44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 27, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, when I go door to door, people ask why they should vote. There is a lot of cynicism out there and people watch what they sometimes think is a gong show in Parliament. When we ask them what they need, we hear time and time again that people cannot afford to get their teeth fixed. There are seniors with serious teeth problems and young families that are not able to look after their children's teeth.
We made a promise that if we went back to this Parliament, we would get this done. Tonight, we are on the verge of the biggest new investment in federal health care since Tommy Douglas. This is extraordinary. This is actually about putting people first and putting the political antics to the back row, which is probably where the Conservatives belong because they are continuing with these antics.
I would like to ask my hon. colleague how significant he thinks it is that we can show people we can actually deliver something that will make a difference in their lives and the lives of their children.
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Madam Speaker, this is an excellent example where I could amplify what the member has so rightfully put on the record.
In the last federal election, it was a minority government. That means that for the Liberal Party to be able to get things through, such as Bill C-31, we need to have a partner. We need to have another opposition party to support us. As opposed to being strictly nothing but opposition and oppose everything, the NDP has identified goals on which it can work with the government and ultimately see things get through. Let there be no doubt that if it were not for the government, the Liberal Party, and the NDP, we would not be able to get Bill C-31 through.
That is delivering for Canadians. It is respecting what Canadians wanted in the last federal election, which is for parties to start working together to do things for Canadians. That is exactly what this bill would do.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague's discussion here today. I always learn something.
I am concerned. In Quebec, it is a bit different. We already have a dental care program. My constituents would be concerned about whether anything would be taken away from that dental care program. Would anything be taken away from the Canada child benefit? It is a tremendous investment in families in my riding. In being delivered to my constituents, is this program something that would have improvements in the future?
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Madam Speaker, it is an excellent question. For the member, in absolutely no way would this take away anything from the constituents whom she represents. The legislation would complement what is taking place in the province of Quebec. That is important to recognize. The second component of the legislation is the rental subsidy. I am sure the member is going to share with her constituents how this legislation overall would make a positive difference.
I appreciate the hard advocacy of the member for her constituents.
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Madam Speaker, I have a couple of concerns with this. One is that with the exception of a few of our Liberal colleagues who are here, this member of Parliament, our hon. colleague, has gotten up three times on this topic: triple, triple, triple.
I sit on the health committee and the concern I have is that we literally were given two hours to study a bill worth $10 billion. There were two hours for parliamentarians to study a bill worth $10 billion. I do not discount that Canadians are in need of some help because of the costly government. However, the other side likes to talk about working collaboratively. Those members have not worked collaboratively with the opposition. They have actually rammed this through. If anything, all 338 members of Parliament have been sent here to be the voices of Canadians.
Why does my hon. colleague feel it is important to ram a bill through that is worth $10 billion and will be on the backs of Canadians?
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Madam Speaker, the bill is a very costly bill, but we must realize that the money we are talking about is going into the pockets of Canadians. That is why it is a costly bill.
For the most part, the reason the committee was somewhat limited is that the Conservative Party did not want to give any indication in terms of passing the bill out of committee well before it was ultimately passed. If the Conservatives wanted to have more time for it in committee, then why did they not negotiate or at least allow Bill C-31 to pass second reading at an earlier time so there would have been more time for it to be debated in committee? They cannot have it both ways.
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Madam Speaker, a child in Quebec will receive about half of what a child outside Quebec will receive. There is considerable inequity. Why?
It is because we already pay for dental care in Quebec. Quebec taxpayers already pay once for children's dental care and they are going to pay a second time for the federal program, even though Quebec will only receive half the money handed out elsewhere. That is really inequitable.
We could have fixed this when this bill was being studied in committee. The government just bulldozed it through by imposing a super closure motion.
We could also have fixed the rental assistance component. Why is the government refusing to accommodate Quebec?
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Madam Speaker, there are some people who would like to sabotage the bill. I argue that there are thousands of people who move interprovincially every year. A child in Quebec today could be a child in Manitoba tomorrow, or vice versa. I would like a program to be there for all children in Canada, no matter where they live. That is what this legislation would do.
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- Oct/27/22 4:40:09 p.m.
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It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Spadina—Fort York, The Economy; the hon. member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship; the hon. member for Calgary Centre, The Economy.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise today to represent the constituents of Regina—Qu'Appelle in opposition to the bill that would add more inflationary fuel to the fire.
