SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 218 - Jun/21/23

Mr. Ryan Williams (Bay of Quinte, CPC)

Jun/21/23 5:39:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour and privilege to follow and share my time with the future prime minister of Canada. When I was a little boy, my grandfather used to read—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Jun/21/23 5:39:20 p.m.
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The hon. parliamentary secretary is rising on a point of order.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Jun/21/23 5:39:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not recall hearing the Leader of the Opposition indicate he was sharing his time.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Jun/21/23 5:39:30 p.m.
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He did. The hon. member for Bay of Quinte.

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Mr. Ryan Williams

Jun/21/23 5:39:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour and privilege to share my time with the future prime minister of Canada. When I was a little boy, my grandfather used to read to me a great Canadian poet, Robert Service. The poem that he would read to us was The Cremation of Sam McGee, which starts: There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee. The greatest line from that whole poem was, “Now a promise made is a debt unpaid”. When we said things are broken, what is broken the most are the promises to Canadians: promises for a better life and a way to boost the ability and the affordability of the middle class and those who hope to join it, a promise for a better life in Canada with ample affordable rent and housing, a promise for a good paycheque and a promise for law and order. When we said things were broken, these promises were broken, and what is left are broken promises, empty promises that are leaving Canadians with empty wallets and the debt that is left unpaid. Canadians deserve better. They deserve the best, and the Liberal government has failed to deliver. It is our duty to effect change and to ensure that our hard work in this House today ushers in a better tomorrow for all. The Liberals have stood for far too long with years of hopeful policy that has only led to empty promises and empty wallets for Canadians, especially in the middle class. With more than eight million Canadians using food banks, it is plain that more people than ever before are finding themselves out of the middle class. Rising interest rates are hammering homeowners, renters and businesses as every increase takes more out of Canadians' paycheques and wallets and gives it back to the government. As a business owner, I can say it is hard to watch. Milton Friedman said it best back in 1992, over 30 years ago, when he said that although printing money has some immediate benefits that seem desirable in the short term, it can lead to harmful consequences in the long term, causing deficits that lead to inflation. The good effects come first, and it feels good. The bad effects only come later. There is a strong temptation to overdo it, but when governments stop printing money, it is the opposite: The bad effects come first and the good effects only come later. It is hard to reverse and it is addicting. After promising teeny-tiny deficit spending before COVID and before the election in 2015, the government spent $100 billion prior to COVID-19 on deficits. The government printed that money. Then, after COVID, it printed $200 billion of non-COVID deficit inflationary spending, and then in this budget, after the finance minister promised to get his house in order, we see that the government is printing $63 billion, saying that it is bringing it down to $43 billion because $2,400 of new taxes per middle-class-income family is going back to those households. This is the invisible tax that is taking hold further. Inflation rates have driven food prices up more than 10%. This invisible tax steals from Canadian incomes and steals from Canadian wallets. We know that the solution to inflation is to stop printing money and make more of the things that money buys. Doing this creates powerful paycheques by creating more of the stuff that we need in Canada that we are short of, and powerful paycheques mean more money in people's pockets. The complacency of the current Liberal government has fostered an environment in which our nation's doers and dreamers are forced into a playing field that is anything but level, and it is harder than ever to create those paycheques. Companies in Canada find it increasingly difficult to operate in Canada because of increasing costs caused by inflation, higher interest rates on their loans and the complete inability to hire talent and workers whom they need to generate income for their companies. We have red tape. We cannot get LNG out of the ground. Our leader talked about this. We need faster building permits. A mine should take two or three years, not 25. Furthermore, we have big, bossy institutions that dominate our marketplaces with rules that protect them and not our small business owners, who find it hard to grow their businesses. Although the almost 1.2 million small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada make up 98% of all businesses in Canada and employ 10.5 million people, or 54% of the workforce, monopolies run this country. In this game of Monopoly, Canadians lose. We pay $200 every time we pass “Go”. Every time we roll the dice in the game of Monopoly, and kids hate this game, we land on Telus or Rogers or Air Canada or VIA Rail or InBev beer or RBC or Bell Canada or Mastercard, and we lose every time. No one wins. The simplicity of bringing down prices is that it is about something very simplistic. It is about freedom, freedom of choice for consumers in a free market that is not dominated by monopolies. It is about free and honest competition, about fostering our small and medium-sized enterprises and allowing them to grow. Competition is anything but competitive in the Canadian telecommunications sector, where Canadians pay the highest cellphone rates on the planet, rates that are three times higher than they are in Australia and double those in the U.S. and Europe. Is this competition? I think not. The landscape has been gamed to favour the monopolies, leaving consumers without choice. Without competition, these telcos do not have to earn our confidence and our hard-earned dollar; they just demand it. We pay for it, as some of the highest prices in the world can be found on our bills every single month. Everyone in Canada has a cellphone. The Liberal government campaigned on lower bills and more choices. It said they would be 25% lower. Today, those empty promises come with a significant price. The Canadian telephone monopolies have suffocated start-ups and silenced critics. If they cannot win by offering the prices that they do, they buy their competitors. They have bought more competitors to take them out of the market than anything else. We must fight for freedom of choice for Canadians. We must create an environment that breeds competition in a fair and open market. We must fight to ensure that our hard-earned dollar is equal to the affordable and reliable service that we all deserve, because the Liberal Party’s empty promises just mean empty wallets. It is the same in all sectors, and the solution to see Canadian paycheques grow is to have Canadian businesses grow. We need more homes. We need microchips. We need food. We need farms. We need food processing. We need LNG. It is also about keeping Canadian IP in Canada. Canadians invented peanut butter, the zipper, the Ski-Doo, the Sea-Doo, the pacemaker and the WonderBra. Where are all of these inventions in the past decade? We dedicated billions in funding to R and D, which gets pilfered by our foes and allies. We have put millions into battery research in the east coast at Dalhousie, but who owns that battery research? It is Tesla. We put millions into the Sidewalk Labs at Google. Who owns that research? It is Google. We are still paying for research from Huawei in our Canadian colleges and universities. Who is paying for that? It is Canadian taxpayers. Again, we have not been smart at all with where we are putting our investments. When it comes to looking after Canadians’ money, it is all about one thing only: It is about investing in Canadians’ futures, and we have not been doing that. People with good intentions make promises; only people with good character keep them. There were promises made and a debt unpaid, leaving Canadians with more debt owed than any generation before them. The moral of this story is this: Do not make promises that you do not intend to keep. Perhaps the real lesson here is that promises made are only as strong as the person who gives them. If we cannot trust what someone is saying, we need to turn to a new voice. A Conservative government will be that voice, a voice for all Canadians in a time of need. As families struggle to make ends meet and sacrifice daily to put food on the table, the last thing they need is more empty promises. A Conservative government will rise above the unnecessary layers of bureaucracy that have stalled out in bringing about much-needed change. Action is what we offer, and bringing home paycheques to fill emptying wallets is what Canadians deserve. It is what the future deserves, and this future government will bring it home for Canadians.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Jun/21/23 5:48:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, over the last three decades, there have been 20 Conservative budgets introduced in the House. I am wondering if the member knows how many of those 20 Conservative budgets actually were balanced or ran a surplus. I ask because when he discovers that the answer is only three, he must know that there is a reason for that. Why is it that between Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, of the 20 budgets that were introduced in the House, only three ran a surplus or were balanced? Why is that?

