Shelby Kramp-Neuman

“Canadians cannot afford rent, food, or child care, and many are losing their homes. I want the government to pass our Conservative plan to save people money.”

“Mr. Speaker, Canadians are being crushed by the cost of living. Many families cannot afford rent, groceries or child care. I spoke with a woman last night who shared that she is being evicted from her home, and with a gentleman who lost his home and is on a wait-list for low-income housing. Canadians are falling deeper into debt and being forced to put their future plans on hold. They do not need more announcements from a government that says affordability is the best it has been in a decade. They need relief. Will the government pass our Conservative action plan to save Canadians money and help Canadians get back on track?”

In response to a question from Arnold Viersen

“I support this bill because it lowers fuel taxes and leaves more money in people's pockets. People in my riding tell me that the high cost of living is their biggest worry.”

“Mr. Speaker, our support for this measure is very straightforward. When Parliament has an opportunity to leave more money in Canadians’ pockets through lower fuel taxes, this measure is just a common-sense prerogative. I know, from people in Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga, that when I am at the grocery store, when I am out at different community events, the tone is consistent. The concern is consistent, that affordability is the number one issue and that we need to get this under control.”

In response to a question from Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault

“The government needs to stop spending so much money. The deficit has doubled under this government. We found 150 billion dollars in savings that could help Canadians instead of being wasted on consultants and bad projects.”

“Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to reconcile what I am suggesting tonight, and that is the fact that we need to get the government to stop spending. We need to get spending under control. The deficit has doubled from what the government inherited. We, as an opposition, have identified $150 billion in potential savings, roughly $10,000 for every Canadian. Instead of having money swallowed up by unnecessary spending, like spending money on consultants or the boondoggle that is the Alto project, perhaps the government needs to put its money where its mouth is and look after Canadians.”

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  “The Conservatives have identified $150 billion in potential savings.”

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In response to a question from Arnold Viersen

“This bill was our idea, but I do not care who gets the credit. What matters is lowering gas prices for Canadians.”

“Mr. Speaker, I think, as the loyal opposition, that we should take this as a compliment. My father once taught me that one never has to worry about who gets the credit as long as the job is done. I think, in this case, it is very clear where the idea came from. Nonetheless, what is most important are the results and Canadians getting results at the gas pump.”

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In response to a question from Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault

“Our job is to fight for Canadians. For 11 years, this government has made promises and announcements without delivering. We need more action and less talking.”

“Mr. Speaker, here before all of us tonight, we have to recognize that our job is to advocate and work and fight for the Canadian people. The government, for the last 11 years, has continually been making promise after promise, announcement after announcement. We need to do significantly more doing and significantly less talking.”

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In response to a question from Tamara Kronis

“I support this bill to cut the tax on fuel. Life is too expensive for Canadians right now, especially for people in rural areas who have to drive to work. We want this tax cut to be permanent, but temporary relief still helps.”

