Ottawa, ON – With the House back in session, Conservatives dominated the week, holding Liberals accountable and fighting to make Canada affordable and safe again. MP Roman Baber kicked off the week tabling Bill C-257, which creates a new criminal offence – to wilfully promote a terrorist group or terrorist activity – with a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.
Jamie Schmale, Conservative Shadow Minister for Crown-Indigenous Relations, also introduced Senate Bill S-228 in the House, which would clearly define and criminalize forced sterilization. The amendment to the Criminal Code ensures that no individual is ever subjected to the procedure without their consent.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called for an emergency debate on extortion, and Frank Caputo, Conservative Shadow Minister for Public Safety, the Hon. Tim Uppal, Conservative Deputy Leader, and Arpan Khanna, Conservative National Outreach Chair, called out the Liberals for their failures to address the scourge of extortion, up 330 per cent across Canada since the Liberals took office. Conservatives again invited the Liberals to join in changing catch and release laws and return safety to our communities.
Canadians worried they were misreading grocery prices were able to cancel their optometrist appointments as Statistics Canada confirmed that food is 3.4 per cent more expensive year-over-year. Fresh or frozen chicken is up 6.2 per cent, while seafood and other marine products are up 8 per cent. The price of meat has skyrocketed by 8.4 per cent and fresh and frozen beef has risen by an astonishing 16.8 per cent. Infant formula is also up 5.9 per cent more than last year, with the situation getting so desperate it’s become “one of the most stolen food products in Canada.”
It’s having a real impact, with Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab reporting that “Food continues to dominate household financial concerns across Canada, with four in five respondents citing it as their top expense pressure.” Costs have gotten so bad that over a quarter of Canadians report that they are food insecure and need to use savings or borrow money just to buy food.
The facts were no better on the housing front, with Carney’s housing agency reporting a 17 per cent collapse in the seasonally-adjusted annual rate of housing starts in October. The latest numbers show that housing starts have fallen to less than half of the Liberals’ construction target, with Canada building more homes per year in the 1970s than today.
While Carney continues to fail to deliver, the Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner, Conservative Shadow Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, announced the Conservatives’ comprehensive package of amendments to Bill C-12, the Liberals’ border security legislation. The amendments would help fix the broken asylum system and strengthen border security to finally restore order, fairness and public confidence to Canada’s failing immigration system.
At the Health Committee, Carney’s Immigration and Health ministers failed to provide any evidence that they had considered Canada’s healthcare capacity before setting immigration levels. The immigration minister even laughed when asked how many more patients our healthcare system could support, despite doctors testifying that her immigration policies directly impact access to care.
Following their disastrous testimony, the Conservatives voted to compel the Auditor General and Parliamentary Budget Officer to launch investigations into the Interim Federal Health Program. The program covers supplementary benefits that many Canadians do not have access to, and costs skyrocketed under the Liberals from $66 million in 2016 to over $821 million last year.
Finally, Conservatives pressed Marc-André Blanchard, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, and Michael Sabia, the Clerk of the Privy Council, on Mark Carney’s conflicts of interest. They admitted that they do not know all of Brookfield’s investments, meaning they can’t fully screen the Prime Minister from using his office to enrich himself. Michael Sabia made clear to the committee that he couldn’t do his own job without selling his shares in Brookfield. Yet Mark Carney has refused to do the same.
After another week of holding the Liberals accountable for the failures, it’s never been clearer that Canadians cannot afford the costs of Carney. That’s why Conservatives continued to put forward real solutions that will restore an affordable life on a safe street protected by strong borders.