Ben Lobb
Huron—Bruce, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could comment briefly on what the Liberal member of Parliament said about what a big problem giving tax relief to Canadians is going to be and what the cost is. He never once mentioned the mess he has put Canada and Canadian families in.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member of Parliament mentioned all of the foreign investment, but if we go back and look, every dollar of foreign investment is paired with the taxpayer dollars of investment. If we go back to the Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper days, companies would invest their own dollars, with no government money.”
“Mr. Speaker, also offensive are some of the initiatives the Liberals have funded abroad. I think about the issue with the rice. I am not going to get into it on the rice, but can the member talk about some of the dollars that have been wasted in some crazy investments or expenditures overseas that would have been way better invested in in…”
“With enough money set aside, saved and invested, when it was time for them to retire, they would be able to retire in the comfort of their community, perhaps in an elaborate way, and have a retirement they would enjoy and find meaningful and fulfilling.”
“We are starting to lose our fiscal ability to recover from this, as well as our path toward balance and the light at the end of the tunnel for the investment community. Government expenditures, this year, are getting pretty close to $600 billion for the annual spend. Ten years ago, it was $288 billion.”
“I hope it is not permanently broken, but most people feel like it has been broken in one way, shape or form. I believe the Liberal government's propensity to spend and go for this theme of the day or that theme of the day, without real direction, has caused us to be where we are today.”
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“Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could comment briefly on what the Liberal member of Parliament said about what a big problem giving tax relief to Canadians is going to be and what the cost is. He never once mentioned the mess he has put Canada and Canadian families in. On the taxes, we can look at the cost of the grocery benefit the government is putting out and why that has come to be. It has come to be because of all the inflation and the cost of fuel to get things shipped around the country.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member of Parliament mentioned all of the foreign investment, but if we go back and look, every dollar of foreign investment is paired with the taxpayer dollars of investment. If we go back to the Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper days, companies would invest their own dollars, with no government money. I wonder if the member of Parliament would talk about the value of that, where a business will just come here to make an investment because it makes business sense to make an investment.”
“Mr. Speaker, also offensive are some of the initiatives the Liberals have funded abroad. I think about the issue with the rice. I am not going to get into it on the rice, but can the member talk about some of the dollars that have been wasted in some crazy investments or expenditures overseas that would have been way better invested in increasing the stability of research stations in rural Canada?”
“Madam Speaker, what I would say is that it was given up and there was nothing gained in return. At one time, the Liberals gave it up because they thought it would help them get to the negotiating table. We have done that too many times now, and that is unfortunate. Another thing I would say to my Bloc colleague is that the Liberal government has way overstepped its boundaries and is so far into all the different areas of provincial jurisdiction. The Liberals have to pull back on some of that stuff, and they have to do an analysis of what the federal government's job actually is. This is not to say that the Liberals cannot partner with provinces, but they certainly cannot stick their toe into everything the provinces are supposed to be responsible for.”
“Madam Speaker, the member is missing out on a few key points. One is to remember which government initiated the national shipbuilding project. With respect to some of the spending the Liberals may be taking credit for today, those seeds were planted many, many years ago. Another thing I would also mention is the expenditures on the F-35. The bungling of the Liberal government on the F-35 lost us direct national benefits for the manufacturing of parts in this country. That was a major screw-up, to my mind. We would already have F-35s here today, we would have pilots trained and we would be able to be an active participant with NATO. We had a plan, and if the Liberals had just stuck to our plan, we would be years ahead today.”
“It was supposed to be $500 million or $600 million a year in trade with beef and pork. It is a fraction. We have a trade deficit with the United Kingdom on beef. All of these things need to be reconciled. Canada has been a fair trader for many years, and it is time for us to get our share too.”
