutely clear that the people of Ponoka—Didsbury 100% stand behind the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces. Many of the people in my constituency, like it is for anybody else in the House, have served in the Canadian Armed Forces. We are very, very proud of the men and women who stand on guard for us each and every day, but we have a procurement problem in Canada. We cannot get things done on time. We have lots of red tape and lots of bureaucracy. This budget implementation act is just at report stage. It is not even at third reading two days before the next budget is to be tabled. Division 16 in Bill C-31 would establish the Defence Investment Agency as a body with its own minister, which is, by the way, yet to be named. This piece of legislation would actually to be replaced by another bureaucracy in Bill C-40, which is also currently before the House. We have a bill to create a bureaucracy that is so late coming to this place that the new bureaucracy to replace this bureaucracy is being stood up in another piece of legislation currently before the House. We cannot even make this stuff up. If there was a gold star for building government, every grade 5 teacher in Canada would be asked to surrender their gold stars to the Liberal government in Ottawa for all of the gold stars it would get for creating more bureaucracy. We have never had more government than we do right now. The Liberals are so busy making government here that they do not even have time to ratify legislation that creates one bureaucracy before they get around to ratifying another piece of legislation to replace that bureaucracy. That is how fast they are growing government here. Our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces need the tools, technology and equipment to defend us, but really, all we are doing right here in Parliament is creating one bureaucracy after another bureaucracy. Like I said, they get gold stars for creating bureaucracy, but that is not the bigger point I want to make in my comments today. I think Canadians would be shocked to find out just how in debt Canada actually is. I am not just talking about our federal debt, which is massive. It is more than double what it was in 2015. I think we are at $1.5 trillion in national debt, which is up from just over $620 billion. Every government and every prime minister in Canada, up until 2015, in 150-some years of the existence of our country, managed to amass a grand total of about $620 billion in debt. Since Justin Trudeau and this new Liberal Prime Minister have been to office, that has more than doubled, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer has projected that, in the next five years, it is going to go up another $700 billion to well over $2 trillion. That is just the federal debt, and the interest on that debt is now becoming one of the highest budget line items we have, to the point where we are getting up to $6,000 for every family. All the taxes they pay to the Government of Canada are just going to pay the interest, not the principal. It is like just paying the interest on the credit card without ever paying down the principal or the amount that is owing. Right now, we are at $6,000 per family before any service is paid, before any doctors are paid, before any teachers are paid, before any schools are built, before anything is done, before any police officer is paid, before any Crown prosecutor is paid, before anybody at our corrections services or anybody at our border trying to protect our country is paid, and before our men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces are paid. Before any of that gets paid, we are dealing with $6,000 just in interest. We also have all the sub-sovereign debt from all of our provinces and then all of the business debt. I am not even talking about what our financial institutions are on the hook for when it comes to lending. I am just talking about business debt, such as businesses that take out a line of credit, a farm that has a loan with Farm Credit Canada, or something like that. This debt is now added on to the personal debt of every Canadian, and we are looking at 385% debt-to-GDP. I am not even talking about the money financial institutions have lent out that they owe. I am just talking about personal debt, credit card debt, business and commercial debt and government debt. The entirety of our economy has to service all of that debt, and we are not getting the economic questions in this country right. We have a Prime Minister who gets up every time he speaks and has a doomsday scenario for Canada, yet one simple little request we had was to remove the tanker ban off the west coast. If we are on a war footing economically, we could be shipping another 250,000 barrels a day by rail to Prince Rupert to give to our friends and allies. I just got back from a trip to Japan with several Liberal colleagues, not the ones who are smirking at me on the other side right now, and Japan would take every drop of oil, natural gas and propane we have, but we will not get out of the way. We will not remove a tanker ban to allow a simple little thing to grow our economy so that, hopefully, we could pay some of this debt. I shudder to think why this is. It makes no sense.