44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2023 10:00AM
- Jun/8/23 10:29:45 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a number of suggestions come to mind.
As I recently said in the House, we need to walk the talk. In this case, that means that we need to do whatever it takes—even if we are hogtied and gagged—to prevent a government partner from spending billions of dollars on measures that support the oil-related economic chain. That in itself would be a major contribution.
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- Jun/8/23 2:20:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians learned yesterday that the Bank of Canada is raising interest rates for the ninth time since last year. This comes thanks to the Prime Minister's out-of-control spending, which is driving up the cost of the goods that we buy and the interest that we pay. Half of all mortgage holders were already struggling to make payments and that was before the bank's announcement. The Department of Finance knows this number, and the government refuses to share it.
Can the finance minister tell us how much families will now pay for their mortgages because of her inflationary spending?
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- Jun/8/23 2:24:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday evening, hundreds of thousands of families in Quebec and Canada had a very difficult conversation at the supper table.
The question was this: Will we be able to keep our house? The Bank of Canada increased the policy rate for the ninth time in just under a year, which means that interest rates will rise. The government rightly pointed out that mortgage payments are going to go up by 40%. There is one thing that the government could do to reduce inflation and that is to control spending.
Why does it not do that?
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- Jun/8/23 2:25:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague has a selective memory. The Conservative leader clearly said that there are two things the government must do. First, it should not create new taxes and, more importantly, it should have a plan to reduce spending and get to a balanced budget.
Why have a balanced budget? That would honour the word of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance who said that deficits add fuel to the inflationary fire.
Does the Deputy Prime Minister still agree with herself, namely that they really need to control spending and, most importantly, aim for a balanced budget for all Canadians?
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- Jun/8/23 2:32:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the IMF reports Canadians have the most indebted households in the G7, with a mortgage default crisis looming. Out-of-control Liberal spending gave Canadians nine bank interest rate hikes in a year. Former Liberal finance minister John Manley said that the out-of-control spending by the Liberals is like pressing the gas while the Bank of Canada is trying to slam on the brakes with its interest rate hikes. Adding another $60 billion of fuel on that inflationary fire is not going to help anybody.
Will the Prime Minister cancel his tanning plans this summer, get to work in this House and rewrite his budget, so Canadians do not lose their houses?
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- Jun/8/23 2:33:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Conservatives will continue to fight to stop this Liberal-NDP government from putting another $4,200 of debt on the backs of struggling Canadians. Liberals' out-of-control spending gave Canadians the highest inflation seen in 40 years, and that made interest rates go up. The majority of Canadians are only $200 away from insolvency. Any more rate hikes are going to be crippling. This budget would turn Canada into a nation of inflation and higher debt.
Will the Prime Minister end his surf trips, end the phony celebrity tours and rewrite this failed budget, so Canadians can keep their homes this summer?
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- Jun/8/23 2:52:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Liberal deficits and spending have caused inflation to reach a 40-year high, which caused interest rates to reach a 22-year high. These rates will cause mortgage defaults.
We have made-in-Canada inflation, and people cannot afford the government. We need to stop fuelling the inflationary fire, stop interest rates from going up and stop people from losing their homes.
When will the Prime Minister stop his inflationary deficit spending?
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- Jun/8/23 2:53:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member just does not get it. The government refuses to take any responsibility for what it has done to affect the cost of living of Canadians.
For example, a local food bank in my community told me that they registered 294 new households in March alone, with the fastest-growing demographic needing help being two-parent, working households. Inflationary deficits are crushing families' finances.
When will the Prime Minister give people hope and end the inflationary deficit spending so that Canadians can afford to stay in their homes?
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Mr. Speaker, it is important to be clear about what the government has spent money on. When the Conservatives talk about those deficits, those deficits were spent on such things as CERB, the Canada emergency response benefit, or the Canada emergency wage subsidy, which quite literally kept households afloat during the pandemic.
When it comes to what we are spending on right now, we are spending on such things as the Canada workers benefit. That is in the current budget, which the Conservatives are delaying, and it will help the lowest-income Canadians have more access to more money.
If the Conservatives truly cared about helping low-income Canadians, they would support Bill C-47. They would vote with us, and they would—
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- Jun/8/23 2:55:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with billions in new spending in the budget, the Liberals are driving up inflation and the cost of living. This has caused another increase in interest rates, which is going to cost thousands more for Canadians on their mortgages. However, the Prime Minister has the audacity to try to claim that his budget is “uninflationary”.
One does not have to be a meteorologist to look outside and see that it is raining, and one does not have to be an economist to know that this Liberal budget is driving up inflation. When will the government finally come up with a plan to balance the budget?
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- Jun/8/23 2:56:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us listen to what some Liberals have to say.
