Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join this private member’s bill debate around the national framework on skilled trades and labour mobility act coming from the member for Richmond East—Steveston. He made some interesting comments in his speech that I would like to address. He talked about there not being so many people leaving our country and going to the United States, which is blatantly untrue. I wondered what the numbers actually were for emigration from Canada to the United States over the last couple of years. I went to StatsCan, and it said that 120,000 people left Canada in 2025, with 2026 data suggesting this trend is persistent and largely driven by economic factors and high-skilled professionals moving south. On the key trends in rising migration, the number of Canadians leaving for the U.S.A. in 2025 grew by roughly 3% over 2024, marking four consecutive years of growth, according to StatsCan. This is where it gets scary and this is why we need to do more for our young people in Canada. Over half of these emigrants are prime-aged workers between 25 to 49, with professionals like engineers and scientists leaving at twice the rate of others. The U.S.A. remains the primary destination for Canadians relocating abroad. I think this hits at the heart of the problem when we talk about frameworks and ideas around what we can do to grow the Canadian economy. The Liberals talked about the one Canadian economy and made promises that we would have fewer interprovincial trade barriers by July 2025. Not much has happened on that front. My concern is they are not realizing there is a problem. There is a big problem with Canada losing its young, skilled workers. It is something we have to take very seriously. My fear, and this came out of the Liberal National Convention, is that to make sure young people do not leave Canada, the Liberals want to charge them $500,000 to leave Canada. How asinine is that? It is not about trying to make sure the economy is strong enough that young people want to stay, but trying to charge them a huge fee so they will not leave. A couple of the Liberals across the way are shaking their head. This was on the convention floor. They had a speaker come in who said that they should charge young people $500,000 so they do not leave this country. I would suggest maybe taking a bigger look at what has happened over the last 11 years in our country with these Liberals in charge. They put forward legislation and policies that basically killed our natural resource sector. There was the “no more pipelines” bill and the shipping ban on B.C. Then they were looking at other things like steel tariffs. Last year, the Liberals campaigned and won the election on having the guy who could get a deal done with Donald Trump. He has been an abject failure on that front. Canadians can see now that the Prime Minister is just an illusionist. It is all smoke and mirrors; he never gets the job done. The Liberals have not really managed to get one trade deal done in the year that he has been Prime Minister, and he has failed when it comes to dealing with Donald Trump. I met with steel workers of USW 5890 from Regina today. One of their biggest concerns is making sure they have enough money through the labour market development agreement to ensure they can get additional training. They are scared those jobs are not going to be in Canada anymore. When we look at a steel plant like Everest Steel, it is a natural resource company. If there are not natural resources being developed, pipelines are not needed. The Liberal government has failed on every front when it comes to getting something built in this country. Basically, we have not had a large project in a long time. They talk about the Darlington nuclear plant. That has been going on for 10 years. Their Major Projects Office has not announced one new project. There have only been reannoucements. When we look at why young people are leaving our country in droves, it is because they do not see a future. They do not believe they are ever going to be able to afford a house, because housing prices have skyrocketed. They do not believe there will be a job waiting for them after they get their education. That is why we have the big brain drain, as Statistics Canada has said. Can members believe that we are losing 120,000 people a year to the United States? Our country has all of the riches and all of the resources, and we cannot create an economy, because of the Liberals, that is an economic reason for people to stay in our country. That is something that lies completely at the feet of the Liberal government. We talk about having to do frameworks. I am lucky the member for Winnipeg North talked about being in the provincial government. I was in the provincial government with former premier Brad Wall. We brought forward the New West Partnership, an agreement that allows people more mobility when it comes to trade, so they can go between Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan. When the member said it was largely a provincial issue, he was right, but there should be leadership from the federal government when it comes to that. The Liberals always make these grandiose announcements, but they never follow through. That would be my one concern about this. There are timelines in here, but will the Liberals make the timelines? The timelines do not seem to matter to the Prime Minister. He is just another Liberal. The Prime Minister promised to have a deal done with Donald Trump. He promised to have a deal done by July 21, 2025. He made it a specific date. These are not my words that I am trying to hold him accountable to. He should be held accountable to his own words and his own standards. I think this was coined by the member for Winnipeg North, but the three Ts are tariffs, Trump and trade. On those files, there are three Fs. The Prime Minister has failed, failed and failed when it comes to trying to make deals and getting the tariffs removed. The steel tariffs are a very big deal in Saskatchewan. There is a lot of concern from the people who work at Interpro, which used to be Evraz. It was bought, so it is a new company. There is concern because there is uncertainty about how it is going to be able to do trade. There is a plant in Portland, so some stuff is going back and forth, but there is a fear right now about whether there will be more projects that use steel. For example, what projects are going to move forward that use Canadian steel? That is the other fear. In some of the projects that have gone forward, imported steel is being used, not good, made-in-Canada steel. That is another thing that was brought up to me in our meeting today. Lots of our skilled workers and tradespeople are younger people, and they need to have a vision of Canada in which they can see themselves living in this country. They want to have affordable housing. They want to have streets with less crime. They want to be able to buy a house and start a family. In another statistics report, we read that people are delaying having kids longer because they think that they cannot afford to have children in this current climate. We have the slowest growing economy in the G7. We have the highest food inflation in the G7. That is a made-in-Canada problem. The Liberals have tried to blame everything on others. My colleague from northern Saskatchewan, for some reason, asked if the Conservatives could stop a war in Libya. I think he got his countries wrong, and the guy gets a lot of things wrong, but what he can do is try to be someone who actually supports Saskatchewan and tries to get things done for Saskatchewan. When we are talking on the floor of the House of Commons, the Liberals need to look at the root causes of why young people are leaving our country, and we need to make Canada a place where people see themselves being able to have a good job and raise a family in a home on safe streets. That is why people are choosing to leave this country. It is all because of the policies being driven by this long-serving, 11-year-old Liberal government. There is nothing new about the Liberals from the last election a year ago. It is all the same policies. It is many of the same faces in the same places. They changed the guy at the top, who is very similar to Justin Trudeau in many ways. It is funny that no one mentions Justin Trudeau anymore. They seem to have amnesia when it comes to Justin Trudeau. The Prime Minister is just another Liberal like Trudeau, and his policies are causing young people to leave our country. As the Conservative Party, we have put forward ideas and policies to grow the economy so that young people stay and see a future in Canada. We will continue to put forward ideas that grow our economy and make Canada the best place in the world to live, raise a family and get ahead.