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Mr. Ryan Williams

Jun/21/23 5:49:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is three more than the Liberals have ever delivered to Canadians. The simple fact is that whenever Conservatives get in, they tend to clean up the mess from the previous government. We saw a pattern here. We talk about it. Every 30 years, we tend to learn those lessons. We saw that pattern after the current Prime Minister's father was in government. We are certainly seeing the pattern now. The whole premise is that as Conservatives and as Canadians, we believe that the only people we need to be listening to are Canadians, but when it comes to fixing this mess, it is going to be Canadians who also fix it, resulting in powerful paycheques, businesses that get rid of red tape and lower taxes to create new jobs for workers who want a better paycheque and who want to work in those jobs, who want to make this country a better place. Conservatives are going to do that. We look forward to many balanced budgets in the future.

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Mr. Luc Desilets (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ)

Jun/21/23 5:50:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there are often peculiar components to the Conservatives' motions. The motion itself is interesting. It reads well. The Conservatives are asking for a plan and the Bloc Québécois agrees with that. The disappointing part is that the motion is based on premises or whereases that are slightly sensationalist and off-topic. The Conservatives know it too. Inflation and interest rates result from international forces. We can call out this government all day long—we could help the Conservatives call it out on a lot of things—but these factors are international. It would have been nice if the content and premises had been based on the reality of the situation.