“We are starting to lose our fiscal ability to recover from this, as well as our path toward balance and the light at the end of the tunnel for the investment community. Government expenditures, this year, are getting pretty close to $600 billion for the annual spend. Ten years ago, it was $288 billion. That is the lay of the land of where we are. The other thing, and maybe in questions and answers we can get to it, is trade. Trade has been a big issue, obviously, in the news headlines. It has been a reality for Canadian exporters. For a long time, I have been saying that we need a reconciliation in all our trade deals. There are trade deals, for example the comprehensive European trade deal, in which we are not getting our fair share. I have said this many times in the House. We do not get our fair share of what we bargained for.”
“Projected roughly, we will collect $52 billion in GST this year, which would roughly cover interest payments, although paying interest is not what GST was set up for. If we project it out to the year when interest will be $76 billion, GST is only projected to bring in $62 billion, which is a tremendous amount of money, but it obviously falls short of covering interest. As I said, this is not what GST was meant for; it is just a comparison. Total debt is over $2 trillion. If we go out to 2029-30, it will be $2.9 trillion. Sometimes we use the net debt number, but I do not think we should be using that number anymore; it should be total debt. The total debt in 2015 was $1 trillion. If we look at that, everything has doubled. That is a troubling trend considering that we had a balanced budget 10 years ago.”
“With this version, maybe $265 billion over the next number of years will be added to our debt. As for interest, I did hear many times today in our debate that there will be $53 billion in interest this year, going to $76 billion per year in just a few short years. The interest on the debt in 2015 was $25 billion. That puts into perspective what the interest was then compared to what the interest is now and the perils of the path we are on. There was a Liberal member of Parliament who said that compared to Japan, we are looking pretty good. We should never compare ourselves to them, because they are just a few years ahead of the path we are on right now. Another cause for concern is the amount of GST we collect every year.”
“We have somebody who was supposed to be a responsible fiscal manager but who now makes Justin Trudeau look like Warren Buffett. It is hard to believe, but he has done it. It is sad to be here listening to him sometimes, but that is the reality. We will have a $78-billion deficit this year, and until the 2029-30 fiscal year, it is going to average $64 billion per year, which outdoes Justin Trudeau every year, except for when we had the COVID pandemic. It is really shameful. It is going to leave a shameful legacy if it is allowed to go on. The other thing is that Justin's deficit this year was only projected to be $42 billion. His accumulated amount of debt over the same period of time was only going to be $131 billion. It is shocking to say “only”. That is still a lot of debt.”
“I never would have believed at the beginning of this year, after Justin Trudeau stepped down as prime minister, that the current Prime Minister , who announced he was going to run for the Liberal leadership, won it, was successful in the election and became the Prime Minister, would outperform Justin Trudeau in the deficit department. I did not think that was possible. (1625) Out of all the thousands of doors I knocked on, I do not think the people I talked to thought this is what they were voting for either, although there were a few, once in a while, who said they were voting for him. I think they thought they were voting for a business person, not a spender like the previous prime minister and the finance minister were.”
“I hope it is not permanently broken, but most people feel like it has been broken in one way, shape or form. I believe the Liberal government's propensity to spend and go for this theme of the day or that theme of the day, without real direction, has caused us to be where we are today. I would like to go back in time, because it may help us shape where we need to go in the future. If we go back 10 years ago and look at the budget that Stephen Harper and Joe Oliver presented to Canadians, there was a budget surplus. It had a clear path and direction. It had an enticement to get private capital investment into this country. They knew this was a country where people could do business and grow and expand within the country, because all the frameworks were there for that. The deficit this year will be $78 billion.”
“With enough money set aside, saved and invested, when it was time for them to retire, they would be able to retire in the comfort of their community, perhaps in an elaborate way, and have a retirement they would enjoy and find meaningful and fulfilling. In addition, along the way their kids might have the opportunity to get involved in sports, music or the arts. Whatever it may be, they would be able to get behind them and support them in their extracurricular activities and maybe take a modest vacation once in a while. Also, their taxpayer dollars were being used in such a way that if they needed to go to the hospital or see a doctor, they would have a family doctor, and health care would be accessible to do that. I think the vast majority of Canadians my age and younger now feel that this covenant with the government has been broken.”
