44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2022 02:00PM
- Jun/8/22 2:28:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Liberals are completely out of touch and denying reality. That is why single parents, young homebuyers and seniors do not believe that they have a plan. Literally every single day, people are seeing the prices of everything go up. On fiscal policy overall, no one will trust the Prime Minister, who is in a very happy political marriage with the NDP. We should just ask the Parliamentary Budget Officer, or maybe former finance minister Bill Morneau, what they think of the government's fiscal policy.
All we see from the tax-and-spend Liberals is more taxing and more spending, and no plan to fight inflation. Is that not the truth?
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here with you and all of my colleagues this evening to debate Bill C-19.
I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Kitchener Centre this evening.
It is a pleasure to be here this evening to reflect and offer a few thoughts on a piece of legislation that is important not only for those in the chamber but also for all Canadians, coast to coast to coast. It is important in the fact that I, like many of my colleagues here, have children at home, or grandchildren for that matter, and everything we do, as legislators and as members of Parliament, should be through the lens of ensuring that we leave a strong economy and a clean and healthy environment for our children and grandchildren.
I do have some thoughts on where we are in Canada and in the world, and where we are with the economy today. Bill C-19 would continue to put us on a path for strong economic growth, good jobs and employment prospects for Canadians. We would also ensure we are leaving behind a very healthy and clean environment, including reaching our net-zero goals by 2050 and the interim targets which were defined and which we became accountable for through Bill C-12.
As we look at the Canadian economy, with an unemployment rate of 5.2%, we, as a country, through the hard work of Canadians from coast to coast to coast, have recovered 116% of the jobs to where to were pre-COVID. We are on the right path. Our AAA, the big A's and the small a's, for our credit ratings have both been affirmed by all three major agencies: DBRS Morningstar, S&P and Moody's. Our fiscal framework and the finances of this country are strong and continue to be guided by the Minister of Finance, who is doing an incredible job.
We know that in the world today, Canadian families are facing an affordability issue. We have inflation, and we know what has caused the inflation. We do know that COVID-19 has disrupted and continues to disrupt supply chains. Some of them have been fixed, and some of them will take longer. We know the barbaric, unprovoked invasion by the Russian Federation and President Putin into Ukraine has disrupted commodity markets, food markets and, obviously, energy security and affordability. We acknowledge that.
I see it when I go to the grocery store. My wife sees it when she goes to the grocery store to shop for our three children. It is a conversation at home. We all know it. We must be steadfast and resolute as a government to maintain the backs of Canadians as we move forward through this environment, and as we move forward ensuring that Canadians have the resources they need for them and their families.
We can look at our measures for affordability over the years. We have Bill C-19 and the BIA, as well as bills on past budget measures that we have implemented. We can think about the Canada child benefit being indexed, which benefits more than 9 out of 10 Canadian families. It is literally thousands of dollars, tax free, arriving monthly to Canadian families. We can think about the Canada workers benefit, something I have championed day after day, literally helping millions of Canadians and lower-income workers. We can think about early learning and child care plan we have put in place with all provinces and territories. It is something we said we would do. It is a promise made and a promise kept.
My family is going to be putting our almost eight-month-old daughter into day care in the fall. It is something we will see a benefit from. I know that in the province of Ontario, by the end of this year,December 31, we will see a 50% reduction in child care fees. For the area I represent, the York region, just on top of Toronto, this would represent a 50% reduction in child care fees. It would represent literally thousands of after-tax dollars to families in York region and in the city of Vaughan. That is something I applaud.
I am proud to be part of a government that signed on and collaborated with provinces and governments of all political stripes in the provinces. Unlike the Conservative Party of Canada, which wishes to tear up the early learning and child care agreements, we will maintain those agreements. We will continue to work with those provinces and territories across Canada to maintain these agreements because it is the right thing to do. We will not buy into the gimmicks offered by the Conservative Party of Canada when it comes to affordability.
Our seniors will receive a 10% increase in their old age security in July. That is roughly $800 a year, which will continue to be indexed, for roughly 3.5 million seniors. Again, that is a promise made and a promise kept by this government. I look forward to seeing our senior groups over the summer at the bocce courts, picnics and gatherings.
In the city of Vaughan, we have such a vibrant senior population. I love my seniors. They built this country, and they built the community. Many of them immigrated here with very little education and very little money. They came through Pier 21. They never complained. They worked hard. They saved, and they created a better future for themselves and their families. I just love and applaud them. They have my utmost respect as an individual and as a parliamentarian.
