44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 16, 2024 10:00AM
- Apr/16/24 2:43:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, even the polls tell us that the majority of Canadians are fed up with the Prime Minister overspending, over-promising, under-delivering and failing this country. Over $52 billion will be spent on servicing his debt alone. While Canadians are struggling, he raised the price of gas, groceries and home heating, raising the carbon tax by 23% just two weeks ago. This is punishment, not progress.
In his big-deficit budget later today, will the Prime Minister finally axe the tax on farmers and make food cheaper for Canadians?
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- Apr/16/24 4:24:38 p.m.
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It took an activist, determined Liberal government to get it built. Last week, the Bank of Canada estimated this project alone will add one-quarter of a percentage point to Canada's GDP.
As we invest with purpose for the benefit of our younger generations and those who love them, we continue to stick to a responsible fiscal plan. As part of that plan, in the fall, we set three very specific fiscal guideposts: maintaining the 2023-24 deficit at or below $40.1 billion; lowering the debt-to-GDP ratio in 2024-25, relative to the 2023 fall economic statement, and keeping it on a declining track thereafter; and maintaining a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio in 2024-25 and keeping deficits below 1% of GDP in 2026-27 and in future years.
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- Apr/16/24 4:26:42 p.m.
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In this budget, every single one of these objectives is being met, as is our fiscal anchor, which is a declining federal debt-to-GDP ratio over the medium term. In fact, Canada has the lowest deficit and net debt-to-GDP ratios in the G7, as recognized in our AAA credit rating.
Private sector forecasters are now predicting a soft landing for the Canadian economy—avoiding the recession and heartbreaking surge in unemployment that many had thought was inevitable.
Canadians know how important it is to responsibly manage a budget in the face of rising costs, and they rightly expect their government to do the same.
That is why, going forward, federal public service organizations will be required to cover a portion of increased operating costs through their existing resources. Most of these savings will be achieved through natural attrition in the federal public service. As a result, over the next four years, we expect the ranks of the public service to decline by approximately 5,000 full-time equivalent positions.
To responsibly build a fairer future for younger Canadians, we need to make sure our tax system is fairer too. In Canada and around the world, the 21st century, winner-takes-all economy is making those at the very top richer, while too many middle-class Canadians are struggling just to avoid falling behind.
The job of our tax system is to lean against this structural inequality and to fund investments in the middle class, especially in young Canadians, by asking those who are benefiting from the winner-takes-all economy to pay a little more. Today, our tax system does not do that. Today, it is possible for a nurse or a carpenter to pay tax at a higher marginal rate than a multi-millionaire. That is not fair. That must change, and it will.
Our government is raising the inclusion rate to two-thirds on annual capital gains above $250,000 for individuals. This new revenue will help make life cost less for millions of Canadians, particularly millennials and gen Z. It will help fund our efforts to turbocharge the building of more homes. It will support investments in growth and productivity that will pay dividends for years to come.
Who will pay more? Most Canadians have no capital gains in a typical year, so they will not pay more. The first $250,000 in capital gains every single year enjoyed by each individual Canadian will be taxed at the current rate. Individual Canadians enjoying this substantial annual gain will not pay a penny more.
The lifetime capital gains exemption, an amount fully exempt from taxation, will be raised to $1.25 million, and this change will not, of course, apply to the sale of Canadians' principal residence, which is and will remain fully exempt from the tax on capital gains. Only 0.13% of Canadians with an average annual income of $1.4 million will pay more on their capital gains. For 99.87% of Canadians, personal income taxes on capital gains will not increase.
Taxing capital gains is not an inherently partisan idea. It is an idea that everyone who cares about fairness should support. In fact, the idea of taxing capital gains in Canada was first broached by the government of former prime minister John Diefenbaker and his Royal Commission on Taxation, which was chaired by Kenneth Carter, and former prime minister Brian Mulroney raised the capital gains inclusion rate to 75%, higher than the rate we are establishing today.
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- Apr/16/24 4:40:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is the ninth deficit budget since the Prime Minister said that budgets balance themselves. Everything he spends money on only gets worse.