“By that I mean that gone are the days when somebody could work hard at school, get good grades, have an opportunity to get an education they were dreaming of, whether in the trades, at community college or in university, whatever it was, and graduate with a reasonable amount of debt, or in some cases no debt. They could get out into the workforce, get a meaningful job that hopefully they were trained in or inspired to do and save a few bucks. Maybe their parents would help them; maybe that was not an option, but they were able to save a few bucks and buy their first home. It could be modest or grand, whatever they saw in their own eyes, but they would be able to have a home. Then they could find somebody special to raise a family in that home, have a career and an affordable retirement.”
“Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House today to talk about the budget. I will be sharing my time with the member for North Island—Powell River . This budget, in my mind, is really a confirmation of what we have seen gradually increasing over the last 10 years. The Prime Minister himself has spoken about it. He gave a pre-emptive speech a few weeks ago and talked about the sacrifices that future generations will need to make, which was basically a confirmation of what we warned about, even 10 years ago, regarding the risks of deficit-heavy spending budgets and the accumulation of debt, which is where we are today. This budget is a confirmation that the covenant with Canadians has been broken.”
“Madam Speaker, the Liberal member for Winnipeg North was going on about Japan. I just wonder whether the member could talk about Japan and the folly of comparing Canada to Japan when it comes to debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio. How did Japan get there? Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio is 250%. How it happened is persistent, long-term deficits, and then all of a sudden, one day, it is in a big mess. Could the member talk about how we should not be like Japan and about how we should get the budget balanced and provide fiscal certainty to the rest of the world?”
“Mr. Speaker, I think that some of the Liberals are confused today when they are giving their speeches. They are acting as if the deal were a new one. It is an old deal. There was CETA and, post-Brexit, there was the temporary agreement. There are over 10 years' worth of outstanding issues. The Canada-U.K. deal would have been a chance to fix issues around beef and other issues. This may be a worse deal, but the member for Cumberland—Colchester talked about how it is the greatest thing. I bet if she were to take a closer look, she would find that the people in her riding are going to have less with TPP than they would have with CETA. I wondered if the member could talk about that.”
“Madam Speaker, one comment the member made defies logic. It is not in the fact that open dialogue is not bad. It is good; I agree with that part. However, CETA has been around a long time. Mary Ng was negotiating the Canada-U.K. trade agreement, but it broke down on one of the things around some of the trade irritants we have with the U.K. Now we are looking at CPTPP and more access. There will be more access, certainly for dairy and other things. Does the member agree that the time for talk is over, and it is time for the U.K. to live up to its end of the deal?”
“Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the member two questions specifically. There is a huge trade deficit on Canadian cars entering the U.K. versus U.K. cars coming into Canada. It is about 20:1. How can there be a trade deficit in Canada with U.K. beef? There is more beef from the United Kingdom entering Canada than Canadian beef heading into the United Kingdom. How can we do anything with the United Kingdom until we straighten out those two issues?”
“We love these Blue Jays because 41 million Canadians can see themselves in them: in an underdog, in their hard work, in never giving up and in believing in themselves. There are four more. Let us win it all.”
