Starting up the new session of parliament, Branden Leslie, Member of Parliament for Portage-Lisgar, has several things on his mind that he believes need to be changed.
Leslie started with one thing that the Conservative Party of Canada has been actively campaigning against since its inception.
"One of the first things, obviously, is the carbon tax, it needs to go. The easiest thing they could do to ease the cost of living and ease the burden that people are facing is to abandon the carbon tax in its entirety. Even more realistically, in April, we're going to see yet another increase. We saw this earlier this year calls from provincial premiers, from territorial leaders, from business leaders, from everyday Canadians saying please just don't increase, at least put a pause on the carbon tax. It was not listened to the first time around. I suspect those calls will continue to mount in the coming months leading up to that ramp up."
Leslie notes that another issue he'd like to see taken on in this session of parliament is safety in our community.
"One of the issues that we're seeing a huge rise in is crime, and a lot of this stems back from a couple of pieces of legislation that were passed by the Liberals back in their early days of their first governments in about 2016 to 2018, in that time frame," Leslie continues. "We're really seeing the impacts of that now and that included making it a lot easier to get bail and a lot easier to be released from prison. When I talk to the RCMP and other police services in our communities, it's the same set of criminals in every community that are generally the problem, and the problem is when they are released regularly with no real fear of any punishment, of any real jail time, that's when you see the continued rise in crime. It's these repeat offenders that we need to get off our streets. So, repealing the piece of legislation that they implemented, although I don't hold out a lot of hope that they will be that wise, I think would do a lot to alleviate some of the criminal justice issues that that we're facing on our streets in Portage and across so many communities across our riding and in this country."
The MP added that he hopes to see some changes to the way the government spends taxpayer dollars as well.
"We have seen a ballooning level of debt that is deeply concerning to me. We had another $7 billion in debt added in the last quarter. And the problem with all of this reckless spending that they've added up is, it's neither providing any significant value to Canadians insofar as our economic growth is stagnant, but we're also seeing what is expected to be, although might be higher now, about $54 billion spent on the interest on our debt this year. That's a shocking number given that combined federal got transfers to provinces is about just under $50 billion for the entirety of our healthcare system. We're deciding to pay a bunch of rich bankers and bond holders a whole bunch of taxpayer money because we couldn't make tough decisions and prioritize what our spending needed to be. So, the reckless spending, the bill to it is coming due and it's having a real impact because I'd rather spend $50 billion to support our healthcare system, to support our military, to support so many aspects of our country that is so badly needed to make sure that we have the infrastructure required to have growing populations. It's about choices and, unfortunately, we've seen a lot of bad ones that has put us in this rather difficult spot right now."
Leslie also touched on housing, noting that the price of houses and rent across Canada has doubled what they were 9 years ago.