Andrew Lawton
Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“They will claim full coverage, as we see across southwestern Ontario in particular, when everyone who lives there knows that is just a joke. I thank my colleague across the aisle from Compton—Stanstead for introducing this very important discussion. I have actually spent some time in her riding in the past, and I know it is very rural.”
“I want to see us identify ways to ensure accuracy in telecom coverage maps in rural Canada, but I also want to see us fix and expand those areas where we know the coverage is not there.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise and speak on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. It is a particular privilege to speak to a bill such as this one, which speaks directly to one of the most persistent concerns I hear from people in the rural communities in my riding, scattered across Elgin County…”
“We still have the same problem, which is that we have people looking to a new technology, but that not solving the problem, which is applicable to not just the farmers in my riding, but all the people who live in these rural communities who want to work in these communities, want to study in these communities and, as my colleague for Aval…”
“As technology evolves, we see farmers incorporating more and more technology into their work that requires cellular connectivity, especially if they are out in the field, far from the Wi-Fi routers they may have in their homes or, increasingly, in their barns.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today. It is with great pride and pleasure that I present a petition on behalf of representatives of the Elgin County Drowning Prevention Coalition, including Briar McCaw, Linda King and Nathan MacIntyre of the RIP Current Information Project.”
The complete record
Every one of 676 lines we hold for Andrew Lawton, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 14.
“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be working with my colleague on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. During committee proceedings, he spoke with several witnesses about the issue of criminals recruiting young people. In Canada, we are seeing an increasing number of cases of youth crime, including serious offences such as murder. I would like to ask him why, in his view, the government has not taken this problem seriously.”
“Mr. Speaker, my colleague is also on the justice committee, and I was hoping he could elaborate on the problems that emerged during our committee study, because we actually put forward a lot of amendments. It was shocking how many amendments the Liberal government put forward to its own bill, which I think reinforces the point that even the Liberals saw the flaws in this. We were prepared to work across party lines to protect victims, but can my colleague answer what happened when we tried to put forward concrete amendments that would keep offenders behind bars, where they belong?”
“That means listening to them and advocating for them, but it also means advocating for a justice system that does not let perpetrators and offenders, including those behind some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, get a pass. It is regrettable that this is what this Liberal bill, Bill C‑16 , would now do.”
“When judges are formulating their picture of the circumstances of an offence and an offender, the officials indicated that one's immigration status could actually be captured by the bill. If a mandatory minimum sentence would jeopardize someone's status as a resident of Canada, someone who is not a citizen and is convicted of a criminal act, that could be factored into a judge's saying that a mandatory minimum is no longer appropriate. The justice minister said something different, and herein lies the problem. If the minister and the department officials are not even on the same page about what this safety valve would do, how can any judge looking at it, even in good faith, take it and make laws and decisions that are going to support victims? We will always stand up for victims.”
“I have a great deal of regret that these provisions that I am very proud of and that I can stand up here and say would help victims are embedded in a bill alongside other things that would actually make things far worse for victims of crime. The bill now has this poison pill that the Liberals would not address, which would basically take any mandatory minimum sentence, including minimums that have not even been declared to be unconstitutional by a court, and subject it to the so-called safety valve, which means it would become optional. It would become discretionary. Interestingly enough, I spoke about what some of these circumstances would be at committee with justice department officials.”
“They would be allowing any activist judge who fundamentally does not even believe in carceral sentences, which, sadly, we have seen a fair bit of in the justice system, to unilaterally declare that they do not think a mandatory minimum is appropriate. This would take away the “mandatory” of mandatory minimum sentences and ensure that the very people who commit these heinous acts we are talking about, and not just acts of a sexual nature but breaking any criminal laws really, are actually able to get a pass. This is something that I feel we need to say, in the strongest possible terms, we will not stand for, and it is with a great deal of regret that I say this is what the Liberals have done to Bill C‑16 .”
“member for Calgary Nose Hill did in her bill, Bill C‑216 , a definition specifically of artificial intelligence-generated material, which would ensure that new technology is captured by what we are trying to do here. We would not need to come back as members of Parliament to the drawing board because we find that the law does not actually capture all the cases we are seeing. As we were working on this, I was very proud. This was an example of all parties working together to support victims. However, as we got through the clause-by-clause process on Bill C‑16 , we realized that the big sticking point remaining was the Liberals' own poison pill, making it so that their so-called restoration of mandatory minimum penalties would not be, in fact, a restoration at all.”
