Kelly Block · TranslatePolitics.ca

Oral Questions

Public Services and Procurement

2026-06-11

“I'm accusing the Liberals of using their budget bill to take more power over contracts for themselves. They're also stopping the watchdog, the ombudsman, from being able to watch them. I want to know why the Liberals are changing the rules to let them give out contracts with no oversight.”

Government Orders

Build Canada Homes Act

2026-06-09

“I want the different governments to work together on housing. But the real goal should be to spend less money and make it faster to build houses. That's what the federal government should focus on.”

“My kids had trouble affording a home. The government isn't helping. They aren't building enough homes for young people. They're wasting time making new bureaucracies instead of fixing the problem.”

“I want the member to look at reports that say the government isn't being transparent about its housing initiatives. The government should show the kinds of housing it is building and whether it will meet the needs of families.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I would just suggest this: My hon. colleague does not need to take my word for it. She does not need to take the word of my colleagues on this side of the House. Maybe she should go back and look at the Auditor General's report or the PBO's report that was tabled last fall. In her report last year, the Auditor General found a clear lack of transparency in reporting numbers on the government's housing initiatives, which further undermines the trust Canadians have in the government's ability to address the housing crisis. Under its own definition of housing units, the government refuses to be transparent with the kinds of housing it is building and whether it will meet the needs of families. I would remind the member that she needs to also take a look at what others are saying about this crisis and how they are doing.

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“We don't need another bureaucracy. We need to get government out of the way so builders can build more homes and fix this housing crisis.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-20, an act that seeks to establish the Build Canada Homes bureaucracy, at third reading. As I mentioned during the debate at second reading, this bill is the latest attempt by the Liberals to solve a problem they created. Unfortunately, their solution is to create yet another Crown corporation, which they promise will deal with their housing issue. It is their third Crown corporation, no less. Over the last 10 years, our young people have watched rents and the prices of homes double. Inflation has soared and swallowed up their ability to save for the future, and the prospect of owning a home has slipped away. We all remember the promise the Prime Minister made during the last election to build at speeds not seen in a generation. This generation is losing out. He has invoked grand speeches since, reminding Canadians that for much of our history, our country was able to build vital projects and the housing it needed. I am deliberately saying “for much of our history”, because over the past 10 years under the Liberals, companies have been forced to downsize and lay off workers, businesses have had to shut their doors and our builders have been unable to build because of increasing costs and regulatory burdens. After promising to deliver 500,000 new homes every year, the PBO estimates that Canada's housing completions will average only 222,000 per year, which is well below the number needed and the number promised. However, rather than delivering on their promise to build these homes, the Liberals are building yet another bureaucracy. This makes it their fourth attempt at using bureaucracy to try to fix the housing crisis they have created. While the Liberal government continues to tell young Canadians that solutions are on their way, it is going to deliver and all it needs is more time, our young people are waking up each morning with less hope of making a down payment on a home, landing a career that will meet their needs or starting a family. After 10 years of getting it wrong, just how much time do the Liberals need to get it right? Now we find out that their grand plan is to build yet another bureaucracy. It is completely out of touch to believe that doing the same thing over and again will somehow produce a different result. Rather than repeal overburdensome regulations or legislation, the Liberals' plan is to create yet another massive, multi-billion dollar Crown corporation to do what the private sector already does, except it would move slower, cost more and require more red tape. The