44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 16, 2022 02:00PM
- Nov/16/22 2:39:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, according to a recent Canadian Federation of Independent Business, or CFIB, survey, 94% of businesses in Canada and Quebec say that price increases are related to the cost of transportation and fuel. Furthermore, 80% of businesses say that government costs such as fees and permits have driven prices up significantly.
CFIB members' first recommendation to the Prime Minister is to stop the carbon tax increase. That is what the CFIB says, and we agree.
Will the Prime Minister commit to not increasing the carbon tax?
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- Nov/16/22 2:41:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is one thing the Canadian Federation of Independent Business is calling for, but there are other things as well. Are members aware that of the 4% of SMEs with an average debt of $150,000, 78% are experiencing persistent stress and 17% are thinking of closing permanently?
Small and medium-sized businesses are the heart of the Canadian economy, and they are clearly asking the Prime Minister to not increase Canada pension plan premiums and EI premiums, as well as other planned federal tax hikes.
Will the Prime Minister listen to Quebec entrepreneurs and businesses? Will he listen to them?
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Mr. Speaker, I am here to talk about the fall economic statement, which was presented last week.
For the past seven long years, the Liberals, with the shameful complicity of the NDP, have succeeded in breaking the spirit and morale of Canadians by making them poorer than they have ever been in the history of our country. When asked if I would like to share my thoughts on the fall economic statement, I did not think twice.
As members of Parliament, we are well positioned to see what is actually happening on the ground, and I wonder why the members opposite do not see how people are suffering, as we do on our side. When the Minister of Finance says that cancelling a Disney+ subscription is a good option to reduce the debt burden and make ends meet at the end of the month, it is clear that the Liberals are totally out of touch with reality.
I will give some examples. When the Liberals came to power in 2015, a litre of gas cost $1. Now, on average, it costs $1.67. This does not even take into account the increases that are expected in the new year, when this Prime Minister raises the carbon tax for a third time.
In 2015, the average price of a house in Canada was close to $300,000. Today, the average price of a house is over $746,000. This is 40% more expensive than in the United States. The Prime Minister has said he does not think about monetary policy all that much, and I have a feeling the Minister of Finance does not either. The economic update released by the Liberal-NDP coalition does not address the cost of living crisis created by government spending, which is out of control. The Prime Minister's inflationary deficits have driven up the price of groceries, gas and home heating. Canadians have never paid more in taxes than under this Prime Minister.
To reduce the cost of living in Canada, the Conservatives had two clear requirements. It was not complicated. First, we implored the government to not create any new taxes. We asked it to cancel all planned tax hikes and to not triple the carbon tax. Second, we warned the Liberals that they had to stop all new spending or ensure that any new spending was matched dollar for dollar in savings. In other words, to spend a dollar, they would have to save a dollar. What was so complicated about the Conservative Party's requests for this economic update? Nothing, it was just common sense.
I cannot show the document that I have with me, but we saw in this economic update that none of the Conservative Party's demands were met. For that reason, we cannot support this inflationary update.
The Liberals claim that they had no other choice than to double the debt. They have accumulated more debt than all previous prime ministers combined. Let us recall the 2015 election campaign. The Prime Minister, who was then the leader of the Liberal Party, said that the Liberals would have a small deficit of $10 billion the first year in office and another the second year. After that, they would balance the budget. They promised to make massive investments in the country's infrastructure.
It was a good marketing strategy. They promised to run up a deficit to invest money, and people thought that it might not be such a crazy idea. We all saw what happened. After their first four years in office, they had accumulated $100 billion in additional debt and no major infrastructure project had gotten off the ground in Canada. We fell for it from the beginning.
Then, the Prime Minister tried to make us believe that all of the spending in the past two years was related to the pandemic. However, today, we know that 40% of the new measures were not. We are talking about $205 billion. The Parliamentary Budget Officer did a study that showed that $300 billion of the $500 billion was used to implement pandemic-related measures. There again, we could look into all of that spending because there was no reason for some of it. Regardless, we know that, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer's assessment, $205 billion in spending had nothing to do with the pandemic. What is worse, we do not know what that money was used for. Half a trillion dollars was spent in two years on top of the government's usual spending.
