“I oppose this bill and the bill meant to replace it. They lack accountability. They fail our military equipment purchases and hurt Canada's sovereignty.”

“Mr. Speaker, fortunately, I am not really concerned about what the member opposite thinks is right or wrong. I suggest that he read the bill closely with a lens of accountability. He will find that there is a lack of accountability there. Despite what spin the member decides to put on the bill, I have read it closely. I understand the industry and understand defence procurement, and this bill, as well as the follow-on replacement bill, Bill C-40, is clearly failing Canada. It is failing our defence procurement and ultimately the sovereignty of our country, something that should be as important to the member opposite as it is to me.”

“The Prime Minister says housing gets more affordable every month. But Statistics Canada says rent in Newfoundland and Labrador went up nine percent. I want the member to explain this.”

“Mr. Speaker, the member opposite made reference to housing and housing affordability. In fact, the Prime Minister has told Canadians that housing affordability has improved every single month since his government has been in office. I am just wondering how the member opposite squares that with a recent report released by Statistics Canada. In Newfoundland and Labrador, there has been a 9% increase in the average rent cost in our province. What is the member’s response to that and to the Prime Minister’s claim that affordability has gotten better every single month?”

“I do not want this budget bill to pass. It hides a rule that lets the government back up to $1 trillion in risky mortgages. That puts taxpayers on the hook if people cannot pay their loans. Giving out more debt just drives home prices up without building new houses. The government is not meeting its promise to build 500,000 homes a year. We should focus on building more homes by opening federal land, lowering taxes, and speeding up building permits. I want the government to explain why they put this loan limit in the bill.”