A former Liberal finance minister described the government's economic strategy as “a bit like driving your car with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake”. Some Canadians might want to go out and try that for themselves to really understand the metaphor. However, with the carbon tax driving up the price of gas, no one can afford to do burnouts anymore.
If the Liberals will not listen to our advice or even their own advice, will they at least listen to Canadians, who are footing the bill for all their spending?
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- Jun/8/23 3:00:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, massive deficits cause inflation. Inflation causes rate hikes. Rate hikes make mortgage payments unaffordable. Unaffordable payments lead to mortgage defaults.
However, there is a solution. The Liberal government could stop the deficits, stop inflation, stop rate hikes and prevent defaults. Even the finance minister agreed with this basic advice a few short months ago.
When will the Prime Minister end his inflationary deficit spending?
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- Jun/8/23 3:05:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister and his speNDP junior partners have caused a problem. Their massive inflationary budgets have caused rate increases, which cause mortgage increases, which cause defaults on homes for Canadians.
We have the solution. The solution is to stop the deficits, stop the inflation, stop the interest rate hikes and stop the defaults on homes.
I have a simple question: When will the Prime Minister stop his inflationary deficit spending?
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- Jun/8/23 3:06:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what a ridiculous response. Canadians are paying the price for the Prime Minister's addiction to spending. The Liberals are telling Canadians that they have never had it so good. One in five Canadians are skipping meals. Eight million Canadians are visiting food banks because there is more month than paycheque always left over.
The simple question is this: If the Liberals are making things so good, why do Canadians not have more money in their pockets?
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Mr. Speaker, I am always pleased to rise in the House to speak on behalf of my constituents, and today we are debating Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care.
I spoke on this bill at second reading, before it went to committee. After reviewing my comments from my previous speech, I do not see many improvements that would address the very important concerns I have with this legislation.
From the outset, I want to affirm that Conservatives support making child care more affordable for families. That is why, back in 2006, our Conservative government created the universal child care benefit, which put money directly in families' pockets to spend on their priorities. At the time, the Liberals claimed that families would just spend it on beer and popcorn, but they have since come around to our position with their improved Canada child benefit, which combined a number of already existing child care benefits, including the Conservative universal child care benefit, under one program.
The Liberals have moved forward with their new Canada-wide early learning and child care initiative. In budget 2021 it was projected to cost $25 billion, at least, over five years. Now, due to record-high inflation and high demand for limited, affordable child care spaces and limited professional child care workers, this number has undoubtedly become far larger.
I would remind the House that this program is being funded entirely by borrowed money, and the cost of these Liberal deficits and higher interest rates means that, for every billion dollars borrowed, they will pay an additional $45 million in interest every year.
I am very excited to see the new movie Oppenheimer. Thinking about that movie got me thinking about the brilliant Albert Einstein. Einstein is reported to have said that the eighth wonder of the world is compound interest. Those who understand it will receive it, and those who do not understand it will pay it. I do not think the Liberal government understands it because compound interest is truly a powerful force.
As the Liberals borrow billions more each year to fund their programs, that interest compounds. At the current interest rates of 4.5% for Canada government bonds, the interest cost for a plan that costs a billion a year will exceed and rise exponentially as long the government borrows year after year. These deficits are radically increasing the interest costs Canadian taxpayers will have to pay. Eventually, this debt has to be repaid. It is Canadians and the economy that will suffer because the government will either have to borrow more or tax Canadians more to pay for it.
We have always given the Liberals a hard time. We have called them the tax-and-spend Liberals, but today we have something that is far worse. We have the borrow-and-spend Liberals. At least with the tax-and-spend Liberals, they would go out and raise taxes to try to gather money to pay for their programs. With the borrow-and-spend Liberals, they conjure this money out of thin air. They create new money in the system.
This creates inflation in two ways. By competing for capital in the economy, they raise the cost of everything from mortgages to business lines of credit, which thus raises the cost of owning a home, running a business and many other things. The second way it creates inflation is when they spend that money. When government spends the money it borrowed, it is competing with consumers and businesses for goods and services, which raises the cost of everything.
The Liberal child care plan is proving to be not only an expensive failure, but also extraordinarily inflationary. I have spent the last two years, since the government brought forward this program, consulting with families and child care operators. Very few of them have anything good to say about these programs. While some families have benefited from lower child care costs, there are at least tens of thousands of Canadian children who are stuck on waiting lists. Some of them have been stuck on these waiting list for years. Their children will be in kindergarten before a spot ever opens up, if it ever does, so they will not benefit from this program.
