Pat Kelly
Calgary Crowfoot, Alberta · Conservative · Canada
“They are the same Liberals who spent the last 11 years actively preventing Canada from diversifying its export markets by systematically preventing the construction of the energy infrastructure necessary to export Canadian energy to the world. Canadian oil and gas is by far Canada's most valuable export. It dwarfs everything else.”
“I thought that might mean that a year after he made these claims, there would be some kind of approval on the horizon for a pipeline project. I could easily imagine that.”
“If it had been built, it would be carrying 525,000 barrels a day today to world markets. At today's prices, that would bring about $20 billion per year to the Canadian economy. Would we be in a recession today, if the Canadian economy had another 525,000 barrels a day in exported production?”
“Madam Speaker, the member brings up the Trans Mountain pipeline and, again, Conservatives were not calling upon the government to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline and build it themselves.”
“They ran up deficits in the eighties that were so big that by the time the Liberals were defeated in 1984, Canada was literally kiting interest payments by issuing new debt just to cover the interest on the existing debt.”
“She said that, based on the government's stress tests, which, “draws on decades of Canadian economic and fiscal history, including, recessions, financial crises, oil price crashes, and runs thousands of combinations to show the range of possibilities....that the likelihood that the deficit-to-GDP ratio will decline...is less than 1 per ce…”
The complete record
Every one of 352 lines we hold for Pat Kelly, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 8.
“Mr. Speaker, we now see the character of this new majority government. Liberals are going to use their numbers to stifle debate and prevent scrutiny of their bills. Since they tabled Bill C-30 , there have been maybe three hours of debate. Does the minister think that is parliamentary accountability and a sufficient opportunity for members on all sides to question the minister on his horrific spring economic statement, with crippling debt service charges projected in the years ahead?”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his kind words when he identified me under my former riding name. I am very pleased that the member has been able to move this legislation. It is important. The reason it is important is that we have actually seen a deterioration in the information available to parliamentarians over the last number of years. The Liberals disclose even less information than they once did when we make inquiries through questions on the Order Paper or through the access to information system. There is a real need for this legislation, and the problem is becoming more urgent, not less. Would the member like to comment on the reason we need this legislation?”
“Mr. Speaker, the member's speech covered many key points. One of the most important federal ties to this issue is the Liberals' failure to make the argument in court when they could the first time around, making the appeal of the decision they say they oppose so much more difficult. Could the member maybe comment on that?”
“Mr. Speaker, is he talking about maintaining their fiscal anchors? Is this parliamentary secretary serious? He was not here, I guess. Maybe he has not been here to see how many fiscal anchors have been declared and discarded since 2015, even the one he cited in his remarks. He possibly misspoke, but he said that they have a declining debt-to-GDP ratio. They do not. If we look at the budget, it is right there in the statement. They got rid of that fiscal anchor. That is not the current one. He talked about the Liberals congratulating themselves on their deficit being $11 billion lower than what they forecasted five months ago. That is like congratulating themselves for taking off the carbon tax after they put it on in the first place. I do not know what else to say. The standard of living is unchanged in 10 years with these guys.”
“The government gave itself extraordinary new powers to approve new major projects. None have been approved. None are being built. The Liberals are not building big across the country. They are just talking about it. Each time, it is as if they are having an out-of-body experience when they say, “Oh, if only we had a pipeline, we could be an energy superpower.” They had one on the table that was approved. The very first thing they did in 2015 was cancel the northern gateway pipeline. Then they chased out the proponent of the energy east pipeline. Then they chased out the private sector builder of the Trans Mountain pipeline. The government has no track record on building anything, and the budget that it brought in is twice as bad as Trudeau's final budget, the one that triggered his resignation.”
“The first budget the government tabled was more than twice the last budget, which was so bad it resulted in resignations. In response to that, this is what the member said. He would not give assurance that there would not be more than $30 billion in deficit. It turned out to be $67 billion. However, he said, “We are building big, we are building bold and we are building across this country.” What are Liberals even talking about? What are they building? They are not building anything. They talk about the need for energy infrastructure. They talk about the need for all kinds of infrastructure. They have been campaigning and talking about this since 2015 without doing anything. Here we are, over a year after the Prime Minister said they were going to build major projects at unimaginable speeds.”
