44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 29, 2024 11:00AM
- Apr/29/24 12:39:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Jonquière.
I am very pleased to be discussing the budget today. We have read it, and it looks more like a Liberal election platform than real fiscal policy, which is exactly what we feared. We in the Bloc Québécois had made some very clear demands of the government. We wanted certain things to be included, things we have been talking about for years, such as increasing old age security starting at age 65. Unfortunately, that was not included in the budget. We also noted significant federal interference in the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces. That is unacceptable. I will let my colleague from Jonquière elaborate on that.
When the budget came out, the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard said she was shocked that the Bloc Québécois was voting against the budget before even reading it. That is what she said. I did my homework. I did read the budget before criticizing it. That was the right thing to do. I read it and saw that there was not really anything in it for eastern Quebec, nor for the Lower St. Lawrence or for Gaspésie—Îles‑de‑la‑Madeleine. It was pretty clear to me that the minister had not contributed to writing the budget or there would have been more funding for that region, which is very important in eastern Quebec.
I feel a need to quote some excerpts from a Radio-Canada article from the Gaspésie—Îles‑de‑la‑Madeleine region that appeared the day after the budget came out. The title says it all: “A budget with nothing major for the regional economy”. In the article, municipal officials say they do not really have any details on the money that was announced and they are waiting to see how this will materialize on the ground. Obviously, fishers and seasonal workers are disappointed. Daniel Côté, the mayor of Gaspé, says elements of the budget interact with Quebec's jurisdictions, such as housing and shoreline erosion. He asks, “What is that going to look like in the community, in concrete terms?”
What he is asking for is essentially to have more in terms of how the money is invested. When the federal government interferes in provincial areas of jurisdiction, adding yet more conditions, that obviously means less flexibility for Quebec and the municipalities, which is a bad thing. They are afraid of constitutional quarrels and distrustful of budget announcements that come without concrete measures. Éric Dubé, the mayor of New Richmond, says that “these are promises, but they are not accompanied by an operational program. There are announcements, but we wake up two years later and nothing has come of it.” I know that Mr. Dubé is speaking from experience.
Like the mayor of New Richmond, the mayor of Gaspé hopes that the details will be better defined and that the terms of the federal and provincial infrastructure program will be renewed quickly. That is what the Bloc Québécois wants too, particularly for the investments in housing. Let us give Quebec and the municipalities their share, with no strings attached. The budgets for existing federal programs, such as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's programs and affordable housing programs, need to be renewed. There are projects on hold in my riding. They are ready to move forward. They have the backing of the Quebec government, but the federal government says that there is no more money in these budgets. Let us start by renewing these types of budgets, which are extremely useful for the municipalities, especially in the Gaspé.
The mayor of New Richmond is thrilled with the announcement of funding for Via Rail. That is a good thing, which I will come back to later. It has been just over 10 years since Via Rail stopped passenger rail service to the Gaspé. For years, community groups have been calling for rail service to be restored. It is good news that initial funding has been allocated for the replacement of the fleet. It remains to be seen whether that results in passenger trains returning to the Gaspé.
In the city of Gaspé, the mayor was waiting for funds to fully renovate the Cap-des-Rosiers lighthouse, as well as additional investments for Forillon Park. I will come back to that as well.
Expectations have not been met when it comes to regional air transportation. I cannot agree more with the mayor of Gaspé that we need investments in regional air transportation. The Gaspé Peninsula's economy centres on the fishing industry. The mayor wishes the federal government had provided some support for the industry, which has been hit hard by the rapid decline of crustacean species, such as shrimp, as well as fish species, such as Greenland halibut. Unfortunately, apart from investments in small craft harbours, there is not much in the budget for this industry.
Claudio Bernatchez, executive director of the Association des capitaines-propriétaires de la Gaspésie, says he would have liked the budget to signal, or at least hint at, Ottawa's interest in discussing the future of our fisheries. The fishing industry is facing a crisis. People feel as though the government is seeing only the short-term picture, when we need a global long-term vision of the marine ecosystem. Mr. Bernatchez says that he wants to know how the fisheries will be restructured and how a minimum of economic activity can be ensured in our coastal communities, especially in eastern Canada.
He says, “for now, we have no resources and are powerless in the face of a government that does not seem to consider a future for this industry.” These are strong words, but the criticism is well-founded in the circumstances.
This budget is also disappointing for groups advocating for unemployed workers, who feel ignored by the federal budget. The coordinator for the Mouvement action chômage Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Nadia Mongeon, “feels that the new fiscal year will offer nothing new and no improvements for seasonal workers, apart from things having to do with an employment insurance IT system.” Which is to say that the long-awaited employment insurance overhaul, promised years ago by the Liberal government, has still not arrived.