The guiding principles under section 7 about funding in this bill say that this program must be accessible, affordable and inclusive. The program has been implemented over the past couple of years. It is still in the process of being fully implemented, but looking at the outcome of what we have seen so far, the program, as it stands, is not accessible. At least 50% of families have not been able to access an affordable care space. It is not affordable because those families that cannot access a space are still paying the full unsubsidized price for child care, and it is certainly not inclusive because these families are from all sorts of communities.
Because this is a universal child care plan, it does not matter if a family earns hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or a family is below the poverty line. There is no consideration for lower-income families or special dispensation for these families, so what we are seeing is that marginalized communities are being further marginalized by being excluded from programs. As such, on its own principles, the government is failing to achieve what it said its principles are.
The government also said under paragraph 7(1)(b) of this legislation that the bill must provide access that enables “families of all income levels, including low incomes, to benefit”. Before the implementation of the Liberal early learning and child care plan, many families across Canada already benefited from subsidy programs provided by their municipalities and provincial governments. These low-income families were paying far less for child care than the top rate that most middle-income and upper-income families were paying. These families were already benefiting from government subsidies in some form or another. However, because the government has implemented a universal system that does not take into account means testing of income, we have a flood of people from middle- and upper-income families taking spots in the system, and low-income families that could get subsidized spots in the system are no longer benefiting from these spots. Therefore, on another principle of this legislation, the government's already existing child care plan is failing.
Statistics show that the demographics of people who were already accessing child care in this country before the implementation of this Liberal plan were primarily middle- and upper-income families. Those middle- and upper-income families that already had a child care space are the primary beneficiaries, because they never had to wait on a waiting list since they already had a child care space. When the government took the $1,500 a month families were paying and brought it down to $500 a month, it was putting $1,000 a month in the pockets of primarily middle- and upper-income families.
This fails on the standard and principle of creating equity and fairness, because we know that inflation impacts lowest-income families the most. Lowest-income families spend proportionally more of their income on things like shelter and housing, transportation, food and other things. As such, when these families do not get access to child care, they continue to spend a lot of money. When higher-income families get access to these government subsidies, which they are currently, they get extra money in their pockets and spend it on things that are not necessarily shelter or necessities because they are of higher income and it is a lower proportion. They are spending money on more restaurants, a new vehicle or maybe a bigger house. As we are seeing, these are areas where inflation is really rising in this country.
This is another example that demonstrates the inflationary power of the government's legislation. The people who are being hurt the most are the lower-income families, because the prices of things are being pushed further and further beyond their reach.
I spoke to child care operators and asked what the biggest problem they are facing is, and they said labour is the biggest problem. They said to me that currently in Ontario the most they can pay a child care operator is $25 an hour. That is annualized at about $48,000 a year. There was a woman working at a day care centre who has been working there for 30 years, and she is getting paid $25 an hour. She is making less today, after inflation, than she was making when she started 30 years ago. For a high school or university graduate coming straight out of school, an entry-level job in the federal government will pay around $48,000.
A 30-year professional child care operator under this Liberal plan, which the Liberals say will raise wages somewhat, is making less than an entry-level worker for the federal government, and with competition for labour, they are losing people left, right and centre. They cannot retain people, and because of the restrictions and regulations the government has put in place under this legislation, they cannot compete for this labour. Their hands are tied and they are losing staff, which means losing capacity and increasing wait-lists. This is an unfolding disaster that families are seeing across Canada.
Finally, the child care director told me that the reason families cannot get spots is that the government has capped the number of spots it will fund. These families cannot get spots because the government is choosing not to fund them. The government is responsible for the wait-lists we are seeing in this country.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-35, an act respecting early learning and child care in Canada.
We know Canadians are struggling. When I speak to parents about affordability, they tell me about how they cannot afford to pay the bills, they cannot afford to heat their homes, they cannot afford to put gas in the tank and they cannot afford to put food on the table. When discussing child care, it is important to address the affordability concerns that I hear from parents.
The Prime Minister's inflationary spending has created a cost of living crisis. Families cannot afford basic necessities anymore. I was just debating the recent Liberal budget, which proposes more than $60 billion in new spending, pouring even more fuel on the inflationary fire. This additional spending comes out to $4,200 per family, meaning higher costs for those already struggling to get by. This burden only makes it harder for parents to afford quality care for their children. To make matters worse, the Liberal government is tripling the carbon tax, making it more expensive for Canadian families to make ends meet.
It does not stop there. Just in case Canadians were not struggling enough, the government is implementing a second carbon tax. Yes, Canadians heard that right. The new tax will cost the average family in Manitoba over $600 additionally per year, without a rebate. The Prime Minister's carbon tax will cost families in Manitoba over $2,100 a year. Parents cannot afford these new tax hikes when they are raising families. Rural Canada will be hit especially hard by these punitive taxes, displaying the Liberal government's disregard for the rural way of life.