We have committed to dental care, and that is something that I have a very granular story on. A senior came into my office and said she needed help with her dental care. She had an infection. We sent her to York Region where there is a program to assist low-income seniors. Something like that for a senior who is on a very minimal income can really bankrupt them. It could really set a person back.
We cannot have that in our country. We cannot have that in modern-day Canada. That is why we have committed to ensuring that Canadians from coast to coast to coast, such as young children, seniors and all Canadians, will have some sort of coverage or insurance through a $5.3-billion dental care plan that will ensure vulnerable Canadians do not have an issue with getting dental care. The BIA and Bill C-19 really invest in growth, in people and in the green transition.
Of course, I would be remiss if I did not talk about the tradespeople who build this country from coast to coast to coast. My father was a tradesman. He was a carpenter, a labourer, a sheet-metal worker and a roofer. I remember working on weekends with him, when we would do odd jobs for our neighbours and friends, and that was something that taught me the values of hard work, sacrifice and putting aside that dollar, and I see that in our budget.
We came through on a promise made and kept on a labour and mobility tax deduction for tradespeople. Obviously, they have to fit the criteria. This would be $4,000, and it would be a deduction and not a credit. A deduction is very powerful. It would allow tradespeople to move from one jurisdiction to another jurisdiction and cover those expenses, which is something I know the Canadian Building Trades Union, LiUNA and the carpenters have advocated for.
I mention those two organizations because both of their training facilities are located in the city of Vaughan in my riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge. I meet with those members, and those are the folks who every day, rain, shine or sleet, warm or cold, get up to build our communities and build our critical infrastructure. They are great people.
We need more of those apprenticeships, and when we talk about apprenticeships, our government rolled out a program called the UTIP, the union training and innovation program.
We have committed another $80 million, which is within Bill C-19, to ensure we train literally thousands and thousands more apprentices. I went on a visit to a carpenters union, and I was looking at CCAT. They had their apprentices there, and they were high school students. They were being funded through this UTIP program. It was so great to see these young folks so excited about their futures and so excited about what they are going to do in this country, building the homes and the infrastructure for tomorrow.
The same thing takes place, whether it is at the LiUNA 506 training facility in York Region or LiUNA 183's training facility, with the operating engineers, the painters, and the HVAC and the electrical workers. The same thing takes place, and we are partnering with all of these organizations.
Members will remember that the Conservative Party from prior years attacked private sector unions with Bill C-525 and Bill C-377. The first thing we did in 2015 and 2016 was repeal those bills. We will always stand beside working Canadians, and we will always stand beside those tradespeople who go to work every day to maintain and build and repair our critical infrastructure.
When it comes to homes, I have spoken before about them in the House. I am blessed to live in a very entrepreneurial area. I have to hand it to the entrepreneurs in my area. The Mayor of Vaughan, the hon. Maurizio Bevilacqua, was a member of Parliament for many years. He committed to raising $250 million for our hospital, so this city of 330,000 people has the spirit of generosity.
We, the city of Vaughan and the entrepreneurs, hit the target of $250 million last week. I applaud them. They are entrepreneurs who have taken risks, invested, made money and contributed to their hospital. With that—
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Madam Speaker, today we debating Bill C-19, the budget implementation act, and I will be coming at this debate from the perspective of somebody who is a member of a young family, a father of a young child and an Albertan.
For the past seven budgets, we have seen a Liberal government that has always blown through its self-imposed fiscal guardrails. It has always spent far more than what its members originally told Canadians they were going to spend. I remember the Prime Minister's 2015 election talk about small $10-billion deficits, but we all know where that ended up. This government has racked up more debt than all the prime ministers in our country's history combined.
One would think that as we are getting out of the pandemic, the government would be wanting to look for ways to pull the throttle back on its stimulus spending. Some of the stimulus spending was definitely necessary during the pandemic, but as we are seeing high inflation, it is quite clear that there is not a need for further stimulus in our economy and that this government should be looking for ways to pare back some of the spending. As a father, I do not want to see my children and my grandchildren burdened with the debts of today in future generations. This would hinder their ability to chart their own futures.
I am not against government spending, but I always ask if we are getting a high return on investment for Canadians. That is why I have been really watching this Liberal government's much-flaunted, by themselves, early learning child care plan with a great deal of interest. The minister never fails to take an opportunity in the House to tell us about how successful this new program is, but the facts that we are beginning to see on the ground are telling a very different story.
