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Jeff Kibble

Conservative 12:20 p.m.

“I'm saying the government is announcing a big defence strategy without actually making the hard choices to back it up. They're making promises to our military they can't keep. The strategy will fail without real plans to match. All Canadians will pay the price. Conservatives support our troops and we won't accept this illusion of action. Our riding deserves better.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to conclude my remarks. I was speaking about not having a national security strategy for Canada to back up the government's Defence Investment Agency and defence industrial strategy. None of this will work without this key foundation. A procurement architecture cannot be designed for a mission that has never been defined or for threats that have not been assessed. We cannot build an agency to deliver capability to our armed forces when we have not decided what capability Canada actually needs. The Minister of National Defence admitted to me in testimony at committee that no consideration of threat assessments, pre-kinetic warfare, grey zone warfare, cognitive operations or PSYOPS is in the defence investment strategy. How could there be? That would require a foundational national security strategy, a strategy the government does not have. Simply put, the government has put the cart before the horse, and Canadians in uniform will pay the price. Indeed, all of Canada will pay the price. This is the exact opposite of creating a self-reliant and sovereign country. The fancy speeches, the hollow announcements and the promises are all illusions. The reality is that it seems as if the Prime Minister is more focused on building his own defence industry oligarchy. As Conservatives, we have always stood proudly with the women and men who serve in uniform. We ask them to do dangerous things. We ask them to stand between Canadians and harm. We send them to protect our sovereignty, to serve our allies and to represent our country at its best. The very least we owe them is the right equipment, honestly procured without corruption, without patronage and without a $1-billion slush fund that answers to no one. Vancouver Island is home to both CFB Comox and CFB Esquimalt. The families there are watching, the veterans there are watching and the serving members are watching. They are all starting to see behind the curtain of illusion, and the illusion is starting to crumble. We will oppose division 16 of this bill, not because we oppose defence investment, but because we refuse to accept the illusion of it in place of reality. Canada deserves better. Our armed forces deserve better. The people of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, who live alongside—

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Jeff Kibble

Conservative 12:25 p.m.

“Canada isn't spending 2% of GDP on defence like we claim. The real number is 1.6%, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The Liberals are fudging the numbers and shuffling money from the Coast Guard to inflate our defence spending to meet NATO commitments. It's an illusion and it's shameful.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite's question was ill-informed. The 2% NATO spending that the government constantly boasts about is truly an illusion. Money was shuffled. The Coast Guard, which is not operationally deployable, was accounted for, and that is not within the NATO regulations. In fact, I would like to draw the member opposite's attention to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the gold and global standard for identifying government and NATO spending, which said that the discrepancy was 0.4%. In other words, Canada has only actually spent, by this gold standard assessment, 1.6%. This is another Liberal illusion, and Canadians need to see that reality. Of note, I will add that Canada was the only country mentioned with such a large discrepancy in our alleged 2% spending. It is shameful.

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Burton Bailey

Conservative 12:25 p.m.

“The Prime Minister announced a deal to buy military aircraft from Saab. Is it real or just another Liberal illusion?”

Jeff Kibble

Conservative 12:25 p.m.

“The Prime Minister announced a big deal to buy military aircraft. It's just an illusion. There is no contract or order.”

Jeff Kibble

Conservative 12:30 p.m.

“You're delusional. I'm just stating facts. My party put money into the military and it worked great. Your party is using tricky accounting to make it look like you're investing more, but really the military is weaker. You're living in a fantasy.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I was looking at nothing but the facts, and I hear the frustration in the member opposite's voice. Clearly, reality is colliding with illusion, and his frustration is building. Let me be clear. With the investments of 1% under the Harper government, they still managed to go to Iraq and Afghanistan, because they had solid, well-founded programs that did not waste money. Right now, we are seeing creative accounting and self-reporting. When the Stockholm Institute reports on actual numbers, we see it is more Liberal illusion, just like their announcements. It is all illusion, and our military is no stronger. In fact, it is weaker under this government's illusion and failure. I am bringing reality.

