44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 29, 2022 10:00AM
- Sep/29/22 3:23:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it will be my absolute pleasure to split my time with the great member for Thornhill.
It an honour to be in the House today to address the affordability crisis that is gripping Canadians across our land, from coast to coast to coast, including in my great riding of Northumberland—Peterborough South.
Milton Friedman once said, “Many people want the government to protect the consumer [but the] much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”
This is particularly true today, as the Liberal government is driving up the cost of living. For two years now, the Conservative leader has been pushing the government to put people first and to start fighting inflation. However, inflation continues to rise, at this point, over 7%. Canadians are feeling that pain.
Today, I am honoured to call on the government, along with the rest of my colleagues, to scrap its planned tax increases, including the payroll tax hikes slated for January 1, and the tax hike on gas, groceries and home heating scheduled for this April.
To give some context to the opposition motion, I think it is important to understand the relationship between the government and the economy.
A fundamental principle, which must be the bedrock of all political discussions of the economy, is the indisputable fact that wealth or prosperity is created by the businesses and workers of our communities. It is through the production of goods and the delivery of services that a country adds value to the economy. When the country increases its ability to produce goods or to deliver a service, or, in other words, enhances its productivity, that country, by definition, becomes wealthier and its people more prosperous.
A country can temporarily and artificially increase its economic performance through the printing of money or quantitative easing. However, this is always short-lived, and the consequences are nearly always worse than the initial increase in improvement in the economic times.
What happens with this government spending, is that some of it wasted, of course, but some of it hits Canadians' bank accounts. When this money hits the bank accounts, what happens to that money is that, by the time it is available to be spent, the cost of everything has increased. The illusion of the windfall is quickly taken away, and we see we are left with nothing but inflation.
The true path to a more prosperous nation, a wealthier Canada, a more successful Canada, is through productivity. In fact, enhancing productivity is really the only way that this affordability crisis will be cured. When we improve productivity, we increase real wages. We increase real profits, and we create jobs. Unfortunately, the government appears to be doing everything it can to reduce the productivity of Canadians.
There are at least three significant policy directions that the government must reverse course on if it really is serious about tackling the affordability crisis. The government must cap its spending. Excessive spending is eventually paid for either through taxation or inflation, which reduces the ability of our productive sector to make things competitively, be profitable and be prosperous. Worse yet, it continues to drive inflation.
Who ultimately pays the cost of inflation? It is not the wealthy in our communities. It is not the super rich. It is not the government. It is our workers, our workers who are going out there.
I ask members to think of the worker who is earning $50,000 a year. They are already subject to a high rate of taxation. Now, they have seen inflation eat thousands of dollars away from their real buying power. These are people who are already struggling to get by. Thomas Sowell famously wrote that inflation is one of the biggest and oldest forms of taxation.
The effect of our government's overspending is to starve the productive sector, or the private sector, of resources. Those resources are needed.
If one listens to my friends in the NDP, one will hear them say that those monies are just wasted on yachts and wealthy billionaires, and I am sure there is probably some of that. The reality is that the majority of that money is invested back into businesses.
Right now we are starving Canadian businesses of the ability to reinvest. We are dead last in the OECD in capital investment. For every dollar that the U.S. invests in capital investments, we are investing 43¢.
That is the money that is building our businesses in the future. These are the dollars that will make us competitive in the future. We are losing ground at a tremendous rate every single day. That will make our economy less productive and every worker less effective. It will impoverish our country today, as well as tomorrow.
The government must commit to no further tax increases. Tax increases, and it is simple and as plain as day, by very definition, increase costs for workers and for consumers. That will drive inflation. In fact, do not take my word for it.
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to ask questions of the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem. I asked him if the carbon tax was a driver of inflation and he unequivocally agreed. In fact, he said that it was a significant driver of inflation. I think all sides of the House would acknowledge that we are in an affordability crisis. We are at really high rate of inflation and that is making life more difficult for Canadians.
We would think the Liberal government would understand that the carbon tax at its current rate is driving inflation, so it should pause the carbon tax or maybe reduce it, but the government is taking the unthinkable action of tripling the carbon tax, which the Governor of the Bank of Canada has already said is fuelling the fire of inflation. Now it is going to triple it. It is really unthinkable.
Further, with every new tax increase, we are taking away the rewards and incentives of hard work. When entrepreneurs go out and put their whole lives on the line, risking their homes and families' futures, they need to be rewarded. When those workers work 20 out of 24 hours to ensure their families are fed at the end of the month, they should be rewarded for it, and they need to be incentivized. Because of our progressive tax systems and the clawbacks that exist in our current system, middle-class wage earners, and even low-income Canadians, are facing income tax rates of 30%, 40% or 50%. It is not fair that Canadians who are working the hardest should have to pay an exorbitant amount of taxes. This is really unconscionable.
Once again, what has been our Liberal government's response to that? It is going to increase taxes. The Liberals are going to dramatically increase the payroll taxes. This is not fair to Canadians. It also is detrimental to our economy. If we take away the rewards, the very dollars that people have worked so hard for, we reduce the incentive and the rewards for which these people have worked so hard.
Finally, we need to invest in those sectors of the economy that are extremely productive. We have a huge productivity gap. Productivity is measured by the contribution to the GDP per hour worked. Currently, Canada is at $50. Contrast that to Switzerland at $60; the United States at $65; and Ireland at $85. However, we do have sectors in the economy that are doing exceptionally well. In the oil and gas extraction sector it is at $664 per hour. To make life more affordable for Canadians, we need Canadian energy.
It is inescapable that we are all dealing with the consequences of these failed Liberal economic policies. Perhaps no problem is as pressing as food inflation. This is creating challenges for Canadians from coast to coast. According to Statistics Canada, 20% of Canadians are utilizing food banks. Life is getting more challenging for Canadians. Many are experiencing these incredibly difficult economic challenges: inflation is at near highs, rising interest rates and punitive rates of taxation. The government, however, has the opportunity to reduce people's pain, to give them some hope by cancelling their proposed and planned tax increases on gas, home heating and groceries as well as on paycheques.
It is time that the government stops blindly following its ideology and actually help Canadians by cancelling its proposed tax hikes.
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- Sep/29/22 3:34:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would not take a politician's word for it, but I would take that of the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has said that 60% of Canadians pay more in carbon tax than they receive in rebates. Quite frankly, that is the experience of those in my riding.
I can tell the residents of Winnipeg North that, if we were to form government, we would reduce their burdens. We would truly have their backs and get the Liberals' hands out of their pockets.
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- Sep/29/22 3:35:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I very much enjoyed working on the public accounts committee with the member. I always found her thoughtful.
I will say that, from Milton Friedman to Thomas Sowell, it is clear from history that, throughout the numerous inflation crises this world has experienced, including the last one under Pierre Elliott Trudeau, it is nearly always a government issue, either because it was printing too much money or taxing too much money. In this case, the government is doing both.
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- Sep/29/22 3:37:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am mindful of the public accounts committee where I asked the environment commissioner if the government had hit one single emissions target. The answer was a clear no. What is the signature policy of the Liberals to get emissions down? It is the carbon tax. The proof is that this policy is failing.
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- Sep/29/22 3:38:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government's punitive policies, particularly on farmers and agriculture, are going to worsen a food crisis that is around the corner. Whether it is restrictions on fertilizer or increases to the carbon tax, life is getting tougher for farmers, which means food is going to get more expensive. The world needs Canada's food. We need to enable and empower our farmers.
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