“Mr. Speaker, today we are debating Bill C-31, the second part of the budget implementation act of 2025. I am sure everyone watching at home would agree that this is a little bit ridiculous, given that budget 2026 is coming out on Thursday. They would agree even more strongly if someone forced them to read Bill C-31, as it is 350 pages of mishmashed measures, many of which do not immediately seem to pertain to the budget at all. For instance, division 13 of the act before us would end automatic, mandatory, periodic re-evaluations of pesticides; division 12 would reduce mandatory review of the Tobacco Act from every five years to every two years; and division 10 would abolish the deputy chief commissioner position at the Human Rights Commission. It is, of course, a pleasure and a privilege to stand in this House and debate the budget implementation act from last year, two days before the new budget comes out, which does not have much to do with the budget, actually, but gosh, allow me to remark, this is a strange place. This is not what I thought I would be doing when I came here. I have reviewed the 350 pages of the budget implementation act because I think that is what the people of Kitchener South—Hespeler expect of me, to see if there was anything sneaky or dangerous pertaining to the nation’s finance to debate with my colleagues opposite today. Many of my colleagues on the Conservative side have zeroed in on division 16 on defence procurement, which indeed is problematic, but as they have spoken so well on this issue, I would like to focus my remarks on division 7. Division 7 would increase the guaranteed loan ceiling of the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation to $1 trillion. It is one clause that would increase the ceiling to $1 trillion. That is an eye-popping figure. What does it mean? The CMHC guarantees mortgages. If I want to buy a home and I do not have a 20% down payment, my bank will not give me a mortgage because it is high risk and I might default. Another word for high risk in the mortgage world is sub-prime. I hope some ears are perking up at that. If I only have 10% for my down payment, CMHC can step in to say that although it knows the bank will not give me a mortgage, the Government of Canada will guarantee the mortgage. That means if I default on my mortgage, the bank will not take the haircut, but the taxpayers of Canada will. Division 7 of this bill would allow CMHC to put taxpayers on the hook for $1 trillion of relatively high-risk mortgage. This is on the same order as the national debt, which stands at $1.4 trillion. I would ask the Liberal members, is this prudent? Is this the direction Canada’s housing policy should go in? Is this the direction they meant to take it in? Canadians have been clear for a decade: We need housing. There is a housing crisis. The Liberals promised to build Canada strong, to build at speeds not seen at generations and to get homebuilding starts up to 500,000 units per year. They have failed in each of these promises. Housing starts are down this year from last year. They are going nowhere near 500,000. CMHC, the agency under question, in fact projects that they will continue to go down. Now, having failed all of these promises, their reaction is to raise the mortgage debt ceiling. We wanted houses and they have brought us more housing debt. The distinction here is between demand-side measures and supply-side measures. Imagine a town where 12 families want to buy a home, but there are only 10 homes available. If the Government of Canada swoops in and provides cheap financing to all 12 families, they will be able to bid more for a home. The price of homes will go up, but two families will still be left out in the cold, frozen out of the Canadian dream. That is a demand-side measure. That is almost entirely what Liberals have been up to with respect to their housing policy for the last 11 years. The Prime Minister, compared to Justin Trudeau, I will concede, is able to use more sophisticated language to hide the financialization of our housing market that he is perpetrating. He is able to blow more hot air, and hotter air, into the housing balloon, but it is just hot air and not houses that he is generating. The numbers do not lie. Again, I say housing starts are down this year compared to last. At every turn, the Prime Minister and his housing minister favour bigwig bureaucrats, high-flying bankers and fat-cat condo developers in Vancouver, with giant bailouts and other forms of gravy on the public dime. All of these demand-side measures have the effect of increasing asset prices and inflating investor portfolios, instead of putting dollars into the pockets of construction workers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, electricians, stonemasons, drywallers, roofers, and my friends and neighbours in Kitchener South—Hespeler, and it does not put houses on the streets of our cities and towns. Our Conservative plan is focused on supply-side measures. I do not have time to review them all in this speech, but our every effort would be focused on building houses so that all 12 families would be able to bid on 12 homes at a fair price and no one would get left out. I often think of housing policy like the board game Monopoly. That is why the inventors of that board game created it. There are only so many properties on the Monopoly board. Once a group of players has bought up St. James Place, Boardwalk and Park Place, injecting more cash into the system by handing out $200 just because they passed Go allows the four players to bid up the price of each other’s homes. If a fifth player joins the game in progress, they will not be able to afford anything. This is the situation Canadians under 40 find themselves in today. The game of Monopoly has been going on too long with no new or sufficient properties being brought to the market. They have been frozen out of a game of Monopoly that has not been fair to new players since the 1990s. The Conservative supply-side plan is to put another fresh board into play by opening up federal lands to development, reducing taxes and increasing permitting. The Liberals know that what they are doing has failed. I have searched the Hansards. I think that is why none of them have ever mentioned division 7 in this House. Can members imagine that a clause that increases the ceiling to $1 trillion was snuck into a 350-page document that none of them have had the time to mention? We have been debating this bill for a year. They have not had the good graces to even mention in the people’s House this sneaky clause that puts the people on the hook for $1 trillion of high-risk mortgage debt. As my time is coming to an end, I very much look forward to hearing the Liberals finally speak about this clause. Maybe they could start by explaining to Canadians why they failed to mention it in the first place. Why is it hidden in an omnibus bill? Then perhaps they could explain to Canadians whether this is really prudent. Is $1 trillion of mortgage debt, inflating the cost of our houses, not building any homes and failing on their housing promises the direction they meant to take our housing market in? I am listening.”

“The member did not listen to me. I am not against CMHC mortgages. I am against the government sneaking in a $1-trillion increase to total allowed mortgage debt, which breaks their campaign promise.”

“Mr. Speaker, once again my friend from Winnipeg North did not listen at all to what I said. I did not say that I am against CMHC mortgages. I am against the Liberals sneaking a $1-trillion increase in the total mortgage debt allowed in this country in contravention of their stated campaign promise—”

“I made a mistake. The Liberals did not promise to increase debt to one trillion dollars. Still, the member should focus on policy instead of arguing about words. He also needs to stop bringing up Stephen Harper. That was over ten years ago, and I am not here to defend him.”