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Eric Duncan

Conservative 12:30 p.m.

“The people who live in my riding have opinions. The government is bad at spending money. Lots of programs wasted money. Lots of people are mad about the high-speed rail. We are in a recession. I don't like that. The government keeps spending more money. Servicing the debt costs a lot.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise on behalf of the good people of Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry to add my contributions and views based on what I am hearing in my community, the United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, as well as Cornwall and Akwesasne, and bring that to the floor of the House to make sure their voices are heard. As we discuss this piece of budget implementation legislation, it is important to acknowledge some of the breaking news today. The unfortunate news that we had from Stats Canada confirmed that under the Prime Minister, just 15 months into office, Canada has entered into a recession. We have now had two quarters of negative economic growth. We can look at the last four quarters, as a matter of fact, and we have had three quarters of negative economic growth. That is showing that despite the speeches, the photo ops and the good intentions that are always mentioned by the Liberals, we are seeing that their plan is failing to resonate when it comes to economic growth and creating jobs. We have seen tens of thousands of jobs lost so far in 2026. Sadly and very frustratingly, we are now entering into a recession, as confirmed by the government's own Stats Canada agency. Conservatives on this side of the House are going to keep advocating for a change in direction and for getting rid of the anti-development laws that are on the books, like Bill C-69, and some of the caps that have been put in that are prohibiting and inhibiting our natural resources from getting built. Let us remember that it was this Prime Minister who promised to move at unimaginable speeds to get things done. Here we are, seeing that it can take, in cases of getting a mine built, upwards of 25 years to get a mine permitted and built in this country. At the same time, we are seeing the idea or possibility of a pipeline out to the west coast, but we do not know a proponent, a start date, a route or the details. We are years and years away, because the Prime Minister and the Liberal government continue to put those anti-development laws in place. They are trying to weasel through certain exceptions, different side deals and MOUs. At the end of the day, we are seeing, again confirmed, a shrinking economy, not a growing one, despite the vast natural resources we have in this country. When it comes to a change in course, it is not just those anti-development laws; it is the change in our housing policies. Right across this country, we should be removing the GST on all new home builds and encouraging partnerships with every single province to take the HST off, which could provide significant savings, not just for first-time homebuyers but for all new home builds in this country. We need to invigorate and pump-start our housing economy. Again, the rhetoric was that the Liberal government was going to double house building in this country, to about half a million homes per year, which is what its own stats say is needed just to keep up with affordability and demand in the coming years. We are only at half that. As opposed to seeing new housing starts accelerate, we are seeing them, in many cases and over many months, decelerate, not grow. Our Conservative plan will continue to be on the table. We will continue to pressure the government in that regard. When it comes to the high price of gas, what we need to do is go further to provide inflationary and financial relief for Canadians. The Liberals are removing only one-third of the federal taxes for one-third of the year. What we are proposing is to remove all federal taxes, not just the federal excise tax but the seven-cents-a-litre fuel standard, which under the Liberals will be going from seven cents, currently, to 17¢ a litre in the coming years, and also to get rid of the GST that is charged on the price of gas. That could provide real relief of 25¢ a litre for the entire year, allowing Canadians to keep more money in their pockets to help with the rising cost of living. This is yet another contrast and another change the Liberals could make to combat the Liberal recession that we are now in. Of course, it is about the out-of-control spending. I hear, repeatedly, in Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry and other parts of eastern Ontario, particularly Prescott and Russell, where we have a lot of correspondence from, the