I have reports from numerous day care centres across this country, not just from one province, that are saying that they cannot apply for this one-size-fits-all government program and that the amount of red tape is insurmountable. I have seen statements from day care operators that they will be required to submit expenses for food and craft supplies to a government agent for approval. Some are even being told that they need to cut their expenditures on nutritious food and educational programming in order to meet the government's stringent funding requirements.
Another huge issue is that this government's day care scheme seems to ignore the fundamental basics of economics: supply and demand. We know that when there is an increased demand, which the government is creating by promising affordable $10-a-day child care, there will be an increase in the cost of supply, and those supplies can take the form of, most significantly, the wages of child care workers, the cost to build new facilities and to rent out new facilities, and the cost to provide the programming. We know that as the demand increases, the cost of these supplies is going to increase.
I had a child care centre say to me that the government's proposed program will only subsidize the wages of child care workers up to $18 an hour. The average child care worker in this country is paid over $23 an hour, and in this tight labour economy, people are lucky to even get a child care worker at $23 an hour.
Also, the government is not being flexible with child care centres. It is saying that if they apply for the subsidy, they need to achieve $10-a-day child care on its timeline. If they cannot find a way to cut their spending in other areas, whether it is the cost of the building or the cost of the labour, then they will not be able to get the subsidy for this program. As a result, we are seeing that a lot of day cares are just throwing up their hands and are really sad to tell the families that as much as they would like to apply for the subsidy, the government is simply making it too difficult for them to do it. That is fundamentally because the government is ignoring the laws of supply and demand.
This is going to result in is a two-tiered day care system in this country. We will have a few $10-a-day day care spaces, and if a family is lucky enough to get on a list and get their child in there, it will be wonderful for them. However, many other families are going to be paying upwards of $1,600 to $2,000 a month for child care, and that is not fair. It is not right.
In fact, a Globe and Mail story on December 27 of last year said that a minority of parents are going to reap the benefits from this Liberal child care plan. It said that currently over seven in 10 children under the age of six do not have access to licensed child care and that in the best-case scenario, in five years from now, the government is anticipating that only six in 10 children will have access to care. We are seeing in this country that in the best-case scenario, 40% of children will not be able to access the government's program.
This is not a universal system. This is a two-tiered system.
Conservatives, I believe, had a far better plan. We had a universal plan, because we wanted a refundable tax credit, meaning that regardless of whether someone had taxable income, that person would receive a direct financial benefit for their child care expenses.
I also believe that as Conservatives we should add onto that, because I have talked to a lot of day care operators who want to operate in rural areas, and it is very difficult to find appropriate spaces. We have seen, at the provincial level in some provinces, that funding to help day care entrepreneurs find appropriate child care centres—for example, in an empty classroom in a school—can be very valuable, because we know that we need to create spaces in rural areas, where often people do not have access to child care. The fact is that the government is really missing the mark.
The other aspect is that we hear the government saying that the Conservatives used to send child care cheques to millionaires under the universal child care program. The fact is that under this so-called $10-a-day child care program, it does not matter what someone's income level is. If a millionaire parent can get their child on the list for a $10-a-day day care spot, the government is essentially subsidizing the children of millionaires by thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, a shift worker working for minimum wage, a single parent who cannot get access to this $10-a-day day care because of a huge waiting list, could be stuck paying $1,500 a month for child care. That is a two-tiered child care system that does not reflect the needs of Canadian families.
I also want to talk as an Albertan in moving on to another aspect, which is what is not in the budget implementation act.
In the budget, the government had a much-vaunted carbon capture tax credit. I have been a proponent of a carbon capture tax credit for a long time, because my riding is a critical area for carbon capture. We have the Northwest Redwater Sturgeon Refinery, which sequesters 1.2 megatonnes, 1.2 million tonnes, of carbon dioxide every year. There is a fertilizer plant next door that also contributes to the pipeline. This carbon is taken through a pipeline and is put into the ground for enhanced oil recovery.
There are numerous other enhanced oil recovery projects in Canada, but unfortunately the Liberal government was so blinded by its ideology that it chose to exclude enhanced oil recovery projects from its carbon capture tax credit.
I will say that a carbon capture project that purely captures carbon and puts it into the ground and does not have any enhanced oil recovery should get a better tax credit, because they are not making money by getting oil out of the ground, while a project should not get as good a tax credit if it is making money through enhanced oil recovery.
