44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 18, 2022 10:00AM
- Oct/18/22 2:19:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the cost of government is increasing the cost of living. The wasted $500-billion money-printing inflationary deficit is driving up the cost of the goods we purchase and the interest we pay. Inflationary taxes are making it more expensive for our businesses and workers to produce these goods and services. Next year, Canadians will be paying $3,000 per family because of this inflation caused by the Prime Minister.
When will he reverse his inflationary policies?
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- Oct/18/22 2:30:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Prime Minister, Canadians are sinking faster than ever as well, and as Canadians prepare for a harsh winter, Liberal inflation has driven up food, gas and utility costs for struggling families. The Ontario Energy Board estimates that natural gas prices are rising 153% just this month. Families across Canada could see gas bills rise anywhere from 50% to 300%, and it is all because of these failed Liberal energy policies.
Will the Prime Minister do the right thing, end his plan to further punish Canadians for necessities and cancel the tripling of the carbon tax?
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Mr. Speaker, let me start by congratulating the member for Calgary Forest Lawn on his new role as Conservative finance critic. I am sure we will disagree about many things, but I also do believe there are issues where we will find common ground.
One good example is Bill C-30, which would provide inflation relief payments to 11 million Canadian households. Thanks to unanimous support in the House, including from the Conservatives, I am very hopeful that bill will receive royal assent very soon.
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- Oct/18/22 2:32:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Liberal inflation is vaporizing any supports they could even come close to giving, and the carbon tax will never be high enough for the costly coalition. In Calgary, the average gas bill is $170 a month, but because of failed Liberal policies, it could be anywhere from $300 to even more than $500 after the price increase. When the Prime Minister triples the carbon tax, it alone could make up 60% of heating bills.
When will the Prime Minister finally stop draining Canadians' bank accounts and cancel the tripling of the carbon tax?
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- Oct/18/22 2:33:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a bit rich to hear the Liberals blaming foreign oligarchs for attacking the Canadian energy sector. Every day we hear heartbreaking stories of Canadians struggling with the cost of living crisis caused by the Prime Minister's policies. Liberal inflation is forcing people to cut back on groceries, with many having to turn to food banks for the first time ever. Canadians are stretched beyond their limits.
Will the Prime Minister finally do the decent thing and end his plan to triple taxes on gas, groceries and home heating?
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- Oct/18/22 2:36:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what the Liberals fail to understand is that the Liberal carbon tax is having a real and direct impact on the rate of inflation. Winter is coming. What does that mean for Canadian families? It means that heating costs will go up. It means that transportation costs will go up and, as a result, the cost of food will go up. All three are basic necessities for Canadian families. The Liberal government refused to cut taxes.
Does the Prime Minister realize that his actions are contributing to inflation?
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- Oct/18/22 2:37:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we should have done what every G7 country has done, that is, lower taxes. Only Canada under this government has refused to lower taxes. To stand alone like that suggests that the others may be right and we are wrong. Every G7 country, even the U.S. under Biden, the Prime Minister's friend, has lowered certain taxes. This government has refused to do the same.
Why is the government refusing to lower taxes, which is contributing to rising inflation?
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- Oct/18/22 3:04:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our government understands very well that many Canadians are struggling with affordability and the cost of living. That is the reality. That is why I am very pleased that all members of the House have decided to unanimously support our plan to deliver inflation relief payments. It was a significant moment.
The time has come to take the next step together and deliver the housing and dental care payments.
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- Oct/18/22 3:05:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, northerners are facing unaffordable gas, groceries and home heating bills. I was in Inuvik recently, and two and a half litres of orange juice was over $21, ground beef was over $16 a kilogram and Kraft Dinner was over three dollars a box. Liberal inflation and carbon taxes are already punishing northerners and it will soon be impossible for them to afford it.
On behalf of all northerners, will the Prime Minister end his plan to triple taxes on gas, groceries and home heating?
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Uqaqtittiji, the NDP has been supportive of the bill because it has been made obvious that there are gaps in the dental care program. This bill attempts to fill some of those gaps.
Why, during this time of inflation, when families are forced to make difficult choices as to what they can afford for their dental care needs, which is an essential part of their overall health, do the Conservatives continue to play with these delay tactics?
