Cheryl Gallant

“I want the government to support our emergency fuel relief plan. Diesel prices rose by nearly 80% over the last year, which makes food and shipping cost more. Our plan would lower diesel costs and help farmers and families. Instead, Liberal spending and regulations on fuel and electricity are driving up inflation.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the farm-filled riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke to address the absence of an answer from the Liberal government when asked if the Liberals would support our Conservative emergency fuel relief plan. Soaring diesel costs are putting even more pressure on the cost of food. Diesel prices have risen by nearly 80% over the last year. Diesel powers the tractors that grow our food. Diesel powers the trucks and trains that move it. When those costs rise, farmers, businesses and families pay more. That is why the Conservatives put forward the emergency fuel relief plan to cut diesel costs, produce more Canadian fuel and save Canadians money. Sadly, the Liberal MPs voted it down. Lower costs for farmers who grow our food and the businesses that ship it mean lower costs throughout the supply chain. Our plan to save Canadians money stands in stark contrast to the Liberals’ official policy of higher prices. The Liberal plan to ban 90% of plastic in grocery stores will increase the price of food. The Liberal plan to increase ethanol and gasoline has increased, and will continue to increase, the prices at the pump. The Prime Minister’s promise to impose carbon tariffs will increase the cost of imports from countries without a carbon tax. The Liberal plan to impose costly new electricity regulations will push up the price of Canadians’ power bills. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister claims this is all fake news. He waves his hand and tells us, “These are not the Liberal policies you’re looking for.” Instead, the Liberals reach for the Trump playbook, specifically the page on meaningless symbolic renamings. Just as the U.S. president renamed Lake Ontario, the Liberals renamed the GST credit, but the Liberal gaslighting starts when they claim their renamed GST credit is somehow proof that they care about affordability. The truth is that this is evidence of their guilt. Gaslighting is the only way to describe a party led by an economist who makes the claim that giving people back their own money lowers prices. Liberal policies such as the plastic packaging ban, as well as electricity and fuel regulations, increase costs. The Prime Minister’s out of control spending is fuelling inflation. The latest PBO report highlights just how much more reckless this Liberal government is compared to the previous Trudeau government. The report reveals that, before any new spending has been announced in the upcoming budget, total borrowing over the next five years will reach three quarters of a trillion dollars. Every Canadian should know that the first $1,500 they send the government in taxes is going to pay the interest on the Liberal debt. Interest payments are the fastest-growing expense. By the end of the government’s term in office, the federal government will be spending $83 billion on interest payments, and that same year the federal government is budgeted to spend $64 billion on health care. We have an aging population, but prime minister Brookfield wants to spend more on corporate welfare than Canadians’ health care. Out of control spending pushes up demand in the economy and stokes inflation. Liberal regulations push up the cost of fuel and electricity. They will deny this reality as long as they can, but Canadians paying higher prices can see the truth. Higher prices are the official policy of the Liberal Party.”

In response to a question from Arnold Viersen

“The recent 2.9-billion-dollar cut to defence hurts our soldiers and their families. I oppose this bill because it uses borrowed taxpayer money to invest in defence companies so the government can profit off buying equipment.”

“Mr. Speaker, the real strength of our army is in its people, and the $2.9-billion cut to defence this year alone is going to impact the well-being of our military, the individuals and their families. The real concern about the expenditures in this bill is that borrowed taxpayers’ money would be going to invest in defence companies so the government would have a piece of the action, and when a piece of equipment is built, procured or purchased, it would be the government that cashes in.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The member who just spoke is the only person here who brought up corruption and attacking people's character.”

“Mr. Speaker, the only person in this room so far who has mentioned corruption and character assassination is that member.”

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“I oppose this bill. It will not fix how we buy military equipment, and it will only make Liberal insiders richer. Letting a new Crown corporation buy shares in defence companies will lead to conflicts of interest and waste public money. We need to buy our troops the best gear, not make investment deals.”

“Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the MP for Calgary Midnapore. I rise on behalf of the women and men of Garrison Petawawa and the wider Ottawa Valley community to express my deepest condolences to the families of the four soldiers who lost their lives and the 39 people recovering. When tragedy strikes, the loss is felt deeply by all those in the Canadian Armed Forces, especially by their families and their loved ones. Private Shaun Farrell, Private Hayden Lykkemark, Private Aidan Goulding and Sergeant Morgan Wong fell serving their country. Their loss is a stark reminder of the dangers we ask the Canadian Armed Forces to undertake every single day. We owe our seats in this chamber to the sacrifices made by those serving today and the veterans who went before them. We can never repay the debt we owe to Shaun, Hayden, Aidan and Morgan. What we can do is live up to the example they set of being of service to our country. As members of His Majesty’s loyal opposition, we are called to serve by holding the government accountable. It is the duty of the government to appear in this House and give that account. Anything less is a disservice to all Canadians. What we owe Canadians, and particularly the members of the Canadian Armed Forces, is the certainty that we take the nation’s defence seriously. The Liberal government has tabled Bill C-40, an act respecting production, procurement and investment in relation to national defence and national security. The Liberals’ chosen short title makes the purpose of this bill clear. It is called the “strengthening Canada’s defence sector act”. It is not the “strengthening the Canadian Armed Forces act”. It is not the “speeding up defence procurement act”. It is another Liberal industrial strategy dressed up in a military uniform. There is a reason prime minister Brookfield appointed a bank president to lead the Defence Investment Agency instead of an expert in defence and security. This is all about making Liberal insiders richer. Between pressure from our NATO allies, the aggression of Russia and insults to our sovereignty by the U.S. president, the Liberal Party now supports increased military spending. The Liberals saw the commitment to meet our NATO targets as an opportunity to cash in, and that is what this is really about. The Liberal talking points claim this bill is meant to help speed up defence procurement. Of course, this is what the Liberals said a year ago when the Prime Minister created a new bureaucracy within public works and called it the Defence Investment Agency. Six months later, the Liberals said it needed to be a stand-alone agency. A year later, the Liberals are claiming this needs to be a Crown corporation. Changing the agency to a Crown corporation would not fix defence procurement because it would not address the root of the problem. As long as the Liberal Party of Canada continues to exist, the Canadian Armed Forces will struggle. From Pierre Trudeau scrapping our aircraft carriers to Jean Chrétien scrapping the EH-101 helicopter and Justin Trudeau whipping out his pen to cancel the F-35 procurement, one party has repeatedly campaigned against defence procurement. Not only did Chrétien and Trudeau actively campaign against military purchases, but they both won majority governments from those campaigns. Those campaigns sent a loud message to the defence sector and the public service that a delayed procurement is better than a negative headline. Even today, while the Liberals claim to care about meeting spending targets, the Liberal Prime Minister has placed the F-35 procurement in jeopardy. The F-35 review is not making Canada secure. The review is not because the defence department has discovered a new advanced jet it did not know about before. The only reason for this fake review is that it is politically convenient for the Liberal Party of Canada. The Liberal government is willing to sacrifice national security to keep its elbows in an upright pose. These posers do not care about national security if it risks the poll numbers. I wish this was not the truth. I want the government to succeed in buying the kit that the soldiers, sailors and airmen need. In some ways, this bill could actually be seen as a way to get most of the Liberal Party out of the way of the defence procurement. By creating a Crown corporation and a single responsible minister, it may get the industry minister to stop meddling in defence purchases. Unfortunately, this bill’s multiple mandates would replicate the same whole-of-government incoherence with a single Crown corporation. Even worse, the new power this Crown corporation would have to make equity investments in defence companies would be putting the entire organization into repeated conflicts of interest. How could this defence Crown agency corporation invest in a company while running a competitive procurement process that includes the same company? The only answer is that the government would have to sole-source the projects. Who needs a competitive procurement process when they own a piece of the bidder? Obviously, sole-source contracts are rife for conflict and corruption, but Canadians may even forgive the Liberals’ lining their pockets if at the end of the day, the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces were provided with the very best equipment in the world. Instead, the Liberal government procured winter sleeping bags that do not work in the cold. Once the government is a shareholder of a company that no longer has to compete for government contracts, is that company going to invest in research and development, or will it follow the lead of the government’s newest sole-source defence contractor, Maritime Launch Services, and cash in its stock options? This bill has less to do with our national security strategy and more to do with the Liberal defence industrial strategy. Rather than taking President Eisenhower’s warnings of a growing military-industrial complex to heart, the Liberals are taking it as a how-to guide. While there is more of a case for government intervention to maintain critical defence capabilities, this bill would go well beyond limited interventions. For example, there is a strong case for providing market security and long-term sustainability for armaments by expanding munitions stockpiles, yet this bill would allow the minister to stockpile anything the Liberal cabinet decides is in the party’s interest. Another example was recently provided by President Trump. On the same day the Liberals announced this bill that would allow them to buy equity in defence companies, the U.S. president announced the U.S. government was taking a 40% equity stake in a defence company redeveloping an old naval shipyard. The President argued that its equity stake would commit the U.S. government to keeping the facility operational forever. As President Trump said, he and the Prime Minister “agree on many things”, and that includes taking equity stakes in politically sensitive companies. I disagree with the Prime Minister and the President. I appreciate the argument that this type of investment commitment can ensure the long-term stability needed to keep a critical factory in operation, yet as Ukraine’s heroic defence against Putin’s aggression has shown, the pace of technology and technological change is only accelerating. What is critical today may be obsolete in 10 years, but the contracts and scarce dollars will keep flowing to outdated factories because the government owns a piece of them. Even if people support the government taking equity stakes in defence companies to secure currently critical assets, surely they would at least agree that there should be some constraints. Under this bill, there would be no limits. As the head of this defence Crown corporation, the Prime Minister’s close personal friend and highest-paid government employee could buy 1% of a drone start-up or buy 100% of Stelco. That is an extraordinary amount of power to grant the government. Not since World War II has the government nationalized a company without introducing specific legislation. Given how poorly the Liberals managed their national electric vehicle industrial strategy, if we grant the Liberals this much unaccountable power to implement their national defence strategy, all we can be certain of is that vast amounts of money will be spent while leaving Canadians with little to show for it. The Liberals can continue to reannounce new strategies to speed up defence procurement, but the real problem is staring them in the mirror. This Liberal bill is a confession of Liberal failure. It is an admission of Liberal guilt. We owe it to the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces to get them the best equipment, not the best investment deal.”

