Philip Lawrence
Northumberland—Clarke, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“When everyone else said that they were not going to get the sale or the business was not going to grow, Ziad would always find a way. If members have had the honour and privilege of meeting Lebanese Canadians, they know that, bar none, there are no better business people in this country or anywhere in the world.”
“They have been there, making those breakthroughs, making our world literally a better place, including saving lives with medical breakthroughs. Canada is more independent.”
“Mr. Speaker, I will get to the punchline because I do not want to keep the member waiting. We have always needed the type of entrepreneurship and innovation that has been led by Canadians of Arabic origin. I want to tell members a story about a Lebanese gentleman who I got to know. His name is Ziad. He is not the member in the House.”
“He supported other Lebanese members of his community within Canada. His daughter went on to be a very successful lawyer. That is the type of entrepreneurship innovation that Canada is increasingly in need of.”
“It makes all the sense in the world to acknowledge that diversity with a spirit of inclusivity so we can allow all Canadians to achieve the economic dream that, unfortunately, because of 10 years of Liberal mismanagement, has increasingly become more difficult to achieve.”
“Our inflation is still within range of 2.8%, but is creeping up. We have the highest food inflation. A quarter of the population is food-insecure. While we have always been highly dependent on Canadians of Arabic origin, we are even more dependent right now, because we need their entrepreneurial spirit.”
The complete record
Every one of 217 lines we hold for Philip Lawrence, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 5.
“As businesses do not have the ability to go forward, to move, to grow and to invest, it multiplies throughout the economy. If one business fails, what happens is that those companies that supply the company may also fail, which cascades across the entire economy. What then happens is that more individuals require the assistance of the state going forward, which requires the government to pay more money. This cycle just continues. As more money is taken out of the private sector, the private sector shrinks even more, which shrinks the tax base and puts greater needs on the state. This creates a socialist death spiral, where the private sector just gets smaller and smaller and the state gets bigger and bigger. The reality is that the innovators, the job creators, are snuffed out one by one.”
“In any modern society, there is a calculus that has to be made: How many resources are dedicated to the public sector, and how many resources are dedicated to the private sector? (1245) I want to start by saying that the public sector has many great purposes: our police, fire and armed forces. Even the equity ability of the government should not be understated, but the challenge is, if too many of the resources are put on the public side of the ledger, the private sector of the economy ends up being starved. This creates what has been seen in many countries, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela, Cuba and many others, which is a socialist death spiral of the economy. What happens is that as the private sector gets starved of oxygen or resources or capital, this starts to have a compounding impact.”
“In other words, they trusted individuals to do what was in their best interests and also in the company's best interests, going forward. By putting in place that culture of personal responsibility, not only did it have the effect of making people more entrepreneurial and more innovative, but it brought people into the organization and, quite frankly, brought people together. No longer did they look at other people as the enemy or as their competitors in the corporation, they saw their colleagues as people who could potentially help them up the ladder. The empirical evidence is clear. The next subject I would like to talk about is what I have deemed to be the fiscal or financial imbalance in our country.”
“One of his conclusions talked about the level of control, bureaucracy and rules in a corporation. He said that, ultimately, governments, or actually in this case, companies, often put copious numbers of rules in place in order to fence in, or box in, a couple of bad actors. What happened with all these rules was that those folks who were entrepreneurs, who were inventive and who were driving the productivity of those companies forward were snuffed out. Once again, the book is called Good to Great . I highly recommend that everyone check it out. In his research, he compiled the empirical data. Those companies with too much regulation almost always failed. They were unable to compete with those businesses that, instead of hemming individuals in with these oppressive regulations, established a culture of responsibility.”
“If Canadians do not believe politicians, it may be because there have been politicians, even in this very House, who have been disingenuous and who have not been entirely believable. I would like to direct attention to a scholarly book written on business by one of the bright lights in terms of academic discussion of businesses and how businesses succeed. Jim Collins wrote Good to Great . For those with no knowledge of this, I highly recommend it. His books have been highly influential, not just in the business sector but in the non-governmental, non-profit and charitable sectors as well. He had a number of different rules based on an incredibly large study that he did of many companies over a long period of time. The empirical data in there is really undeniable.”
