44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 5, 2022 02:00PM
Mr. Speaker, to the member for Kingston and the Islands, collectively, the measures before us today, as outlined by two of the big banks in Canada, will have an inflationary impact on the economy of Canada.
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Mr. Speaker, first, on the issue of helping municipalities move forward in getting zoning and rezoning dealt with, the NDP was able to force the government to bring forward the accelerator fund. Part of that funding is, in fact, going to be dedicated to municipalities and local governments to help with that. This work is actually going to be under way, although the program is not fully developed and more work will be done.
That being said, the member talked a lot about housing and addressed the housing crisis. One of the issues impacting the housing affordability issue is the financialization of housing, yet real estate investment trusts are getting preferential tax treatment. In fact, they get government support by way of insurance coverage and mortgage coverage.
Would the member agree that the government should stop preferential tax treatment for these corporate landlords?
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Mr. Speaker, I cannot speak to the specifics of the financialization and/or corporate preferential tax treatment outlined by the New Democratic member from Vancouver. However, I can say that the rate of home ownership in Canada has decreased to a level that we have not seen in a generation. All political parties, especially mine, want to restore and maintain the hope of young people to have a reasonable chance of owning a home. We want people to be able to get a university or trades education. I want people to have the dream of being able to save up for a home and have a reasonable chance of getting it. That is being eliminated at a faster rate than we have ever seen in the history of Canada, and it is troublesome for our democracy.
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Mr. Speaker, could the member tell the House how hypocritical it is of the government to, on the one hand, want to spend all this money on rent relief and control, and then, on the other hand, on January 1 add significant payroll taxes, not only to employees but to employers? It is also going to triple the carbon tax on April 1. On the one hand it giveth, and on the other hand it taketh away.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the things the government could is stop raising taxes. People cannot afford food. They cannot afford gas. They cannot afford heat.
Why would the government not just change the personal exemption rate of $13,800, increase it and stop all this wealth redistribution? Let people keep more of their paycheques. That is the best thing we can do to help Canadians who are struggling right now.
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Mr. Speaker, if I may, I just want to give a quick shout-out. I do not often spend holidays away from my family, but I would like to thank the Ottawa Jewish community for the warm welcome and the meaningful prayer and introspective services that I took part in today.
What happens when young people do everything in this country that they were asked to do? What happens when they do everything they are told? What happens when a 35-year-old who did everything they were supposed to do, who earned a degree, got a job and worked hard, lives in mom and dad's basement or in a 400-square-foot apartment because the price of housing has doubled since the Prime Minister came into office?
Young people have done everything they were asked to do, and they end up trying to keep their heads above water in a housing bubble that is the second largest in the world. As for families lucky enough to own a home, they were paying 32% of their income to maintain that home when the Prime Minister took office. Now, those families have to pay 50% of their income to be able to keep it. There are higher costs, higher interest rates and less money for exactly the same thing in this country.
Canadians have done everything they were asked to do. The government told Canadians not to worry. The government told people that interest rates would not rise for a long time. It gave Canadians the confidence to take out those loans. There would not be anything to worry about. That is what it said.
We are seeing interest rates, the ones the government told us would stay low, go up. We have the highest interest rates in the G7, with rises of 3%.
It is worth repeating: Canadians did everything they were asked to do. The percentage of Canadians who own their home or who are about to own a home is at its lowest level in 30 years.
No government has ever spent more on housing than this Liberal one; the government will tell us that, yet it is a failure by every metric. Measuring success by how much the Liberals have spent and not by how many houses were built in Canada is where we are, yet, with all of those dollars and all of those talking points, we have still seen the doubling of housing prices in this country since the Prime Minister took office. That is a fact.
Knowing all this and presenting the House with Bill C-31 as a solution makes it seem as though the government weighed the political benefit of a proposal rather than the economic one. In fact, it entirely forgot about the economics of this one.
The bill is the latest problem child of an NDP-Liberal marriage that shines at raising Canadians' taxes and the prices they pay on everyday goods. It fails at producing an actual outcome to get people into the housing market. It does not allow them to keep their home or the certainty at the end of the month of being able to keep the lights on in that home.