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Madam Speaker, as I outlined in my speech, there have only been 11 and a half hours of debate for a bill that will effectively cost taxpayers $10 billion. When I was debating Bill C-31 last week, I outlined some of the work from every big bank in Canada that talked about the inflationary impact of further spending right now.
If the government continues to spend money, the people who are going to be impacted the most are low-income Canadians. We need to get a handle on our spending right now to prevent further inflation and a further demise of the spending power of low-income Canadians, who are struggling the most.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this House to speak to this important piece of legislation on behalf of the citizens of Vancouver Granville. This piece of legislation, which deals directly with measures related to dental care and housing, is going to provide immediate support to families across the country.
We have all talked about the fact that the global economy is facing serious challenges, which are causing real impacts here at home and around the world. Whether or not members want to believe it, inflation is in fact a global phenomenon. It has been caused by COVID-19, Putin's illegal and unjustifiable war on Ukraine and a variety of other factors. Life is getting more expensive and all of our constituents are hurting. Families are feeling the effects when they go to buy groceries and other staples.
In my riding of Vancouver Granville, affordability and the rising cost of living are top of mind. That is why the crucial supports needed in Bill C-31 will provide much-needed relief to Canadians now and will help ensure a healthy future for tomorrow.
Our government has put forward a concrete plan to make life more affordable and help my community and communities like it across the country get through these tough times. This bill, as we know, establishes two cost of living relief measures and provides crucial assistance to those who need it the most: first, through the creation of a new Canada dental benefit, and second, by providing a direct federal Canada housing benefit top-up payment of $500 to eligible renters who are struggling with the cost of housing.
We know that oral health is an important marker of overall health and that access to good dental care is essential, but one-third of Canadians do not have dental insurance, unlike everyone in this room, and one in five Canadians reported avoiding dental care because of the cost. When we talk about meaningfully addressing affordability, ensuring accessibility to quality dental care is important. It is important not just because of the long-term benefit to our health care system, but because poor oral health in kids has an impact on their future. I became a dad recently, so for me, children's health, and in particular dental care, is top of mind.
Here are some facts that we do not often want to talk about. Children with poor oral health are three times more likely to miss school as a result of dental pain. Absences caused by pain were associated with poorer school performance, but absences for routine care were not.
This has longer-term impacts on children, and here is some very boring scientific information. Sometimes we need to hear the facts behind why some things matter, and here are some of those facts. Bacteria that is trapped by plaque travels to major organs like the brain. Rather than focusing on growth and development, kids who do not have access to good dental care end up having consequences when the brain is battling inflammation. Oral health has an indirect impact on kids’ cardiovascular health. Kids with poor dental care who participate in sports and other activities will likely also suffer poor performance in sports. We also know that high levels of disease-causing bacteria in the mouth put children at a higher risk of clogging of the arterial wall and higher blood pressure.
That is a lot of information about dental care, something we probably do not talk a lot about in this House, but if we actually care about children, and the facts and the consequences, these should be reasons enough. No price should be too high to protect a child’s health and development.
The Canada dental benefit would provide dental care for families without insurance and an annual income of less than $90,000, starting with children under 12 this year. That means up to $650 per child under 12 tax-free. That is immediate financial relief to low- and middle-income families right now. Through this benefit, parents would be able to make sure their kids can see a dentist, prevent oral health problems from developing and address dental care needs sooner rather than later. This is another necessary step toward establishing a robust, sustainable long-term dental care program for all.
What I fail to understand is why anyone in the House would not support this measure. We all have the data that shows that dental care is critical to long-term health, preventing everything from heart disease to cancer and from dementia to kidney disease. If the Conservatives care about the fiscal bottom line, if not the health of Canadians, then this should appeal to them because good dental care in kids saves money for the health care system in the long term.
The Conservatives often tell us that this would be bad for the economy, but this morning the CEO of the Pacific Blue Cross, one of the biggest insurers in British Columbia, was in my office. He was unequivocal in his support for dental care for kids because he knows that it makes good economic sense. Preventative care saves money in the long term and it makes for healthier citizens. At a time when we all acknowledge that we must safeguard the resilience of our health care system, we must also realize that dental care will help support the long term viability of our health care system and, indeed, the health care indicators of all Canadians.
