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TRANSCRIPT
Prime Minister Carney's well-crafted and
eloquently delivered speech at Davos has
been widely noted and I want to start by
offering my own praise. The Prime
Minister is right to restate what many
have said for years. Canada must become
more self-reliant, less dependent, and
work with like-minded countries to
advance our interests. And Conservatives
are as always willing to work with him
to turn these words into results. What
stood out most to me was when he pointed
out, quote, the gaps between rhetoric
and reality. That's especially true here
at home. If liberal words and good
intentions were tradable commodities,
Canada would already be the richest
nation on Earth. Unfortunately, after a
decade of promises and grand speeches,
liberals have made our economy costly
and dependent, more so than ever. After
nearly a year as prime minister, Mark
Carney has made things only worse. The
deficit has doubled. Food inflation is
double that in the states. Housing costs
have also doubled, the worst in the G7.
And no pipelines are approved.
Anti-development laws removed. The
military has a massive recruiting and
equipment shortfall. There's still no
free trade between provinces. No crime
laws have been passed. And the prime
minister's signature promise of
negotiating a win with the US is
unfulfilled. Indeed, US tariffs have
more than doubled on Canada, while Mr.
Carney's promised counter tariffs have
vanished along with his elbows.
Those unkempt promises which followed
grand speeches and announcements make us
especially vulnerable to the world's
dangers. We have we've had enough words.
Now we need results. Now we need to
unblock our resources. Now we must
approve pipelines. Now we must bolster
our military to protect our soil, sea,
and skies. Now we need to crack down on
foreign interference, threats, and
intimidation of our people from hostile
powers like China, Russia, and Iran. The
last 5 years have shown us that we can't
count on others. Our closest neighbor
and largest trading partner, the United
States, struck us with tariffs and
questioned our sovereignty. Now, that is
shortsighted, and I believe it will hurt
them, too. But we can't control what
they do, and no one can control what
President Trump does or says. I know
it's tempting to say our relationship
with America is over forever. But here's
the reality. We still live next door to
the biggest economy and military the
world has ever seen. We sell 20 times
more to the US than we do to China. One
in 10 Canadian jobs rely directly or
indirectly on trade with America. We owe
it to those workers, our friends,
family, and fellow Canadians to ensure
those jobs don't go away. Growing and
derso diversifying our economy is
essential, as all political parties have
been saying for decades. But we must
also remember that our trade and
security partnership with the US is
centuries old and will outlast one
president. To quote the British Liberal
Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, we have
no eternal allies and we have no
perpetual enemies. Our interests are
eternal and perpetual and those
interests it is our duty to follow. We
should continue to work with allies
within the US that are outside the
administration to minimize the damage
until a larger relationship repair can
be completed. And I restate once again
my offer to the prime minister that
conservatives stand ready to help his
government fight US tariffs. But while
we hope for the best, it would be naive
to assume that things will go back to
exactly what they were. Whether the next
administration is Republican or
Democrat, tariffs may be here for the
foreseeable future. None of that though
is an excuse for letting our guard down
and repeating past mistakes by making
Canada even more vulnerable to
aggressive powers like the People's
Republic of China, which the prime
minister himself called our greatest
threat only a few months ago. It was
with great irony that the prime minister
quoted one of the greatest heroes of the
20th century fight against totalitarian
communism, Vaglav Havl, less than a week
after launching a quote strategic
partnership for a new world order with
the Chinese communist regime. A
partnership that includes plans to
deepen engagement on national security
issues at a senior level. We cannot
throw caution to the wind with a regime
that kidnaps our citizens, steals our
technology, interferes in our elections,
setups illegal, sets up illegal police
stations on our soil, and has a history
of using trade as a tool for diplomatic
warfare against us. If this is what the
prime minister meant when he told the
Davos crowd that he is calibrating our
relationships so their depth reflects
our values, then I seriously question
his values. and frankly his judgment. Of
course, we have to trade with China as
we always have, but without losing our
compass or our national security. At the
same time, we must continue the work of
Steven Harper, the prime minister who
expanded our network of trade with more
likeminded middle power countries. It's
not a new idea. In fact, we already have
free trade with most of the middle
powers that the prime minister
recognized in his Davos speech after the
previous Conservative government
negotiated agreements with a record 46
countries. Given that we already have
these agreements in place, what stops us
from growing trade with those countries
is not their trade barriers on us, but
our trade barriers on ourselves. Liberal
laws like C69 and C-48 make it
impossible to approve projects or ship
energy to uh other countries on
different coasts. It takes 19 years to
approve a mine in Canada. The Liberal
government has created these laws and
obstacles. And almost a year after
taking office, Mr. Carney has not
removed a single law or bureaucracy or
approved a single pipeline or removed
the industrial carbon tax which drives
food and housing costs up and industry
out. There are hundreds of billions of
private dollars looking to invest in
wildly profitable projects like a
pipeline to the Pacific. Money to get
Canada's energy flowing and can Canada's
workers working. We have the resources
under our feet. The only thing missing
is permits, the federal permits from the
Carney government, which are still among
the slowest in the world. Grand
announcements, new government agencies,
signing ceremonies, red carpets, and
stacking new laws and bureaucracies on
top of old ones will do nothing. There's
no magic to this. What we need is for
the Carne government to get out of the
way and approve these privately funded
projects. Mr. Carney told the crowd in
Davos that quote, "A country that cannot
feed itself, fuel itself, or defend
itself has few options. So why can't we?