The government keeps talking about the climate emergency, saying that we need to take action now, and I agree; I love the environment. We need to get carbon out of the atmosphere as quickly as possible, and one of the ways that the government could have done that is that is by removing its ideological aversion to working with our energy industry, which is primarily located in the western provinces, and working with them to develop a carbon capture tax credit that would support enhanced oil recovery. I think companies would be spending billions of dollars today if they knew they could access this program. We would be sequestering many more megatonnes of CO2 today and we would be getting much further toward our carbon capture and our Paris climate change accord goals.
Finally, I want to talk about the first home savings account. It sounded like a great idea during an election when we are trying to buy votes from Canadians, but we know that working families cannot afford to put $40,000 in a savings account, so which families are going to benefit from this? It is going to be the families of the wealthiest 1% in the country. The parents are going to give their children the $40,000, which taxpayers will then subsidize, because when one puts the $40,000 in, one gets a break on taxes. This government policy is going to disproportionately benefit the wealthy and is not going to help young families get affordable housing.
With that, I cannot support Bill C-19.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with the member. We know that in the constitutional order of this country, it is not the federal government but the provincial governments that are primarily responsible for the delivery of health care, and I was very disappointed to see yet another broken Liberal promise from the last election. The Liberals promised a special Canada mental health transfer that would be immediately afforded to provinces this fiscal year. That was not put in the budget.
I have talked to so many constituents. We are facing a mental health tsunami in this country, and the federal government is not being proactive in putting the funding forward to the provinces to address our mental health needs.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place today to debate Bill C-19, an act to implement certain provisions of budget 2022.
I will say from the outset that I will be voting against this high-spending federal budget, which proposes to dig Canada deeper into debt and drive our deficits ever higher. It simply hurts and squeezes middle-class Canadians even more through the Liberals' inflationary policies, which have created a cost-of-living crisis for Canadians in this country and a competitiveness crisis for Canadian businesses.
The Liberals and NDP often rise in this chamber to claim that they have the backs of Canadians, but their actions, as demonstrated by this reckless budget, prove otherwise. They will argue that it helps Canadians, when in fact it does the exact opposite.
If people were hoping for a return to some form of fiscal responsibility in this most recent federal budget, I am sure they were as disappointed as I was when the Liberal government revealed its $452-billion spending plan on April 7. If there was any cut in this budget, it was in the size of the document itself, which went from 725 pages in last year's budget to 304 pages in budget 2022. Perhaps that is progress, but only for a Liberal, I would presume.
Let us think about this for a moment. Federal government spending is now 25% higher than it was prepandemic. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, each Canadian’s share of the national debt is now $31,700, and it is growing quickly.
It is clear throughout budget 2022 that the Prime Minister, his Minister of Finance and his NDP friends have failed to deliver on a plan that is fiscally responsible. Instead, they have added another $50 billion in uncontrolled borrowed spending. This will only fuel inflation and result in higher taxes, because one day these costs will have to be paid.
Despite all this new spending, there was very little support announced for our hardest-hit tourism sector. There is no mention of repayment extensions for CEBA or RRRF, and there was no extension to the tourism and hospitality recovery program, which ended already last month. These were key requests made to the government by the tourism industry to assist in its recovery, yet they were all rebuffed by a government committed to the talking point that it invested $1 billion in tourism. They fail to mention that this was in last year's budget, and it was still grossly insufficient given the economic toll the pandemic raged against this industry.
At a time when tourism recovery is still very much an aspiration for many and not yet a reality or certainty, the Liberal-NDP government, through this budget, has pulled the rug from under the feet of the tourism sector by not listening to its concerns and input on these important federal business support programs.
My riding of Niagara Falls, which includes the beautiful towns of Fort Erie and Niagara-on-the-Lake, is Canada's top leisure tourism destination. Before the pandemic, Canada’s national tourism industry generated $105 billion, which is 2% of our country’s GDP, and it employed one in 10 Canadians. Meanwhile, Niagara Falls alone contributed $2.4 billion in tourism receipts, and it employs nearly 40,000 workers in Niagara in our local tourism sector.
For tourism businesses in Niagara, the 2022 summer tourism season is its first real chance at recovery in two years. The sector, which will generate 75% of its income in the next four months, will be challenged to achieve recovery in 2022, specifically as a result of the government’s policies. By not listening to the concerns of the tourism sector, the government has essentially tied one hand behind the sector’s back by ending important relief programs, all while continuing to have in place restrictive travel mandates, which serve to depress visitors from travelling to Canada for business, to visit family or for vacation.