“This is across different sectors, including manufacturing in my great province of Ontario, where we have some of the best manufacturers in the entire world. When I meet with them, and I have met with many of them in my own riding in towns like Cobourg and Port Hope, they all talk about their inability to fully exploit their potential because of the amount of red tape and regulation surrounding them, particularly at the federal level. The ones who ultimately benefit from a corporation or a company being successful are the workers, because when a company is successful, it is the workers that will receive much of the compensation that comes from that. However, when we look at this, we see this regulation, and we see things slowing down.”
“Mr. Speaker, as always, it is an honour and privilege to rise in the House. Today, we are discussing the budget implementation act. I want to talk, just in generalities, about the importance of the private sector and of the individual workers, entrepreneurs and job creators across this great country. Ultimately, they will drive our productivity and our economy forward. Unfortunately, the Liberal government has been working at cross-purposes to empowering them and getting them to do the work that they do great, which is to create jobs and wealth. In our country, as nearly any metric by nearly any international or domestic organization will show, we have extremely high rates of taxation and regulation. This regulation has the undeniable impact of limiting our potential and our ability to fully exploit our economy as we go forward.”
“Mr. Speaker, to the chair of the transportation committee, it should not take opposition parties calling emergency meetings to get a parliamentary committee to meet, like it is supposed to, but that is exactly what the opposition parties have been forced to do. When we had a meeting, in the middle of it, the Liberals suspended and ran out the back door. Will the chair confirm that there are scheduled meetings, or will they run out the back door again?”
“Madam Speaker, we continue to hear these old, tired lines from the so-called new government. The Liberals tell us again and again that Canadians have never had it so good. Here is the reality. Food bank usage is at record rates, with over two million visits per month. Meanwhile, Brookfield's stock has gone up by over 20% since the Prime Minister got elected. Maybe that is just a coincidence. Why do Canadians have to continue to suffer while Liberal elites get wealthier?”
“Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister 's priorities are clear. He has gone from elbows up to putting his hands in the air and saying “Who cares?” when it comes to negotiating for Canada. However, he is still working hard for the interests of Brookfield. We learned in the recent budget that the Liberals are giving $500 million to the European Space Agency. Guess who owns 50% of the U.K. campus where those funds are going. Members guessed it right: Brookfield. Why does the Prime Minister continue to put his financial interests above the interests of Canadians?”
“Liberal members of the transport committee need to fulfill their democratic responsibility, let victims be heard and let parliamentarians get back to work.”
“Madam Speaker, members of Parliament, above all else, are servants of the Canadian people. Whether we are working in the chamber or in the committee rooms, we must carry that hallowed responsibility wherever we go. Constituents are counting on us to carry out the work they sent us here to do. Right now, members of the transport committee are being denied that opportunity to work and serve. Liberal MPs are obstructing our work because they do not want to hear the testimony of victims in our study of unsafe truck driving practices. Voting against our motion to hear from victims is the Liberals' democratic right. However, cancelling meetings to avoid a vote is not just wrong; it is undemocratic. Enough is enough.”
“Mr. Speaker, we have heard that tired line from the current government and the previous one: “Canadians have never had it so good”, but the reality is that Canadians are struggling, families are struggling and workers are struggling, yet the government keeps defending the indefensible. While Canadians are lined up in record numbers at food banks, Liberal bureaucrats are living the Liberal life of luxury. Will the government take any disciplinary action against the individual and maybe even curtail his travel budget?”
“Mr. Speaker, every dollar the Liberals spend comes out of the pockets of hard-working Canadians. Senior Liberal appointee Pierre Tremblay nearly doubled his former travel budget to allow him to spend thousands of dollars on unnecessary limo rides. Instead of asking young Canadians to sacrifice their future, why does the Prime Minister not ask one of his top bureaucrats to maybe sacrifice a limo ride here and there?”
“Mr. Speaker, when the government picks winners and losers, the ultimate losers are Canadians. It is individual Canadian businesswomen and businessmen who are in the best position to make those decisions. With respect to Bill C-69 and other pieces of legislation like it, the reality is that in Canada we have a GDP-per-hour problem, a productivity issue. The average in Canada is about $50 to $60. In oil and gas, it is $500. If we want to solve our productivity problem, it goes through Alberta, Canadian energy and Canadian oil and gas.”
“Mr. Speaker, the reality is that, as the government continues to grow its debt and deficits and mortgage Canada's future, Quebec and the rest of the provinces will see decreasing amounts of investment in them. The money will just run out. If we squeeze and squeeze the private sector, eventually it will stop producing golden eggs. We need to reinvest in the private sector. We need to reinvest in Canadians, not the Canadian government.”
