SoVote

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

Apr/25/22 5:38:34 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the member's intervention here today. He specifically cited the tax-free first home savings account as being a measure that his constituents would utilize, so I have some questions for him. First, what about the member's constituents who do not have $8,000 a year to set aside? Second, what happens over the next five years? Obviously, in the previous five years we have seen housing prices almost double. Last, many people, particularly young millennials, are getting bounced because of the Liberal stress test today. Let us say someone scrimps and saves, puts aside all that money, has $40,000 five years from now and then goes to apply and gets bounced. What will the member do? Will he send them an “I'm sorry” card?

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Context: House Hansard - 57 - Apr/25/22

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

Apr/25/22 5:44:06 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place and talk about things that my constituents, the great people of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, care about and to talk a bit about the budget. Obviously, the budget is the social economic blueprint for the government to give the bureaucracy direction as to what it wants to have done. I looked at the budget in its totality, and it has been billed in so many different ways. It was billed as an affordability budget, which it is not, and as an innovation budget, which it is not. It has been billed as a fiscal return to reality budget, which it is not. It has also been talked about as being a growth budget, but it is really a mass of discombobulated measures. Obviously, a government has to pay attention to a lot of different things. As I said, a budget is its biggest social economic blueprint, but by the same token, I have never seen a budget that seems to be so disconnected from reality. I am going to pick a couple of different areas where I will list what the government has said it wants to do in this budget and some of the things it has done previously to point out that it is following a very similar path. For example, on the innovation front, we have something called a Canada growth fund. This is brought to us by the government that brought us superclusters, which were not so super, and the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which Canadians cannot bank on. Now we are on this Canada growth fund. On page 61 we can read the following: The fund will be initially capitalized at $15 billion over the next five years. It will invest on a concessionary basis, with the goal that for every dollar invested by the fund, it will aim to attract at least three dollars of private capital. In standing up the Canada Growth Fund, the government intends to seek expert advice from within Canada and abroad. Following these consultations, details about the launch of the fund will be included in the 2022 fall economic and fiscal update. Essentially, the government is saying that we have a new shiny object, much as at one point it had the Canada Infrastructure Bank. We do not have any idea yet about the details. The government puts it in the budget and then it will ask people how it can make it work, but it will put aside lots of money for it. On the money side, Paul Wells, in his shiny new Substack, which, unlike this shiny new program, did not cost taxpayers anything, sought to get to the bottom of this new shiny Canada growth fund and how much it would spend. He could not get an answer on the cost. He asked the government what it would cost. It said that it would cost anything from nothing to who knows what. This is not the first time an agency was created. In fact, back when Bill Morneau was the finance minister, the Liberals eliminated the Public-Private Partnerships Canada Crown agency, PPP Canada, rather than change its mandate, and brought in the Canada Infrastructure Bank. I asked the minister about this at committee. I said that it would take five years before the government even figured out the governance policies for it, and I asked why it would do that. He said that it was because we needed to get big transformational things done. Here we are and the only big and transformative thing this bank has done is give its executive and workers bonuses. Therefore, this way of putting out a shiny new object, putting billions of dollars aside for it, and then trying to figure out how it is going to make it work just goes down again as another idea to distract and say that it wants it. Really, the mandate of this new growth fund is almost identical to the infrastructure bank, for which the government has also changed the mandate. It just seems strange to me that it is doubling down on these policies that have been not proven to work in the past. This is the problem. Rather than, for example, the government saying what it wants to do and then giving out small trial balloons of money to various teams to actually show they have business models that can work and then choosing from among those options if they bear fruit, the government does the worst of big government thinking. It throws money at the wall, see what sticks, and then continues on to throw money at another wall to see what sticks, so we have a Canada Infrastructure Bank we cannot bank on and now we will have a Canada growth fund. This is the worst element of big government, and the worst part of it is that we are all paying for it and will continue to pay for it even if it does not bear fruit. That is what the current government seems to do. It is always about more; it is never about doing it right. As to new programs, I have heard a few members talk about this. I want to remind my friends in the NDP, who are going to be taking credit for a new dental program, that the only NDP premier in the Confederation is in my home province of British Columbia. John Horgan is the one who is actually leading the charge in asking the government to please not put money into new government programs since we need it for health care. I spoke to someone in Princeton the other day who has cancer. He is seriously ill and does not have a doctor. I spoke to a would-be medical student too, and for the second year in a row, despite having all the grades, UBC Okanagan does not have a spot for him. In our health care system, the backlog from COVID is large, yet the government is pushing into new areas. A dentist called me the other day and said that as long as they have been a dentist, they remember the healthy kids program and B.C. one. The healthy kids program is for young people so they can access dental services. B.C. one is for low-income adults. These programs are being provided, and government members are saying this is going to be done this year. I have never seen a new program established that quickly, so it will be interesting to see. Moving on to a key aspect from a financial perspective, there is no greater challenge to this country right now than inflation. Inflation is hitting Canadians hard and it is affecting our economy. Stephen Gordon, an economics professor at Université Laval, said, “We're at full employment, inflation has burst out of our comfort zone and the Bank of Canada is embarking on an agressive tightening cycle. This not the time for expansionary fiscal policy.” Stephen Tapp, chief economist from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said, “Here's the thing: Even after raising its nominal policy rate by 75 bps in last two announcements up to 1%, and ending further GoC asset purchases (starting ‘Quantitative Tightening’ next week), BoC policy remains highly stimuluative. The ‘real’ rate has never been this low! Not only is the nominal rate well below the elevated rate of current inflation, so the real rate is negative. The nominal policy rate (1%) is still below the Bank's estimate of neutral (2-3%). Until its rate rises above 2-3%, the Bank is pouring gas on the inflation fire.” Stephen Tapp is saying that the current policy today is pouring fuel on inflation, and the government is adding more spending. It is completely unheard of. At least the Governor of the Bank of Canada came to committee today with some humility. He said mistakes were made and they are trying to reverse them. They are trying to raise interest rates, obviously being mindful of the fact that we have so much debt in this country. The government is full charge ahead. It is the spend-DP, as I call it. Again, the ship of state right now is pointed at a spend-DP iceberg. Let us all agree that inflation, especially if it becomes unanchored and persistent, is what makes an economy less efficient at best or hollows it out at worst. We need to make sure that government is constraining its spending so that we do not make inflation worse. Last, on housing, a member stood up previously and said that we have a first-time homebuyers' tax credit and that it was doubled from $750 to $1,500. This is a tacit admission by the government. House prices have doubled under the Liberals' watch, and this is the very least they can do. We talked about the first-time homebuyers' savings account. Most people do not have $40,000. We have millennials who get bounced by the Liberals' stress test every day. In summation, the government has thrown a lot into this budget. It is inflationary. It does not do what it needs to. It is the very worst of big government. I hope that the government will start to tighten up and do things it needs to, like getting flood supports to areas that are affected in my riding and in other areas of British Columbia. That would be helpful. However, with the way the government works, it is just pointing the ship of state, as I said, toward that spend-DP-Liberal iceberg.

