44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 26, 2022 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, we are here in Parliament today talking about the affordability crisis that so many Canadians are dealing with, and in a way it feels like progress that we are even talking about this, because most of the debates that happen in Parliament are scheduled by the government, and for two years the government has been ignoring the problem of “Justinflation” that so many Canadians have been dealing with. For two years the government has been ignoring the cost of living crisis, but the election of the member for Carleton as Leader of the Opposition has really focused the mind of the government. Immediately after the Leader of the Opposition took his position, the government started saying that now it needs to try to talk about the affordability issue.
However, unfortunately, the measures the government has put in place are not moving us forward. They are not actually addressing the problem. In fact, in some respects they are making the problem worse. The government still does not appreciate the degree to which it really is its policies, the policies of the current Prime Minister, that have created and continue to create the kind of affordability crisis we are talking about.
At the outset, I think it is important to go over a bit of the history of this. Back in 2020, the member for Carleton, who was at the time our shadow minister for finance, said that Canada was about to face this problem of significant increasing inflation. He said that the significant increase we were seeing in government spending was going to drive inflation. Government being more expensive was going to make it more expensive for everyday Canadians to buy the various goods they needed.
At the time, those concerns were dismissed by the government, including the finance minister, who is still the finance minister. She was more concerned about apparent impending deflation, and that of course turned out to be very wrong. It was clear from the arguments being made at the time, and it is clear now, that when we have the government pouring more and more money out there, borrowing more and spending more but not actually driving increases in production, that is simply going to be inflationary. When we have more money chasing fewer goods, that is going to make everything more expensive.
These arguments were made and have been made over the last two years, but they have been continuously ignored by a government that clearly would rather talk about other issues. It clearly would rather be trying to shift attention away from those things, which really are the fundamental priorities of Canadians.
The government also, first of all, denied it. It was refusing to acknowledge the inflation crisis that it was causing, but as the numbers have come out and as we have seen increasing inflation, it has been harder and harder for the government to deny it. The new form of denial is for them to say, “It is not our fault,” and that they have nothing to do with it. They say that inflation is happening everywhere and is the result of the invasion of Ukraine and other such events, or it is supply blockages and is really an issue of the challenges in global supply chains.
I have a few responses to that. Number one is that this inflation was clearly an issue prior to the invasion of Ukraine, but it was two years ago that we started sounding the alarm on this issue of inflation. Of course, the invasion of Ukraine, as such, started in 2014, but this particular further invasion of Ukraine started six months ago.
It is also hard to make sense of the claim that global supply chains are responsible for instances where the goods are produced here in Canada yet the prices have been going up. Global supply chains can hardly be blamed for the escalating price of property and real estate that makes it increasingly difficult for Canadians in my age demographic and younger to be able to afford housing.
The government is constantly looking for other people to blame. It no doubt will blame the previous government at some point in today's debate, as well as global events that are beyond its control, but the reality is that the government is pursuing policies and pouring more money through borrowing and spending, without proper controls or encouraging more production. These economic policies of the government are driving inflation.
Canada is not the only country with rising inflation, but the point is that other countries that have this problem have pursued the same policies that the Liberal government has pursued. Some countries that are pursuing policies that entail exactly the same problems are getting the same results. However, other countries that are being more prudent and responsible in their spending are not experiencing the same challenges, and that is the reality. The escalating inflation is the result of the economic policies of the government, and it needs to own that challenge.
This is where we have been for the last two years. The government has been trying to distract attention on other issues, but then we have the Leader of the Opposition come into his position and continue his laser focus on issues of affordability and cost of living. Then, right away, the government says that perhaps its needs to talk about this affordability and cost of living thing, so it has tried to come up with a solution. Unfortunately, when we have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. The government's approach when it comes to the economy is always the same: more spending, more borrowing and higher taxes. That solution to the inflation crisis is going to make the problem even worse.
The government wants Canadians to believe that their lives will be made better and more affordable by giving away more money. I will share a little story.
