SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 302 - Apr/18/24

Apr/18/24 4:42:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would never cast negative aspersions on the member's community, and I thank him for spending time in my community and supporting local businesses in my community. He mentioned the last four years that he has been here. Almost three of those years were during the pandemic and that, indeed, had a huge impact on our community as it did across the country. It created a lot of hardship for people. We have seen increased homelessness. That is why I, as a local member of Parliament, am working so hard along with many community partners, who are excited about the measures in this budget because they are going to address very specific needs. I had hoped that not only would he support this budget, but that he and the members of his party would have supported all of the anti-poverty measures that we have brought in over the last several years that have helped many members in our communities. The measures outlined in this budget are going to help make my community and, I am sure, his community, a better place to live for many people.

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

Apr/18/24 4:43:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are some very interesting things in my colleague's speech, including converting government buildings or commercial buildings into housing. I think that is truly interesting and there are some great examples of that. My question is much broader and much more existential than that. There is a Constitution that exists and we are working with it. In any case, we are working with the Constitution, and I am talking about areas of jurisdiction, unfortunately. We might want to restore some order to all of this because the power-grab that the federal government is attempting here is becoming abusive, excessive and shameful. It is widespread. Does my colleague think that it is time to reopen the Constitution to restore a bit of order in this and determine what belongs to whom?

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi

Apr/18/24 4:44:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. I have had the honour of serving in the provincial legislature as well. For 11 years, I was the provincial member of Parliament for the same community of Ottawa Centre, which was kind enough to elect me as their member of Parliament. As a former provincial cabinet minister, I had my share of battles and debates with the former Harper government, which starved many of the provinces like mine in Ontario, by cutting off all kinds of funding and by downloading those services. I held and still hold the view today that our federation works really well when all three orders of government work together. That gives us the opportunity to not make cuts and download all of the important services like the Harper Conservatives did, which I understand the current Conservative Party wants to copy by cutting services and downloading those important services to the provincial governments. Rather, we need to make sure that we are investing in Canadians and working with our provinces and territories. That is precisely what we are doing when it comes to housing and when it comes to health care. In health care alone, the amount of work we are doing by working with our provincial and territorial counterparts, including Quebec, to ensure they have the resources necessary to provide important health care services will make the lives of Canadians far better than ever before.

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/18/24 4:46:09 p.m.
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It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill, Public Safety; the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Finance; the hon. member for Victoria, Climate Change.

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Mr. Scot Davidson (York—Simcoe, CPC)

