SoVote

Mr. Randy Hoback (Prince Albert, CPC)

Apr/4/22 1:41:15 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, it is great to be here this morning talking about government spending again. Spending is something the government knows how to do very well, and it has been very actively spending taxpayers' dollars as it sees fit, as if it is the government's own slush fund. I am here to speak against Bill C-8, because some of that bill would actually do the exact same thing that has happened before. Let us review what is going on in the Canadian economy as we speak today. Typical housing prices have gone from $345,000 to $810,000 in the biggest one-time gain of all time. Newly created government cash, $400 billion, was pumped into the financial markets, and a lot of that money went into high-risk mortgages at rates less than inflation. Those are concerns that Canadian taxpayers should have going into the future, because we are insuring a lot of those high-risk mortgages. We are seeing the price of food going up, and that is something I hear of quite often. The price of chicken, for example, is up 6.2%, beef is up 12%, bacon is up 20% and bread is up 5%. Those are old numbers. Those numbers are no longer relevant. We could almost double them today and that is what we would see when we go to buy things at the grocery store. Inflationary pressures, not COVID pressures, are starting to become a major factor in what Canadians are facing moving forward. We see the economies opening up here in Canada. Saskatchewan has been open for literally over a month and a half. Masking mandates have been removed and vaccine passports have been removed. Canadians are getting back to business, except for federal employees who, for one reason or another, decided not to be vaccinated or not to reveal their status. Those people are still sitting in unemployment lines or have been laid off or fired. It is really sad when we look at the history of these people and what they have contributed to our economy and to our civil service. These are penitentiary guards and other federal workers who have given their hearts and souls to their jobs, only to be told, because they did not release their medical status, that they were no longer needed or wanted. It is amazing to lose people with that type of skill set and that experience at this point in time, in a situation where we have unemployment. People are demanding and looking for labour. The government is going to have a huge problem filling the shoes of those people who have left. I think the government has forgotten history, and I am going to go on a trip down memory lane, just as I did last week when I was talking about our motion to look for a way back to a balanced budget. The government has not remembered the mistakes of the past. It has not talked to former Liberal members who went through the process of trying to actually balance the budget after they were told they had to. Let us go back to the 1990s. Let us look at the situation in 1992 and 1993. All of a sudden, the warning signs were going off. We had inflation. We had gone through a period in the eighties when, if someone got a mortgage at 14%, they were excited. I can remember buying my first house. I was excited. I got a mortgage at 14%. Now, if I cannot get a mortgage at 2.5% or 3%, I am mad. That really tells us the difference between where we are sitting right now and where we are possibly heading again. We saw rapid inflationary pressures. We were seeing oil and gas pressure. The Canadian economy was showing strides. If someone had a job, they were excited. When I was coming out of high school in 1984 or 1985, if I got a job at McDonald's I was taking it, because there were not a lot of jobs to be had. A lot of people flocked to university, just because they had no options other than continuing to go to school. There were no jobs to be had. In 1994, Moody's investors lowered our credit rating. In 1995 and 1996, we had more people jumping on that and saying that Canada needed to do something, and in 1996 Jean Chrétien and finance minister Paul Martin had to go through the process of making decisions they did not want to make. They were decisions I hope no future governments will ever have to make. The federal government, for example, wanted to block transfers to the provinces. It cut health care funding substantially, compared with 1993 levels, and those levels did not return to normal, or 1993 levels, until 2004. It took that long to get things back in order so that we could actually start putting more money back into our health care system. Basically, we saw a situation where people were looking at the economy and were in dire need, and there were just no financial resources there to help them out. We had spent the cupboard bare, and the government had to make all sorts of difficult choices, both at the federal and provincial levels, to pay back the excess of borrowing that happened in previous governments, such as the Trudeau governments of the early and late seventies. I do not want to see that repeated. I do not want to see that handed on to my kids or my grandkids. Hopefully I will have grandkids somewhere down the road. We are spending a lot of money. We are seeing inflationary pressures and all sorts of instability around the world. We are spending our reserves, which we may need to save for another rainy day, like we did when COVID-19 first hit or when we had the great recession of 2008. At that time, we had the fiscal capacity to spend some money and strategically use it in such a way to advance our communities and help things that needed to be done get done earlier so we could get back to balanced budgets in 2015. Now we are seeing the government spending like crazy. Part of it is okay. I have to admit that part of it is fine. Supporting people during the time of COVID-19 was important. We had to be there for people. I think all parties agreed with that. However, now as we get out of COVID and start looking into the future post-COVID, all of a sudden we have not learned a lesson and we continue to keep spending and spending. We have to wonder: What is the role of taxpayers? Are taxpayers really on board with this type of spending? If we go back to the last election, they did not vote for a coalition government. They did not vote for a new dental care program or a new pharmacare program. They did not vote for a coalition government. If we asked them that today, they would be totally against it, and it would have changed their voting habits in the last election. When we look at the costs of these types of programs, one has to wonder: Who is going to pay for them? How are we going to pay for them? There are some options. If we want a dental care program or health care program, there are options to pay for that. One of them is to quit shutting down the industries that actually would pay for it, like the oil and gas sector, for example. We have the safest and most ethical oil and gas in the world. We just need to get it to market. By getting it to market, we would have royalties that could be used to keep our deficits low, pay for services like a dental care program, increase funding to health care and education and transition to a green economy, which is somewhere we all know we have to go. However, our transition is not going to be paid by royalties off oil and gas; it is going to be paid off with deficits and debt. The Liberals call this investment. That is fine, but in the same breath, why are we borrowing money when we have the ability to raise the money? That is what drives me and a lot of Canadians crazy, because they see opportunities for the government to get this economy going and what does it do? It brings in regulations and policies that slow or shut it down. It brings in policies that are not being followed anywhere else in the world and it is putting Canadians through restrictions that nobody else has to face. A classic example is the oil and gas regulations for the environment we have here in Canada, and our friend President Biden and the regulations he put in place. If he was so in favour of what we have done in Canada, why did he not copy us? Why did he not bring in our regulations? Why did he not bring in the exact same regulations we have here? Has he done that? Is he going to do that? The answer to that is no, because he will not risk the U.S. economy in light of what he needs to do in moving forward with electronic vehicles or the green economy. He is not going to throw that away. He is basically going to try to do both at the same time, which is what Prime Minister Harper was trying to do. He was balancing the economy and the environment together. We can look at other sectors. If we talk to those in the manufacturing sector, they are saying we are losing manufacturing left, right and centre. They are saying nobody is reinvesting in Canada because it is too expensive to operate here in Canada. I was in the U.S. two weeks ago and had some closed-door meetings with some senators. They were saying the reputation of Canada being a great member of the supply chain is at serious risk. They were saying that we cannot seem to get it together and that we do not have the ability to be part of a supply chain anymore. They said we are great for one-off purchases, but if we want to part of and embedded in the supply chain, we need to improve our border efficiency, our reliability and our tax structure. Not all of these are federal problems; I will agree with that. Some of them are municipal and some are provincial. However, we need to get to work on them, and that is where we need to focus. When we look at things we could be spending money on, things that could grow our economy and make things grow stronger, that would be wise to consider. More importantly, we need to be smarter and more proactive. Let us spend money where it is needed and required immediately, not chase new dreams and new structural deficits and debts that will leave our kids basically out in the cold, making the exact same decisions that Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien had to make. Even Ralph Goodale was part of that role. I encourage the Liberals to talk to some old Liberals. I think a lot of the old Liberals, like Dan McTeague, would say, “What is this party?” [Technical difficulty—Editor] what the government has been doing. They would not endorse it. They would not say this is a prudent way forward. They have the scars of going through the 1995-97 cuts and have experienced that. Let us not make the same mistakes. Let us learn from history. Let us move forward and do it in a prudent, proactive way.

