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 7 of 8.
“As an ongoing celebration of Malcolm's life, the Malcolm Torrance award in Canadian politics will be established by his family, his friends and his University of Calgary colleagues. He leaves a legacy of friendship, memories, public service and inspiration to others. Rest well, Malcolm.”
“Mr. Speaker, Malcolm Torrance unexpectedly passed away peacefully in his sleep at age 20 on April 2, during the recent election. Malcolm was a loving son and trusted friend, a political science student, president of the University of Calgary's Campus Conservatives, a former Conservative intern known to many here on the Hill, director of the Calgary Crowfoot Conservative Association and, at the time of his death, an active and dedicated volunteer on my election team. During his short life, he had a significant impact on his community and touched the lives of many. While ideologically driven and having strong opinions, he always treated everyone with respect, including those with whom he did not agree.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is as if the parliamentary secretary has no background information at all on the track record of the government he speaks for. He said in his response just now that our allies are calling for Canadian energy. Indeed, they are. They have been for 10 years, and this government, the government the parliamentary secretary speaks for, loudly told our allies that there was no business case for Canadian LNG. That is what the then prime minister of Canada had to say. This government has been in power for 10 years, and it is as if there is some kind of out-of-body experience where the Liberals are not aware of who has been running the government for the past 10 years and who has been chasing away investment, including investment in LNG, which would supply the world with reliable Canadian energy.”
“The government could just do as I asked in my question, or what we have been calling for for the last 10 years: Get rid of Bill C-69 , get rid of Bill C-48 , get rid of the emissions cap, get rid of the industrial carbon tax, get rid of the EV mandates, repeal the so-called clean fuel standard it brought in, rein in its spending, bring in a balanced budget, restore the public finances of the country, establish conditions upon which private investment can once again flourish in this country and get Canadians back to work in the energy industry so we can supply clean, reliable energy to the world.”
“Therefore it is hard to take at face value the mixed words about claiming to support energy, when its response is, for example, to bring in a bill, Bill C-5 , which gives the government the power to interfere politically, to decide and to pick and choose when it wants to dispense with the rule of its own laws and not apply the laws it created that are preventing private investors from building infrastructure in this country.”
“We have declining per capita GDP as we speak, and over the last number of years, while the government has been in power, Canadians have been getting poorer. Per capita GDP has been declining. This is a decline in the living standard of Canadians that the government has presided over. Liberals are talking about jobs and about the importance of energy, but the government has spent literally 10 years chasing capital out of Canada, chasing jobs out of Canada and doing everything it can to strangle the energy industry in Canada.”
“We will help build the strongest economy in the G7, create jobs for Canadians and give the best cards to our negotiators at the negotiating table. Canada's new government will win this trade war. There is a lot to unpack in that response. To start with, the minister said, “if there is a national consensus”. They do not have a consensus even in their own caucus about pipelines. How are they going to have a consensus? The word “consensus” means that every single person agrees, and that is not a reasonable bar for the government, or any government, to set for whether there will be something as critical to our economy as pipelines to be built. He talked about “the strongest economy in the G7”. Canada arguably has, and actually this is probably not even arguable but instead a fact, the weakest economy in the G7 right now.”
“Mr. Speaker, when the Liberal government was first elected in 2015, it killed 16 major resource projects and chased $176 billion out of the Canadian economy. This resulted in thousands of lost jobs in my city alone, and Bill C-69 continues to make it impossible to build the pipelines needed to unleash our resources and restore our economic independence. I asked in June whether the Prime Minister would commit on that day to cancelling Justin Trudeau's “no more pipelines” bill, Bill C-69 . The response from the new minister was to say: We will support new pipelines if there is a national consensus in favour of them. With our country's facing American tariffs, we must strengthen our energy and natural resources sectors. There is no question that energy is Canada's power.”
“Madam Speaker, it almost seems like the Liberals across from us are just wondering why the provincial courts are not restraining people, after the Liberals passed a law that required and imposed the least restraint. It was the secretary of state for public safety who introduced this to the debate, and I would like the member to comment, if she would, on the Liberals' response.”
“Food and housing remain unaffordable while unemployment is rising, and the government still has no plan and no budget. The Liberals may have pushed Justin Trudeau out, but the fiscal ineptitude remains.”