I have five children and my three-old son recently came to me with a wad of U.S. dollars. I knew exactly where he got them from, because I had just returned from a trip to Washington and had left the money on the counter. He said, “Daddy, look what I got.” Then he very generously said he would give me one. I told him that was great, but asked him where he got it from. I think that is how Canadians feel when the government offers them more money. The government says that it will be generous and give more money to people, but Canadians want to know where that money has come from.
The government does not generate any money of its own. Government does not work to produce money. It takes money from taxpayers and then redistributes it. Just like my son, who I know is not going out, earning that money and generously offering it to me. I know that he is finding it somewhere around the house. When the government says that it will give more money, it clearly has to find it somewhere around the house, and that is the issue with it. It wants everyone to see how generous it is being, that it is giving away more money. In question period the other day, the Deputy Prime Minister said that the government was giving $1,000 to these families and $500 to those families, but Canadians are asking where the money is coming from.
We have run up more debt under the current Prime Minister than in the entire country's history prior to 2015. That is incredible. That is more debt than in the country's entire history from 1867 up until 2015. This is driving the challenges in the cost of living and inflation. Then the government's solution to the problem it has caused is to do more of the same. We have inflation because of high taxes, high borrowing and high spending and the government tries to solve that problem through more taxes, more borrowing and more spending.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The Liberals' approach is going to cost more, and any of these giveaways that they are promising to Canadians, such as these $500 here and $1,000 there, is real money. This is significant money for people, but I think they also understand that the money comes from somewhere and that those dollars are eaten up every day by higher prices. The same government that is saying that it is going to do more on these spending items is actually eroding the value of that money as it is handing it out.
This is a failed policy. Again, doubling down on the same failed approach of more borrowing, more taxes and more spending is not going to achieve a different result. It is “Justinflation” from start to finish. This is what we predicted two years ago. That is what we are seeing now and that is what is going to be further exacerbated by these new policies.
I note that expert analysis from Canada's leading banks said that these policies from the government are going to be inflationary.
l listened to the leader of the NDP, the coalition partner of the government, talking about this issue on CBC's The House. I think it was this past weekend. He said that the NDP did not agree with the analysis from the big banks. The leading economists in the country are saying that the government's policy is going to be more inflationary. Dismissing that expert analysis because people have an axe to grind with the big banks is really missing the point. The government talks about drawing from experts. It should listen to experts and acknowledge that its policies will continue to be inflationary going forward.
The Conservatives are offering a better approach, a common-sense approach for moving us forward.
First, we need a dollar-for-dollar rule when it comes to new spending. If the government is going to approve new spending of $1, $10, $1 million or $1 billion, it should first find an equivalent amount of savings. If there are new areas needing money to be spent, it should identify areas for those savings, areas to find efficiencies, and then put those dollars to toward the new areas.
There are new emerging priorities. There are always going to be new things needing money, but there are also going to be plenty of examples where dollars that were spent in the past no longer need to be spent or, perhaps, should not have been spent in the first place.
I think about some of the things that the government has spent money on, like the $25 million on the ArriveCAN app, which could have been easily saved. We could talk about the failed $35-billion Infrastructure Bank. We could talk about the subsidy package for private media, which is unfortunately eroding confidence in the media. We could talk about the government's various corporate welfare programs. All of those things have, frankly, hurt Canadians instead of helped them.
There have been many opportunities with respect to wasteful spending within the government or spending that was poorly targeted toward objectives. It is great to find new areas to make investments. Let us apply the same discipline that households and businesses have to apply by having a dollar-for-dollar rule.
A great way to help make life more affordable for Canadians would be to stop increasing taxes. Of course, we would like to see lower tax on this side of the House, but as a first step for the government, stop making the problem worse. Right now, the government has automatic scheduled tax increases for next year. On January 1 of next year, happy new year, and on April 1 of next year, which is sadly not an April fool's joke, tax increases are currently scheduled: increases to the carbon tax, which will drive up the cost of gas, groceries and home heating; increases as well to payroll taxes. Those payroll tax increases will take effect on January 1 and then subsequently the carbon tax hike.