“Mr. Speaker, at 10 o’clock this evening, I think it is fair to recognize, as all of us can acknowledge, that it has been a long day. Nonetheless, it is certainly very much the case that this issue is important. As we return to the House, I believe it is worth reminding ourselves of something that can be lost amid the disagreements of this place. Canadians expect us to come here not simply to argue but to deliver results. They expect us to scrutinize legislation. They expect us to ask difficult questions. They expect us, as an opposition, to hold the government to account. However, they also expect us to recognize a good idea when we see one and to work together when legislation can make life a little easier for the people we were elected to serve. That is the spirit in which we approach Bill C-38. On this side of the House, we have long said that we are prepared to support sensible measures that provide meaningful financial relief to Canadians. There is nothing contradictory about challenging legislation when we believe it falls short and supporting legislation when it moves in the right direction. That is not partisanship. That is Parliament doing its job. Bill C-38 is a measure we can support because its central objective is one that I believe members across the House should be able to agree upon: Canadians need some breathing room. Families are making very difficult choices right now. Parents are looking at the grocery bill and deciding what can wait until next week. Young Canadians are wondering whether home ownership will ever be within reach. Seniors on fixed incomes are watching every single dollar, and small business owners are absorbing higher costs whenever they can. Farmers and producers are paying to fuel the equipment and vehicles they need simply to do their jobs. Governments cannot and should not solve every challenge confronting a household, but governments can make choices that leave Canadians with more of their own money and avoid unnecessarily adding to the cost of everyday life. Of course, permanent relief is better than temporary relief, but as we return to Ottawa, members on all sides should reflect on what we heard in our communities over the summer. For me, and I suspect members from every party, one subject came up again and again, and that is affordability. People in Hastings—Lennox and Addington—Tyendinaga are not speaking about affordability as an abstract economic concept. They are talking about what remains in their bank accounts after their mortgage or rent is paid. They are talking about the cost of groceries, heating their homes, getting their children to hockey practices and filling the tank so they can get to work. That last expense matters enormously, especially in rural and small-town Canada. That is not to diminish the very real affordability challenges facing people in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal or other major urban centres, but transportation looks very different outside Canada’s largest cities. For millions of Canadians, driving is not a lifestyle choice; it is a necessity. There is no subway in many locations. There may be no commuter train. In many communities, there may be little or no public transit whatsoever. The grocery store may be kilometres away. A medical appointment may require travelling to another community. Getting to work, taking a child to school or operating a farm may mean getting behind the wheel because there simply is no other practical alternative. When fuel costs rise, those Canadians cannot simply choose not to drive. They have to find the money somewhere else in their family budget. That is why federal fuel tax relief matters. The government’s temporary suspension reduced the federal excise tax by 10¢ per litre on gasoline and four cents per litre on diesel, among other fuel categories. The government itself estimated that the temporary measure would provide more than $2.4 million in tax relief in 2026. Extending that relief is therefore a step in the right direction, and Conservatives support doing so, but it also raises a reasonable question: If removing this tax temporarily provides meaningful relief to families, workers, farmers and businesses, then why should Parliament not have a serious discussion about making that very relief permanent? That is the larger conversation we believe Canadians deserve, because every single dollar matters to a household that is stretched. Ten cents on a litre may look small when written on a spreadsheet in Ottawa, but Canadians do not buy one litre of gasoline at a time. A farmer does not operate one piece of equipment for one kilometre. A tradesman does not drive up to one job site a year, and a parent in rural Canada does not make one trip to the grocery store. Those costs accumulate. So do savings when government chooses to reduce them. We would prefer permanent relief. We have been clear about that from the get-go, but we should also remember the old principle that we ought not allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. If this legislation means Canadians keep more of what they earn, then it deserves our support. Perhaps it represents something else as well: an acknowledgement that the concerns expressed for years by rural Canadians, small-town families, farmers, tradesmen and commuters are legitimate and deserve to be heard in this very chamber. The affordability challenge, however, extends far beyond the gas pump. Statistics Canada released new results from the 2024 Canadian housing survey showing that 23.2% of Canadian households were living in housing considered unaffordable under the conventional measure of spending 30% or more of household income on shelter costs. Among renters, that figure was 33.7%. That same survey tells another troubling story. In 2018, 11.1% of Canadian households reported being dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with housing affordability. By 2022, that had risen to 14.5%. In 2024, it reached 23.3%. In other words, dissatisfaction with housing affordability more than doubled between 2018 and 2024, including an increase of 8.8 percentage points in just two years. Behind every one of those statistics is a person. It is the young couple wondering whether they should postpone starting a family because they cannot afford a larger home. It is the renter watching another lease renewal approach with anxiety. It is the family whose mortgage payment has increased and who now has to decide what else can be cut from the monthly budget. The pressure is not confined to housing. Statistics Canada reported that in the spring of 2024, 45% of Canadians said that rising prices were greatly affecting their ability to meet day-to-day expenses. That was up 33% from just two years earlier. The burden was particularly pronounced among Canadians with lower incomes. Fifty-nine per cent of people in the lowest income quintile reported being greatly affected, as did 52% in the second and 48% in the third. More than half of Canadians between the ages of 25 and 44, or 55%, said rising prices were greatly affecting their ability to meet everyday expenses. Those numbers should command the attention of every member of this House regardless of partisanship, because affordability should not be simply a slogan we deploy when convenient. It should be a test we apply to the decisions we make right here. Does a measure make it easier or harder for a Canadian family to balance its budget? Does it leave a worker with more or less money at the end of the month? Does it recognize the realities facing a farmer, a senior, a young person or someone living in a community where driving is not optional? These are practical questions, and Canadians deserve practical answers. Bill C-38 would not solve Canada’s affordability challenges. No responsible member of the House should pretend it does, but it would provide relief. It recognizes the real pressures facing Canadian households, and it moves, however incrementally, in the direction of allowing Canadians to keep more of their own money. We will continue to argue for permanent fuel tax relief. We will continue to challenge the government where we believe Canadians deserve better. That is our responsibility as His Majesty’s loyal opposition, but our responsibility is also to support measures that help Canadians when they come before the House. Canadians are making difficult choices every day. Parliament should be looking for responsible ways to make some of those choices a little less difficult. On this measure, we have the opportunity to do precisely that, and that is why we will support it.”