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Context: House Hansard - 57 - Apr/25/22

Mr. Dan Albas

Apr/25/22 5:55:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member from Winnipeg for giving me this stimulative lesson. I will say again that Stephen Gordon, professor of economics at Laval University, said, “We're at full employment, inflation has burst out of our comfort zone and the Bank of Canada is embarking on an aggressive tightening cycle. This is not the time for expansionary fiscal policy.” I am glad to open my eyes to read this to the member. I really hope that he opens up his ears to hear mine.

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Context: House Hansard - 57 - Apr/25/22

Mr. Dan Albas

Apr/25/22 5:56:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the member's intervention. He is very thoughtful and I do appreciate his work at the finance committee. Let us start with supply. Supply needs to happen, rather than giving CMHC $4 billion over the next five years for a program that says it is going to be flexible with municipalities but does not actually say what the money is supposed to do. One of the key aspects we need to do is to have that ready supply. I read in a book recently about the issue that if we do not have housing, then, with the constraints around that, the wealthiest take the best spots and then all the way down it is cruel musical chairs, except with housing. We need to focus on the supply issue, and I believe that the Government of Canada and the provinces need to start pounding the table with municipalities and saying we have a societal goal here, and that is to get young people where they have that first chance. We need to deal with this. We already have rents that are going out of control. If there were no government controls at the provincial level, we would be having people who would not be able to afford where they are. That is a terrible state for a modern economy. We need to fix this. We are the second-largest land mass in the world. We have always been open to immigration, and yet we have allowed ourselves to be stuck into this problem.

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Context: House Hansard - 57 - Apr/25/22

Mr. Dan Albas

Apr/25/22 5:59:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a challenge because the Liberals continually promise things that they either have no idea how to deliver or no intention of delivering. We have seen this with infrastructure. Again, they dangle out that they are going to fund certain things and then they do not do them. When they are promising to deal with transit or even military spending in this budget, here is the question. Three times they tried to procure Browning pistols, yet somehow they say that we are going to be putting more into military spending. They can say they are going to, but whether they actually do it is another thing, until they fix that broken system.

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