44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 5, 2022 02:00PM
Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege for me to be able to stand tonight and speak to this bill. I am going to speak slowly, because I just decided to do this and do not have anything to provide to the translators, so I promised them I would do my best to make it as easy as possible for them to translate what I have to say tonight.
It is really important we go back to the beginning of the current government, which was my first time in the House, and remember what happened as early as preCOVID. We tend to focus on things as they are right now, but how did we get here? We have heard over and over again tonight the word “crisis” and that we are in a crisis. Absolutely, I agree, but why are we in the crisis we are in today, where Canadians are suffering so much within an economy that is simply not functioning the way it should?
We heard about sunny ways and how amazing life was going to be for Canadians with a new government. Honestly, it is true, there was a real sense of hope in Canada when the Liberal government came to power. However, seven years later, we are in a situation where the government, when it runs out of answers, goes all the way back to 2017 to talk about the amazing things it did.
It brought in a Canada child benefit, which, it claims, lifted all of these children out of poverty and no longer gave money to the wealthy, and which was just an amazing service that it gave to Canadians.
However, what the government does not talk about is how many of those whom they raised out of poverty were also being raised out of poverty previously, and also that the way it runs this program, where it picks winners and losers, costs a lot more. The way the government functions, bureaucratically, costs Canadians more.
As I walked along, knocking on doors, people would say to me that they get the child benefit but have to give it all back. At that point, I would ask if they owned their home, how many cars they had and if they both worked. In that circumstance, they did not need that money. I would tell them to set it aside, and when the time came, to pay it back to the government through their taxes.
However, what if something happened whereby that family lost its means of income in the course of that year? Let us say they worked in the oil field when the government came into power, and all of a sudden their jobs are gone. The way this program is set up, they would need to wait until the next year, after they filed their taxes, to show how desperate they were, and then have their child benefit reinstated. The way the program used to run, if someone hit the end of that year and things were bad, they would have that money.
On the circumstances around lowering the taxes on the middle class and raising them on the wealthy, there are reasons to go that route to some degree, yet the government claimed it was revenue neutral. We know it was not. We are talking millions of dollars in difference that it did not make up by doing that, so already we were in a situation where the government was not managing money well. It was not managing the funds from Canadians' money well in the way it was providing its programs.
That was all preCOVID, when it signalled to the world that Canada was not going to be open for business anymore. All kinds of small businesses and medium-sized businesses that were involved in our oil and gas industry left this country in an instant. I am sure the members on the other side of the floor must understand that when one does that and all of a sudden creates chaos in the source of funding for our economy, it is not a good thing. Canadians were left in very dire straights.
We were no longer open for business. We lost the confidence of investors in this nation. As a matter of fact, the government had to buy a pipeline, or maybe chose to buy a pipeline, because it wanted to control the future of our oil and gas industry in a way that was not beneficial toward a green economy in the future, because we were hampering our own country at a time when the world, and it knows this as well, will continue to need oil for a long time.
Therefore, we are saying to a world that needs our products that are clean and ethical and enable our people to earn a living and to pay taxes so that the current and future governments can provide for the true needs of Canadians, that all of a sudden it is not there. These measures that we are looking at today are temporary measures. They are like putting one's finger in a dike.
I know Canadians are desperate enough to say that they want this and need this and that it is better than nothing, but the frustrating thing is that we never should have gotten here in the first place. The government promised a $10-billion over-expenditure on an annual basis. It has never met that promise, and we are facing almost a trillion and a half dollars in debt as a nation, larger than all the debt combined throughout the history of our country. That is where we are today.
Of course, Canadians are in a circumstance that is very difficult. I grew up in Saskatchewan. As I was growing up, we had an NDP government. I grew up during that time when things were really tough. My husband has four siblings and I have five. Out of 11 of us, everybody but two left our province. There was no work. There was no income for our government to do the things it needed to do. We were in a situation where government knew best and wanted to provide for everybody, and it shut down productivity in our province. People left because there was no work. There was no encouragement for people to become small business men or women and make a difference for their own family by becoming productive on their own.
With respect to these measures that I am seeing here now, they are trying to put a stopgap in a situation that is really bad. That is what happened during COVID as well, because people were not allowed to work. Small business owners in my communities could have maintained their ability to be active in their communities. They could have continued to pay their employees and produce their products in a way that worked within that environment, but the government shut everything down. Yes, it provided in that circumstance, but it created the problem as well.
I experienced having a small business in the early 1980s. It says here that this is the worst inflation in 40 years. Do members know what was happening about 40 years ago? I experienced losing our business, as did many business owners, because interest rates rose to 22% overnight because of the fiscal approach of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Here we are today. The apple does not fall far from the tree.
I just want to put a shout-out for the fact that yes, as the NDP members are saying, large corporations should not be receiving benefits from the government. The Liberal government handed out incredible money for fridges for a large corporation that these people spoke against, yet here it is now, supporting them.
I want to speak for corporations that put incredible amounts of tax dollars into our provincial and federal governments and provide amazing community resources. I know, because I live where there is one. They provide benefits to their employees that are unmatched. We have a lot for which to thank those corporations that do good work and are fiscally and environmentally responsible. We should not be painting them all with the same brush.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to the first part of what was said, that it was the provinces that brought in the mandates that made it difficult for businesses and whatnot. I am sorry, but I hold the Prime Minister and the Liberal government fully responsible for everything that has happened in this country, because when it first hit and we did not know what we were dealing with, our borders were not shut down to China and thousands of people from Wuhan, and China in general, came into this country.
That is absolutely true. You are welcome at any point to share with the House, the way you were supposed to, what helped you make the decisions that you made and every province responded to the—
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Mr. Speaker, you did make a couple of good decisions that I really appreciated, even as far as bringing the member to the bar and facing what you faced.
Anytime the government is ready to share the information that this House called for so that we are aware of what was done to make the decisions that were made is fine with me. I am open to that and I would appreciate hearing what should have been shared with the House in the first place.
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Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that this is definitely something that we have discussed in my riding. Truth be told, the majority of people in my riding have dental care programs. I have experienced this as well because, when the previous prime minister was in place, we went through a very hard time. We lost our business. We had $500 to our name, three small children and had to totally retool for our future. There were programs available for us. There are programs available for seniors who are within the province to assist them as well.
It is not that I do not believe that these children should have the support that they need. I just believe that we should be focused, as a government, on those who truly need assistance and not thinking of the larger-scale programs where everybody falls under the same umbrella and no one is left to put the taxes in the place—
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