Basically, what the government announced regarding employment insurance amounts to “up to five additional weeks—for a maximum of 45 weeks—to eligible seasonal workers in 13 economic regions.” That is a temporary measure set to expire in October 2024. The government is proposing to extend this measure, which, I would remind members, was meant to be temporary. It seems, then, that this oft-promised EI reform has been postponed indefinitely, and there is simmering discontent in the community. People have been waiting for this for a long time, especially in a region such as ours where seasonal industries abound.
The Mouvement action chômage Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, which for years has fought for this, shared the reaction of the Mouvement autonome et solidaire des sans-emploi, which denounces the Liberal government's disdainful attitude toward the unemployed: “Apart from the extension of the temporary measures,” as I mentioned just now, “there is nothing in the 2024 budget offering respite to the thousands of people who find themselves each year without work and who receive little if any government assistance.”
Nevertheless, groups advocating for the unemployed and unions all answered Ottawa's call by proposing a common set of recommendations with an eye to the 2024 budget. The movement says it is frankly surprised that the government decided not to act on any of their recommendations for its budget. They had presented three priorities: “make the system more accessible, end discrimination against women so that they would not lose their right to employment insurance if they become pregnant, and adapt the scheme to regional realities dictated by the seasonal industry”. Obviously, none of these measures ended up in the budget.
That being said, there are investments for small craft harbours. As indicated in the budget, those investments are for harbours that were severely damaged by hurricane Fiona in 2022. We are talking about approximately $463 million. Will that be enough to repair and maintain all of the small craft harbours in eastern Quebec? I do not think so. The government seems to intend this money to go mainly to ports that were damaged in the hurricane.
The government says, “This investment will support local economic development for generations to come, particularly benefitting Canadians working in the fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, construction, and marine engineering sectors”.
I personally do not feel like this $463‑million investment for small craft harbours is going to help all those people. Obviously, wanting to repair these harbours is good news. However, as one fisherman said, it is all well and good to have new spots to dock the boats, but that does not get them out to sea.
I should note that there is no support for fishers affected by species-specific moratoriums. There is nothing for pelagic fishers affected by mackerel and herring moratoriums. There is nothing for shrimp fishers. Although there is no moratorium on shrimp, quotas have been slashed. There are no support measures for those fishers. The government could have proposed buying back licences. That is what the mayor of Gaspé has been proposing for a few weeks now, and it could prove helpful. There is nothing for processors either. A seafood processing plant has closed in Matane, which is in my riding.
Hundreds of owner-operators are at risk of bankruptcy. We need more investments in fisheries. I would like to continue, but my time is already up.
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- Apr/29/24 12:54:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if we had to define this budget, if we had to characterize it, I think it could be best described as a budget of interference. However, before getting into that, I would like to return to what happened before the budget.
It was unheard of. Like me, my colleagues are discerning analysts of federal politics. None of us had ever seen such a series of pre-budget announcements. At the end of this unveiling, or striptease if I may be so bold, of the various government measures, the emperor was left without any clothes. We did not even need a lock-up. We already knew what was in the budget.
Why did the government do this? If we take a closer look, its motivations are fairly obvious. These are electoral motivations. Like all the other parties, the Liberal Party is watching the polls. They took the pulse of the electorate. Clearly, things have not been going too well for the Liberals for quite some time, so they put out a budget designed to boost their standing in the polls. That in a nutshell is what this budget is about.
This is an election budget, that much can be said. It can also be described as a budget of interference. In reality, I see in this budget a degree of continuity when it comes to the structural problems with Canada's federation. I say that because the reality of this budget is typical of what is not working in the Canadian federation. It comes down to two fairly simple things, which stand out even more in the current context.
First, there is the fiscal imbalance and jurisdictional encroachment. Second, there is Ottawa's inability to propose an economic system that does not rely on fossil fuels. That is what we have seen in this budget. These are consistent trends in Canadian politics: On the one hand, Ottawa acts in areas of provincial jurisdiction, and on the other, it does everything it can to support oil and gas.
That leaves me with serious doubts about the alternative available in Canada. What is the alternative? Right now, it is the Conservatives. When I look at the Conservatives over the past year or two, what I see are people parroting often empty slogans. I could mention what the Leader of the Opposition says when he talks about the budget. He says he wants to “fix the budget”. I do not even know that he means by that. Is he going to take a pickaxe and a hammer to it? We do not know. He says he wants to fix the budget. He says he wants to stop the crime. Those are empty slogans. What are the Conservatives' proposals for getting us back to a balanced budget? It is just another sales pitch, just more prattle. Their dollar-for-dollar policy is just political prattle. It sounds like a McDonald's ad: This week, Big Macs are a dollar. It sounds like a McDonald's commercial. It has no real substance.