frustration and the opposition to the $90-billion boondoggle that is Alto high-speed rail. The Liberal government spends $20 billion each and every year on consultants, many of them Liberal insiders who get repeated sole-sourced contracts, at a time when our federal public service has ballooned to higher levels than we had just 10 years ago. There is the $742-million gun grab, which is an absolute waste of law-abiding Canadians' resources and time. It is costing taxpayers money, and it is not going after the root cause of gun violence in this country, which is illegal and smuggled guns. Taking a law-abiding firearm owner's firearms away from them when they go up to the Cornwall Handgun Club, for example, is not going to tackle the crisis. The Minister of Public Safety has even admitted in leaked audio that their plan does not work, but there is $742 million that has gone down the drain in wasteful Liberal spending. It continues with the PrescribeIT program, which was $300 million spent on a software program. That was done by Health Canada, and it was supposed to digitize records. After pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the program, the Liberals decided that nobody wanted it and nobody used it. They had to shut it down, all while paying the CEO of that organization over $800,000 per year in an executive salary and bonuses. It is absolutely absurd, and it was a waste of taxpayers' money, once again. If that is not enough, Conservatives are digging up more wasteful spending by the Liberal government. No wonder we have such a high deficit and debt in this country. The Liberals are spending $200 million over the next 10 years on a gravel pit and concrete pad in rural Nova Scotia for a rocket launch service. The company was nearly bankrupt and almost shut down. It then got an injection of $20 million with a backdated contract retroactive to last year. This infusion of $20 million saw its key investors suddenly cash out with millions of dollars, and we have a gravel pad with a concrete pad on top of it that is costing $20 million per year. The lease of that land, just for the record, was about $15,000 per year. Where is the other $19.99 million a year going? Canadians have a right to know. When we talk about waste and about ways to lower our deficit, there are several key ways.There are the billions of dollars we Conservatives have been mentioning. That would be a common-sense way to get our finances under control. We see the massive deficits that the Liberals have included in their budget documents this year, and they are ongoing for the next few years. The Liberals have no plans to balance the budget. I looked at the numbers and did some rough math. They are looking to add $330 billion more to our national debt in the next five or six years alone. That is on top of the $1.3 trillion or $1.4 trillion already on the debt. These Liberals have added more to our national debt than every other government combined before it. That is how bad it is. I have said this repeatedly in my tenure in public life, and it bears repeating: The easiest thing for government to do in public life is to tell Canadians what it is going to spend money on. That is the easy part. The part that Canadians need to pay attention to, and where we are with this Liberal government, is how it is going to pay for it all. This is what we call a costly credit card budget, because that is exactly what it is doing. It is adding tens of billions of dollars each and every year. In this case, there is $67 billion in the spring statement that was just proposed and, like I said, $330 billion in new debt in the coming year. The thing we need to remember is that, when that goes on the credit card, there are public debt charges, which is the interest to service that debt. As a matter of fact, we spent $54 billion this year just to pay the interest on our national debt. That is not paying it down. It is just paying the interest on that proverbial credit card, and that interest is expected to go up to $59 billion next year. It will then go to $65 billion the year after that, and then on to $71 billion and $76 billion. Finally, in 2030, we will be spending $81 billion per year servicing our national debt. That is not sustainable and not the right way. Canadian households do not do that with their credit card and their home budgets. They expect, as Canadian taxpayers, government to do the same thing. It is ridiculous to see that the new Prime Minister has doubled Justin Trudeau's deficit. Whether it is the budget implementation act or the Liberals' efforts here on defence, we are seeing more bureaucracy, more taxes and more ineffective measures. Now that we are in a recession, under the Liberal Prime Minister, it is time to smarten up and change course.