“I spoke to people including a personal friend of mine who was herself a victim of an artificially generated nearly nude image's being shared. What happens is that these images are shared, and oftentimes the most important thing is for the image or video to be taken off-line, so one of the amendments I put forward at the justice committee would force tech giants to remove this material within 48 hours. I am grateful I had support for that from my Liberal colleagues. Another amendment I put forward was one making it so that the definition of “intimate image” would not exclude things based on a technicality. We changed it to include “nearly nude”. This was, again, something that was brought forward in testimony we heard from witnesses. We also added, and this came from previous work that my colleague the hon.”
“We also see, through emerging technologies and artificial intelligence, the dissemination of deepfakes, or deepnudes as they are sometimes called: artificially generated images and videos that look very real, showcasing someone in a state of undress or engaging in a sexually explicit act. These things are disseminated and shared and victimize people in much the same way that the sharing of actual non-consensual intimate images does. This is important because the law needs to catch up with the technology. (1740) I heard from witness testimony. I spoke to women's advocates in particular, like Liz Brown from Valora Place in St. Thomas, and Jennifer Dunn from the London Abused Women's Centre. I spoke to Chief Thai Truong, chief of the London Police Service, and Chief Marc Roskamp of the St. Thomas Police Service.”
“I am very proud of some of the work that the justice committee, on which I have the great privilege of sitting, did on Bill C‑16 . In fact, I am proud of some of my own amendments, which have been adopted into this bill. An example is the way the bill deals with those who are victimized by intimate images being distributed. This is a horrible crime that we see affecting more and more Canadians, especially young Canadians. I have spoken about this with high school students, who just accept this now as a fact of life. This is something that we need to have a very strong response to in the Criminal Code.”
““Mandatory minimum penalty” has three words. The first is “mandatory”. If we give judges a safety valve to unilaterally declare, on their own terms, that they do not need to uphold the mandatory minimum, it is no longer mandatory. It is not even a minimum. In some cases, it is not even a penalty. Why that is so important here is that in the Senneville and Naud case, the trial judge made that very determination. The trial judge thought that the mandatory minimum penalty for these two men, who between them possessed thousands of images of young boys and girls being subject to acts I will not read in the House, was cruel and unusual punishment. That judge would have availed themselves of the very safety valve the Liberals are now seeking to enshrine in Bill C‑16 . Why is this so particularly troubling?”
“Conservatives offered a very reasonable solution: to reinstate the mandatory minimums for people trafficking in and possessing child sexual abuse and exploitation material; and to defend them with the notwithstanding clause, a tool in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms given to legislatures to ensure that the will of the people and, indeed, basic decency are upheld in our laws. Now, Bill C‑16 , the government has said, was its answer to this. To be fair, members of the Liberal Party have certainly expressed disgust with the facts of the Senneville and Naud case, but where we diverge is that their answer to this is a bill that would give all judges a so-called safety valve, to say that a mandatory minimum sentence seems like it might be cruel and unusual punishment in a certain case and, therefore, they will not apply it.”
“A lot of the discussion about mandatory minimums for sexual offences, for example, such as child sexual exploitation and abuse material, was exacerbated when there was, last year, a horrendous Supreme Court of Canada decision called the Senneville decision. In that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that for someone possessing thousands of images and videos of children as young as four being subjected to brutal sexual acts, a one‑year mandatory minimum sentence in that case was cruel and unusual punishment because of some “reasonable hypotheticals” in which someone else, in an entirely different set of circumstances, might be charged, under what the court said were more sympathetic terms, with possessing child sexual exploitation and abuse material.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. It is also a privilege to rise, as I always do on matters of justice and the Criminal Code, in support of victims. That is one thing that distinguishes the approach my Conservative colleagues and I take to crime and justice matters from that of the Liberals. We look out for the rights of victims, and they look out for the rights of offenders. We root our approach in the facts on the ground, what law enforcement advocates say, what members of law enforcement say and what victims advocates say. They rely on legal theory and, so often in doing so, ignore the gruesome realities of some of the most heinous acts of crime we see in our country.”
