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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Apr/26/22 3:41:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, respectfully, the hon. member makes a fairly obvious error in his economic analysis. He is talking about the fact that the Bank of Canada controls monetary policy, but he misses the fact that fiscal policy can impact inflation as well. It is fairly well established. The first-year economics professor he spoke about at the beginning of his speech could, I am sure, confirm the fact that monetary levers and fiscal levers can both impact inflation. In fact, the expansionary fiscal policy being pursued by the government is having a significant impact on inflation. Of course, it is also important to acknowledge that the Bank of Canada, as a Crown corporation, acts within the general ambit of established policy on things like the inflation target, which is set by government. The member and other members of the government who try to absolve the government of responsibility for inflation by saying that it is just about the independent Bank of Canada are missing the obvious fact that the fiscal decisions of the government do impact inflation as well. Will the member acknowledge that fact and call his government to account for its fiscal decisions?

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Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia

Apr/26/22 3:43:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it can in certain circumstances, but I do not think the member would like to argue that the massive amount of spending that took place during the depths of the pandemic was crowding out private investment. It is quite the contrary. It was helping to maintain private investment and was shifting the debt burden from individual Canadians to the government. If one looks at the recent budget, it allocates only about $31.2 billion in new spending over the next five years. That is about $6 billion a year. That is less than what is being invested in the REM project in Montreal.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Apr/26/22 3:43:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think it is common knowledge that the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis is a champion of water and water policy in this place. I know this question might make him discomfited, but was he as disappointed as I was that the federal budget 2022 so badly ignores the previous commitments the government has made to deliver on the Canada water agency and to properly fund the neglected area of freshwater science, research and capacity in this country?

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Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia

Apr/26/22 3:44:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was happy to see an injection of about $25 million into the Experimental Lakes Area and an injection of about $8 million into creating the freshwater action plan. This is one budget, but there will be others to follow, and I can assure the member that I will continue to advocate for greater and greater investments in freshwater science and protection. There is money for the Canada water agency. The agency will take a while to develop, so it is good to take a step-by-step approach to funding it.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Apr/26/22 3:45:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the issues that I am quite disappointed about with respect to the budget is the lack of action by the government on its promise to deliver a “for indigenous, by indigenous” urban, rural and northern housing strategy. The budget only outlines $300 million, which is just a drop in the bucket, truth be told, to address the crisis with urban indigenous people in need of housing. Over 80% of urban indigenous people live off reserve, yet they are 11 times more likely to end up in a shelter. My question to the member is this. Will he take up the cause to advocate, on behalf of urban indigenous and northern indigenous people, for the government to make a substantive investment in a “for indigenous, by indigenous” housing strategy in this budget, and also with the fall economic statement coming up?

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Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia

Apr/26/22 3:46:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is an extremely important issue and priority, obviously. The government has taken housing very seriously from day one of its election in 2015. We are already on track, by 2027-2028, to deliver more than $72 billion in financial support through the national housing strategy, which is the very first national housing strategy in Canadian history. Of course, a priority on indigenous housing is an important part of that, and it should be. It is something we need to keep an eye on in the future.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Apr/26/22 3:47:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a brief follow-up to my earlier exchange with the member. I think it is clear there are a variety of government policies at the fiscal level that are impacting inflation, and that impact is especially strong at this point as we are seeing the highest level of inflation in decades. This is at a point when we have very much come out of the depths of the pandemic. There is also a question of the target the federal government sets and how seriously it sets that target, because the Bank of Canada operates within the target that has been set by the federal government. It is ultimately the government that establishes the policy framework that governs the way the Bank of Canada, which is an independent but Crown corporation, operates. To re-emphasize my previous question, does the member acknowledge that the policy choices of the current government are driving inflation and making things more expensive, and that it could be making different policy choices that would address this problem of inflation and the rising prices of goods that people are seeing?

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Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia

Apr/26/22 3:48:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I recall, the framework for the Bank of Canada in terms of its inflation target has not really changed much over the past few years. It is still aiming for a 2% inflation rate, so I do not see that there has been a radical change at that level. It is very important to recognize that the Bank of Canada is independent. I am quite fearful that private member's bills such as the one introduced by the former leader of the Conservative Party somehow try to shift the blame to an independent institution, impugn it and attack its credibility in the eyes of Canadians. I think that would be a great threat to the economic policy in this country.