“Mr. Speaker, after nearly 10 years of fiscal and economic vandalism, the Liberals claimed they were ready to rein in the out-of-control inflationary spending that piles on debt for future generations and drives up the cost of living. However, since the Prime Minister took office, federal spending has gone up 8.4% based on the estimates tabled in Parliament. He has boosted consultants by 37%, from $19 billion to $26 billion. He has also boosted the bureaucracy 6%, from $59 billion to $63 billion. Justin Trudeau left a deficit of $42 billion, but the Prime Minister 's big spending election platform raised it to $62 billion. In July, the Bank of Montreal estimated the deficit could be as high as $80 billion, and in August, the C.D. Howe Institute estimated it as high as $92 billion.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for bringing to the House's attention the issue around merely transferring the ministry under which the Coast Guard operates from one department to defence without actually increasing or enhancing the defence capabilities of Canada. Taking a civilian force that undertakes civilian activity and bringing it under the authority of the Minister of National Defence does not make it a defence organization. We know the vital importance of the Coast Guard, but in order to make it a military force that increases Canada's defence capability, it needs to change. I would like the member to comment further on that.”
“Mr. Speaker, after 10 years of the Liberals' driving prices up, housing supply has never been worse. According to CMHC, housing starts are down 10% in Vancouver, down 58% in Toronto, down 51% in Hamilton and down 71% in London. All these cities received funding under the Liberals' so-called housing accelerator fund, and their housing starts are falling. Why is the minister protecting real estate investors instead of giving hope to millions of Canadians locked out of home ownership by the government?”
“Mr. Speaker, under the Liberals, we have become a country with two kinds of families: those that already own real estate and those that likely never will. The media reports that the housing minister owns real estate worth millions of dollars, while he tells Canadians who cannot afford a home that prices must not fall. Will the minister , the former mayor of one of the most unaffordable places on earth, admit that his government spent a decade driving up housing prices and apologize to Canadians for crushing their dreams of home ownership?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance is part of a consensus within his cabinet to build oil and gas pipelines. The Prime Minister told Canadians that he supported the government's decision not to cancel the approval of northern gateway. Has the Prime Minister changed his mind, and is the Minister of Finance part of a consensus to build oil and gas pipelines?”
“Mr. Speaker, once again, the minister did not answer the question. The Prime Minister has said pipelines will be built only if there is a national consensus. The Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture , the Minister of Environment and the Prime Minister himself have all opposed new pipelines. Is there now consensus in cabinet to build new Canadian oil and gas pipelines?”
“Mr. Speaker, the member did not answer my question. What was the cost to the Canadian taxpayer for the construction of TMX, which would have been built with private money had the Liberals not chased the private builder out of Canada?”
“Mr. Speaker, I had to ask the question three times before I got an answer. I will take that as a yes. The minister has now said that he supports the construction of new Canadian pipelines, so he says. How about the trade minister?”
“Mr. Chair, in 2015 the government was elected and promised a balanced budget by 2019. It is 2025. The fall economic statement had no date for a balanced budget in sight. On what date will the minister project having a balanced budget?”
“Mr. Chair, this exchange will age if the rate should happen to exceed 7%. Ordinarily, these projections would be in a budget that would be tabled in March or maybe April at the latest, so this is ordinarily something the government would project. Is the minister giving an assurance to this House that the unemployment rate will not exceed 7%?”
“Mr. Speaker, the government has certainly signalled that it would like to do that, which is using accounting trickery to deceive Canadians about the true nature of the deficit. This has been tried at the provincial level. It does not work. It is a mistake if the government wants to go that route.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member raises a great point. It was a disturbing and chilling bit of political theatre when we watched the Prime Minister sit down as if we were in a presidential system, and sign some paper. I do not even know what was on that piece of paper, but he felt that he had the power to usurp what is normally the prerogative of the House. Maybe it was just his ignorance of parliamentary process and our system, and his comms people thought it would look funny. I do not know, but it was not good.”
“Mr. Speaker, this is so typical of what we saw throughout the entire last Parliament. A government that prorogued the House, dissolved Parliament and forced Parliament to sit idle for six months now demands to know whether we can we drop everything and just rubber-stamp its legislation. The member seems to suggest that the Liberals can ignore Parliament for months at a time, and that then somehow it is the opposition's fault if their agenda is not immediately adopted. Where was the government from December 2024 on, when a budget could have been tabled and Canada's urgent problems could have been addressed?”
“Six months later, Canadians are entitled to a detailed plan and at least some degree of honesty and transparency about how the government will tax, spend and borrow; how much the deficit will be; and whether there is any plan, even another phony plan, to eventually balance the budget. This is the absolute minimum owed by the government to Canadians. It was demanded by the people represented in the House last week, so let me add my voice to those calling on the government to table a budget before the summer. Canadians will not get fooled again.”
