44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 21, 2023 02:00PM
- Jun/21/23 9:28:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member about something he said in his speech right at the end. He said that they will leave no one behind. That is what the Liberals said in 2017 when they talked about the just transition for the coal workers. I have looked at that program very thoroughly, and every one of those coal workers got left behind.
We know we have to transition off coal, and we have been transitioning off coal. However, the Liberals said they had $185 million for coal workers. They spent $58 million of it, and all of that went into a slush fund for government revenue. If members take a look at what happened to the actual workers, they will see that unemployment in those cities went up by 10% and the value of people's houses went down by two-thirds. Can the member across the way tell me how that actually translates into not leaving anybody behind, like the Liberals promised to do? It is completely false.
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- Jun/21/23 9:44:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think I am the last speaker in this session of Parliament before we take a summer break, and it is my pleasure to be serving here for the constituents of Calgary Centre. I hope I have represented what I said I would represent in the House for them. If I have let them down in anything I have done or said in the House or anything I have done publicly, I apologize to them for that. I hope to represent them well on all these things, with the highest regard for this House.
Let me take 10 minutes, and this will be as concise as I can make it, to talk about where we are going in the financial future of this country. We need to link here exactly what is happening with the government. It is about truth and consequences. The truth, of course, is that we are running bigger and bigger deficits. Our debt is getting higher and higher. There are consequences to this going forward, and those consequences are going to be borne not by the government in power here but by the Canadian people, who are going to continue to face mounting debts, deficits, interest payments and household debts going forward.
Three months ago, we had a Liberal finance minister deliver a budget. In it, there was a lot that she put in front of Parliament, including another $40 billion-plus deficit added to Canada's debt, which has now reached $1.3 trillion. That is only federal government debt. Layer the provincial government debt on top of that, of all the combined provincial governments, and there is another $900 billion. We are talking about a society that, from a government perspective, is very much in debt.
The government, in its fiscal wisdom, says that the provincial governments are starting to actually get more money. There is one provincial government that received money last year, and that was my home province of Alberta, because of a boom in oil prices that led to a whole bunch of royalties. This translated into over $21 billion being forwarded to various governments across Canada as a result of a prosperous industry. We need to make sure we understand what is happening here. This is an industry that suffered for a number of years before it actually made any profit. This is the economic basis of what is holding up the social welfare of this country at this point in time.
I am going to go back to the finance minister's speech. There was federal debt and provincial debt, but she was also facing an inflation regime at that point in time that was around 4%. It had come down from last summer from about 8.2% to 4%. How did that happen? It happened because the Bank of Canada, an instrument of the Government of Canada, had raised interest rates from 0.25% to 4.5%. It had done its job in trying to control inflation. This is the mandate of the Bank of Canada. It performed that mandate, but it had to do so because of government overspending.
The Bank of Canada did what it had to do to bring that rate back down. It came down to 4%. What happened in April? The consumer price index went back up. Inflation in Canada's economy went back up. Why did it go back up in April? It is because the government imposed a 30% increase on the carbon tax upon the backs of Canadians. Of course, that rippled all the way through the economy and caused inflation at the pumps, inflation at the food stores and inflation in everything we do that involves energy.
There is something the government does not seem to have a hold on. If it increases the costs in the economy, it is going to increase inflation. It is doing this in two ways. It is increasing the costs to Canadians, and it is increasing deficits. These are all monetary mechanisms, fiscal mechanisms, that increase inflation. The government asked the Bank of Canada if it could come in and fix its mess from imposing more costs upon Canadians.
When the minister delivered her budget, the Bank of Canada rate was 4.5%. That went up this month, on June 7, to 4.75%. What was declining in both respects has gone up. The cost of inflation has gone up, and the cost to Canadians has gone up again. They are all refinancing their mortgages, and it is another 0.25%. Where will this end? We do not know at this point in time. It is costing Canadians more and more.
What is the principal cause of this inflation? The number one cause of inflation in the economy is money printing. The government continues to print money. It has doubled Canada's debt in eight years.
The government is going to say that we had to do that to keep people safe during the pandemic. I say to my friends on the other side that the pandemic is over. We have to get back to some sort of balance, where we are actually paying for the goods we consume in society today with today's dollars. We keep taxing the future generation of Canadians to pay for our spending today, and that is something that has to change. That is something my party is asking the government to change, because it is a necessity for the future of this country.
