The New NDP-Liberal Coalition Government
Plus my recent virtual town hall, my motion to cancel a wasteful government program, the new government votes down Conservative motions supporting our allies and Canadians, and more.
The New NDP-Liberal Coalition Government
On March 22, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, announced an agreement to essentially form a coalition government between the two political parties. This agreement is said to last until 2025. In a statement outlining the “supply and confidence agreement”, the NDP agreed to support the Liberals on any votes of confidence as well as budget bills, while the Liberal government agreed to advance NDP campaign proposals like national pharmacare, a national dental care program, and ‘Just Transition legislation’, anti-energy worker policy that aims to phase out energy jobs. The Liberals would also provide regular parliamentary briefings to NDP MPs by cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats. The NDP would receive preferential treatment with regular Whip and House Leader meetings, along with a special oversight group formed between the two parliamentary parties. There is much more to the agreement and I invite you to read the news releases from the political parties.
The statement released from the Prime Minister does not include the signed written agreement that was reached between both sides, so everyday Canadians will not know what the contents of the deal are. This is a dark day for Canadian taxpayers and citizens across our country. The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated the NDP federal election platform would cost taxpayers and additional $214 billion in spending on top of the $101.4 billion in new spending already introduced by the Liberals in 2021. Our national debt is already over $1.1 trillion dollars, excluding provincial and municipal debt, meaning that both party’s plans for spending constituted nearly 33% of our federal debt in just one year.
Conservatives have been warning voters since the federal election that Prime Minister Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh were coordinating together in a working coalition to the detriment of voters. The Liberal government and Prime Minister Trudeau went to the ballot box and called the election with the sole intention to win a majority government. He felt entitled to it and forced Canadians to go to the polls during a pandemic, despite the known difficulties in organizing a federal election in such circumstances. After a $600 million election, Canadian voters passed their judgement on him and his record, keeping his government in a minority and returning a Parliament that was virtually identical to the last. Nobody voted for this new coalition. It is simply an attempt from the Prime Minister to hold onto power as long as he can and claim a mandate, despite the results of the last election which were a referendum on his leadership. The way the NDP-Liberal coalition intends to govern is the same way this deal was made, with secrecy and little transparency. In the press statements, both parties agreed to communicate on issues that could impede the government’s agenda or cause “unnecessary obstruction”. So, the next three years will see record spending, record deficits, record debt, higher taxes, the phasing out of energy jobs and sector that have been our country’s economic engine for decades, and lastly far less accountability from the Liberal government. With rising inflation, a skyrocketing cost of living, and national unity under threat, Canadians cannot afford radical ideas from the NDP-Liberal coalition.
In the past, formal coalitions between two political parties saw a merging of their teams on Parliament Hill, and saw the inclusion of the smaller party’s MPs into Cabinet. However, this deal is undemocratic. The NDP is trying to have it both ways; they want to have significant say in government decision-making while remaining an opposition party. Opposition parties are granted questions in Question Period, space to work in the lobbies around the House of Commons, seniority through vice-chairmanships at parliamentary committees, and so on. These privileges are afforded to recognized parties in order to help them fulfill their constitutional role in keeping the government ministry, the Cabinet ministers, accountable. This deal between Trudeau and Singh is a contortion of the parliamentary system, one that suits the Prime Minister and compromises the NDP’s role as an opposition party. Conservatives stand against such abuse of parliamentary norms and as the Official Opposition, we will continue holding the government to account and fighting to make life more affordable for Canadians.