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Mr. Ryan Williams

Jun/21/23 5:51:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is a perfect correlation in the fact that all governments that ran greater deficits ended up with higher inflation. Something that we do not hear bandied around any more, although we used to in the beginning, is the modern monetary theory, this whole new proposition that we can spend our way out of a pandemic, out of a major problem, and that budgets would balance themselves. There was new thinking, although money has been around for thousands of years, that we could just keep spending and there would be no consequences. Well, the consequences are here and they are very real, and Canadians see them every single day. This motion that we have is perfect, because it talks about going back to the table to return to balanced budgets. We have identified so clearly that Canadians know—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Jun/21/23 5:52:05 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

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Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Jun/21/23 5:52:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always really interesting to see what kind of freedom Conservatives are willing to defend and whose freedom they will not defend. Today the Conservatives shouted down a motion to protect kids. A nine-year-old girl was threatened and attacked for having a pixie haircut, yet they will not stand up in protection. The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan invited an MP from Uganda here who voted for the death penalty for LGBTQ people. He voted for the death penalty to kill people for their sexual orientation. Also, in the desperation to hold back Maxime Bernier, the member in Stornoway was sending out pamphlets attacking the rights of gay people. I would like to ask the hon. member why the opposition continues to undermine the rights of queer people, LGBTQ people and trans people and denies them freedom and the right to live their lives in dignity.

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Mr. Ryan Williams

Jun/21/23 5:53:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we stand up for all of those people. I think the simple premise, though, is that this party over here is supporting a government that is failing Canadians in every single aspect of their lives right now, with the homes that they cannot afford and the rents that they cannot afford. We see it every time a single mother tries to fill up her car, pay her rent or get groceries. This party is propping up the government right now and not solving any of those problems. We are the only party in the House right now standing up for Canadians, standing up for their rights and their future, and we will continue to do so.

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Mr. Terry Beech (Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Lib.)

