Marty Morantz

[Situation in Lebanon and Israel, October 1st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, with the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon last week, in the member's view, is that justice for the Lebanese people?

[Committees of the House, September 25th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, that is pretty rich from this member. His party voted with a government that spiked inflation higher than it has ever been before, quicker than has ever happened before, and this has made everything more expensive. As much as they like to talk about how inflation has come down to the 2% target, the damage has been done. Everything is more expensive. Good on him for taking on credit card interest, but the reality is that the policies he supported were seriously detrimental to affordability in this country. Canadians are suffering now because of that.

[Committees of the House, September 25th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, as I said, Conservatives tabled a dissenting report, and that report was based on testimony we heard from many witnesses at committee who said that the carbon tax was just a terrible policy that was making life harder for everyone, that we needed to take tangible steps to build more homes, that the budget was out of control, and in fact that the budgetary spending was the actual cause of spiking inflation and making everything more expensive for everyone. We heard testimony saying that we needed to bring in things like mandatory minimum sentences and consecutive sentences in order to help stem the tide of crime in this country.

Those things are in a dissenting report for the very reason my colleague mentioned, which is that our colleagues in the Liberal and NDP parties on the committee would not agree to listen to what the witnesses said.

[Committees of the House, September 25th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I will agree with the member. At one point she said that Conservatives never cease to work for Canadians. In fact, that is absolutely correct. We will never cease to work for Canadians, and that is exactly what we are doing right now.

I will take no lessons from a member who literally was holding hands with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah less than a year ago, after what happened on October 7, 2023.

[Committees of the House, September 25th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the extraordinary display of hypocrisy that just occurred in the House has never before been seen on a level like that in the history of this country and in the history of this austere chamber.

What happened? The leader of the NDP knew he was going down. We had a great candidate. I was at doors with him many times. Colin Reynolds is a construction electrician, a guy on the executive of his local IBEW union board who grew up in the area and who really connected with the residents.

The leader of the NDP knew he was going to lose the by-election. What did he do? He said that he was ripping up the agreement and that he was done with the Prime Minister. Unfortunately, the people of Elmwood—Transcona deserve better. They deserve better than having the leader of the NDP try to fool them into thinking he is a man of principle. He is not, and that was established today. In front of the entire country, the man who said he was ripping up the agreement got up, taped it back together and said that he believes in the Prime Minister and is voting with him. In fact, he said he has confidence in the Prime Minister.

The height of hypocrisy is on a level never, ever before seen on the floor of the chamber. Canadians will not forget it, and the people of Elmwood—Transcona will not forget it come the next election.

Regarding the issue of the report, as I said, I sit on the committee. Conservatives really are the only members on the committee who are doing their best to hold the government to account. We had some great ideas for the report that our colleagues from other parties on the committee would not support. Therefore, for the people watching, I will explain that we attached a dissenting report to the report, which we are allowed to do. Anyone can look it up online and read the dissenting report. I want to go through some parts of it, but before I do, I want to just circle back for a second to look at part of the Liberal government's record.

In 2015, in order to fool Canadians into voting for him, the Prime Minister promised to balance the budget by 2019. Of course that never happened. In fact he doubled the national debt in nine years. It is hard to get one's head around that, but just to put it in perspective, in 2015, when the Prime Minister first was elected to office, the national debt was $616 billion. Today it is over $1.2 trillion. The Prime Minister has gone more in debt than all other prime ministers from 1867 to today combined.

Today the interest on the debt is $52 billion a year, which is more than we spend on health care, more than we spend on defence and in fact more than we actually collect in the GST. It is important for people watching to know that when they go out and buy something in the store and the store adds on the GST, that money is going directly to paying the interest on the massive, historic debt that the Prime Minister has managed to rack up.

Therefore at committee, Conservatives made a number of common-sense recommendations that were rejected by the NDP and Liberal members. One of the recommendations we made, which we had hoped would be a recommendation in the report, was to axe the carbon tax. The reason we wanted to axe the carbon tax is pretty straightforward, and I will go through some of those points. For example, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, came to committee and told us that the carbon taxes are inflationary and that by cutting the carbon tax, inflation would come down by 0.6%, bringing the CPI back into the bank's target range.

The government has an opportunity now to start with the carbon tax on farmers. The common-sense Conservative bill, Bill C-234, should be passed immediately in its original form to take the tax off farmers to help lower food prices. I know it has been said many times in the House, but when one taxes the farmer who produces the food, taxes the trucker who ships the food and taxes the grocer who stocks the food, the food costs more. What is the result? It is two million Canadians lining up at food banks, and a historic number of homeless encampments across this country.

