44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 28, 2022 11:00AM
- Mar/28/22 1:02:54 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, the member spoke about some of the things that he wished were in the legislation. I want to speak about something that I wish was in his speech.
The government has spent tremendously on all kinds of different programs that have added billions and billions to our debt. In fact, our accumulated debt has more than doubled under the Liberals' watch.
I would ask the member if he feels that this spending can continue and if he has any comments at all, any thoughts, on debt and the debt of the country, or if it could just go on forever, in his opinion.
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- Mar/28/22 1:09:55 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, ironically, the very next line in my speech is that “the government really knows how to waste time”. I think that was just a great example of it right there.
I want to assure colleagues that I am not going to waste the time of my constituents in Saskatoon West. I am going to dive into this piece of legislation and speak about why I am voting against it. Then I am going to talk about what matters to the economy of Saskatoon West, which is agriculture and energy, and why this fall economic legislation should have focused on those drivers of our economy.
I need to tell my constituents why I oppose this legislation. I invite all Canadians to go to page 36 of the fall economic update to understand how damaging this legislation is for our country. The government’s own figures show that once this legislation passes an additional $28 billion in debt will be added in the fiscal year ending this week. For the next fiscal year, which starts on Friday, this legislation will increase the debt by another $13 billion.
The government thinks this is a non-event with nothing to see here, but the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has a debt clock that shows our debt. Did colleagues know that the Liberals broke that clock? It did not have enough digits. The clock shows our debt is increasing at $4,500 per second. That means in the minute and a half that I have been speaking, our debt has increased by $400,000. Every 10-minute speech by the Prime Minister adds $2.7 million to our debt. Last year’s deficit added well over $300 billion. This year’s deficit will add another $150 billion and next year is half of that again.
How do governments come up with this extra money? They issue bonds and print money. All economic theory will tell you that printing money increases inflation. History teaches us this same lesson. It could be the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany or the stagflation of 1970s America. Twenty years ago it was the Asian flu, and 10 years ago we had South American governments that were defaulting and becoming bankrupt. Time and time again, when governments print money it results in inflation. Inflation hurts Canadians, especially seniors and those on fixed incomes.
Another effect of money printing is rising house prices. Property prices skyrocket, requiring larger and larger mortgages and putting homeowners under financial stress. That is exactly what caused the 2008 housing crash and the Great Recession. I think most Canadians understand that government spending causes inflation. I think that Canadians also understand that only the Conservative Party can fix the mess caused by the Liberal government. We will fix this one. We will reign in government spending. We will unleash the power of our entrepreneurs and risk-takers. We will multiply the advantage of our resource sector. We will restore confidence in Canada again.
In Saskatchewan, agricultural policy is economic policy, and Bill C-8 does not mention this. Even though I represent a fully urban riding, I know the importance of agriculture to the economy of Saskatoon West. Plus, we all need food and most of us enjoy it too.
There are two main growing areas on this planet. The first is the great plains of North America, which stretch from northern Saskatchewan all the way down to Texas. The second are those in eastern Europe. Putin’s unprovoked invasion and war in Ukraine is destroying the second-largest wheat growing area in the world. We have not seen a disruption of eastern European food supplies on this scale since the Holodomor under Stalin, when that brutal dictator stole the crops of the people and starved millions of Ukrainians to death. Now that we are counting on Saskatchewan and the great plains to feed the entire planet, our farmers will step up to the plate. There is no doubt that Canadian farmers have the capacity to make up the shortfall, but there are problems that our farmers face.
I sat at the environment committee, and I focused on farmers' issues and the harm that the NDP-Liberal government's policies were doing to our farmers. First and foremost is the carbon tax. This tax is adding massive input costs. Fertilizer and fuel for planting machinery is adding significantly to each bushel of wheat. Output costs are going up as well. Fuel for harvesting machinery and transport costs by trucks and train are adding even more dollars of cost per bushel of wheat.