Jun/21/23 5:53:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Kingston and the Islands. It is a pleasure to rise to discuss Canada's current fiscal position, our independent monetary policy, the current economic context and the 2023 budget, as well as to highlight a number of measures that are making life more affordable for Canadians while building a sustainable economy that works well for all Canadians. This week, the International Monetary Fund reaffirmed not only that Canada enjoys the lowest deficit in the G7, but that this advantage continues for each and every year through its projected horizon. It said, “Canada is a strong fiscal performer”, with an enviable job market and a strong labour participation rate, which have been bolstered by the government’s investments in a Canada-wide early learning and child care system. The IMF went on to note the resilience of Canada’s financial system in the face of recent global financial challenges, pointing specifically to Canada’s robust regulatory framework and contingency tools to safeguard federally regulated financial institutions, as well as insurance deposits. The IMF praised Canada’s progress in strengthening our anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing frameworks. It also noted our government’s efforts to increase housing supply and to address housing affordability challenges, including with the housing accelerator fund, which provides incentives for municipalities to bolster the housing supply even further. At the end of March, our government released budget 2023, our made-in-Canada plan for a strong middle class, an affordable economy and a healthy future. It comes at an important moment for our economy. As we have seen, Canada’s economy has made a remarkable recovery from the COVID recession. There are 890,000 more Canadians working today than when COVID first began. In the first four months of 2023 alone, the Canadian economy has added nearly a quarter of a million jobs. We have now recovered 128% of jobs lost during the first months of the pandemic, while the United States has only recovered 117%. Also, universal child care has increased the labour participation rate for Canadian women to a record high of 85.7%, showing the success of that policy, and our unemployment rate remains close to all-time historic lows. Global inflation, while still too high, has fallen in Canada from its peak of 8.1% last June to 4.4% last month, and the Bank of Canada predicts it will be 3% by this summer and 2% by the end of 2024. Canada’s inflation rate also remains below that of our economic peers. Inflation in the U.K. is almost double, at 8.7%; the OECD average is at 7.4%; the EU is at 6.1%; and the G7 is at 5.4%. We can see that at 4.4% we are way below those. Since February, the average wage for Canadians has grown by more than 5%, meaning that paycheques are now outpacing inflation. That means more money in the pockets of Canadians after a hard day’s work. Canada had the strongest economic growth in the G7 over the course of 2022, and that is projected to continue through to 2024. Also, in April, S&P reiterated our AAA credit rating, and we have the lowest deficit-to-GDP ratio and the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, lower than other major AAA-rated economies, such as the Netherlands and Australia. It is this remarkably strong economic foundation that underpinned the investments we made in our 2023 budget. Unlike the Conservatives, we believe our commitment to invest $196 billion to improve Canada’s health care system over the next 10 years is a prudent investment to make, especially in a context where we are exiting the greatest global health emergency we have faced in more than 100 years. We also think it is prudent to invest in fighting climate change and to develop the net-zero technologies that our world will demand as we continue to confront the increasing costs of previous inaction on reducing emissions. If investments in health care and the clean economy are the first two pillars of the budget, the third is our government’s focus on affordability. Let us not forget that our government reduced our debt-to-GDP ratio every single year before the pandemic. This allowed us to support Canadians and Canadian businesses through the pandemic, and it is what allows us to invest in making life more affordable for Canadians today. While inflation is coming down, I think we can all agree that it is still too high and is making it difficult for many Canadians to make ends meet and put nutritious food on the table. That is why budget 2023 introduced a grocery benefit that will help support 11 million Canadian families, including more than 50% of seniors. It will be delivered by cheque or direct deposit on July 5, so Canadians should watch for that over the next two weeks. We also secured a deal to reduce interchange fees for credit card-accepting businesses. This will save small businesses more than $1 billion over the next five years. At the same time, we are looking to reduce additional fees and charges for Canadians. This includes fees on their cellphone bills, event and concert fees, excessive baggage fees and unjustified shipping and freight costs. We are also cracking down on predatory lending. We are reducing the criminal interest rate from 47% to 35% and imposing a cap on payday loans. We are also supporting low-income Canadians by introducing automatic tax filing so that individuals can get access to the benefits they are entitled to. For some families, this will mean tens of thousands of dollars that they might not otherwise receive. Students are receiving better access to student loans with increased student grants. The average student is likely to save $3,000 as a result of our government's eliminating interest on student loans. This will help young workers and apprentices get the start they need when they are looking to first enter the workforce. I have not even mentioned dental care, which will benefit nine million Canadians, as well as our investment in creating high-paying sustainable jobs that will benefit generations to come. These investments build on significant investments that our government has made to support Canadians since first being elected in 2015. Child care costs, for example, have been reduced by 50%, with $10-a-day child care on track to being fully implemented by 2026. Child care on its own used to be the same amount as a mortgage payment. A family with two children is now saving over $20,000 a year in many cases. We have increased old age security and have worked with premiers to increase the average value of pension payments going forward. We have reduced taxes for the middle class while increasing them on the top 1%. We have also increased the amount everyone can earn before paying any federal income tax at all and have reduced taxes for small businesses not once but twice. Of course, let us not forget the Canada child benefit. This benefit, like many of the programs I have already referred to, is indexed to inflation and supports more than 3.5 million families. This means that as the cost of living rises, so will the benefit that Canadian families receive. On its own, the Canada child benefit has helped to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, and combined, these measures have lifted more than 2.7 million Canadians out of poverty, demonstrating that Canada’s first poverty reduction strategy is having a significant impact. Finally, our enhanced workers benefit is supporting 4.2 million Canadian workers with higher paycheques. We have ensured, for the first time, that our investment incentives include measures to support workers with fair wages and benefits. All of this together is happening because we believe that confident countries like Canada do well when they invest in themselves and when we invest in our people. These are challenging times, but Canada is in an enviable position to be able to support Canadians who need it the most in a responsible and targeted way while ensuring that global inflation continues to decline in Canada. At the same time, we are securing health care and retirement security for the next generation while creating high-paying sustainable jobs for this generation. There is obviously more work to do, more work to do on housing, more work to do on climate change and more work to do on affordability. Canadians are up to this challenge, and we are well positioned as a country to address those things. I hope that all members of this House will work together to bring forward the best Canadian ideas from right across the country, and that we will work to implement those ideas and positive solutions through the fall and through to budget 2024.

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Mr. Gérard Deltell (Louis-Saint-Laurent, CPC)

Jun/21/23 6:02:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are talking about taxation, the budget, the management of public funds and, most importantly, how we are going to manage the money that Canadians give us through their taxes. Just seven months ago, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance tabled an economic update and gave the following warning. She said that we needed to control spending and avoid deficits because deficits throw fuel on the inflationary fire. Those were the exact words used by the Minister of Finance. Now, here we are seven months later and she has completely changed her tune after getting a slap on the wrist from Liberal supporters who said that they wanted more deficits and that there was no problem. How can the member explain the fact that, just seven months ago, the Deputy Prime Minister was saying that we should not run deficits, that we should control spending and that there was a plan to balance the budget, but now all of that has gone out the window.