Now, I will talk about this recipe for inflation that the government has imposed upon this country at this point in time. It has asked the Bank of Canada to come in and fix our mistakes again and again.
What is the consequence of the Bank of Canada coming in and raising the interest rates throughout the economy? It is having higher mortgage rates. This means that the actual cost of maintaining the mortgage on the same house has risen by 122% in the last eight years, which is significant. I will explain what the issue is.
When mortgage rates are low, as they were up to a year ago, people buy houses. However, we have a saying in finance that we do not really buy the house that we need; rather, we buy the house the payment will afford. A 25-year mortgage at 0.25% with a $100,000 down payment, for instance, will equate to a bigger house than if the mortgage payment is around 4.75%-plus, which is what we have done to Canadians. We have added four and a half points of interest to mortgages, which is hundreds of thousands of dollars to the average Canadian. We have actually picked their pocket here, or pulled a bait and switch as to the house they can buy. The end result for many Canadians is that they are going to have to walk away from their house, because the equity in their house is not going to equal what it was when they bought the house. They are losing value in their house because of the current government.
However, there is not enough housing in this country anyway. We have to get building again, and we have to make sure we get back to balance. We have to ensure that we serve Canadians to make sure that they have the ability to build a life in Canada going forward.
Canada's GDP is $2.3 trillion at this point in time, and the consumer debt of Canadians equals 107% of that; therefore, it is over $2.3 trillion, and about 75% of that is mortgage debt. This is the most indebted ratio in the G7. We are more exposed to a downturn in the economy than any other economy in the world is at this point in time. This is on the cusp of danger.
We call it moral hazard. The government has not faced the fact that, in supposedly good times, it is supposed to balance the budget, pay back some of the debt and bring down interest rates so that people can actually get the economy going. However, it continues to spend more money, ramp up the cost of everything and make sure that Canadians are bearing it on their backs. The back it is going to bear the most on is mortgage rates, which are going to push many Canadians out of their homes as the rates rise and Canadians have to refinance. That is the great tragedy we are visiting upon Canadians without balanced budgets.
My party has actually been pushing the government for a long time to show us a plan where it gets back to balance, because in every budget it has shown us so far, it says, “Well, you know, we are going to continue to spend more and more.” A $10-billion temporary budget deficit in 2016 has turned into hundreds of billions of dollars per year. There is another $40 billion-plus this year and more of that going down the road. This is to say nothing of the debt service charge, which has doubled in the last two years. We are up to $44 billion that we are going to have to pay as interest. All of this is contributing to inflation. We have to get back on track.
I will tell the government to please bring us a plan so Canadians can see that they will actually get back on track.
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- Jun/21/23 9:55:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have been corrected. The member is correct that there were larger deficits during the pandemic than there were after the pandemic. Every year, we look at the deficit the Liberals put on the table for the next year, and it always rises. This is the point I was trying to make, and if I misspoke in that respect, I owe her an apology.
There were three questions, but the member talked about economists, Conservative theories and all this stuff. These are not Conservative theories; these are economic theories. I know that, sooner or later, the Liberals will have to start paying attention to economics and finance. The numbers will actually matter at the end of the day.
I apologize to the member because I have forgotten her second question out of the three. If she could ask me again later, I would appreciate it.
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- Jun/21/23 9:57:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the theory that there is no more need for oil is very interesting. The world uses a lot of energy, and over 80% of it comes from fossil fuels. I am sure that Canada's oil companies do not have much say over the price of oil. That is determined by global markets, which set world oil prices. The prices of other forms of energy also depend on the price of oil.
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- Jun/21/23 9:59:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not know where my colleague got that fact about the city council in Calgary and Conservative policy, because we are all about building affordable houses.
I will point out to the member that there was a solution before there was a problem. There was not a housing crisis for either affordable housing or housing for Canadians who had the money to buy houses eight years ago. How did this problem arise? Let me figure it out. What happened eight years ago?
I will ask my colleague who asked that question why he is supporting a government that has created the problem that Conservatives need to get in power to solve.
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