To help mitigate this for our farmers, I asked the environment minister at committee if he would recognize Saskatchewan’s carbon capture system as equivalent to the federal system. His answer was, “That's certainly the intent.” True to form, he then reneged and imposed his own separate system of federal costs on Saskatchewan farmers. The result is more inflation on the price of food.
We will certainly grumble over the massive inflation price increases, but we are a rich country. The people who will suffer the most are in Africa and Asia, the most vulnerable people on the planet. I guess, in the minds of the small cabal of NDP-Liberal politicians that have a power lock on this House, mass starvation is a low price to pay for a carbon tax.
Let us look at the NDP food policy. As I have said, Canada is a global agricultural superpower, but the NDP do not recognize this. Indeed, the NDP's policy statement says the opposite. It says, “We’ll work to connect Canadians to farmers with initiatives like local food hubs, community supported agriculture, and networks to increase the amount of food that is sold, processed and consumed in local and regional markets.”
We might ask what is wrong with that. A Saskatchewan farmer produces tens of thousands of bushels of wheat, and he is not going to sell that at a farmers’ market. How many Canadians do members know who mill their own wheat into flour and then transform that into bread and pasta? If it were up to the NDP, all we would have are community gardens in urban settings that grow food like a few carrots and cabbages. There is nothing wrong with community gardens, but they only feed a small group of Starbucks-sipping people, whereas the Conservative Party has a long history of unlocking Saskatchewan agriculture.
It was under Prime Minister Harper that we eliminated the Canadian Wheat Board, allowing farmers to finally market their own crops. We also gave plant breeders the right to give our farmers access to the most modern crop technology available. All these measures were opposed by the NDP-Liberals. The people in my riding of Saskatoon West need to ask themselves whether the NDP really has an agriculture policy that benefits our province and them.
In Saskatchewan our energy and mining sectors are the two other drivers of economic activity that are not really addressed in this legislation. Last month, I spoke to the importance of these sectors to our province. Energy is 26% of the economic activity in Saskatchewan. In my riding alone, 40 businesses are directly involved in primary energy extraction. Our province produces an average of 500,000 barrels of oil per day, or one-fifth of all the oil consumed in Canada every day, and additionally we have 1.2 billion barrels of oil in reserve.
How is this oil transported? Some of it goes through pipelines, but much of it travels on railways. The NDP-Liberal government has done everything in its power to kill pipeline projects that would safely move oil and natural gas to refineries or tidewater. Conservatives, on the other hand, understand the need for pipelines and the need for Canadian energy.
Right now there is massive global demand for Canadian oil and natural gas due to the war in Ukraine. The price of oil is as high as it has ever been. Russian liquefied natural gas has been cut off from Europe. Our allies in the U.S. and Europe need our energy. President Biden has instead turned to the dictators and despots of Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia for this energy. Why? It is because the NDP-Liberal government is keeping its ideological blinders on and not seizing on this opportunity to move our energy to market.
The people of Saskatoon West have faced a host of issues these past years, while suffering under the yoke of the current Liberal-NDP government in Ottawa. This current legislation promises to add to the crisis of Justinflation. The Bank of Canada admitted earlier this month that the carbon tax is directly contributing to this inflation, which has raised the cost of groceries an average of $1,000 a year. For many people that is simply out of reach, especially as they make trade-offs as the prices of gasoline, clothes, rent, mortgages and other necessities experience record high inflation as well.
There is a strong contrast between NDP-Liberal policies that will pickpocket people and redistribute their money to special interest groups, and the Conservatives, who will allow people to keep their money and let them decide how they want to spend it. Do we want our taxes to rise, or do we want tax cuts to help Canadians struggling to get by? Do we want income splitting? Do we want unrestricted access to EI and CPP payroll taxes to make up government policy shortfalls, or do we want to have rates that keep politics out of those funds? Do we want to pay tax when we sell our houses? Do we want tax rates that are set by G20 bureaucrats or by people in Canada?
