Branden Leslie says his first year as Member of Parliament for Portage-Lisgar has been an honour he deeply cherishes. 2024 marked Leslie's first full year in the role.
Leslie, a Conservative, explains he is reminded of this honour each time he enters the House of Commons, adding, overall, it's been a great year.
"I particularly enjoyed my role in the Environment Committee bringing a dash of agriculture/natural resource mindset and a rural lens to a lot of the discussions that we have there that are typically dominated by more urban issues. We've been able to, with my colleague Dan Mazier from Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa riding, bring a little bit of levity of the rural way of life to that committee."
"One of the long-standing issues that I frankly wish I wasn't involved with, that predates my time as a Member of Parliament, was Bill C-234, which was a bill that I was the architect of with the Grain Growers of Canada," added Leslie. "It was meant to exempt farmers from the carbon tax when heating and cooling their barns and drying grain. We fully anticipated the Senate to pass that into law, as the Members of the House of Commons had previously voted on it before I was elected. I, unfortunately, had to give a speech on it soon after I was elected and it's still in limbo after the Senate decided that it was going to make pretty substantial changes, which sent it back to the House of Commons."
Leslie says the ongoing four-month debate in the House of Commons has stalled most all legislation from passing, including Bill C-234. He feels this is quite disappointing for our farmers and livestock producers.
"They are not currently getting that relief so, hopefully, in the new year, maybe before this government falls, whenever that may come, that will come into law," said Leslie. "It'll be a bit of a feather in my cap after working on it for a year-and-a-half prior to becoming an MP. Unfortunately, as I say, we're still working on it now. But at the end of the day, whenever we get into power, assuming that Canadians will make the right choice, we're going to be getting rid of the carbon tax for everybody. We'll be getting rid of it for farmers on grain drying and heating, cooling of livestock barns. But any relief we can give farmers in the short term, particularly with low commodity prices right now, for the most part, and high input costs."
Aside from these efforts, Leslie says he has been working on many environmental policies. A self-described 'policy geek', he says he's really tried to dive into that type of thing.
"There is a shift in emissions -- a small shift, but nonetheless -- we're trying to put in perspective policies that people around here can understand, whether that be protecting our fresh water, protecting our biodiversity; things that we live and work and play on, and not focusing on emissions. So, I've been taking in a lot of meetings with stakeholders to try to put together some policy ideas that I've submitted to our team that, hopefully, some of which will make it into the platform whenever the campaign kicks off. I'm really trying to dive into some of those areas that makes sense for the area that I represent and, frankly, Conservatives across the country represent, which is rural communities."
Additionally, Leslie feels the four-month debate underway in the House has almost vanished from mainstream media, claiming they merely make passing mention that Parliament is paralyzed.
"Well, it is, because the majority of elected members of House of Commons has asked the Liberal government to hand over these documents that potentially show criminality, and they refuse to do so. There's no amount of corruption that's okay, but I would say that $390,000,000 that we know of, of Liberal corruption, is certainly a high enough bar for us to demand that they hand them over. They cannot move forward with their agenda. They don't have a terribly heavy legislative agenda at the moment, anyway. They really don't have a lot of a piece of legislation that they're trying to move forward on."
"The motion that we demanded was that they hand over the documents to the Law Clerk of the House of Commons, who could then hand it over to the RCMP for further investigation," Leslie further explained. "If you're wasting four months of Parliament's time, as the Liberals have been, I have to assume that there is something very much that they want to hide. The fact that the Auditor General only sampled the portion of these contracts and found 186 conflicts of interest, not that one or two conflicts of interest is okay, but 186 out of just a small percentage of what she sampled, there's clearly more to this story. I think that's why they're unwilling to hand them over."
Meantime, the Conservative MP says the Liberal's GST holiday is confusing small business owners, noting some have reached out to him explaining the difficulties they are experiencing. That includes, for example, changing point-of-sale systems on certain items.
"[...] the two-month temporary tax trick," said Leslie.
"Of some items that folks are out shopping for right now -- there might be a 5 per cent break on the GST portion of that. But at the end of the day, we're of the view this is not something that's going to make Canadians any better off in the long run."
"It's been a lot of headaches. The CFIB (Canadian Federation of Independent Business) has put forward a lot of information showing some of the challenges that small business owners have had on that. Conservatives, unsurprisingly, are of the view that we need actual tax relief. There is far too high of taxation in this country that is driving out investment. So, it's about moving forward with substantial tax relief, not just this temporary two-month holiday."
Leslie notes that some of the big players like PepsiCo and other big companies, days before it was supposed to come into force, just said, "We're not doing this."
"They said, 'This is way too much work for us,' and therefore, their products, you know, the small business owners that are selling them and the convenience stores, the gas station, might do it, but they're just eating that cost. The other thing we learned just before the coming-into-force-date is that it's actually not mandatory, so Pepsi Cola could get away with it without any repercussions.
I think a lot of Canadians have really seen through it. It's a government that's at the end of its life and is just throwing anything they can to try to get any support. I don't think Canadians are stupid."
All in all, along with being his first full year as MP, Leslie says he loves is working in Ottawa but noted, he certainly enjoys working within his riding.
"I've been really privileged to tour through so many businesses around Portage, Winkler, Morden, Carman, and Altona -- all of the larger communities -- to talk to so many farmers in their shops and get a sense of what's going on in the business community, where those pinch-points are, where those struggles are, where that red tape is, and really try to dive into what the challenges and frustrations there are. Likewise with our municipal partners. The Mayors and Reeves from cities, towns and RMs across the riding; I've been able to form good relationships with them so they can call me when something comes up."
He says they get together and try to advocate to the federal government on their behalf, and although he can't make any promises to them, he insists he will always go and fight for them.
Leslie says he does the same for the not-for-profits who have been under a tremendous amount of additional work over the past year than previous years due to the the terrible economic conditions for so many people, with rises in cost of living.
"It's been a difficult year for many people in our region and right across this country, so getting a chance to sit down and understand what's frustrating them, what are their needs, and try to come up with solutions. I'm not the guy that's going to come up with every solution. I take the view that those folks that are working on the ground, helping those in need in our communities, are the best place ones to come up with the solution. So, I should be there to listen to them."