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Eric Duncan

Conservative 12:30 p.m.

“The economy is bad. Very bad. The Liberals spent too much money. Now everything is broken. I blame the Prime Minister.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, when I talk about our economy, I am saying that it is the Liberal government that is broken. Let us make it very clear: We are now in a recession. We have seen negative growth for two quarters in a row, and over the course of the last year, three of those four quarters have seen negative growth. That is the Liberal record. That is the reason we are criticizing the Liberal government and its record. It is clearly not working. Let us be very clear: We are the only G7 country now in a recession. All the other G7 countries are facing the same headwinds with tariffs, gas prices and oil prices. They are facing the exact same circumstances and headwinds, yet they are not in a recession. Canada is the only G7 country in a recession. That is the Liberal Prime Minister's record. When we criticize, we are criticizing the Liberal government's record, because as Statistics Canada is showing today, we are going into a recession. Clearly the government's plan is not working.

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Rachael Thomas

Conservative 12:30 p.m.

“I want to repeat my friend's attack on the Liberals. The economy is bad. The Liberals spent too much money. Now everything is broken. I blame the Prime Minister. People are sad now. It's his fault.”

Eric Duncan

Conservative 12:30 p.m.

“The Liberals say they're helping. I don't believe them. Food and rent cost more. People are struggling. The economy is bad. The Liberals did that. Conservatives will fix it.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Lethbridge has an insightful question, and I thank her for the opportunity to reflect. Today, I am thinking, as we look at the struggles, that the data confirms that Canada is the only G7 country going into a recession. Canada is officially in a recession under the Liberal government. Today, I am thinking of the millions of Canadians who are relying on food banks. Under the government, we have seen food prices double over the course of the last 10 years. We have also seen rent and housing prices double, not just in Cornwall and Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry, but in every part of the country. We are seeing the strain when it comes to housing. We are seeing the strain on our immigration system and the chaos there. We are seeing, when it comes to affordability, things getting worse. The Liberals have a big laundry list of all the things they claim to be doing to help with affordability, but affordability has never been more difficult for families to meet. Whether it is the House of Lazarus in Mountain, the Agapè Centre in Cornwall, or Saint Vincent de Paul in Cornwall or Alexandria, we have many people and organizations stepping up to help thousands of people in need in this country. Our goal, as Conservatives, is to change the trajectory, to get ourselves back out of the recession and have Canadians able to afford rent and food in this country. After 11 years, things have gotten worse, not better, under the Liberal government. That is the fact.

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Eric Duncan

Conservative 12:45 p.m.

“Liberal spending is out of control. The debt is huge and growing fast. More borrowing and spending will only make the problem worse. It's just throwing fuel on the inflation fire. People can't afford the basics. Housing and government services are a mess. When will it stop?”

Garnett Genuis

Conservative 1:05 p.m.

“The sovereign wealth fund is a bad idea. The government is already in debt. We shouldn't borrow more money to put into a fund. It's just going to increase our debt and burden future generations. The Liberals need to understand this.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I do not think the member has well understood the debate about the sovereign wealth fund. I will explain it simply by analogy. If I open a savings account to save my money, that is a good idea. If I have no money, so I open a savings account then take money off the credit card and put it in the savings account, that does not make a lot of sense. The issue is not the existence of the account but whether or not we have something to put into it. The principle of having a sovereign wealth fund is great, but when the government is running massive deficits, its proposal is not for a sovereign wealth fund. It is for a sovereign debt fund. It would be taking out even more money we do not have and then requiring the additional costs and capacity around a fund that would invest borrowed money. There is also a lack of the protections from political interference, and all kinds of other problems. Will the parliamentary secretary recognize the real problem and understand that the Liberals should not have a sovereign debt fund that would land on future generations?

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Connie Cody

Conservative 1:10 p.m.

“I don't like the bill. I think it lets ministers give money to their friends without having to compete for it. I want a way to hold ministers accountable if they make bad choices with our money.”

Garnett Genuis

Conservative 1:15 p.m.

“Housing costs and the cost of living are out of control. Young people can't afford to start families. The government shouldn't cut vocational education grants while people are struggling.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, as we talk about the situation of the economy, one thing I often hear from young people is about how difficult it is right now for young people to start out in life. Youth unemployment is extremely high, at 14.3%, and we have very low workforce participation as well. Homes are extremely expensive. All these challenges make it more difficult for young people to start out, to start a family and to start to have children. We see this showing up in the numbers. People are having far fewer kids than they tell pollsters they want to have, because of these pressures. Meanwhile, the Liberal government is cutting funding for students attending vocational programs. Will the government reverse its removal of grants to students studying in vocational programs?