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Mr. Terry Beech

Jun/21/23 6:03:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really appreciate having another opportunity to address Canada's current fiscal situation. We have the lowest deficit in the G7. We have the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7. That is what has allowed us to focus our investments in this budget on securing health care, with $196 billion invested over the next 10 years; investing in the future with sustainable jobs; investing in the clean economy; and of course investing in affordability. There is global inflation, and while inflation in Canada has come down from 8.1% to 4.4% and is now likely, as forecast by the Bank of Canada, to hit 3% by the summer and 2% by next year, we need to make sure that Canadians who need our support are receiving that support. We have invested in very targeted measures to make sure that the most vulnerable Canadians who need support the most get it through these hard times, while we position Canada as a country, as a whole, to thrive going forward.

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Ms. Bonita Zarrillo (Port Moody—Coquitlam, NDP)

Jun/21/23 6:04:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member and I are neighbours; we share a border. Today in our local newspaper, one of the headlines said that rents are unaffordable for 40% of Coquitlam renters. While the Conservatives continue to try to deny children dental care, the NDP is working on solutions to get people in homes and stay in homes. One thing that is happening in B.C. is a housing acquisition fund. The B.C. government has put forward a housing acquisition fund that would allow the province to work with not-for-profits and co-op housing to maintain housing in our communities. I wonder if the member can talk about whether the federal government is going to come forward with a housing acquisition fund, as has been requested over and over again by the member for Vancouver East.

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Mr. Terry Beech

Jun/21/23 6:05:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to start by thanking the member for her petition today. It is an issue that I have spent a lot of time on as well. I expect our issues are similar because we are neighbours. I also want to thank her for bringing up investments in housing. I had an opportunity to meet with mayors and councillors from across British Columbia at the UBCM Housing Summit, where we were all working together to find solutions to make rents and housing more affordable. Part of the discussion was about reviewing what the federal government has done. We have to remember that the federal government had been essentially out of housing for almost 30 years. That was until we created the national housing strategy, an investment of over $80 billion going to a number of different things. That particular summit gave me the opportunity to review how that money has been invested. Some 39% of it that has been invested in projects across the country and 61% is still unallocated. The investments in British Columbia on their own in the last six years already amount to more funding than the B.C. government has suggested it will put forward over the next 10 years, and we are continuing to invest on top of that. B.C. is a good partner. B.C. municipalities are a good partner. However, we can only get affordable housing if the federal government, the provincial governments, the municipal governments and indigenous governments all work together, and that is exactly what I propose we all do.

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Mr. Marty Morantz (Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, CPC)

Jun/21/23 6:07:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I noted that when the member was talking about the IMF, he was cherry-picking points from the IMF's report that strengthened his case. I have a chart in front of me of housing market risk indicators. It says, “Economies with high household debt and more floating-rate loans have greater exposure to higher mortgage payments, and a heightened risk of defaults.” Then it lists a number of countries. Do members know which country is rated as having the highest risk of all of them? It is Canada. I wonder if the member could explain why.