In response to a question from Mario Simard

“American film and TV productions supported about 85,000 Canadian jobs this year. That is more than double the jobs in Canada's steel and aluminum industries combined.”

“Mr. Speaker, I will acknowledge that American film and television production supported an estimated 85,000 Canadian jobs in 2024-25, which is more than two and a half times the combined direct workforce of Canada’s steel industry of 23,000 and aluminum industry of 9,800.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The United States warned Canada many times not to tax streaming services like Netflix. A top American trade official said our streaming law hurts our trade relationship. The government was careless to pass this law, and we need to deal with this problem.”

“Mr. Speaker, very boldly, I will reiterate for the record, the USTR warned Canada again and again not to institute this Netflix tax. The USTR, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, in testimony to the ways and means committee of the U.S. Congress, specifically cited the implementation of the Online Streaming Act as a trade irritant, and I can attach that for the record in the House of Commons. We in the House have to acknowledge that this is a big picture. We cannot get caught up in the noise and the rhetoric. This is significant information and data that needs to be addressed, and this is a careless act by the government.”

“The government's streaming laws led to new fees on foreign media companies. This hurts our trade relationship with the United States and threatens Canadian jobs. We should cancel this tax hike and protect trade with the U.S. instead.”

“Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak about the recent CRTC decision, what it means for the ongoing trade relationship between Canada and the United States, and both how this decision will directly hit Canadians at home and its broader implications on negotiations on 232 tariffs and CUSMA. I first want to address the first point of defence that the government uses, which is that this is not a government decision but a CRTC decision. This is a gross mis-characterization of the process. The CRTC’s own press release clearly indicates that the decision is a direct result of the organization’s attempt to meet criteria set out in legislation introduced and passed by the government. The CRTC presser acknowledges: The CRTC is taking important steps to implement the modernized Broadcasting Act (the Act) by updating how Canadian and Indigenous content is supported and made available. The Act requires the CRTC to modernize Canada’s broadcasting framework and ensure that online broadcasters make meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content. That instruction came in the last Parliament, under Bill C‑11, the Online Streaming Act. I will remind the House that Conservatives raised objections to this legislation, including to its potential impact to CUSMA negotiations, months prior to the U.S. election. We voted against the legislation specifically because of our concerns of impacts to the trading relationship between Canada and the U.S. even during the Biden administration and before the current administration’s battery of unjust and unfair tariffs was levied against Canadian industry. Outside the House, we were not alone in our concerns. In June 2024, in a meeting with the international trade committee, Dr. Meredith Lilly, associate professor and Simon Reisman chair in international economic policy at Carleton University in Ottawa, stated in her opening remarks: ...implementing CUSMA in good faith also means not adopting legislation and regulatory measures that contravene CUSMA and antagonize the Americans. For example, on digital trade, the Online Streaming Act would be in violation of the chapter of CUSMA on digital trade were it not for Canada’s cultural exemption. Similarly, unilateral action by Canada to introduce a digital services tax would discriminate against large U.S. firms. We should be prepared for U.S. retaliation if these measures are enacted, and Canadian lawmakers should be aware of the damaging consequences for the broader CUSMA review process. Similarly, Sean Heather, senior vice-president for international regulatory affairs and antitrust at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, stated: Consequently, Americans find it ironic that Bill C‑11 specifically targets U.S. companies in a manner that may violate Canada’s international trading obligations, including those under CUSMA. This action appears to contravene commitments that guarantee a minimal standard of treatment, require equal treatment of foreigners and local enterprises, and obligate Canada to refrain from imposing certain performance requirements on foreign direct investment. While addressing a press conference in 1947, standing alongside Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, President Harry Truman said, “The record proves that in peaceful commerce the combined efforts of our countries can produce outstanding results. Our trade with each other is far greater than that of any other two nations on earth.” Everyone was telling not just the