I caught the last few minutes of my hon. colleague's speech, the Liberal member for Winnipeg North, and I am astounded at how much he can get wrong in just a short 20-minute period of time. However, I give him full marks for efficiency. He crammed a lot of errors and misinformation into one 20-minute speech. I probably do not have enough time to address all of them in my speech because of the sheer volume of inaccuracies in his speech.
I will start by helping the hon. member understand what caused inflation, because that is what this bill is supposed to be about. It is supposed to help address the suffering of families who are experiencing the sticker shock every time they go into a grocery store, a hardware store or any other store they might have to buy goods or obtain services from. Prices they have been used to over the past few years are now much higher. We know the Prime Minister does not think about monetary policy. I am not sure if anybody else in the caucus does that the member leads, but I will help him understand what causes inflation.
The inflation that Canadians are suffering from is directly linked to the massive Liberal deficits that the government chose to run before the pandemic even started. Why do I say that? That is what the Bank of Canada admitted. The Bank of Canada, which is in charge of Canada's money supply, has acknowledged that it was the money creation that it embarked upon in March of 2020, just as the current government was racking up record-high deficits, the biggest deficits Canadians have ever seen. It was on its way to adding more to the national debt than every single other prime minister combined. The government added $500 billion to the national debt.
When the government spends more than it takes in, it has to borrow. It has to find someone who has money to lend to it. That is normally carried out during normal economic times by the bond market. Large investors buy government treasury bonds that are basically IOUs that the government writes after borrowing money from someone who has it and spending it with the promise to pay it back. It is that promise to pay it back with interest that is costing the Bank of Canada money now. As a little aside, the Bank of Canada is now actually losing money for the first time in Canadian history. This has never happened before. However, I will get back to that in a moment.
The government turned to the Bank of Canada and started floating these IOUs, these government bonds, and the Bank of Canada said it would buy the bonds the government was issuing with these massive deficits. The problem is that the Bank of Canada did not have anybody else's money. The Bank of Canada did not have lots of deposits from Canadians or deposits on account from financial institutions that it could use. When I say it did not have deposits, I mean it did not have any of its own money on deposit. It did not have some vaults of cash that it could buy those government bonds with.
What did it do? It had to create the money. It created that money right out of thin air. It exchanged the bonds that other institutions had bought, large profitable banks like the big five banks in Canada and other types of large financial institutions that have accounts with Canada's central bank. They bought the bonds from the federal government and sold them to the Bank of Canada in exchange for brand new money that had never existed before. With little ones and zeros and keyboard strokes, the Bank of Canada just dumped cash into those big banks and large financial institutions and then took those bonds in exchange. That is how the Canadian economy was flooded with over $400 billion of brand new money.
We have seen the effects of that, the Liberal government's trickle-down economics, where it pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the most wealthy and most profitable corporations in Canada: the big banks. It pushed that money through that system. The big winners, when it comes to this type of arrangement, is whoever gets the money first as there is a bit of a lag between rising prices and money creation, because the market has not yet learned that there is a whole bunch of new money chasing the same number of goods. The prices in the grocery store have not yet, at this point, started to go up, and the prices for commodities have not yet, at this point, started to go up.
Those large financial institutions, those massively profitable banks, got to buy up all these assets. They got to push that money through on everything from commodities to real estate to anything else we can imagine, while the prices were still low. They got the new money first, bought as much as they could, and that is when the prices started to rise.
By the time that new money hits Canadians' pockets, it is already too late. The prices at the grocery store have already skyrocketed. We have seen food inflation go over 8% for a couple of months now. The average inflation index, the CPI, has been hovering around 7% for several months now. By the time Canadians start to get the new money the government has created, the prices have already gone up, and that is when those big banks and financial institutions can sell. They make those massive profits on what they can buy low with newly created money and sell high after the inflationary effects are taken into account. That is why we saw record profits during and after the pandemic by Canada's largest banks.
This is the result of the Prime Minister's economic policy, allowing the richest and most profitable corporations in Canada to make even more money, while Canadians subsidize that profit through higher prices in the grocery store aisles. That is why these inflationary deficits are so devastating, and that is why Conservatives are opposed to new measures that force the government to borrow more money to pay for new spending. It is a little like a superficial treatment to a problem.
We can all think of examples of what might look like a course of action that would help with a problem but that actually makes the problem worse. We might have experienced in our lives and have seen public service videos about fire safety where they say to never pour water on a grease fire. However, we can imagine a young child perhaps or someone who was never educated along the lines of fire safety seeing a fire, and we are all taught from a very young age that water beats fire. We put out fires with water, and we always keep a bucket of water if we are having a campfire and things like that. We all understand that. We see pictures of firefighters putting out fires with big hoses of water.