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Mr. Terry Beech

Jun/21/23 6:08:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is good to bring up the stress test measures that were brought up in 2018. We had historically low interest rates, and we were concerned Canadians might not be able to afford their mortgage payments if there was a sudden increase from historically low rates. We put that in place. What was the Conservatives' response? Not only did they speak against the stress test, but they actually suggested in the election that came after that we should extend amortization rates. They wanted Canadians to take on more debt and wanted to, in that action, increase housing prices at the same time.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Jun/21/23 6:08:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to the opposition motion that has been put before the House. I will start by saying that I am concerned about the rhetoric in the preamble. However, the motion and the result clause is fairly short. It talks about a balanced budget and committing to a balanced budget immediately. I found this very interesting because I asked the member for Bay of Quinte how many times Conservatives introduced balanced budgets in the House, and I even gave him the answer. It was three times in the last 30 years that Conservatives have introduced balanced budgets in the House, under Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper. There was a grand total of 20 budgets introduced, and three were balanced. Do members know when they came? The first came in 2006-07. This was on the heels of Paul Martin's surplus, which was a $13-billion surplus. Stephen Harper axed that the next year, and in 2007-08, the surplus was only $9.6 billion. After that, he started to run deficits immediately. He blew away that surplus that Paul Martin had left for him and started running deficits immediately. Then, of course, there is the famous balancing of the budget in 2014-15, when Stephen Harper slashed veterans services and sold off GM shares at bargain prices just so that he get himself in a position on paper that he was bringing in a surplus because he felt he needed to do that to solidify his base that was demanding it. However, rather than dwell on the fact that Conservatives have done this historically, at least in recent history, I think we have to ask ourselves something: Why do governments run deficits? There are two reasons. A government can run a deficit, one, because it is expecting the taxpayer to pay more to make up that deficit and plans to charge or tax them more or, two, because it is investing. The whole idea behind investing is assuming that a government will get something in return for that investment. When governments are running deficits to invest in Canadians, they are doing it with the expectation that something is going to come out on other end to grow our economy. When we grow our economy, people are better off and there is more wealth in our economy. What about population growth? We are growing at historic rates. We are just past 40 million people in Canada. When we continue to grow in such a fashion, we need to make new investments, and we are seeing it on the other side through the growth, which is why Canada is continually rated to have one of the best credit ratings in the developed world. That is why we have such a low debt-to-GDP ratio, which is what people really need to focus on. However, I know that it is not intuitive for people to want to focus on that, especially when Canadians are managing a household budget, and they cannot look at it the same way, but the reality is that we have to look at our debt in relation to our GDP. As our GDP continues to grow, if we are spending less than that growth, we have a net benefit at the end of the day, which is essentially what we see when we bring forward these budgets that are investing in Canadians. Quite frankly, that is something that Brian Mulroney understood. It is something that Stephen Harper understood, and it is something that former Liberals, such as Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien, understood. They understood that, if we invest in Canadians and actually use the money to invest in Canadians when running those deficits, we will get to a place eventually where Paul Martin got to, which was a $13-billion surplus, and a surplus the year after that as well. We will get to those places naturally. The point is that we can get to that place by investing in Canadians because we see the economic growth, see the opportunities, see people being better off and see the debt-to-GDP ratio. We see the debt specifically as it relates per capita to the lowest among the G7, as we are hearing. There is one thing we should be concerned about, and I rightfully share it with so many other people. It is the debt level each household is experiencing right now in Canada, but we have to ask ourselves why. Why is that? Is there something unique about Canada and our spending habits that puts us in that position? It has a lot to do, I would suggest, with the age of our population. In the G7, Canada has one of the youngest populations. These are people who are buying new homes and investing for the first time. These are people who do not have the retirement savings that other G7 countries have. Am I excusing anything? I am not. I am saying that we have to be mindful of this and we have to be vigilant in the approach and ensure Canadians do not put themselves into situations they do not want to be in. I stress that there is a reason for the circumstances we are in, but regardless of all of this, Canada still puts itself in a position of being among the best in the G7, as it relates to the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio and the lowest deficit-to-GDP ratio, and I think it is very important that, as we reflect on this, we consider that. I have brought these up on a number of occasions recently, and I want to talk about them again. They are the recent comments made by former prime minister Brian Mulroney on the job this government has been doing. I mean no disrespect to any living Liberal prime ministers, but I have not even heard a former Liberal prime minister speak this highly of the current government. Brian Mulroney said, “I have learned over the years that history is unconcerned with the trivia and the trash of rumours and gossip floating around Parliament Hill. History is only concerned with the big ticket items that have shaped the future of Canada”. The article continues, “He said [the current Prime Minister] and the premiers 'conducted themselves as well as anybody else in the world' in dealing with COVID, something Mulroney called 'the greatest challenge that any prime minister has dealt with...in 156 years.'” We have heard Conservatives tell us many times in the past how we failed the country on NAFTA, but here is what the architect of NAFTA, the Prime Minister who was the lead at the time and negotiated the original NAFTA deal, had to say about the job this government did. The article describes, “On NAFTA, Mulroney said that he saw first-hand how the current Prime Minister made 'big decisions at crucial moments' and won 'a significant victory for Canada'. He said, 'It's due to the leadership that we saw from the government of Canada'”. That is Brian Mulroney, a former Conservative prime minister, absolutely praising the work this government did in relation to keeping our economy in a good position when we had to renegotiate NAFTA. I remember the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle at the time standing up in question period demanding the government capitulate to Donald Trump's demands, but we did not. The government stood firm. Our finance minister negotiated this, and we got a better deal at the end of the day. Brian Mulroney will even tell us that. Also, we can look at the various other things that have occurred. I know that my time is running to an end. I think that once again we have an opposition motion in front of us that is troubling. I am getting tired of challenging the Conservatives day in and day out, but here we are. It is the last one. Hopefully when we return in the fall, we will have motions with perhaps a little more substantive measures to them than what we are seeing now.

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