44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 25, 2023 10:00AM
- Apr/25/23 10:04:56 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I too rise on behalf of Canadians with a petition regarding the same case my hon. colleague mentioned, the Bissonnette decision of the Supreme Court.
Canadians believe this is an unjust decision. It puts the interests of some of Canada's worst criminals ahead of the rights of their victims. Reoccurring parole hearings can traumatize the families of victims of mass murderers over and over again.
The government has tools at its disposal to respond, including invoking the notwithstanding clause. Therefore, the undersigned in this particular petition urge the Minister of Justice to invoke the notwithstanding clause to override this decision.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague and friend from Calgary Midnapore.
It is always an honour to rise in this place. Today, I speak in response to another Liberal budget failure. Budget 2023 and the budget implementation bill do not work for the people who do the work. More will be spent, but Canadians will actually get less. During a time when Canadians are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet, the finance minister and the Prime Minister just made things a lot worse. I will explain how that came about.
Conservatives had these three clear demands for the budget: lowering taxes on workers, including scrapping the carbon tax; ending the inflationary deficits and wasteful spending that is creating the cost of living crisis, plus driving up inflation; and building more affordable homes for Canadians. In other words, Canadians believe that Canada should work for the people who have done the work.
However, the budget meets none of our demands. Instead, what the finance minister and the Prime Minister presented were more Liberal tax hikes, more deficits and more inflationary spending. The budget includes billions of dollars of new inflationary debt and taxes.
I surveyed individuals, businesses and municipalities in my riding to better understand how the cost of living crisis has been impacting them financially. Seventy per cent of Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner residents who participated in the survey do not believe that Canada's economic situation will improve in 2023. In fact, 70% of respondents expect that their personal financial situation will be the same as or worse than it was in 2022. Overall, they have no faith in the Liberal government's ability to offer hope for their financial stability or future prosperity.
Maybe this is why: In budget 2023, tax revenue has increased a whopping 92% from 2015 and now sits at $261 billion more than the last time Conservatives put forward a budget. It is no wonder taxes are so high. Spending is up to $456 billion from $280 billion in 2015. That is a 63% increase in just seven years. Low-income and working-class people will suffer the most because of the Liberal deficits and inflation. In fact, this budget will add about $4,200 per family in new government spending, with taxpayers left holding the bag.
While we are on the topic of bags Canadians cannot afford to be holding, we can talk about grocery bags. The wasteful spending of the Liberals has caused the cost of food and groceries to skyrocket. Their so-called grocery rebate is actually a GST rebate. It is really just lipstick on a pig. It will provide a meagre $234 for a single adult and $467 for a family. This does little to cover the rising cost of food that the Liberals' own inflationary deficits and wasteful spending have helped to create.
What is worse is that the Liberals think that they are helping, but as we all know, “Canada's Food Price Report 2023” predicts that a family of four will actually spend nearly $1,100 more on food this year alone. Anyone who has been to a grocery store lately will know that this is not even the worst of it. The small one-time Liberal payoff is lost in the inflation and ever-increasing carbon tax.
Speaking of taxes, the Liberals raised payroll taxes on workers and small businesses in January of this year. A worker making about $66,000 a year will be forced to pay an extra $255 to the mandatory Canada pension plan and an extra $50 for employment insurance tax. That is a $305 increase per worker, meaning that, in a family with two working parents, the parents will be required to spend over $600 in new taxes right off the top of their paycheques. There is also a cost per business. With so many new taxes and existing tax increases, 86% of the people in my riding believe this will make life much more difficult.
That leads me to the carbon tax. We know that the carbon tax, as has been shown, does nothing to protect the environment. Rather, it simply drains the pocketbooks of Canadians, who are just trying to heat their homes, get to work and drive their kids to events.
Of people polled in my riding, 78% supported the removal of the carbon tax. Of businesses that responded to my survey, 100% indicated that the carbon tax was having a negative impact on their business.
What did the Liberals do? They increased the carbon tax on April 1, making it even more expensive for Canadians who are already struggling with the rising cost of living. The Liberals and their NDP coalition are completely out of touch.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has indicated that the carbon tax will cost the average family as much as $847 more than the rebates they will receive in 2023. Canadians cannot afford that.
Speaking of things we cannot afford, the Prime Minister has spent more and added more national debt than all prime ministers in Canada's history combined. Even worse, he has no plan to balance the budget and control his inflationary deficits, which are driving up the costs of the food we buy, the goods we buy and the interest we pay. This is at a time when 50% of the municipalities in my riding are looking to the government to focus on reducing inflation.
Canada's federal debt for the 2023-24 fiscal year is projected to reach $1.22 trillion. That is nearly $81,000 per household. Moreover, in Canada's budget projections, there is neither a path to balance nor a plan to pay back the debt. This alone is a cause of the inflation and cost of living crisis that my constituents and all Canadians are facing.
The members opposite need to hear that 75% of the people in my constituency who responded to our survey said that the biggest issue they are facing is the cost of living. The second-largest issue is health care, and that was at 9%. That is the impact this cost of living issue is having on my riding.
There we have it. There is $43 billion in new debt, and nothing in the budget for working Canadians except new taxes.
It will not be the Prime Minister paying back the debt. He has no plans to do that any time in the foreseeable future. The Canadian taxpayers will be left holding the bag again.
Canadians need a government that will make life more affordable for them, and the Conservatives are the only ones willing or even able to do that. After the election, when the Conservatives win a majority, we will lower taxes on workers. We will scrap the carbon tax and end the inflationary deficits and wasteful spending that are driving up inflation. We will build more affordable homes for Canadians. We will fix the damage the Liberals and the costly NDP coalition have caused and get back to common-sense solutions that work for Canadians who do the work.
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Madam Speaker, of course, any government needs to be continuing to plan for our future, build infrastructure and plan for where technology is taking us. However, I look back to what my constituents have told me in a recent survey we finished in March, in anticipation of what the budget could be.
We asked what the government should focus on to support long-term economic growth and job creation. Here is what they told me: The number one thing my constituents said, at 21%, is that we need the natural resources and energy sector. Number two was agriculture, number three was small business, number four was manufacturing and number five was new technologies. There was then a three-way tie among tourism and hospitality, the service sector, and green technology and renewables. My constituents have made it very clear what they expect from the government.
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Madam Speaker, I agree that there is frustration in the workplace with increased taxes, but, like my friend, most Canadians do not mind paying for protection for if they lose their job. However, the fight we have as Conservatives, and what my constituents are really against, is that it is coming at a time when they are struggling. Businesses are closing in my riding. Business owners are saying they do not know whether they are going to make it through 2023. All these added costs for the workplace, employers and employees are, at this time, inappropriate.
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Madam Speaker, I did not hear a question. It seems that the NDP coalition supports the government. I am sure Tommy Douglas and Jack Layton are turning in their graves.
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