Kelly Block
Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, Saskatchewan · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, that was a serious question that deserved a serious answer. Buried in the Liberals' omnibus budget bill is yet another ministerial power grab. Cabinet gives itself more powers to award contracts while allowing itself to muzzle the very watchdog, the procurement ombudsman, who is meant to monitor it.”
“Mr. Speaker, I would just suggest this: My hon. colleague does not need to take my word for it. She does not need to take the word of my colleagues on this side of the House. Maybe she should go back and look at the Auditor General's report or the PBO's report that was tabled last fall.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-20 , an act that seeks to establish the Build Canada Homes bureaucracy, at third reading. As I mentioned during the debate at second reading, this bill is the latest attempt by the Liberals to solve a problem they created.”
“We must also acknowledge the lost potential to our economy as construction workers are laid off and home builders stop building at a time when housing starts, job creation and affordability are needed the most. Building has become complex. The regulatory burden has become expansive.”
“This would mean a departure from an “Ottawa knows best” mindset and a return to common sense, wherein young people are free to innovate, businesses are able to adapt and the market drives demand for growth.”
“As for the Canada Lands Company, its responsibility to develop federal properties and convert them into housing units will now become the responsibility of Build Canada Homes. The six projects that were announced, as my colleague pointed out earlier, had already been approved and development was well under way.”
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“In fact, they even lashed out at law-abiding Canadians when they raised concerns about the rise in gun crimes under the Liberal government in the hopes that the Liberals would crack down on criminals and illegal firearms. Instead, the government started targeting law-abiding firearms owners and treated them as if they were dangerous criminals who needed to be dealt with. We all knew that illegal firearms being smuggled across the border to be used by street gangs were what needed to be dealt with. The government needed to stop illegal firearms from crossing the border so they could not be used to rob, injure or kill Canadians. What did the Liberals do instead? Old habits die hard. The government doubled down on hunters and sport shooters.”
“This sweeping piece of legislation, which the government claims will strengthen our border, protect Canada's sovereignty and keep Canadians safe, amends the following acts: the Customs Act; the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, to add fentanyl to schedule V; the Canada Post Corporation Act; the Oceans Act; the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act; the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act; the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act; the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act; and the Sex Offender Information Registration Act. It also introduces the supporting authorized access to information act, which is one to pay attention to. For years, the Liberals, knowing we had severe problems at our border with the United States, dragged their feet on addressing any of the issues.”
“Madam Speaker, I echo the comments that have been made welcoming you back to the chair. I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise to speak to this important piece of legislation, Bill C-2 , an act respecting certain measures relating to the security of the border between Canada and the United States and respecting other related security measures. Finally, after a decade of inaction and repeated failures, the Liberals have tabled a so-called strong borders act, which gives the appearance of taking border security more seriously. However, the fact is that this legislation is packed with measures that Canadians did not ask for. It is a travesty that the government has allowed so many problems to fester for so long and cause so much damage to Canadians.”
“The Prime Minister must tell Canadians what assets he held when he entered public office and whether those assets were held in offshore tax havens to avoid paying Canadian taxes.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has repeatedly refused to be transparent about his financial holdings. Instead of coming clean about his financial interests, he dumped his assets into a blind trust, exposing a loophole in Canada's financial disclosure laws. Through this scheme, he is keeping his financial interests a secret from Canadians in order to escape accountability. This follows a pattern of shady actions. Prior to becoming Prime Minister , he helped two multi-billion dollar funds in offshore tax havens so his company, Brookfield, could avoid paying Canadian taxes. After a spending bill asking for half a trillion dollars has been tabled, Canadians deserve to know whether the Prime Minister is using that spending to boost his own investment portfolio.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has been in office since March 14 and is now pushing a presentation of a budget for six months. He is pushing it down the road, even though the fall economic update was tabled in December of last year. This is not leadership; this is abandonment. That is exactly what the Liberal government does. It is long on virtue signalling and short on being virtuous.”
“Mr. Speaker, I absolutely disagree with the premise of the question. What we have here is a government that actually stole many of its ideas from Conservatives. The Liberals say they are going to do these things, yet they have a Speech from the Throne that is ambiguous enough that they will be able to not undertake the things they are promising. They are not bringing forward a budget, so we do not know what their plan is. There is no road map to get us where they say they want to go, and it remains to be seen if they will actually end up getting us there.”
“Mr. Speaker, just when the Prime Minister and his caucus would love us to believe that there is a new government, that member stands up to ask a question and proves, as he does over and over again, that it is the same old, tired government we dealt with in the last Parliament. It should go without saying, and the member would be familiar with this, that I rarely ever agree with anything he says. The past 10 years of Liberal governments have shown that the Liberals are not interested in or serious about making Canada an energy superpower. Despite all their rhetoric, their actions have spoken louder than their words, and we can expect more of the same.”
“Canadians can count on Conservatives to fulfill our duty every day to stand up for them, fight for change and restore hope once again.”
“While promising to define a new relationship with the United States, they are dropping retaliatory tariffs and allowing the U.S. to take jobs out of Canada. While promising to make Canada an energy superpower, Liberal ministers insist that pipelines should not be built and that Canada's oil and gas should stay in the ground. While the Prime Minister promised to bring housing costs down, his housing minister intends to keep house prices up, at record highs. The Liberals are already going back on their word within the first days of this session. Unfortunately for Canadians, the so-called new Liberal government looks a lot like the old one. After 10 years of high spending leading to inflation and an affordability crisis, Canadians want fiscal restraint and a government that will be responsible with their tax dollars.”