I could go on, but my constituents get the point. NDP-Liberals will tax and spend and drive inflation through the roof. Conservatives will always be there to make life simpler for Canadians.
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- Mar/28/22 1:19:54 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, there are so many ways to answer that question, but I think I am going to focus on this: Did we need to spend money during the pandemic? We did. Was that money well spent, as the member asked? I would say in many cases it was not. I have seen many examples of organizations that received more money than they needed and businesses that received more money than they needed. We have lots of examples of people who were not even in Canada, inmates and all kinds of things. There was a tremendous amount of money that was not spent correctly.
At the end of the day we have to be very careful with Canadians' money, because this is the fundamental thing: It is not our, us in this room's, money. This is Canadians' money. This is money they earn and spend, and we have to be extremely careful and prudent in how we spend that money. When we put ourselves into debt, we are putting Canadians into debt, and we have to be extremely careful on that as well.
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- Mar/28/22 1:52:46 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I had a bit of a hard time following my colleague's speech. He is worried that the government is not taking care of the debt for future generations. I think that is important too. He talked about the housing crisis and said that the tax on unused properties in Canada is inadequate. I completely agree with him.
I often hear the Conservatives criticizing what the government is doing on the housing file, but I do not hear them proposing a whole lot of solutions. In a study a month or two ago, Scotiabank, which is supposedly one of their friends, said that there is a shortage of 1.8 million housing units in Canada to address the crisis.
My colleague pointed out that housing prices have doubled since the Liberals took office, but accessibility also includes the availability of more housing. What solutions does the Conservative Party propose to address this shortfall of 1.8 million housing units in Canada?
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- Mar/28/22 3:49:07 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, today the government is printing and spending money at a rate never seen in our nation's history. This is plain. Never before has the government spent so much so quickly, not just during the pandemic, but from 2015 to 2019 the Liberal government borrowed $100 billion when, in the 2015 election campaign, the Prime Minister promised small incremental deficits and a balanced budget for 2019.
During the pandemic, Canada has borrowed more money than it has in its 155 years through 23 prime ministers. This year alone, the government printed $300 billion. Where did this money go? It is simple. Just like a Will Smith slap, it was gone.
A lot of money was spent with little investment. After $800 billion was spent in the last six years, we do not have more ICU or hospital beds that would help in future pandemics, allow much-needed surgeries to take place or stave off any more unneeded lockdowns. Our military is in shambles, and we need new equipment, and more investment in Arctic defence and our navy.
We have a broken immigration system, with which we cannot currently fill the more than one million jobs in this country that need to be filled in order for businesses to grow. These are the businesses that pay salaries, payroll taxes and corporate taxes; generate GDP, which contributes to federal taxes; and make the stuff that will hopefully quell inflation. We have the biggest single housing crisis in the world, with a growing homeless population. We have an outdated strategy, and we are lacking innovation in this country.
Not only are we losing out in immigration, but other countries are poaching our talent from here at home. We have not invested as much as we need to in R and D. We are not seeing IP and patents generated here as well as they are in other countries, and we cannot get our Canadian energy, whether it be from Keystone XL or especially LNG, to Europe and the rest of the world. All at a time when it has to still buy it from Russia and Putin, fuelling the war machine devastating Ukraine.
It is quite simple. By having a government spend rather than invest, it has put Canada on a race to the bottom. We are headed for more disaster when we fail to invest in Canada, our children and our future, and continue to spend to satisfy today. By spending and not investing, it is Canadians who are hurting, Canadians such as my constituents in Bay of Quinte, who are having trouble pinching loonies and toonies together to pay for groceries, heat and gas for their fuel tanks.
They also have an incredible debt load that is compiling on its own. Do members know that, in all of the nations of the G7, we have the worst personal debt for our families in this country? They are racking up lines of credit and credit card bills, and putting a lot of money on themselves, just the same as the government is. The result is higher interest payments for them, payday loans they cannot get out of and having to decide how to pay bills this month and next. They are having trouble because the money spent may have been cheap and it may have been easy, but that easy and cheap cash is fuelling inflation, as more money chases fewer goods. These are all points that have been made clear on this side of the House again and again.