“Nobody knew if we were even going to get a briefing in a lock-up over it. It was delayed. There was no speech. When we did receive the budget, there was no signature and no name. It was like an anonymous budget just dropped by a random Liberal minister who was called upon to do it. The finance minister resigned over that budget or had resigned already. The former prime minister resigned not long after that. The issue then was the deficit. The deficit was so big then that nobody was willing to take responsibility for it. The Liberals' own cabinet and caucus decided enough is enough and it was time to bring in somebody who could actually balance the budget or at least control spending and restore fiscal sanity. However, as it turned out, it actually got worse.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on adjournment business to seek a little more accountability from the government for its response to a question that I asked in question period a couple of weeks ago. I questioned the government about the deficit, which had not yet been tabled. I simply asked whether or not the government could give assurance to the House that it would not be higher than the projected deficit that Justin Trudeau submitted in the last financial update that was tabled in the House when he was prime minister. Some will recall the chaos around that. The finance minister resigned two days or so before it was to be tabled. For those of us who were here then, we did not even know if there was going to be a budget that day. It was chaotic. There were boxes.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have no idea why. The member is asking why the Liberals are choosing to ignore all the testimony and the substance of all three reports. Nobody is saying that sexual assault and misconduct cases must stay within the military justice system. Nobody is recommending that. I have no idea why they are ignoring all the witness testimony they heard and why they spent 11 years not dealing with and solving the problem with legislation to deal with sexual misconduct in the armed forces.”
“Mr. Speaker, I completely disagree with what the government is doing, and I thank the member for the way he put it. That is exactly what we have seen and what is happening today. The government is undoing the work of a parliamentary committee that did good work on behalf of Canadians. MPs from different parties co-operated with each other and produced sound, principled amendments to deal with a real problem, and now the Liberals are undoing that work because they can.”
“Mr. Speaker, I think the member completely missed the point. I was not speaking of the Prime Minister 's use of French or English. I was talking about his use of the English word “deputy” when clearly characterizing his MPs as his deputies. The Prime Minister thinks that the MPs of his party are his deputies, just there to do his work. However, they are elected by the people of Canada. All MPs are elected by the people of Canada. Nobody is the Prime Minister's deputy around here.”
“I support the conclusions of the defence committee, which made important amendments to fix the bill. I oppose the Liberals' attempts to undo the committee's work by gutting the amendments today.”
“I am actually concerned about his limited civic literacy, when he speaks in English and calls other MPs his deputies, and when he sets up photo op signings, pretending to sign bills into law. It is almost as if he needed to be told that it is actually the Governor General who signs laws, not him; that she does so only after they have been agreed to by a majority of members of Parliament, of both Houses of Parliament; and that none of those members in either chamber are his deputies. I am disappointed that the government took 11 years to deal with a well-known and long-standing problem and that it is proposing to gut this bill after such clear and powerful committee testimony. I supported the bill in principle and sending it to the defence committee.”
“I hope the member for Nunavut will remember this and will not end up opposing her own contribution to the bill, because she proposed the amendment that would allow choice and flexibility in cases of sexual misconduct in the military. She was doing her job, so now that she sits on the Liberal benches, I hope she will actually follow through and support her own amendment. The member for Nunavut is not the only one. There are other members who have crossed the floor. We now see the Liberals and their true colours: power at all costs and control at all costs, with power concentrated entirely in the hands of the Prime Minister . The Prime Minister 's contempt for Parliament as an institution is becoming obvious to all.”
“They want them to work together and want them to respect and co-operate with each other. That is what the defence committee members did. They took seriously the amendments offered by an MP who did not even have a vote at the committee. However, between the clause-by-clause review at the committee and the present, today, when the Liberals now have a majority and have used time allocation to curtail debate on this, the member for Nunavut has crossed the floor and joined the Liberal caucus. She had a history of principled opposition to government. She was one of the few NDP members who remembered that her duty was to oppose the government and not to hold the opposition party to account.”
“The Liberals have a majority, and they have already demonstrated the contempt they hold for opposition MPs and for ideas other than their own. In its arrogance and unbridled hubris, the Liberal government is ignoring the wisdom born of co-operation and collaboration. There were 14 amendments, which were all supported by multiple parties, and now the Liberals are intent on ramming the bill through, after spending almost 11 years failing to introduce and pass it. The member for Nunavut , in particular, contributed to the bill in a very meaningful, important way. This is what Canadians want. Her party did not even have a seat at the committee table, but she as an MP produced a good, sound, principled amendment that was debated and adopted at committee. Canadians say they want their elected representatives to be open-minded.”