When I take a closer look, it is quite clear that the Liberals and the Conservatives have similar instincts. The leader of the Conservative Party often says that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. The Prime Minister responds by saying that his government will be there for Canadians. I have even heard him say they would be there to be there. These empty phrases get tossed around during question period. One side says the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. The other replies that they will be there to be there. Who loses in all of this? Canadians lose. This can be seen in the recent budget.
I would like to come back to the fiscal imbalance and the subject of jurisdictions. When I look at the budget, it feels like Groundhog Day. A wide-ranging inquiry was conducted in Quebec in 2002 by the Yves Séguin commission. As everyone knows, Yves Séguin is not a sovereignist. His goal was not to hassle the federal government, far from it. He wanted to explore how Quebec could keep its public finances healthy within the context of the Canadian federation. In 2002, Yves Séguin launched this commission on the fiscal imbalance and came to one glaring conclusion, specifically that the Canadian federation is dysfunctional because the federal government has much greater fiscal capacity than the provinces and yet spends less money. Why is that? It is because Ottawa is not responsible for social services, which cost a little more. That is what we learned from Yves Séguin.
That was recently reaffirmed by the late Benoît Pelletier, a federalist, before his passing. He denounced the federal government's many encroachments on jurisdictions that were none of its business. We saw that again in the budget. We saw it encroaching and wielding its spending power left and right.
When I think about this, what immediately springs to mind is Jean Chrétien. Toward the end of his political life, he had an unguarded moment. He revealed a political strategy used by the Canadian federation that was common knowledge. He said he could reduce health transfer payments without ever paying the political price because the public, the voters, would think that the Government of Quebec and the provincial governments were responsible for the cuts to health care. It was Jean Chrétien himself who said that. That statement beautifully explained what the fiscal imbalance is.
Well, today we are seeing something similar. The federal government is trying to do the same thing, to follow Jean Chrétien's logic but in reverse. When asked by pollsters what their main priorities are, Quebeckers will immediately respond health and education. These are always at the top of Quebeckers' list of priorities. The Prime Minister decided that, if he wanted to be in step with Quebeckers' priorities, he would have to try to get involved in health and education. At the very least, he would have to try to get involved in social matters, hence the dental care and pharmacare programs, which are no doubt the product of the Liberals' marriage of convenience to the NDP. With these two measures, the federal government is trying to run roughshod over provincial jurisdictions.
The budget even interferes directly, with amounts for long-term care, along with dental care and pharmacare, of course. The federal government has absolutely no jurisdiction over those things, and it is repeatedly interfering in provincial jurisdictions.
I would remind members that, initially, the provinces were calling on the federal government to provide $28 billion to increase health transfers from 22% to 35%. By 2040, the federal government's share will be down to a measly 20%.
It does not stop there. The federal government is interfering in education, too. I saw two sections. The first is entitled “After-School Learning”. As far as I know, the federal government does not run any school boards. The second is entitled “Coding Skills for Kids ”. That is bordering on meddling.
However, what is most surprising is the government's take on one of the other major issues of our time: global warming. The federal government had pledged to end fossil fuel subsidies in 2023. According to what I see in front of me today, it is going to put into service a pipeline that cost us $34 billion when it was originally supposed to cost us $7 billion. The budget talks about myths like low-carbon oil. It talks about carbon capture strategies, which received massive amounts in previous budgets. While the government says it will cap emissions by 2026, Alberta is breaking records. Almost four million barrels of oil a day are flowing out of Alberta. Clearly, the polluter pays principle does not apply in Canada.
In 2023, fossil fuel subsidies amounted to $18 billion. We are talking about $65 billion over the past four years. At the same time, investments in clean energy have dwindled to a trickle.
I will finish my speech with the cherry on the sundae. The only worthwhile tax credit was the 15% that could have been given for clean energy. However, that was not enough for the government. It said that if it provided the tax credit, it would have to have a hand in setting rates. In Quebec, Hydro-Québec's rates are set by a board. Quebec politicians do not meddle in Hydro-Québec's rate setting. It is governed by a law. However, the federal government says that, if we want the 15% tax credit, then it will decide how much to charge for electricity.
In conclusion, this budget is all about interference and continued reliance on fossil fuels.
