Dan Muys
Flamborough—Glanbrook—Brant North, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“Today, that promise feels increasingly out of reach. Young Canadians who have done everything right are finding themselves locked out of the housing market. Many are delaying major life decisions.”
“Yet, when members examine Bill C-26 , they will find very little detail about what success looks like. How many homes would be built? How many housing starts would result from this spending? What benchmarks would be used to determine whether the money was spent effectively?”
“In essence, it would authorize the Minister of Finance, with a giant blank cheque, to make payments to the provinces and territories up to a maximum of $1.713 billion for the purpose of improving housing supply. It is a lot of money, and there is not a lot of indication as to whether there would be results.”
“After the introduction of the bill in March, between the months of April and May, housing starts decreased by 6%. That is not progress. Housing affordability improves when homes are built. That means reducing delays, accelerating approvals and ensuring that infrastructure keeps pace with growth.”
“What is missing is a federal government willing to focus on results instead of process. Canadians are tired of hearing that help is coming. They want to see the homes being built and families getting a key in the door of the home they can actually afford. That is the standard by which the bill should be judged.”
“Mr. Speaker, if you will indulge me for a moment, as Sunday is Father's Day, I would like to thank my father for his love and support to me and my three brothers, for the life lessons he taught us and for his humour, his compassion, his very practical common sense and his love of nature: happy Father's Day to Dad.”
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“We will hold the government to account for what gets done for the results. We will keep fighting for what really matters: paycheques, productivity, and a future that unleashes Canada's great potential for everyone.”
“With the final vote in the House expected shortly, Bill C-5 is poised to become law by Canada Day. Conservatives made it more transparent, more accountable and more secure. We stood up for taxpayers, we shut the back door to insider influence and we forced the government to answer for its overreach. Conservatives made Bill C-5 better, but many challenges remain. Canada is falling behind because we make it too hard to build, too hard to work across provinces and too hard to trade within our own borders. Canada has everything the world wants and needs; we need to address what is holding us back. Bill C-5 takes a small step forward. Is it enough? No. Is it the right direction for a change? Yes, and that is why we will not hold up this modicum of progress. We are the party of building, and so we will not stop fighting for real change.”
“As the Canadian Chamber of Commerce told us, internal trade barriers act like a self-imposed 21% tariff, and yet we wonder why productivity is stagnant, investment is down and young Canadians cannot find opportunities at home. Meanwhile, Trump's tariffs are escalating. Our competitors are attracting investment while we are repelling it. The government's answer cannot be another layer of process and platitudes, more bureaucracy and empty promises while opportunity slips away. We are in a moment that calls for ambition, that calls for reform and that calls for leadership. Instead, the government gives us something that sounds good but fails when it meets the reality of the Canadian economy, and Bill C-5 , despite the title, despite the spin, still does not do enough to change that.”
“We all want to see worthy projects proceed, not just the ones that are politically favourable that particular week or month. We are in an era of fierce global competition, urgent infrastructure needs and historic opportunity. While the legislation sets a framework, there is more to be done. There needs to be a clear model for approvals, and impediments to approval need to be cleared, such as, again, Bill C-69 , Bill C-48 , the production cap, and the industrial carbon tax. It is important that we step back for a moment and look at the bigger picture. Canada, in the past decade, has ranked dead last in the G7 for economic growth, and 80% to 90% of our energy exports still go to the United States at a discount. Our farmers, miners and manufacturers are boxed in by regulations that serve no one.”
“Exner-Pirot, director of natural resources, energy and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, at committee. She warned us very bluntly that global capital is mobile. Investors are not going to wait around for a country that takes years to approve a pipeline or transmission line. In fact, they are not waiting; they are going to the United States, they are going to Australia and they are going to Norway, to countries with the same environmental standards but faster, clearer and more reliable approval processes. We cannot ignore the warning signs. Canada has dropped in global rankings for competitiveness. A lack of clarity, slow timelines and politicized approvals are driving investment away. Conservatives believe in a better path: one-and-done approvals, a national energy corridor and shovel-ready zones.”