“Official languages is an issue if a member cannot get service in the official language of their choice in the provincial system of where they are stationed. Delay is another one. That is why the committee recommended choice. It would not be forcing anybody to have their case studied within the military system. It would be giving choice. During this committee study, no party had a majority. All the MPs worked together, regardless of their party affiliation. There were many amendments proposed, and there was very powerful and compelling testimony that drove these amendments. That is what Parliament is all about: hearing from the witnesses at committee and working together to recommend improvement to the legislation. That is good opposition politics. That is good government party politics. However, we know that now everything has changed.”
“That is why Conservatives and Bloc MPs, even the NDP, all recommended that the best way to give victims their best shot at receiving justice is to allow the victim to choose which system makes the most sense in their particular case. (1340) The simplicity of this recommendation speaks for itself. There have been other inquiries and studies done at the defence committee, and none of the inquiries, the studies or parliamentary reports disagreed that there are barriers to justice within a system where the victim and the accused are part of the same chain of command. Nobody is disputing this. However, as was pointed out by witnesses during the committee's study, the civilian system is also riddled with barriers to justice for victims.”
“The amendments we are debating are the result of the defence committee's work earlier this year. The defence committee heard brave, courageous testimony from victims of sexual assault, abuse and harassment within the armed forces. They heard about traumatic, harrowing experiences. The testimony that was heard at the defence committee was given serious consideration. The appropriate jurisdiction of investigations and prosecution is not a simple question. It is true that Justice Arbour recommended that all cases be referred to the civilian system, but it is also true that many victims expressed a variety of concerns about access to justice within the civilian system.”
“That lost legislative session ended with the implosion of the Liberal cabinet, the resignation of the then prime minister and the prorogation of Parliament. It ended the Liberals' attempt, their first attempt, to legislate the changes recommended by Justice Deschamps. Conservatives have always supported, and continue to support, the recommendations contained in the Deschamps report. We agreed with the recommendations when we were in government. Conservatives have continued to agree with them while in opposition during the 42nd Parliament, the 43rd Parliament, the 44th Parliament and, now, the 45th Parliament. When the Liberals finally called this bill, Bill C-11 , last December, on a Friday, Conservatives allowed it to pass at second reading without even one full day of debate. Now we have the amendments.”
“Three elections in, the Liberals finally got around to tabling an earlier version of this bill in the spring of 2023. That was eight years after the Deschamps report, and then they made almost no effort to move the bill in the House. It sat there collecting dust on the Order Paper for a whole year before receiving, I believe, exactly one day of debate in the spring of 2024. Some will remember what the Liberals did in the fall of 2024. They sacrificed their entire legislative agenda in defiance of two orders of Parliament. They willingly did so rather than comply with rulings from the Speaker that found prima facie evidence of contempt of Parliament related to the corruption of the green slush fund and the lies told about the disgraced former minister Randy Boissonnault at committee and his conflicts of interest.”
“We have to go through this to really figure out how we got here, when the Liberals are time allocating this bill today, in 2026. During the 42nd Parliament, the Liberals' main contribution to the issue of sexual misconduct was to cover it up. That is what it did when it touched the highest levels of the chain of command. Some will remember that former defence minister Harjit Sajjan helped cover up known sexual misconduct by the then chief of the defence staff, Jonathan Vance, along with some help from the Trudeau PMO. After the next election, in the 43rd Parliament, the Liberals still did absolutely nothing to implement the Deschamps report. They let new reports pile up, such as the Fish report and the Arbour report, while a succession of senior officers continued to be publicly accused of sexual harassment.”
“Mr. Speaker, sexual misconduct in the armed forces is a known long-standing problem. It was known during the previous Conservative government. The previous Conservative government received the Deschamps report, which recommended changes, some of which required legislation, in March of 2015. The report was tabled and its recommendations were accepted just before the 2015 election. If Conservatives had been re-elected in 2015, the legislative changes necessary to address investigations and prosecutions into sexual misconduct would have been taken care of 10 years ago, but that is not how it turned out. The Liberals won the 2015 election. During the entire 42nd Parliament, the Liberals did absolutely nothing. They made literally zero effort to pass the necessary legislation between 2015 and 2019.”
“Madam Speaker, the reviews on this costly budget are in and they are not good. Even Andrew Coyne, that pillar of Laurentian consensus, said that this new government has no interest in “arresting our economic decline.” Even Andrew Coyne says we are in economic decline, and the Liberals are not interested in doing anything about it. Will the Liberals finally end their credit card budgeting, yes or no?”