“Mr. Speaker, we are never going to get to net zero with that level of gaslighting. My goodness, the London economic region, which includes Elgin and St. Thomas, has the highest unemployment rate in Canada, at 9.2%, with 1,800 jobs lost in April. Does he expect me to go to my constituents and say, “Don't worry. You can sell all that uranium you've been working on”? Families are struggling. Families are suffering. The government keeps spending more and more money and will not even acknowledge the consequences of its actions. When is it going to get serious and account for the fact that it has put Canada into a recession, the only country in the G7 to be there?”
“Mr. Speaker, it was not that long ago that the Prime Minister got up and said he was the grand economist who would turn things around, the guy we could go to in a crisis. Well, here we are: Canada is the only G7 country in a recession, and where is he? He is nowhere to be found. He ran from a reporter who asked about it. He does not rise in the House of Commons to speak to it, while Canadians are suffering, struggling and paying the price. When will the Prime Minister admit that Canada is in a recession and that he is the one to blame?”
“Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I believe the chief government whip just acknowledged taking a photo in the House while he was sitting there, which is against the rules. I hope you will urge him to delete that, Mr. Speaker.”
“Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate my colleague from the north's acknowledgement of the problem. I did find it a little odd that he touted the government's removal of the consumer carbon price, when in 2024 he actually devoted a member statement, a rare opportunity to rise in the House on any subject of our choosing, to defending the carbon tax. It is funny that he is now getting up to claim credit for dismantling it. If the Liberal government truly does acknowledge these concerns, truly realizes the affordability crisis facing Canadians, why will it not get rid of all federal taxes on fuel and give Canadians full relief for the entirety of the year?”
“All countries around the world are dealing with the same global instability, the same tariffs and the same trade threats, but only Canada is in a recession. Why is the Liberal government not taking seriously measures that it has within its authority to do, at a minimum dropping all federal taxes on fuel for the duration of the year, but far beyond that, stopping the inflationary spending that is driving life more and more unaffordable for Canadians?”
“However, it is not theoretical or merely technical when we talk to Canadians who cannot afford to fill up their gas tank, when we talk to Canadians who are skipping meals, as I have heard of several constituents doing, when we talk to Canadians who are using a food bank now for the first time in their life, or when we talk to people at the food banks who say they are struggling to keep enough food on the shelves. Canada lost 112,300 jobs just in the last three months. We are seeing a couple of conflicting narratives from the government on this. They say it is just a technicality in numbers, and on the other hand they say the recession we are in right now is the fault of the U.S. That does not explain why we are the only G7 country to be facing this.”
“When we asked the government to take all federal taxes off fuel for the entirety of the year, as a starting point, because it would save Canadians 28¢ a litre at the pumps, what did the Liberals do? They said, “Okay, we will tell you what we can do: We will take a third of the taxes off for a third of the year.” Something is better than nothing, but it is not nearly enough. I look at the challenges that have been aggravated now that we have learned Canada is in a recession, two quarters of negative growth. We hear, of course, from the defenders of the Liberal government and the media that it is just a little technicality; a technical recession, they call it. I believe a technical recession is what the media calls it when a Liberal government is responsible for it. That is what $2 billion of taxpayer money will buy in terms of coverage.”
“When I asked in the House, in question period, whether the government would commit to a very real and tangible measure to make one aspect of life more affordable, to cut all federal taxes on fuel until the end of the year, all I got from the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources was bluster. I believe “hot air” was the comment I may have made in my original attempt at getting a response. In the opposition, we are about solutions. We continue to hold the government to account and offer ideas for things that will make life more affordable. As our leader has said time and time again, and as I have said, we welcome when the government steals our ideas. We wish it would go further and steal the whole idea, because Canadians need relief.”
“Madam Speaker, it is always my great pleasure and honour to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, who, like all Canadians right now, are grappling with an affordability crisis. The cost of food has gone up. The cost of fuel has gone up. The cost of rent has gone up. The cost of housing has gone up, and yes, the cost of the Liberal government continues to go up. This is not just an abstract national issue; this is something we see particularly in the London economic region, which includes St. Thomas and Elgin. London unemployment is the highest in the country, at over 9%. This is a massive problem for people. We see youth unemployment pushing up against 15%.”