“That is real growth, real paycheques and real opportunity, but very little of that is in Bill C-5 . Again, the bill does not do enough to seriously address the economic headwinds that Canada is facing. Now I will go on to part 2 of the bill, the building Canada act. This section is supposed to fast-track major projects that are in the national interest, but instead of real reform, we get a selective shortcut. We get all the red tape, bills like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48 remain in place, and there are no clear criteria for what makes a project eligible. There is no certainty for investors, just more discretion handed to the ministers who have failed to deliver time and time again. (1525) Yes, Conservatives improved the bill at committee, but flaws remain. We heard from Dr.”
“At committee, we heard from Catherine Swift, president of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada, who summed it up well: Canada has been talking about internal trade for three decades, report after report, announcement after announcement, but it is still not nearly enough meaningful action. The fear is that the bill would only add to that pile and it would become just another press release without a solid plan to move forward. That is why Conservatives have been proposing a better way to provide financial incentives for provinces that eliminate barriers, which would be a win-win; it would boost GDP, increase revenues and allow provinces to reinvest in important infrastructure projects. The IMF has estimated that removing internal trade barriers could raise Canada's GDP by as much as 4%.”
“Conservatives made the bill better. We delivered transparency, oversight and guardrails. I want to thank my colleagues on the transport committee for their hard work. However, let me be clear: While we made it better, we cannot pretend that the bill is the be-all and end-all of meeting the moment. Let us look at part 1 of the bill, which is about free trade and labour mobility within Canada. It sounds ambitious, but in reality, it is far more limited. There are no binding timelines, no penalties for delays, no incentives for provinces to actually remove trade barriers and no framework for a blue seal licensing standard that would allow professionals such as engineers, nurses and skilled tradespeople to work across the country based on national credentials.”
“We also saw that the bill as originally drafted would have given the government too much power, so we fought back, and we won. With the support of opposition colleagues, Conservative MPs passed amendments to close loopholes, ensure stricter controls and bring about transparency and accountability. We made sure that public office holders would have to recuse themselves in the event of a conflict. We established a mandatory national security review for foreign state-owned proponents. We added a public registry of projects, clear rationales and a timeline to publish criteria within 15 days of royal assent. We created a mechanism for parliamentary oversight, requiring regular reporting. We mandated public consultation reporting. We forbade the government from exercising extraordinary powers when Parliament is dissolved or prorogued.”
“Faced with the economic challenges of their own creation, the Liberals have said numerous times recently that this is the moment. What would have met the moment is scrapping Bill C-69 , scrapping the shipping ban, and scrapping the oil and gas production cap and the industrial carbon tax. At committee, Conservatives rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We saw that the bill would create a series of loopholes that would have allowed ministers and the prime minister to bypass Canada's ethics laws, the Conflict of Interest Act, lobbying rules, the protections under the Criminal Code, and the Auditor General Act, among others. Under the original draft of the bill, a minister could have approved a project that would benefit their own investments, and no one would have been the wiser.”
“Mr. Speaker, we are now at third reading of Bill C-5 , our final opportunity in the House to speak to the legislation before it moves to the Senate. Let me start here: Canadians are not short on talent, we are not short on ambition, and we are certainly not short on natural resources. What we are short on is a government that knows how to unleash that potential and get things built. I hear all the time that people are ready to work, businesses want to expand and communities are waiting for critical infrastructure, but over and over again we run into the same thing: bureaucratic bottlenecks, over-regulation, and a government more interested in announcing headline-grabbing projects than permitting economically important ones. The bill is about getting big things built, and that should matter a whole lot.”
“Mr. Speaker, under the Liberals, Canadians are being forced to skip meals just to pay the rent. A new report from Royal LePage shows that 39% of Ontario renters are cutting back on food and essentials just to stay housed. Even the CMHC is waving the white flag, admitting its own housing targets are not possible under the Liberal government. This is what failure looks like: unaffordable housing, stalled construction and Canadians falling further behind. With alarm bells ringing all over the place, when will the Liberals finally admit that their housing plan isn't working?”
“Mr. Speaker, we certainly see that the movement towards free trade within Canada by Canada Day is, obviously, not going to happen. The bill just moves an inch along, and it is woefully inadequate. As my colleague pointed out, the vetoes that are contained within it are an impediment to that one Canadian economy. It just harkens back to the original Canada free trade agreement that the old Liberal Party government, apparently now the new government, had under Trudeau. There were hundreds of pages of exceptions. I do not know what is new in this particular piece of legislation.”