“Mr. Speaker, I misspoke. An increase to $1 trillion is not the direction the Liberals promised to take Canadians in. I wish the member would spend less time on semantics and more on policy and the general direction. The other thing the member for Winnipeg North does with literally half the speeches I have ever given in this House is stand up and say, “but Stephen Harper...”. Stephen Harper was my dad’s prime minister. I think I was 18 when he became prime minister. I did not come here to defend the record of Stephen Harper. I like him. We are talking about 11 years ago. I do not take the criticism at all.”

“Young people are losing hope of owning a home, and the high cost of goods and services makes building houses even harder. I want the member to explain more about how our Conservative plan helps the next generation buy homes.”

“Mr. Speaker, housing is extremely important to this country. I would absolutely agree that we have a generation of young people who are losing the hope of home ownership in this country. The member talked about our Conservative approach with respect to increasing supply. One of the things I think is also important within the context of that conversation is how much goods and services in this country cost right now, which is also adding stress on the construction side of new housing. I wonder if the member would like to expand on why our approach restores the dream of home ownership for the next generation.”

“The government should remove the sales tax on new homes up to $1.3 million, as Conservatives want. The Liberals only took half-steps. Prices and housing costs are rising because the government runs large deficits and spends too much money. They are also using accounting tricks to hide how much they spend.”

“Mr. Speaker, I think I am picking up what the hon. member put down regarding goods and services. A cornerstone of the Conservative plan has been the elimination of the GST on new homes up to $1.3 million, GST, of course, being the goods and services tax. As usual, the Liberals have sort of done a half-measure to meet us halfway on that part. Half measures only work by half. Then, to the member’s larger point about the price of everything going up, housing just being the most extreme, and perhaps important and close-to-home example, the price of everything continues to go up, because the Liberals keep printing money in the form of deficits. I imagine, on Thursday, we will find out that the deficit is even more out of control than they promised. The Liberals will continue their weird accounting tricks about operating versus capital, putting what are obviously operating expenditures into the capital budget. I think the phrase is, “Micturating on someone’s leg and telling them it is raining.””

“This bill is a mix of unrelated things. The government could have used it to protect people's privacy and rights, but they will not. They keep taking away our privacy online and hurting our civil liberties.”

“Mr. Speaker, the list of things the Liberals could have done in Bill C-31 is literally endless. As I explained, it is a mishmash of totally unrelated measures. I cannot find any thread that connects them. If the question is whether they would they do that, the answer is obviously not. The Liberals have taken steps again and again in this House and in forthcoming bills to restrict privacy rights of Canadians on the Internet and otherwise. They have taken actions related to the Emergencies Act in the last Parliament that obviously were against our civil liberties. If the question is whether they could, the answer is yes, of course they could improve our civil liberties and privacy rights. If the question is would they, the answer is no, they have not. The leopard does not change its spots.”

“I do not want this budget bill to pass as it is. It does not make life cheaper or build what we need. I want the government to cut all fuel taxes, end the carbon tax on business, lower taxes on new homes, and cap federal spending. I also want the government to take out the part of the bill that creates a new defence investment agency and have a committee study defence spending instead. Finally, the government must fully fund repairs to Wharf 18 in Port Colborne and use the shipyards along the Welland Canal to build and fix navy ships.”

“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.”

“We must help people who do not have enough food. But the government cannot just keep mailing them cheques. It needs to fix the basic problems that made them hungry in the first place.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is a sad reality in the country that we have come through so many years where we have government subsidizing the problems it created in the first place. Do we need to help people with food insecurity? Absolutely we do, because they have food insecurity, but we cannot continue to throw cheques at people without dealing with the underlying structural failure of government to deal with the underlying components of what produced that food insecurity. Yes, we need to help people in need. Conservatives will always have that point of view. We will always help those who need a hand, but we need to focus, fundamentally, on looking at restructuring the problems at the granular level of government, to fix those fundamental structural problems, so that Canadians will not need to have cheques mailed to them once a month.”

“This bill should give more resources to border officers. Border communities across the country do not get enough of them. Giving more staff to places like the Welland Canal and the St. Lawrence Seaway would bring millions of dollars in business to my community.”