I want to turn to the second crucial component of this legislation, the housing top-up. Housing is where we continue the traditions of our past and plan our futures. Everyone deserves a safe and affordable place to call home. That is why we have made and continue to make historic investments to rapidly create more affordable housing. Our $72-billion national housing strategy, launched in 2017, and the $1.4-billion investment in housing in budget 2022 will go a long way to addressing some of the obstacles faced on the path to home ownership. This is a long-term strategy for the future.
However, at the same time, renters are facing increasing challenges today. From finding a safe place to call home to the high cost of living, affordable housing is becoming less and less attainable, and we need to step up now.
We know that those struggling with the cost of rent need targeted action immediately, and through this bill we are doing just that. By investing $1.2 billion to provide a direct federal Canada housing benefit top-up payment of $500, 1.8 million renters struggling with housing costs will receive assistance. This support is in addition to the $4 billion already invested to provide an average of $2,500 in direct financial assistance with the cost of rent through the existing Canada housing benefit. Crucially, this one-time top-up will not reduce other federal income-tested benefits, such as the Canada child benefit, the GST credit and the guaranteed income supplement.
Other key components of our plan to make housing more affordable include measures to double housing construction over the next decade, helping people save for and buy their first home and banning foreign ownership.
These are challenging times for everyone, but our actions now will undoubtedly define what our future looks like. By working together to make life more affordable for families and make sure kids get the dental care they need and by alleviating the cost of living, we are taking the steps necessary to be there for Canadians when they need the support most.
These are important priorities for our government, and I want to take this moment to acknowledge the hard work done by the member for Vancouver Kingsway in his advocacy on dental care for many years. Perhaps this could be the time that all of us in this House come together and vote to give Canadians the supports they need.
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Madam Speaker, let me begin by saying that I will be splitting my time with the member for Peace River—Westlock.
This motion and the underlying Bill C-31 are effectively an admission of failure by the Liberal government when it comes to the economy and fighting inflation. To be very clear, Bill C-31 is setting up a national dental care program focused on children; it also provides for 500 dollars' worth of rent relief, which does not go very far nowadays in most of our cities. That is what this does.
I want to focus on the term “relief”. Why is relief even required in the first place? Something went wrong in the economy, so that the government decided, “Listen, we are going to have to borrow more money and send out cheques, because Canadians are suffering and falling behind.”
Why are they falling behind? There is a very clear reason. Inflation is rampant. The government did not get hold of the problem of inflation in a timely way.
I will be the first to recognize that there are different things that have affected the inflationary pressures within Canada. We know the global community has suffered from a COVID pandemic, which has disrupted everything in our lives. Our lives have been changed, actually, forever by the COVID pandemic. A pandemic had not been experienced for over 100 years, and suddenly it was at our doorstep.
Sure, that contributes to inflationary factors. Supply chain disruptions that occurred, the war in Ukraine and weather-related challenges, whether they are drought and famine, storms and hurricanes, or heat domes in British Columbia, all contribute to inflation.
However, there is one big factor that is very clearly in the control of the Liberal government, and that is its spending and its borrowing.
Here is a factoid that a lot of Canadians are not aware of. Are members aware that over the last seven short years, the Liberal government has spent more money than all previous governments in Canadian history combined? That's going back from 1867 all the way to 2015. The Liberal government, in the subsequent seven years, has spent more money than all of those governments combined. Now we know there is a problem.
Some of that money was required to support Canadians in their time of need during the COVID pandemic. That was a crisis that required a government response, but much of that spending was not actually COVID-related. We know that because the Parliamentary Budget Officer said so.
The spending this government did has now accumulated a national debt somewhere in the order of $1.5 trillion. If the spending that has brought us to that point, much of which was not COVID-related, was effectively money that was pumped into the economy, then more dollars are chasing the same number of goods and services, and that drives inflation. Every credible economist will tell us that. If a nation's productivity is not improving, which in Canada it is not, but it is pumping more liquidity into the marketplace, that is going to drive inflation.
I challenge the government to show me the steps it has taken to discipline and to restrain spending, and the borrowing that was required to sustain that spending, much of which was not COVID-related.
That is the first challenge I throw out to my Liberal friends. I ask them to explain to me where the plan is to control spending, that reckless spending that has taken place. Also, by the way, where is the plan to return to balanced budgets? Where is the plan to start repaying that massive debt that we have accumulated over the last few Liberal years? I ask them to explain to me how they justify to future generations of Canadians this massive debt, in an environment of increasing taxes and increasing interest rates, that their children and grandchildren are going to have to repay. I cannot defend that to my children. I cannot.