“Mr. Speaker, my Bloc colleague sits with me on the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. We will be studying the bill this week around the clock, clause by clause, and I am sure we will have many points of agreement and discussion around that, to make some improvements to what we view as a bill that does move the needle just slightly, as referred to in the comments from the business leaders, but certainly not enough. There is so much more potential that needs to be unleashed in Canada, and this bill is just going to take that tiny baby step toward it. We certainly support that little bit of progress, but we want to see a whole lot more, and I do look forward to working with the—”
“Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, Canada has everything the world wants. I cited 18 LNG projects that languished on the desk of the former prime minister. We have the ability to unleash great potential, and this bill does not go far enough. The new old government, or the old new government, has had 10 years to address that, and what we get is a very tiny, baby-step piece of legislation just before the summer recess to create the illusion that something is being done. Conservatives support some progress, but my goodness, we have everything the world wants, we should be booming in this country, and we need to unleash that potential.”
“It is about restoring the Canadian promise to generations that feel abandoned by their government. Conservatives will not stand in the way of the minor progress of this bill, but we will not pretend the bill would deliver what it claims. We will work in committee this week to strengthen it, seek real amendments and keep pushing for solutions that go beyond optics and tackle the root cause of stagnation. Canadians do not want more red tape and more process. They want paycheques, they want purpose, they want projects to get built, and they want to be proud of this country and what it can do, once again.”
“Dan Kelly of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business summed it up when he said the spirit of this bill may be positive, but in practice, it will not move the needle. We could be leading the world. Again, we have everything the world wants. Eighteen LNG projects, as has been mentioned, sat on Trudeau's desk awaiting approval. Germany, Japan and other countries came looking for our LNG. We could have been helping get the world off coal and replacing European dependence on Russian natural gas, yet the Liberals turned the German chancellor away and said there was no business case. Will this be more of the same? This is not just about economics; it is about sovereignty, national unity and building a future where Canada leads in so many sectors as we are capable of doing.”
“We have everything the world wants. At the same time, we are selling our energy to the United States at a discount. Our farmers, miners and builders are being boxed in by the federal government. Global demand for energy, food and raw materials is surging. Other countries are stepping up, but Canada is standing still. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce said it well: “internal trade barriers still act like a [self-imposed] 21% tariff.” What did we get from this bill? We got a couple of washing machines. Meanwhile, U.S. tariffs have turned a simmering problem into a full-blown crisis. Canadian workers and exporters are caught in the middle, and the government has no answer.”
“If they can fast-track one project, why not all deserving projects? Why not fix the system for everyone, not just the politically connected few? Canadians do not want political favours. They want fairness, they want clarity, and they want to build. That is why Conservatives support real reform, one-and-done approvals, a national energy corridor and shovel-ready zones with clear timelines and firm standards. We believe all worthy projects should be able to proceed, not just the ones that win favour from this week's minister. We have the people and the expertise in Canada. We have the resources. What we need is a government that believes in Canada's potential again. Let us talk about the broader context. Canada has posted the worst growth in the G7 over the last decade, yet we have all the national resources in the world.”
“The bill tries to create selective escape hatches for a few lucky projects, but it would keep all the red tape in place. It is a patchwork solution for a broken process. There is no clarity on which projects would qualify, no defined criteria for what would constitute the national interest and no certainty for investors or communities. It is just another layer of bureaucracy and a lot of discretion left in the hands of ministers. Even with the promise of a two-year timeline, provincial vetoes would remain, and the sunset clause would limit the use of these powers to just five years. How is anyone supposed to plan long term? (1320) Here is the most frustrating part. The Liberals are essentially picking and choosing which projects get exemptions, without fixing the laws that block everything else.”
“In fact, economists estimate that removing interprovincial trade barriers could add as much as $200 billion to Canada's economy; yet, instead of seizing that opportunity, Bill C-5 takes a baby step. It scratches the surface when Canadians are looking for bold, transformative reform. Part 2 of the bill is the building Canada act. The most revealing part of this section is not what it proposes but what it omits. It is an admission by the government that its own laws are the problem and that Liberal legislation, such as Bill C-69 , the shipping ban and the energy cap, are laws that have tied our economies in a knot. The Liberals know it, investors know it and workers know it. The bill is the Liberals' workaround, a way to admit failure without fixing the root of the problem.”