government but all members of the House that the Online Streaming Act would have a negative effect on CUSMA talks. Now we have the added issue of tariff negotiations as well, and all of this is just for the initial 5%. Bill C-11 gave the CRTC the power to do what it is doing. As a result, that 5% has now tripled to 15%, and the timing could not have been worse. The Minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade is heading down to Washington to negotiate with our American counterparts, which is a difficult prospect on the best of days. Now he has to contend with a regulatory body’s recently tripling what the Americans have viewed since 2024 as a trade irritant. I will be quite candid. I would love for the minister to succeed. There would be no member of the House happier than me if he came home with a paper in hand that ends the 232 tariffs sets the groundwork for a successful CUSMA review, but decisions like the recent CRTC announcement make it unnecessarily harder for him, especially considering that the initial levy is still being argued before the courts. We need, collectively, to set him up to succeed, not to fail. Supporting the decision by the CRTC, and refusing to accept responsibility for giving it the authority and mandate to do what everyone warned it would do, is not supporting the minister in his duties but actively torpedoing him. I would also like to take the opportunity to head off the argument that by opposing this tax hike, and tax in general, we are attacking Canadian and indigenous media and content producers. This is simply false. The government has innumerable ways to help out these sectors financially. The only thing we are saying is to not create an additional irritant in a trillion-dollar relationship in order to get there. I have the perfect solution. The CRTC estimates that the tax will mean $2 billion in revenue. I know how we can supplement that for the next 45 years, and it will not cost the government a single cent of additional committed funding: cancel the $90-billion Alto high-speed rail vanity project. Using public funds to unite Canadians through media, among a dozen other concerns, is a far better use of taxpayers’ dollars than paying for a project that no one asked for and that will involve the permanent expropriation of private lands and tear rural communities asunder. Naturally, yes, I am singling out the Alto high-speed rail project because it is topical and relevant to my riding, but the broader point is that there are a number of programs or revenue-raising mechanisms that can be used instead of a tax on these digital service providers. What gets lost in these conversations is the reality of these investments in Canada. These companies, while American-owned, provide economic benefits alongside Canadian digital service providers. They provided $4.6 billion in 2024-25 and were responsible for 86% of foreign productions that year. They support an estimated 85,000 Canadian jobs, and of course, they are not happy. Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin issued a statement on this matter, which in part reads, “This burdensome framework unfairly targets global streamers with requirements that directly violate Canada’s obligations under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.... The decision also undermines the open, market-based system that has helped fuel investment, job creation, and creative partnerships across North America”. It is important to remember that these concerns about Bill C-11, which led to the recent CRTC decisions affecting the Canada-U.S. relationship, predated the Trump administration. They predated elbows up. They predated the current trade war. It may feel great to some listeners to dismiss the importance of this relationship and say to move on. If they are not willing to listen to the economic argument against that, I would encourage them to think about what that means for their daughter-in-law who works in the local steel mill, their father who is on the line at the auto plant or their sister who is working at the pulp mill. Their economic well-being, as well as the livelihoods of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who depend on the nearly $1 trillion of trade that flows between our two nations annually, is the cost of that good feeling. As a legislator, I am not prepared to pay that cost. Speaking to the importance and defence of Canada-U.S. trade is not a defence of or attack against any one administration, Democrat, Republican, Liberal or Conservative. It is a plea to cut through the rhetoric and noise and to repair and reinvigorate the relationship between our two great nations. We as legislators need to think beyond the current news cycle. We need to plan for 10, 20, 50 and 100 years into the future. Yes, that means diversification, but as the Prime Minister himself recently said, that also means deeper integration while building fortress North America. Leaders on both sides of the border cannot change that one part proximity, but we need certainty to change everything we can to restore those nine parts goodwill and common sense. Getting rid of this tax hike is certainly a step in the right direction.”