“The government is using borrowed tax dollars to invest in defence companies it buys equipment from. How do we know taxpayers are getting the best value? This is a conflict of interest because the people buying the equipment have money in the companies selling it.”

“Mr. Speaker, with the federal government investing, using borrowed taxpayer dollars, in the very companies that will be tendering bids and offering their models of equipment for purchase by the Canadian government, how do we know that we will get the best value for our dollar? How is it not a conflict of interest that the very people making the decisions on what equipment the government is going to buy have money invested in these defence companies?”

In response to a question from Harb Gill

“The government taxes people too much. They take money from our paycheques, when we buy things, and even when we try to save.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is the typical giving with one hand and taking with the other. However, in this case, with the Liberals, it is take, take, take. They take money off the paycheques, they take money when we buy something and they take it no matter what we do. It is very difficult to save. Even on the money we are saving, they tax us.”

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In response to a question from Luc Thériault

“Seniors are hurt the most by high costs, especially in rural areas where people must drive. We have no buses, so seniors without cars must pay high taxi fares just to buy food or see a doctor. Fuel costs keep going up because of the carbon tax and other Liberal taxes.”

“Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the member that seniors are the hardest hit. Seniors living in rural communities are even harder hit because they have to drive even to get groceries. Seniors who do not have a vehicle, if they have to take a car to the grocery store or to the doctor’s office, or for anything that has to be done outside their home, have to take a taxi as we do not have buses. In our community, that sometimes costs $40 just to go to the bank and another $40 to get back. The cost of fuel keeps going up for taxi drivers, so every trip costs more because of the increasing price of fuel due to the carbon taxes and all the other taxes the Liberals keep on increasing.”

