44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 18, 2024 10:00AM
- Apr/18/24 2:11:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, budget 2024 has dropped. The reviews are in, and I am sure NDP members and Liberals are excited. Let us see what people have had to say.
Former finance minister Bill Morneau said that aspects of this budget were “clearly a negative to our long-term goal, which is growth in the economy, productive growth and investments.” However, he is just a random Liberal.
Let us hear what the NDP had to say; I am sure the New Democrats are excited. Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair said, “It fell way short”, that it really would be “giving a sock in the jaw to a lot of small business people, entrepreneurs, artisans” and that it was not actually going after “the super rich”; it was going after “super ordinary Canadians”.
The Conservatives agree. This budget should have been about growth and instead it is more failure and more tax and spend. The good news is that it was not like this before the Prime Minister and it will not be after him. Common-sense Conservatives have a common-sense plan. Let us bring it home.
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- Apr/18/24 4:03:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in the House. We are talking about the budget today, and I think it is important to start with some context as to where the country is. The member who preceded me did an excellent job. Hopefully, I will build on his strong work.
Canadians are experiencing difficult times from coast to coast. Millions of Canadians are finding that, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, there is simply more month than money. They are unable to feed themselves, and food bank usage is off the charts. Over two million families will go to the food bank each and every month in Canada. The food banks in Otonabee-South Monaghan in my riding have seen the number of families with children using food banks double just in the last six months.
The suffering is a result of Liberal policy failures. There is no two ways about this. The Liberals' policies are responsible for driving people deeper and deeper into financial crisis. Financial crises and financial issues generally have two different sides to them, as does the affordability crisis. We have income on one side and expenses on the other. There has been a lot of talk in the House about the expense side, the ever-increasing inflation, interest rates and taxes, and for good reason. It is causing considerable pain for Canadians.
My focus will be on the other side, which is the income side or the growth side of the economy. I believe this is as serious, if not more serious, than the expense side, the reason being that history shows us that, when incomes rise, increasing costs can be managed by economies. There are a number of examples, but there has never been a time, not once in human history, where there has been prosperity in the absence of economic growth. For thousands of years, when the economy has grown, we have had prosperity. When it does not grow, we do not.
Let us be clear that the income side of the ledger in Canada is bleak. We have experienced what Conservatives call, and what economists are starting to call, a lost decade in Canada. GDP per capita in Canada has barely grown. By this metric, we are in the worst economic time since the Great Depression, and quite frankly, there is no sign of relief. This is not getting better. We have had seven straight quarters of a decline in GDP per capita. If we measured recessions on a per capita basis, we would now be in one of the longest recessions in our lifetime.
Liberals, of course, will attempt to obfuscate by blaming the lack of growth on other factors beyond their control, like the weather or other things, and their having no control over a weather front coming in, but the failure is distinctly Canadian. In this last decade, the American growth of GDP per capita, or the measure of each individual economic contribution of every American, has increased by 47%. In Canada, over that same period, it is 4.73%.
An hon. member: It's not the weather.
Mr. Philip Lawrence: No, it is not the weather. It is because of the failures of the Liberal government.
Mr. Speaker, underpinning the failure of our economy to grow are our productivity issues. We have heard numerous commentators talk about this, Liberal and Conservative alike, from Bill Morneau to Lisa Raitt and commentators on all sides of the political spectrum. The productivity issue is crushing our Canadian economy. “Productivity” is a fancy word, but all it means is our ability to produce goods and deliver services efficiently.
We can think of productivity as a three-legged stool. There are three key elements to productivity. The first is capital, and I will talk about that right now. Capital investment is incredibly important. A simple analogy is two workers competing with different levels of capitalization. One worker is trying to dig a foundation for a new building using a backhoe, and the other worker is using a shovel or even bare hands. We can see that the individual who is well capitalized, even if he or she is the inferior worker, will always win that victory. The individual who is not capitalized will never be able to compete. That is where Canada is right now. We are decapitalizing our economy right now. This will have tragic impacts, not just for the near term, but for the long term as well.