After eight years of the Prime Minister, everything feels broken. The Liberals have hiked taxes on Canadians while fuelling inflation through their out-of-control spending. We recently learned that Canadians will have to bear yet another interest rate hike caused by the NDP-Liberal coalition's out-of-control spending.
To trick Canadians into believing it is acting on affordability, the Liberal government has unveiled the so-called $10-a-day child care plan. Unfortunately, this proposal is nothing more than a political marketing scheme designed to deceive Canadians. The Liberal government thrives on making grand promises but fails to deliver on them.
Why should Canadians believe the Liberals about child care this time? The Liberals have been promising results on this for years. Canadian families, especially those in rural Canada, are concerned about child care. The lack of available child care is becoming the norm across the country. Canadians have heard and experienced the stories of those waiting months, and in some cases years, to find a child care space for their child.
Some Canadians add their names to countless lists, only to continue waiting, with no response in sight. This causes parents to stay out of the workforce for an extended period of time, something they cannot afford to do during this cost of living crisis. The pain and suffering that families face waiting for child care should be a top priority for the government.
In my own province of Manitoba, 76% of children live in areas without equitable access to child care. This figure gets considerably worse for families that live in rural Canada. In many communities, only one child care space is available for every three children. Canadian families need more access and more choices in child care, not an Ottawa-knows-best type of approach. Any discussion of child care needs to empower the voices of those in rural Canada, not just those in urban areas. Unfortunately for the Liberal government, listening to the voices of rural Canada is not something it has ever displayed.
During consideration of Bill C-35, the Conservatives sought to strengthen the voice of private, home-based child care providers. Supporting home-based caregivers and listening to their voices would have strengthened access for families in rural Canada. It is not just me saying this. Listen to those in the industry. Julie Bisnath, program coordinator of the Child Care Providers Resource Network, stated, “Championing home child care...would increase access to a diverse array of child care options.” Unfortunately, the NDP-Liberal coalition voted down these common-sense measures that would address the concerns of families struggling to find care.
To make matters worse, the number of skilled child care workers across Canada is in short supply. There are not enough workers to meet the needs of Canadian families who are struggling to access care.
In my home province of Manitoba, it is estimated an extra 3,000 early childhood educators will be required to fulfill the demand in the near future. Unfortunately, Bill C-35 does nothing to address this shortage.
How does the Liberal government believe Canadian families will have access to child care without the workers needed to provide that support? Once again, the government has unveiled a plan that is filled with promises but light on details.
Our Conservative team previously proposed changes to this legislation that would have addressed the worker shortage in the industry. This included a plan to support recruitment and retention of child care workers, which is an idea that has been praised by experts in the field.
Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, supported this Conservative amendment, stating:
That would absolutely be an amendment we would support because we know that we need a robust workforce strategy to make sure that we can address the recruitment and retention issues in the sector.
Once again, this Conservative proposal was voted down by the NDP-Liberal coalition.
Without a plan to address the shortage of child care workers, especially in rural Canada, we cannot fix the long wait lines for child care across our country. As Conservatives, we believe Canadian families deserve access to affordable and quality child care. Sadly, the Liberal plan will leave many families in the dark.
With the limited number of spots across this country, those who obtain a spot in a $10-a-day child care facility will be lucky. Those who are in the back of the queue will be out of luck. They will be forced to pay much more expensive fees for care, especially those on the lower pay scale.
Although these concerns were brought up in committee by industry experts, their concerns fell on deaf ears. As the Liberal government ignored these concerns, Canadian families on the lower income scale will definitely have the most to lose out of all this. Instead, the pressure to find adequate care will only build while the cost of living continues to impact Canadian families.
This top-down Ottawa-knows-best approach to child care will not address accessibility. It will not consider the lack of child care spaces and workers across this country and it will not address the desire for families to choose care that suits their needs.
Any plan on child care must address the backlog of spaces available for families, any plan on child care must address the shortage of workers and any plan should be centred on allowing families to choose the care that best addresses their needs.
In my region, parents and caregivers know what is best for their children. It is not a handful of Ottawa bureaucrats living miles away. Unfortunately, the NDP-Liberal coalition ignored these concerns throughout the debate on this bill, and it is my worry Canadians, especially those in rural Canada, will pay the price because Ottawa did not listen to their concerns.
The $10-a-day child care is only a political marketing scheme that lacks substance and details to address the concerns of Canadian families. In the end, like everything offered by the Liberal government, it will promise one thing and deliver nothing.
In closing, it is the Conservatives who will continue to speak up for the families struggling to afford child care. It is the Conservatives who will stand up for families who continue to wait for a spot in care. It is Conservatives who will bring home quality child care for all Canadians.
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