“There is no effort to create a blue seal licensing standard that would allow skilled immigrants and professionals, such as doctors, nurses and engineers, to work in the province next door, despite meeting rigorous national standards. Therefore, this was a missed chance to unlock the talent that is already here in this country. There is also a missed opportunity to incentivize the provinces to remove their own barriers. The most effective governments are those that find ways to align incentives, not those that just issue guidance and hope for the best. That is why Conservatives have proposed a real solution to offer financial bonuses to provinces for every interprovincial trade barrier they eliminate. It would be a win-win-win. It would boost GDP and increase federal revenues.”
“It claims to deliver free trade and fast-tracked projects, but the reality is it would deliver bureaucratic theatre; it is a showpiece of announcements without the substance to back them up. Let us start with part 1 of the bill, the free trade and labour mobility in Canada act. The premise is good. Canadians should be able to work and trade freely across the country without unnecessary federal barriers. However, the scope of this section is minuscule. It would affect a tiny subset of goods and services. In fact, during government briefings on the bill, one of the few examples offered was clean energy labels on washing machines, which is certainly underwhelming. There is no comprehensive list of affected items. There is no plan to deal with the biggest trade barriers, no mechanism to assess progress and no timeline.”
“Above all, I thank my wife, Tracy, without whose love and support I certainly would not be here today. I will now go to the matter at hand. Canadians are struggling, not because we lack talent and not because we lack resources, but because we are too often being held back by red tape, gatekeeping and a government that over-promises and under-delivers. Nowhere is that clearer than when it comes to getting big projects built or trying to move goods and services and workers across provincial lines in our own country. These barriers do not cost us only time and money; they also cost us opportunities, investments and jobs. That is why Bill C-5 , an act to enact the free trade and labour mobility in Canada act and the building Canada act, is such a missed opportunity.”
“Mr. Speaker, let me say off the top that I will be splitting my time with a great new member, the hon. member for Terra Nova—The Peninsulas . Since this is my first time speaking for a substantive length of time since the election, please allow me to thank the hard-working, industrious people of Flamborough—Glanbrook—Brant North for the honour of being their voice and their servant and for carrying their hopes and dreams to this place. While I have lived and worked in other places in North America in my career, I have always felt and known that the communities of Flamborough—Glanbrook—Brant North are my true home, and home is where the heart is. It is the honour of my lifetime to serve these great communities. I want to thank my campaign team, including Simon, Mona, Jordan, Wendy, Jim and hundreds of volunteers.”
“Mr. Speaker, after the lost Liberal decade, the dream of home ownership continues to be a nightmare. A new study ranks Toronto as having one of the least affordable housing markets in the world. Construction costs are up 58%, and zoning delays mean it takes up to 32 months to approve a single project in Toronto. It is no wonder Canada is short two million homes. Housing costs will average 52% of household income this year, according to a new federal memo, and that is up from 38% in 2015. I have heard from far too many families in the GTHA that now teeter on the brink because their monthly payments are up by thousands of dollars, and young Canadians who have yet to enter the market have simply given up. Even the new housing minister admits it is a crisis but says it is a slow-moving creature.”
“Mr. Speaker, did the steelworkers in Hamilton hear that? There was not one number in that arrogant answer. I do not think that is surprising given that this is a government whose Prime Minister believes that Canadians do not actually use steel in their daily lives. For workers and businesses in my community of Hamilton looking for the support that might have come from the revenue of those countertariffs, they are being left empty handed, and they are worried about their futures. Let me ask this again: If the Liberals are truly fighting back, can they tell us how much has been collected from tariffs? I ask them to just give a number.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised elbows up with dollar-for-dollar tariffs on the U.S. that would collect $20 billion. The Prime Minister then broke that promise, giving Canadians elbows down when he dropped the tariffs on the U.S. to effectively zero. Now Trump is threatening to double tariffs on Canadian steel to 50%, attacking Canadian workers, their jobs, their livelihoods and our industry. Can the Prime Minister tell our steelworkers how much has been collected from tariffs on the U.S.?”
“Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you in the chair. Congratulations on your new role. I also congratulate my colleague from Brampton West, in particular for his advocacy on crime. On car thefts and auto thefts, we have seen them in my community. We see them in his community and across the GTA, yet there has been no serious action from the government in terms of bail reform or what is seeping out of our ports in terms of stolen cars. Would the member comment a little on auto theft and the importance of that issue in Brampton?”