We have, over the last 15 years, the lowest rate of investment growth into our economy in the G7. We are predicted, by many international organizations, to have the lowest investment rate in the OECD over the next 40 years. When we do this, unfortunately, we undermine the Canadian economy and the Canadian worker.
A second key and equally important leg of that productivity stool is innovation. Innovation is incredibly important, and the good news is that we have great minds and great ideas here in Canada. We also have great post-secondary education here in this country. The challenge is that, after nine years, we do not have a framework in place to successfully and efficiently capitalize and exploit those ideas, turning them from an idea formed in a university dorm room to building products and solutions on the factory floor. Unfortunately, what happens far too often in our economy is that these great ideas come up and then dissipate, or more truthfully and more accurately, they go across the border as individuals who have great ideas simply do not have the framework to market, exploit and grow their ideas here in Canada. Instead, they end up improving the wealth of the United States of America, Europe or other places in the world. Meanwhile, Canadians fall further and further behind.
Third, it comes down to workers, and I am proud to say that we have the best workers in the entire world right here in Canada. Unfortunately, they are being undercapitalized, and there is an absence of innovation due to the poor regulatory framework here in Canada. The challenge is that we have untapped resources. We have thousands, in fact hundreds of thousands, or probably millions of newcomers who are not able to access the Canadian dream because there are various organizations that are unwilling to recognize their education and hard work across the world. They have the ability to be doctors, engineers and scientists to help our economy in this time when we need to enhance our productivity. That is why our leader would bring in a fantastic blue seal program that would allow newcomers to gain access to the Canadian dream.
With this is mind, if we look at the expense side of the ledger, this budget did not deliver. We need it to have, as is the growing consensus out there, fiscal restraint and a path to a balanced budget, but that is not there. This will continue to push along inflation and higher interest rates. Of course, we have seen higher taxation as a result of this budget as well.
However, as we look at the income side of the ledger, I was hoping to see a focus on economic growth, and I am not the only one. Bill Morneau said that he was very disappointed in the government's lack of attention on economic growth. David Dodge was also discouraged by the lack of focus on economic growth. The CFIB and numerous organizations from coast to coast to coast were disappointed to see the lack of focus on economic growth.
We can see that economic growth is the magic bullet to economics. If we have an economy that is growing, we will have jobs, standard of living increases and a stronger social safety net. Instead, the government has chosen to ignore growth, and unfortunately, we will all bear the cost for that.
Conservatives will proudly be voting no on this budget.
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- Apr/18/24 4:14:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, just because I like the drapes in a house, it does not mean I would buy the whole house. The reality is that, if the member's comments were not put in context, they might have more merit.
We have had nine years of the Liberal government. We see the record food bank usage. I wrote this speech because I field the calls from my constituents about not being able to make it to the end of the month and not being able to feed their kids. This has real consequences. This is the real world. We need real change.
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- Apr/18/24 4:15:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to work on rail alongside my respected colleague. I am an outspoken supporter of rail.
I, too, read that section of the budget. Ultimately, we will have to see what is in the implementation section. We do need strong rail infrastructure in this country. We can contrast that with the United States of America, which has the most rail per mile in the entire world, and in Canada, we are falling behind. Given our legacy of being one of the largest rail systems in the world 100 years ago, it is sad to see what we have come to.
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- Apr/18/24 4:17:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a negative spiral. They work together, unfortunately. As there is more debt, it reduces the amount of economic growth. It is taking money out of the economy.
The reality is, as that debt reduces the growth, it then reduces the amount of revenue. It gets to a negative spiral. This is exactly what Brian Mulroney had to deal with in the mid-eighties when he took over from Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
It is a two-sided solution. We need to get the economy growing, and we need to reduce the debt so that Canadians could have a reasonable shot at prosperity.
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