It would be a very basic first step for the government to acknowledge it is in a hole right now, so it should stop digging, stop making the problem worse and stop inflicting more pain on Canadians by raising their taxes. Although that would be against the basic instincts of the government, that would be an important step to take, to recognize there is actually a problem that needs to be solved. If the government is unwilling to listen to us and reverse these planned tax increases, then I think it will be clear that the government's words about affordability are just that, only words. We have seen this before. When Canadians are connecting with and responding to a Conservative message, sometimes the government tries to use the same words. It tries to talk about the same things.
The proof is going to be in the pudding. The proof is going to be whether the government follows through with its planned tax hikes, or whether it continues with its approach of borrowing, spending and taxing always going up, or whether it will listen to Canadians, who are feeling the squeeze as a result of “Justinflation”, stop this damage and try to reverse the planned tax—
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Madam Speaker, I know the member for Timmins—James Bay is excited to hear the rest of my remarks and it sounds like he is chomping at the bit for the privilege of debate that may be coming. I look forward to his remarks. I would encourage him to make sure he has consulted with the rest of his party around the position he takes on that, because there may be some differences of opinion around that important and sensitive issue.
With respect to the remarks I was making, it is very clear that we have two different approaches in front of us when it comes to responding to the economy. The Liberals have started to try to adopt Conservative language, although not all of it, as maybe the point of order demonstrates. They do not want to acknowledge their own responsibility when it comes to inflation, but they have started to acknowledge that there is a problem of inflation. They just think it has nothing to do with the policies of the government, which obviously stretches credibility.
The government has, in the last two years, pursued a radically different direction. In some respects, it has the last seven years, but it has escalated in the last two years. They have pursued a radically different direction with respect to economic policy. We have gone from tens of billions of dollars of deficit, which felt quite significant, and was quite significant, to hundreds of billions of dollars in terms of deficit, and they want to pretend as if that approach has had no consequences with respect to affordability. The reality is that it obviously has and Canadians are seeing the direct impacts on their lives when it comes to rising costs of all sorts of different goods. The government's efforts to pass the blame for this onto everybody but themselves really stretches credibility. Now their proposals of more taxes, more spending and more borrowing are simply going to make the problem worse.
I appeal to the government, on behalf of my constituents and many Canadians who have raised concerns about affordability, that if it wants to show that it has a modicum of sincerity when it comes to the issue of affordability, it should cancel the planned tax increases for next year. It would be a simple way for the government to show that it is actually listening to Canadians.
I want to talk specifically about the issue of the carbon tax. The Liberals think that a tax increase is a replacement for a meaningful response to the challenges we face with environmental policy. It is clear from various reports that their carbon tax is not working to achieve environmental objectives. Many of the groups that have supported them on this are saying it is a dramatic increase they want in terms of the carbon tax, and the Liberals are planning, I believe, and forecasting it.
Before the previous election, they had promised that they would not increase the carbon tax, but then they did increase it. It is continually going up and up. When is it going to stop? Every time their carbon tax fails to achieve their environmental objectives, instead of changing approach and realizing that we actually need an approach that emphasizes technology instead of taxes, they are just doubling down on the taxation approach. It is just not working; it is not achieving the objectives they said it will.
The government really needs to be responsive to what Canadians are telling it and it needs to be willing to make changes in its direction when the evidence clearly suggests it. I repeat that appeal again: no new taxes. The least the government can do is stop the damage, and that means to commit to not proceeding with the tax increases that it has scheduled for next year.
It is a clear choice and a clear contrast. We have a government that is talking about borrowing, spending and taxation, and that is leading to inflation. Then in the official opposition, we are talking about more freedom, giving individuals back control of their lives, reversing tax increases, lowering taxes and fundamentally replacing big government with big citizens, with a big society, as David Cameron talked about, with the idea that a strong society, with people standing together and supporting each other's needs, is much better at bringing us together as communities and moving us forward than the government. I am proud to continue to champion that vision and make the case for that vision in the House and beyond.