Just this week, Canada was declared the
food inflation capital of the G7. And
last year, Canadians who can't feed
themselves made a record 2 million
visits to a food bank every single
month, more than double than the number
from 7 years ago. In a country with
almost endless farming potential
potential. We have the potential to be
the most affordable and the richest
country in the world because we have the
most land, resources, and coastline. We
need to unblock our potential. Stopping
and starting. That's why Conservatives
proposed the Canadian Sovereignty Act.
It's a detailed plan to unlock and
unblock Canada's potential and make our
country more affordable, self-reliant,
and sovereign. It aims to bring home the
half trillion dollars of investment
that's been driven to the US over the
last decade with practical steps like
ending capital gains tax on
reinvestments in Canada, which would be
economic rocket fuel for business
startups, high-tech inventions, and
massive money-making job creating
projects, repealing anti-pipeline and
anti-development laws to legalize fast
and safe approval of pipelines, and
shipping energy to our east coast,
including a new pipeline to the Pacific,
which would ship a million barrels a
today and $30 billion a year, the single
biggest increase in our exports
overseas. Let's go from having the
second slowest permits in the in the
OECD to the fastest. Let's end the
industrial carbon tax on industry and
farmers so that they can more affordably
produce what we need. Let's create free
trade bonuses for provinces and
territories to open up their markets to
fellow Canadians, tear down internal
barriers and strengthen national
economic unity. We need new rules and
tax incentives preventing Canadian
technologies, intellectual property and
strategic assets been from being sold to
hostile foreign states and state
influence in state influenced interests.
We need to cut taxes on work,
investment, home building, and energy so
that we can make more with less. Doing
so will make us both autonomous and
affordable. The more food we grow, the
more energy we supply ourselves, the
more we will be able to afford, the
stronger our dollar will be, and the
more purchasing power our families will
enjoy. That's why I'm announcing today
that next week we Conservatives will
introduce a motion in Canada's
Parliament to pass the Canadian
Sovereignty Act. Speaking about
sovereignty, we need a strong and
sovereign national defense. And what we
do on defense is something that we
control alone. We don't have to ask
anybody's permission to have a strong
state-of-the-art military and defend
ourselves. But could we really defend
ourselves today? Once again, Mr. Carney
has talked a big game about building up
our armed forces. But after nearly a
year as prime minister, he hasn't even
begun to deliver. It's been pushing
promises down the road, smoke and mirror
budgeting, and commitments of things he
might one day do. Just trust us. We
really want to do it, just not yet.
Look, we all support the sovereignty of
Greenland and Denmark, but we must be
able to support our own Arctic
sovereignty. Right now, we only have 300
full-time members of the military
stationed in the Arctic in a territory
that is larger than most countries. We
have the largest coastline in the world,
and yet we have just a regular naval
force of 8,400 personnel. A sovereign
country must be able to defend its
people and its territory. Conservatives
have a detailed plan to restore armed
forces and our great marshall tradition
to fix our recruitment crisis and expand
regular force and reserve force
dramatically and immediately. Increase
recruitment and promotions by driving
merit and not political correctness.
Reestablishing a permanent military
presence in the Arctic with CFB AWIT, a
new Arctic naval base and upgrade Inuvik
to full base status for fighters and
tankers. to back sovereignty with real
hardware by requiring four new ice
breakers, including Awax aircraft to
detect threats to our Arctic skies, to
fasttrack
upgrades to submarines, helicopters,
northern hubs, to strengthen boots on
the ground presence by doubling the
Canadian Rangers and creating an Army
Reserve unit in White Horse. So far, Mr.
Carney in this regard and in every other
has been very fortunate to be judged by
his rhetoric and his stated intentions
rather than by his results because
nearly a year into his term, the
rhetoric has changed, but the reality is
not. The illusion of purpose is there,
but the results have not shown up with
it. We need to do things, not just say
them. Canada strong can no longer be a
slogan, nor true north strong and free
just a motto. We must put our people and
our country first in everything that we
do. Then and only then will Canada be
autonomous and affordable, secure and
self-reliant. To paraphrase Henley, we
are the masters of our fate. We are the
captains of our soul.
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