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the work that we have done on the all-party border caucus. The caucus is non-partisan, for the most part, and we talk about issues like this. The allocation of resources from CBSA among border communities is a continuing problem across the country. I guess there are CBSA resources that are going to come to the port of Hamilton soon, but we could have expanded economic development opportunities along the Welland Canal and the St. Lawrence Seaway. If CBSA would provide resources, it would stimulate millions and millions of dollars of investment in industrial and commercial activity, particularly in short sea shipping. Absolutely, the CBSA should have been included in the bill. Additional resources would have an enormous impact on my community.”

“The government's grocery rebates are just the GST rebate under a new name. It is a trick to hide the real problems making life unaffordable. I want my colleague to speak more about this.”

“Mr. Speaker, my colleague’s passionate and very poignant speech was about economic opportunities for his riding that are not being acted on. I would like him to expand a bit. I believe he was in the chamber when the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader mentioned the quiet part out loud, that all the grocery tax rebates and benefits are really just a repackaging of the GST rebate. It is a shell game that the government has been playing to try to obfuscate the circumstances and the systemic problems that have created an affordability crisis. I wonder if my colleague could comment on that.”

“I oppose this budget. The government gives out subsidies instead of fixing its own spending problems. Next year, we will spend more money on debt interest than on health care transfers to the provinces. To pay for new programs, the government just raises taxes, then sends people cheques to make up for the cost.”

“Mr. Speaker, where do I begin? What concerns me as a relatively new member of the House is coming here and looking at a budget document like this, where we have repackaged problems into subsidies. I do not believe that Canadians want to have continual subsidies thrown at them for problems that the government has refused to, has failed to or will not solve. As I said a minute ago, we have fundamental structural issues with how the government operates in the country. That costs billions of dollars. The interest we are paying on the debt next year exceeds what we spend on health care transfers to the provinces. That is an outrageous amount of money. That means the only way we can pay for additional programs is to raise taxes on Canadians. We raise their taxes, and then we send them back a cheque for all the pain those taxes have caused.”

“This bill creates a new corporation to buy military equipment. I am asking the member if she is worried it gives a minister too much power to interfere with military purchases and stop fair competitions, which would hurt our armed forces.”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her intervention on Bill C-31 at report stage. Included in Bill C-31 is division 16, which deals with the Defence Investment Agency, which would now be replicated in Bill C-40. This actually was the second iteration of the BIA. We would now have, under Bill C-40, a federal Crown corporation. Is the member at all concerned that what the Liberals are trying to do is put more power into the hands of a minister, unnamed at this point in time, who would be able to exercise more political interference in procurement, stop competitions and ultimately undermine our Canadian Armed Forces by not buying what it actually needs?”

“I do not want the government to turn the Defence Investment Agency into a Crown corporation, and I do not want it to hand out contracts without competition. The agency has not made military buying any faster. Turning it into a Crown corporation and letting it skip competitive bidding will hide how billions of dollars are spent and lead to political favouritism. We need more oversight of this spending, not less.”

