44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 17, 2023 10:00AM
- Oct/17/23 10:19:01 a.m.
- Watch
After eight years of the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government, we are starting to see the hard reality that inflation is the price one pays for all of the programs the government told us were free. We will remember that the Prime Minister said he could double the debt, but not to worry, because the budget would balance itself. He said that interest rates were low, so not only were deficits permanently affordable, but also we could not afford not to spend. Here we are, with the devastating human consequences not so long after that because, as Pythagoras says, numbers rule the universe. No matter how many words are spoken, no matter how many soft lullabies are sung, the reality is that when we spend what we do not have, we drive up the cost for everyone else.
Here we are. The cost of government has driven up the cost of living. Half a trillion dollars of inflationary debt has bid up the goods we buy and the interest we pay. According to former Liberal finance minister John Manley, government spending is pressing its foot on the inflationary gas pedal, which forces the Bank of Canada to press on the brakes with higher interest rates. Now, I bump into people across Canada who are living in financial terror. A shipyard worker in Vancouver told me that his monthly mortgage payment is now $7,500. He is a shipyard worker. Of the $7,500, $4,000 is just for interest. His family is basically spending $50,000 a year on interest for their mortgage. This is after the Prime Minister, his budget documents and his bank governor told that man that rates would stay low.
One would think the government would reverse its policies, but it is doing the opposite. A year ago, it said it would balance the budget by 2028. Six months ago, it changed its mind and said it would never balance the budget. Last week, we found out from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the deficit is 15% bigger than the government claimed only six months ago. It has totally lost control of the spending.
Our common sense plan is to cap spending and cut waste in order to balance the budget and bring down interest rates and inflation. Let us do it before the hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages renew into these higher rates. Let us save people's homes and our future. It is common sense. My colleagues will work to bring home this common sense here in Canada. It is your home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
441 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/17/23 11:01:13 a.m.
- Watch
Yes, we borrowed extensively, billions of dollars, in order to have the backs of Canadians. We spent that money, most of it supported by the Conservative Party, on things such as small businesses.
Yesterday, I heard a Conservative member talk about small businesses being so important to Canadians and Canada as a nation. I have talked about small businesses as the backbone of our country when it comes to economic development. During the pandemic, this government spent billions of dollars supporting small businesses, preventing them from going bankrupt in many ways.
We supported Canadians, who were no longer in a position to work, through programs such as CERB. Millions of Canadians were supported by billions of dollars, which did increase the debt. However, the Prime Minister, this government and many members of this chamber supported spending that money. It is like the leader of the Conservative Party giving a child a chocolate bar and then condemning the child for eating it.
However, at the end of the day, it was important for the government to spend that money to support Canadians and small businesses, not to mention the billions of dollars that were there to support our seniors through one-time payments for those on GIS and OAS or individuals with disabilities.
The Conservatives talk about this huge debt. In part, they supported us at the time and now they criticize us for it. They need to be more transparent and honest with Canadians about that when they criticize the government for spending money. Are they now saying, retroactively, that we should not have supported Canadians, that we should not have supported small businesses and others? That is what it sure sounds like. Today, in a question that I put forward to the leader of the Conservative Party, I challenged him on that point.
It is interesting when we look at the waffling of the Conservative Party. The best example is the previous speaker, the seconder on the motion. After I posed a very straightforward question for him, the member spent so much time, as many members of the Conservative Party have, criticizing the price on pollution, or as they call it “the carbon tax”. Like their apparent flip-flop on the need to support Canadians during the pandemic, the member failed to acknowledge that he supported a price on pollution, or the carbon tax, and he was not alone. Every member of the Conservative Party who ran in the last federal election supported it. When I pointed that out, he replied that he personally did not support it. It would appear that the first thing we need to ask every Conservative candidate is whether he or she personally supports this.
453 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/17/23 1:37:08 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in today's opposition motion debate. I first want to congratulate the Conservatives on bringing forward a motion that is not directly associated with the issue they have been bringing forward time after time in the House. Now, we get to talk about something a bit different, although I do have great concern with the premise of the motion they have brought forward. The “whereas” clauses and the assertions they have made are, I think, wholly inaccurate, and I look forward to explaining that in the next 10 minutes or so.