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- Apr/29/24 1:09:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that compensation is essential.
The Government of Quebec is asking for $2.9 billion. This does not appear in the budget. In my introduction, I talked about the fiscal imbalance. Well, that is what is going to happen. The federal government generates and creates expectations. Then, it withdraws from programs. It is the Government of Quebec that is obligated to meet these imperatives. This puts pressure on Quebec. The federal government never pays the political price. It is groundhog day.
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- Apr/29/24 1:39:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today, we are debating the ninth budget that the Prime Minister and the Liberal government have written. If people listened to their rhetoric, they may be confused into thinking it was their first budget ever. They seem to have forgotten just who has been in charge of this country for the last nine years and just who is responsible for the situation we are in.
It is the Liberals' latest half-hearted attempt to clean up the mess they have made, while pretending it is everybody else’s fault, or worse, while pretending that everything is okay. They are somehow trying to say that it is global, that it is still COVID related or that it is anything but a painful addiction to spending by the Prime Minister who cannot help himself. He has lost his way in a world too complicated for his version of this idealistic, post-nationalist state he is trying to create.
We know that leadership starts at the top, and if the Prime Minister is really unhappy about the way things are going, as we have heard him say over the last couple of weeks, then he should take it up with the guy who has been in charge. We also know that we cannot ask the arsonist to put out the fire, and we cannot ask Liberal politicians to fix Liberal messes.
Anything other than that is just gaslighting to the extreme. The ministers pretend they can save the day with the same old tired ideas, repackaged nicely with a new bow and a new communications plan. It is nothing more than delusional. That is what we saw in the budget's rollout.
If we were to ask a Liberal MP or a cabinet minister to sum up the costly coalition’s budget, they could probably do it with just one word. In fact, we just heard it, and that word is “fairness”. We have heard it constantly from that side of the House and in weird platitudes the Liberals use on TV when answering questions that have nothing to do with that word or with the budget itself, or when anyone dares to question their intentions as being anything but good.
In fact, the word is even in the title of the budget. The Liberals call it “Fairness for Every Generation”. I love the idea of fairness. Do not get me wrong. It was fairness and equality of opportunity that allowed my parents to come to Canada, to work hard, to get ahead and to build a better life for me and my brother. From the front seat of a taxi to the front row of Parliament Hill, that is the story of Canada in one generation. It is the story of hard work. A story like that is the story of so many millions of other Canadians.
However, we have to ask ourselves this: Is the budget really fair? Does the budget actually live up to the idea of fairness? What exists in the budget that would lead them to falsely label it as such? When we scratch beneath the surface, when we go past the marketing exercise we saw roll out before the budget and when we really dig deeply into what the Liberal-NDP government is proposing, it is clear that this budget is profoundly unfair for the people the government claims it would help most. Let me tell everyone why.
First of all, the budget is unfair because it does nothing to axe the costly and ineffective carbon tax. It is a tax that punishes people simply because of where they live, what kind of home they own, if they are able to own a home at all in this country, or what they do to make a living. A commuter in Charlottetown cannot ride the subway, despite what the Deputy Prime Minister thinks. A farmer in Medicine Hat has to drive a tractor to feed his family and millions of other Canadian families too. They do not have another choice, but they do have to pay the carbon tax anyhow. That is unjust and unfair.
Secondly, the budget is unfair because it continues the pattern of runaway Liberal spending, spending that drives up the cost of living and that keeps interest rates artificially high. Experts have testified in this place, and in fact Liberals have said, over and over again, that higher spending means higher inflation, which means higher interest rates and higher prices for consumers. That is how we are living in Canada because of the Prime Minister’s spending in all of the budgets, spending that continues to go unchecked by a party that used to be in opposition: the NDP.
In this budget, Canadian families now pay double what they used to pay for a mortgage, what they used to pay for a home and what they used to pay for rent. This year, they will pay over $1,000 more for groceries than they did just last year. They pay more per litre every time they are at the pump. They pay more for everything. That is why it is known as the “inflation tax”. It is the fault of the Liberal government, the Liberal Prime Minister and his NDP supporters.
It is extra money that Canadians spend every year, simply because the government has driven up the cost of living. It is unfair that everyday Canadians should continue to be subjected to this tax, while the government pretends nothing is wrong. Every day in the House, government members get up and say that Canadians have never had it so good, while they keep up the immense spending agenda.
Although the government ignores the pleas of almost everybody, the Liberals know. They go out into their communities. Everybody tells us the same things: Things cost too much in Canada, they are working harder, and they cannot get ahead. I hear those things in my constituency and across the country. I would be shocked if they did not hear the exact same thing. In fact, I have been in their ridings and have heard that.