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Mr. John Aldag (Cloverdale—Langley City, Lib.)

Apr/26/22 3:49:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was interested in the reference my colleague made in a previous response to the national housing strategy. Housing affordability is a huge issue in the riding of Cloverdale—Langley City, and I have been really pleased to see in this budget the commitments to housing. I wonder if my hon. colleague could speak for a moment about the housing commitments that are being made and how they will positively impact ridings such as mine.

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Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia

Apr/26/22 3:49:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, housing is a very complex area. We have brought in some important measures to help with housing affordability. We have a new savings vehicle. It is a very creative combination of a TFSA and an RRSP that will benefit first-time homebuyers. There are other aspects of the housing situation that are under the control of municipal governments. I think the member has probably seen this in his area. I have seen it in mine. There is a big debate going on in my community about densification, and some amount of densification is going to be necessary if we are going to increase the housing supply in a geographic area that is already highly developed. Obviously, we cannot influence municipal bylaws and permitting, but through the housing accelerator fund we can exert a certain amount of influence, and hopefully that will be helpful.

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Mr. Gerald Soroka (Yellowhead, CPC)

Apr/26/22 3:50:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know the Liberals talked several times about this new RRSP. They talk about this program to help people who are first-time homebuyers, yet the majority of Canadians, over 50% of them, are less than $200 away every month. How does this plan actually help, when Canadians have no money to invest up to $40,000, to make sure it is a secure situation? How is this really benefiting first-time homebuyers?

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Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia

Apr/26/22 3:51:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, by that logic we could ask how the RRSP benefits anyone or how the TFSA benefits anyone. I just said in my speech, if the member was listening, that households have higher savings than before, so if those savings can be channelled into a creative instrument such as the first-time homebuyers' savings account, I think that would help. It will not be the solution to everything, but it is part of a bigger puzzle.

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Ms. Raquel Dancho (Kildonan—St. Paul, CPC)

