44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 23, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Red Deer—Lacombe.
This summer, I spoke with thousands of constituents from Kelowna—Lake Country in person, over the phone, on their doorsteps and at community events. I met with small businesses, farmers and not-for-profits. The struggles I heard from people and small businesses are real and extensive.
I heard about the unmanageable cost of living, which includes costs on housing, fuel and food, overall inflation, labour shortages, travel restrictions such as the ArriveCAN app, ongoing federal mandates, crushing debt for small business, supply chain issues, and delays in every federal government department, whether it be immigration and citizenship, CRA, benefits or passports.
It is evident that the legislation before us, Bill C-31, does nothing to address any of those issues and nothing to address the cost of 40-year-high inflation. For the Liberals to introduce this thrown-together legislation that will only boost inflation, and which will see its benefits evaporate with the ever-rising cost of food and gas, demonstrates the government's detachment from working families, small businesses and seniors.
I remember as a kid those tough times 40 years ago at the end of the last Trudeau government. History is repeating itself. I remember eating lots of wieners, white bread and Spam. What got us through were two sets of grandparents who had big gardens. Families are suffering today.
I mailed out a survey to residents of Kelowna—Lake Country to get their feedback about the cost of groceries and gas prices. I received thousands of responses. Food costs can vary regionally, and most people said their food bills had actually gone up more than 20%. To fill their vehicles was over $50 more per fill than last year.
Many people gave specific examples of their personal situations. I will give just a small sampling. John, who needs his pickup truck for work and who says he has good mileage on his truck, will be paying $513 a month more for gas than last year. Jeff in Lake Country wrote to me that he is getting close to having to choose between gas or food, saying that is “not a good spot to be in.”
Lea in Kelowna says she is forced to go to food banks for the first time in her life. Ken wrote that his family is presently helping a person who is living in his car because he cannot afford rent. This person works as a delivery driver, but gas prices may now prevent him from working entirely.
Paulette wrote to me and said, “I am a recently retired as a nurse. I am pretty tight with my budget. I have been able to keep my bank account at the same float number. Since March of this year, I have noticed incremental decline in my bank balance to the tune of $400 a month. It doesn't take long on a fixed income to be alarmed in seeing consistent decline.”
How is a retiree like Paulette supposed to deal with a $400 loss each month? How is a new family or a young worker supposed to deal with it? They will not if we maintain the government's high-spend, high-cost NDP-Liberal approach. We need to stop the money printing, stop the spending and stop increasing taxes, all of which are creating inflation.
Legislation like Bill C-31 will not reverse the ever-increasing costs of our basic necessities. While the government says this legislation will tackle the real issues of Canadians in need of relief, the value of these supports on people's budgets will rapidly proceed to nothing. They will evaporate quickly if the government does nothing to rein in its own costs.
Conservatives have been talking about precisely where the government could reduce costs, which would directly help to reduce the inflation that is shredding the value of people's paycheques and household budgets. It could cancel its $35-billion Canada Infrastructure Bank, which has yet to build a single road, bridge or rail line. It could drop the ArriveCAN app entirely today. It could save $25 million right now and scrap what I call the “ArriveCAN'T” app.
The government could use a one-for-one rule: For every dollar spent, find a dollar in savings. It could cancel all planned tax increases, including payroll tax hikes scheduled for January 1 and tax hikes on groceries, gas and home heating scheduled for April 1. It could cancel the escalator excise tax, which is also scheduled for April 1.
Leaving those scheduled increases on the books will be catastrophic to Canadian and small business bank accounts. Let us change course today. The NDP-Liberal bill would only raise Canadian costs, and this is obvious.
Economists are in agreement on this as well. Robert Kavcic, senior economist at the Bank of Montreal, was quoted recently on the government's proposal as saying, “We all know that sending out money as an inflation-support measure is inherently…inflationary.”
Andrey Pavlov at Simon Fraser University's Beedie School of Business said, “If we have high inflation and that inflation continues, that assistance isn’t going to do very much to help anyone, including the recipients of that assistance. It’s just not going to be enough.”
Derek Holt, vice president and head of capital markets economics at Scotiabank, could not have been clearer: “Any belief that the government's proposals will ease inflationary pressures must have studied different economics textbooks.”
Let us not forget that this legislation is before us only because of the summer rush that the members of the costly NDP-Liberal coalition put on themselves, once again trying to make a parliamentary body of law-making into a short-order kitchen of quick fixes.
The legislation bears all the hallmarks of a bill not thoroughly thought through. If the government members even took the time to glance at most rental listings in British Columbia, they would know that a $500 cheque would represent not much more than a single week's worth of rent.
According to rentals.ca, British Columbia had the highest average rental rate, at $2,578 per month in August 2022. Even if the bill passes, six out of every 10 renters will not qualify for it. In Kelowna—Lake Country, the government's record on rent is clear. According to the CMHC, the average one-bedroom apartment was roughly $900 a month in 2015, when this government was elected. Fast-forward to 2022 and the rental prices have increased 61%, to $1,475.