“Mr. Speaker, with $78 billion, we could rebuild his entire community, every house, every hospital. We could rebuild everything. For $50 billion in interest, we could rebuild the member opposite's entire community as well. Instead of spending money on debt and deficits and helping the people at Brookfield, let us actually help Canadians.”
“Every time we have increased taxes, the economy has contracted. We can see this. As one of the most compelling pieces of evidence, if we track the Canadian dollar over the last 30 or 40 years, we see that underneath every single Conservative prime minister, the Canadian dollar has spiked in value. Do members know what happens as soon as a Liberal is elected? It falls almost directly. It is really uncanny. It dips down. We had an opportunity to free our people or pad Liberal insiders and bureaucrats, and we know what the Liberals have decided to do.”
“It becomes more money, as great entrepreneurs across this land, from Quebec to British Columbia, utilize that cash to grow their businesses and employ more people, who then go out and spend more money to empower more businesses. This is as opposed to the government's plan to take truckloads of more and more money to Ottawa and dump it on the fire. That money does not get multiplied. In fact, it gets reduced. After nearly 100 years of undeniable truth, we have found that when we reduce the burden on the private sector, when we reduce the burden on the people and when we give them more freedom, there is more prosperity. That has been the case for well over 100 years. Whenever tax cuts have happened, whether by Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper or any of the great prime ministers of the past, we grew the economy.”
“They tell the Conservatives they are spending less and tell the NDP they are spending more. Obviously, they cannot do both things at the same time, even though that is what they say. The verdict is in. We see that program spending is going to increase by over 16% to over $100 billion. What is that going to result in? It will result in debt charges growing from over $50 billion to over $70 billion. That money has to come from somewhere. It will come from hard-working Canadians through either direct taxation or inflation. Either way, we are withdrawing more money from the private sector. That in itself is not good. The challenge is that it hurts even more than that, because money in the private sector gets multiplied.”
“The way that capitalism works is it counts on millions of Canadians to make thousands of different decisions. Those individual decision points allow us to be more efficient. What has happened in Ottawa is an increasing centralization of those funds. We have taken the money from all the people who have earned it and are so brilliant at allocating resources and given it to bureaucrats to, unfortunately in many cases, squander, as we have seen with the green slush fund and the numerous scandals of money going out the door. We need to get more of those resources back to the individuals who actually earned them and are so careful with spending each and every dollar, to maximize resources as we go forward. The Liberals will say they are spending less and spending more at the same time. This is a George Orwell-type quote for them to say.”
“An American worker, for example, has two to three times as much investment in the tools and equipment they are utilizing compared to a Canadian worker. There is an analogy I often use. If two workers are competing to dig a hole and one has a shovel and the other has a backhoe, the one who has the backhoe will win 100 times no matter how hard the man or woman with the shovel works at digging the hole. We have seen the economy increasingly starved of capital. What is the government's response? It is going to suffocate the private sector more. It is going to suck more resources out of the private sector and out of the women and men who have the best ability to reallocate resources. Ultimately, what happens when there is an allocation of resources?”
“(1650) The public sector is absolutely necessary and is important for our safety net, health care and equity, but at some point, we have to stop starving the private sector of resources. It is ultimately where our productivity comes from. It is not shocking, then, that as the government increasingly reallocated resources from the private sector to the public sector, we saw declining productivity. The OECD has us ranked as one of the worst performers with respect to productivity. That is not because we do not have the best workers in the world. We do. Where the problem lies is in both innovation and capital. We have been one of the worst countries over the last 10 years with respect to investments.”
“I have had a bit of fun to show what $78 billion could get us, and we have heard from some of the experts. The reality is that this is a scary time for Canada. This budget will encumber our country with generational debt, without any positive transformation, or none to point to. There are 78 billion reasons we should not vote for the budget. The reality is that we are coming off 10 years of what we can call fiscal malfeasance. The government has failed Canadians at every turn. In the last 10 years, we have had the worst economic growth since the Great Depression. How did we get here? The government created a fiscal imbalance. Increasingly, it put more and more resources into the public sector while starving the private sector.”