Apr/18/24 4:46:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my hon. colleague and friend, the member for Simcoe North who we actually meet out in the middle of Lake Simcoe in rural Ontario. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the 2024 budget on behalf of the hard-working residents of Bradford West Gwillimbury, the soup and salad bowl of Canada; East Gwillimbury; Georgina; and the Chippewas of Georgina Island. After nine years of the Liberal government, Canadians are worse off than ever before. Sadly, this failure of a budget will only make things even worse. The Prime Minister and finance minister have refused to listen to common sense and have presided over a shrinking middle class and record-low levels of national productivity. Prior to releasing this budget, the finance minister promised it would be a plan to unlock pathways to the middle class for the next generation. Wow, can members believe that? The Liberal government used to brag about its ambition to grow the middle class. The first chapter of the Liberal Party's 2015 platform was entitled “Growth for the Middle Class”. The 2019 platform emphasized “Forward: A Real Plan for the Middle Class”. Now, here we are in 2024, and instead of looking to grow the middle class, the Liberals are admitting that because of them, the middle-class lifestyle, which used to be a reasonable and attainable expectation for living life in this country, is now something that few Canadians will ever enjoy. It seems that, over nine years, the promise of Canada is gone. This is the day-to-day reality facing Canadians. Two-thirds of young Canadians have resigned themselves to being worse off than their parents. Can members imagine that? With this budget, instead of restoring that promise for our citizens, the Liberals are sending a clear message to millennials, to zoomers and to everyone else left behind, saying that it's tough luck and that they should have been born sooner or in better circumstances. However, Canadians, both young and old, are well aware that it is the punishing taxes and the high-spending agenda of the Liberal government that are to blame, and the policies have locked Canadians out of so many of those pathways that people used to join the middle class. The cost of living is out of control. It has left half of Canadians living paycheque to paycheque. After paying for their everyday expenses, Canadians just do not have money left over to save, and others are resorting to charities and food banks just to get by. It did not need to be this way. Common-sense Conservatives have been calling on the Liberal government to restore the promise of Canada and to bring home lower costs by axing the tax, building the homes and fixing the budget. Unfortunately, the Liberals did not axe the tax. In fact, the Prime Minister increased it by 23% on the first of the month, making it so that families, rural residents, farmers and small businesses suffer even more. For months, I have been calling on the Liberal government to address the unfairness that has excluded rural communities, like York—Simcoe, from the rural top-up. The Liberals insist on classifying them as Toronto, making them pay more in carbon taxes than other Canadians. After ignoring this problem for years, budget 2024 finally says that the government will look to better define rural areas, but it only commits to put forward a proposal to do so later in the year. Let us talk about a day late and a dollar short. This is just further proof of why we have to axe the tax for everyone everywhere. The Liberals also have not built the homes, after nine years of the Liberal government. The government promised to lower the price of housing, but now rents and mortgages in Canada have doubled, and middle-class Canadians are forced to live in tent encampments in nearly every city across Canada. Even small towns like mine are seeing the impacts, as all forms of shelter have become unavailable and unaffordable. Budget 2024 will not make things any better. It will certainly give more opportunities to Liberal ministers to pose for photo ops, but it will not help Canadians who cannot buy a home or who cannot afford to renew their mortgage. With $40 billion in new spending in budget 2024, it is obvious that the Liberal government has failed to fix the budget. The Prime Minister has failed to put a stop to the inflationary deficits and has failed to rein in spending. He will continue to make life worse for Canadians. The Liberals are now spending more on interest and more on the debt than on health care. There is more money for bankers than for nurses. It is no wonder there is still no hospital in York—Simcoe. To protect our social programs and to lower costs, Conservatives have called on the government to cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation. That would require the government to find a dollar in savings for every new dollar in spending. Instead, the Liberals are misleading Canadians, pretending that the rich would pay for the Prime Minister's spending. We all know that it is the everyday Canadians, the extraordinary Canadians, not the Liberal bigwigs and Bay Street billionaires, who have been paying the price. The government even admitted in its response to Order Paper question 2407 this week that it does not even know how many wealthy Canadians have fled the country and no longer paying taxes. When Canadians look around at what this country has become, they see abysmal failures of the Liberals to address the problems that the Liberal government created. It is more clear now than ever that the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost. I recently received a letter from a constituent of mine, Laura. I will read it into the record so that the government can finally understand the pain it is inflicting on Canadians. She wrote that her family lives in Pefferlaw in a small bungalow. They are a single-income family. She is a stay-at-home mom of two, and her husband works 60 hours a week, just so they can survive financially. They received their gas bill, and over the months, the carbon tax has steadily increased up and up. Now, it has officially become more than their actual usage. They, like so many others, are struggling after the bills are paid and the groceries are purchased. Her grocery shop one day was $167 for just four bags of groceries. They have nothing left over. She does not pretend to know the intricacies of big government, but she is also not a fool. She really feels like they, and everyone else, are being cheated by the Liberals, who rob from the poor to feed the rich because they lack the ability to budget taxpayers' money. They do not go on vacations. They do not eat out or take their kids to the movies. They live like that, apparently, because the Liberals need their money more than her family does. The Liberals can choose to keep ignoring the common-sense proposals put forward by Conservatives, but it is shameful that they continue to ignore the plight of everyday Canadians like Laura. Every Canadian knows what a budget is and what it is supposed to do. By definition, it is a means to determine financial goals. With budget 2024, it is evident that the Liberals have no financial goals, no vision, no plan to bring back balanced budgets to our country and affordability to the people. Their only objective is to spend as much of Canadians' money as they can before they are sent packing. The needs of ordinary Canadians be damned. Canada is broken. Canadians are broke. I will be voting, alongside my common-sense Conservative colleagues, against this budget.