“Mr. Speaker, last night, for a few hours we were a nation united, gathered around our TVs watching the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Mariners in seven games to reach the World Series for the first time in 32 years. The season started slow, but around the middle of May, something clicked. Playing with grit, hustle, good pitching, defence and no easy outs in the lineups, the Blue Jays went 73-45 to finish in first place, and they have not looked back. We love Vladdy, and we have dreamt of what he could do since we signed him at 16 years of age. There is Gausman, Yesavage, Bieber, Scherzer and Hoffman. The list of all the great pitching goes on and on. Then there is Kirky. How could we not admire him, a fan favourite and the everyman in the lineup? George Springer found the fountain of youth and had a career year.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member had better ask his Prime Minister , because I am sure he will give him a lesson on macroeconomics. We can take just one simple measure: the price of gold. That is where stability is found for countries. When the Liberal government was elected in 2015, the price of gold was $1,200. The price of gold today is $4,000, and that is not because the government has been doing a great job; it is because everybody else around the world knows that the economy is broken. Hon. Mark Gerretsen: Now we are responsible for the price of gold? Ben Lobb: Mr. Speaker, if the member from Kingston and the member from Winnipeg do not get it, I am sorry but you guys are the ones who are sitting at the cabinet table and are saying that the ship is going great. It is not going great; it is going badly.”
“Mr. Speaker, that is a great question. I can give an example. Over 20 years ago in my riding, where I used to work, the owner of Wescast Industries at the time made a decision to make a huge investment in Wingham, Ontario to build a new foundry where exhaust manifolds would be built and sold around the world. It was the largest manufacturer of them in the world. There were 2,000 employees in Ontario at Wescast Industries during the period of 2003 to 2004. Do members know how many there are today? There are zero. That is the tale across many communities in Ontario and in Canada. I know that the softwood lumber industry is feeling it now. Those jobs do not come back. The dollars to build the foundry at that time were from private investment, not government grants.”
“Mr. Speaker, first of all, nobody is putting down AI. Simply put, I am saying that when given the choice where to invest, investors are picking the United States. That is all I am saying on that. When it comes to the debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, I do not know why the Liberals even bring it up anymore. Once we get to 100% debt-to-GDP ratio, it is over. No country has ever recovered from that. Basically we are comparing ourselves to countries that are terminal financially. Without a great debt jubilee, it is over for them, like Japan, the United States, etc. Why do we want to be the best of the worst? Why do we not just want to be the best?”
“Of course unemployment, unfortunately and amazingly, under the current Prime Minister , and it is almost unbelievable I am saying this, is higher than when Justin Trudeau was the prime minister. I do not think the current Prime Minister ever thought that would happen. As well, there have been 86,000 job losses since he was elected. I do not think he ever thought that would happen, but it did.”
“At the beginning of the year, the United States announced there would be a $500-million investment into the broader AI sector. None of that was government dollars; it was all private dollars. There has actually been a lot more since that, NVIDIA being the greatest example. It is allocating $100 million out of its own free cash into AI, ChatGPT, in the United States. It is pretty quiet up here in Canada. The only investment we really see is from the Government of Canada. Why is that? It is because the climate, not the weather climate but the investment climate, is not great. The other thing is that there is no extra electrical capacity in this country, partially because of all the red tape in seeking approval to start projects. There is a lot I would like to continue on with.”
“If we go back in time, that was not the case. Large corporations could examine the Canadian market, take a look at the investment climate, the labour pools and all the different services that went into it. I am talking about before 2015. They could make their own decisions, and they did not need Canadian taxpayer dollars to make the investments; they would just come here. It has not been great in the last 10 years. In fact for Canadian companies, unfortunately, the majority of the time when they have a chance to make an investment in Canada, they definitely are not doing so. They are choosing somewhere else. Unfortunately we see that in the news every day. Another one is AI. It is a buzz word on the news, in business and everywhere else.”
“Mr. Speaker, I really think question period today highlighted the fracture in philosophies on the best way forward for the Canadian economy. What we heard in question period today from the Liberals, time and again, was that if we keep spoon-feeding and force-feeding the failed policies of the last 10 years, it might work, instead of letting free enterprise and the capital market move forward with the ability to invest on its own. In question period today, the Liberals were talking about direct foreign investment into Canada. The reality is that it is almost zero when there are no government dollars attached to that investment. We have seen those investments in Ontario and in different places. However, they would have never happened under the current economic climate unless there were taxpayer dollars involved.”