Liberals' record of overseeing Crown corporations is not stellar either. Let us consider Canada Post. This Crown corporation became insolvent under the government and has received not one but two $1-billion loans that taxpayers are on the hook for. This is all because the Liberals failed to act and approve its strategic plan for five years. The Canada Infrastructure Bank, which is another Crown corporation, handed out a $1-billion loan to a Chinese shipbuilding company, instead of giving that work to capable, hard-working Canadians in B.C. As for the Canada Lands Company, its responsibility to develop federal properties and convert them into housing units will now become the responsibility of Build Canada Homes. The six projects that were announced, as my colleague pointed out earlier, had already been approved and development was well under way. Only 49% of federal land commitments from the Canada Lands Company will be built by 2028. According to the Auditor General, federal property disposals take six to eight years per property. These delays are not one-off incidents. They are slow, repeat failures that demonstrate a true lack of will to address the issue in a meaningful way. There is no reason to believe that by transferring these properties to the new bureaucracy, things will speed up or be any more effective. Reorganizing is not reform. Still, that does not seem to resonate. Believing that giving paycheques to policy advisers on bureaucratic boards will deliver results is a failure of imagination and a failure to recognize that a change in approach is needed. Getting back into the business of building cannot mean being in the business of hiring consultants or layering on more delays. A new board of directors would not fix the supply crisis the Liberals have created. What builders need is for the cost of building to come down, and that means bringing the cost of government down. It means recognizing that the cost of government is more than just the development charges and it is more than the cost of GST on the sale of a home. It is the cost hidden in the complex rules that present the first barrier to a shovel hitting the dirt. These rules drive away competition, slow progress and gradually increase cost. We do not catalyze an industry by competing with it, using $13 billion of its own tax dollars. We do not build homes by adding more process to the country's system that already has far too much of it. For greater clarity, the OECD has identified restrictive zoning permitting and fragmented approval systems across levels of government as a principal constraint on housing supply in Canada. Build Canada Homes will not fix this, and there is a real human cost to all of this. Young Canadians are being forced to work longer in the hopes of entering the housing market later in life. We must also acknowledge the lost potential to our economy as construction workers are laid off and home builders stop building at a time when housing starts, job creation and affordability are needed the most. Building has become complex. The regulatory burden has become expansive. It is not Canadians who need to be reminded of a time when we used to build here in Canada. It is the government here in Ottawa that needs reminding that there was a time when it did not stand in the way of letting people build. If the Liberal government is serious about wanting to tackle the housing crisis our country is facing, it needs to stop blaming outside factors and rather look inward to determine a new approach, which is needed in our capital. A new approach would deliver the results Canadians need. The new is often uncomfortable. This would mean a departure from an “Ottawa knows best” mindset and a return to common sense, wherein young people are free to innovate, businesses are able to adapt and the market drives demand for growth. The government, as a customer, cannot drive demand forever, create the jobs we will need nor house every Canadian, and it should not want to. Canadians are the most capable people in the world, and the government needs to remember that. Young Canadians should not be asked to sacrifice more than they already have. They deserve a fair chance to work hard and build the homes, lives and families they choose. The 500,000 homes a year that are needed to solve this housing crisis will not be built by a fourth housing bureaucracy with red tape that prevents shovels from hitting the dirt. Boardrooms have never built homes. Builders and capable workers do. Canadians do not have to settle for a $13-billion project that will build just 5,000 homes a year. Better is possible, but it requires a change, not more of the same. The bill we are debating today is just more of the same.