We can imagine someone about to dump water on a grease fire, thinking that they are helping, but we all know what will actually happen. We have to resist the temptation to apply a superficial antidote to a problem. We all know on this side of the House that instead of pouring water on that fire, we have to treat it in other ways. We have to put a lid on that fire and remove it from the heating element. There are others ways to tackle that fire rather than making it worse.
A thirsty person might look at an ocean shore and think, “Boy, I'm so thirsty, I'm going to go down and take a nice long drink of water.” As Homer Simpson taught us, “Water, water everywhere, so let's all have a drink,” but that is not actually how the poem goes. It is “Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink,” because ocean water makes thirst worse. However, that is what we are seeing with this Liberal government bill.
The member for Winnipeg North gave a speech pretending and trying to convince Canadians that this would help, that while prices are going up in many aspects of their lives, the government is coming along with a way to reduce some costs for them. Where are they going to get the money for that? They are going to have to borrow more money to pay for that, so any benefit that any Canadian might hope to receive under the government's plan that we are debating today will evaporate because of the effects of this new government plan.
In other words, the government is trying to convince us that a government program will help alleviate the problems caused by government programs, and that is where Conservatives come along because we take a more comprehensive look at issues.
The Liberals and their allies in the costly coalition, the NDP who are pushing all this new spending and working hand-in-hand with the government to drive up the costs of living with higher spending and more borrowing to pay for it, is where this is coming from. That costly coalition's approach is always very superficial. We can make the comparison to candy before supper. There is a problem, so here is a simplistic solution: We are just going to have a new government program to dole out more money.
Conservatives understand that we have to treat the fundamental issues that caused it first. We would be doing Canadians a far greater service, including low-income Canadians who are being hit hardest by inflation, if we came to this place every day trying to reduce the cost of government, looking for ways to reduce spending and cutting out inefficiencies, like the half a billion dollars the government tried to give to its friends at the WE organization or the $54 million for the arrive scam app that did not work, was not needed and could have been designed and programmed in a weekend for a fraction of the $54 million taxpayers had to pay for it. The Prime Minister might have looked at ways to visit London where he did not have to charge $6,000 a night for a single room. Those would be the types of things.
We could all come together and every member of Parliament could go back to their offices tonight and scroll through the public accounts, which were just tabled this morning. We could all put our collective heads together to look for ways we could eliminate wasteful spending and bring down that cost of government, so that the government could pay back those IOUs, retire those bonds and take that brand new created money that is floating in the system out of the system to return it back to normal, where that money is backed up by real economic activity and not just ones and zeroes on the computer terminals at the Bank of Canada.
If we did that, we would put a lot more purchasing power back in the hands of Canadians who have worked so hard to earn it. That is why they call inflation the hidden tax, the most insidious tax of all. When the government raises a tax rate, it has to do it in the House for all to see. It has to bring forward a motion or a bill to raise those taxes, opposition parties hold it to account and every Canadian has an elected representative who can vote yes or no, based on that proposal.
However, when the government causes inflation through the Bank of Canada by forcing the bank to purchase those government bonds, there is no vote in the House, there is no debate and there is no accountability. Not any one of us got to read the proposal, make a decision and vote based on our constituents, and our constituents cannot hold us to account because none of that ever took place. It just happens. It happens because those powerful unaccountable officials just made a decision one day, and that is why Conservatives are opposed to this legislation, knowing it would make the problem worse.
There are other ways the government could tackle the cost of living crisis. This opposition has proposed a very concrete proposal, which we should be debating today instead of a bill that would add more borrowing costs on the government and, therefore, lead to even worse inflation.
We are about to head into the winter months, and many Canadians are already getting a taste of what those home heating costs are going to look like over the next few months. I want to take a few moments right now to inform members that the higher costs that Canadians are about to get hit with, and some have already started to experience, are not some accidental outcomes from government policies. These are not unintended consequences. It is not like the government was trying to do something and accidentally caused home energy costs to rise.
This is a feature of the NDP and Liberal coalition's plan to make home heating costs more expensive. They want Canadians to pay more for filling up their tanks and for heating their homes. Members do not have to take my word for it. They have admitted it. They have built a fake environmental policy around the idea of making Canadians pay more for fuelling their cars, for purchasing goods that have to be transported to Canada and for the crime of heating their homes in the winter.