“They could do all these things. They may have had to work a bit of overtime and save from time to time, but it could be done. Now that dream is way out in the distance. I talked to somebody the other day who was talking about all the boomerang kids who have come back to live with their families. We never—”
“He said one thing that might be the worst lie he could have told a Canadian, which was that the Liberals took on debt so Canadians would not have to. A lot of Canadians took that literally, five years ago. They are really being hit now, to the point where they are giving keys back to the bank and there are record lineups at food banks. It goes on and on. Ten years ago, when Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty and Joe Oliver were putting together budgets, a young family had a future. They could afford to buy a home. They could afford to save for their kids' education. They could put food on the table and not have to rely on government food programs to feed their children at lunchtime. People could afford to buy groceries and put it in their kids' lunch boxes. Canadians could afford to raise their kids, play sports and go on a vacation.”
“When Canadians were looking at him in the winter and through the spring, they thought, “Boy, we've really broken away from this Trudeau guy.” However, what they really did was elect Trudeau on steroids. Now, months later, people cannot believe what they got, and I know because I am out in my community all the time. It is not just in finance and business. It is in everything. It is universal disappointment. (1355) We need to get back to the basics. We need to create an economic climate where we can invite people to do business in our country. We need transparency. We need to know exactly what the rules are. Think about how many times the rules have changed since the Liberals have been in government over the past 10 years. For big projects and little projects, everything is changing all the time.”
“All the while, the Liberals have been telling Canadians that we just need to invest a little more to the point where, now, in 2024-25, I believe total government expenditure is at $450 billion. In 10 years, we have increased the size of government by well over 50%, we have more than doubled Canada's debt permanently and we have added burden onto young Canadians that will last their lifetime and generations down the line, all because Justin Trudeau said 10 years ago that we were going to make a wee investment. He used the phrase “modest short-term deficit”. He also used a phrase that came back to bite him pretty hard: “the budget will balance itself”. The other chief architect of this commentary is now the Prime Minister . He was Trudeau's adviser all the way along.”
“I'm going to have a balanced budget in 2020 and a little deficit in the medium term, or $10 billion a year, so some investment can kick-start the economy.” Now, that should have been deadpanned right from the beginning because, with a $2-trillion economy, $10 billion is really not going to get the job done. Right from the beginning, we knew it. Canadians should have known that, when a person comes in with that kind of philosophy, it is going to fail. Fast-forward to today and the net debt is $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion, and the gross debt is way more. The debt-to-GDP ratio for just Canada, not for all the provinces combined, is 45%, I believe. The deficit this year, incredibly, will be higher than a Justin Trudeau deficit at approximately $62.5 billion.”
“The Liberal government has been around so long that it is trying to fix the devastation it created, but that is never going to happen, because the Liberals do not know how to fix it. If we go back 10 years, Stephen Harper and Joe Oliver delivered a budget in the legacy of Jim Flaherty. It was a balanced budget. The government expenditures that year were $289 billion for a balanced budget. The entire net debt for the country was $610 billion, which is a lot. The debt-to-GDP ratio at that time was just over 31% and declining. We really were, after a number of years, becoming a destination for the world to do business. Justin Trudeau came along and said, “Look, I'm just going to spend a bit more over the next three years.”