Apr/26/22 3:52:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Beauce. The Canadian dream is dying, and the Liberals are digging its grave. They put us on an economic suicide mission, and the world that millennials are inheriting will be far different, after six years of the Liberals' rule in this country, from that of the baby boomers who preceded us and that of our parents. I am very concerned about it, and very much looking forward to discussing the budget that they brought forward and the lack of vision and a positive plan to create a future that millennials can really believe in. Let us take housing, for example. Housing has effectively doubled in price since the Liberal government took power six years ago. It is over $868,000 to buy a house today. My generation is the most educated generation in history: We have dual-income households, with both people working full-time, yet half of us will never be able to afford our own homes. That is what the data is telling us. In our parents' generation, let us take the 1970s, the average income was about $25,000. A person could not have a formal, post-secondary education and earn $25,000 a year, and the average house price was about $50,000. A person could reasonably buy that house and pay it off within 10 years. Now, for my generation, the most educated in history with dual-income households, half of us will never own a home. Something is seriously wrong with this picture. People depend on houses for their retirement, so what is half of my generation going to do about their retirement plan? We have not heard a coherent plan from this government, but since they took office and with their new promises in their budget, the Liberals are spending about $74 billion on housing. One could argue that perhaps their plan is making housing more expensive, from the looks of it. We know that the Parliamentary Budget Officer himself has said that the Liberal plan for housing will only have a limited impact, so there is not a lot to look forward to for millennials. We hear every day that interest rates are going up. What does that really mean for the average homeowner? If a person recently bought a house at the average home price of $800,000, and was lucky to get in with a lower interest rate of about 2%, and paid 5% down, they would probably be paying about $3,400 a month for their mortgage. Let us say that it goes up even 3%, which does not sound like a lot. Let us say that the mortgage goes up 3% when it is time to renew it in a couple of years. That would mean that they would be paying about $5,200 a month. That is $22,000 more, for the year, that a family with the average home price would pay in interest. At $22,000 a year for a mortgage, it is catastrophic. That is families walking into the bank with their home keys, dropping them on the desk and saying “Sorry, take them. We cannot afford it any more. We are going to lose our equity. We cannot afford this.” It is very concerning to hear of these interest rate increases and the impact they will have on home ownership in this country. We know that the cost of living is going up as well. Of course, it is driven in large part by inflation. It hit 6.7% for the cost of goods in March, which is a 30-year high. Inflation has not been this bad since before I was born, to put it into context. That is what we receive as millennials and as Canadians, now after six years of Liberal rule. If we look at food and gas, a recent survey showed that a third of Manitobans said they do not make enough to cover their bills. That is one in three, and half of Manitobans are only $200 away from not being able to afford their bills. They are going to go bankrupt. They are $200 away from the doors closing and being unable to pay their bills. It is pretty astounding that half of Manitobans are only $200 away from that. Every time my colleagues work hard to bring up legitimate grievances on behalf of their constituents who are struggling to afford food, or struggling to afford gas that was about a dollar a litre when the Liberals came in and now is almost two dollars, we get a bit of an eye-roll and hear: “Oh, we're here for the people. We take care of them. We have Canada's back.” I do not think so. It does not seem that way when people cannot afford groceries. If we go to the grocery store to pick up four modest bags of groceries, we are looking at a $300 bill. Imagine families of four or five. How are they affording this? Interest rates are going up on car loans, credit loans, credit cards and mortgages. All of it is increasing. More money is going to just interest payments. Prices are going up, but what is the Liberals' plan to grow the economy and to bring prosperity to the millennial generation and to all Canadians? I am really not clear after reading the budget, and that has been a common criticism across the political spectrum. What is the vision? We know growth and investment have been way down since they took office. They have created an environment in Canada such that people look at Canada and say they are not investing there because the regulatory burden is too high. I was listening to a podcast of Paul Wells, formerly of Maclean's, who was saying that in the Liberal budget itself growth over the next several years is projected to be lower than in the rest of the G7. Total spending on research and development has been declining in Canada, which is the only G7 country where that has been happening. That is what Mr. Wells brought my attention to in this podcast. That is the Liberals' record of seven years of governance. The Financial Post said, “Manufacturing capital stock is the lowest it has been in 35 years.” The Fraser Institute said that “business investment dropped in seven of 15 sectors”, critical sectors. Economic engines of our country have dropped since the Liberals have been in government. Jack Mintz from the Financial Post put it quite well: “Ottawa needs to recognize that Canada's economic potential depends on private investment, not government spending”. If only they would recognize that. If we look at the country's main economic engine, what brings in the most revenue, more than any other industry, it is oil and gas. We have heard a lot about this. There were the “no more pipelines” bill and the tanker ban. Liberals repeatedly brought in major regulatory burdens so that Canada cannot develop its natural resources and get them to market. It has been moving at a glacial pace, yet we know that oil and gas brought in $700 billion in cumulative fiscal revenue to federal, provincial and municipal governments. That is $700 billion made from oil and gas and given to government. That pays for health care. That pays for education. That pays for roads. That pays for our generous social safety net. We talk about green investment. I am all for moving forward and greening our economy. I think most people are, but how are we going to get there? It is very expensive and the technology is not there yet. We need research and development dollars, which I just mentioned are declining. We need something to make the money so that we can invest in these programs, invest in making our economy greener, and that is oil and gas. That is LNG. If we would export our LNG and offset the world's dependence on coal, we could massively lower emissions, but we need a government with the will to make that happen. We see countries like Norway leading the way, making their economy greener and also aggressively pursuing oil and gas development, working with their oil and gas for carbon capture technology. It is incredible what Norway is doing: green and oil and gas. For six years, we have heard the government talk about green jobs. I looked on Google for quite some time to try to figure out exactly what “green jobs” means. We also heard this from the Kathleen Wynne government in Ontario, green jobs. Of course, the energy prices for households doubled during her time in the Ontario Liberal provincial government, much like what is happening with the federal Liberal government now with energy prices and household costs. I cannot seem to find any evidence of these green jobs. Maybe someone can correct me and quote some data, because I have not been able to find these green jobs that the Liberals have been talking about for six or seven years. Where are they? I would like to know, and I would like to see the data that says they are going to be as lucrative for Canada today as oil and gas has been for our social services and for our infrastructure. There is no evidence of this. Not to say it cannot happen, but they are not doing a great job. What does this create? I think people forget, but Canada is a very difficult country to govern. We are the second-largest land mass in the world. We have two official languages. We have over 300 first nation communities. We have the east coast, the west coast, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec and the north. It is a difficult country to govern, historically and today, but especially when the Prime Minister and his father have been in power we have seen western alienation. We have seen Quebec separatism. This is what we are seeing, and the Liberals know it. They know that if they can focus the votes in the Toronto area, they do not have to pay attention to the rest of the country. We can see it in their policies. They do not consider what the west needs. Gerald Butts, former number one right-hand person to our Prime Minister, said, “What you see here is a long term optimization trend”. He also said, “Campaigns are a ruthless optimization exercise: where will your incremental investment drive the maximum return in real time”. He said, “We count seats, not votes, so smart campaigns focus on delivering them.” They are winning elections on division. I will end with this: If governments can't demonstrate that their efforts work for regular people, then people will start to look around for other, extreme alternatives. Who said that? It was the Prime Minister, at a Liberal convention in 2014. Maybe he should listen to his own words.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/26/22 4:02:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as a prairie member of Parliament, I would suggest that the member is off base on a number of accounts. When the world price of oil was going down, we were criticized because we were not allowing it to sustain itself. The Conservatives wanted it to be higher. Today, the Conservatives are criticizing us because the price of world oil is too high. When it is too low, it is the government's fault. When it is too high, it is the government's fault. The member asked about the need for oil production. Stephen Harper brought not a drop of oil to the coastlines. At least we have put a pipeline in that is going to the coastline. Can the member take a look at the real numbers, the jobs and job growth? If we take a look at the economic activity, Canada does exceptionally well, especially if we compare it to our neighbours in the south, the United States. My question to the member—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/26/22 4:03:16 p.m.
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Unfortunately, the hon. member has gone on, and I do have to allow for other questions. The hon. member for Kildonan—St. Paul.