Instead of a bill that would expand the rental market or offer my constituents an affordable path to home ownership, the government chooses to raise costs even further.
For the government to call the other half of this legislation a dental program is not quite accurate. A program would typically feature an application process. It might coordinate with many provincial, low-income dental care programs. It would actually be a program. Instead, what the government offers is an attestation.
We have seen this attestation process with no verification or cross-referencing before. We have not been told how the CRA will administer this program or what extra staff they will need to administer it. All the government has said is to remember to keep one's dental receipts.
Will people be subject to having the value of this benefit clawed back if the government or the CRA deems them not applicable? My constituency office was inundated with people being told they had to pay back CERB. The government just has not learned.
Once again, the Liberal-NDP coalition is clear on how it wants the government to run: Allow inflation to rise unchecked, take more from Canadians' pockets, circulate it through the government's bureaucracy, and then write cheques that will give only a fraction of it back. It is like a family's financial situation is a sinking boat, and the Liberals throw them a teacup to bail out the boat instead of patching the holes.
We need to put people first.
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Mr. Speaker, my next-door neighbour back home is a dentist, and he noticed a sharp decline in his business shortly after the Liberal government took office, because nobody had the money they used to have in their pockets because of the policies of the government. That is the whole point. I know the members are cheering for that loudly over there—
An hon. member: That is from your side.
Mr. Blaine Calkins: —because Liberals actually do not care about Canadians who do not vote for them. That is the issue.
I would be happy to bring in all of my friends who happen to be dentists to talk about the decline in business once the oil and gas sector workers no longer had any disposable income. This is the problem, and I will get to it.
When a family is spending all of its money and the people who used to be able to easily provide for their families no longer have the resources they need, that is what puts them into this situation, that is what makes them desperate and dependent on government. That is actually what the Liberal government wants. I will go back to a great quote from Ronald Reagan, the former president of the United States, who once famously said, “Government does not solve problems. It subsidizes them.”
That is exactly what is happening with this piece of legislation. What is a $500 rent cheque going to do for somebody in Toronto or Vancouver who is now paying $2,300 to $2,600 a month for rent? The government is proposing to solve their housing problem by giving them one week's worth of rent while adding billions of dollars of debt onto our already massive national debt. This is not going to work. Economists are almost unanimous across this country in suggesting that any more spending by the government is surely to cause upward pressure on inflation and exacerbate the problem that we currently have.
The current government is not a solution-provider. The current government is problem-maker. There are more people in trouble in this country today than there have been in the entire time I have been here. They are in more trouble than they have been in 40 years with the inflationary pressure that we have. Interest rates are going up. Now people who borrowed money and the businesses that borrowed money during the pandemic have upward pressure on the loans they need to pay back. The pinch and squeeze is terrible for the people of this country. The problem is the government. It is not the solution.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Red Deer—Lacombe for his speech. He and the speaker before him talked about the importance of cutting spending to fight inflation. If we want to cut spending, then I would suggest that we cut the subsidies being given to oil companies that are making record profits in the current crisis.
The Conservatives would never dream of cutting oil subsidies, but they do not want to provide rental assistance.
I would simply like to know why oil companies, which are already rich and making profits, deserve help more than someone who cannot afford to pay their rent.
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- Sep/23/22 11:20:18 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this week, the Fraser Institute published a report showing that Canadians are spending more on taxes than on shelter, food and clothing combined. The government wants to increase taxes again even though house prices have doubled and the inflation rate for food is at a 40-year high.
Will the government cancel its tax hikes on paycheques, gas, heat and food?
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- Sep/23/22 11:21:35 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we, as the official opposition, join the government in offering our thoughts and prayers to anyone affected by this crisis, and we offer our full collaboration with the government to help in any way we can to serve the people who are affected.
This week, the Fraser Institute published a report showing that Canadians are spending more on taxes than on food, clothing and shelter combined. Now, with 40-year highs in inflation and house prices having doubled, Canadians cannot afford to pay any more. Will the government cancel its planned tax increases on paycheques, gas, heat and groceries?
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Mr. Speaker, I truly appreciate the member's kind and caring words about the situation the people in my community and province face. As I am sure we all do in the House, I hope it is not as bad as it is projected to be.
With respect to this bill, absolutely I am supporting it. I support the idea. As I said, I wish it was not that we have to provide a one-time relief payment of $500 to people because of high inflation, and instead got at the root problem of the issue, which is higher inflation caused by excessive government spending and the printing of money by the Bank of Canada. Putting all of that money into the system means more money chasing fewer goods, which causes the price of everything to go up. That is what we should be dealing with. If we had dealt with that in the first place, there would be no need for this bill.
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