44th Parl. 1st Sess.

March 4, 2022 10:00AM

Mr. Dan Albas (Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, CPC)

Mar/4/22 10:04:20 a.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

He said: Mr. Speaker, happy Friday. I believe few would dispute that we live in highly unusual times. Indeed, we are charting a path through a pandemic without a playbook. This is not the fault of the government: Every government is in the same situation, and as we all know, different governments have proposed different ways of moving forward. We must recognize that we agree, and I say “we” because we have to in large part unanimously agree, on most fiscal measures to this point. Canadians sent a minority Parliament to Ottawa and aside from the Prime Minister's shameless attempt to stage a power grab by calling an expensive and unnecessary election, here we are again in this minority Parliament. We must recognize that, rightly or wrongly, our fiscal cupboards were literally spent dry responding to this pandemic. I am not here today to debate the past. I am simply pointing out the obvious. A significant portion of Canada's fiscal capacity has been spent. It is gone and we must recognize that. Why? Because in the event we run into any type of future emergency situation, we will have less fiscal room to respond. Again, I do not raise that to point a finger of blame. I raise that because we must recognize that, going forward, we must be very careful how we proceed fiscally. Let me give an example. If anything, during this pandemic we have learned that our health care system was ill equipped to deal with the stresses and demands placed on it, more so when we see fully vaccinated Canadians who find themselves in our hospitals in the ICU. Every premier of every political stripe is clear that current Canada health care transfers are not enough to meet the needs of Canadians now or going forward. Here is something I would like to share with every member of this place. The Canadian health care transfer stands at over $45 billion a year. In the current fiscal update bill, spending is forecast to increase to over $55 billion in fiscal 2026-27. In other words, there is an increase of over $10 billion in that time frame. I am hopeful that my friends in the fourth party hear that clearly, as they have a bad habit of referring to increases in health care spending as cuts. I will get back to this increase in health care spending. The increase in health care transfer spending between now and fiscal 2026-27 is $10 billion. Here is the problem. Today, the interest we are paying on servicing our debt is just over $20 billion. Over the same time, it too will increase. The same budget bill forecasts that debt servicing costs will increase to almost $41 billion by fiscal 2026-27. I can already hear members of the government say, “But debt-to-GDP ratio”. They will say, “The AAA credit rating”. They will say, “But now there is another thing”. Between now and fiscal 2026-27, we know two things will happen. The health care transfer will increase by $10 billion, but servicing our debt will increase by over $20 billion. That is $10 billion on health and $20 billion on debt. To be clear, our interest costs of servicing our debt are climbing at twice the rate as our increases in the Canada health transfer. Does anyone not see that as being as a serious problem? The Parliamentary Budget Officer put out a report recently that said that the numbers the government put out in its last fall fiscal update actually underestimate our debt servicing costs in 2026-27 by $6 billion. When the government talks about all the things it wants to do on the economy, and when it talks about all the action it wants to take, we really have to understand that we are putting ourselves in a situation where we will not have the fiscal room to respond in cases of further external or internal events. In external events, we have nowhere further to look than the situation that is happening in Ukraine. We heard from the Governor of the Bank of Canada last night. We see that now the talk about inflation being transitory has washed away. We are now seeing that Canadians are being told by economists they face a perfect storm of higher gas prices, rising interest rates and the costs that go with that, and rising food prices. The Dalhousie report that came out earlier this year said the average family would be paying over $1,000 more in just grocery costs alone. That is not even factoring in the hit to their income with Canada pension plan increases that the government has put forward. We do not have the fiscal capacity, in my mind, to be able to say to Canadians that we can handle external events. Why? It is because the government has baked extra spending into it and, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, it is not giving proper projections of that. It is probably going to be higher. Government needs to be better than this. Our citizens are worried and anxious about their financial future, and the government continues to kind of walk around the issues that we have. My particular area of focus right now, both on the finance committee and here in the House, has been given to me by our leader of the official opposition. I have been given the task of focusing on housing and inflation. Here is what I have to say on that matter: There has been a 43% increase in home prices. Right now, the average Canadian home price is $811,000 and rapidly rising. We are seeing where the number of people purchasing homes and the low supply, coupled with many of the things that are causing those fundamentals to go up, are pushing away the dream of home ownership. The government continues to put forward policies, inadequate policies in my view, that simply walk around the issues. The great MP for Simcoe North put forward a very reasonable amendment. In fact, members are probably going to be a little shocked here. We actually were trying to help the government by putting forward that amendment. It was around banning foreign ownership of residential properties. It would have been for two years so we could take a look. The government says that it wants to look at data. We could have given it a two-year ban, and essentially we would then be able to see if it pushed down demand in the market and allowed more young Canadian families to have that first shot at home ownership, by pulling out, for a temporary time, foreign bids. The government voted against the amendment. We were only trying to help this Prime Minister who, by the way, in multiple elections has said that he wants to address skyrocketing housing prices, which are a gobsmacking 43% higher than in 2019. The Liberals voted against the amendment. That is the main problem with the current government. It has underestimated how much money it has spent. We will see much of that $6-billion gap that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has identified in our fiscal track, so we are going to have less firepower from that. We also have, at the same time, the perfect storm in which economists have told us that Canadians are going to be subjected to gas prices that they have never seen. I was born in Victoria, and I saw yesterday reporters pointing out that the cheapest form of gas was priced at $1.94 on the island. I have never seen that. In April, we will see the carbon tax go up to $50 a tonne, the backstop as well, and we will see where gas becomes increasingly unaffordable. I have put forward with my able colleague, our industry critic, some very reasoned amendments to help improve the legislation that has been brought forward. Really, we can no longer simply let the government talk around the issues. It needs to start putting forward real policies, such as banning foreign owners from purchasing Canadian properties to give Canadians that first chance at home ownership. The government continues to bring forward legislation that is not up to the task. Let me say again that it is always an honour to rise in this place. Again, I am imploring the government for my own riding. Those flooding victims in Merritt, Princeton and other rural areas of British Columbia are counting on the government. Unfortunately, they are told to wait as well. This is the problem I have with the current government. It is not addressing these important needs that Canadians have right now.

1464 words

All Topics

Hear!
Rabble!
add
star_border
share

SoVote

House Hansard - 41