“Mr. Speaker, I have been looking closely at what the government is doing with the Defence Investment Agency in Bill C-31, and I have to say that the more I look into it, the more questions I have. Imagine my skepticism last October when the government announced it was creating a new Defence Investment Agency. We were told that it would speed things up. Creating yet another level of bureaucracy to fight bureaucracy seemed like a bad idea to me. Then they brought in Doug Guzman, a former senior banker and friend of the Prime Minister, to run the agency, promising procurements at speeds not seen in generations. Now, barely a year later, the government is back with another plan. Apparently, the agency it just created is not structured the way it would like, so now the government wants to turn it into a Crown corporation. I have spent a good part of my life in business, and I can say that when something is not working, the last thing anyone wants to do is add another layer of management. We should find out where the problem is and fix it. If people are sitting around waiting for approvals, we should figure out why those approvals are taking so long. We should not build an entirely new organization around the problem and hope things will somehow improve. However, that is what the government seems determined to do. What exactly have we accomplished over the past year? When Mr. Guzman appeared before committee, I wanted to understand what had actually changed since the DIA was created. Had it eliminated unnecessary approvals? Had it reduced the number of signatures required to get a contract approved? Could he point to a major procurement that had moved faster because of this new agency? When I hear the government celebrating another announcement about submarines or aircraft, I want to know whether our military is any closer to getting that equipment. It turns out that he admitted all of those projects were already under way long before the Defence Investment Agency existed, in 2016 or something like that. Believe me, I understand the frustration with government paperwork. I have dealt with enough of it as a farmer to know how ridiculous the requirements can be sometimes. Maybe people find themselves filling out forms to prove something that the government already knows, and then they wait weeks for someone to say they should have filled in a different form. I am all for getting rid of unnecessary red tape, but when we are talking about spending billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and changing the agency to a Crown corporation, I think we need to be very careful about which of the rules we will be getting rid of as we make those changes. Some of those approvals exist for a very good reason. They are there to make sure contracts are awarded fairly, public money is accounted for and somebody can be held responsible when things go wrong. I am particularly concerned about what happens to parliamentary oversight when we move these decisions into a Crown corporation. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report showing that over the next five years, the federal government is projected to run about $333 billion in deficits, but borrow almost $733 billion. That is a difference of roughly $400 billion. Honestly, Canadians must be shocked to hear that the government can borrow that much more money than what shows up in its reported deficits. It turns out that when government borrows money to make loans or investments through a Crown corporation, for example, those transactions do not necessarily count as expenses in the annual deficit. Will we know why one company received a contract instead of another? When something goes wrong, will the minister be responsible, or will we be told the Crown corporation is to blame? When government decisions go badly, Canadian taxpayers are the ones who bear that cost. That brings me to another part of this legislation that I find particularly troubling. The government is proposing broad powers to award defence contracts without going through a competitive bidding process. I understand that there are circumstances where that makes sense. If our military needs something urgently, or if there is only one company capable of providing a particular piece of equipment, obviously we need to move very quickly. However, when I read through the proposed exceptions, I was gobsmacked by how broadly some of them are written. I have to ask where Parliament fits into all of this. If the government can decide that a contract does not need competition, how are we supposed to know taxpayers are getting the best value? How are Canadian companies supposed to know they have been treated fairly? What safeguards will prevent political favouritism from influencing decisions that should be based on what our military actually needs? Let me give another example of why these safeguards matter. Canadians recently heard the Prime Minister talking about how Canada needs millions of military drones. I could not help wondering who was going to build all these drones and how that contract would be awarded. Well, it turns out that a fellow named Eliot Pence, who sits on a trade advisory board with the Prime Minister, conveniently started a company a little over a year ago called Dominion Dynamics. That company has since raised $139 million from an investment firm called Georgian. A man named David Court serves as chair of the advisory board of Georgian, is a member of the board of directors at Brookfield and was previously corporate director of Brookfield when the Prime Minister was chair of Brookfield. Coincidentally, Georgian has recently acquired defence contracts to produce drone vehicles, which will likely be in the millions of dollars, maybe billions. If the DIA turns into a Crown corporation, these kinds of shenanigans will all become so much easier to do. Contracts will be awarded to brand new companies with basically no track record because somebody happens to know the right people. Does this sound familiar? If the government wants to expand sole-sourcing powers while moving procurement into a Crown corporation, should we not be demanding more accountability, not less? I raised a similar concern when Mr. Guzman appeared before the committee earlier this year. I asked him whether defence dollars were at risk of being spent for market outcomes rather than giving our troops the right gear at the right time. His answer was that defence spending will be used to create Canadian economic growth. He said that National Defence needed to be “accepting of more than one solution”. Does that mean it might not get what it needs because a friend of a friend is opening a new business building knock-off night-vision goggles? Is that what he means by being accepting of more than one solution? I certainly want Canadian businesses to benefit from defence procurement. We have some remarkable manufacturers in this country, and I would love to see more of the equipment our armed forces use being made right here at home. If we are sending young Canadian pilots into dangerous situations, mothers want to know that the aircraft they are flying was chosen because it was the right aircraft for the job. They do not want political connections or investment announcements getting in the way of buying the right equipment. The government says there will still be oversight, a board of directors, audits and reporting requirements, but I want to know what happens before these enormous contracts are signed, not simply when it gets reported afterward. Sometimes the problem is not that we need another organization; it is that the organizations we already have are not working together efficiently. As with any business, we know what happens when too many people are involved in making a decision and nobody wants to take responsibility. Everything slows down, costs start climbing and eventually someone has to step in and sort it out. We do not fix that problem by handing someone the company’s chequebook and telling them they can make the decisions with fewer questions being asked. Our armed forces have waited long enough for the equipment they need, and we want to see it delivered as quickly as possible, but we also want to know that when billions of dollars are being spent, somebody is keeping an eye on the money. If the government can create a new agency one year, decide it needs replacing the next and then ask Parliament to give the replacement even more powers, we have every reason to ask whether we are solving a problem or being told, as in The Wizard of Oz, to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. So far, the only thing moving at speeds not seen in a generation seems to be the creation of more government bureaucracy. How many times does the Liberal government expect Canadians to fall for the same line? It is another agency, another reorganization and another promise to cut red tape, and now the Liberals want even more power to spend billions. When does someone finally have to answer for the results?”