At this point, I would like to move an amendment. I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:
"the House decline to give second reading to Bill C-31, An Act respecting cost of living relief measures related to dental care and rental housing, since the bill will fuel inflation and fails to address the government's excessive borrowing and spending that lead to the inflation crisis in the first place.”
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Madam Speaker, I will be very clear. I am proposing, fundamentally, as a first step, that the government commit to reversing planned automatic tax increases for next year.
The member thinks that this is not going to matter to Canadians for a long time. It will matter to Canadians right away. Canadians who are struggling to pay for gas, groceries and home heating will immediately be affected by the tax increase that his party wants to bring in next year.
Working Canadians and small businesses will be immediately impacted by the increase in payroll taxes that his government plans to bring in next year. This would be immediate relief to the affordability crisis.
There is more that it needs to do. I talked about the dollar-for-dollar rule, and I support tax reductions to make life more affordable for Canadians. As a basic first step, which would have an immediate impact, I am calling on the government to reverse its planned automatic tax increases for next year. I hope that he will speak for his constituents and join me in opposing those tax increases.
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Madam Speaker, I would be happy to have that debate in detail at another time. I think that, in front of us, we are discussing the issue of affordability for Canadians. There is a lot of work to be done on the health care front. There is no doubt about that. There have been many challenges that have been exposed through the COVID pandemic that require significant work.
I look forward to further analyzing, discussing and debating those issues when that issue is up for debate in the House.
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Madam Speaker, respectfully to my colleague, I have a number of points on this. Number one is that we have major challenges in our existing health care system. Rather than address those challenges, the parties of the left—
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Madam Speaker, I do not mind the heckling from the government minister over here. I know he has strong views in support of the Liberal agenda, and he is using his voice in the House to defend Liberal policies.
Many Canadians are disappointed by the fact that the NDP have really sold out. They have sold out on principles they used to articulate. I look at the bill before us, and regardless of what the member for Edmonton Strathcona said previously, she would have to agree that the legislation is not a dental care program. The Liberals have already reneged on their commitment to the NDP, yet the NDP is still persistently supporting and defending the Liberal government. If the NDP is not even going to extract the price that was offered and is still supporting the Liberal government's failed approach, it is a real betrayal of the people the NDP said it would represent.
Canadians are realizing that it is only the Conservative Party that is going to speak on behalf of Canadians and workers, and on behalf of defending our systems and defending Canadians from the attacks on their pocketbooks that we are seeing from the government.
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Madam Speaker, I have already identified a number of areas of spending that I think are not only not necessary but actually make Canadians worse off. It is a reasonable principle to have dollar for dollar to be able to identify those areas while talking about spending increases.
Just to zero in specifically on the Green Party's emphasis on defence spending, it kind of misses the reality of what is happening in the world right now to pretend that a greater focus on national defence is not necessary. We have the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Canada has been significantly involved in sending weapons to that. We think they should be doing more, in terms of sending support to Ukraine.
However, to pretend that we could do these things, which I think are required for basic justice and our security, without thinking about the cost is a bit naive. The threats we face, and the emerging threats we face, are very significant. I know there are some members who, for philosophical or ideological reasons, are against more spending on defence, but there are realities we face in the word today, and members need to take stock of those realities and acknowledge that, if we are going to be in solidarity with Ukraine, if we are going to protect our security, and if we are going to secure our own Arctic, those things do involve costs, and we have to live up to our obligations.
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Madam Speaker, that is the best question I have received all day. I did not live during the tenure of the previous Trudeau government, but I can say that my grandfather made sure that I knew about what happened. My grandfather was working as an engineer in Alberta during the national energy program, which was the last time we had a prime minister named Trudeau, and the last time we saw those kinds of really aggressive attacks on our regional economy.
We have seen a repeat of that dismissive attitude towards Alberta and the energy sector. We are seeing a repeat of those kinds of economic policies when it comes to inflation and making life less affordable for Canadians. The idea could come from various sources, but the bottom line is that these are failing policies. Canadians realize these policies are not working and are asking the government to change its course. The government is now trying to change some of the rhetoric. It is saying it is prepared to talk about these issues, but it is not delivering the results Canadians want.