“Mr. Speaker, I shudder to ask this question after the very kind praise from my colleague toward the Conservatives, but I cannot help but recall, in light of her criticism of the budget implementation act, of which there is a great deal to criticize, that she actually supported the Liberal budget based on promises from the Prime Minister on what the government would do. I do not actually criticize my colleague for this, but I wonder if she might have any cautionary words for others who are similarly being given these grand promises from the Prime Minister and the Liberals and what happens with those when it comes to the actual legislation they put forward.”
“Will they commit today to doing the right thing, supporting our motion and getting out of Canadians' streaming platforms?”
“Mr. Speaker, to the Liberals, CRTC is their mission statement: control, regulate and tax Canadians. Now they are coming after Canadians with a streaming tax, tripling the levy that streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon have to pay. This is going to go directly to the bill the consumers pay. If the Liberals had their way, the only fiction we would see is the Prime Minister saying that the country's on the right track. We have an option for them: a motion that we have put forward in the House, calling on the Liberals to do the right thing, use their power in the Broadcasting Act and cut the streaming tax once and for all. When Canadians cannot afford grocery shopping, they should not be priced out of even watching cooking shows on TV, which is precisely what the Liberals are doing.”
“Madam Speaker, all of us in this chamber were elected. We went to Canadians and said, “We believe we have something for you. We can serve you.” Canadians chose to support us. Canadians elected us. This is what companies have to do every day in the private sector, and it is what cultural companies need to do as well. They need to say, “We are producing a product that you like. We are producing a product that you support.””
“Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Lethbridge , for her incredibly important work on this. I know the minister responsible for this is the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture . This is the minister who thinks someone should be criminally charged if they quote a Bible verse that he does not like. This is the minister who stood behind the Canadian Museum for Human Rights' decision to malign parental rights as being a hateful discussion. This is the minister who is championing the return of the online harms act. We know the Liberal government has used that to weaponize the Canadian Human Rights Act against people for dissident opinions. Everything about the government's handling of the heritage file is about control and eliminating Canadians' freedom and choice.”
“Madam Speaker, wanting Canadians not to be taxed more is about supporting Canadians and supporting Canadian interests. I would note that Quebec has produced some cultural gems. If every other country in the world did what the Liberal government has done through the Online Streaming Act, it would actually be harder for that content to find its way into, for example, other francophone countries. When we block cultural imports, we are also blocking cultural exports. I choose to stand behind what Canadians are capable of producing and creating.”
“Madam Speaker, it literally says the Governor in Council has the authority to do this. I would also note that the CRTC is made up of Liberal appointees. The Online Streaming Act is Liberal legislation. All of this is a consequence of a Liberal bill, so what I would love to see is Liberal legislation repealing Bill C-11 . That would be, I think, the first order of business. However, again, we also have to look at the broader context here. This is something that has been held up and has already been acknowledged as a trade irritant with the U.S. I thought of that because an irritant was on my mind after I heard that question.”
“They said, “No one is going to tax streaming services,” and here they are, not just taxing them but increasing the tax on these streaming services. We will not protect anything in Canada if we take away more affordability from Canadians and take away choice, which needs to be front and centre in how Canadians choose to engage in whatever cultural product it is: a show, a movie, a song or anything else.”
“In fact, there has already been some recognition from the Liberals of the effect that streaming services have on Canadian budgets. We may remember the former finance minister whose brilliant idea for how Canadians could cope with inflation was to cancel Disney+. Well, more Canadians will have to follow that advice because these services are going up in price because of something the Liberal government could rectify very easily. We have an opposition motion that calls on the Liberals to reject this streaming tax increase, to use their authority, which rests in the Broadcasting Act, to cancel this streaming tax once and for all. I remember when Stephen Harper warned about the Netflix tax over a decade ago. The Liberals mercilessly mocked.”
“I would note that the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture has not really staked out a position on this. He said he will “carefully assess its impacts.” Now, that, I believe, translates from Liberal to “We do not know what we are doing, but we will carefully assess its impacts.” He says he wants Canadians “to see themselves reflected on [the] screen”. We do, but we also want Canadians to be able to afford to watch the content they want to watch and to afford things that have already gone up in price. It is more expensive to buy groceries now. It is more expensive to pay rent, to buy a house, to pay the gas bill and to fill up the gas tank. These are measures that, in a lot of ways, are within the Liberal government's control. Why is the Liberal government insisting on making everything more unaffordable?”