A flashy headline and an expensive tab for taxpayers is what got us into this mess, and surely members in the House know it is the exact opposite of what we need to get out of the mess. Maybe they do not know.
The problem is that it is not just housing any more. It is the cost of everything. It is the cost of gas. It is the cost of groceries. It is the cost of home heating. They have cobbled together a piece of legislation that will only drive up inflation and of which we will see every single dollar evaporate with the rising cost of that gas, of those groceries and of that home heating.
It demonstrates the government's out-of-touch planning for working families, for small businesses, for seniors and for young people who have become victims of its incompetence.
Economists agree. I am not sure what the conversation is in the House during the debate, but the Bank of Montreal's senior economist recently tweeted, “I think we all know that sending out money as an 'inflation-support' measure is inherently...inflationary.” Those are his words.
Scotiabank was clear. Its expert said, “Any belief that [the government's proposal] will ease inflationary pressures must have studied different economics textbooks.”
The house that no one can afford is on fire, and the minister who introduced this legislation is painting the basement where the 35-year-old lives. Bill C-31 is a political attempt to stay in power, not to help Canadians, and that is a shame.
There is an obvious fact that many members opposite may not see as obvious at all. It is about the other back-of-the-napkin math that is in this cobbled-together piece of legislation. In the entire 80-page Liberal platform from just last year, not one of the pages mentioned developing a dental care program like the one the government is proposing today, so we have to ask what reasoning members opposite have for introducing this legislation at this very moment.
Has there been some sort of epiphany among the Liberal caucus? Have they suddenly been convinced that this is the silver bullet for solving the affordability crisis, which they now admit is here? After seven years of Liberal government and three elections, is now the time for a proposal we have never heard of before?
Is there another factor at play? Frankly, I think there is. Perhaps it is the fact that the government now relies on votes from the NDP to ensure its very existence. The NDP curiously made dental care a centrepiece of its election platform just a short year ago. If this is the case, then do the Liberals believe that this is necessary? Is it the right thing to do, or is it a piece of legislation where $5.3 billion would be prolonging the messy divorce we all know is coming?
We should not only ask how a government has failed to provide the details of this legislation, but we should ask why we would trust a government to create a new program, when it cannot deliver the programs it already has?
The government cannot pay its own public servants. It cannot get clean drinking water onto reserves. It cannot get Canadians passports without giving them an urban camping experience they did not ask for. It cannot ensure Canadian travellers get an app to travel across a border. It cannot assure Canadians that, when they go to the airport, they are actually going to leave on an airplane, and we are supposed to believe that it is going to deliver an efficient, functional, national dental care plan to millions of uninsured Canadians, one that we have never heard of before.
For those following this debate and for those who will vote on this, dental care programs for low-income children exist in all provinces and territories, save for Manitoba and the Northwest Territories, in addition to the 70% of Canadians who are already insured and have coverage.
This program is a political one, and it is designed to fail by a government that has failed to deliver very basic services for Canadians. There would be up-front, direct payments of $650 per year to any family they deem eligible, with no questions asked and no strings attached in the legislation. Then, it is up to the CRA to follow up after the fact and verify the money was used correctly. I would like to know how the government thinks the CRA, which will takes years to fix a minor tax issues faced by my constituents, would have the capacity to verify the proper use of a grant by hundreds of thousands of Canadians, given there has been much to be desired in its ability to do just that with programs in the last two years. It is the wrong approach. We have seen it before, and we know how it ends.
Economists have been clear about the impact of direct payments on the cost of living, and I know members opposite understand there is a cost of living crisis. They have just recently admitted it. From the other side of the House, Canadians will remember that the Liberals told us interest rates would stay low. They told us the carbon tax would not go up. They told us that the problem was deflation, not inflation.
We have record inflation. We have a plan to triple the carbon tax, and we have the highest interest rates since the 1990s. It is time to end inflationary taxes and deficits, give Canadians control of their own lives and put more money in their pockets. Reducing taxes, capping government spending and removing red tape are the best ways to end the inflation crisis we have watched the government impose on Canadians through its high-spend, high-tax agenda, not with bigger budgets, higher taxes or more government.