That is what they want. They want Canadians to feel pain when it comes to those types of goods. They admit it. It is in the rationale for the carbon tax. Here is the thing: The carbon tax is not working. Canadians are getting all of the pain and none of the environmental gain. The government has not hit a single target it has set for itself. The people who are concerned about climate change the most should be opposed to the carbon tax the most, because the government has gone all in on a failed policy that, for seven years now, has been proven not to work.
That is why the official opposition and Conservative members of Parliament have been working so hard, since this fall sitting began, to convince the government to do no further harm when it comes to borrowing and spending and driving up inflation, to control some of the things it can control and to cancel the planned tax hikes.
The government's plan is to triple the carbon tax. The member for Winnipeg North might like to make jokes about the Tim Hortons double double, but there is a reason we are highlighting it and a reason we want Canadians to understand. It is because it is already hard enough to make ends meet for the vast majority of Canadians. We are hearing really shocking stats. Canada is a G7 developed country, and 1.5 million people visited a food bank last month. That is unbelievable.
It is a record high. It has gone up 15%. There have been 15% more visits to food banks last month than the month before. It is Canadians who are working, who have two jobs in some cases, and those in double-income households. Because they have to pay more for their mortgage as interest rates go up and costs are higher at the grocery store, they now have to turn to charity at food banks just to be able to feed their children.
What else is very alarming is that food banks are running out too, because Canadians have fewer goods to donate to the food banks. That is the thing about Liberal-NDP coalition economic policies. They lead to scarcity.
When Conservatives are in government, we lower the cost of government. We leave more money in the economy and more money in the pockets of hard-working Canadians, and that does more good for low-income Canadians, because there are more jobs to fill and there is more opportunity. When Canadians have more at the end of the month, they can make decisions to be charitable. They can fill up those shelves at the food banks so that the less fortunate have more choice, more options and more support when they need it.
NDP and Liberal policies that drive up the cost of fuel, home heating and other essentials and chase away jobs and investment mean there is less at the end of the month for Canadian families to donate to charities, so those families who do need it have less.
That is the constant and unblemished record of failure of the government and its failed policies. That is why Conservatives are fighting this instead of voting in favour of a bill that would just add to the cost of government, leaving Canadians with a situation in which the government has to go out and borrow more, paying higher interest rates.
I mentioned at the beginning of my speech how the Bank of Canada is losing money for the first time in Canadian history. This is the perverse outcome of the bond purchase program the Bank of Canada initiated to help pay for the government deficits. When it bought the bonds, the Bank of Canada bought them at very low rates. The Bank of Canada had lowered its overnight rates as low as 50 basis points; it was down to 0.5%. The interest the government had to pay on the bonds the Bank of Canada holds was at 0.5%.
Let us remember that the way it bought those bonds was by putting large deposits into the bank accounts of the large financial institutions. For example, TD Bank and CIBC have accounts at the Bank of Canada, and there are deposits in those accounts for the bonds the bank sold to the Bank of Canada. As interest rates rise, the Bank of Canada has to pay more interest to those large financial institutions than the government pays the Bank of Canada in interest. That is unbelievable.
This is a direct transfer of wealth: Hard-working taxpayers pay money to the government; the government then turns around and pays the Bank of Canada interest, and the Bank of Canada does not have enough, so it is going to lose money. I believe it has indicated that it expects to lose about $4 billion this year. That is from the bank's website. If the member for Winnipeg North thinks I should not believe everything I read on the bank's website, he should maybe call his friend, Tiff Macklem, and ask him to be a little more accurate.
The question for the government is, is it going to have to bail out the Bank of Canada with taxpayers' money? After taking taxpayers' money to pay interest on the bonds it sold, it will now have to underwrite the difference that the Bank is paying out to other large banks. If we follow the logic here, basically the government is going to have to underwrite the deficits that the Bank of Canada is racking up due to its own deficit spending. It is a triple insult to Canadians, when we look at all the interest that is being paid.
I will close by urging my colleagues on all sides of the House to stop digging when they are in a hole and to not pour water on that grease fire. Let us have no more inflationary spending that will make the problem even worse.
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Madam Speaker, there are so many questions I would love to be able to ask the opposition House leader, but, due to time limitations, let me take advantage of his economic analysis and ask him to reflect on countries like the United States and England and many European countries, where the inflation rate is higher than it is here in Canada.
Would he draw the same sorts of conclusions, given that some in the western world have taken the ideas from Canada and others? Why do they have the inflation rates they have? Did they have bad policies too?
Why do they have the inflation rate there? Perhaps he could use his same principled economic analysis system.
