44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 25, 2023 10:00AM
- Apr/25/23 10:04:10 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition signed by Canadians who are calling on the government to invoke the notwithstanding clause to override the Supreme Court of Canada's Bissonnette decision, which struck down a law passed by the previous Harper Conservative government that gave judges the discretion to apply consecutive parole ineligibility periods to mass murderers. As a result of the Liberal government's inaction, the sentences of some of the worst killers in Canada have been significantly reduced. The petitioners are calling for action.
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Mr. Speaker, whether it has been the incredible leadership of the member for Etobicoke Centre, the Deputy Prime Minister or the Prime Minister himself, not to mention the different ministers responsible, whether for defence or foreign affairs, we have been very much on top of the Ukraine file. In many areas, we have led.
In other areas, we continue to work with the United Nations and our allied partners. I think it is somewhat shameful that the member would try to give a false impression that the Government of Canada has not been supportive of Ukraine because, in every way, it has been supportive of Ukraine.
My question to the member has to do with the member making reference to the Government of Canada not hitting 2% of the GDP. Does the member not remember that he was, after all, the parliamentary secretary of defence and it was the Harper government that actually dropped below 1% of Canada's GDP? I can assure the member that this government has never even come close to that, as we get closer to 2%.
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Mr. Speaker, I quote:
...let me be very clear. We are absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline and our deficits must continue to be reduced. The pandemic debt we incurred to keep Canadians safe and solvent must [and will] be paid down.... This is our fiscal anchor. This is a line we will not cross.
Who said that? It was our finance minister. A year ago, she made that bold statement, said those bold words, when she proclaimed to the world that Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio would be Canada's anchor and that she would not cross the line of allowing it to increase.
Here we are a year later. Can we guess what happened? Our finance minister took a big step across the line. The issue for Canadians is this: Whom do they trust to manage this country's finances?
We asked for three things. We asked that the war on work and lower taxes for workers be ended, that the inflationary deficits that are driving the sky-high cost of living be ended and that the gatekeepers be removed from home construction across Canada so Canadians can have their dream of home ownership restored. None of those three requests were followed through on by the Liberal government.
I want to touch on a couple of issues, including affordability and inflation, the problem of uncontrolled spending, the staggering cost of government and, finally, economic performance. I do not know if I will have enough time to cover all those issues, but I will do my best.
First is affordability and inflation. Taxes on everything are going up. There is a reason that Canadians should not trust the current government to manage finances. It is a tax-and-spend government under which the cost of living has skyrocketed, including the cost of groceries, gas at the pumps and home heating.
Let us not forget the cost of housing. Under the Liberal government, nine out of 10 Canadians now say that dream of home ownership has disappeared. It is a dream I grew up with. I assumed it was attainable for most, if not all, Canadians. Today, nine out of 10 young Canadians say that dream is no longer a reality for them. A down payment on the average Canadian home, the average mortgage payment and, quite frankly, the average rent payment have doubled in Canada over the last seven years under the Liberal government.
Inflation has eroded what a dollar buys. We see stagnating wages across the country. It is at the point now where the gap between the rich and the poor is growing ever greater. Those with assets are growing richer, whereas those who earn paycheques are growing poorer. We now have one in five Canadians skipping meals just to get by and have enough to eat. Let us think about that. There is a perverse situation in which the poor are going to food banks and asking for medical assistance in dying, or in other words, assisted suicide. This is not because they are sick but because they do not want to go hungry. Is that the perverse situation in which we find ourselves in Canada? The government is expanding access to medical assistance in dying, while at the same time, it is not providing the resources Canadians need to at least survive and have some kind of satisfaction in their lives.
I will talk about the problem of uncontrolled spending, which is a critical issue for this country. Today, the government is spending $151 billion more than it did in 2015, when it came to power and took over from the Harper government. That spending has created unprecedented inflationary pressures that are driving the skyrocketing cost of living for Canadians, who just cannot afford life in Canada anymore. Today, we have a deficit of $43 billion. Does everyone remember when the Prime Minister, back in the 2015 election, promised tiny deficits of no more than $10 billion? Every year since then, budget deficits have been much greater than that.
We all acknowledge that, during COVID, there had to be supports and benefits provided to Canadians to allow them to make it through that very troubling period. However, we are out of COVID now, and the deficits continue despite the government's promises to return to balanced budgets. The Minister of Finance promised we would return to a balanced budget. She promised that last year, just one year ago, and today she broke that promise. Promise after promise after promise is broken by Canada's corrupt and failed government.
The result, of course, is that over the last seven years, Canada's national debt has doubled. In fact, the government has racked up more debt than all other Canadian governments combined. That, by definition, is profligacy. That is irresponsible use of taxpayers' money. The government does not understand that we have to live within our means, the way any Canadian family has to.
I will go on and talk about the staggering cost of government. Under the current government, the federal public service has increased by nearly 31%. In seven years, over 80,000 new federal government positions have been added. I can ask an average Canadian citizen out there whether they are getting better service. Those 80,000 professionals who have been hired by the government must be providing an enhanced level of service. How are passports doing? What a failed program that is. How are visas doing? That is a failed program. Immigration is a failed program. It goes on and on and on. Service is going down, and the cost of government is going up. Who pays for it? Canadians do.
