44th Parl. 1st Sess.

March 28, 2022 11:00AM

Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Mar/28/22 5:22:54 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, we are talking about Bill C-8. It is the fiscal and economic update, and I will be spending my time, as many of my colleagues have been, talking about inflation. Inflation is probably the greatest challenge our country is facing at this moment in time, due in no small part to the fact that the government has basically written itself a cheque for $400 billion. It then brought that cheque to the bank, deposited it in its bank account, and proceeded to spend the money. That money was basically created out of thin air, and now we see this new influx of cash cascading through the economy. We see it in the rising of prices of all kinds of things, clear across the country. Why should we care about inflation? We hear from the Liberals all the time when they say, “Well, it is happening all around the world. It is not just something that is happening right here in Canada.” That is all true. A little bit of the problem is that we are unable to then measure what inflation is actually doing. If we are floating down the river and somebody is floating a little faster than somebody else, it may actually feel as though one is getting ahead of another who is floating a little slower. That is the problem we have. When the whole world is experiencing inflation, we cannot measure what the inflation looks like here in Canada effectively. We often measure our inflation or relative inflation against the American dollar. We say that our Canadian dollar is worth 78¢ to the American dollar, and that is a decent measurement of our currency. However, if the American dollar is being devalued and the Canadian dollar is being devalued at a similar rate, that percentage might actually stay the same, in terms of the 78¢ to the American dollar. If inflation is running at the same rate, we are not going to see a big change between the two, because we do not have a fixed point we can measure up against. The devaluation of our dollar is what happens when there is inflation. When our dollar is unable to buy the same amount of goods as it was capable of buying before that, that is a devaluation. One of the things that I use to measure inflation and to measure effective currency exchanges is the Big Mac. McDonald's Big Mac is sold around the world. We can see the relative value of one's money by seeing what the Big Mac is worth around the world, everywhere one goes in the world. For me, that is my quick check to see what a dollar is worth. The relative price of a McDonald's Big Mac around the world gives one a measure of what one's dollar is worth. When we see that the value of the Big Mac, or the price of the Big Mac, is going up right here in Canada, we know that our money is worth less. We see that in housing prices. If one's house has appreciated in value over the last couple of years, as many Canadians' homes have, it is because of, one, more demand for the house or, two, the dollar now actually being worth less. The house did not change. The house is still the same house one bought several years ago. If one is a Canadian that happens to own a house, that is an advantage at this point of time, but it is still the same house. The fact that it has doubled in value or gone up by 50% is a measurement of inflation. It does not mean one's house is now suddenly worth more. It just means that our dollar is worth less, so it takes more dollars to buy the same house. What does that mean, particularly now that we hear about how the government seems to be oblivious or does not seem to take this as seriously as I think it ought to, in regard to the whole issue of inflation? Members of the government will say, well, it is just a matter of fact, it is happening around the world and there is not much we can do about it. There are a lot of things the government could do. First of all, it could stop printing money. Second, it could show some fiscal restraint. Many times when we ask in this place about what the government is doing about a particular thing, its members stand up and tell us how much money they are spending on the thing. When it comes to housing prices, we say that housing prices are getting out of control and government members stand up and say, “Yeah, we know and that is why we are going to spend this much more money on housing affordability” or when we say that taking care of children is getting more and more expensive in this country, they say, “Yeah, we know and that is why we are going to spend this much more money” on that particular thing. I am from a Dutch family and the Dutch are notorious in terms of their money management. If one is getting the same thing for more money, that is not a good deal. If one gets the same thing for less money then one is doing a good job. That is what is going on in this country. Government members say that Conservatives were obviously not managing that particular issue well because they only spent that amount of money and we are spending this amount. Border controls are a clear example. When Conservatives were in charge of this country, we did not have a massive influx of people running across the border. We were managing our border. We were keeping our border secure. It did not even cost us that much. Now we have a steady stream of people running across the border. We could say that this perhaps is a problem. There is a front door to Canada. People are welcome to Canada. If they just apply through the normal channels, people are welcome to come to Canada. What is happening now is that the government says this is obviously not a problem because it is spending x number of dollars on border controls. If we have a bigger problem and we are spending more money on it, that to me is not good value for the money. That is another area where we see the government spending more and more money to achieve less and less. The Liberals may say it is all fair and nice for me to say as I am a Conservative with my own arguments. They will make their own arguments and say that they are here to fight climate change and all those kinds of things and that costs money so they have to spend money. That is fine if that is the argument they want to make. Why should a person whose number one concern in the world is climate change and the environment care about inflation? I am going to make the argument that they should care about inflation because runaway inflation drives short-term thinking. To pull this to an extreme, in Germany after World War I, they had runaway inflation, like unheard of inflation. Folks were demanding that they get paid by lunchtime so that they could run to the store to buy a loaf of bread, because if they got their wages later, the price of the loaf of bread would have gone up by the end of the day. People demanded to get paid for their work in real time and turned that cash into a tangible asset in about the same amount of time. That drives very short-term thinking. We see that happening here in Canada right now as well. Everybody is trying to turn their cash into something. They are trying to take their earnings and turn them into a hard asset so that they do not lose the value of their money. They do not lose the value of their effort. Real estate is an example. Folks across the country have turned their earnings into real estate. It drives the fact that we do not save for a rainy day. We do not think about the future. We want to get our earnings into a tangible asset by any means possible. If someone is able to afford a house, that is a good place to do that, but if one is unable to afford a house, one buys other things in order to manage that. Runaway inflation drives short-term thinking. Climate change and the environment, all these things, are pressing issues, but they are all issues that are somewhat long term. There are a lot of studies around the world that point out that the net worth of the population must reach over $5,000 U.S. before people start to care about the environment and things like that. There is a correlation between one's net worth and inflation that drives long-term thinking. We should be thinking about those things. If we are going to drive inflation up wildly, people are less likely to look further into the future. They are going to think about turning their earnings today into tangible assets in real terms. That is a reality. I hope I can make that argument to folks who are concerned about the environment to say that runaway inflation drives short-term thinking. If we want to make it so that our country thinks about things in the long term, we have to get this inflation under control. It looks like I have to wrap up. I hope to have many questions so that I can continue on some of these issues.

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House Hansard - 47