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Tamara Kronis

Conservative 1:15 p.m.

“That bill is too long. Too many things. Hard to examine all at once. Government should welcome scrutiny, not dodge it. Bill won't really fix the big problems they talk about. canada Strong fund not in the bill - where is it? Government says big things but the bill is small. We need real productivity and results, not just moving things around.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. The Prime Minister has spent much of the last year arguing that Canada faces a more dangerous, more competitive and less forgiving world. He is absolutely right. Trade relationships are more fragile, supply chains have become matters of national security, and energy, minerals, data, defence production and industrial capacity are no longer simply economic assets but have become instruments of sovereignty. Few serious observers would deny that Canada faces a more demanding world than the one we recognized a decade ago. The question before Parliament, however, is whether Bill C-31 reflects the seriousness of that diagnosis. A serious country must be able to build. It must be able to defend itself, educate and train its people, approve projects, mobilize capital, protect consumers and make decisions that endure beyond a single news cycle. The Prime Minister has framed this moment as one that requires ambition, discipline and state capacity. I agree with that premise. What I question is whether Bill C-31 would advance it. If the challenge is state capacity, the answer cannot simply be layers of state complexity. If the goal is economic sovereignty, the answer cannot be legislation that gestures in many directions while avoiding difficult choices. Bill C-31 is more than 330 pages long. It would amend tax law, financial law, labour law, transportation law and defence procurement law. It would touch housing finance, automatic benefit delivery, crypto asset reporting, the clean hydrogen tax credit, non-compete clauses, air passenger complaints and a defence investment agency, to name just some of the topics. Some of the measures may be worthwhile. Some deserve support. Others deserve amendment. The problem is that Parliament is being asked to evaluate them all at once. The government will argue that time is short, and it is going to pressure us to pass the bill before the summer recess. A lack of planning on its part should not be and should not necessitate an emergency for all of us. Major reforms to defence procurement deserve their own legislation and committee study, as so many of my colleagues have explained today. Lord knows, air passenger rights deserve their own scrutiny. Significant tax reforms need to be thought through. Instead, they are being bundled together in an omnibus bill that makes serious examination more difficult. We have already seen how sloppy Liberal drafting has unintended consequences through a number of other bills that have come before the House and that, we have learned, have significantly impinged upon Canadian freedom. Parliamentary scrutiny is one of the institutions that makes good government possible. A government confident in its reforms should welcome rigorous examination rather than continuously dilute it. The most revealing aspect of Bill C-31 may be what it does not contain. On April 27, the Prime Minister announced the Canada Strong fund, describing it as Canada's first national sovereign wealth fund. It was presented as a cornerstone of economic sovereignty and nation building. Canadians were told it would help mobilize capital for strategic projects that are so desperately needed and give future generations a stake in national prosperity. A sovereign wealth fund can be a powerful instrument of public policy. It can also become an expensive political investment vehicle if its governance is weak. The difference lies in the design, and the devil, as they say, is in the details. There is no statutory framework in Bill C-31 for the Canada Strong fund, no explanation of how it will operate or how Parliament will oversee it. More than a month after its announcement, all we have is a short government backgrounder promising yet another office with yet another CEO and consultations to determine, over the next several months, what the fund will eventually become. That omission matters because it reveals a broader disconnect between the government's rhetoric and announcements and its implementation. The same pattern applies to its skills training. The government has repeatedly argued that Canada's future prosperity depends on building the most skilled workforce in the world, and it does. It has spoken about the training that workers need to build homes, develop critical minerals, expand advanced manufacturing and strengthen defence production. The diagnosis is correct, yet the legislative response is remarkably thin. Bill C-31 contains measures related to labour mobility and employment. Those may be useful, but they do not amount to a national skills strategy. They do not explain how Canada will train workers at the scale required, accelerate