Cancel a Failed Government Housing Program, Save $1.25 Billion
I have long been a critic of the First-Time Home Buyer’s Incentive (FTHBI), a $1.25 billion program managed by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Created in 2019 with a target of helping 100,000 Canadians; it was to achieve this goal by September 2022. Before the program was implemented I raised alarm bells at parliamentary committees, took the CMHC CEO to task publicly and criticized it in our nation’s national newspapers with editorials. The passage of time has revealed much. The FTHBI criteria has been changed three times over the past two and a half years to increase the scope of the program and get more customers. However, recent figures published in Parliament show there have been less than 14,000 successful applications in its final year, a far cry from even the CMHC’s own internal projections. Part of good governance is admitting mistakes. This week, I introduced a motion calling upon the federal government to abolish the program once and for all and calling on them to re-focus their time and efforts on increasing the supply of housing. Let’s see if they will admit to their failures.
New NDP-Liberal coalition government votes down Conservative motions to support our allies, remove GST at the pumps, and ending federal mandates
Conservatives proposed three opposition motions in the House this week. Opposition motions are days when opposition parties get to set the agenda for a day of debate in Parliament and can force a vote in Parliament on the issue. They can order documents to be provided, criticize decisions, call for action by a government, or demand of government witnesses be provided or even create new parliamentary committees.
The first motion called upon the federal government to export more natural gas to displace Russian natural gas in Europe. Canada’s energy supplies are essential to ensure our national security. The same would apply to Europe. However, Russia supplies nearly 40 percent of natural gas to Europe, giving them significant leverage in any geopolitical standoff with our allies. This has come to the fore with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. European heads of state have raised the prospect of replacing Russian natural gas with Canadian natural gas when the Prime Minister visited the continent on his recent trip. Conservatives were prepared to stand with our allies in their time of need, offering our natural gas supply to help Europe move away from Russian energy, but it was voted down.
The second motion called upon the government to soften the financial burden Canadians are facing at the gas pump by removing the GST/HST from fuel purchases. This would have helped Canadians at a time when inflation is accelerating and the cost of living continues to rise. Temporary relief at the gas pump would have helped many families who are struggling to make ends meet and have had to make tough decisions for their purchases. 75% of Canadians have had to modify their spending in recent months and a majority say they cannot keep up with the rising cost of living. The Liberal government had an opportunity to help, but they voted down this motion as well.
The third motion called upon the government to immediately lift all federal vaccine mandates. We wanted to protect the jobs of federally regulated employees, enable Canadians to travel unimpeded, ensure Canada’s tourism industry could recover, and allow the free flow of goods across the Canadian border. Again this was voted down by the NDP-Liberal government although one Liberal MP voted with the Conservatives on this motion. This is the second motion we have forced on ending mandates in Canada in recognition of how every province has either announced an end to their vaccine mandates or published the end date of their vaccine passport systems. Likewise, nearly all of our G7 allies have now removed their vaccine passport systems.
If this is how the coalition government will operate, Canadians are in for a ride they cannot afford.
Return of Virtual Town Halls
Thousands of constituents have been reaching out to me through emails, phone calls, and in-person meetings over the past several months sharing their views and feedback on important matters facing everyday Canadians. Many expressed concerns on the rising cost of living, provincial and federal vaccine mandates, the trucker protests in Ottawa, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and more. On Wednesday, I held a virtual town hall offering my thoughts on many of these issues, answering recent emails, and addressing constituent concerns.
I am still working through all of the correspondence, so if you have not heard from me, a response is coming! The volume has been immense and finding answers to some of the questions has taken time.
If you would like to watch the town hall in full, please view it at the link below.
E-Petition calling for the end of the vaccine mandate on domestic air travel
I recently sponsored an online e-petition calling upon the government to end the domestic vaccine passport requirement for Canadian citizens and permanent residents taking domestic flights. The issues with the domestic vaccine passport were something I had become all too familiar with, as many constituents have raised the issue for months. Families were kept apart at Christmas and New Year’s or unable to take vacations together because a family or more was unvaccinated, usually a child. All provincial governments have either announced the end of the vaccine passport system in their jurisdictions or a date when it will end very soon. Nearly all have lifted some or all of their health restrictions. The federal government is the last holdout. Since it launched on March 11, there have been over 16,000 signatures. If you would like to add your name to the e-petition, please click the link below.