“People in other countries would not get to benefit from some of the great cultural exports of Canada, shows like Being Erica and Schitt's Creek , or speeches from the member for Winnipeg North , and all of these Canadian cultural exports that people from around the world may wish to tune in to. Not all Canadian content is good content, as the latter example shows, but we do not want the Liberal government to be the determining force in what types of content Canadians can see, and we do not want Canadian enterprise to suffer. Again, the idea that the Liberals are presenting is that if we triple this levy, companies are just going to pay it, and it is going to go into creating jobs and opportunities in Canada. However, we know that is not what happens, and the Online News Act is, I think, a very good cautionary tale.”
“We often think about the need to safeguard this term we hear, “cultural sovereignty”, but in actuality, Canada, as we often hear from the Liberal government, is a very diverse country. Streaming services allow Canadians of all backgrounds to watch shows in different languages and from different countries. In fact, my favourite show of all time was not an American production imposed on me but a Spanish show that I learned about through a streaming service. I cannot understand it in the original Spanish; perhaps I will get to that at another point. I hate the idea that the only content we would get is Canadian productions when we should be able to have access to everything. We can imagine if other countries imposed the same sort of cultural protectionism that the Liberals are trying to do. Then Canadian content could not be exported.”
“In that case, it was journalism and news outlets. What did Meta do in response to this? It said, “Why are we going to be penalized because newspapers want to share their content on our platform?” Meta pulled news out of the Canadian market. To this day, Canadians cannot share a news article about Liberal corruption, among other things, or any news article on Facebook or Instagram. It is very conceivable that streaming companies could take similar retaliatory action if the Liberal government makes it so that their business model is no longer viable. This is not about the American companies. This is not about streaming services. What this is actually about is Canadians' ability to access content they want and shows they want. One of the great things about streaming services is that they bring together content from around the world.”
“This tripling of the tax will be passed on to consumers, who, because of everything the Liberal government has done to the country, deserve the chance to kick back and watch something for fun. They deserve the chance to watch some television shows and some movies. However, when the Liberal government is saying that we need to penalize companies that are offering a service to Canadians that Canadians pay for, and that the money will go toward content the Liberal government approves of, Canadians know this will result in more government control or in companies pulling out of the Canadian market altogether. (1035) Members should remember that Bill C-11 did not come in isolation. It came alongside the Online News Act, which similarly tried to extort companies for being utilized by Canadian companies.”
“It is easy to get up and say that, in theory, we can put this levy in place and triple it from 5% to 15% and all these big American streaming platforms are going to have to pay it. That is the type of rhetoric we hear from people who do not understand how business works. They do not understand how markets work. To be fair, I have seen the budgets the Liberals put forward. I know they do not understand how business works. This money will not be absorbed by the Netflixes and the Amazons. It will be passed along to consumers. All of a sudden, the amount of money people have to pay to Netflix to watch some shows they like will go up. The amount of money we have to pay to subscribe to these platforms will go up.”
“We have already heard, quite recently, from streamers who have noticed changes. Content they used to produce and generate that would do very well all of a sudden is not. Podcaster Jasmin Laine, among others, has pointed to this. We have heard from officials that there are still very many conversations going on, and the Liberal government tries to play coy on these things. Even now, we have heard from one Liberal member of Parliament that this is all the CRTC's actions at arm's length and not something the Liberal government is controlling, ignoring the fact that the Liberal government has the power under the Broadcasting Act to step in and stop this streaming tax immediately. It has the power to do this. This is a consequence of the government's own legislation. What is this going to mean?”
“This is so important because when Bill C-11 first came through the House, Conservatives warned that it was not actually going to be about Canadian storytelling; it was going to be about the government picking and choosing winners, picking and choosing which types of stories get to be told, which ones get the support of government, who gets supplemented and supported and who gets suppressed. One of the biggest powers of Bill C-11 that we warned about was, basically, the requirement that streaming sites, including, for example, YouTube, would have to manipulate their algorithms so that they are serving up content that the Liberal government wants Canadians to see. While the Liberals say they are not manipulating algorithms, we know that the consequences of what they are forcing streaming platforms to do necessitate that.”