“The Liberals campaigned on the Prime Minister 's being a safe pair of hands in a crisis and the “man with the plan”, and on just enough change that we might forget about how incompetent and unserious the previous government was for nine and a half years. Now it turns out that there is no plan at all, just a bunch of new spending that will have to be funded by taxes and borrowing, paid for by people who are literally struggling to put food on the table. Parliament was adjourned, prorogued and then dissolved, since mid-December, so for nearly six months, Parliament sat idle. The last sort of mini budget was delivered by nobody. There was literally no name on the fall economic statement. No minister was attached to it during Justin Trudeau's last-ditch attempt to remain in power.”
“The massive 34% increase in the use of third party consultants is proof of both a refusal to deal with out-of-control spending and a clearly broken campaign promise. I know there are some people in the press gallery or elsewhere who will say and have said that, no, the estimates are not comparable to last year, we cannot compare the main estimates from last year to this year, we have to wait until the supplementary estimates are tabled later in the year, and these are just the mains and not the government's full spending plan for the year. They ask whether we know the difference between the estimates and a budget. To those people, I say, yes, we do know the difference. The estimates are the money that the government will actually be authorized to spend. They are not a budget. That is exactly the point: There is no budget.”
“It is nowhere; there is no plan to be found, because the Prime Minister refuses to table one. The Prime Minister tabled an estimates bill, which appears to double down on all the failed policies and strategies of the past nine and a half years, but the government will not table a budget. In the absence of a budget, all we can do is judge the government by the estimates it has tabled, and the judgment is a terrible indictment of the new Prime Minister and the tired old government. The estimates show that the government is on track to be even worse than before. The estimates show an overall spending increase of 8% at a time when the Liberals promised to restore fiscal discipline. It is an 8% increase in spending without concrete solutions for any of Canada's major problems. It is not fiscal discipline; it is just bloat.”
“We also know that the government once again claimed suddenly, during the most recent election, that it will do something to rein in its out-of-control spending, and we know that many Canadians appear to have believed the Prime Minister when he claimed to be different from the last prime minister and the other ministers who surrounded him in the last Parliament and said he was going to control spending. The Prime Minister brandished his resume and boasted about his experience as a crisis manager, so where is the plan to deal with the crisis and bring down inflation, reduce food prices, increase housing supply and increase the productivity of the Canadian economy so Canadians who work hard can regain their place as the world's wealthiest middle class?”
“All the elements of the food inflation crisis, which is exacerbated by a housing affordability crisis, were here long before the trade war, but now there is even greater urgency. Last week's food inflation numbers are horrific: The cost of beef sirloin is up 34%, oranges are up 26%, white rice is up 14%, infant formula is up 9%, and the list goes on. Canadian families will spend an average of nearly $17,000 on groceries this year. We know that taxes, government spending, deficits and printing money all contribute to inflation; the government has admitted as much.”
“Many families will go without meat, fresh fruit or fresh vegetables, and are wondering how many boxes of mac and cheese it will take to get them through the week or how they are going to put nutritious meals together for their kids' lunches. Many Canadians are increasingly unable to pay for food at all and are turning to food banks, which have seen record use across Canada under the government. (1755) Not helping things at all is a housing crisis, which has also emerged during the government's nine and a half years. Average rent and mortgage costs have more than doubled since the government was elected in 2015. That is why we are debating the motion. We are in a food inflation crisis long in the making.”
“After nine and a half years of uninterrupted inflationary spending, borrowing and money printing; after nine and a half years of the Liberal government's consistently exceeding every previously announced spending limit; and after nine and a half years of bloat, waste, insider dealing, sweetheart contracting, self-enrichment and smug, sanctimonious self-congratulations, we are in the midst of a full-blown affordability crisis of the government's own making and with no plan to get out. Right now, millions of Canadians are thinking very seriously about how they are going to feed their family in the upcoming week. For some, that might mean substituting chicken for beef. For others, that may be going without fresh meat and substituting something they can find in the discounted “previously frozen” section.”
“Fiscal anchors and guardrails were declared and immediately discarded. Their 2015 election promise to balance the budget was completely forgotten. By early 2020, some $90 billion had already been added to the national debt before anybody had even heard of COVID-19. In early 2020, the country was on the brink of recession, and the Liberals were about to blow through all their budgetary projections and table a $60-billion deficit. What followed in the years since was that another $400 billion was added in deficit spending, the majority of which had nothing to do with pandemic relief. Here we are today.”