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Madam Speaker, I do not know if the member for Winnipeg North's mother ever used the expression, “Just because someone's friends go jump off a bridge does not mean they should too.”
It is true. There are other countries that have inflation. They followed the same failed policies the government did. There are lots of times in human history when there seem to be a lot of people making the same mistakes. That does not make it right. To the Canadian who is going through the grocery store aisle and buying things we make here in Canada at inflated prices, it is no comfort to know that other countries are paying higher prices too.
Other countries made the same mistakes. They printed money. They have inflation. Some countries did not print money to pay for their spending. Some countries, like Switzerland, maintained fiscal discipline, and that is why they are not experiencing inflation. That is the reason other countries—
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- Oct/27/22 5:02:39 p.m.
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The hon. member for Mirabel.
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Madam Speaker, we had a good, constructive opposition day this week. Throughout the day, both Liberal and Conservative members told us that there was no time to talk about such important issues in the House.
I would like to ask the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle if he believes that the fact that the Liberals and the NDP tripled the number of closure motions in the House leaves us more time to debate such important issues as the monarchy.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoy debating philosophical aspects.
I really enjoy esoteric philosophy-based discussions. I studied political science, and it is always interesting to talk about the best way to build a government and have a debate, perhaps over a glass of wine after dinner. However, I am sure that Canadians are more concerned about what their money can buy than they are about whose face is on it.
I basically agree with the member about government motions. We have had a few motions and bills that have nothing to do with the cost of living crisis.
I hope the government will present real solutions.
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Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague from Regina—Qu'Appelle. I did not hear, in his speech, any mention of dental care.
I imagine this is because he does not, in fact, support the idea of expanding universal health care to include care for people's teeth. I appreciate an honest disagreement as much as the next guy.
My question is around consistency. Through much of his remarks, he talked about his view that the government should not be providing directed financial relief to the people hardest hit by this crisis, because, in his view, it is inflationary.
Why, then, did he vote for Bill C-30, given that the measures in Bill C-30 are very similar to the relief measures in Bill C-31? The money all comes from the same place. I think people appreciate consistency more than anything. Perhaps he could explain.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to do that. There is a big difference between lowering the tax burden on Canadians and new spending. It is as simple as that.
I just want to take issue with one of the major principles with the far left these days and this idea that the government has a big pile of cash and all we are really doing is fighting over how to spend it.
The government does not have a dollar that it does not first take out of the economy, that it does not first take out of someone's pocket.
Is the hon. member comfortable saddling Canadians with more financial burdens and higher costs of government? That cost, the cost for this program, has to be paid for by taxpayers. It adds to the inflation crisis, because the government has to first borrow to pay for it.
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Madam Speaker, I know my hon. colleague from Regina—Qu'Appelle well, and I was in this place and certainly a close watcher of the Harper administration for years. I would like to put to the member that if Stephen Harper had been prime minister at the beginning of the COVID outbreak, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have done exactly the same things the Liberal government did. That is because every economy and central bank throughout the G20 followed the same prescription. It was dictated to us through the International Monetary Fund. I urge the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle to check the June 17, 2020 report of the IMF. The central banks throughout the G20 followed all the same prescriptions: low interest rates and fiscal quantitative easing. Any member of the public can check it out.
The reasons for Switzerland's not having high inflation have nothing to do with what the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle said. The reasons have a lot to do with the fact that before the war in Ukraine the cost of living in Switzerland was already 51% higher than in Germany, because it has a very regulated economy. It has renewable energy locked in and high electricity prices.
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Madam Speaker, unfortunately I will not have enough time to point out all the errors that the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands just made in her statement.
I have here the “Economic and Fiscal Update 2021: Issues for Parliamentarians”, from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. While there is no doubt that a Conservative government would have found ways to support Canadians through an unprecedented pandemic, there are lots of ways that governments can do it without running the printing presses at the central bank.
I just want to read a very important stat from the report: “[S]ince the start of the pandemic, the Government has spent, or has planned to spend, $541.9 billion in new measures...of which [$176 billion] is not part of the COVID-19 Response Plan.
That is the major point here. Yes, there was a pandemic. Yes, there were unprecedented actions that governments had to take. However, there were lots of things along the way that the government did not have to do. The Liberal government chose to use the pandemic to try to enrich its friends at the WE organization. It chose to use the pandemic to give contracts out to former Liberal MPs. It chose to use the pandemic to create—
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- Oct/27/22 5:08:29 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands.
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