“Madam Speaker, remember when Justin Trudeau's projected deficit was so bad, Chrystia Freeland refused to table it and resigned, and then Trudeau resigned? They had to get another random Liberal to table it. The update is so bad. It is another credit card budget, with double the deficit that forced the then-finance minister and, eventually, the prime minister to resign. Will the Prime Minister admit that after 10 years of reckless Liberal taxing, borrowing and spending, nothing has changed?”
“Madam Speaker, that is a credit to past prime ministers, who bequeathed this government a balanced budget in 2015. He may note that it gives me no joy to point out that we are at the bottom of the OECD for per capita GDP and that the standard of living in the country has not improved over the tenure of the government. Yes, they are clinging to that one, but we have seen how they discharge all of their anchors and all of their measurements, all of the bars to which they measure themselves, when necessary.”
“Madam Speaker, I only had 10 minutes. I am glad I got that question. The hon. member raised the tariffs. This is a terrible moment in which we find ourselves with respect to the tariffs. Again, this is the government that said it had the answers. It promised and ran in an election campaign promising a deal by last July. The deal has not happened. There is no visible evidence of progress toward a deal. I do not know what the Liberals' plan is. They just seem to think that their own slogans or walking around saying “elbows up” will solve the problem.”
“Madam Speaker, with regard to the debt-to-GDP, I did not even have time to get to that slippery bit of accounting that these guys talk about. I heard, yesterday in debate, when they talked about a 10% debt-to-GDP ratio. That is if we are pretending that we have the ability, if we wish, to use the entire assets of the Canada pension plan to pay off Canada's debts. That is accounting trickery. He talked about the port of Montreal. The Liberals have been in office for almost 11 years and they have done nothing to build this infrastructure. It would be one thing if they had just come into power and were looking at this. They have been here for 11 years and they have not done what they promised to do in 2015.”
“Let us repeal all of the bad laws the Liberals have passed over the last 10 years that have been chasing investment out of the country and we will see building and construction of a strong, resilient, sovereign Canadian economy. That is the approach Canadians need, not the approach that benefits rent-seekers and insiders rather than the people of Canada.”
“It did not work with the Infrastructure Bank, but instead of winding up the Infrastructure Bank and moving on, they are doubling down and creating a new thing where people who are seeking regulatory relief and self-enrichment or subsidies would lobby the government, and those with the best connections would be chosen by the government. This fund would be politically controlled. Its board would be PMO buddies who would approve the projects that the Prime Minister wants to have approved. The Prime Minister said as much. The Liberals have talked about, “We can give regulatory relief or subsidies to some of these guys, but we are going to want a piece of the action, too”. Think of the kind of language that they are using. Why not use a common-sense approach?”
“The accidents in northern Ontario are horrific. I come from western Canada, where there are some horrific portions of that highway in B.C. Think of the productivity drag. We have ports that are ranked among the very worst in the world. Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Montreal all need billions of dollars in improvement. These are the kinds of things that would improve the productivity of our country. They announced a wealth fund with the same model as the Infrastructure Bank, which was called a failed industrial policy by the Montreal Economic Institute on Monday. Representatives from the Montreal Economic Institute came to committee and said that the Liberals are doing the same thing.”
“They create new Crown corporations, funds and bureaucratic structures, but we do not see real, tangible infrastructure investment. The last thing, which they are still talking about, was the Alto project. They say it will cost around $90 billion, but an average cost overrun would take that to about $135 billion, and 12 million people a year, according to McGill University, would ride the thing. Doing the math, it would be probably around $500 a ticket just to service the debt that it would cost to build this thing. That is not nation building, it is pet-project annouce-ology, announcing something that people will feel good about, but has no basis in fact. Why do the Liberals not take that money and twin and build a proper Trans Canada highway? We have seriously dangerous portions of the highway where people are killed regularly.”
“The opportunity lost and squandered over the last 10 years is devastating, and it has accelerated in the last year and a half since they changed leaders on the other side. The deficit and productivity crisis are getting worse. In fact, we are coming up on the second anniversary of when the deputy governor of the Bank of Canada declared productivity to be a break-glass emergency. We are at the bottom of our peer countries in investment, plants, equipment and intellectual property. These are the things that improve the productivity of our economy and lead to higher wages, so that people can afford the increased cost of living. The Liberals ignored this productivity emergency. They are not building productivity-enhancing infrastructure; they just talk.”
“Think of how much in taxes and provincial royalty we could have, and all of these public goods that would have gone toward building schools, hospitals and public services that Canadians rely on, but they cancelled it. It was literally the first thing they did. Now here they are, having this out-of-body experience, wondering why things have not been built in Canada over the last 10 years and why we have this deficit in infrastructure. They ran in 2015, promising to borrow in the short term in order to build infrastructure that would allow the budget to balance itself, but it did not happen. The deficits happened, and they continue to spiral upward to what we have today, a $67-billion deficit.”