Thirdly, the budget is unfair because it means a $40-million deficit that will cement the current Prime Minister's legacy of being the costliest prime minister in history. He has run up more debt than every prime minister before him combined. Who will pay for this deficit and out-of-control spending? It is going to be young people, the next generation of Canadians. They will be forced to scale back on their standard of living as they struggle under the mountain of debt they have been left by the once-liberal party that has turned its back on generations of Liberal consensus. Members do not have to ask me; they can ask the Liberals, who say the exact same thing.
One of the gravest injustices we can commit is to steal the future from those who have yet to come. That is what the costly coalition is doing to Canadians. Let us look at our future. Today, we are paying more for interest on our debt than the federal government pays for all health care for Canadians. That is more money than is transferred to any province. This times even more spending, even more long-term debt, is a window into the fiscal reality that is going to be imposed on our children and our grandchildren, who will have to confront it soon enough.
When we dig deep into the budget, it is clear that there is unfairness all around, so it is perhaps ironic that it is indeed called “Fairness For Every Generation”. It is the perfect title from a government that tells us less is more, up is down, left is right and black is white. When we come back to that title, we see that it accomplishes none of that. It does not do so for young people, who are going to be left holding the bag for the Liberal-NDP government's spending spree; for families, which will continue to suffer under the burden of higher taxes, higher inflation and higher interest rates; or for the seniors who still cannot make ends meet thanks to the out-of-control cost of living they will now face, with additional taxes when they retire.
With respect to fairness, it was the current Prime Minister who promised Canadians that the rich would pay for all his spending, but we know it has been everyday Canadians who have paid for his addiction to spending. They pay every single day at the grocery store, at the gas pump, with respect to their mortgage bills and for everything else. In fact, the only people who are richer after nearly nine years of the Liberal government may very well be the rich and elite in his inner circle, the bureaucrats, the friends of the Prime Minister who give themselves bonuses, who reward failed performance, who gorge themselves on public funds, who are called to the bar here and defended by the Liberals not to answer questions. More big spending and higher taxes are going to make sure that these Ottawa insiders continue doing just fine while everyone else suffers.
By the Liberal fat cats' definition of fairness, I am sure the budget is very fair. By everyone else's definition, it falls far short. Fairness is being able to afford the necessities, such as food, heating and housing; it is having a government that helps, not hinders, everyday affordability through lower taxes, lower inflation and lower interest rates. It is being able to provide for one's family, to keep the fruits of one's labour and to receive good, decent wages for work, interest on investments and returns on risk. It is being able to take those risks, work hard, put everything on the line and be rewarded for doing so.
Fairness would not be giving up on the dignity of those afflicted with addiction by giving them taxpayer-funded drugs; it would be giving frontline officers what they need to protect us. It would be a leader who unites this country instead of dividing it. It would be bringing more capital into the country, not out of the country. Fairness would be a Conservative government.
We hope not to see another single budget from the Liberal-NDP coalition, and we will vote this one down.
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- Apr/29/24 1:53:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are two ways to go broke: gradually and suddenly. Canada is not going broke; it is broken.
In the battle for the soul of Canada, we are confronted by two ideologies. There is that of the Liberal and NDP socialism, which is of spending beyond reproach, high crime rates, divide and division, high taxation, an unproductive economy and a monopoly economy, in which housing and food have become unaffordable for so many. On the other side lies the vision of a common-sense Conservative economy, in which government is leaner, taxes are lower, paycheques are bigger, and competition thrives. It is a vision where we prioritize toughness on crime to ensure equal opportunity for all who call Canada home. The problem with socialism is that it eventually runs out of other people's money.
After the government spent $350 billion in deficit spending outside of COVID relief programs, the budget is set to spend another $50 billion while raising taxes. Another $60 billion in spending is projected for next year. That is $460 in deficit spending since 2015 for bigger government and more social programs. The result is that Canadians are worse off.
After nine years, too many young Canadians feel as though the deck is stacked against them. They get a good job and work hard. However, far too often, the reward of a secure, prosperous and comfortable middle class remains out of reach for them. After nine years, we have seniors who have been priced out of their homes and are going to the food bank. Their pensions that once made sense and their fixed incomes that promised a comfortable life are now not enough to cover their basic needs.
After nine years of Liberal governance, too many Canadians feel disheartened seeing their aspiration to live a secure, prosperous life slipping away. They see the effects of big government, suffocating regulations and reckless spending. It is anything but fair.