I will repeat the simple appeal that, if the government really cared about these issues, it would cancel scheduled tax hikes for next year. Will it cancel those tax hikes?
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- Sep/26/22 11:08:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this important debate tonight about the impacts of hurricane Fiona on eastern Canada.
As members know, I represent a riding in Alberta. We live in a big country, where a natural disaster could affect one part of the country and not another. I also know we are a community of solidarity, where people in Alberta follow events in other parts of the country and are feeling a deep sense of solidarity and a desire to help. There are many Albertans with close familial and ancestral connections with Atlantic Canada, who are really following in horror the impacts of this hurricane and would like me to share on their behalf the sense of solidarity and the desire they have to see their government come to the aid of those in need.
Just as when western Canada has faced natural disasters, such as the B.C. floods, Atlantic Canada was with us, in the same way my province and my constituents are fully behind Atlantic Canada and are calling on the government to have a strong, effective and continuous response. The lead to this response from within our caucus is coming from the Atlantic caucus, and I want to salute and recognize the excellent work being done by members of that caucus, including the member for Cumberland—Colchester, who put forward the proposal to have this emergency debate tonight. Of course I also want to recognize the engagement of our leader and the powerful speech he gave tonight as well.
What really stuck with me from our leader's speech was his saying that we do not want this to be another situation in which there is an “A” for the announcement and an “F” on the follow-through. Sometimes commitments are made when a story is in the news, when there is a focus on the situation, and it is very acute as it is happening. Then there is the question of whether the government and the rest of the country are really there through the follow-up, through the rebuilding process that must continue long after the story is not in the news anymore and attention has shifted to other issues. Is there the follow-through? Also, is the government making announcements but then severely delayed in actually delivering the results, or is the government responding quickly enough?
The opposition will be there, led by our Atlantic caucus, in pushing strongly for follow-through, for efficiency, and for the government to support the rebuilding that is required, not just while the story is in the news but in fact over the long term. We need to have a results-oriented approach that measures the results that are achieved, that measures the concrete impacts, that invests the dollars that are required and really measures those results. Canadians can be assured that our opposition will be diligently following up on this issue for the long haul to make sure those results are achieved, or certainly to do all we can from this side of the House to ensure they are achieved.
I want to speak tonight in particular to highlight one issue that we have seen with the government's response. It is about the issue of matching programs. There is a problem with the way the government has consistently developed and delivered matching programs. The problem has been that the government identifies one organization or a small group of large organizations for matching support, and it says it will match every donation that is made to organization X or to this group of five organizations. However, the government does not offer matching programs to all of the organizations that are involved in a response.
I have encountered this issue, particularly in the area of international development. In cases in which we have seen disasters around the world, this was a major issue brought to my attention by international development organizations working in Lebanon, responding to the humanitarian needs associated with the invasion of Ukraine, and most recently in the situation in Pakistan, where there are organizations, maybe small organizations, diaspora-led organizations, organizations with really deep connections and a significant footprint on the ground, that are left out of a government matching program because it becomes easier for the government to say that it is going to match with these very large organizations that have more experience dealing with government and that we have established relationships with. It is easier to say that it is going to match a contribution to this big player as opposed to saying it is going to match donations to all of the organizations that are doing this work.
I have encountered and learned about this issue in the area of international development, but now we are seeing this as part of a domestic disaster response. Again, the government, in the process of a matching program, is choosing one organization. In this case, it is the Red Cross.
I want to say at the outset that I think the Red Cross does excellent work. I also think the idea of matching programs, of encouraging individuals to donate and saying that when someone makes a donation, the government is going to match those dollars, is a very good concept. It expresses the shared solidarity that we need here, which is not the government acting alone, but the government being part of a solution and supporting individual philanthropy in collaboration with government. In principle, that is really good.
When we have a system that matches donations to some organizations and not others, not only do those smaller organizations, which may have a bigger presence on the ground and may be led by local people and plugged into local communities, lose out on the benefit of the matching dollars, but they actually lose out on donations as well.