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In response to a question from Gord Johns

“People with disabilities are hurt the most by high prices, but I do not support a basic income for everyone. In my riding, 30,000 people do not have a doctor, so it is hard for them to get medical forms filled out. Anyone who already qualifies for the disability tax credit should automatically get the disability benefit without applying twice.”

“Mr. Speaker, Canadians living with disabilities are often the most hard hit by any consumer prices. However, I do not believe in a universal basic income in addition to what we already have. With respect to the disability tax credit application, there are 30,000 people in my riding who do not have a doctor. It is even hard to get a nurse practitioner and people are on a waiting list. Therefore, it is very difficult to get that form filled out in the first place. What I agree with is this: If somebody qualifies for the disability tax credit, they should not have to go through all the motions to obtain the disability benefit as well.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“I would only like this budget if Conservatives wrote it. Liberal programs have hidden costs that regular people end up paying for, even when the government claims to save them money.”

“Mr. Speaker, I would really like the budget if it came from Conservatives, because then there would not be the drawbacks and the little hidden costs that every consumer pays every time the Liberals put forth a program that is supposedly going to save them money.”

“I want the House to pass our motion on the cost of living. After 11 years of Liberal government, life has become too expensive. Liberal rules like the industrial carbon tax, clean fuel rules, electricity regulations, and the plastic packaging ban make energy, shipping, and food cost more. These costs hurt seniors, rural families, and low-income Canadians the most. The Liberals need to admit their policies are raising prices and vote with us.”

“Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Red Deer. I am pleased to rise on behalf of my price-conscious constituents of the fall foliage-filled riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke. The motion before us today simply asks that we recognize reality. Reality is that the Liberals have been in power 11 years. Reality indicates that we have an affordability crisis. Our Liberal colleagues would prefer we ignore reality. They prefer the fantasy world in which they are now a new government. They prefer that Canadians forget that higher prices are the official policy of the Liberal Party. The Liberals want to send the Trudeau years down the memory hole, but Canadians are living with the consequences of 11 years of bad Liberal policy. When it comes to affordability, there are four bad Liberal policies that truly stand out. The first is the industrial carbon tax, the second is the new fuel standard, the third is the plastic packaging ban for food and the fourth is the Liberal electricity regulations. Liberals will insist that, taken in isolation, each policy is done with the best of Liberal intentions. The road to higher prices is paved with Liberal intentions. The Liberals will claim that the purpose of the industrial carbon tax is to reduce emissions. What they do not tell us is that the consequence of the carbon tax is higher prices. Canadians understand that carbon taxes increase prices. Every Canadian saw first-hand the impact that eliminating the consumer carbon tax had on gas prices. The only difference between the consumer carbon tax and the industrial carbon tax is visibility. Most Canadians do not pay for the industrial carbon tax directly. It is paid indirectly, and the costs are absorbed first by employers. Companies have to pass those costs along to consumers if they can. Some companies will not be able to raise prices, because of foreign competition. That is why the Liberal Prime Minister even promised carbon tariffs. As all Canadians know, tariffs increase the price of everything. The point of the Prime Minister’s promised carbon tariff is to allow those companies paying the industrial carbon tax and facing foreign competition to raise prices. Before my Liberal colleagues start howling in outrage, I want to be clear: The Prime Minister has not imposed his promised carbon tariffs yet, and I have never met a Liberal prime minister who has not been prepared to break a promise in the face of poor polling. Canadians should note that the Liberals’ favourite defence of the industrial carbon tax is to claim that if we do not penalize our companies with a carbon tax, our European allies will violate our trade agreements and impose carbon tariffs on our exports. Given Europe’s current energy crisis and growing debt concerns, our European friends are in no position to impose carbon tariffs, yet the Liberals will continue to repeat that carbon tax talking point. They will say with a straight face that Europe will tariff us. At the same time, they claim to be expanding free trade with Europe because we can trust it not to tariff us. The deeper irony is that the industrial carbon tax has the same impact on our exports as the U.S. tariffs do. Tariffs and taxes increase prices. It is the same as the other bad Liberal policy I mentioned, the Liberal fuel standard. Just as with the carbon tax, the Liberals claim that the intention behind the fuel regulations is to reduce emissions. The impact, though, is to increase prices on fuels. Yesterday, the Liberals voted against our emergency fuel relief plan. It is part of a pattern with the Liberals. They vote to increase prices at every turn but then vote against any action to reduce costs for Canadians. They even had the audacity to call their legislation that hikes gas taxes in the middle of winter a fuel affordability bill. The only thing more cynical than that piece of gaslighting is the Liberals’ rebranding the GST credit as the Canada groceries and essentials benefit. When Mulroney brought the GST to tackle the first Trudeau deficit, his government established the GST credit and made sure not to apply the GST on most groceries and essentials. Stealing Conservative policies has become stock and trade with the Liberals, and if they actually adopted our policies faithfully, I would sing their praises, but they never do. They always have to put their own Liberal spin on it. With the GST credit, they increased the payment by 25%. That increases demand, and given the name change to the credit, the Liberals want increased demand to go toward groceries, and that means even more grocery inflation. At the same time, the Liberals are pursuing their policy to ban 90% of plastic packages in the grocery store. Switching from plastic bottles to glass bottles would increase prices and reduce supply. A truck filled with glass jars of peanut butter will carry less peanut butter than if it were in plastic jars. Maybe our economist Prime Minister should explain to Canadians what happens when he increases demand and reduces supply. The Liberal intention behind their plastic packaging ban is to reduce plastic pollution. The road to higher prices is paved with Liberal intentions. Bad Liberal policies are raising the prices of industrial goods, diesel, gasoline, everything that is made or shipped, and, worst of all, the price of food. Of course we need to give an honourable mention to the Liberal plan to increase the price of electricity with the constitutionally dubious clean electricity regulations. It will not surprise me if my Liberal colleagues try to defend these policies individually. Their first impulse will be to deny and deflect. They will claim that the policy is not raising prices, and then they will point to $10-a-day day care, which is not $10 and is not available to many of our most marginalized families. The problem for the Liberals is something called the Canada Gazette. That is where they must publish their regulations and, most importantly, tell Canadians the truth. That is where Canadians can see in black and white that the Liberal regulations increase prices. Most important, even if they reveal the impact of higher Liberal prices, it is not shared equally among Canadians. Lower-income Canadians are hit hardest. Rural Canadians and seniors are hit hard. For lower-income seniors in rural communities, its hits compound. The upper-income urban progressives can afford the luxury of paying for Liberal intentions. What the Liberals should not be doing is passing the higher cost onto those who can least afford it. Of course, if they do not deny and deflect, they will try to diminish the impact. Today they might claim the Liberal fuel standard has increased the price of gasoline by only five cents a litre, and they will ignore the PBO report that proves the cost will reach 17¢ per litre by 2030. Whether it is for gasoline, diesel or electricity, every extra penny of the cost of energy cascades through the economy. Five cents a litre might not sound like much. It might not sound economically crippling for the average urban commuter, but what about the lakers, those ships on the Great Lakes that take iron from northern Ontario to be smelted into steel in southern Ontario? The lakers carry well over 500,000 litres of marine diesel. The Liberal fuel standards means they are paying over $34,000 more to fill up that ship. They pass those costs on to the steel plant. The steel plant passes those costs and their own extra costs onto the primary parts makers. The parts makers pass those costs on plus their extra costs to the appliance manufacturer. Those appliances are loaded onto trucks powered by diesel and shipped to the retailer. Sitting at the bottom of that cascade is every single consumer. Only Conservatives are proposing positive policies to reduce energy prices. We are fighting for the cascade of lower prices. We want policies to increase supply, not demand. We need policies that will increase competition, not more protectionism. We need broad-based tax reform, not gimmicky megadeductions. Most of all, we need every Liberal member to follow the advice of their leader, to look inside themselves. They need to ask if their intentions are aligned with the impact they will have on Canadians. Higher prices are the official policy of the Liberal Party, and Canadians can see the results after 11 years of Liberal rule. Housing, energy and food have become more expensive. Bad Liberal policies and out-of-control spending have led us to this affordability crisis. The road to recovery starts with the Liberals’ admitting they have a problem, by supporting our Conservative motion.”

