44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 5, 2023 11:00AM
- Jun/5/23 7:44:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was interesting to listen to the Liberal member fearmongering about cuts, as many Liberal members do. If we take a look at actual history and facts, we will find that the last government to significantly cut transfers for health care, social services and other important programs was the one of finance minister Paul Martin's budgets of 1995-96 through 1997-98, where we went from $18.4 billion in 1995-96 to $14.7 billion in 1996-97 to $12.5 billion in 1997-98 because of the absolutely disastrous economic policies of the last incompetent Trudeau government, a government that racked up deficits in 14 out of 15 years. We now see another incompetent Liberal government doing the same thing.
Does that not concern the hon. member in the least?
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- Jun/5/23 8:15:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as you know, and as the hon. member has been around long enough to know, it is against the rules of the House to mislead the House, and he just completely misinformed the House in regard to the Harper record.
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- Jun/5/23 9:09:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it has been an interesting debate tonight. There were a couple of things that I heard from the Liberals and the NDP, one of which I expected to hear a lot about and one which I did not.
What I did not expect was a couple of NDP members doing victory laps over the Alberta election results time and time again. As I watched the election results, I was struck by the fact that a Conservative government, having gone through a pandemic and a leadership change, unsurprisingly lost a couple of percentage points and formed a strong majority government.
The NDP may want to celebrate the fact that it gained about nine percentage points at the expense of the Alberta party, but hopefully all of us can hope for the very best for the Danielle Smith government in Alberta, because that would be really good for Albertans across the board. I, for one, congratulate that government and hope that it succeeds on behalf of all Albertans over the next four years of its very strong mandate.
What I expected to hear and have heard a lot of today, over and over again, is Liberal fearmongering about cuts that some potential Conservative government might threaten or initiate or whatever the case might be. It caused me to look back at history. It is important to look at where there have been cuts, because maybe we can learn from situations in the past when we have seen actual cuts. I had to go back a long way to find real cuts to health spending, social services spending, education spending and the transfers that fund those things.
I went back to 1993, 1994 and 1995, when we saw cuts at the very start of a newly elected Liberal government, but then it was astonishing to see the cut that occurred in 1995-96. In the 1995-96 Liberal budget, $18.4 billion was spent on health care, social services and education, and then in 1996-97, the very next year, we went from $18.4 billion to $14.7 billion, a reduction of almost $4 billion in important transfers for health, social services, education and those kinds of things. The next year, 1997-98, we went from $14.7 billion to $12.5 billion in those transfers.
I mention those figures because, as a result of the spending during the reign of a fiscally incompetent Trudeau government, a government that ran 14 deficits in 15 years while it was in power, we saw a crisis in energy, a crisis in housing and a crisis in inflation. I do not know if that sounds familiar to anybody around here. There were 14 deficits in 15 years in the 1970s and 1980s, and that led to these devastating cuts in 1996-97 and 1997-98, going from $18.4 billion for health, social services and education to $12.5 billion two years later. That was a Liberal government dealing with the devastating effects a generation after another Liberal government, a Trudeau government, had absolutely zero idea of what to do to run an economy.
I fear that we are in the same boat now. We have heard Liberal speaker after Liberal speaker get up and ask how Conservatives can vote against this thing, and they will cherry-pick one thing, or be against this other thing. All of the things they talk about sound great, but I hearken back to the debate on May 1 in the House of Commons, and one comment, though there were many comments like this, struck me. The comment was in response to a question during question period from a Conservative member of Parliament. The Liberal finance minister, talking about the grocery rebate, said, “The grocery rebate is going to deliver support to 11 million low-income Canadians who need it.” How have we come to a place in 2023 when the finance minister is bragging about the fact that we have 11 million low-income Canadians who need support to buy groceries? How are we at that place in 2023?
We look at the government's own budget documents and we take a look at the numbers in these documents and we think about those important transfers we are talking about and other programs. The Canada health transfer is set to be, in 2023-24, $49.4 billion. Do members know that the projected cost to service the debt will be in the same year? It is $43.9 billion, so because of the fiscal incompetence, and there is no other way to say it, of the government that has been in power for eight years, we are going to spend as much in interest as we are going to spend on health care in this country as a federal government. There is no other way to say it: That is absolute incompetence.