We are heading for more spending with the NDP and Liberal merger. Where spending is concerned, with the NDP and Liberals put together, we have not seen anything yet. There is a saying that goes, “Money is only important when you don't have any.” Neither the Liberals nor the NDP believe we are out of it, never mind that the clock is ticking, literally. The national debt clock is fast approaching $1.2 trillion, but, hey, what is $1 trillion anymore? We certainly know $1 million for a house is nothing now. I have a couple of statistics. That is $31,000 per man, woman and child in Canada. For a family of five, that is $155,000 that they now owe for the debt in Canada.
Let us look at what we are borrowing every day. Every day we are printing $391 million to cover the debt, when this country needs to pay its bills today. Let us look at what is eclipsed and what the interest payments are for the debt. What does it cost us to pay for the debt? It is now $40 billion. When we think about investments, would it not be nice to have $40 billion more for health care, to create more beds and ICU beds, or to pay doctors and nurses, or to make sure we have what Canadians need just to have a universal basic income that we so pride ourselves in?
The Liberal-NDP merger has been said to be giving fits to the finance minister because the already outlandish spending is set to increase oh so very much more with universal basic income, free pharmacare, free dental care and on and on. Members can imagine that perhaps even Oprah Winfrey will make an appearance to the House herself, saying, “You get a car. You get a car. Everyone is going to get a car.”
There is far more importance today. Success is where preparation and opportunity meet. For our investments, for a better tomorrow, for our children, for our children's children, we need to learn the difference between spending and investing, and make sure that we invest in Canada's future. Here is the kicker: Some of that investment may actually be free.
Number one, we need to stop the spending spree. There will be a windfall for the federal government this year, and do members know where that windfall will be from? It will be from oil, and Alberta itself may be able to balance its books for the first time postpandemic. The federal government needs to put some of that money into debt repayment, and while we have too many problems to put the brakes on spending, it needs to spend more wisely than ever before.
Number two, we have to grasp that we cannot have everything. If we are going to make Canadians choose between groceries and rent, then we must choose those investments with extreme caution. Canadians choosing whether to put their kids into hockey or swimming know that they cannot have everything. They need to make choices, and the government needs to make choices as well.
Number three, we need to invest in those of Canada's strengths that will provide a return on investment. Housing includes working with the provinces to double our building of new starts, and it includes increasing our skilled trades in Canada by investing in our immigration system. It is terrible that, right now, across Canada, we cannot fill a million jobs, and when the immigration minister talked about this, he, in effect, said that it is broken, and they are putting $85 million into it, but they are not sure if they are going to have many skilled labourers at all coming into this country by the end of the year. Every minute that we wait to fill these companies and they sit empty or are not able to produce the things that provide money for this country, we are failing those businesses. We are failing Canada to be able to make money on its own and quell inflation.
We need to look at food production in Canada now that Ukraine and Russia have decreased theirs. Ukraine provides over 20% of the world's wheat and 9% of the world's corn. A bigger problem for Canadian agriculture is that 80% of fertilizer currently comes from Russia, and that 80% of fertilizer is nitrate, which helps us grow our corn. If we are out of nitrate and we do not have that fertilizer, we are in big trouble for producing the food that we need, not only for our own country, but also for those across the world. The simple solution may be to ask farmers to produce 10% more this year to ensure that we are making our own fertilizer, and ensure we are helping farmers as much as we can to produce the things they need to feed the world and feed Canadians.
We have to increase our output of Canadian energy, especially our nuclear energy modular units. Canadian oil is much better than unethical oil from other parts of the globe, and if we make it cleaner, we should be promoting it more steadily.