“The government, with a bunch of the same ministers, came into power in 2015. It inherited a balanced budget and what the New York Times in 2015 called Canada's middle class: the wealthiest middle class in the world. I know that the Liberals would appreciate that as a newspaper of record. The Liberals were elected on a promise to run modest deficits to fund “unprecedented investments in infrastructure” that would lead to the budget's balancing itself in 2019. None of that happened. The Liberals immediately plunged Canada into structural deficits without building any of the productivity-enhancing infrastructure they had promised, and they presided over a decade of zero per capita economic growth. Every single year, they piled on more and more debt while claiming to be bound by various fiscal metrics, always moving their own goal posts.”
“The new Minister of Transport is the former deputy prime minister and finance minister, as well as the former global affairs minister and trade minister. The new finance minister is the former industry minister, as well as the former global affairs minister and infrastructure minister. The new President of the King's Privy Council was the president of the King's privy council in the last government, and so on along the front benches. Therefore the government is absolutely the same Liberal government that we have endured for the last nine and a half years. The same crew of ministers and advisers that has provided over nine and a half years of economic and fiscal vandalism is still in charge. In the timeless words of Pete Townshend and sung by Roger Daltrey: Meet the new boss Same as the old boss.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate on the opposition motion, which calls for the government to table “a fiscally responsible budget before the House adjourns for the summer, that reverses [the] inflationary policies” of the past nine and a half years under the Liberal government. Let us be clear about a few things. The government most assuredly is not a new government. There has not been a change of government; it is a continuation of the existing government. There is a new Prime Minister ; that is true, but there is not a new government, nor is his presence new. The Prime Minister spent the last five years as an adviser to the last prime minister. Anyone attending question period can see for themself that the front bench in the current Parliament is a lot like the front bench in the last Parliament.”
“Mr. Speaker, while I share many of the member's ideals of democratic government and elected parliaments, I would like to discuss the actual matter at hand, the Speech from the Throne. This is a Speech from the Throne that contains no plan or map forward for the government, through these admittedly very difficult times that we face, and there will be no budget tabled in the spring session. Parliament has not sat for many months. Does the member not agree that there should be a budget this spring?”
“Madam Speaker, I welcome the member for Calgary Signal Hill to this House. He is another Calgary MP. It is great to see him here. I share his thanks to his predecessor, Ron Liepert, who is a good friend and known to all of us in this House. We wish him the best in retirement. The member spoke in response to the last question. I would like to give him more time to fully explain some of the points that he might want to make there. It is not just because in his riding and mine the oil and gas industry, the energy industry, supplies high-paying, good jobs and careers that support families; it supports the entire country. It is the biggest industry in this country and it is where the revenue comes from to fund public services in every province. Does he agree and does he have anything else to add with respect to this important industry?”
“Mr. Speaker, it certainly would have been better to have not had a carbon tax at all, industrial or consumer. We would not have had this series of bureaucratic difficulties that the member mentions. From roughly 2017 to 2019, I was the shadow minister for the CRA. I would hear, every day, staggering examples of the challenges Canadians face in dealing with that agency, often made more complicated and more difficult by the government and the general complication of our tax system.”
“Mr. Speaker, I did not comment on this in my remarks. I was hoping for questions and comments that were related to the speech I made. We will see what is proposed, and we will examine legislation as it is proposed.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is true, thankfully, that over nine and a half years was not long enough for the government to actually completely kill the industry. We are thankful for that. There are a number of points that the member brought up. He brought up TMX, and it still astounds me, the credit that the Liberals want to seek for driviPng private capital out of the oil and gas business. They had to take over and nationalize a project. This project would have been built sooner and at no risk to the taxpayer. When they chased out all of the private proponents for pipelines, yes, they built one. Even before they did that, though, they killed the northern gateway. The northern gateway was approved. It was almost literally the first act of the Liberal government when it came to power.”
“This is all while the Liberals have allowed the public service to grow enormously during their time while service to Canadians declines. Copying our ideas is the most sincere form of flattery, and we would be prepared to accept it as Conservatives, but the government is not a new government. It has a different Prime Minister , but it has the same people in the front benches, who, for the last 10 years, have criticized Conservatives. When I look at Hansard, I can see some of the things that members of the front benches said to me and other members when we proposed important ideas, like axing the tax, which is something they were all too quick to adopt in the election. As such, I have doubts about the ability of the government, with the same group of people in the front benches, to execute on improving life for Canadians.”
“The Speech from the Throne contains no concrete plan. There is no budget that would signal a plan or even tell Canadians and be honest about where we are financially, what our fiscal plan is and what the deficit will be. The Liberals have said some things that are encouraging to many. They have taken many ideas from the Conservative benches and the Conservative campaign. If someone puts a tax cut in front of me, I will vote for it. If someone proposes to eliminate a regulation that is destroying the job opportunities in my riding, I will support it. However, what I will not support is a Speech from the Throne that gives vague promises without any type of a clear road map, while the Liberals simultaneously table a set of estimates that show ballooning public expenditures for consultants, of all things.”