This country certainly took on a lot of debt in order to support Canadians from coast to coast during the pandemic, and we have certainly had to take on our fair share to do that, much of which was unanimously approved by the House, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic. However, it is always important to look at things in terms of context. Obviously, debt is significantly affected by GDP, the amount a country is able to produce in terms of economic activity, because that is exactly what will end up supporting that debt. When we talk about the debt in this country and when we look at the debt-to-GDP ratio, Canada is actually doing quite well.
As a matter of fact, if we look at our debt-to-GDP ratio, we are at 14%. Some people might ask whether that is good or bad. That is fair, because I do not think everybody is an economist and knows the default answer to that, but let us compare that 14% in Canada to the percentage for our G7 partners. France is at 99%. Germany is at 47%. Italy is at 129%. Japan is at 161%. Probably the two most comparable to us, the U.K. and the United States, are at 95% and 96%. When we talk about our debt levels, it is extremely important to compare where we stand on them to the position of our G7 counterparts, our most comparable economies in the world. In that regard, we are in an extremely good position.
I would add that I will be sharing my time with the member for Kings—Hants today.
That is very important for context. I know that Conservatives, including this lot here, like to come into the House and routinely tell us about how theirs is the only party that knows how to introduce a balanced budget. They may want to go ahead and cheer and clap now, because usually they do that when I try to pay them a compliment, before I add the “but”.
It is really important to consider this: Conservatives will tell us that they know how to balance budgets, but if we look back to—
An hon. member: We do.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, they said “we do”. They will then have to explain the following facts to me and why they did the following. Since 1990, there have been only two prime ministers who have significantly added a surplus or balanced a budget. They were Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. This is interesting, because Conservatives will always say that Stephen Harper balanced budgets, but no, he did not, and Brian Mulroney never had a single balanced budget. Stephen Harper did not really either, and I will explain why. The first two budgets Stephen Harper brought into Parliament were on the heels of Paul Martin's surpluses that he had been running for years. The Conservatives certainly squandered those surpluses and went into a deficit position very quickly.
Of course, Conservatives also like to tell us, and I have heard it already this morning, that they left the fiscal state of this country in great shape in 2015 with the last budget they presented in a last-ditch effort to get Canadians to vote them into office one more time. They brought forward a “balanced budget”, and for the purposes of Hansard, I should say I am putting “balanced budget” in quotes, but they did it on the backs of veterans by closing Veterans Affairs offices. They sold off our shares of GM at the time at bargain prices in order to get that off their balance sheet. They did a whole host of things in order to portray the illusion that they had balanced the budget, when they really had not. They did it at the expense of Canadians and the investments the government had on behalf of Canadians.
I know that many will say this was so long ago, 10 years ago for Harper and even longer for Mulroney. Fine, let us just get back to this lot of Conservatives right here. All of them who are here today ran on Erin O'Toole's plan in the last election, and that plan was to run deficits for a minimum of 10 years. Here we have a group of Conservatives who are now coming into the House with a motion that says to develop a plan for a balanced budget by October 25 of this year, a week and a half from now. Meanwhile, they had no intention of doing so when they were running in the last election. They did not care when they were knocking on doors and presenting their plan to Canadians. The plan from Erin O'Toole and the Conservatives was to run deficits for at least 10 years. That is the reality of it.
This should be concerning to Canadians, because this is not the first time that we are seeing hypocrisy come out of the Conservatives. It is actually the second time. They also ran on a plan to introduce a price on pollution and to modify the existing price on pollution that this side of the House had. They ran on that, too.
This morning, somebody challenged them and asked a Conservative member why they ran on that. That Conservative member stood up and said, “I did not believe in it.” That is funny, because that is the second or third Conservative I have heard say they were not running on a price on pollution or a carbon tax. However, they had no problem going along with the plan during the election. They did not say a single word in opposition to it at the time. Now, suddenly, they come in here and think that the buzz phrase of the day is going to be “axe the tax”, and this would bring them into power. That is not the position that somebody who is aspiring to be the leader of this country should be taking, asking what buzzwords happen to work today that would get him into power.
