SoVote

Mr. Kelly McCauley (Edmonton West, CPC)

Apr/26/22 11:37:54 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to join the debate on budget 2022. I think it is the fifth budget I have been able to debate since arriving at this place. This seems to be another case with the Liberal government of “if at first you don't succeed, try and try again”, duplicating past budgets with lots of spending and lots of added debt, but with a poor outcome. I think in the case of the government, though, the saying should be “in case you don't succeed, spend and spend again”. I want to touch on three major items in today's budget. The first is housing. It is no surprise that I want to talk about housing, and it is covered a tiny bit in the budget. We know there is a housing crisis of prices in Canada right now, an affordability crisis, and I want to read a couple of quotes from the housing minister. In February, just a couple of months ago, he said, “We have ensured that we have housed 1.1 million Canadians since the beginning of this government.... We have built over 480,000 units of housing through the...the national housing strategy.” Two months later, just last month, he said they spent $72 billion and have housed two million people. In two months, he claimed in the House, we have gone from 1.1 million Canadians housed to two million. That is 900,000 additional Canadians housed in just two months. Unfortunately, it is not true. Here are the facts, and this is from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. This is not me making up this information, nor pundits. This is actually from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Across the country we know the average house price has doubled since 2015. The Parliamentary Budget Officer stated that funding for housing programs intended to help low-income households has, under the government, actually decreased 15% in purchasing power. The government will stand and tell us to look how much money it has spent. It has spent all these billions, but we know that there is an inflation problem. We also know there is a housing affordability problem, with prices going up. The Parliamentary Budget Officer himself has said that the money put in by the government, based in real dollars, is down 15%. He further stated that since 2015, there has been a 42% reduction under CMHC's low-income housing units for houses that have been supported. Again, just in April, the housing minister said two million Canadians have been housed, up 900,000, miraculously, from two months earlier. However, here we have the Parliamentary Budget Officer noting a 42% decrease. The PBO further states that CMHC's shift to capital contributions over affordability assistance, like rent assistance, means that little short-term relief is actually delivered to Canadians. Further, he says that while these capital contributions are spread out over time, even when looking at the long term, the actual result in lowering rents for Canadians is very little and maybe not worth the investment. The PBO also states that there are as many Canadians living in vulnerable housing now as there were in 2015, after $30 billion to $72 billion. It is hard to say how much because the housing minister changes the numbers each time he stands to speak. It is $30 billion in one moment and then $72 billion. Say it is on the low side, at $30 billion in spending. What do we have for it? We have as many Canadians in vulnerable housing as we did in 2015. Homelessness in Edmonton has actually doubled in the last couple of years under the government. I want to get to the second part: growth and the economy. What has $1.4 trillion in debt, hundreds and hundreds of billions in added debt, by the government gotten us? The finance minister stands in this House, just as she did yesterday, and states that we have the highest GDP growth according to the IMF. Well, according to the IMF, with numbers that come directly from the IMF website, in 2021, the year the minister claimed we were number one, we were actually fifth in the G7 for growth. We are second in 2022. In 2023, the IMF predicts we are going to below the advanced economy average for growth. Think about that. In 2021, we were fifth in the G7. That is after a 67% increase in the price of oil. Here we have our economy surging because of the price of oil and we are still fifth. In 2022, we are seeing another 12% increase in the price of oil, yet we are still not at the top in the G7. There is an OECD report out called “The Long Game”. It says that Canada is going to have the worst-performing advanced economy from 2030 to 2060. When I was reading through this report and saw we are going to be the worst from 2030 to 2060, I thought maybe we will be okay from 2022 to 2030. Then I read the next page and it said that oh, by the way, from 2020 to 2030 Canada is going to have the worst-performing economy in the OECD as well. This is the OECD; this is not me. These are real numbers from the OECD. In that same report, the OECD talks about productivity. Canada is going to have one of the worst productivity improvements in the OECD. Part of the name of the budget is “A Plan to Grow Our Economy”. This gets back to my comment about the government: “If at first you don't succeed, try and try again”. The Liberals have been trying for years and years and spending more and more, and what do we get? We get what the OECD says is going to be the worst-performing economy in the OECD. Turkey, Greece and second world countries are all going to have higher economic growth than Canada. I will go on to the environment. Here is a quote from our environment minister from January 31: “I would like to remind him that over the past few years, our government has implemented more than 100 measures and invested $100 billion in the fight against climate change.” What are these 100 measures brought in by the government and this $100 billion, as the environment minister claims? According to Stats Canada and the Library of Parliament, GHG emissions have actually risen every year under the government. Therefore, $100 billion of taxpayer money is spent and there are 100 new regulations and programs, but we get higher GHG emissions. I wonder where we would be if the government had done nothing. I think we would be a lot better off. I want to get back to another claim by the finance minister. Besides saying we have the fastest-growing economy in the G7, she talks about our GDP growth being the highest in the G7. What she leaves out is that this is not what we call real GDP growth, which is the real growth when we take inflation out of the GDP. When we take out our out-of-control inflation, we actually drop quite a bit in the G7. We are not the top, as the Liberals claim. Adjusted for inflation, OECD numbers say we are the fifth in the G7 for economic growth. We heard today claims about the debt-to-GDP ratio. We notice the Liberals always say “net debt-to-GDP” or they just say “debt-to-GDP”. They do not talk about the gross debt-to-GDP. Do members know why that is? When we take the real debt or the gross debt, we are not the best in the G7, we are not the second and we are not the third. We are actually the fourth. When we look at the developed nations of the OECD, we are the ninth worst out of 38 for debt-to-GDP. What is the difference between what the Liberals are claiming and the truth and reality? In net debt, they include the half a trillion dollars in assets of the CPP and the Quebec pension plan. They do not count the liabilities and all the money put aside by our parents, ourselves and our grandparents. They do not include that liability, but they include the money they have set aside. The government is therefore not counting every penny set aside for someone tomorrow, next year or in 10 years when it makes the claim of how great our financial situation is. Other OECD nations do not record the net amount like we do, so it is a false statement. It is unfortunate that the government continues to mislead Canadians on how bad things are with our debt, which actually has to be eventually repaid one day, one would hope. Obviously, we are in a problem here in our nation. We have an aging population, no growth coming and an out-of-control deficit. Canada needs better, and that is why I will not be supporting budget 2022.