When people say they want to be part of responding to, in this case, the recovery efforts around hurricane Fiona, or in previous cases, the flooding in Pakistan or the situation in Lebanon, people instinctively want to give to those organizations that are receiving matching, as opposed to the organizations that do not.
Organizations tell me that they get calls from previous donors who say they were going to donate to what they were doing, but they actually want to donate to another organization that is getting matched. We see how, through a government policy, by matching donations to some organizations but not others, the government ends up incentivizing private donors to change their donation behaviour from organizations they were previously giving to, to organizations that are matched. The government is, through this matching policy, directing donations from some organizations to others. That is a problem.
The effect of offering matching to some organizations is that it might take away from groups that have a long track record and have been working on the ground. It also creates some level of suspicion. People ask why the government is not matching them. Is it because it has somehow determined the organization is not good enough for the match? That is not the reason. In fact, some of these organizations may be more effective in their response, but they are not receiving the match because government instinctively goes back to the same organizations to provide that match every time.
Having raised this issue multiple times in other contexts, I want to implore the government again to really reconsider this policy. There are different ways of doing this. The government could identify, in some global sense, all of the donations that are made to charitable organizations related to flood relief, and the government could then put that same amount of money aside in a fund, which it then distributes.
It would not have to necessarily match every dollar that was given to an organization to exactly the same organization. However, if it put aside an amount of money that was equivalent to the total donations and then disbursed that, it would at least address the problem right now of disincentivizing donations to organizations that are not matched. I think that would be a good way of exploring the response.
Every Canadian who donates to hurricane relief, in some way, should see their donation matched, whether it is to the Red Cross or to organizations that are smaller and embedded in local communities. The Knights of Columbus council in my area might want to raise money and transfer it to a Knights of Columbus council in Atlantic Canada. There might be small local food banks that are raising money, locally and across the country. I would say those worthy efforts deserve the same kind of matching support.
Again, I have raised this in the House on past occasions. It is a bit frustrating to feel these simple, non-partisan solutions, which say we need to reform these matching programs, do not seem to be heeded. It has been raised on past instances yet it remains a problem. I implore the government to revisit this issue and to look for mechanisms to match donations in a way that is inclusive, that represents the diversity of organizations and that supports small local organizations as well as the larger ones.
Again I want to share with the House that my constituents, the people of western Canada, are very much behind and in support of the people in eastern Canada who are struggling right now. We want to see the government have their backs over the long haul.
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- Sep/26/22 11:19:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to underline that nothing in my speech was to take away from the great work that the Red Cross is doing in eastern Canada or in other parts of the world. Of course, it does have partnerships with local organizations, and I hope it will do its best to engage some of those local organizations.
However, fundamentally, it does not change the point that there are many other worthy organizations that are not getting this matching support and, essentially, it puts the Red Cross in the position of being the disbursers of public money, which is a role that we would normally conceive of as being the government's. We should work to provide that support in the form of matching to all of the organizations that are doing good work, not because the organizations being matched are not worthy of it but because there are other organizations that are worthy of it as well.
I know my constituents will be actively involved in this relief effort and I would like to see all of the donations that my constituents make matched, regardless of the organizations they give to.
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- Sep/26/22 11:22:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, of course it makes sense to have resilient infrastructure, infrastructure that is fit for purpose and that can respond to these things as much as possible.
I am not an engineer. There are probably limits to one's ability to build for all possible events, but I would assent in principle to the idea that we should as much as possible, in the process of rebuilding and in the process of building up infrastructure, try to be prepared for and resilient against the possibility of storms and other kinds of weather events.
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- Sep/26/22 11:23:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think a really simple thing for the government to do would be to say, as a policy statement, that it will work to identify all of the dollars that have been donated for this purpose and match those dollars insofar as it will set aside, in a fund for relief, the number of dollars equivalent to the amount it estimates has been contributed.
That formal calculation does not have to all be done in one or two days. If the government says that now as a policy commitment, then it means that over time the government can engage those charities, work to identify who is involved in relief and what dollars have been contributed and then disburse the funds at a later point.
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