credential recognition, strengthen apprenticeship and completion rates or address the labour shortages already delaying major projects across the country. The government's language is national. It is big, and it is ambitious. The legislative response is partial. This pattern extends to the economy more broadly. Bill C-31 contains investment incentives, tax changes and reporting requirements. Some may improve the functioning of the tax system, but none constitutes a serious productivity agenda, and productivity is the quiet crisis beneath the politics of affordability. We learned this morning that Canada has quietly slipped into a recession, with two consecutive quarters of shrinkage. If Canada produces less per worker than its competitors, wages stagnate. When wages stagnate, affordability deteriorates. Governments can soften the consequences through transfers, credits and subsidies. They can send all the cheques they want, but they cannot permanently compensate for weak productivity, and the spending has consequences at the grocery store and everywhere else in our economy as things continue to get more expensive. That is because prosperity must be created before it can be distributed. The same concern arises with the Defence Investment Agency. Canada unquestionably needs procurement reform. Our armed forces require equipment, readiness and capability. In a more dangerous world, faster procurement is not just a bureaucratic preference but a strategic necessity, yet speed is not competence. National security is not an area for weak accountability. The Defence Investment Agency may prove useful. It may not. Parliament has not yet been given sufficient evidence to determine which outcome is more likely. What is clear is that such significant reform deserves its own legislation and its own committee study. It should be examined by the defence committee with witnesses who understand defence procurement, military readiness, industry and national security. It should not be one division in a big budget bill competing for attention with tax rules, air passenger complaints and labour measures. The central question here is not whether Canada should move faster. The question is whether this structure will make us faster or merely more complicated. A ship that cannot sail does not defend sovereignty. An aircraft that cannot fly does not secure the Arctic. A procurement system that produces announcements faster than equipment does not serve the Canadian Armed Forces. State capacity is not measured by the number of institutions government creates. It is measured by the ability of its institutions to deliver. The air passenger rights provisions raise a similar concern. The current system is clearly failing Canadians. Complaint backlogs are unacceptable. Delays are excessive. Compensation is often very difficult to obtain. However, consumer protection is not achieved by announcing rights. It is achieved when ordinary people can enforce those rights without needing a lawyer, a media campaign, an MP or two years of patience. That observation applies far beyond air travel. Capability is not centralization for its own sake. It is not ministerial discretion without accountability. It is not omnibus legislation without scrutiny, and it is not the appearance of motion while standing still. The Prime Minister often speaks about resilience, sovereignty and national purpose. At a time when Canadians are carrying the burdens of housing scarcity, weak productivity, affordability pressures and global uncertainty, we should insist on something better. We should insist on competence, accountability and results.

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Dan Albas

Conservative 1:15 p.m.

“I'm using my time to thank an opposition MP and say the government messed up. Their big expenditure didn't fix the problem. Is this really the best way they could spend your money?”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith for standing up in this House on the very important topic of air passenger protection regulations and the government's absolute mess of it. The member mentioned that we are in a recession and the economy is contracting. What is not contracting? It is the backlog of the CTA. It has around 97,000, perhaps even 100,000 cases in backlog. That means people are waiting three years to have someone hear their case. Instead of the government fixing the system and simplifying the rules, it provided $75 million over three years to make the CTA process faster, and by this particular provision in the bill that she mentions, it shows that it has been a complete disaster. Could the member please let us know if she thinks that this is the best use of her constituents' money in this bill and by the government?

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Tamara Kronis

Conservative 1:15 p.m.

“I'm arguing these tribunals are supposed to make things easier, but they don't. You still need a lawyer. The government should clear the backlog to really make things simpler.”

What they said. What they meant.

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