I also find it very interesting when we talk about inflation specifically. Today we have seen that Statistics Canada has reported that the inflation in Canada has dropped to 3.8%. I should add that all the economists who were predicting this in advance of today said it would be anywhere between 3.8% and 4.2%. It ended up being on the lower end of that. Conservatives are laughing.
Maybe it is time to compare that. I did it earlier, and I can compare it again. Let us compare it to the G7 countries. Again, Canada and the United States are tied for second place in terms of the lowest inflation. I think it is extremely important when we talk about our comparative countries.
Canada is heading in the right direction when it comes to inflation, but interestingly enough, when we look at inflation and the different sectors of the economy, transportation is one of the only sectors of the economy contributing to inflation, and it is the biggest contributor. It is interesting because the member for King—Vaughan was up earlier, and I asked her what proposals she would have to reduce the inflationary impact around transportation. Of course, the exact answer that I think everybody in this room would have expected, and I certainly did when I asked the question, was to get rid of the carbon tax, because the carbon tax is contributing to inflation.
The reality of the situation is that the carbon tax is not contributing to inflation. Tiff Macklem, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, recently said that the overall impact of the carbon tax to inflation is 0.15%. I believe he was in Alberta at a Chamber of Commerce meeting. We could chalk that up to a rounding error. Now I know the default for my Conservative friends would be to jump up and say that they do not trust Tiff Macklem; they have already made their position on that very clear.
I have a whole list, and I will not bother reading it right now, of Conservative MPs who have stood up in this House and invoked the name of Tiff Macklem as the expert when he has all the right things that they want to say at the moment. They cannot pick and choose when they want to use somebody as an expert in the field.
It goes without saying for the rest of us in the House, other than Conservatives, that Tiff Macklem is an expert in this field. When he says that the carbon tax contributes 0.15%, I am sorry to the member for King—Vaughan, but getting rid of the carbon tax is not going to be helpful. It is not going to be the solution as it relates to inflation specifically.
Once again, we are confronted with a motion by Conservatives. All they are interested in is political games and cheap shots at the Prime Minister.
1632 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/17/23 1:47:23 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I appreciate that my colleague always brings high-mindedness and elegance to his debate in this House of Commons. However, today in his speech, he talked about economic and financial numbers again. I know he is way out of his depth whenever it comes to those debate points.
He talked about our debt-to-GDP being 14%. Nobody says Canada's debt-to-GDP is 14%. As a matter of fact, he can google it himself. Canada's combined provincial federal debt is $2.1 trillion, and our GDP is about $2.3 trillion. It is almost the same. It is almost 100%, much like the other countries he brought up and referred to.
Would he take a lesson in this and say that, yes, it is much higher than 14% and, therefore, must be addressed? Can we do it with this bill?
145 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/17/23 2:35:28 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, do members remember the middle class and those working hard to join it? Do they remember that the Liberals would take on more debt so Canadians did not have to? Do they remember that the budget would be balanced in six years? Those were the promises, and after eight years there is no talk of the middle class anymore because it is underwater from Liberal-NDP spending sprees. Now the budget will be balanced in the year never.
Has the finance minister completely lost control of the books, or is there a new promise this week about when she will actually stop the inflationary spending so that Canadians do not lose their houses?
115 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/17/23 3:03:40 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, Quebeckers are worried about debt. Young people fear that they will never be homeowners. That is what we read this morning in a Quebec newspaper this morning. After eight years of this Liberal government, with the complicity of the Bloc Québécois, our young people are pessimistic about the future. They see that it is costly to vote for the Bloc, just as it is costly to vote for the Liberals.
What new measures will be taken now to help our young people realize their dreams of home ownership?
95 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/17/23 4:04:32 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I want to start my remarks by saying I will be splitting my time with the spectacular member for South Surrey—White Rock. My comments are in no way related to the fact that she happens to be our whip. That is just a bit of levity.
I want to paint a picture here because, as I said in my question for the member for Kings—Hants, we are in serious times. We are in perilous times. When we look around the world with respect to foreign policy and see what is happening in Israel and Ukraine, we see that it is a time that requires serious leadership.