“This further demonstrated the Harper government's commitment to consulting with and listening to Canadians, especially those most directly affected by resource development projects, all while upholding Canada's world-class environmental standards. Does this sound familiar? However, the last 10 years of an antidevelopment Liberal government has made Canada dependent on and vulnerable to the U.S. Without a commitment to scrap the production cap on Canadians, to repeal Bill C-69 and Bill C-48 , and to axe the federal industrial carbon tax, this proposal is just another empty promise. In closing, the promises made in the Speech from the Throne do not line up with Liberals' actions. While promising to enact more fiscal discipline, they are increasing spending.”
“Although this study was cut short when the election was called, the issues persist and must be addressed, especially if the government intends to fast-track major projects across the country. This leads us to the promise in the speech to create a “new Major Federal Project Office”. Imitation is truly the best form of flattery. In 2007, the Harper government created the Major Projects Management Office. The goal of the office at that time was to improve coordination within Canada's regulatory system by providing industry with a single, efficient point of entry into the federal process. It also provided for the integration of Crown consultation requirements with indigenous communities at the beginning of the process.”
“Given the Liberal government's track record on indigenous procurement, I believe this will be another empty promise. While studying the procurement strategy for indigenous businesses, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates found that the government was not verifying the indigeneity of businesses. During testimony, indigenous groups and businesses suggested that most of the funding through this program was going to non-indigenous businesses that were posing as indigenous. The Liberals allowed this abuse by ignoring the rules and a lack of indigenous leadership and/or ownership while handing out millions of dollars in contracts. The government was unable to offer any explanation for its failure to ensure that programs meant to benefit indigenous peoples and businesses did so.”
“Roughly $60 million is known to have been spent on this app; the number may be even higher, but, because shoddy documentation was kept, the Auditor General could not confirm it, so we will never know. We also found out that McKinsey, a favourite consulting firm of the Liberals, was given preferential treatment, leading to $100 million in government contracts. The Liberals used a contract vehicle called a national master standing offer, which is usually reserved for vendors who offer a specialized service that government departments need access to. When the Auditor General reviewed these contracts, she found that McKinsey should not have been given special access to the government contracts. In the throne speech, the Prime Minister also promised to work with indigenous peoples to identify and catalyze projects of national significance.”
“Within this half-trillion dollar ask, the government has earmarked $26 billion in spending on consultants. That is an 11% increase in spending on those consultants. In the last Parliament, Conservatives uncovered what the Liberals paid for: consultants who had padded their pockets through double-dipping, fraudulent billing and, at the end of it all, subpar work that could have been done in-house by the public service. Perhaps the additional billions in spending is due to the new list of Liberal insiders that the new Prime Minister brings with him from his previous career. (1150) In the arrive scam scandal, a consulting firm billed tens of millions of dollars to build a simple app but did none of the work, work that some programmers were able to replicate over a weekend.”
“During the election, the Prime Minister said that despite being an economic adviser to Trudeau, he would be different; he would reorient the government to be more fiscally responsible. The throne speech stated, “In all of its actions, the Government will be guided by a new fiscal discipline: spend less so Canadians can [save] more.” However, no sooner did the promise of fiscal responsibility pass his lips than it is already being broken. Now we see that the spending of the Trudeau years will carry on under the current Prime Minister. The main estimates were released last week, with the government asking to spend nearly half a trillion dollars in its first spending bill. How can the Liberals keep a straight face in claiming to be fiscally responsible while supporting a spending bill that even outstrips Trudeau’s spending from last year?”
“It is not a good sign that while Canadians are struggling with affordability and businesses face uncertainty, Liberal ministers want to suppress the country's largest industry and keep young Canadians priced out of the housing market. Members will remember when the Prime Minister said during the election campaign, “a plan beats no plan.” Canadians were rightly expecting to see that plan put forward in the Speech from the Throne, followed by a budget. However, with the campaign behind him, the Prime Minister announced he is waiting until the fall, pushing off the plan, as well as the accountability that comes through the scrutiny of a government's budget. Instead we are left with a throne speech full of half measures, no budget and main estimates that include more spending than under Trudeau, with an 8% increase.”
“The people in my riding and, indeed, Saskatchewan, overwhelmingly voted for hope and change. They understood that our country would not thrive under more of the same failed Liberal policies. While the Prime Minister promised change, a different Liberal government and a more serious approach, we are not off to a good start. As it turns out, things are not so different after all, starting with the Prime Minister naming Trudeau's foremost ministers to the most senior roles in his cabinet. Immediately after their swearing-in, his ministers made statements refuting the various policies he had run on. For example, the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture claimed that no pipelines will be built, and the housing minister stated that he intends to make sure housing prices do not come down.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in this place and speak to the Speech from the Throne. As this is the first time I am rising in this Parliament, I would like to take a moment to express my gratitude to the voters in Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek for once again putting their faith in me to be their representative here in Ottawa. It is truly an honour, one that I take very seriously. No one gets here on their own, and I want to thank my team and the volunteers who showed up day after day during the campaign. Lastly, I want to thank my husband, Milton, and my entire family, who have stood by me and behind me every step of the way. I also want to acknowledge all those individuals displaced as a result of the fires in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, as well as all those fighting hard to ensure those communities remain safe.”