“Now, they are into the next round of playoffs, and they are getting their return on investment. That is really what we are talking about here today. We have to unleash the private business investment in this country. We have to become more attractive to foreign companies and our own domestic companies so they make a decision to invest in Canada. There is far too much red tape and obstruction to do that. There was a Liberal MP who spoke about 20 minutes ago, and what she said was interesting. She said that the Liberals created a new program to deal with all the red tape and delay in the programs. Well, guess who created all that red tape and delay in the programs?”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise here today. What we are talking about today with this motion is ending the Justin Trudeau-style economic philosophy and the Justin Trudeau-style budgeting and getting back to the basics here. We are talking about investments today and different things. Before I get started, I should congratulate the Toronto Blue Jays on a great victory and a great series. It was excellent. We can all agree on that in the House. It is a bit of unity before we get the punching in. What did the Blue Jays do? We can give them credit for private investment. They spent $750 million over the past few years updating the Rogers Centre, and they did not ask for any government money that I know of. They had a business case, they went about it and they did it. I think they did it on time and on budget.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is all part of the consideration. I know the hon. member is a big fan of snowmobiles and chainsaws and all of these things. We can think back to snowmobiles 30 years ago when there was not one snowmobile in the country that was four-stroke. They all were two-stroke, and they used mixed fuel, and we could smell them five kilometres away. Most of them now are four-stroke, and people do not have to mix the fuel. Even in recreation vehicles, there is innovation.”
“Those help to recycle emissions. We have catalytic converters. What comes out of the tailpipe of a truck from 30 years ago does not reflect anything that happens on a new truck today.”
“Mr. Speaker, I would ask the hon. member to talk to car dealership managers right now and ask how sales of EVs are going once the government rebates and grants are falling off. We can look at the data for the first six months of the year, and we know sales are down because the grants are down. The other thing I will say is to take a look at the combustion engine and its evolution over the last 30 years, specifically around pickup trucks that had V8 engines. Regarding fuel mileage, way back in the day, Ford pickups would get about eight miles to the gallon. Maybe 20 years ago, it would have been 13 or 14 miles to the gallon, and now, if they are cruising down the road, it is close to 30 miles to the gallon. That is a huge innovation. There are other things, like EGR valves that are bolted onto the exhaust manifold.”
“Mr. Speaker, on the problem that the hon. member talks about, she will see if she just goes outside of Guelph a bit that there are an awful lot of people who make their living with a pickup truck. Whether they are a contractor or whatever they do, they have a pickup truck. The way it is today, take, for example, a Ford electric truck. It is great if someone is just tooting down the road with nothing to pull behind them, but as soon as they put a trailer on it with a bit of a load, the battery does not last. It is not a critique of Ford; that is just the way it is. People need a combustion engine to get the job done. It is not to say that down the road it would not happen, but the Liberals are handcuffing Ford, GM, Dodge, all of them. Make it a goal, but the way it is, the proposal is too rigid right now.”
“If we are going to claim an electric vehicle is environmentally friendly because it does not emit, which I can agree with, then we have to be able to recycle the entire car.”
“We know the recyclers will take all the nickel and cobalt they can get out of it, because that is the lucrative part of the recycling, but there are the plastics, the copper and aluminum; all of those should be ethically taken out as well. There was a company, Li-Cycle, a recycler in the U.S., mainly, that recently filed for chapter 15 bankruptcy protection, and a company does not file for that if it is making hordes of money recycling these batteries. It could not get its costs down quick enough to make a go of it. If we have a complete cycle, it makes sense. If governments are going to promote this and we are going to do it, we have to have a complete cycle in the sector. We have to find a way to recycle these vehicles when they come to the end of their life.”
“If we look at the IESO report, it anticipates that there could be new builds for some forms of electricity by 2035, but every day that goes by, we are further along. The other point I really want to talk about is the complete life cycle. Years ago, I worked in the automotive parts manufacturing business. The other point is the recycling of these batteries, which is a reality. If we are adding hundreds of thousands of vehicles with electric batteries in them every year, they cannot just get thrown into the junkyard. There has to be the ability for the entire industry, and the governments that promote these vehicles, to recycle these vehicles safely, environmentally and ethically.”
“We saw what happened in California a couple of years ago with Gavin Newsom. He actually had to tell people there were certain days and certain hours when they could not charge their car. Well, if a person is retired and not having to do everything all the time, that is one thing, but for a parent with kids, running them to hockey, baseball, soccer and music, and going back and forth to work, the possibility of having charging restrictions may not work as well. I am not trying to throw fear into the discussion here, but that is just the reality of what happened, and it was probably because of poor planning of the electrical grid and some other conditions. Something I think we need to consider is the complete cycle of this. That is a reality of the mandate as we get to 2035, and it will be a challenge.”