This entire bill is an excuse for policy in hopes of being remembered in the next election, when that rolls around, and it is just one more drop of gasoline on the inflationary fire. Canadians deserve a government that will put people back into the plan, and the Liberals have proven that they are not that government. Conservatives will not forget that. Members on this side of the House will not forget that, and neither will Canadians. Putting people at the centre of decisions starts with voting against this bill, and I hope members understand the consequences of another broken promise, failed delivery and worse economic hardship for Canadians.
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Mr. Speaker, the member talks about the supply and confidence agreement between the NDP and the Liberals as though she just cracked a 30-year-old mystery. I think it is pretty well known that the NDP, in order to come together with the Liberal Party to bring forward legislation on behalf of Canadians and to form some stability, made this as one of their requests in the process, and the government agreed do that to work with the NDP. That is how parliamentary democracy works when a party does not have a majority.
I am just curious if the member is aware of that, or if the concept of parties working in a minority situation is completely foreign to her. Perhaps the Conservatives are just upset we did not ask them to form that kind of alliance with us. Perhaps she could comment on that.
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Mr. Speaker, I am actually not going to comment on the condescending speech that I just got from the member opposite about how this place works.
What I will comment on is that this plan, or lack of a plan or lack of a dental plan or lack of any details at all, does one thing and one thing only. It drives the cost of everything up in this country and Canadians are suffering. It ought to be clear by now that the Liberals need to do something about it. They need to lower taxes, kill the carbon tax, kill the paycheque tax and stop spending money that we do not have.
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Mr. Speaker, I know and all Canadians know that the members across the way do not agree with the way we want to put forward policy, but ultimately, at the end of the day, we are trying to create things that are long-lasting. We are trying to create something bigger than ourselves.
Whether we are talking about health care, dental care or pharmacare, which we are going to keep working on, and whether we are talking about long-term, truly affordable housing or child care, which after 28 years of working on it the government finally did, all of these things are long-lasting. Tax credits do not do that. This idea of putting money back into people's pockets through tax credits actually dissolves things, which the Conservatives are trying to do right now. It dissolves the pension plans and dissolves programs like EI, but those are things that workers need. That is what long-term planning is about. We are in a series of crises now because there has not been that long-term planning.
I understand that is a difference we have between our parties. However, I would ask the member across the way if she is here to ultimately create something that will benefit all people equally, which social programs do.
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Mr. Speaker, I realize that it is not the member's position for Canadians to spend more of their money, to have Canadians with more of their money in their own pockets to make the best decisions for themselves, but there is no dental plan here.
Frankly, I would not want the member on my negotiating team, because she did not negotiate a dental plan. There is nothing in the legislation that she is suggesting is in the legislation.
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Mr. Speaker, what we have in Bill C-31 is in fact a path for the dental plan. We are talking about giving families whose incomes are less than $90,000 and do not have access to a dental care plan, with children under 12, that support. Next year, seniors and people with disabilities will also get it. People 18 and under will also get it until we get the full realization of the plan. I am sorry, but the member who says that this is not a dental care plan is simply wrong.
Why are the Conservatives so against people who need supports getting them? Why would they vote against children getting dental services that they desperately need?
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Mr. Speaker, the dental care plans for low-income families exist. They exist at 70% across most of the country. If the member opposite read the legislation, she would realize that there are no details in the bill and there is no dental care plan. I expect her to yell behind me, but that still does not change the fact that it is not there.
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- Oct/5/22 9:15:30 p.m.
- Watch
I see no one rising to speak.
I want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and a good riding week. Tomorrow I will be attending my son's graduation from Nova Scotia Community College as an LPN, and I want to wish him the best in his future career. I would also like to thank everybody for their interventions this evening.
There being no further members rising to speak, pursuant to order made earlier today, the debate is deemed adjourned and the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).
(The House adjourned at 9:16 p.m.)
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