When it comes to GDP, few Canadians know that, after real estate and manufacturing, mining, gas and oil comes third, providing 585,000 jobs and over $190 billion in direct and indirect taxes a year. In comparison, a country that I really love, South Korea, which is the size of the rock of Newfoundland, has the same GDP as Canada, and has manufacturing and innovation replacing those oil and gas revenues Canada enjoys. However, that innovation and manufacturing is worth almost three times what Canada does. If we are going to start replacing that, we need to increase innovation and we need to increase manufacturing.
When we look at South Korea and the examples it provides, it has Hyundai, LNG and Samsung, things that Canada needs to start investing in if we want to ever start bringing in royalties, increasing the GDP and jobs, and investing in Canada and Canadians. We need to start paying for the things we want. As deputy critic for innovation, science and industry, I would hope that for Canada's future we look at this kind of investment for Canada to succeed in the future.
Jim Balsillie was in the SRSR committee this week talking about what Canada needs to do in order to start capitalizing on intellectual property and ensure that we have an advanced and growing the economy. Do members know that the OECD has predicted that Canada, from 2020 to 2030 and the next three decades after, is going to have the worst performing economy of all the OECD? It is absolutely deplorable, and we have to ensure now that we are investing. We have to fix this economy and get to the future.
Simply, on the struggle Canadians are going through today, with inflation and the housing crisis, we have to invest in Canada's tomorrow. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Let us invest in Canadians. Let us invest in Canada, and let us get going for the future.
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- Mar/28/22 4:35:59 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to talk about Bill C-8, an economic and fiscal update tabled in December of 2021.
Before I get to the crux of my speech, I want to point out that this bill would add an additional $70 billion of new inflationary fuel to the fire we are seeing already with our public finances. Inflation was at 5.7% in February. We are seeing supply chain shortages and labour issues, and the list goes on and on. We are now seeing a jaw-dropping $1.2 trillion of national debt. Housing prices are up 25% from last year. The average typical home, when the Liberals took power, was $435,000. Now it is $810,000. That is having real impacts.
The carbon tax is having a massive impact on people all across my riding. Of course, it is a rural area and a lot of it is cottage country, but it also has agriculture, tourism and manufacturing. The list goes on, but for the most part, people have to drive to get to work. These manufacturers have to import parts to make their components and to make their goods. We have seen continued price increases along the supply chain as a result of the carbon tax, among the other challenges industry is facing right now.
It is not going to get better, unfortunately. Some experts and media sources are saying that the new deal between the Liberals and the NDP could add an additional $15 billion to $20 billion of government spending over three years and upwards of $40 billion in 2026-27, all of this while we have basically printed money, which is causing a lot of this inflation, and there is no end in sight. That has a real impact on people on the ground.
I want to start now by reading some of the emails I have been receiving from my constituents who are just struggling beyond belief to deal with the increased cost of living.
This one comes from Colin. It reads, “Prime Minister, now is not the time to hike the carbon tax again. Canadians like me are already getting hammered by the highest inflation in decades, which drives up the cost of everything. The crisis in Ukraine has increased the price of oil and gas, driving up anything that requires oil and gas to produce or transport, which is basically everything, and now the carbon tax is going up again on April 1.” He says, “It is the worst April Fool's Day joke ever, and Canadians simply cannot afford this one-two punch.”
Clayton's email reads, “Thank you for taking the time to read this email. Question: Have there been any thoughts or talks of reducing the carbon tax that is skyrocketing on fuel used to heat our homes? We use propane as our main source of heat, and the price of filling our tanks is getting out of control.”
This one is from Colin: “My landlady and I are both on a fixed income. She is 81 years of age. We use heating oil, and the current bill, including GST and carbon tax, makes the price of heating oil $1.65 per litre, which is more than the price of a litre of gasoline.” Their bill is now $250 per month more than last year. That will total about $1,250 more for the season, and that is if they are lucky. Colin writes,“We have to start cutting back on groceries to cover our heating bill. This is unsustainable and, to be frank, downright”, and we can insert an unparliamentary word here. He continues, “There should be some support for folks like us in this situation, and we have not drawn any support from the COVID payouts. Please help.”