How did we get into this mess? The inflation rate is so insanely high that interest rates had to be pushed up to control it. Meanwhile, ordinary people are being bled dry.
Additional costs are related to things such as houses and mortgages. People with variable mortgages get hit first. Every time the interest rate rises, their mortgage interest rate goes up. The principal does not change, but the interest rate jumps.
People who have to renew their mortgage these days will have to pay an average of $7,000 more in interest per year for an average family. That is a chunk of change.
Our friends across the way used to love talking about how they were working for the middle class and the people who wanted to be part of it. What we have seen in recent years is the opposite of that. They have made the middle class poorer, not richer, and people are ending up in financial trouble.
The Bank of Canada announced that it had no choice but to raise the interest rate in an attempt to fight inflation driven by inflationary measures. That will make things even worse for people.
There was nothing in the fall economic update suggesting the government plans to do anything to keep all that under control. The only thing on the agenda is taxes, taxes and more taxes. We have been talking about the carbon tax for two months now.
Yesterday, I was pleased to see a report by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which polled businesses across the country. One of the main conclusions is that the businesses confirm that the carbon tax is a major problem for transportation. All the costs associated with that are causing prices to go up and the consumer is left paying the bill. The CFIB is asking on behalf of its members to not increase the carbon tax. The Conservative Party is not making this up. Businesses across the country are saying that this absurd and that it needs to stop.
I am not even talking about food banks. Last month, there were 1.5 million visits to the country's food banks in just one month. That is a record number of food bank visits in the history of Canada.
I have endless examples, but the main thing I want people to remember from my remarks today is that ultimately, this economic update, which is about 100 pages long, simply repeats measures that were voted on last fall. There is nothing really new here. The Conservative Party's simple demands, which we know were backed by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, were not considered. Furthermore, the Parliamentary Budget Officer's assessments confirm what we are saying.
We are not making things up just so we can make speeches and blather on. We are stating economic realities that are easy to understand. Canadians who have to pay the bills at the end of the month understand this full well. They look to their government, which does not seem to get it. People are looking to their MPs and asking them what is going on and what they can do to help the economy make a smart recovery. That is our job.
The Conservatives are in opposition for now, but not for very long. We do not know how much longer we will be in opposition, but as long as we are, we will make sure Canadians know we are asking the right questions and making the right recommendations to the government to build a good, strong economy so that people can get up in the morning feeling happy to go to work and knowing they have enough money to treat themselves once in a while, not wondering if they will have enough money to pay the bills at the end of the month even though they have a job.
There was nothing new in the fall economic update. Nothing has changed, and that is very disappointing.
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Madam Speaker, we are against it because these are inflationary measures. Even Mark Carney said that Canada's inflation is domestically generated.
As long as we are comparing ourselves to other countries, why not compare ourselves to countries such as Switzerland that do not have inflation?
Should the government copy countries that are not handling things well, that are taking insignificant measures and creating problems? The answer is no. We should do what needs to be done for Canada here in Canada.
If we cannot stop inflationary measures, we will end up in a vicious cycle, with Canadians getting poorer and poorer.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his many questions.
We definitely need to find savings. Over the past two years, at least $205 billion has been spent on who knows what. Imagine all the auditing that needs to be done.
I do not think that getting out of energy production is a good idea. We would end up buying foreign energy, which we are already doing too much of.
Instead, we should be self-reliant, consume Canadian energy and get organized. Our energy is the greenest in the world. Why consume foreign energy? Why invest in buying energy from other countries, corrupt countries, when we have everything we need here at home?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.
There is a balance to everything. There needs to be balance when it comes to taxes, both for individuals and businesses. However, let us not forget that businesses are wealth creators. Without businesses, there are no jobs.
We have to ensure that there is balance and no abuse. We also need to ensure that companies that make a profit reinvest in effective measures to build their business capacity while offering greener solutions for the environment.
Criteria need to be established and put in place. We cannot simply say that businesses are not paying enough taxes. There needs to be a balance. We need to see what we can do to make things better for businesses, individuals and the environment.
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