Back here in Canada, things are not all rosy either. Canada's debt for 2023-24 is projected to be $1.2 trillion. That might be hard for the average individual to contemplate and get their head around. I know it is for me. However, that is $81,000 per household. That means people wake up in the morning and their starting place is $81,000 in debt. That is particularly troubling, because Canadians themselves, as individuals, are the most in debt in the G7. Therefore, the amount of debt and burden that is being piled on Canadians is, at some points, overwhelming.
As has been famously said, the first step to getting out of a hole is to stop digging. Unfortunately, the Liberal government continues to dig the hole deeper. This year, the PBO said that the deficit will be closer to $46.5 billion. We have heard some chatter in this House already with respect to the fall economic statement. I look forward to seeing that document. I am the eternal optimist. I am hopeful that there will be some type of path for fiscal sustainability, a fiscal anchor and a return one day to a balanced budget. However, given the last budget, in which the government pushed back the date for a balanced budget from 2030 to never, perhaps my optimism is a little exaggerated.
Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio, which is the other number the Liberals use, is the fiscal anchor that the Minister of Finance put before Canadians and said would never go up. Then, six months later, it did go up. The challenge too, even with the debt-to-GDP ratio, is that it does not take into consideration the per capita calculation. Canada's population is growing. Of course, as all Canadians do, I think that is a great thing. We are growing the number of Canadians, and that is terrific; however, the challenge is that the GDP is not keeping up with the population growth. Our per capita GDP, which in layman's terms just means the amount of money Canadians are earning, is going down. Therefore, while there are more Canadians, they are earning less money. That is challenging. We are getting poorer as a nation as the government takes a larger portion.
After eight years, we have a debt at $1.22 trillion and a deficit approaching $50 billion at the end of this year. We are digging that hole even deeper. We simply can no longer afford the Prime Minister and the Liberal government, as they continue to pound Canadians into the ground with more debt, which is now $81,000 of debt per Canadian household.
It does not stop there. Obviously, that money will have to be recovered somehow. The former governor of the Bank of Canada, David Dodge, recently said at the finance committee that the government will have to do one of two things, which is to cut spending or raise taxes. The money has to come from somewhere. We have no doubt that the government will be raising taxes. If I were a homeowner, I would not be shocked. However, I would be a little worried that the government will start taxing the principal residence exemption. It has a track record of seeking taxes wherever it can get them, and it will be increasingly desperate as we go forward to collect revenue from Canadians.
There would be not only direct taxation but also indirect taxation. When there is deficit spending, and the government continues to spend, that increases the money supply, which increases inflation. If members do not believe me on that, they can just ask a former Liberal finance minister, John Manley. He recently stated that, because the government keeps pushing on the inflationary pedal, the gas pedal or the spending pedal, that is forcing Tiff Macklem, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, to push down on interest rates in order to fight inflation.
Therefore, we have fiscal policy, which is what the Liberals are doing. They are spending more and more money increasingly recklessly, such as $50 million on the arrive scam. This is causing inflation, which is making everything more expensive. As a result of that increased inflation, the Governor of the Bank of Canada is having to increase interest rates, which is increasing the cost of housing. As I said, after eight years, Canadians simply cannot afford the current government.
Let us look at the current housing situation and how it is going. It might be different in other provinces and other communities, but in the towns of Cobourg, Port Hope and Brighton, it is nearly impossible to get a rental property. If someone wants to get so much as a one-bedroom apartment, they are looking at $2,500, at least. That is a wild amount of money. If someone is fortunate enough to be able to buy a house, mortgage payments have now gone up from an average of $1,500 a month to $3,000 a month. Therefore, inflation is taking a larger and larger chunk of paycheques.
We have taxation that actually takes up more than transportation, housing and food combined. The government is taking a larger and larger share of Canadians' increasingly smaller paycheques. As I said, if someone is trying to rent in Port Hope or Cobourg, they are looking at a cost of $2,500 or $3,000. They are looking at a mortgage payment well in excess of that.
I want to share a little anecdote. This is an actual email that I received from one of my constituents. It says the following:
“[My wife and I] have good jobs and are very thankful to have what we have. We have yet to own a home together in our 5 years of marriage and have been continually renting with our two young children.
“We are again very thankful to have what we have. We are able to secure approximately $400k for a down payment from selling a property I owned in a different city before we were married....
“We were recently trying to purchase our first home together with a listing price of $800k. This means we would be putting 50% down”.