He promised that these deficits would make housing affordable. Then rent, mortgage payments and down payments for buying a home doubled.
He said that food would become more affordable. Now it costs 30% more, and one in four children do not have access to a nutritious meal.
After nine deficits, the government is rich and the people are poor.
Today, he is doing much the same with a $40-billion inflationary deficit in new spending, which is the equivalent of $2,400 in inflation for every family. We are spending more on interest on the national debt than we are on health.
That is why common-sense Conservatives will be voting against this pyromaniac firefighter who is pouring fuel instead of water on the inflationary fire he has set.
This is the ninth deficit after the Prime Minister promised the budget would balance itself, and what did he do with the money? Everything he has spent on has become more expensive. He has doubled the rent, doubled mortgage payments, doubled the needed down payment for a home and forced 3,500 homeless encampments. In Halifax alone, one in four kids cannot afford food, and now he is adding $40 billion of new debt and new spending, which is $2,400 of new inflation.
That is why Conservatives will vote against this wasteful inflationary budget, which is like a pyromaniac spraying gas on the inflationary fire that he lit. It is getting too hot and too expensive for Canadians, and that is why we need a carbon tax election to replace him with a common-sense Conservative government.
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- Apr/16/24 4:50:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for the ninth time, the Prime Minister promised that if he spent more and taxed more, Canadians would be better off. For the ninth time, we see that quality of life declined, especially for the middle class he is always talking about.
The cost of rent doubled, and then there were big government programs for affordable housing. According to the government itself, one in four children do not have enough to eat, even after programs were created to make food affordable.
Furthermore, the government talks about a state-funded pipeline like it is the biggest accomplishment there could be in a society. If the government had not gotten involved, it never would have happened. This is a project that is 500% more expensive than planned. The money to buy the project went to Texas. This is another example of massive waste.
That is why common-sense Conservatives are going to vote against the budget and in favour of an election that will allow Canadians to choose a party that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. That is common sense.
Here we have, today, a ninth consecutive deficit, with the budget still not balancing itself. Everything on which the Prime Minister spends gets worse and gets more costly. He is spent and Canadians are broke. The country is broken.
We have a doubling of housing costs. We have 8,000 people joining a Facebook group to study how they can get a meal out of a garbage can after food prices have gone up faster than at any time in a generation because of the carbon tax he is imposing on our food, a carbon tax that, with the help of the NDP, he plans to quadruple to 61¢ a litre.
Today, did he learn anything from these catastrophic failures? No. He doubles down on the same failure, with $40 billion of new deficits and $40 billion of new spending, and that is to say, it is $2,400 for every family in new debt and in new inflationary spending. Now, for the first time in a generation, we are spending more on debt interest than on health care. That is money for bankers and bondholders rather than doctors and nurses.
The great example of how wonderful government can be, given after a tremendous theatrical pause, was the government's purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline. What would have happened if the government had just gotten out of the way, asked the finance minister.
The answer is that the thing would have been built with private money rather than $30 billion of taxpayer bailouts. In fact, a project the Prime Minister said would cost $5 billion is up to $30 billion. That is 500% over budget. It is $2,000 in costs for every single Canadian family for a project that the private sector was going to be building on its own. The company that was going to build it was bought out, and it took the money to Texas, where it is building Texan pipelines with Canadian dollars. All of our exes are in Texas.
Then, to close it off, we have got some of the most hair-raising, ideological fervour from the minister, who says that what Canadians really need is a stronger government. They have created a stronger government in order to make for weaker and more suffering people. This is not a government that gives people everything they want; it is a government that takes everything they have.
The good news is that we want big Canadian citizens with a smaller and more efficient government, where the state is servant and not master, where our priorities are clear, to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.
As soon as the NDP takes away its support from the Prime Minister, we will have a carbon tax election, where the people will be able to make that decision for themselves, in a country where they can earn powerful paycheques that buy affordable food, gas and homes in safe neighbourhoods, the country that we all knew and that we still love, a country based on the common sense of the common people, united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
I now move:
That the debate be now adjourned.
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