“This budget is a financial disaster. Our youth and future new Canadians will be left to pay off the massive spending spree well past when the authors of this mess are gone. And to pay it off there are really only three paths: significant tax increases to pay down the growing debt and increased debt charges; significant austerity or both. In the end, this budget isn’t a spaghetti western, it’s a slow-motion fiscal shootout where taxpayers are the ones left holding the smoking gun. The good parts are minor cameos, the bad dominates the middle, and the ugly rides off with our future saddled in debt. If this is what passes for “generational investment,” future generations may wish they’d been written out of the script. That is the reality of the budget.”
“For $78 billion, they could fly 780 Artemis moon missions. Maybe someone is into clean energy and thinks that is important, as I do. They could install 1,500 gigawatt facilities. Health care, of course, is important to us all. If we did not have this deficit, we could build over 7,000 hospitals. In education, we could endow over 1,500 Harvards across this country with $78 billion. This one is fun: If we took $100 bills and stacked them to reach $78 billion, we would be higher than the orbit for space. If we had gold, we would have 10% of all the gold ever mined in human history. That is 39 billion iPhones. It is also enough to give everyone on the planet $10. That is a lot of money. I will tell members what some of the experts have said as well. Kim Moody said: The ugly outweighs the good by a significant amount.”
“Maybe if they work for Brookfield they will, but the rest of us really will not have that opportunity, so I will give people an idea of what they could do with $78 billion. With $78 billion, they could buy over 7,000 private islands. They could buy over 700 Icon-class mega-yachts. Those are the types that Jeff Bezos and Brookfield-type folks have. They could buy over 30,000 luxury homes in Beverly Hills. They could buy 100 of the top soccer clubs. They could buy about 15 or so NFL franchises. They could buy themselves 15,000 private jets. If people are not interested in those wealthy accoutrements, I have more ideas people might be interested in. They could fund the World Food Programme to end hunger at the United Nations for 10 years. For 10 years, they could feed the hungry. Maybe space exploration is of interest to people.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour and privilege to rise in this House. At the end of the day, I do not think there is a better saying to sum up this budget than Winston Churchill's; he said that a nation trying to tax itself into prosperity is akin to a man jumping into a bucket and then yanking on the handle and wondering why he did not get pulled up. There has never once been a country in the entire history of humanity that has been able to tax itself into prosperity, and it will not start here. I wanted to start with a bit of fun, but it makes a point. Of course, the deficit was announced at $78 billion. That can be hard for people to wrap their heads around. Seventy-eight billion is not a number that most people will come across.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is odd to me that the Liberals do a great job of talking about how they are giving money to people, but they do not ever state where that money comes from, which is also the people. They go out to our communities and our ridings and take that money, take a chunk of it to Ottawa and give out the shells to the rest of us. Does the member not realize they are actually impoverishing Canadians with their high rates of taxation and even higher rates of spending?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have been in power for a decade, and Canadians are feeling the results. They are struggling with the high cost of living, including rising food prices, skyrocketing housing costs, and paycheques that just do not go far enough. This is a simple concept: The more the Liberals spend, the more things cost. Reckless Liberal spending and increasing tax increases are making life harder for Canadians. It is time to reverse course. Conservatives have a plan for the budget. We have got great demands. We are asking to get rid of hidden taxes on Canadians' food. We want to cut taxes on work, homebuilding, investments and energy. We want the government to keep the deficit under $42 billion. Canadians are sick of Liberal buzzwords. We are sick and tired of the lectures. We are ready for results.”
“His answer was zero. That is what government will accomplish. It will spend millions of dollars, but the problem will remain the same. When will the government finally wake up and get out of the way so that home builders can build homes?”
“Mr. Speaker, Winston Churchill once said that if a country tries to tax itself into prosperity, it is analogous to a man or woman standing in a bucket, pulling on the handles as hard as they can and wondering why they do not go up. If, in fact, more government spending were the answer, we would have one of the best economies in the world and we would have affordable housing. The reality is, we have a tremendous amount of expenditures. They said not to take their word for it, to take the Prime Minister 's word; he said, just last night, that government expenditures have grown by more than 7% on the operational side over the last decade. The Liberals spent and spent and spent. In fact, the former housing minister, who is now the justice minister , was in front of committee. I asked him how many houses the housing accelerator had built.”
“Why does he not make some sacrifices instead of telling our young people, “Well, we know you can't afford houses, suck it.” This is his response to them. We need to do better. When will this government finally wake up, change direction and make housing affordable again?”