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Government Orders

Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 2

2026-06-01

“This government is spending too much. If they don't stop, things will get worse. Canadians are already struggling. But the Liberals keep spending and think somehow it will get better. That won't happen. It will keep happening unless the Liberals stop their spending.”

“Madam Speaker, I am worried because the government created an economic mess and now it wants us to think it has the solutions. The government keeps introducing the same failed policies that got us here in the first place. I don't see that changing, and it concerns me.”

“I think the Liberals keep spending and spending. They never stop spending. Big spending didn't work before. It won't work now. You can't just keep spending and hope for the best.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I believe that under way are the key words in that phrase, because the first five projects the government announced were well under way. That was more performative than anything. What I would say is that Bill C-31 is proof that in year 11, the Liberals continue to put forward legislation that keeps the same failed logic we have come to expect. Believing that an 11th try using deficits to fund jobs will bear the fruit they desire is wishful thinking. I heard someone else say the issues are real and the consequences of bad policy-making are being felt across the country by Canadians. It truly is time the government holds up its end of the deal and changes course from the reckless deficit spending it has become known for.

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“The Liberals keep spending money we don't have. Debt and interest will keep growing. The government avoids real change. They just want more power to go around their own rules. Conservatives will see if the Liberals keep avoiding accountability.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, today we are debating the 330-page budget implementation act, no. 2. All I can say is here we go again. This act, which puts in place measures to implement what was announced in the update, is just more of what we have become accustomed to from the Liberal government. The Liberals keep building bureaucracies and spending at speeds never seen before, faster than the previous Trudeau government. Any fiscal room that was generated by higher-than-expected revenues went immediately out the door. For more than a decade, the Liberals have preached that deficit spending will drive the growth in the economy needed to produce good-paying jobs for Canadians. For a government that is desperately trying to convince Canadians it is different and would achieve the results Canadians have been waiting a decade for, the spring economic update proves very little has changed. Every dollar that comes into the economy is another dollar to subsidize itself. The Liberals have caused the regulatory burden in Canada to balloon and suppress innovation and growth. Inaction is a choice. A perfect example of this is the sections in this bill that create the Defence Investment Agency as a stand-alone entity. The powers it is granting to an unnamed minister are broad and sweeping. The exceptions to competitive procurements are vast and can be used as much as the unknown minister chooses. Exceptions are likely to become the norm. No one would argue that defence procurement has been in major need of reform. Onerous rules and layers of bureaucratic processes have only grown. The pace that meets the operational needs of the Canadian Armed Forces has been sorely needed. One could expect that over the 11 years the Liberals have been in power, they would have worked to overhaul and reform the systems and rules around procurement. One could expect it, but they would be wrong. The Liberals' solution to the bureaucratic bloat seems to be the exact same as it was a year ago. It was in Bill C-5 this time last year that the Liberals claimed they needed extraordinary powers to bypass regulations and roadblocks that got in the way of major projects. They have yet to use any of those powers to designate a project in the national interest to advance our resource development. I do not bring up Bill C-5 to talk about the lack of results from the government on resource development; there are more than enough examples to talk about this elsewhere. I bring it up because it was originally drafted in such a way that would have allowed the government to bypass not only certain acts of Parliament to build projects, but virtually any act of Parliament. Allow me to list a few of the acts it sought the ability to bypass before it was amended at committee: the Access to Information Act, the Canada Labour Code, the Conflict of Interest Act, the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act, the Investment Canada Act and the Lobbying Act just to name a few. The only reason this was prevented at the time was because of the minority government that Canadians had elected. A year later, now we have the same story. Procurement has become slow, costly and unable to deliver the lethality and operational readiness our armed forces need. To give members an idea of the state of operational readiness in our armed forces, we can use the Department of National Defence's own annual results from 2024-25. Less than 60% of our maritime fleet is serviceable and ready to go out on operations. Only 51% of our land fleets are sitting at the ready and well maintained so troops can use them. Only 42% of our aircraft in the Canadian Armed Forces are ready to serve and have the proper maintenance. That is years of waiting for the government to deliver while rules and processes grew without any reform. The solution, according to the Liberals, is not to bring about reform or transformation, but rather to grant an unknown minister near-unlimited power to bypass competitive procurement rules. He or she would be able to bar anyone from being allowed to compete without ever having to provide a reason why. This unknown minister can draw $1 billion from the consolidated revenue fund, without ever needing to go to the Treasury Board to purchase shares in companies, and fire entire boards. They can use exceptions to competitive procurements to no end, never having to justify or report it to anyone. These powers can be delegated to the CEO, undermining the entire point having a single place for accountability. A year ago, we had Bill C-5, and the same story, the same solution was presented. In this case, however, the Liberals are seeking the ability to just go around the rules without ever having to explain why to anyone. This is rife for abuse. If power is to be given, the case must be made for how it will be balanced with accountability. This budget implementation act allows the same failed thinking that got us here: no case for reform and no change in approach. As I said, inaction is a choice. Proud Canadians in my riding of Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek were looking for a signal that something better was on the way. Instead, they see that the Liberals under this Prime Minister have not changed their approach at all. Deficit spending still has not produced the results the Liberals have been promising. The interest on our debt will total more than $50 billion. Nobody on that side of the aisle seems to be interested in what we could do with our economy with that $50 billion every year. These interest charges will continue to rise and total more than a projected $80 billion by 2030‑31, with no course correction in sight. Instead, the Liberals continue to announce even new ways to deficit spend: enter the sovereign debt fund. We recently learned that the estimated interest payments to borrow the money for this fund will be three-quarters of a billion dollars annually. They have yet to even tell Canadians what the return on their money might be. Canadians have been waiting. They continue to pay their taxes and play by the rules. They have kept their end of the deal. Saskatchewan and Saskatchewanians have kept their end of the deal. In return, the government is supposed to deliver on the results it promised Canadians. It is avoiding real change. Instead, after more than a year since the previous election, it has opted to tinker with the margins or make small changes around the edges, and it has not been willing to change the approach it has taken to our economy. Its spending and its Defence Investment Agency all follow the same failed logic of the previous 10 years. Simply allowing the Liberals to have more power and more authority to avoid the bureaucracy they created and accountability is not the solution. Conservatives will wait to see who will be named as minister, and whether the Liberals will use their manufactured majority to continue a pattern of avoiding accountability at committee when this bill is referred to it.

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Government Orders

Spring Economic Update 2026 Implementation Act

2026-05-25

“That's bad. I don't like that. I think it's very bad. When will you realize you're here to serve Canadians, not yourselves?”

Private Members' Business

Points of Order

2026-05-25

“I don't have anything to say right now. I just want to look like I'm involved.”

