Canadians are hurting and losing hope for the future.
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.24898
Summary
After 30 hours of weekend voting, 135 confidence votes, the government failed to get rid of the carbon tax and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was forced to call a special session of Parliament into the House of Commons to try and get it back on track. Tory MP for Calgary-Rocky Ridge, Pat Kelly, was on the show to talk about the process.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your
00:00:10.020
host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Court, the likes Brock, with new
00:00:13.200
content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. On today's show, 30 hours of weekend
00:00:19.220
voting, 135 confidence votes. Sadly, none of them passed. Also, we're going to talk about our
00:00:25.220
defence readiness. Please like, comment, share, and subscribe to this program. This is messaging
00:00:30.160
and information you're not hearing in the mainstream media. Tell your friends they can
00:00:33.480
download it on platforms. That's CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. You name it, it is out
00:00:38.140
there. Today, coming back is Pat Kelly. I apologize for not having him on a long, long time ago. The
00:00:43.940
Member of Parliament for Calgary, Rocky Ridge, and he did bring that to my attention that he has been
00:00:47.800
on the show. Lo and behold, you're on today. Well, thanks, Jamie. It's always a pleasure to be on The
00:00:52.260
Blueprint. It's a great show, and thanks for having me. Anytime, anytime. So, we did 30 hours
00:00:57.160
of voting. We started at 5.45 p.m. Thursday, went all through the night, continued to about 11 p.m.
00:01:04.400
on Friday evening, Eastern Time. You were there for pretty much all of it in person. We're trying to
00:01:10.840
get the confidence vote. Sorry, we're trying to get the Liberal government to scrap the carbon tax,
00:01:16.740
but each one of those votes was a confidence vote, which, if the government lost, would have triggered
00:01:21.420
an election. Yeah, that's right. We voted individually on each of the items in the estimates
00:01:28.140
because the government has refused to listen to Canadians and axe the carbon tax. The carbon tax
00:01:34.640
makes life less affordable for Canadians. It costs jobs. It's hard on consumers. It makes food more
00:01:41.580
expensive. It makes transportation more expensive. It makes home heating more expensive. We've demanded
00:01:46.280
for a long time that they axe the tax. They'd refuse to do so, and we wanted to see if the NDP will
00:01:54.120
continue to support the government or to side with Canadians. Well, let's get a clip of you in action
00:02:02.440
on the floor of the House of Commons. While that was all happening, you were asking for a recorded vote,
00:02:07.880
which, of course, is asked to ensure that we do have that standing vote, which we indeed wanted,
00:02:11.800
to show Canadians that we are working hard in terms of getting that carbon tax removed,
00:02:16.200
which the government still refuses to do. Let's queue up cut one, play cut one, Pat Kelly in action.
00:02:21.640
The Honourable Member for Calgary-Rocky Ridge is rising to request a recorded division.
00:02:26.840
Well, yes, Canadians have lost confidence in this government, so have I. So I do call for a recorded
00:02:32.520
division. I'm anxious to see if the NDP will side with Canadians or continue to prop up the government.
00:02:37.480
So we know the answer. They propped up the government. Yes. Each and every time. That's
00:02:42.120
right. And Canadians are fed up with this government, and I'm asked all the time by the people in my
00:02:48.120
community, you know, when will you be able to force an election and allow us to get rid of this tired
00:02:55.640
government that keeps piling on taxes, driving inflation, driving up the cost of living, driving up
00:03:01.160
interest rates, which drives up the cost of mortgage payments. But, you know, the NDP are absolutely
00:03:07.080
committed to sustaining this government, and it's a shame. And it's interesting, the Bloc Québécois was
00:03:11.880
dancing with the Liberals too, which I found kind of shocking, considering their whole public approach
00:03:16.280
is to oppose the Liberals. Well, really, we are the only party that is opposing this government. We're
00:03:22.520
alone. All of the other parties are complicit in the inflationary policies of this government that
00:03:30.440
drive up the cost of living, make life more expensive for Canadians in every way. Groceries,
00:03:35.720
home heating, interest rates. And Canadians are suffering, and they're ready for a change.
00:03:42.920
They're ready for a new government. We tried 135 times in a row to test the confidence of this
00:03:48.520
government, but these parties are absolutely committed to sustaining this government.