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Context: House Hansard - 58 - Apr/26/22

Mr. Kelly McCauley

Apr/26/22 11:48:55 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague fails to mention something, and this is what the Liberals do. They will make a statement, knowingly twisting reality. They say we have the lowest unemployment we have had, but our unemployment is about 60% higher than in the United States. The U.S. has all these demographic and racial issues; it has all these problems, yet our unemployment here, despite massive spending, is 60% higher. Our unemployment is higher than England's. Our unemployment is higher than Japan's. Sure, it is better than it was perhaps a year ago or two years ago, but when we compare it to our peer countries, our unemployment is very, very high. The member opposite should be more forthright when he talks about such numbers.

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Context: House Hansard - 58 - Apr/26/22

Mr. Kelly McCauley

Apr/26/22 11:50:39 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague, and it has been disinformation from the government. We heard the housing minister in February talk about 1.2 million Canadians housed by his government. Two months later, it is two million Canadians. One moment it is $32 billion spent, and the next moment it is $70 billion. The reality is that we have a housing shortage. We built fewer houses in the last six years, since the government came to power, than any of our peer nations in the G7. What the government is doing is not working. It has to change track. It should listen to us, to colleagues with the Bloc and to colleagues with the NDP. What the government is doing is not working and it needs to change track to help Canadians, not just its political fortunes.

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Context: House Hansard - 58 - Apr/26/22

Mr. Kelly McCauley

Apr/26/22 11:52:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I respect the question and where my colleague is going. The reality is that Canada has a shortage, and that is not going to be fixed with taxes. It is not going to be fixed with the home equity tax the Liberals seem to keep funding studies of, but by addressing the supply issue. We need to get government out of the way. We need more supply built. We see it in our G7 peer countries that have proper supply. They do not have the housing crisis, the affordability crisis, we have now. The best thing we can do is get government out of the way and build more houses.

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