What is even worse is that much of this COVID spending, the amount that was invested in relief and support programs, came through programs like CERB. They were poorly designed, so yes, fraud took place, much more fraud than should have taken place. The programs were designed in such a way that people who did not need the support got the support. I can speak from personal experience. I have had constituents come into my office to tell me they applied for some of the benefits, such as that loan program of $60,000 that they did not actually need, and that now they have to pay only $40,000 back, because $20,000 is forgiven. They asked why they would not apply for it if they qualified.
Why did Canadian businesses and individuals who actually did not need them receive benefits during the COVID pandemic? During the COVID pandemic, because people had to stay at home, some businesses catered specifically to that kind of situation and made a ton of money. They had never made profits like that before, yet they applied for these benefits and received them from the Liberal government. That is a failure.
Then there is a question that has to be asked about a government that cannot fix its passport system, a government that cannot deliver passports on time, a government that botches the ArriveCAN app and pays $54 million for that app when the private sector says it should not have cost more than $1.5 million or $2 million, and a government that came up with the failed Canada Infrastructure Bank and the CERB program. I could go on and on about these programs that were absolute failures and that the government could not deliver in an efficient and accountable manner. How is it that the government now expects to roll out a $10-billion national dental care program? Nobody in this country trusts the government to manage that, to do it in a coherent and accountable way.
Bill C-31 is effectively a band-aid solution to an underlying problem that is much more significant, which is a failure of the Liberal government to address the underlying causes of inflation. Effectively, Bill C-31 camouflages the real problem, which is incompetence on the part of the government on the economic file, its inability to understand that it needs to control its wild borrowing and spending because that is what is driving inflation, at least in part.
I will be fair, as I said at the beginning. Some of the influences on inflation are not within Canada's control, but a very significant component is, which is its spending. My challenge to the Liberal government is to get its borrowing and spending under control. Then it might gain some credibility with Canadians when it rolls out these expensive programs, multi-billion dollar programs that are going to saddle future generations with permanent obligations. It should not do that to future generations. Canadians expect better.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a comment through you. I know that the parties are usually in caucus on Wednesday morning, tomorrow. I have a bit of a special request for the Conservative Party. Since we are talking about economic issues, for the mental health and well-being of the rest of the House, I would ask that the Conservatives stop saying “triple, triple, triple the tax”. It may have been funny the first 350 times, but now it is just “annoying, annoying, annoying”.
That said, I have a question for my colleague. Our colleague made a comment a few months ago suggesting that some of the ideas proposed by his future leader, particularly related to Bitcoin or firing the top executives at the central bank, were absurd, to say the least. We know that the fight against inflation is important to him.
What does he think of his leader's suggestions now?
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Mr. Speaker, what our leader, the Leader of the Opposition, has been speaking about is inflation. He has been speaking about taxes. He has been speaking about the cost of living and affordability of housing, all of the things that matter to Canadians. That is what he has been speaking to in the House, and I have been here for every single meeting.
The biggest challenge facing Canada today is the affordability crisis, where Canadians are having to make the choice between groceries and putting fuel in their cars or between sending their kids to ballet lessons and paying for rent. Those are decisions we should never have to foist on Canadians, yet it is the Liberal government's irresponsible approach to borrowing and spending that has brought us to this point. As I mentioned earlier, we can do better.
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Madam Speaker, people on Vancouver Island do not want to see the carbon tax triple in terms of what we are having over the course of the next little while.
What I will say about this is that we are in this cost of living crisis, in the name of that bill, because of the spending habits of the Liberals and New Democrats for the past seven and eight years and it is only going to get worse. We are in this crisis and we are in this problem because we have two parties working together that do not care about balancing a budget or our economy or managing it. They are printing new money. They are adding debt and deficit, and they are leaving it to future people to actually pay the bill. Every single dollar of this program is going on a credit card. It is driving inflation and it is driving the very problem we are facing in this House of 40-year-high inflation and no date and no timeline to ever balance the budget again. The Liberals will just leave that for people in a good strong Conservative government to finally fix when we get around to it.
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