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/18/24 4:56:19 p.m.
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I am going to work my way backwards because I know the NDP have a couple of questions. The hon. member for London—Fanshawe.

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Ms. Lindsay Mathyssen (London—Fanshawe, NDP)

Apr/18/24 4:56:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was really quite happy to hear the member talk about the fact that the government is not actually making the ultrarich pay their fair share. That is fascinating. I do agree that in terms of what we are seeing in this budget, it certainly does not go far enough. The increase of the inclusion rate for capital gains simply is not enough. New Democrats have been calling for an increase of the excess profits tax, the corporate book tax and other taxes. Would the member be willing to work with New Democrats, and maybe put forward an amendment, to ensure that the government, within this budget, would actually increase the corporate tax rate, like what we are seeing in the states, so that we are competitive as opposed to being the lowest in the OECD?

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Mr. Scot Davidson

Apr/18/24 4:57:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, to bring this back to York—Simcoe, it is the farmers, the working class and the middle-class people who are paying for these deficits. Let us look at this. There is $50 billion in new spending. That is more than we bring in through GST alone. I alluded to the fact that York—Simcoe does not have a hospital. We still do not have a hospital. To my NDP colleagues, I would say that we are spending more on the debt than we are on health care. It is unbelievable.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel, BQ)

Apr/18/24 4:58:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague from York-Simcoe belongs to a party that has been saying for weeks that the Liberal government is corrupt, that it is mismanaging the public purse and that it is managing everything all wrong. Yesterday, in an interview with Le Téléjournal on housing, the member's own leader said that he wants to use federal public funds to give money for housing to Trois‑Rivières and Victoriaville, where his party hopes to win seats. Meanwhile, he plans to penalize Montreal, where he will likely not win any. Does my colleague think it is right that his leader is already starting to buy votes with public funds, even before taking office? Does he not think that his leader should wait until he is in power before he starts using public money for partisan purposes?

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Mr. Scot Davidson

Apr/18/24 4:58:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we can talk about the housing accelerator fund. Interestingly enough, I am a York Region and Simcoe County MP. The northern six municipalities in my riding applied for the housing accelerator fund, and guess what? They got no money. Apparently, in York—Simcoe, we are “too Toronto” for the rural top-up and actually “not Toronto enough” for any housing funds.

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Mr. Chad Collins (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Lib.)

Apr/18/24 4:59:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition was in Hamilton several weeks ago as part of his “make Canada great again” tour, and he talked about dismantling the national housing strategy, which is a strategy that has built units in the member's riding. In fact, I know that there were 18 transitional units constructed in his riding. Passage House in East Gwillimbury provides shelter services for people who are in encampments. There was also a youth shelter constructed in Sutton. It provided services by Blue Door. I wonder why the Leader of the Opposition is so intent on cutting supports for not-for-profit organizations as well as cutting supports for those most vulnerable Canadians who need the services and the facilities in the member's riding. Can I ask him why?

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Mr. Scot Davidson

Apr/18/24 5:00:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am trying to make the Liberal government understand. Let us take York—Simcoe, for example, which we are talking about tonight. I want to again talk about the rural top-up of the carbon tax because the government members love to divide Canadians. They are dividing Canadians based on geography now; that is what they are doing. I went atop the CN Tower with binoculars, and I still could not see my riding of York—Simcoe, with binoculars, yet the government chooses to classify us, the soup and salad bowl of Canada, as Toronto. It is actually unbelievable.

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/18/24 5:01:16 p.m.
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Before proceeding, I just want to apologize to the House because I did miss that the hon. member for Mirabel was not wearing a tie, and we all know that we should be wearing ties in the House when we are speaking, so just an apology to hon. members for missing that.