“It has really been an economic lost decade, which has put Canadians in a position of earning less and things costing more. At the end of the day, it is not the amount of money we print, it is how many goods we produce and how efficiently. In Canada, we have seen a market loss relative to the rest of the world, which has created an economic nightmare where people are unable to afford the basic necessities of life, everything from food to housing. Now, we have an entire generation that has nearly given up on the hope of owning a house. What is this Prime Minister 's response? He says that we have to make sacrifices. Well, why does he not make some sacrifices? Why does he not donate the billions of dollars he has invested in Brookfield and other countries?”
“The one who helped direct us into this economic quagmire has been put in charge of the future, and somehow this is supposed to be a new government, a government that has woken up. I agree with some of the Prime Minister's criticism of the past 10 years, because there can be no doubt, what we need is a new direction where people can afford houses again. I will run through a couple of the economic numbers in case people out there are unaware of just how challenging the economy has become over the last decade. We had the third-lowest growth in the OECD among 30 nations, dropping well below the OECD average. In fact, GDP per capita, which is simply the economic output per person, has dropped to almost 0% over the last 10 years.”
“However, at the same time, we are seeing people lose equity in the value of their house. We have a problem that, really, only Liberals created. There are people who cannot afford to keep their house, people who cannot afford to buy a house and people who are seeing a decline in the value in their house all at the same time. The heart of this issue comes down to some fundamental economic issues that have arisen over the last 10 years. We have seen an incredibly bad economy over the last 10 years. If members do not believe me, they can just ask the Prime Minister . In his speech, he talked about how bad the economy has been managed over the last 10 years and how badly his party has done. It almost reads like a Monty Python skit with the former minister of industry now being the Minister of Finance .”
“Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to get up and close things off today. I am looking forward to a good discussion here that is beneficial to the people of Canada, particularly the people of Northumberland—Clarke. I rose on June 9 to ask a question with respect to housing. I said, “In 2015, housing costs were an average of 38% of Canadian household budgets. Today, it is overwhelming. It is 52%.” This is a dramatic increase upward of over 20%. We are now sitting here in a housing crisis, which continues. The housing crisis, in some ways, has actually worsened, because we are now seeing people who are facing the renewal of their mortgages, and they cannot afford to stay in their houses. We are seeing an uptake in foreclosures and power of sales, and that has a devastating impact on many families across Canada.”
“Mr. Speaker, if more government spending were the solution, then Canada would have the most prosperous economy in the G7. The result is that we have the slowest in the G7. The Liberals can call it what they want. They can call it government spending, government investment or the fluffy kitten fund, but the result is the same. It comes out of the pockets of hard-working Canadians. Once again, will the Prime Minister keep his promise and keep the deficit under $42 billion?”
“Mr. Speaker, every dollar the Prime Minister spends comes out of the pockets of hard-working Canadians. His finance minister was industry minister for the same Trudeau government that doubled the debt and promised that it would lead to more investments. The result is the worst per capita GDP growth in the G7 and more than a 10% drop in investments. Now the Prime Minister is set to double the Trudeau-era deficits. Will the Prime Minister keep his promise and keep the deficit under $42 billion?”
“Mr. Speaker, faith is a word that has meant so much to so many, yet in today's world, often those who have faith are mocked as being naive or even ignorant. The truth is that faith is the very foundation of our civilization, bracing humanity against the unrelenting storms of life by providing us hope of something greater and better than ourselves. It acts as a north star leading us home and empowers great men, such as Lord Wilberforce in his unrelenting fight against slavery, to call out injustice and speak truth in a dark and divided world. Canada is facing challenging times. Many struggle just to get through the day, but all is not lost. We press on to build a better nation and a better future. As we move forward to build better days and have a better future, may we all take faith, have faith and keep the faith.”
“Mr. Speaker, every dollar the Prime Minister spends comes out of the pockets of hard-working Canadian workers, families and seniors. Justin Trudeau promised that deficit spending would be an investment. The result was that the debt went up and the investment went down. That gave Canada the worst economic record in the G7 and the worst inflation in 40 years. No matter what the Liberals promise, the results are always the same: more debt, higher costs and declining investment. Why should Canadians believe that this time will be any different?”