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Ms. Raquel Dancho

Apr/26/22 4:03:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would say that any Liberal who suggests that they support the oil and gas industry is living in a fantasy. All they need to do is look at the electoral map. They have no seats in the areas of the country that generate some of the most economic wealth because they are consistently ignored and consistently abused by the Liberal government and its policies. Any words from a Liberal member of Parliament that indicate they support our energy sector are a farce.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel, BQ)

Apr/26/22 4:03:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to remind my hon. colleague that we continue to be separatists, no matter who is in power here in Ottawa, including the Conservatives. I note that she spoke at length about housing. I also note that the Conservatives' housing suggestions are different from ours and the government's. This leads me to believe that the government should perhaps stop imposing conditions, like the new set of conditions in the budget, and simply transfer the money to the provinces. The provinces are the ones that know their ecosystems and their housing markets. They are the ones that develop plans, and they should be allowed to implement the measures that they want. Would that not be the best way forward?

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Ms. Raquel Dancho

Apr/26/22 4:04:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the answer to the housing crisis is that we simply need to build more houses more quickly. We need to ensure that federal dollars are incentivizing municipalities to build homes more quickly. I think we need to be moving forward in our economy. If our economy is going to keep growing, and if our population is going to keep growing, we need to ensure that our housing continues to grow as well. To the Liberal member, I know in his riding I am sure he is having the same problem as I am. He is a similar age to me. Half of our generation cannot afford homes. The government is spending $74 billion on housing, yet housing prices have doubled since they have been in government. Something is going seriously wrong here. It is unacceptable.

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Ms. Lisa Marie Barron (Nanaimo—Ladysmith, NDP)

Apr/26/22 4:05:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree that there are many challenges being experienced by many Canadians who are trying to make ends meet. Those particularly hard hit are those living with disabilities. They are being left behind. Many in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith are concerned. They are living with disabilities and trying to make ends meet, and the pandemic has made things even worse. Unfortunately, missing from the budget is the Liberals' long-promised Canada disability benefit. Another issue is the barriers for those living with disabilities and accessing the disability tax credits. Does the member agree in the importance of this budget to not leave those living with disabilities behind and to finally implement the long-needed Canada disability benefit?

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Ms. Raquel Dancho

Apr/26/22 4:06:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I certainly would appreciate a government that takes the needs of the disability community very seriously. There are many seniors in my riding who suffer from disabilities as well. What I would say is that whenever we talk about inflation or gas prices, heating prices and grocery prices going up, we have to see that it impacts those who are on a fixed income the most, such as those living with disabilities or seniors who are living on modest pension incomes. If one only has a fixed amount of money per month to pay for rent, transportation, groceries and any increase in inflation, those folks are hurt the most. That is why we are railing on the government every day to do something about the cost of living because those who are in the lowest economic threshold are suffering the most. It is a very serious issue. That is why we continue to raise it every day in question period.

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