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Mr. Adam Chambers (Simcoe North, CPC)

Apr/18/24 5:01:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in this space on behalf of the people of Simcoe North. To those watching at home, “hello, Alice”. Before I start my comments today on the budget, I just want to take a moment, with the Chair's indulgence, to make a tribute a former staff member in my office who passed away a couple of weeks ago. Diane Bell had been a staff member of mine since I was elected. She was a fabulous woman, the first person I talked to in my circle of friends when I decided to run for office. She was a wonderful human; she cared a lot about kids and her small communities. In fact, the mayor of Ramara said, “On the school board, when there was a busing issue, she was always there for the kids.... She was a very strong advocate for the small schools in Ramara, that they don't get closed and that they stay open.” To her husband, Rob, and her son, John, I want to say that we are going to miss Diane very much. We look forward to celebrating her life on the weekend with all her friends and family. On the budget, it is a shell game of accounting, and I will get back to that later. However, one of the smartest people I worked with was named Fabrice, and he said that we cannot make a house bigger by thinning the walls. That is exactly what the government is trying to do. It has no vision and no plan. It is at the end of all its ideas, and to grow the economy, or make the house bigger, it is resorting to thinning the walls. I looked through the budget very carefully. Everyone says we are in a productivity crisis. The government acknowledges it. I went through the budget, and there is no GDP per capita chart. We are in a productivity crisis, and the government does not care to tell Canadians how we are doing in GDP per capita. One of my mentors, Hugh Moncrieff, said that what gets measured, gets done. Obviously, the government does not care about making Canadians wealthier every year. I do not expect anyone to just take my word for it. Let us go to some experts. Don Drummond, a former senior civil servant and a very smart man, said that he would grade this budget as a D, but that it is very close to an F. He said, “I actually thought given the lead-up there were going to be more tax gimmicks”. Maybe we dodged that a bit, but he would leave it on a D. Bill Morneau said, “This was very clearly something that while I was there, we resisted.” He was referring to the capital gains changes. He said, “We resisted it for a very specific reason: [We were] concerned about the growth of the country”. Robert Asselin, another very smart individual and someone who has written a lot about fiscal policy and government spending, said, “I'm worried the government is overspending again, in a pre-election setup, [with] higher interest rates and debt servicing cost being very high already and rising fast”. Andrew Coyne of The Globe and Mail wrote, Indeed, there is not a single measure in the budget aimed at boosting investment generally.... Having spread itself so thin, budget after budget, on less urgent matters, the government finds itself without the capacity to act on the two or three things that really demand its attention. Assuming it even had any intention of doing so [in the first place]. Sahir Khan says the government is high on “aspiration” and low on “perspiration”. I could not agree more. Let us talk about a few measures in the budget. On housing, the government wants to increase demand measures by helping individuals take more money out of their RRSP. It is also helping wealthy developers. I am surprised to learn that my NDP colleagues will be supporting the budget, because the only people who can max out their RRSPs are very wealthy individuals. The NDP is going to end up voting for a budget that supports the most wealthy in the country and wealthy developers, except that the government vastly under-delivered on its disability benefit. Let us talk a little about the accounting tricks, shall we? The Bank of Canada has been losing money, lots of money, billions and billions of dollars a year. Last year the government told us it was a few billion dollars. This year, we do not actually know. The government is trying to hide that from Canadians; it does not actually disclose it in the budget. It actually buries it in another line with the Canada mortgage bond program and consolidates the two together. The truth is that interest rates have not come down, because government spending has gone up. Therefore, Bank of Canada losses are higher this year than the government thought they would be last year. I want to spend a minute on the capital gains trick, an accounting facade. The government expects it will get $7 billion in new revenues because of those who transact between now and January 25. This is very convenient. It sets a date in the future to change the capital gains tax, it forces a bunch of people to transact, and it gets a bunch of revenue that goes to the bottom line. If the government did not get that revenue, it would be offside its debt-to-GDP ratio and missing its other fiscal anchor, which is the commitment to keep the budget deficit below $40 billion. There is a big risk to the fiscal framework just sitting there in that budget if people decide not to transact, if for some reason they think a future government might change its mind or if the government has made the wrong assumptions on how many people will transact. Let us talk about extra money for the Canada Revenue Agency, with $336 million over two years and another $180 million to write cheques to small businesses for the carbon credit rebate. I have a lot of faith and confidence in the people at CRA, who work hard, but there is something wrong over there or in the system of government. Let us take the bare trust fiasco. On the very last day, it reversed its decision after all these taxpayers hired accountants, did the paperwork and spent thousands of dollars. The people at CRA are doing a great job, but the agency, the CRA itself, does not need more money; it needs to be visited by a proctologist. We need to figure out why we continually have implementation problems. The government's idea is to give the CRA more to do. People are not waiting on hold long enough, so let us give it more programs to deliver. The government has a massive capacity problem. It does not need to find more things to try to do, it actually needs to be better at doing what it is supposed to do. We need to make government simpler, not bigger. The hon. colleague before me talked about the rural top-up. It appears that some individuals in Simcoe North are not getting the rural top-up. We are investigating this, but it makes absolutely no sense. While we are on “what makes no sense”, there is not a single country in the world except Canada that has raised taxes on energy over this inflationary period. For some reason, the government wants to make energy more expensive when people are having a problem paying their bills. It absolutely boggles the mind. It leaves one bewildered. On the capital gains tax, the government wants us to believe there is a pool of people, the one percenters, and they are the same one per cent and are the worst people ever, except guess what: That one per cent changes every year, because people end up in the top 1% or 10% for various reasons. They might sell a business, or something might happen; they might come into some extra money. They are not the same ugly people; the top 25% are not the same nasty, money hungry, greedy people. They change from year to year. We need to be careful about how far we try to squeeze people before they start leaving this country. I look forward to the questions from my colleagues and from the NDP members, who might be able to enlighten us on how they can vote for a budget that is going to help wealthy individuals save more money for their RRSP for a home but not for the disabilities benefit.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/18/24 5:11:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the most significant line item expenditures is the Canada disability benefit. It is a substantial— An hon. member: One billion a year?