This generational injustice has 62% of Canadians aged 18 to 34 giving up on owning a home. That number is 73% for those who are 35 to 54 years old. Taxes are going up more than $20 billion. The GST now only covers debt payment interest. It is now the minimum payment. It should probably be called the DST, the debt service charge, at only $50 billion a year.
Grocery prices have risen to a point where most Canadians now buy less food, and food banks are recording record numbers. Crime is at an all-time high. There has been a 300% increase in car thefts in Toronto alone. Child poverty is on the rise in Canada, a G7 nation, with one in five children facing challenges.
More and more Canadians are finding out they cannot even get a doctor. More and more visits to the ER result in hour after hour of wait times.
The carbon tax has gone up 23% this year alone, raising the price of groceries, heat and gas. There is a bureaucracy that is growing with it. There are over 500 employees just to collect a carbon tax. Meanwhile, our productivity, or doing more with what we have, is at an all-time low. We lack skilled trades, education for our youth and business investment.
There is going to be an increase in personal taxes, which means we will be losing companies in Canada to the U.S., which has lower personal taxes. This is coupled with the fact that a home in the U.S. can be bought for half the cost of a home in Canada. Foreign and domestic investors are leaving Canada at record rates. Innovators and doctors say this budget will drive them out of the country.
Countries cry out for Canadian LNG, but the Prime Minister says that the increased jobs are not worth it. Poland, Japan and Germany have all been turned down for liquefied natural gas by the Prime Minister; he says there is no business case. Meanwhile, the U.S. has opened hundreds of wells and provided billions to its economy.
Our monopoly problem means that Canadians are paying the highest rates in the world for cellphones, airlines, banking and groceries. These are all worse, while the government said it has lowered cellphone bills by half. Can anyone believe this? The Prime Minister said he lowered cellphone bills for Canadians, but Canadians know the real answer is that bills have never been higher.
To top it off, high inflation because of high interest rates is driving the costs for Canadians up based on a very simple fact: The government is spending way more than it is taking in. This is not a budget about Canadian fairness; it is a socialist political manoeuvre described as fiscal responsibility, with generational unfairness that will ensure our next generation inherits the national debt. There has been $460 billion in deficit spending, and we can remember that this is over and above COVID-19 programs. Despite this, there is just more government. Canadians are getting less, paying more and being taxed to death for it.
Canadians who pay taxes on every dollar earned, every dollar they spend, every dollar they inherit, every dollar invested, every dollar saved, every dollar in property tax are tired of seeing their hard-earned money wasted on inefficient government programs and bureaucracy. They deserve a government that respects their efforts and works tirelessly to ensure their prosperity and well-being.
Despite $460 billion in deficits, we have no more doctors or hospital beds; no more affordable rent or homes; no better prices at the grocery store for groceries; no better prices for cellphones; no better prices at banks. We have no bigger paycheques and we have more taxes. At the end of the day, we need a government that will look after Canadians, and that is a Conservative government.
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- Apr/29/24 3:00:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our government understands how important it is to invest in Canadians and Quebeckers.
That is what we are doing, and we are doing it in a fiscally responsible way. We have a AAA credit rating. The Governor of the Bank of Canada said, “The budget does respect the fiscal guardrails that the government put in place.... [T]he budget also commits to those guardrails going forward”.
That is what we are doing.
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- Apr/29/24 5:49:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is another year and another broken 2015 election promise. Let no Canadian or anyone on those benches who ran in 2015 forget what the current government promised. In 2015, the Liberals promised that more spending, more taxes, more deficits and more borrowing would lead to a magical utopia where budgets would balance themselves. They promised they would take a balanced budget that they inherited from the Conservative government and turn it into a deficit, but Canadians were not to worry: It would be a small, short-term deficit.
The Liberals ran on a commitment in 2015 that they took door to door to Canadians, telling them they would run deficits to fund unprecedented national infrastructure spending. Within three years the budget would balance itself. Here we are nine years later, and everything in that promise they made and were elected on turned out to be false. They broke that promise in the very first budget they tabled. For nine fiscal years in a row, the government has promised more spending, more borrowing, more taxes, more deficits, more interest payments, more inflation and more debts amid a further deterioration of the national balance sheet and declining living standards that are hollowing out the middle class. The government has broken the main election promise it made to Canadians in 2015. It promised it would not do that. It promised that a limited deficit would be it and that the budget would then balance itself.
However, budget 2016 was almost Orwellian in the way it pretended that the promises the Liberals made in the previous year had never happened. In 2017, they brought in what some called the “Seinfeld” budget, a budget about nothing, just more of the same. In 2018, I called it the “Britney Spears” budget: oops!... I did it again. In 2019, they promised the debt-to-GDP ratio would shrink forever.