Finally, I will talk about economic performance. One thing I had hoped the government was going to include in the budget was something addressing the issue of competitiveness. We compete with other countries around the world for capital, for investment and for human resources, and we have a productivity gap in this country that continues to grow. Canadians are producing less and less product. That is undermining our national competitiveness, and it is driving inflationary pressures. Every economist will tell us that. There was nothing in the budget to address that gaping hole in our productivity.
I have had so little time to flesh out why we, as Conservatives, cannot support the budget. This is a failed budget. Canada has a failed government, and Canadians deserve better.
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Madam Speaker, just a few minutes ago, in his speech, the hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman talked about the fact that the Harper government cut the defence budget in order to balance the books. I notice that my hon. colleague across the way is also talking about balancing the books. It just seems like the Conservatives sometimes want it both ways. They talk about balancing the books, but then on each individual thing, they say, “Oh, but we need to increase that, and we need to increase this.”
I would ask the hon. member opposite this: Does he agree with his party's defence critic that we should cut defence spending to balance the books?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, which focused on fiscal responsibility, a balanced budget and a zero deficit. I would simply like to remind my colleague that a deficit was posted in eight of the nine years of Stephen Harper's Conservative government. The only year that did not show a deficit was the year before the election, and that was because his previous government had sold the GM shares it purchased during the auto sector crisis. It was a bit artificial.
I have two questions for my colleague. What would he cut and where would he look for the additional money to balance the budget?
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Madam Speaker, I am very proud of the Harper years. During the Harper years, of course, the globe experienced an economic crisis that Canada also had to address. The member knows that Canada was the last country in the G7 to enter that global recession and the first to emerge from it. This occurred because of the management of Stephen Harper. I am very proud of our accomplishments.
By the way, the member is right that, in 2015, we left the Liberal government a surplus of $2 billion. We had balanced budgets. Since that time, the Liberal government has been unable to achieve balanced budgets. In fact, the deficits this government has incurred are actually atrocious when we look at the generational debt that has been created for my children and my grandchildren and for his.
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Madam Speaker, this is something the NDP has been calling for, for years. It is something the Harper government promised to the G20 to do years ago.
The Liberal government has not even come up with a definition of what a fossil fuel subsidy is, what an inefficient subsidy is.
We see that the cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline is now at $30 billion. People complain about how much dental care—
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Madam Speaker, tonight we are hearing a lot about fiscal responsibility from the Conservatives. That is nothing new, and we are not surprised. However, they never seem to mention the fact that the Harper government ran deficits eight of the nine years it was in power, and it was not until the ninth year that it balanced the budget. Even then, it was because the government sold off the GM stock that it had bought during the auto crisis.
If the member really wants to eliminate the deficit, what is she going to do? Is she willing to go out and collect more revenue by stopping subsidies to oil companies or taxing billionaires? If not, what public programs and services does she intend to cut?
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Madam Speaker, I may be mistaken, but I believe I heard the member say that Conservatives ran surpluses under Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper. That statement could be no further from the truth. As a matter of fact, between Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, there were only two surpluses in the entire time both prime ministers were around. The first was on the heels of Paul Martin and the surplus he left for Brian Mulroney. The second came in 2015 at the expense of slashing veterans services and selling shares of GM at bargain prices.
Once again I am learning a new revisionist history given to us by the Conservatives. No Conservative prime minister in the last three decades ran a surplus, with the exception of the two I just mentioned. Perhaps the member can inform the House as to where he is getting his data from. It is clearly not based on the reality of what actually happened.
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- Apr/25/23 10:42:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, emergency debates like tonight's are important because they reassure people that the government is doing its job when a crisis arises like the one we are discussing tonight.
We talked about the long term. We know that Canada is not a military or economic power. However, it can play a humanitarian role and provide international development assistance. The UN asks countries like Canada to allocate 0.7% of their GDP to international development. This government is not even at 0.3%. It is doing less than Stephen Harper's government, which was at 0.33%. I am not kidding. When it comes to international development, we are falling short of what the Conservative government did from 2011 to 2015. There is a humanitarian crisis on the horizon in Sudan, and it will be very serious. Despite that, Canada is not doing its part. Will we eventually make the monetary contribution to international development that the UN is asking for?
OECD countries are sitting at 0.42%. Canada is at 0.27%. How can we be worse than Stephen Harper's government when it comes to international development?
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- Apr/25/23 11:12:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague's comments on the sanctions are important for us to keep in mind today, because it would be very difficult for Canada to find an adequate way to sanction in this particular situation.
The question I have for him is about one of the things I am quite seized with. In 2014, under Stephen Harper, a law was repealed and took away the duty to protect local embassy staff. What happened in Ukraine and Afghanistan is that the staff who supported the Canadian embassy were left behind, and we are seeing that again. That has not been changed. I have raised this with the minister multiple times. This has not been changed.
I wonder if the member could talk about the fact that right now while we have been able to evacuate the Canadians from the Canadian embassy we have not been able to help our local staff.
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- Apr/25/23 11:41:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest challenges I have is that in 2015, when the government was elected, we had a Prime Minister who said very clearly that Canada is back; it was sunny ways, with the whole tapping of the chest thing. I believed him because I was not a member of Parliament. I was a member of civil society, and all the things the Prime Minister said I wanted to believe.
I wanted to believe the cuts and damage that had been done during the Harper decade were over, that Canada was back and that Canada was going to re-engage in the world and take back our place. I prefer the Conservatives because, frankly, they tell us they are not going to do anything. They tell us they are going to be useless, and that is better than a government that tells us it is going to do something and then does not.
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