Instead of allowing tourism to do what it does best, which is to welcome visitors from throughout the world, the Liberal-NDP government has decided to double down on its efforts to hurt the Canadian tourism and travel sector. In fact, through budget 2022, the government is allocating an additional $25 million to support the disastrous ArriveCAN app at our international border crossings and ports of entry for travellers coming into Canada.
From a tourism perspective, which is so important to Niagara, it makes no sense that this is a funding priority of the government in this budget. Instead, the Conservatives are calling on the government to scrap this app. We did not need this app to travel or welcome tourists before the pandemic. Surely, we will not need it to travel or welcome tourists after the pandemic. As the world reopens from COVID, these questions and criticisms of ArriveCAN are important and necessary to highlight and press the government about.
It was astonishing to hear the recent testimony of the Parliamentary Budget Officer in the Senate yesterday. When asked if the finance minister's long-term deficit reduction plan was believable, he said it was not. To quote media reports from the Senate hearing, the Parliamentary Budget Officer stated, “I personally don’t believe it’s credible that there will be that level of spending restraint in the period from 2024 to 2027, given all the expenditures that remain to be implemented by the government over that period of time.” Well, I have a suggestion for the government. Perhaps it can save the $25 million it has allocated to the ArriveCAN app in this year’s budget, which will do nothing to help our tourism sector recover.
Another issue that is hampering the recovery of the Canadian tourism and travel sector is the massive backlogs at our local passport offices. Simply put, constituents of mine are experiencing nightmare conditions of service that are completely unacceptable. Obtaining a passport and renewing a passport are basic services that Canadians can rightly expect from their federal government as citizens and taxpayers, but the incompetence of the Liberal-NDP government has been laid bare by this example of mismanagement. This strong demand for Canadian passports and passport renewals as this pandemic ends was completely predictable, yet the government is clearly unprepared to deal with it, which again proves it does not have a plan to actually help Canadians or our travel and tourism sector, which my riding depends on.
Budget 2022 also raises far more questions than it provides answers for regarding businesses and workers in Canada’s wine industry, which is so important to Niagara and Niagara-on-the-Lake in my riding. First, this budget provides zero details about what the important trade legal excise exemption replacement program will look like. The expensive new excise tax will be hitting Canadian wineries on July 1, which is about three weeks away, just 22 days from now. Wineries across the country badly need to learn these program details so they can prepare and brace against the impact of this new tax.
Interestingly, while no program details have yet been revealed, the federal government does show it expects a revenue windfall, forecasted at $390 million over the next five years, after the excise exemption is repealed. How they arrived at this forecast is unexplained, and it does not indicate whether they expect the industry to grow, remain stable or contract as a result of this new expensive excise tax.
Then there is the question of the $34-million difference between the $101 million of federal support over two years promised in budget 2021 and the $135 million of departmental revenue forecasted for the first two years after the excise exemption is repealed. We know that the wine industry said the $101-million commitment in budget 2021 fell way short of what was needed to offset the costs of repealing the excise exemption in order to keep the industry whole as it is.
Will the federal government commit to returning to the wine industry the $34 million that it expects to generate in tax from the wine industry? Again, we do not know. The expensive new excise tax and all these unanswered questions risk future prosperity in Canada’s wine sector, which is so important to Niagara’s identity and economy.
Budget 2022 fails Canadians and fails Niagara. It proposes to grow the federal government even bigger, when the most basic of federal services, such as passport offices, are already failing and dysfunctional. More importantly, it fails to support our important tourism and wine sectors. For all these reasons and more, I will be opposing budget 2022.
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Madam Speaker, we are debating this evening, it is late, and I have the utmost respect for my other colleagues here in the House. I commend their dedication to democracy.
We are here to debate the 2022 budget implementation bill. I would like to begin by thanking the interpreters for their service, especially when I am giving a speech in broken French.
This is the second or third time I have spoken about the budget initiatives. As is typically the case when I rise in the House, I have chosen to focus my speech on certain topics. Tonight, those topics are Ukraine, affordability and the energy transition, new technologies and the importance of modernizing our regulatory system.
First, though, I want to say that I am a member of the House of Commons soccer team, which was started by my hon. colleague from Parkdale—High Park. This evening, we played a game against the British High Commission. Unfortunately, our team lost, but I think it is very important to put the match on the record. We lost by a score of three to one, with our only goal scored by the member for Lac-Saint-Jean. The Bloc Québécois members were very proud of their member, who got an assist from a Liberal, the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park. Future historians will understand what happened on the grounds of the Supreme Court during that game, a little break from the serious activities taking place here.