“They brought in new regulations and laws, like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48 , that make it impossible to get energy infrastructure projects built. That was by design. This was not even just a mistake on the part of the government. Furthermore, there is no end in sight. The Liberals have brought in, and we have seen it creeping in, a culture of corporate welfare where connected insiders benefit and where Liberal insiders benefit. We saw over that time period the Liberals cancel the F-35s. They came in and said that they were not going to procure them at all and that they were going to have a separate procurement process. They dithered and wasted time while our need for this aircraft carried on. We would already have the F-35s if they had simply procured them when they took office. These are the things that have happened over the last 10 years.”
“Canadians are no better off now than they were 10 years ago. This is a lost Liberal decade. Where were we 10 years ago? When the Liberal government came to power, it inherited a balanced budget, affordable homes that working people could buy, a northern gateway pipeline that was conditionally approved and a Trans Mountain pipeline that was going to be built with private money, not with taxpayers' money. The energy east project was ready to be proposed. The F-35 were ready for contract and ready to be procured. Crime was at the lowest on record. This was the Canada that the government came into power with, and this is where we have been taken over the last 10 years. It is not something that just randomly happened. There were concrete actions by the government all the way along that brought us here. They brought in the culture of “no”.”
“We have ships rusting out and jets wearing out, with recruitment, retention and housing in crisis. We have gaps in domain awareness in the Arctic and a RADARSAT system that is going to reach its end of life without a replacement. Procurement is in a state of disaster. We cannot even procure, build and supply basics like artillery shells. The recently retired chief of the defence staff has said that there has not been an acute need for military preparedness since the end of the Second World War and we are not there. (1645) We have the threat of Trump to deal with, and the tariffs and all that his administration has said it may do. However, perhaps the most important statistic that I can point to is the per-capita GDP in Canada. Over the last 10 years, its growth was the lowest in the OECD. In fact, it was not growth at all.”
“Here we are in June 2025, and the same government has been in power for nine and a half years. It has added half a trillion dollars to the national debt and brought in a structural deficit. It has no plan for a balanced budget in sight. We are enduring a housing crisis wherein mortgage payments and rent have more than doubled on its watch. We have seen a sense of hopelessness creep in among younger people, who believe that they will never have a path to home ownership other than through inheritance or the sharing of real estate equity from their family. Crime in every category has gone up. We have a drug overdose crisis. As for the military, the most basic core function of government is national security and protecting Canadians, and tanks are in extremely short supply and falling apart.”
“I will also say that I am part of a government in waiting, and we are ready to step up and form a government should this government fall. We will demand accountability. We will demand competence and execution. We will be here to scrutinize the laws the Liberals propose and the administration of the government in general. That is what we are here to do. That is what all members of Parliament do. Members do not even need to be in the opposition benches to do that. I challenge the backbenches on the government side to do their jobs as legislators and demand accountability from the government and their own party. That is their job. It is not just their job to cheerlead for the front bench. I hope they will take seriously their role in holding the government to account, as all parliamentarians should.”
“I would also like to thank, of course, my loving family: my wife Kim, my daughters Katie, Jessica and Meaghan, and my mum Marnie Kelly. My father Duane Kelly passed away, sadly, only a few months before the election. I would like to congratulate all members of Parliament on their election, in particular the new MPs. There are many new MPs in this Parliament, and I look forward to meeting them and getting to know who everybody is. I also congratulate the new cabinet and the new Prime Minister . They have tremendous work to do. It is important to me as a Canadian and to the people who sent me here that Canada prospers and does well and that we have competent, prudent and proper public administration and stewardship of public resources. I wish the government the best in doing so.”
“Mr. Speaker, although this is not my first intervention in this Parliament, this is the first opportunity I have had to take a moment to thank the voters of Calgary Crowfoot. I am getting used to the riding name change. Many riding names have changed, but I thank the voters of Calgary Crowfoot for sending me to this place for the fourth time in nine and a half years. I want to thank my opponents in the election for putting their names forward. Without choice and without options for people to vote for, there is no democracy, so I thank all participants in this election. I would like to thank the volunteers in Calgary Crowfoot, the amazing group of volunteers who helped us get out to 25,000-odd doors, put up thousands of signs and make an argument to voters for a change of government.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am glad I was able to catch your eye. I would like to express my congratulations to you. I wonder if the member for Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke could comment further on the extent to which the Liberal Party campaigned on its purported plan, yet it has tabled a Speech from the Throne that contains no concrete plan whatsoever and no budget.”