00:03:52.360
Yeah, these parties also have two speeds, big government and bigger government. They
00:03:55.880
don't seem to know that there is a way to actually get value for your dollar, and something we're
00:04:00.440
trying to keep pressing that messaging and reach out to Canadians more and more that are kind of
00:04:06.360
questioning what's going on in the world today, especially in Canada, and things just don't seem
00:04:10.520
right anymore, and things are broken. Let's get on to cut two. We're going to queue up cut two.
00:04:15.960
This is the Prime Minister. After the voting had ended, a couple things were very interesting. I
00:04:20.280
took away from it. We'll get your comments on this too. One, he was very arrogant as he came out,
00:04:25.000
his answer to the reporters. And two, our viewers and listeners will hear this, what he says, but he
00:04:31.480
finally acknowledged that the price on carbon, as he likes to call it, is in fact a tax. Play cut two.
00:04:37.560
Do you have any intention on axing the carbon tax like the Conservatives want? Are you going to back down?
00:04:41.800
No, we're not axing the tax. What did you take from that? Well, here we have a smug Prime Minister
00:04:49.400
glibly telling the cameras that he has no plan to ax the tax that is making life unaffordable for so
00:04:55.080
many Canadians. And the rising prices everywhere, it's not hurting him. He is not feeling the impact
00:05:02.760
of his policies. No, this government is just so hopelessly out of touch. I don't think they have
00:05:07.480
any idea what is going on at ground level where Canadians are really struggling. They're struggling
00:05:12.440
with the price of food. They're struggling to heat their homes in a cold Canadian winter. They're
00:05:17.400
struggling with the price of gasoline, which also affects the price of bus tickets and transit fares.
00:05:22.440
And all of this, the taxation and the deficits they're running are driving inflation, which drive
00:05:32.600
up interest rates, which make housing even more unaffordable. We've watched, there's a new report,
00:05:39.000
in fact, out right now that living with a roommate is as expensive now as living on your own would have
00:05:47.000
been at the beginning of this government, that splitting the rent with a roommate is now just
00:05:53.560
as expensive as it would have been to rent a one-bedroom apartment when this Prime Minister took
00:05:58.360
office. They don't understand why they don't understand just how they are harming Canadians
00:06:03.320
with their inflationary policies. That really is incredible because you would graduate high school,
00:06:08.280
sometimes go to college, university, you'd room for the first year or two, maybe four,
00:06:13.160
doesn't, you know, see how it goes, how you relate to others and get along. Then you get out on your
00:06:17.800
own and get a place on your own after that. But now people are having to continue that lifestyle
00:06:23.720
going forward. So you don't even have the ability to have your own place. And that is, I think,
00:06:27.400
frustrating a lot of younger voters. Yeah, that's right. People, when they're 40 years old,
00:06:30.920
they want to leave the college lifestyle behind and have some space on their own. And it's just not
00:06:36.040
affordable for so many Canadians under this Liberal government. And unfortunately it won't get any
00:06:40.360
better because you have a government that's fundamentally opposed to helping Canada's
00:06:44.920
energy industry. We have a piece of legislation, C50, being debated in Natural Resources Committee
00:06:51.560
called, well, known by, on our side, the Just Transition, talking about ways that they're going
00:06:57.240
to impact the energy industry. So I want to get a thought or two from you because your community is
00:07:02.120
affected by this. We have a video, so we'll queue up cut three and then we'll go into greater detail.
00:07:11.800
The Liberals just dropped their Just Transition bill. In 30 seconds, I'm going to go over what
00:07:16.760
you need to know, why it's going to cost you more, and why it's bad for Canada. Here we go.