Adjournment Proceedings

2026-05-05

“That's bad. I don't like that. I think its very bad. It cost too much. It didn't help people. Liberals are to blame. They always find someone else to blame. Liberals spend too much. Consultants get paid. Canadians pay the bill.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General did find we needed a new system. That much is true. However, she did not advise the Liberals to manage the program so poorly that 85,000 seniors could not get their benefits in a timely way. The Auditor General certainly did not tell the Liberals to manage the program so poorly that it cost an extra $5 billion. The Liberals want to pretend these failures of Cúram are not their fault. Cúram is yet another example of how Liberal overspending and underdelivering affects everyday Canadians. There is always someone else at fault, and no one is held to account. The pattern is clear, and Canadians see it. Under the Liberals, connected, costly consultants get paid while projects fall further and further behind, running over budget by the billions, and Canadians are left paying the bill.

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“The government's IT projects keep going over budget and getting delayed. I want an independent inquiry to find out why these projects cost way more than planned, and why consultants are getting paid but nobody is held accountable. The Phoenix payroll system, the ArriveCAN app, and now the Cúram software for old age security payments are all massive cost overruns. Seniors are having trouble getting their benefits. The Liberals deny any problem and accuse us of playing politics when we ask questions. I want the minister to explain why these projects always cost way more, and why seniors have to pay for the Liberals' screw-ups.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government's Cúram software platform has become the newest IT project to make the list of over-budget, chronically delayed programs it delivers to Canadians. The program was launched in 2017, just two years after the Liberals took office. The Auditor General found that, by 2022, the program had run into delays and into cost overruns that increased by 43% before a single benefit had been processed by the system. Reports from Le Journal de Montréal estimate that the once $1.75‑billion IT project meant to modernize old age security payments will cost up to $6.6 billion. I wish I could say that this project was the first of its kind. Unfortunately it is the latest in the long list of Liberal-managed IT projects where costs ballooned, and connected consultants got paid. Members of the House voted to launch an independent inquiry into these projects, such as Phoenix, the arrive scam scandal and now Cúram, to find out how the same pattern of delay is followed by cost overruns and by a big bill for taxpayers to pay, while the people overseeing the projects are not held accountable, and why the middlemen involved walk away, getting paid every time. During the arrive scam scandal, connected consultants working out of a basement apartment took millions of dollars without performing any work. They engineered a bid to build the ArriveCAN app, and they contracted out all the work to others while pocketing the difference. The project was originally projected to cost just $80,000 but ended up costing $64.5 million. The connected insiders kept millions of dollars, and Canadians were left footing the bill for an app that the Auditor General found did not provide value for money. Cúram may not simply cost upwards of $6 billion. Reports from March indicate that tens of thousands of seniors were having issues with their benefits, and delays had reached up to 85,000 people. Members of the Liberal government stood up in the House, after taking questions, and first denied anything was wrong, but then they told members to reach out personally and to not make the issue political. Since when has question period, a time when opposition members ensure accountability by asking questions of the government, become a time when the Liberals continually demonstrate arrogance by suggesting that by pointing out that the Liberals failed to deliver the Cúram program on time or on budget, or that nearly 85,000 seniors could not access their benefits, political opponents are playing politics? That attitude is beneath members of this place. I will ask the minister the question again: Why do Liberal programs always massively exceed their projected costs, and why are seniors forced to pay the price for the Liberals' incompetence?

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Government Orders

Strong and Free Elections Act

2026-04-24

“I think this loophole lets people run in too many ridings. All parties agreed on that. I want to close this loophole. I think it's bad like when MPs switch parties.”

“I don't want taxpayers to fund political parties. I want people who believe in a party to donate. Limiting donations is good. Raising money from more donors is better.”

“I want higher fines. More fines show we mean business. I hope the committee agrees.”