They are two well-heeled individuals, making good incomes and they would have a mortgage payment of approximately $2,200 a month. The email continues: “After redoing our budget with the rising costs of groceries, gas, and everything else, we would be in a monthly deficit of between $1,000-$3,000. We have no debts, no car payments and believe we are financially responsible people.” The constituent goes on to ask, “if people like us have decent jobs and a large amount saved and cannot even afford a home these days, who can?”
These are serious times. These are people who have done everything right. They have had their priorities right. They have saved their income. They got good jobs. They have worked hard for the community, for our country and for their children. The deal is broken. It used to be, in 2015, when houses cost half as much and when food was a fraction of the cost, that these individuals would be rewarded with being able to afford a house, being able to afford a steak dinner once a week and maybe even, God forbid, being able to go on vacation.
Increasingly, the great thief of our prosperity is the current Liberal government. Canadians cannot afford the Liberals. After eight years, they have done nothing but bring us into poverty and away from prosperity. We need a common-sense leader, and I cannot wait for the member for Carleton to be our next prime minister.
1409 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, the member started off by being critical of the amount of debt that the Government of Canada has acquired. They understand very clearly that most of the debt that was accrued was during the pandemic. Billions and billions of dollars were spent to support small businesses, individual Canadians, seniors, people with disabilities and so forth; the Conservative Party supported a lot of that. With hindsight, the Conservatives are saying we should not have spent the billions of dollars that they supported at the time. That is one issue.
Actions speak louder than words. The member says he is concerned about inflation. The government is also concerned about inflation; that is the reason we brought forward Bill C-56, which would provide literally hundreds of thousands of new homes in the years ahead for rental properties. The Conservatives' response is to filibuster the legislation. They will not even let the legislation pass. Why is the Conservative Party so out of touch with the reality of what Canadians are facing today?
171 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/17/23 4:24:11 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, Canadians are facing an affordability crisis. Everything costs more, from the grocery store to the gas pumps. Mortgages have doubled, rents have doubled and down payments have doubled. The dream of home ownership is dead for nine out of 10 Canadians. Liberal inflationary spending has caused food prices to skyrocket, and one in five Canadians is skipping meals because they cannot afford to eat.
Families are struggling to make ends meet. Food banks are overwhelmed. In my community, food banks are at risk of bankruptcy because of a surge in demand, and 33%, or one-third, of food bank users are children. Overdose deaths have increased 300% in B.C. The leading cause of death among 10- to 18-year-olds is drug overdose.
This is heartbreaking, and the people in my province need some good news. Unfortunately, StatsCan reported today that inflation remains high. After eight years of reckless spending, Canada's national debt sits at $1.2 trillion. Think about that for a second. That means debt servicing costs will be almost $44 billion this year alone. These are tax dollars that could have been used to invest in addiction recovery services or to help address the housing crisis. Instead, those tax dollars will go to rich bondholders.
At a time when everything feels broken, the Prime Minister has spent the cupboards bare and has no plan to bring the nation's finances into a better position to respond to the real needs of Canadians. This is because of years of blatant disregard for fiscal prudence and monetary policy. We now have a tired, desperate NDP-Liberal government that is out of ideas. It has resorted to recycling broken campaign promises and adopting Conservative policy, albeit watered down.
Its housing accelerator fund has not built a single home. It is nothing more than a housing hoax. The Prime Minister has added more debt than all other prime ministers combined. There is no plan to balance the budget and no plan to get his inflationary deficits under control.
This is the Prime Minister who thinks budgets balance themselves and asks Canadians to forgive him for not thinking about monetary policy. His laissez-faire attitude toward public finance has put the well-being of far too many Canadians in crisis. Government spending has driven up inflation rates, and those rates have put Canada at the brink of a mortgage default crisis.
That is why the leader of the Conservative opposition brought a common-sense motion to the House today. Our motion calls on the Prime Minister to table a fiscal plan that includes a pathway back to a balanced budget. He must do so before the Bank of Canada announces its next rate decision later this month. This motion is urgent and necessary. The government must start spending within its means, something that Canadian families do every day to balance their own household budgets.
