Pat Kelly

“I am giving my remaining speaking time to the previous member so he can finish his points.”

“Madam Speaker, I will keep this brief and give the member whatever time he has left to restate or add to the arguments he has already made.”

“Inflation is up, economic growth is slowing, and paying interest on the national debt is the government's fastest-growing cost. The Liberals have run deficits for 11 straight years and broken their budget promises. This spending drives up the cost of living. When will the government stop running deficits?”

“Mr. Speaker, the Bank of Canada says inflation is rising and economic growth is slowing, while the Parliamentary Budget Officer says interest on the national debt is the fastest-growing government expense. The cost of government is driving up the cost of living and these Liberals have broken every fiscal promise, smashed through every fiscal guardrail and cut loose every fiscal anchor they have ever set. For 11 straight years, they have tabled deficits. When will the government finally stop its inflationary deficit spending?”

“This bill deals with a serious issue, and we need better rules. But it leaves too many details out. I want to know if the member thinks the details left for future rules have been handled well enough.”

“Mr. Speaker, I think it is clear from the speech we just heard how important it is. We are talking about a serious public policy concern, and there is a need for better public policy, which is what the bill intends to put forward, but there are an awful lot of details needed. Is the member satisfied that, for example, the things that would be left to regulation in the future have been adequately addressed so far?”

In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The Liberals want credit for building the pipeline, but they are the ones who broke the project in the first place. They changed the rules and refused to support it, which drove the original company away and forced the government to buy it.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is always entertaining to listen to the Liberals talk about something they broke and then demand extraordinary recognition for their attempts to put things back together. They chased Kinder Morgan out of Canada. They chased it out by moving the goalposts and refusing to champion the approvals that existed and then afterwards want enormous credit for nationalizing that project although they had forced the proponent out.”

“I want the House to pass this bill to end the ban on oil tankers off the northern Pacific coast. The Liberals banned tankers only to stop pipelines and block Canadian oil exports. The northern route is the fastest way to ship our oil to Asia and earn full world prices. Lifting this ban would bring Canada billions of dollars and help create good jobs.”