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Context: House Hansard - 52 - Apr/4/22

Mr. Randy Hoback

Apr/4/22 1:51:55 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I think a lot of people are following this vote very closely because it sends a signal to Canadians about how, and whether or not, the government is going to act responsibly. Having a game plan on how we are going to pay back our debt or get to a zero deficit is not a bad thing. Having a strategy in place to say this is our focus as we go out of the COVID world into an economy that is possibly facing another global war with what we are seeing in Ukraine and Russia is probably a good thing. Actually making sure that we have our ducks in a row physically and financially is very important. Canadians want to see that out of the government, but right now what they are seeing out of the government is confusion. They are seeing a lot of spending. They are seeing a lot of untargeted hyperopia on things the government wants to do moving forward, but nothing that really focuses on Canadians to actually set their families up for the future, and nothing that will prevent our kids from making the horrible decisions the Liberals made in 1995-96 because of the irresponsible spending before them.

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Context: House Hansard - 52 - Apr/4/22

Mr. Randy Hoback

Apr/4/22 1:53:41 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, the hon. member makes an excellent point. One would think people in Saskatchewan want dental care, and yes, they do, but they do not want to burden their kids with all sorts of expenses they cannot afford. This is a structural change in government spending, so we need tax revenue, not just today but in the future, to pay for it. How we are going to do that? We just shut down the oil and gas sector and we just heard from the manufacturing sector that it is leaving, so what are we going to do? My suggestion, if we want a dental program and pharmacare program, is to maybe get the cash first. Maybe pay for it instead of financing it through deficit and then waiting for somewhere down the road to pay for it. We talk about the big banks and the people who make tremendous amounts of money with their corporations. Proper taxation is very important, no question about it, but keep in mind that when a big bank makes money, what does it do? It pays out dividends. What do shareholders do? They reinvest it back into the Canadian economy. They buy things, or they borrow from the bank and use the money in their business to function their operating capital. If we want to have fair taxation rates for banks, let us talk about that; let us make that part of the debate. However, why not raise that money first before we start committing Canadians to a structural expense that they may not be able to afford?

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Context: House Hansard - 52 - Apr/4/22

Mr. Randy Hoback

Apr/4/22 1:55:34 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, well, I have not seen the entire report so it is hard to comment, but with regard to his comments about fossil fuels and keeping them in the ground and emissions, let us talk about a few things. First of all, this is a global crisis, and where is the most environmentally friendly fossil fuel in the world? It is in Canada. If we want to shut down the Canadian industry, okay, shut that down, but it is going to get replaced because people are still burning fuel. What the Europeans found out when they could not get oil and gas from Russia is that they are still burning fuel, so where is it going to come from? It is the areas that are not environmentally friendly, which will actually increase the speed of carbon emissions in the world and provide cheap, dirty, unethical oil all over the world. We have a choice to make, and it is a very clear choice. We can have energy security here in Canada, with a very safe, green, ethical fund growing in Canada's oil and gas sector, whether it is in Newfoundland, Alberta or Saskatchewan, or we can get oil from Venezuela or from third-world dictatorships like Russia. What do we want? We have to decide, because right now the decisions that are being made do not make a lot of sense.

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