“The Liberal-appointed CRTC has come out with a declaration that to enforce the Liberal legislation that the Conservatives warned about vociferously, Bill C-11 , the Online Streaming Act, it will triple the amount of money the streaming services that Canadians enjoy, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV, will have to spend to 15%, up from 5%, as the levy they will have to pay to fund Liberal government-approved productions and Liberal-approved content.”
“Madam Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, especially because we have seen the benefits of film production in Canada in our part of the country. It is great that we have Canadian productions. It is great that we have American productions that choose to set up shop in Canada. The one thing that I think is often missing in this conversation is that the Liberal government has never met a tax it does not like. When it tries to control Canadians and their viewing preferences and listening preferences, the only one who wins is government, not industry, not film production and not the people who work in television and media in this country.”
“Another one says she has to move because she cannot afford the cost of living in a place that she always thought would be affordable. Why are the Liberals ignoring these Canadians?”
“Mr. Speaker, when the Artemis mission was on the far side of the moon, it was still closer to answering the question than the parliamentary secretary just was. I spoke about very real concerns, such as the price of fuel and groceries, and I mentioned a number of ways the Liberal government is not being respectful of taxpayer money. Instead, she came in here with a canned four-minute statement on just one of the many line items I mentioned, showing that the Liberals are not even prepared to rise in the House to defend their reckless spending. A general contractor in my riding is saying that, without relief on the price of fuel, he will find himself forced to lay off employees. A man in Central Elgin, a struggling parent, says he is putting groceries on his credit card because that is the only way to pay for them.”
“They are spending $13 billion for Build Canada Homes, a housing bureaucracy with no track record of actually building homes, along with $20 billion on external consultants. All of this could go away and fund a fuel tax reduction for Canadians and a significant other suite of relief measures without affecting services at all. My question is, why are the Liberals not doing this? Why are they not looking inside themselves, as the Prime Minister has said to some people in the past, and finding ways to save money, which is not theirs but the taxpayers'?”
“They are spending $742 billion on a firearms confiscation scheme that law enforcement has said will not improve public safety. Federal bureaucracy spending is expected to reach $66 billion this year. It has grown in the last year, outpacing inflation and outpacing the rise in the population of this country. Debt interest is $58.7 billion. That is money paying the interest payments on the federal credit card. Then we found out, of course, that the Liberals are spending $200 million on a launch pad. That is what they call it, but it is actually a gravel pit in Nova Scotia. It is on provincial government land, yet they are paying this to insider-connected companies as part of this ambitious Liberal space strategy that Canadians cannot afford in the way they are presenting it.”
“Instead, the Liberals responded by saying they would cut a third of the taxes for a third of the year. Something is better than nothing, but not that much. When we talked about this in recent weeks, some Liberals asked, “Well, where are you going to get the money for that from?” The Liberals will often say that any tax cut has to come at the expense of services, but that is a red herring that is rooted in a fundamental misrepresentation of what the Liberals have prioritized spending on. I would like to mention a couple of those things here. The Liberals are committing $90 billion to an Alto rail project that Canadians do not want and that will not benefit people in the majority of the country, certainly not people in southwestern Ontario.”
“I am hoping we can have a discussion rooted in the substance of the matter, which is that Canadians cannot afford life right now. Canadians cannot afford groceries. Canadians cannot afford the price of fuel. The question I initially asked in question period was about when the Liberals will commit to truly providing relief, not for Liberal insiders, not for consultants, not for bankers and bondholders, but for ordinary Canadians. Canadians cannot afford the price of gas right now, which is especially germane in rural ridings like my own where driving is not, in fact, a choice. It is a necessity to go to school, to work, to medical appointments. We put forward a very clear-cut plan, which was to get the Liberals to cut all federal taxes on fuel for the entirety of the year, as a starting point.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. Oftentimes, people who watch question period with the Liberal government in power will remark that there is a reason it is not called answer period. We often cannot get, in a 35-second sound bite, much substance from the Liberals, which is why I am glad to have the opportunity to take another crack at a very important question today. Those watching who are not familiar with what we call “late shows” in this chamber will remark that there are very few people in the House. There are no journalists present. There is no one in the gallery. There is just me and the parliamentary secretary and a couple of other keen stragglers here.”
“Mr. Speaker, when the Liberals treat Canadians like a cash cow and spend so irresponsibly, they are adding more money to the national credit card, which means we have to put more money toward repaying the debt than funding public services. What are the consequences of this kind of spending?”