“I think this bill is important. It tries to protect our elections. There are some parts that need more scrutiny. We need to prevent fake candidates and foreign funding. The commissioner of Elections Canada shouldn't have too much power. I hope we can work together to improve this bill.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-25, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act. This is a complex, technical piece of legislation, but its core objective is one we should all support: protecting the integrity of our democratic process. Before I get into my speech, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from St. Albert—Sturgeon River for his thoughtful remarks on this bill and for the very good work he does on democratic reform. While the Conservative caucus supports moving this bill to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for a detailed study, there are specific areas regarding foreign interference and new enforcement powers that I believe require further scrutiny. The bill focuses on three central themes. The first is bringing in changes to prevent further abuses of our democratic processes by the longest ballot committee. I know we have heard a lot about this issue during this debate. Over the course of many years now, members of the House, prospective candidates and Canadians have been subjected to a coordinated effort by a group that calls itself the longest ballot committee, whose members have sought to exploit our electoral process. They target specific ridings and flood the ballot with dozens of fake candidates, candidates who have no intention of campaigning, engaging with voters or putting forward solutions and policy proposals to run on. This undermines the trust Canadians have in our election systems. The expectation of residents in the riding of Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek from Humboldt, Warman and Martensville to Radisson, just to name a few, is that as a candidate I run under a set of policies that I am committing to represent, and I put forward a vision of what I plan to achieve in Ottawa and how I plan to represent the voices of my riding here in this place. The longest ballot committee is the exact opposite of this. To call it a protest is to misrepresent the way it undermines trust in our elections. A recent and prominent example was in the riding of Carleton, where we saw a metre-long ballot with 91 fake candidates. This creates voter confusion, marginalizes legitimate candidates and creates unnecessary barriers for voters with certain disabilities. As of now, groups can use the same 100 signatures to qualify multiple candidates. This is a clear abuse of the spirit of the act. Bill C-25 rightly proposes that an elector may only sign one nomination form and that an official agent may only act for one candidate per riding. This would help put an end to this sham of the electoral process by the longest ballot group. The second part of this bill proposes changes to close foreign funding loopholes. Central to our democracy is the idea and trust that Canadian elections should be and are decided by Canadians. Currently, significant loopholes allow foreign interests to influence our outcomes through third parties. If foreign money is sent for a general purpose rather than a specific regulated activity, it can be treated as general revenue and used for campaigning. This allows third parties to potentially be significantly funded by foreign money in practice. That process is the melding of funds. These new rules that would prohibit cryptocurrency, prepaid cards and money orders as contribution methods would extend to leadership contests as well. These changes to prevent anonymous and hard-to-trace funding channels are welcome. As has been noted, with the instance of the 2017 Tides Foundation case, where foreign funds were funnelled through Canadian intermediaries to mask their original source, those entities ended up campaigning against then prime minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 election. That is an intermediary loophole that exists, where foreign funding is dispersed to legitimate Canadian companies and then transferred to third party groups and the funds do not appear to be from foreign entities. This bill would require third parties to use separate bank accounts funded only by Canadians or permanent residents. However, there would be a 10% “own funds” exception that may still leave the door open for foreign influence. That is why Conservatives are urging the government to consider an amendment requiring all third parties, regardless of size, to use separate Canadian-only accounts to ensure a level playing field with political parties. The third part of the bill I will be focusing on is the proposed changes in powers to the commissioner of Elections Canada and new monetary penalties. It is these proposed changes that may require greater scrutiny, which would be done in the House through each stage of debate, and then during the review process at committee. The bill is proposing to increase monetary penalties for individuals from $1,500 to $25,000, and for corporations from $5,000 to $100,000. These are not small increases. Further investigation will be needed, given that the commissioner would have extraordinary powers to apply these fines, to see if it would be more appropriate to refer the matter to the director of public prosecutions and to proceed by way of criminal prosecution. Some of the proposed penalties are for spreading election misinformation. Conservatives will do our part to ensure that the legislation reflects the intent and that it would not penalize or have a chilling effect on having debate and conversations about elections. There are also greater powers being proposed for the commissioner of Elections Canada, in that they would no longer need judicial authorization to compel evidence in all circumstances. We will need to ensure that this is charter compliant. These are examples of where Conservatives believe the bill requires further scrutiny, and I do hope this demonstrates that we are willing to come to the table and find solutions to the problems facing our electoral system. The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs tabled its report, and while some of its recommendations are being put forward in Bill C-25, some are not. The report was unanimous. Conservatives hope the government will be amenable to reconsidering the amendments that reflect the unanimous recommendations made by the committee. Election interference is real, and it is important that we work to close the loopholes and combat foreign influence in our elections. We are all familiar with what happened in 2019 in the riding of Don Valley North, where the Liberal nomination became an entryway for foreign interference in our elections process. A Beijing consulate coordinated support for a candidate who would go on to win the nomination and become a member of the House. Instances like the one in Don Valley North are a warning to every member of the House that foreign interference in our elections must be fought at every stage, including nominations. I know that there is much to consider in the bill, and in the short time I have had, I have not covered everything. Bill C-25 is a technical bill, as I mentioned earlier, and it includes numerous measures that are meant to close loopholes in the current legislation. I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for the report and for the fact that it was unanimously agreed to. Conservatives broadly support the measures contained in the bill that would safeguard democracy and ensure the integrity of our elections, and we will closely review individual measures at committee.

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Oral Questions

Finance

2026-04-24

“The government spent too much, and it caused problems. Canadians have less money because the government takes too much. The government should spend less so people can buy things they need.”

“The government says it will spend less, but Finance Canada admits the plan won't spend less. Net new spending is $90 billion. Interest on the debt is now more than we spend on health transfers. Canadians pay $3,300 per family for this. What will the government tell Canadians in the fiscal update? Will it be more of the same?”