“Madam Speaker, in 2015, the northern gateway pipeline was a conditionally approved 525,000 barrel per day link between the Alberta oil sands and the Pacific coast. In the 2015 election, the Liberals campaigned against this project. They were aided and abetted heavily by environmentalist NGOs, many foreign-funded, that opposed that project. Their then leader, Justin Trudeau, his campaign manager and many of his candidates were vehemently opposed to the northern gateway pipeline. This is what happened in 2015. A pipeline was conditionally approved and the Liberals opposed it. When they formed their government, they failed to champion this approved pipeline. They failed to take any steps to work with anybody toward ensuring that conditions could be met or that the opposition could be worked with to ensure its construction, and they killed it by a ministerial order in the fall of 2016, about 10 years ago. Then they brought in Bill C-48 to ensure that no pipeline could ever be built to the northwest coast. That is the track record of the government. They are opposed to northern shipping because they oppose a pipeline and the increased production to fill the pipeline. The northern route is the best route to world markets. It is the closest way to world prices. It is the least number of shipping days to get to Asian markets. It is the way that Canada could get off the differential with the existing bottlenecks that cause Canadians to take a discount on our prices. Getting to Asian markets, world markets and world prices is how Canada can diversify its trade relationships with Canada’s most valuable commodity, by far the biggest source of export revenue and contribution to the Canadian economy. I heard as recently as last week in debate in this House that they claim there was never any shipping traffic and Bill C-48 was just codifying a long-existing de facto ban. That is all nonsense. They deliberately banned shipping traffic with this bill. Bill C-48 prohibits the loading and unloading of tankers off the northwest coast of British Columbia and this bill today would repeal that decision. Let us face it and admit to ourselves that Bill C-48 never had anything to do with environmental policy, certainly not with maritime environmental policy. It had everything to do with ensuring that the northern gateway pipeline would never be built and that the expansion of the oil sands to fill the pipeline would not happen. That was the agenda. We need to go back to that time and hear some of the things members said in this place. We need to hear what Prime Minister Trudeau said when he appeared at the industry committee, I think in 2021, under questioning from the opposition leader. He doubled down, said he supported it and thought it was the right decision to kill northern gateway. He did not say it was because the Liberals did not want shipping traffic off the northwest coast. It was because they did not believe in the project and did not want a northern pipeline. It was not about safety. It was about their opposition to pipelines and the oil and gas industry. So many of the members of the Liberal government and caucus are quite clearly on the record about this. The current Minister of the Environment, on her MP web page, gave herself credit for opposing an expansion of the oil sands. This is not something we dug up deep from the history of the Internet. This is live while she is Minister of the Environment. I questioned her about it at the natural resources committee. I was actually surprised that the Liberals did not have it taken down within the hour when it was aired publicly. It took months before they took it down. We have the Minister of the Environment who proudly opposes an expansion of the oil sands, and today they would have us think that they are aggressively moving forward to ensure that we have an expansion of our exports and that we become an energy superpower. In order to do that, we would have to export far more oil and gas and energy products than we currently do. We would need two or three northern gateways. We would need a doubling of TMX. We would need Keystone XL to be built. We would need an eastern pipeline to Sarnia or all the way to Saint John. These are the things that an energy superpower would need. The most efficient way to get our exports to world markets would be to allow the shipping traffic that is currently banned by this law. If the northern gateway pipeline had been built at 525,000 barrels a day, at today’s world prices, that would be nearly $20 billion a year in revenue. Think of the taxation base for public services. Think of all the high-paying jobs. Think of what we would have today economically if that pipeline and other pipelines had been built, if the Liberals had championed Keystone XL to ensure its construction or had not chased TransCanada Energy out of Canada. It literally had to change its name and moved all of its investment activity to Mexico and the United States. The Liberals have an opportunity today. They can stand up and vote for this bill, although we will probably not have the vote today but this week. They can declare whether they want to actually undertake the steps necessary to allow Canada to become an energy superpower. They can repeal Bill C-48, which was calculated to restrict the expansion of the oil sands and our exports. They have a chance to do that now. There is today a private sector proponent that wishes to ship 250,000 barrels a day from Prince Rupert, which is the closest port to, and has the fewest number of shipping days from, Asian markets. This proponent would need a repeal of Bill C-48. The Liberals have a chance, with this bill, to be on the side of Canadian jobs, of Canadian export diversification and of getting us out of our dependence on the United States as an export destination. They have the chance to do it with this bill, and it will be really interesting to see if they will undertake a concrete step in furtherance of the objectives they sometimes talk about. The Liberals speak of Canada as an energy superpower yet have not repealed Bill C-69, which is the “no more pipelines” bill. They will need to support Bill C-264 to remove the shipping ban. These things have to be done. They cannot just say the words “energy superpower”. They will have to change the laws the government passed that prevent Canada from reaching its potential as an energy superpower. This is an important step. Bill C-5, which we supported, gives the Liberals the power to exempt people from the law, but that is not the way to go. They need to change the laws that actually prevent the activity. I want to thank the member for Calgary Signal Hill for bringing this bill to the House. I want to thank my friend James Cumming for his attempt in an earlier Parliament to strip away Bill C-48. It is a long-time policy of the Conservatives to repeal this ban, which is all about reducing Canada’s export potential of oil and gas.”

“Margaret Harper died on October 3 at age 93. She was an active member of our community and volunteered on my election campaigns. I send my condolences to her family.”

“Madam Speaker, on October 3, Margaret Harper passed away peacefully at her home at age 93. She was the loving mother to her sons Stephen, Grant and Robert, grandmother to Ben, Katie, Rachel and Elizabeth, and great-grandmother to James. She was an extraordinarily active woman who shovelled her own snow and cut her own lawn and was a well-known presence in northwest Calgary, often seen cycling or on long walks throughout the community, including on the day before her passing. I first met Margaret when she walked into my campaign office and volunteered to door-knock. We knocked on hundreds of doors together in 2015, 2019 and 2021. She would sling a bundle of lawn signs over her shoulder and set off at an impressive pace. She was a woman of character, principle and faith who dedicated her life to her family. The Harpers have my deepest condolences. May she rest in peace.”