“The government wants to reorganize military buying again after just one year. Rearranging staff does not fix problems. I want the government to explain what went wrong with the first plan before it changes things again. Our military needs equipment delivered, not another new chart.”

“Mr. Speaker, I have spent enough time in business to know that when something is not working, we do not automatically fix it by changing the org chart. We have to identify the problem first. The government created the Defence Investment Agency promising procurement at speeds not seen in generations, but barely a year later, it is already proposing another restructure. I think it is reasonable to ask about that. What went wrong with the original plan? Which approvals were causing the delays? What actually improved? How will another reorganization solve the problems? At the end of the day, our soldiers, sailors and aviators do not need another org chart. They need equipment that actually arrives.”

“The government is moving far too slowly. We are still dealing with last year's budget bill right as they introduce the next budget. They also messed up the first budget bill so badly that they had to bring in a second one. I want to hear my colleague's thoughts on this slow pace.”

“Mr. Speaker, the member made a comment toward the end of her speech about how the government is not moving with speed. Here we have Bill C-31. It is from the budget last year, yet on Thursday, the Liberals are tabling the budget for the next year. The Liberals run the calendar themselves. They set the agenda, yet here we are. They passed one budget implementation act, and now we have a second budget implementation act because they messed the first one up so badly that they had to put in a second one. I wonder if my colleague has any further thoughts on how the government is moving at speeds so slow that this is what we get.”

“The government broke its promises to cut red tape and buy military equipment faster. A year after creating a new agency to do this, they are already changing it. Taxpayers want to know what results their money bought, because press releases do not defend the country.”

“Mr. Speaker, what frustrates me most is that we have heard these promises before. We were told that the Defence Investment Agency would eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy, speed up decision-making and finally get equipment into the hands of our armed forces. Now, barely a year later, we are being told that the agency needs to be restructured. Taxpayers want to know what they actually received for the money already spent. Have procurement timelines improved? Have unnecessary approvals been eliminated? Are troops getting their equipment sooner? Announcements and signing ceremonies make a wonderful press release, but they do not protect Canadians or defend our sovereignty.”

“The government is putting money into Crown corporations to hide how it is spent. We need to show taxpayers they are getting a fair deal.”

“Mr. Speaker, it seems that what the government wants to do is avoid transparency by putting all of this money, as the PBO mentioned, into Crown corporations. It is very important that we demonstrate for Canadians that taxpayers are getting a fair deal.”

“I am very worried about seniors who cannot afford basic needs. Many seniors in my riding are struggling to buy food and have to use food banks.”

“Mr. Speaker, with the interpretation, it did not seem like there was much of a question there, but I appreciate the question. As always, I am very concerned about the situation facing our seniors, especially with affordability issues. I hear so many in my riding say they are challenged just to put food on their own table and are using food banks. It is a shame.”