In response to a question from Steeve Lavoie

“This bill makes big promises, but it sets no real deadlines to finish projects. Our past Conservative government had a plan that actually got things built quickly. I want my colleague to explain how this new bill is different from what we did.”

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the speech my colleague gave on the headlines but no deadlines bill. He mentioned that the bill was called “building Canada”. We had that bill ourselves, as I recall, under Harper. Would he make the distinction between this new bill that they call “building Canada strong”, but is actually the headlines without deadlines bill, and the bill that we put in after 2008 that actually got things built very quickly?”

“I want the government to explain why it is raising rent for military members while cutting their housing benefit. When I asked before, the minister avoided the question. The government delays important defence choices just to help itself get re-elected.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the brave women and men serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. Last June, I asked the defence minister if the Liberal government would reverse its policy to slash the housing differential for CAF members by 72% while increasing the rent by 5%. The minister responded to my question about rent by claiming that applications to join the CAF are up, that more women are joining, that the culture is changing, that they are buying weapon systems and that they are buying rifles. He then finished his laundry list by claiming that Stephen Harper left a mess. The minister ran away from the question faster than a Russian soldier does from the sound of a drone. Having served across the aisle from the member for Ottawa South for over 20 years, I do not believe that his answer was the one he would have given had he been properly briefed. The minister’s office had four months to draft a better answer. I look forward to the parliamentary secretary’s response, where he will explain why Liberals are hiking rent and slashing the housing benefit. If I had to guess, he will try to avoid the rent issue and focus on the pay increase, a classic Liberal policy of giving five dollars with their right hand and taking $10 with their left. For any Canadians wondering why the Liberals seem to always work at cross-purposes when it comes to the armed forces, I would encourage them to pick up a copy of the book Into the Breach: A Soldier’s Journey. It is a memoir from former chief of defence staff General Wayne Eyre. A passage was published over the weekend in The Globe and Mail. In it, General Eyre recounts some of his experience in dealing with the Liberal government following the second invasion of Ukraine by Russia: “That began an exasperating two-year odyssey of strategic indecision and procrastination. As global security continued to precipitously decline, Canada dithered, readiness suffered and respect from allies evaporated further.” At one point in the two-year mission to convince the Liberals to spend more on defence, the general considered writing a letter to the prime minister, documenting his concerns. The deputy minister for national defence advised the general that if he wanted to really get his message to the prime minister, he would need to make a placemat instead. This placemat would be a large piece of paper graphically depicting complicated information in an understandable manner. It is shocking to learn that the public service treated Trudeau like a child at a chain restaurant. Despite operation infographic, the prime minister was not persuaded. The Prime Minister’s Office asked for more reviews. More reviews meant more delay. The general described this as strategic indecision. The strategy is not the defence of Canada but the re-election of the Liberal Party. This is the exact same approach the current Prime Minister is taking with his never-ending review of the F-35 purchase. Nothing is actually being reviewed. The Liberals are just engaged in strategic indecision. The Liberals think that by withholding a decision on the F-35, they can use the purchase as leverage in negotiations that are not taking place. The Liberals desperately want Canadians to think the Liberal government has changed. Meanwhile, it hikes rent for Canadian soldiers while paying $20 million in back rent for a slab of concrete it calls a spaceport, which it never used. The Liberals signed a 10-year lease on a concrete slab they call a spaceport. In Canada, renters typically have to pay first month’s and last month’s rent when moving into an apartment. What Canadians do not do is pay for rent 12 months before they move in, but that is exactly what the Brookfield government did. The Liberals took out a nine-year lease on a concrete slab and agreed to pay for 10 years.”

In response to a question from Arnold Viersen

“It will take a long time to fix the damage the last prime minister caused. The same people are still in power, and another environment minister could easily shut down projects again.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is going to take quite a while to make up for the damage the previous prime minister did. The problem is, we still have the same cast of characters here, and all it takes is another left-wing zealot to be in the position of environment minister and everything will shut down again.”

“Those projects started before this bill became law, so this bill cannot take credit for them.”

“Mr. Speaker, all I can say is thank God those projects got started before Bill C-39 came into force.”