“Madam Speaker, as I said, those are wonderful words. If they had been said in the election, they might even have been deserving of some support. However, that is not what the Prime Minister promised. He looked Canadians in the eye and he misspoke the truth. He misled Canadians to believe that he would be able to eliminate all interprovincial trade barriers by Canada Day. That has not happened. By the parliamentary secretary 's own acknowledgement, that has not happened. That is a classic bait-and-switch. Instead of having interprovincial trade barriers eliminated, the Liberals are now peddling a plan to eliminate interprovincial trade barriers. Those are two very different things, to say that we are going to eliminate the trade barriers and simply deliver a plan to eliminate the trade barriers in the future with no hard deadlines.”
“I know that notes are often prepared by the PMO, but perhaps he can show his freedom, as the independent and intelligent member I know he is, and respond to my question, which is very simple, concrete and tangible: How much economic benefit have we realized from the minuscule, tiny reduction in interprovincial trade barriers?”
“There are still barriers to selling alcohol direct to consumers. There are still many barriers for professionals or tradespeople who want to work in the various provinces across the country. There are still many barriers for transportation. There are different rules for different roads across the country. There are also many different regulations across the country for the manufacturing and distribution of safety devices. Quite frankly, in order to have a toilet on a construction site in Ontario, one needs a different toilet than one does in Manitoba. Does that make any sense? These trade barriers very much still exist. They are still very much real. I will give the parliamentary secretary an opportunity to respond, but I want to lay out my question. I am hopeful.”
“This is one of the many promises the government has broken in less than six months. The Liberals said they would cut spending, and we are likely going to have the largest deficit ever in Canadian history, excluding wartime and pandemic eras. They said they were going to tackle crime, yet we see crime continuing to rise. They said the economy would grow the fastest in the G7, and it turns out it is actually growing the slowest. We have a series of these broken promises. Getting to the specific promise of free trade in Canada by Canada Day, the government also told us that it would contribute $200 billion in economic benefits. The reality is that a tiny number of interprovincial trade barriers have been removed. They are the federal trade barriers, which represent a minuscule portion of the barriers.”
“Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to rise for the third time today. It seems like I was just on my feet. It is great to be here. I will take this opportunity, because I originally asked my question of the former minister of transport and international trade, to wish her well in her new role. I will also tell the parliamentary secretaries on the other side to maybe get their résumés ready, as I hear there may be some other shuffling in cabinet. My question was one of the major questions in the election. The Prime Minister made a very grandiose promise, which turned into a bait-and-switch situation. He said to Canadians that the government would eliminate all interprovincial trade barriers by Canada Day. It sounded like a great promise, and won him some votes I am guessing, but the reality is that it was never possible.”
“In conclusion, while the Conservatives will always be the party of law and order and we will always stand for a strong border, we are very confused by this legislation.”
“I am saying the opposite, as 99% are great people who do great work 99% of the time. The challenge is that we need oversight over everyone, because humans are innately flawed and will not always do the right thing. That is why we have judicial oversight. It is why we should have carefully crafted legislation that uses a laser target to get at the people we want to get at. Instead of making a straight line, the government has decided to wander all over various places, from restricting cash transactions to getting warrantless access to the records held by ISPs and banks. This is opening up Canadians to abuse at the hands of perhaps an incompetent or worse government official. We want to make sure there is oversight of the government, such as with a search that requires a warrant.”
“We saw it invoke the Emergencies Act and debank Canadians, and it used such broad powers. I have put on the record before that the use of those provisions was fairly narrow, and very few people were debanked. I want to make that clear because that is the truth and I am here to speak the truth. However, the problem was that the proclamation the Liberals used, the emergency measures proclamation, was broad. These are not my words, but one of the expert witnesses we had before the finance committee said they were so broad that the government could have debanked someone who simply sold a pack of gum to someone who participated in the protest movement. That is not from me. Members can check the finance committee records from a couple of years back. I am not saying that all government is bad and that government workers are bad.”
“There are many cultural and social activities that still rely on cash, and to have cash included is not the right idea. At the end of the day, we can see the ideological divide. Conservatives fundamentally believe in the Canadian public. We believe in Canadians. We want to give them every opportunity to do the right thing. It is not to say that there cannot be some restrictions and there should not be restrictions, but on that side of the aisle, the new government and the old government are the same on this principle. The Liberals believe that more government is better government, that the more intrusion in our lives, the better. They believe that government can do no wrong. We have seen, over the last decade, that the government can do lots of things wrong.”