“The government should not take credit for the Trans Mountain pipeline. It drove out the private builder and spent five times more to build it itself. It also cancelled the Northern Gateway pipeline right after taking office in 2015. This government has a history of stopping projects, and Canadians will judge it by the lack of new work being built.”

“Madam Speaker, time did not allow me to talk about TMX in my remarks. The government seems to seek extraordinary credit for nationalizing and building TMX at a 500% cost overrun from what a private builder would have built with private money after the government chased that private developer out, which is astounding. The debacle of TMX is a further example of the failed approach of the government. The northern gateway pipeline was conditionally approved. Almost literally, the first thing the government did when it was elected in 2015 was kill it with an order in council. The government has a history of failing to allow projects to be built, and we will judge it by the shovels in the ground, of which there are currently none.”

In response to a question from Jean-Denis Garon

“I want the House to pass this bill tonight. It forces the tax agency to measure unpaid taxes, share the data with the budget officer, and publish a list of people convicted of tax cheating. The agency does not share this information and convicts only about twelve tax evaders a year. We need this law so Canadians can see who is not paying their share.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise to participate in Private Members’ Business, because what we are here for is to debate legislation. However, it is disappointing that tonight we are debating this particular bill, because it has passed the Senate not once, not twice, but three times, and it has been presented in this chamber now three times. This bill should have been passed into law quite some time ago. I carried this bill into this chamber in 2019. It was supported by all opposition parties. It was supported by independent members. The only group of people in this chamber that opposed this bill in 2019 was the Liberals. I have some hope that maybe they have smartened up a bit and might support this bill tonight. I hope they will. That is not really the indication that I seemed to get from the last Liberal speaker. I got a lot of self-congratulations for what a wonderful job the Liberals think they have done with the CRA. However, we need this bill, and I am going to talk about it. First, I want to thank the member for Simcoe North for his leadership with respect to tax accountability, for sponsoring this bill in the chamber in this Parliament and in the last Parliament, and for his other bill, Bill C-230, which is an important piece of accountability to ensure that Canadians know what taxes are not collected and what taxes are written off. This bill would do three basic things. It would force the CRA to calculate the tax gap, to share the data on the tax gap with the Parliamentary Budget Officer and to publish a list of tax evaders, those who have been convicted of tax evasion. The Liberals say that the CRA does calculate the tax gap; they do not see what all the fuss is about, but there are several problems with what exists now. The CRA’s reports are not up to date, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer is not able to verify its homework. It does not share the data with the Parliamentary Budget Officer, so we need more than what we are getting right now. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is an important officer of Parliament who is there to help parliamentarians develop policy that is based on the budgetary information that her or she provides. Several parliamentary budget officers have asked for this tax information, and they do not get it. CRA officials have repeatedly said that they will not give the data to the Parliamentary Budget Officer even though they are required to do so by law. They refuse to do so, usually citing some type of privacy excuse for not providing anonymized data to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Yes, this is anonymized data. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has not asked for the identity of any tax filer, nor information that can be identified and connected to any particular tax filer. What the Parliamentary Budget Officer needs in order to do the work of the office is the data so they can come up with their own measurement of the tax gap This is important because there is a history of the CRA, when left to its own devices, underrating its own performance. The Auditor General has repeatedly found that the internal audits of the CRA are not up to snuff. We can think of the call centre at the CRA. The CRA’s internal auditors have thought that it answers the phone reasonably and gives Canadians the information they need. The call centre has been running just fine, according to its internal audits. Every Canadian who has ever called that call centre knows the reality. It hangs up on 70% of the people who call. It gives incorrect information to 30% of the people who actually get through. This is what the Auditor General has found. They found that the CRA’s version of what was going on in the agency was not matched to reality. It is important that the Parliamentary Budget Officer be given the data so that they can make their own estimate on the tax gap and advise Parliament so that parliamentarians have the information to formulate policy and judge legislation. They talk a lot over there about the work they do and about combatting tax evasion, but in reality, we have the Panama papers, in which 900 Canadians were identified. No charges have been laid. In other jurisdictions where citizens were identified, charges were laid and convictions were achieved, but not in Canada. This is important to Canadians, because when people evade their taxes, the rest of Canadians have to pay more. Canadians, by and large, correctly provide information, declare their income accurately and do their best to comply with all of the onerous rules and complicated tax laws of this country. They do their best; they declare their income and pay their taxes, but some do not. It undermines the system and discourages honesty when people get away with evasion. The last thing the bill would do is compel the publication of a list of evaders. Members might know that in a country with over 40 million people and tens of millions of tax returns, corporate and individual returns, excise tax returns and GST returns, all the different types of taxes that are filed, sadly a number of people do not pay their taxes. However, I think many Canadians would be quite disturbed to realize how few people are charged with and convicted of evasion. It is a staggeringly low number. On average, it is about a dozen a year. In a country of 40 million people, does that sound like a government that is tough on evasion? That is within a whole year, with tens of millions of returns. I do not know what the number of false or evasive returns is. We do not have accurate information on that, but most would presume that it is, sadly, a bigger number, and 12 convictions in a year is pretty disappointing. The time for the bill has come. It is time to pass it. Let us have transparency. All members of Parliament, regardless of party, regardless of whether they sit on the government benches or the opposition benches, on behalf of their constituents should surely wish to see a Canada Revenue Agency that does a better job of collecting taxes accurately. Part of being able to do that is to have accurate data and accurate information that can be independently verified and that allows us to transparently see who is evading taxes. Yes, a trial is public, but we cannot search and create a list of evaders from that. An evader is someone who has committed a criminal offence and has been convicted. They do not have the right to privacy and for it to not be known that they have been convicted of a crime. The bill’s time has come. It should have been passed many years ago. I hope that it will pass second reading tonight and move on to the next stage. I hope the Liberals will vote for it. It sounds like all the opposition parties are in favour of the bill. I hope that it passes this stage within the hour.”