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Apr/18/24 5:12:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, $1 billion is a considerable amount of money, believe it or not, for the member across the way. At the end of the day, I find it a little confusing. I am trying to understand the Conservatives' policy on the Canada disability benefit. That should not surprise anyone, because we do not know what their policy is on the pharmacare plan or the dental plan. We assume, based on their voting patterns, that they are against those initiatives. Does the member support the allocations in the budget for programs such as the dental program, the pharmacare program and the disability program?

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Mr. Adam Chambers

Apr/18/24 5:12:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe the government is applauding the disability program. It over-promised and under-delivered. If we want to talk about line items in the budget, let us talk about debt servicing costs. Debt servicing costs are now the exact same amount that the GST is to require. I have a bunch of friends I like to see on Fridays at Frank's compound, Waxy and Frank. Those guys go for lunch once a week. Now, every time they get a bill that has GST on it, they are paying interest on the debt. There might be some good things in the budget, but people do not buy a house because they like the curtains.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel, BQ)

Apr/18/24 5:13:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, page 74 of the budget says that the government is exploring new measures to expand access to alternative financing products for mortgages, including halal mortgages. We know, or rather we do not know, the Conservatives' regard for the separation of church and state. We know that they love to pray for their King. That being said, I know that my colleague is very familiar with the banking system. I would like to know whether the Conservative Party is in favour of changing banking laws, mortgage laws and our prudential and mortgage regulations to accommodate certain religious minorities and possibly add to the mortgage rules certain precepts that are found in sharia law.

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Mr. Adam Chambers

Apr/18/24 5:14:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was surprised to see this in the budget as well, but I must admit that I am not an expert in how those kinds of mortgages work. All Canadians would like to believe that Canadians should have access to financial products. I am interested to see how the government is going to consult on this. I do not know what is being proposed. I think we should learn a bit more. I would tell my wonderful colleague that the government is creating dual classes of mortgage borrowers with respect to those insured and uninsured on mortgage renewals. The government is allowing insured mortgage holders to shop around for a renewal but not allowing uninsured mortgage holders to shop for a better rate on renewal without doing the stress test, and that is unfair.

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Ms. Marilyn Gladu (Sarnia—Lambton, CPC)

Apr/18/24 5:15:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague's financial acumen is renowned in our party. What does he think is missing from this budget that he would like to see?

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