There have been many conversations here in the days and weeks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In this bill, I am very proud of the assistance our government is providing in the form of an estimated $1‑billion loan. This is an important loan, of course, but so is military equipment and humanitarian aid. I think that it is very important for this government and all parliamentarians to continue supporting Ukraine, because Ukraine is fighting for us right now and for international order based on respect for western values. I am very proud of this reality.
The Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri‑Food studied the issue of global food insecurity. I think it is very important for all parliamentarians and all Canadians to understand that Russian soldiers targeted infrastructure in Ukraine that is crucial for the agricultural system. The consequences of this destruction represent a threat for many people around the world, whether in Canada, in countries with weak systems such as Egypt, or various countries in Africa and Asia.
With respect to our diplomatic efforts around the world and our capabilities and expertise in the agriculture and agri-food sector, I had the idea that the Minister of Foreign Affairs could appoint a special envoy to work with our allies and coordinate efforts in this area.
With respect to affordability, we currently have a strong economy, our GDP growth is impressive and, with the current economic recovery, the hardships we faced during the pandemic are well behind us.
I believe that this budget strikes a good balance between the importance of bringing forward different projects and measures to meet the needs of Canadians and the importance of keeping the fiscal framework intact. The budget looks solid.
Of course, inflation is a problem. Yesterday, on opposition day, the Conservatives proposed various measures to address inflation. However, inflation has multiple causes and is a global problem.
First, there are supply chain issues. Second, there are major demographic changes across Canada and in other western countries. Baby boomers will soon retire. Some already retired during the pandemic. According to a Statistics Canada survey, there are approximately one million job vacancies. It is therefore important to facilitate immigration. Temporary foreign worker programs are also very important.
The war in Ukraine, rising food prices and disruptions in trade exchanges have also exacerbated inflation. There are also problems with liquidity. At the height of the pandemic, governments around the world responded in a reasonable way to help their citizens. Naturally, injecting liquidity also drove up inflation.
On some of the Conservative proposals we saw yesterday, it is important to raise the question of affordability but they were not very targeted. The Conservative Party certainly brands itself as being very fiscally mindful of the situation. What it proposed yesterday on the GST really was going to be rewarding individuals who do not need it. It would be rewarding individuals in this House who make, in some cases, four times the average Canadian salary. Why should we be eligible for that? Why should high-income Canadians be eligible? They are not the ones who need help right now.
The government needs to look at addressing affordability as we move forward. Of course, the budget was introduced a number of months ago. We need to address situations as they evolve, but we need to be mindful of balancing the fiscal framework and being targeted at Canadians who really need the help and not have these broad tax relief measures for Canadians who do not necessarily need them.
It is important we understand the Bank of Canada is responsible for helping control inflation. We will see increased interest rates in the days ahead. It is something we should all be mindful of, and frankly, be bracing for. There are some Canadians who hold a lot of private debt and that will be a challenge in the days ahead.
The government should focus on the supply side. Part of the challenge right now is the fact that there is not enough supply for certain demand, which is also driving some of these different prices higher.
I did not get much of a chance to talk about it, but let me just say how important the Atlantic Loop is. As a Nova Scotian MP, this is crucial for our energy future. It is great to see initiatives in the budget that will focus on grid transmission and upgrades. I am going to continue to talk about small modular reactors. We need to continue to drive that. I was pleased to see some initiative in the budget for it.
Hydrogen, biofuels and natural gas are all going to be important elements as transition fuels and in the longer term to 2050.
I am going to leave it at that. I cannot wait to hear from all of colleagues. I know they have been captivated by my remarks.
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Madam Speaker, it does appear that the parliamentary secretary was barking up the wrong tree here. The problem for the Prime Minister is that he appears to think that trees will plant themselves. The parliamentary secretary knows that trees can plant themselves under certain circumstances, so they are unlike budgets, which cannot balance themselves, as we have demonstrated.
I know that other members, such as myself, would have liked to speak to this bill at greater length. We will not be able to because we are under a very draconian programming effort by the government to limit debate on this bill.
I wonder if the member can comment on the overall fiscal framework of the government. Its spending is out of control, with more debt run up under the Prime Minister than all previous prime ministers in the country's history up until now. There is great concern. Members of the government think this is funny. It is not funny. My children are going to have to pay off the debt being run up today by the NDP-Liberal government. Can the member comment on the lack of any targets for any balanced budget at any point in time?
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