“Canadians are struggling to afford food. Turkey costs 10% more than last Thanksgiving. This is because of 11 years of Liberal taxes and spending. I want the Liberals to admit their plan has failed to help.”

“Madam Speaker, Canadians have much to be thankful for in our beloved country, but many Canadians are struggling with the high cost of food. Dalhousie University reports that turkey is up 10% from last Thanksgiving, which of course was up from the year before, because 11 years of Liberal taxes, spending, deficits and declining economic productivity have created a homegrown Canadian affordability crisis. Will the Liberals admit that their response to this crisis is all talk and has produced no results?”

“We have proposed solutions to high costs, but the government voted against them. The government must first admit that its choices over the last 11 years caused this affordability crisis.”

“Mr. Speaker, the member, at the beginning and at the end of his speech, denied a connection between the first part and second part of the motion. He says that the motion could have proposed concrete solutions. We have proposed other concrete solutions, including earlier this week, that they voted against. The first thing toward having a solution is to admit there is a problem. In this motion, we are asking the government to admit that after its 11 years, it has produced an affordability crisis. The member wants to blame external factors as if to say that over the last 11 years, when the government cancelled major projects, and now we need major projects, or imposed a carbon tax and then took it away, the government has not given us the present affordability crisis.”

“The government's rules and delays are blocking hundreds of major projects. This is costing Canadians good jobs. I want the government to approve these projects and start building.”

“Mr. Speaker, he must be really upset with the government that has been in power for the last 11 years. Canadians need results. Hundreds of projects and their applications are waiting for federal approval because the government spent the last 11 years piling on red tape and bad laws that kill high-paying jobs. Last year, the Liberals asked Parliament for extraordinary powers to exempt major projects from its own laws so that projects could be built at unimaginable speeds, and yet nothing has happened and there are no results. When will the Liberals clear the backlog, approve projects, get shovels in the ground and save Canadian jobs?”

“The member talked about our weak economy and the lack of basic infrastructure. The Liberals have been in power for 11 years and broke their promises on infrastructure across four elections.”

“Mr. Speaker, the member identified many of the challenges and problems within the Canadian economy, one being a lack of investment in basic infrastructure across the country. I wonder if he would remind Canadians which party has been in government for the last 11 years and presided over this deficit in infrastructure despite the promises it made in each of its four elections.”