00:07:22.120
One, the Liberals' Just Transition is going to make electricity, transportation, and home heating
00:07:27.720
more expensive. Two, based on the Liberals' failed coal transition, it's going to cost at least 40
00:07:34.120
billion taxpayer dollars. Three, it's going to weaken Canada's GDP and make us less competitive
00:07:40.200
globally. Four, this Just Transition concept has failed in every country it's been attempted. And
00:07:46.280
five, it's going to kill 170,000 jobs in Canada's energy sector. And if that sounded bad, it's just
00:07:53.320
going to get worse. That was Shannon Stubbs, Member of Parliament for Lakeland, also our critic for
00:07:58.040
Natural Resources. Your thoughts on this? Well, I think Shannon nails it, and you're right. In my
00:08:03.240
community, this is really important. This government has spent its entire time over the last eight years
00:08:11.400
years, waging a war against the energy industry. And this has affected countless members of my
00:08:18.840
community. I've had grown men in their fifties reduced to tears in my office, the desperation over
00:08:25.400
job loss. I mean, this was especially kind of from 2015 to 2018 especially. But just as there has been
00:08:34.920
some recovery in the industry, this government comes in with more bad legislation, more regulation
00:08:42.600
that is calculated specifically to drive away investment in the energy industry. The only kind
00:08:50.440
of investment we seem to have in this country right now under this government is that that comes along
00:08:54.920
with government subsidy. We see the use of subsidy to just pick winners and losers in industry and
00:09:01.800
between industry players. And it's no wonder that they've driven out some estimates 200, say 200
00:09:10.840
billion dollars in investment has been driven out of the energy industry during this government's watch.
00:09:18.360
And this bill is just more of the same calculated, deliberate attack on the energy industry in Canada.
00:09:28.600
As we said before, subsidies and just ramping them up, it only delays the inevitable because it's not
00:09:34.680
a market-driven choice, right? You have a false marketplace. And that can be danger for those
00:09:39.960
people that may have a job related to that. So you should be, I think, trying to allow the market to do
00:09:46.120
what it does best and lower the barriers to competition, allowing small companies to
00:09:50.680
to, you know, provide a better quality product service and more choice for the consumer. While
00:09:56.200
at the same time, if we want to, if we want to lower the price, yes, you can get rid of the carbon tax.
00:10:02.360
That's a very important piece. And we've confirmed that in committee and report after report.
00:10:07.320
The other thing they could do is add to the supply, add more supply to the marketplace.
00:10:12.520
Yeah, I mean, this is just it. The world is crying out for Canadian energy. We've seen the desperation
00:10:20.200
in Europe to get off of Russia's gas supply. We know that the world needs natural gas. And we've had
00:10:30.360
no projects approved since this government has taken office. And that trickles down to jobs in my
00:10:38.920
community. So we are we are refusing to be the supplier of ethical, clean natural gas to the world
00:10:49.640
at a time when they desperately need secure supplies from from a country like Canada to get off of
00:10:56.840
dictator oil from from so many of these other odious sources of energy that that are filling the gap
00:11:03.960
from created by our refusal to develop our own resources.
00:11:07.160
So we have the the war continuing on between Russia and Ukraine. You're on the defense committee.
00:11:12.600
So we want to touch on this before we have to wrap up. The chief of defense staff actually,
00:11:17.480
well, had an interview a few weeks ago now talking about the actual readiness of Canadian,
00:11:24.360
the Canadian military. And and his remarks were quite, for me, I heard the interview and couldn't
00:11:31.960
believe it. But you're on the committee. You had to deal with that. You had you're looking into it a
00:11:36.360
little further. Tell us a bit more about it, because it's it's pretty eye opening.
00:11:40.040
Well, the the general air really raised a number of alarms, alarm bells at committee talked about
00:11:46.520
readiness. He talked about his being, you know, kept awake at night, really concerned about our
00:11:53.400
readiness in so many ways. We talked a lot about the production of ammunition. And there has been no
00:12:01.400
change or ramping up of basic production of ammunition in Canada since the war began in
00:12:11.640
since the full invasion of Ukraine began, you know, coming up on two years ago. And there's just
00:12:18.600
it's it's it's mind boggling that we couldn't go on to a war production footing, ramp up production so
00:12:27.640
that we can replace the supplies that we have given to Ukraine and be able to create more supply for
00:12:33.800
Ukraine, more supply for our own defense. There are concerns that we only have a few days of ammunition
00:12:39.000
available to us in some of our deployments. And that's just unacceptable. We have to have
00:12:44.600
the supplies in place. And then we we saw even more recently the video put out by Admiral Topchi,
00:12:50.200
the chief of the Navy, who said we may not be able to meet our force posture and readiness
00:12:57.240
and operational commitments starting next year in 2024. So that is quite an astonishing
00:13:05.320
concern to be raised by the chief of of the Royal Canadian Navy. And this government is going to have
00:13:14.040
to step up and address these issues. But so far, all they've done is said they're going to cut a
00:13:19.400
billion dollars in the Department of Defense. They say they're going to do it from things like executive
00:13:23.800
travel and consulting contracts. And it's like, so they've either let a billion dollars in excess travel
00:13:34.840
and sweetheart consulting contracts creep into the system, or they are going to inevitably affect our
00:13:44.360
force operational and readiness capabilities with this cut. So it's it's quite astonishing the the
00:13:53.880
lack of care and attention that this government has given to our national defense.