When we take a look at the Liberal budget, one of the things that strike me is that they cut their deal with the NDP, and we hear the NDP talk about the different things that they were able to negotiate into this Liberal budget, but I will tell members one thing that was negotiated out of the Liberal budget.
This is the state of where we are. We in this place oftentimes can agree that there are certain things that need our attention. We might have different ideas on how we address those things, but we can agree there are certain things that require attention. One thing that we all agreed on during the last election campaign was the fact that there is a mental health crisis in this country. We all had different platform ideas that we put forward. We ran an election. Canadians looked at those promises we made, because we make promises in election campaigns, and I would think Canadians would expect us to keep those promises. Admittedly, we made promises that were different from those of the Liberals and the NDP on mental health, but we all had substantial promises in there.
The Liberals promised, on page 75 of their election platform, very clearly in a black-and-white five-year costed layout of their election platform, a $4.5-billion investment in mental health called the “Canada Mental Health Transfer”. That was something the Liberals promised. Every Liberal in this House went to doors during the election campaign and promised things to Canadians, many of whom would have been struggling with their mental health, especially as we were still in the midst of a pandemic. We were moving hopefully toward the end of it, but at that point in time people were obviously very significantly affected.
Canadians struggling with their mental health had a Liberal member of Parliament or a Liberal candidate go to their door and promise they were going to spend $4.5 billion on a Canada mental health transfer.
What happened next? Immediately the Liberals signed their deal with the NDP. No NDP member has actually yet taken credit for negotiating this out of their agreement, but clearly it must have been something that the NDP said. They must have said that they wanted to put NDP priorities on the agenda instead of the Canada mental health transfer. No one has talked about why that was negotiated out, but it is very clear that the Liberals have decided that this promise they made is no longer important and that there are other priorities, or, if it is still important to them, that they have come to a point where the fiscal situation is so bad that it was in their cabinet meetings.
I do not know if the leader of the NDP is in the Liberal cabinet meetings or if the House leader of the NDP is, but the Liberals had to go into these cabinet meetings. They had to have conversations and say that things are really tough here and that they had decided to fund some program, one of the many programs they are listing, but they were no longer going to be able to afford this thing they promised on page 75 in their election platform.
I do not know what those conversations looked like; all I know from taking a look at the budget we are debating tonight and from taking a look at the numbers we are talking about tonight is that we are going to be in a situation where Liberal governments and this coalition, however long it lasts, are going to be having conversations like that, because they have come to a point where life is just not only unaffordable for Canadians but unaffordable for the government.
It becomes unsustainable at some point. It is just like when we were dealing with the results of Trudeau Liberal incompetence in the mid-nineties because the Trudeau government of the seventies and eighties had run up all of those deficits over all of those years. I fear we are going to be in the same situation moving forward. During questions and comments, I hope some Liberal will rise up and explain that maybe my concerns are somehow misplaced. Hopefully there will be some explanation and some understanding tonight of the situation we are in.
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- Jun/5/23 9:21:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I can assure the member that, if he carves out that particular element and removes the $60 billion in new spending; if he removes the more than $40 billion in deficit spending, which this country cannot afford right now and which is driving up the cost of everything, and we see the devastating results of that; and if the member wants to go back and say that he thinks they should carve out the 988 suicide prevention hotline, I would be very happy to support it.
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- Jun/5/23 9:23:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let me say first that, soon enough, the member will be able to refer to us as the Conservative government and she will not be spreading misinformation.
I have heard the New Democrats talk about the Harper era during the whole debate tonight, and here are a couple of things from the Harper era. The member was wrong on most of her facts, but the reality is that, during the Harper era, there were a few things we did promise and deliver. We promised regular increases. In fact, almost every single year, we increased spending on the Canada health transfer by six per cent. Members would not know that by listening to Liberal talking points.
Something that clearly differentiates the current Liberal government's approach from ours is that when we dealt with a global economic meltdown, a part of that, every step of the way, was a road map to get back to a balanced budget, which we delivered in 2015. We have not seen one since.
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- Jun/5/23 9:25:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member and I probably have very different positions on oil and gas and on pipelines. However, one thing we agree on is that there was no need for the federal government to own the Trans Mountain pipeline. In our view, of course, the private sector should have been able to build that pipeline. Quite frankly, it is ridiculous not only that the government got itself into the situation where it had to buy a pipeline but also that the pipeline has gone tens of billions of dollars over budget, which is an absolute travesty.
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