“These are all the things we want, that all Canadians want, but we are not going to get there by just simply borrowing money and declaring that we have a sovereign wealth fund when there is no wealth backing it. That is not going to get us where we need to go. Think of where we were 10 years ago. The Liberals had a balanced budget. The northern gateway pipeline was approved. (1035) The Liberals came in here with an approved pipeline and a balanced budget. Enbridge could have built that pipeline, and today it would be pumping out half a million barrels a day into world markets, creating $50 million a day at today's prices in revenue, so $20 billion a year.”
“They are going to borrow this money, which is a charge against the consolidated revenue of Canada. It has to be paid, but they offset it and pay it as an offsetting asset, which will not be generating money to repay the debt, and certainly not anytime soon, if ever. The debt is actually getting worse than even the deficit number would state because of this wealth fund that the Liberals have created, so let us talk about an exercise in announce-ology. We heard the previous speaker talk about building Canada. Yes, we need to build in Canada. There are so many things that need to be built in this country. We need a strong Canada. Everybody in the House wants a strong Canada. Every Canadian wants their country to be strong, secure, prosperous, stable and peaceful.”
“Here we are at $67 billion. That is double the deficit that was so bad a year and a half ago that it brought down a prime minister. This budget is going to begin to squeeze out other spending. The fastest-growing item in this budget and in the projections is debt service. The current expenditure on debt service is $57.8 billion. This is money that is not being spent on health transfers, on old age security and on building, buying and procuring submarines, which is something the Liberals have not done yet. It is the fastest-growing part, and it is going to go to $80 billion in the short-term horizon that this budget covers. We also see debt growing through accounting trickery, because the Liberals are going to borrow $25 billion to fund this so-called wealth fund. It is right there, buried in an appendix at the back.”
“It was pure chaos. Nobody even knew whether the budget was going to be tabled or not. Nobody would sign it. When it was dropped, it had no signature. There was no minister, and nobody was willing to take responsibility for even a $30‑billion deficit projected in this year. It precipitated the eventual resignation of Trudeau. Here we are a year and a half later, and the Liberals are tabling a budget that is twice as bad as that one, which was so bad it brought down a finance minister and a prime minister. They turned to the guy who was supposed to be the adult, who was supposed to have the credentials and be the experienced person who knew that money did not grow on trees, that we could not borrow our way to prosperity and that money borrowed eventually had to be repaid. Everybody thought that was the guy they had gone to.”
“Madam Speaker, let us make no mistake, this is another Liberal costly credit card budget. This budget has record debt, record debt service charges and record spending. This is just more of the same failed approach we have seen for the last 10 and a half years since the government came into power and inherited a balanced budget. This is a failed approach that is continuing to fail. We have a deficit now on this budget of $67 billion. That is double the budget that was projected in the last Trudeau budget for this year. Does everybody remember what happened then? That was when the Liberals were going to table a budget of $30 billion for the deficit for this year, and that deficit then was considered so big and so bad that Chrystia Freeland resigned rather than table it. Do members remember that day? I was in the lock-up that day.”
“Madam Speaker, the member spent a fair bit of time in his speech on the excise section. He said the government is halving the rate of excise. I am pretty sure what he meant is that the government is halving the increase on the excise. I would like him to clarify this, so that we do not leave Canadians with the impression that the government is actually reducing the tax on excise. The government is reducing the rate at which it is increasing the excise. Perhaps the member could comment, then, on whether or not that would bring the excise rate down to the level it was in 2017, before the government started automatically increasing it every year.”
“Madam Speaker, it is a shame, because she must not have listened to my speech. I was very clear about the approach the Liberals should take and the approach they should not take. It takes a staggering amount of arrogance to judge and presume what is important to the opposition, and to say that we should not use an opposition day to oppose a terrible policy being proposed by the government and to propose alternatives. That is what opposition days are for. In question period, we ask important questions that need to be answered. We do not need to be told by the government what questions we should ask or which of its policies we should oppose or propose alternatives to.”
“That is why we call on the government to cancel this Liberal slush fund that is being charged to the national credit card. Its approach is not free enterprise; it is state control. It is the approach that always leads to decline, poverty and, eventually, it follows all the way to its logical conclusion: loss of liberty. I call on the government to not proceed with yet another Liberal slush fund.”