“The other is something that has come up as an election promise, and I am sure the government will try and follow through on it: all the data centres that are going to be required for AI. If we look at these two drivers for electricity to 2025, we are going to be really up against it. The numbers are, roughly, that about 200,000 electric vehicles will use about 5,000 megawatts on average. As the fleet continues to grow, we can see that if we are adding 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 EVs every year to a province, that is going to really chew into the electrical supply. What we need to do collectively here is to say that we know people like electric vehicles, and we want to be able to provide car manufacturers the ability to make these vehicles, but we also cannot handcuff everyday people in Ontario with not having enough electricity.”
“The supply and demand in Ontario's grid is pretty tight when we get into June and July and air conditioning season, etc. The 2035 mandate is really going to be tight for Ontario. (1140) Now, I am sure all politicians will say that we can meet the challenge, we can do it, but if we actually ask the people who have to build the electrical plants, they may be a little skeptical, especially considering all the red tape involved in a new build, regardless of what source of energy it will be. The grid has to be a big part of this; it has to be a big consideration in this. The IESO put out a report in 2024 that basically outlined the two biggest drivers in demand growth for electricity in Ontario until 2050. There is R1, which we are talking about today, the electrical car mandate.”
“If we take that approach, it would be a much more logical and sensible approach that Canadians would agree with. It does not matter if we are 25 years old or if we are getting close to 50 years old or if we are 80 years old, we can make those decisions that work best for us. Nobody wants to go out to their shed and pull it out. If we are only using it once a month in the summertime, we want the thing to work. If it is battery operated, it is going to work. There are two other considerations here. I am from Ontario, and the consideration I would have is the actual electrical grid. I checked this morning, just before I was up to speak, and the demand for Ontario was about 17,500 megawatts and it is only going to continue to go up today, likely to 20,000 megawatts or somewhere around there.”
“My neighbour sells Makita battery-operated chainsaws, drills, lawnmowers and so on. One day, he said to me that I am just a weekend warrior, no offence, and he asked me why I did not get into one of these, because then I would not have to worry about it not starting when I wanted it to, etc., etc. I said I did not know. He let me borrow his. The next day, I went over and said I would buy one, and so I started off with the battery-operated grass trimmer, and it is fantastic. The point is that this is a market-driven demand. I saw a better option that worked for me. For someone who is in the forestry business, an 18-volt or whatever-volt battery that is going in our chainsaw is not going to work for that person, but for a weekend warrior like me, who needs to cut some branches or a little tree that needs to be taken care of, it works great.”
“The idea of and the evolution of electric vehicles is on display every time we get in our car and drive up and down a road. Where we never used to see one, we see one at every grocery store. Whatever area we are doing our shopping in, we will see one. We will see charging stations. It has evolved very well over the last 15 to 20 years and likely will only continue to grow. I do not think that this is the debate anybody is really having in here. It is just about how we are going to put the hammer down by 2035 and penalize those whom it probably is not going to work for. When we are doing that, we are saying it is for everybody. I do not think Canadians are saying that. To take the most simplistic example, I used to have a gas-fired chainsaw and a gas-fired grass trimmer.”
“Her speech will be up after mine and will likely be 10 or 20 times better than mine, but we will hear everybody's speech. With the EV mandate that is being brought forward, I do not think it is important to debate what a person likes better. If we like an electric vehicle, if we like an electric truck or if we like a diesel truck or a gas truck, that is our preference. Probably, we would all agree that the issue comes down to how, by 2035, whether we still desire to purchase a gas or diesel vehicle that suits our lifestyle needs, whether we live in a rural or remote area or whether we use it for business, that is something I do not think we need to be penalized for, in terms of $20,000 a vehicle. I think most people would agree with that.”