00:13:57.720
What is the NATO standard for ammunition when you said that we have three days? What's the
00:14:04.680
So three days, 30 days. So we're supposed to. Yeah, yeah, but we have three days.
00:14:08.440
That's absolutely incredible. I don't think many people know that.
00:14:11.640
Well, we've heard this at the committee. Well, I know you have. I'm not doubting you. I saw the video.
00:14:16.760
This is absolutely incredible. When we are a NATO partner here, we have obligations that we are
00:14:23.480
supposed to be upholding. We do. We have a whole series of obligations. And that goes also to the
00:14:28.760
Navy talking about our force posture and readiness. We have obligations to our allies to maintain force
00:14:34.360
posture and to have to have ships and have deployment capability. The same with our with our air force.
00:14:42.680
And the the concern is that we that we do not have these the readiness that we've committed to our allies.
00:14:50.440
Former General Hillier called the Khrushcheon years the decade of darkness. It looks like we're entering
00:14:55.160
another one of those are actually in the middle of it, hopefully the end for crying out loud.
00:14:59.560
At the same time, what what can we do for their military? I know it's very difficult. It seems
00:15:04.200
very difficult. I'm not sure why to actually buy anything in this in this country military wise.
00:15:09.240
Well, the procurement system is clearly broken. It's being studied at the defense committee.
00:15:13.400
And, you know, the the current Minister of Defense seems to have just recently woken up to this and
00:15:20.280
testified that there might be some kinks in the in the production or in the in the procurement system.
00:15:26.440
And this is, of course, things that that committee after committee, the operations committee, other
00:15:31.000
parliamentary committees have commented on this over the years. And yet after eight years, this government has
00:15:36.520
done nothing to improve our our ability to procure kit and supplies on a timely basis when when needed.
00:15:45.480
Wasn't there an article a little while ago that Canadian soldiers were buying their own
00:15:51.400
There were there were they were not reimbursing our troops and our troops were having delays in
00:15:58.840
getting reimbursed for for meals reports of of troops buying pieces of equipment on the private market as
00:16:07.160
well. So yeah, there are and you know, we're studying the abysmal state of housing on bases right now. There
00:16:14.360
are just so many ways that that we need to do better to support our troops. We recruitment is down
00:16:22.920
where there are 16,000 vacant positions right now. We're concerned about how long it takes to go through
00:16:30.280
the recruitment process to to take in new volunteers. There are also believed to be 10,000 soldiers who are
00:16:40.600
not fit for deployment right now. So you combine that we're 26,000 personnel short. That's for for
00:16:49.080
deployment on on missions. That's incredible. Pat, we got to get out of here. So the guests always get
00:16:56.520
the last word. So the floor is yours. Well, thanks for having me. And, you know, I just would would
00:17:02.280
encourage your audience to, boy, tell your friends and and be ready to to to vote for for change and a
00:17:14.280
new conservative government that that will have the the willingness and the determination to tackle
00:17:19.240
these these these terrible problems that we're confronted with, whether it's inflation, the the
00:17:24.920
deficit, the inflation crisis, national defense, and of course, axing the tax. Pat Kelly, member of
00:17:31.160
Parliament for Calgary, Rocky Ridge. We appreciate your time and we appreciate yours as well. Don't
00:17:36.520
forget, if you want to see more Pat Kelly, please let me know in the comments. You can also like
00:17:41.000
and subscribe. And of course, as always, share this program. Tell your friends it's on Spotify,
00:17:46.840
iTunes and Google Play as well. Download it. Get this message out. Let's ensure Pierre Paulieff is
00:17:51.560
the next Prime Minister of Canada. New content every Tuesday, every single Tuesday, 1 30 p.m.
00:17:56.360
Eastern time until next week. Remember low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's the blueprint.