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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 300

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 16, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 300 - Apr/16/24
Hon. Chrystia Freeland (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Lib.)
  • Apr/16/24 4:32:38 p.m.
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I know there will be many voices raised in protest. No one likes paying more tax, even, or perhaps, particularly, those who can afford it the most. Before they complain too bitterly, I would like to ask Canada's 1%, Canada's 0.1%, to consider this: What kind of country do they want to live in? Do they want to live in a country where we can tell the size of one's paycheque by their smile? Do they want to live in a country where kids go to school hungry? Do they want to live in a country where a teenage girl gets pregnant because she does not have the money to buy birth control? Do they want to live in a country where the only young Canadians who can buy their own homes are those with parents who can help with the down payment? Do they want to live in a country where we make the investments we need in health care, in housing, in old age pensions, but we lack the political will to pay for them and choose instead to pass a ballooning debt on to our children? Do they want to live in a country where those at the very top live lives of luxury but must do so in gated communities behind ever-higher fences using private health care and private planes because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the vast majority of their less-privileged compatriots burns so hot? Everyone of us here in this chamber today, and every Canadian across our truly great country, needs to ask themselves these same questions because the stakes could not be higher. Democracy is not inevitable. It has succeeded and succeeds because it has delivered a good life for the middle class. When liberal democracy fails to deliver on that most fundamental social contract, we should not be surprised if the middle class loses faith in democracy itself. Tax policy is not only, or chiefly, the province of accountants or economists. It belongs to all of us because it is how we decide what kind of a country we want to live in and what kind of a country we want to build. Today, our government is making our choice. This is our path forward. This is our plan to renew the promise of Canada. There are some in the House, especially those across the aisle, who do not share our vision. They would get rid of the programs that we have supported to improve the lives of all generations. They believe that the job of government is to do little, then less, and ultimately as close as possible to nothing at all. Years ago, they ripped up early learning and child care. When he was the housing minister in a former government, the current Leader of the Opposition only got a handful of homes constructed. It was our Prime Minister, not a Conservative, who actually got a pipeline built. Do colleagues know why that is? That is because our government understands that to do big things in Canada, sometimes the government needs to lead the charge, whether it is getting more homes built faster or finally creating a national system of early learning and child care, or bending the curve on emissions.
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