“With this system, the government makes rules that kill investment, then sets up an office staffed by the Prime Minister 's appointees, cherry-picks which projects it does not want the existing laws of Canada to apply to and then leaves itself free to create whatever future rules or subsidies to force the taxpayer to guarantee the success of whatever project it has chosen. This is what the Prime Minister has more or less admitted himself. All the government needs to do to undo the damage of the past 10 years is to repeal its anti-development laws, rein in its deficits and lower or repeal its taxes and investment will flow. It will flow to its logical conclusion of projects built, jobs created, taxes collected, public services funded, taxes lowered and people free to live in comfort, plenty and freedom.”
“He went even beyond his own announcement and said that it would be $5 to every one dollar, in his speech, where he announced it. Here we are nine years later, with billions of dollars still not invested, no projects done and the real number of leveraged private sector investment is 66¢ on the dollar. Now the current Prime Minister wants to do the same thing with this new fund. I do not have time to explain all the things that are wrong with the Infrastructure Bank. This is the same industrial policy that failed with the Infrastructure Bank.”
“The man then who was supposed to be this serious, experienced, credentialed, technocratic adult in the room who would restore the health of Canada's finances after nine years of neglect is now doubling down on the state-led, rent-seeking, crony capitalism of the Trudeau years and has doubled that deficit, which was such a crisis for how huge it was at the time. Consider now the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Nine years ago, the government said that this new thing it gleefully announced would transform Canada. Its members said that it would leverage private sector investment and unlock hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure investment. It was all nonsense. Their press release said that there would be four private dollars invested for every public dollar. Do members remember Bill Morneau?”
“Their deficits quickly became structural and have now spiralled ever upward since. It did actually come to a head in the late 2024 session. Does anybody remember what was happening in December 2024? That was when a projected $30-billion deficit for this year was so bad that Chrystia Freeland refused to sign off on it. Do members remember that? Remember when $30 billion was enough for her to resign as the finance minister? Remember the wave of resignations and retirement announcements? Remember when fiscal management finally became the focused issue and finally forced Trudeau out?”
“Now the Liberals are having a sort of out-of-body experience, wondering why we cannot supply our allies and the world market with energy. (1705) Before anyone says, “Wait a minute, Trudeau's gone. All the leave-it-in-the-ground Liberals have been shuffled off to the back row and off to the sides or given cushy diplomatic appointments,” let us not forget, let no one in the House forget that, in 2021, the now Prime Minister appeared at the industry committee and was questioned by the opposition leader . He was asked about that decision to cancel the west coast pipeline, and he said then that it was “the right decision.” These Liberals have been wrong about everything for the past 10 years. Their deficits were not a transformational investment into productivity-enhancing infrastructure construction that allowed the budget to balance itself.”
“Then the Liberals formed their government in November 2015, and their election promise was to run three years of modest deficits to fund unprecedented investments in national infrastructure, resulting in economic growth that would lead the budget to balance itself. However, the very first thing they did was cancel the existing pipeline approval for the west coast. They did it by a ministerial order before Parliament even met in November 2015. If they had not done that, the west coast pipeline would already be built. Half a million barrels of Canadian oil would be on world markets today. At today's price, that is $50 million a day in Canadian energy exports. That is nearly $20 billion a year at today's prices.”
“The best way to build Canada and the wealth of Canadians is to repeal the laws that the Liberals passed over the last 10 years that have resulted in capital flight from Canada and in economic stagnation. In 2015, the government inherited a balanced budget from the previous government. The New York Times, hardly a Conservative media organ, declared that Canada then had the most prosperous middle class in the world. Homes were affordable for most people. Food was affordable. A pipeline to the west coast was approved. Kinder Morgan was preparing to invest billions of dollars to expand the Trans Mountain west coast pipeline. The TransCanada pipeline project, as it was then called, was doing the preliminary work for an application to build an east coast pipeline. This was what was on the table in 2015.”
“The government announced, “The Fund will invest in strategic Canadian projects and companies alongside other investors—with a clear objective to achieve commercial returns to build the wealth of Canada.” Well, that sounds wonderful, does it not? Who could be against Canadian projects and investing in companies that deliver commercial returns for the wealth of all Canadians? However, the skilful announcement cannot hide what this really is. The problem is that borrowing money and handing it to politicians and their hand-picked cronies to invest in companies that are chasing preferential regulatory treatment, subsidies and self-enrichment, all done on the nation's credit card, is absolutely the worst possible way to go about building Canada and the wealth of Canadians.”