In early 2020, the country was on the brink of a recession, the credit rating had been downgraded by Fitch and the debt-to-GDP ratio was rising. This was all before the pandemic. The government had already squandered its fiscal inheritance and abandoned its promises and so-called fiscal anchors and guardrails.
After the pandemic, the Liberals tabled the “pants on fire” budget, which continued to ignore every fiscal promise and projection they have made in successive election campaigns, previous budgets and fall economic statements.
Budget 2024 says, “we can make sure that Canadians at every age can find an affordable home.” However, the 2015 Liberal platform said the same thing: “We will make it easier for Canadians to find an affordable place to call home.”
The government is repeating old, broken promises verbatim, never mind that housing prices have doubled in that time and rents in some cities have nearly tripled in the nine years since it made those identical promises. Just how much credibility does it think it deserves for anything that it claims in its various announcements?
After nine years, we have unaffordable rents, home ownership no longer an attainable middle-class ambition, record food bank use and another budget that promises more of the same pattern of out-of-control spending and new tax increases. Let us call this one the “Hall and Oates” budget, because it is obvious to Canadians that the government is out of touch and Canadians are out of time.
It is not just with respect to fiscal mismanagement; the government has lost control of the institutional machinery of government. It is a government that has presided over a record expansion of the bureaucracy and an exponential expansion of the use of private consultants. Despite this record bloat, access to government services has never been worse.
The immigration decision queue is 2.5 million people long. The CRA call centres continue to give false information to Canadians or are unavailable when they need them. Most distressingly, the Canadian Armed Forces are in a “death spiral” crisis of retention and recruitment. Those are not my words, but the words of the minister himself.
For nine years, the government has pursued an anti-energy, anti-industry, anti-jobs policy that has resulted in Canadians dropping to near the bottom of peer countries in productivity. This is driving down the standard of living for Canadians at a time when they desperately need economic leadership in order to sustain program expenditures and our national security and public safety.
Conservatives do not want to fix the budget simply because we like the look of a nice tidy financial statement. The budgetary madness of the NDP-Liberal government threatens the prosperity of ordinary Canadians, the sustainability of programs that vulnerable Canadians rely on, Canada's national security, and Canada's ability to be a trusted and meaningful ally in global affairs. This then threatens our trade relationships, our diplomacy and our national security.
The budget has the same formula that has seen the gap in the standard of living between Canadians and Americans widen rapidly. That is not my opinion; it is what economists and the government's own reports are saying. Statistics Canada said, “Real GDP per capita has now declined in five of the past six quarters and is currently near levels observed in 2017.” This past January, Jack Mintz said, “real GDP per capita has stalled since 2018, fell in 2023 by 2.4 per cent and will likely fall again this year.”
According to the Royal Bank, “The Canadian economy is sharply underperforming global peers.... Since 2019, Canadian gross domestic product per capita has declined 2.8% versus a 7% increase in the U.S.” The bank notes that this is the single largest underperformance of the Canadian economy in comparison to the United States since 1965, almost 60 years ago. We should let that sink in: Per capita GDP is now lower than it was five years ago, while in peer countries, it is higher. We have Canada's worst underperformance in comparison to the U.S. economy in that time.
The OECD expects that Canada will record the worst economic growth among advanced countries for decades to come. The C.D. Howe Institute says:
Comparing investment in Canada to that in the United States and other OECD countries reveals that, before 2015, Canadian businesses had been closing a long-standing gap between investment per available worker in Canada and abroad. Since 2015, however the gap has become a chasm.... Having investment per worker much lower in Canada than [in other countries] tells us that businesses see less opportunity in Canada, and prefigures weaker growth in Canadian earnings and living standards than in other OECD countries.
To put it another way, the government is chasing business investment out of Canada, and the result is a lower standard of living for Canadians. The budget itself reveals that interest on the national debt is now more than the entire Canada health transfer. It is also way more than the entire national defence budget. Taxes from Canadians are increasingly going to pay Canada's creditors instead of paying for health care and defence.
Nine years of budgets that spend, borrow and tax more than they promised in their election platforms are making Canadians poorer, and they know it. Canadians know that they cannot afford rent, home heating, gasoline and mortgage payments. They know that inflation is ruining the purchasing power of their wages and the value of their savings. They know that, as government piles on more debt from more spending, they are going to be the ones who will have to pay for it all. They know it is not going to be the ultrawealthy who will just cheerfully pay a little more because it is only fair. Canadians know it is going to be the workers, seniors, small business owners and especially the young who will end up paying for the intergenerational theft that is contained in this budget.