Earlier this year, as part of the finance committee's housing study, Mayor Cam Guthrie from Guelph was a witness. He was elected in 2014. I asked Mayor Guthrie how many homeless encampments there were in Guelph the year he was elected. He said there were zero. I asked how many there are today, and he said there are 20. That is just one example.

I made a speech about this the other day in the House and went through the litany of housing-hell stories across this country as a result of the apocalyptic, historically terrible housing policies of the Liberal government. With $82 billion on the national housing strategy, never before has so much been spent to achieve so little.

It is time to axe the failed and inflationary carbon tax that makes gas, groceries and home heating more expensive, and to bring down inflation so Canadians can once again earn powerful paycheques so they can afford nutritious food and a home in a safe neighbourhood. It seems like a simple ask, part of the Canadian dream, but that dream has been broken by the failed policies of the Liberal government.

We said to axe the tax, and we also talked about building more homes. There is a housing crisis in this country. There is an affordability crisis, and we need to build millions of homes. However, the Liberals and the NDP voted against our common-sense Conservative bill, the building homes, not bureaucracy act, a bill that would have gotten houses built. Instead they just got in the way. They are the gatekeepers of the House of Commons, and they got in the way of a common-sense bill that would have helped Canadians. Of course, we also need to fix the budget and stop the crime. Let us bring it home.

[Committees of the House, September 25th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I move that the 16th report of the Standing Committee on Finance, presented to the House on Monday, February 26, be concurred in.

I will be sharing my time with my amazing colleague, the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.

What an honour it is to rise on behalf of my constituents, the great people of Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley. Every day I come here, I think about what we can do as members of Parliament to make their lives just a bit better.

It is also an honour for me to serve as a member of the Standing Committee on Finance, where I have been for the most part since I was elected in 2019, with a brief stint along the way as a member of the foreign affairs committee. The members of the finance committee serve a vital role as the only opposition party focused on holding the Liberal government to account.

People are suffering across this land from coast to coast to coast after nine years of the most incompetent and out-of-touch government in Canadian history. That is why I think it is very important to point out the extraordinary display of hypocrisy we just saw unfold in the chamber.

Just two weeks ago, in the throes of the Elmwood—Transcona by-election, the leader of the NDP rose to his feet in front of the cameras, held up a copy of the coalition agreement and said that he was ripping it up and that he was done with the Prime Minister. He said that it was over and that the gloves were off. I cannot help but think that the New Democrats thought they were going to lose the by-election. They knew the Liberals were dragging them down, and so the leader stood up in front of the cameras and said that he was ripping up the coalition agreement.

[Taxation, September 24th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, after nine years under the NDP-Liberals, taxes are up, costs are up, crime is up and, yes, now their time is up. The capital gains tax is yet another job-killing tax on small businesses. Liberals will say it only applies to the top 0.13%, but the finance minister will not say that it will not apply to the bottom 99.87%. Tomorrow, the NDP and Bloc have a chance to bring down the costly government by voting for our Conservative non-confidence motion.

Will the NDP and Bloc finally let Canadians decide in a carbon tax election?

[Committees of the House, September 23rd, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I would actually like to ask a question that I am hoping the member will be able to answer, because it is an important one. He mentioned Manitoba pork. I had the opportunity to meet with the executive director of Manitoba Pork just a few weeks ago, Cam Dahl, who told me it has a very serious trade issue. The pork industry in Manitoba is worth about $2 billion in GDP and employs over 20,000 people. He said that the country-of-origin labelling issue in the United States is going to have a deleterious effect on Manitoba pork. I presume that since he has been researching agriculture in Manitoba, he is well aware of the issue.

Can the member inform the House as to what tangible steps he has taken to protect the Manitoba pork industry from the onslaught of country-of-origin labelling in the United States?

[Committees of the House, September 23rd, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would just ask you to rule on whether this is relevant to the actual motion that is currently being debated.

[Online Harms Act, September 23rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite wants to know why Conservatives are voting against the legislation. There are many reasons, but one that really came to light over the summer is that the Liberals appointed an anti-Semite to lead the Canadian Human Rights Commission. This is a man who had said that terrorism, in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, is not an irrational strategy.

Why should Canadians trust the Liberals to run the Canadian Human Rights Commission when they are making these horrible appointments of biased people?