This one is from Brad: “I am very concerned about what my family and I are going to do with the current cost increases. I make a fair wage and I work hard for it, as does my wife. Seeing fuel prices today reaching $1.84 per litre in Peterborough, we are unsure how we are going to choose between getting to work every day and putting food on the table for our family. I can't even imagine how people working two or three minimum wage jobs are going to cope. I beg of you to do your best to get us some relief. With gas taxes and carbon tax, it is making it impossible to stay afloat. The current carbon tax rebate is a joke. We have spent that already on propane and heating costs and fuel since January 1. This winter, our propane heating costs have increased at a tremendous cost due to the carbon tax.”
His latest propane fill is $600, and $120 of that $600 was a tax. Then we have the tax on the tax. He writes that food prices are going up and he does not see how he can possibly keep up with this.
I will keep going. I will read a message from Shawn. He said, “Here in the city of Kawartha Lakes, we are looking at a housing crisis. We are seeing, in my area, a lot of people moving up from the city now that a lot of people are working remotely and seeing the advantage of working from paradise.” I do not blame them; it is paradise. However, it is causing a major problem with the supply and demand equation, not to mention the $400 billion that I talked about earlier. Allowing all this money to be put in the atmosphere is helping to cause this unfortunate situation. He writes about different methods that he could talk about to get housing built. Not only that, they are talking about whether it is sustainable for their kids and whether their kids will be able to afford a house going forward.
I will read two more, because these are really important. I really did not get to my speech, but that is okay; these are important.
I am going to talk about Steve. He does construction, excavating and landscape work in Haliburton. Their company will have to increase their rates 27% just to stay afloat. Also, he is concerned about the larger jobs that he has not completed. Some he started last season; he got about 75% of the way last year, and now he estimates that the costs for material, wages, fuel, etc., will be up over $5,000. Now Steve has to eat that cost, because that is not what the quote read. The customer might not pay it. Sadly, he writes, it is not even worth his fuel, but he has to finish the job and lose money just to save his reputation.
I will read this last one because it is actually quite moving. It is from David, who wrote, “I am a 69-year-old Canadian retiree living in Highlands East, finding it more difficult to live week by week in the amount of ridiculous inflation caused by reckless Liberal spending.” That is all the more reason to stop funding some of the priorities that the Liberals have decided are priorities and to take a look at how seniors are struggling to get by. David continues to write, “This scares my wife and I to death, perhaps having to live in a 200- to 300-square-foot box in a hospital-like setting and paying approximately $4,000 rent a month, and that's not even reasonable.”
That is just a small number of the sad and very real stories I am hearing from constituents right across this constituency. We have heard struggling stories like that all day from constituents, regular Canadians, who are struggling to get by.
We have called for relief from this carbon tax. We are talking about how the carbon tax is affecting the farmers we are dealing with in my area, and others who are trying to figure out how they are going to manage these increased prices when they are talking about drying and about fuel for other methods. Everything has a cascading effect. If anyone has gone to the grocery store lately, they would have seen that the price of groceries is absolutely out of control. It is absolutely sad to see this.
We saw the same plan here in Ontario. The same thing happened when the Ontario Liberals decided to mess around in the energy sector and started picking winners and losers in the energy market. We saw energy poverty. We saw more people relying on food banks than ever before. They could not afford their electricity bill because the government decided that it would start to allow massive subsidies for energy that did not meet the massive demands for energy that Ontario needed. Even when it did, then the excess energy, because storage capacity is not where it should be, although it will be someday, was sold to various states for pennies on the dollar, especially New York and Michigan. Our businesses would therefore actually be subsidizing their competitors through their lower cost of energy.
We need more sources of energy. We need to stop the spending. We need to look at ways we can grow the economy and start building things, and have low taxes, less government and more freedom.
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