In June, the Minister of Finance took to social media to declare victory over inflation. She told Canadians the Liberal plan to tackle inflation is “working” and that the Liberals were making “real progress”. Since then, inflation has gone up 43%. She fails to learn the lesson that excessive government spending and cruel tax hikes are the reason she is losing the war against inflation. After eight years, it is clear that the Liberal fiscal plan is not working and that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost.
Common-sense Conservatives have a plan to reverse these deficits so we can bring down inflation, bring home lower prices and bring homes that people can afford. We will cap government spending, cut waste and bring in a dollar-for-dollar law that requires the government to find a dollar of savings for any new dollar of spending. That is common sense.
We will also axe the punitive carbon tax. When we tax the farmer who grows the food, the trucker who ships the food and the store that sells the food, we are taxing the hard-working Canadian family struggling to pay for that food. The Liberal government has failed to reach any of its emission reduction targets, so all of this financial pain is for no environmental gain.
Liberals and their enablers in the NDP justify their position by suggesting that the carbon tax is not high enough. Speaking about the carbon tax, the Liberal member for Halifax said, “Ultimately they don't want to pay for it, but that's what changes behaviour, so if we rebate them everything they've paid for the pollution price, it defeats the whole purpose. There needs to be a bit of pain there. That's the point of it.”
How out of touch can they be? Other Liberals, such as the member for Avalon, finally admitted that the carbon tax is causing harm to Canadians. When asked about the political consequences the Liberals will face because of the carbon tax, the member for Avalon said:
I think it's hurting them a fair bit. Everywhere I go, people come up to me and say, “We're losing faith in the Liberal Party”.
I've had people tell me they can't afford to buy groceries. They can't afford to heat their homes....
It is too little too late. That member voted to implement the carbon tax, and his party continues to punish Canadians with it.
On housing, the Prime Minister does not think it is his responsibility, but the buck stops with him. It used to take 25 years to pay off a mortgage. Now it takes 25 years to save for a down payment.
Vancouver is the third most unaffordable housing market on the planet. In my community, mortgages now cost thousands of dollars more per month, forcing people out of home ownership. We are not building homes quick enough to keep up with demand because big city gatekeepers impose unnecessary delays and red tape.
A C.D. Howe study determined that gatekeepers and regulations add nearly $1.3 million to the cost of an average home in Vancouver. Meanwhile, CMHC bureaucrats in Ottawa are rewarded with millions of dollars in bonuses for a lackluster performance.
Conservatives know we need to build homes, not bureaucracy. We will reward cities that are getting homes built with additional infrastructure dollars and a building bonus, and we will withhold transit and infrastructure funding from cities until sufficient high density housing around transit stations is built and occupied. We will cut the bonuses and salaries for ineffective bureaucrats, and if needed, we will fire the gatekeepers at CMHC if they are unable to speed up approvals for housing programs to an average of 60 days. We will list 15% of the federal government's 37,000 buildings and all appropriate federal land to be turned into homes people can afford.
Conservatives will turn the hurt the government has inflicted into the hope Canadians deserve. Canada should be a place where our citizens can afford to buy a home, put food on the table and save for the future. This is common sense. Only Conservatives will bring it home.
1199 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/17/23 5:03:19 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, this question would apply to any member of the House.
After eight years, we have seen that the Prime Minister has added more to the national debt than all prime ministers in the past. However, I would like to take us back to just over 40 years ago, when the Prime Minister's father was prime minister and was running out-of-control deficits and inflation was out of control. When he rolled through my town in North Okanagan—Shuswap, he gave the one-finger salute to a few previous Liberal supporters who were standing on the railway platform protesting his car when it stopped.
I would ask the member if she believes there is any difference between that prime minister, who rang up deficits and inflation so incredibly, and the current Prime Minister, or if this one really does not care and is simply not worth the cost.
152 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for that passionate speech. I know he is a hard-working member of his party. We appreciate his work and his suggestions.
I would like to ask him a question. Does he agree that there are several ways to pay off our debts? We can pay off our debts if we grow our country's revenue. Does that not help pay our debt?
If the answer is yes, and I expect it will be, why did he and his party vote against Bill C‑49 today? We asked for changes to the Atlantic accord to open up a market in offshore wind energy with incredible global potential for Canada, and especially for Atlantic Canada.
122 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
