QUESTION PERIOD — Finance
Cost of Living
October 24, 2024
Senator Gold, during Question Period yesterday, our deputy leader, Senator Martin, asked you very valid questions about Ugly Potato Day in B.C., when 15,000 people lined up in the rain for hours, hoping to get some rejected produce from local farmers. Your response to Senator Martin and the farmers she quoted directly was to call her question “old” and “tired.” That was incredibly arrogant and dismissive. That was your answer, Senator Gold. You might think you are insulting the Conservative Party when you give an answer like that, but, as a matter of fact, you are insulting Canadians who are struggling to get by.
Why do you insist on demeaning or insulting our questions based upon the suffering endured by Canadians?
Senator Plett, unless my memory is much worse than I think it is, with all due respect, I think you have very much misrepresented what I said. What I believe I said then, and what I am saying now, is not that the struggles that Canadians are facing, whether on issues of food, housing or affordability, are not important and — indeed, as I think I mentioned — unacceptable in many ways, certainly with regard to food in a country so well endowed as we are. What I did object to and will continue to object to is taking serious issues and then wrapping them up in these tired slogans, like “axe the tax,” “not worth the cost” or all the other ones. I will continue to call those out as unhelpful and, in my opinion, as rhetoric that obscures the real issues.
Check Hansard.
Our questions are based on what Canadians are struggling with in their daily lives, Senator Gold. You represent the government that imposes a carbon tax and wastes millions of dollars on affordability summits, while 2 million people go to food banks just to survive, Senator Gold. Shouldn’t I hold you to account for that? When will someone in your government for once take responsibility instead of brushing off our questions as talking points?
Senator Plett, I don’t know on how many dozens of occasions I have tried to draw a distinction between the legitimacy of your questions and the way in which you wrap them up. I will continue to do so. The fact is that the government continues to work hard and do its part to address the challenges that Canadians are facing on the issue of food, access to quality food and other matters that preoccupy Canadians.