That is why Canadians are increasingly ready for a government that would axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. That is why I will vote against the budget. I will vote non-confidence in the government. The Liberal government is out of touch. Canadians are out of time. Let us have an election and bring in a Conservative government to clean up this mess.
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- Apr/29/24 6:04:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what is the legacy of the current Liberal Prime Minister? Sadly, his entire legacy amounts to one thing. The Prime Minister has grown the national debt more in nine years than under every other prime minister in Canadian history before him combined. That is his legacy. That is the end of it. That is the only thing that he stands for and has as a legacy. That debt now stands at $1.3 trillion, which is an enormous number. It is actually hard to comprehend or even imagine for just about any Canadian. It is really hard to visualize how much money we are even talking about there, so I want to break that down just a little bit.
First of all, our national debt of $1.3 trillion is relative to a $2-trillion national economy. For every dollar the Canadian economy generates, about 65¢ of it has an obligation attached to it. Now, a trillion dollars is a massive amount of money. If we cashed it into $100 bills and stacked those bills into billion-dollar piles, we would have 1,000 piles, each climbing about a kilometre high. That is what we are talking about in terms of what this money would look like. However, that is still viewing the situation from 20,000 feet, so let us zoom in at the ground level for a little better perspective.
For Canada's population of about 39 million people, the share of the total national debt is now about $34,000 for every person in the country. For every family of five in Canada, there is about $170,000 in debt. We can think about what that could mean for the average Canadian family of five and what they could do with that $170,000, if they had that for themselves instead of it being their share of the national debt.
Let us say a person has kids in hockey. A good, reasonably decent youth composite hockey stick, which everyone uses nowadays, is about $90 or so. The kids in that family of five would certainly never have to worry about breaking a hockey stick ever again. In fact, every one of their friends would never have to worry about it again either, because that $170,000 would buy about 1,800 hockey sticks.
A family of five can easily spend $400 or more a week on groceries these days with all the inflation, which means that $170,000 would cover food for that whole family for over eight years. Instead, under the Liberals, Canadian families are struggling to feed themselves. Food banks in Canada received a record two million visits in a single month last year, with a million additional people expected this year.
Examples of what Canadians could do with their own money is endless, but those dollars are not enriching Canadian families at all under the Liberal government. Those dollars represent the money that is owed to bankers and bondholders as their share of the Prime Minister's debt. It is interesting to be able to visualize that, but it is not a theoretical exercise. It is actually having real impacts on Canadians right now here today. The Prime Minister's inflationary deficits are driving up interest rates. He is endangering our social safety nets and our jobs by adding more inflationary debt. His government has caused rent and mortgage payment costs to double and made it harder to save for a down payment for so many young families who are just dreaming of getting into the housing market for the first time but wondering how that will ever be possible.
Those are the problems facing Canada right now, but what is the fix? Common-sense Conservatives have solutions. In fact, we have offered the Liberals a starting point to fix it. We told the Prime Minister that we would support his budget if he would just take three very simple, small little steps towards addressing the affordability issues that are plaguing Canadians by starting to address the debt. We needed to see the Liberal government, at minimum, axe the Liberal tax on food, focus on building homes and not building up more federal government bureaucracy and cap the out-of-control government spending by finding a dollar in savings for every new dollar in spending.
The Liberals did none of that. Instead, they went further down the road of recklessness, adding $40 billion more to the growing federal debt.
Common-sense Conservatives cannot support a budget that continues to further indebt Canadians. We will vote non-confidence in a Prime Minister that has driven this country into the ground. I want to know this: Will the NDP have the backbone to do the same?
The government needs to be run in the same way that people have to run their households. A Canadian family that found itself paying more on their credit card debt and on interest than on their necessities would quickly realize that they had to address their debt load. The government, in a similar circumstance, chooses to open new lines of credit to keep on spending. If the government approached budgeting the way Canadian households have to, with actual needs weighed against available resources, the craziness of paying more to bankers and bondholders in one year than what it funds the provinces for health care would be apparent to every single other Canadian, but not to the people sitting on those benches over there in the Liberal government.
Under this government, the promise of Canada has become a promissory note to its debt holders. The Liberals have tried to rebrand their undisciplined fiscal policy as equal to the aspirations of Canadians, but let us look at the real promise of Canada. It is not the agenda of bigger government that the government promotes. It is certainly not about transforming society to reflect Liberal ideology, despite what Liberals would have people believe.
The promise of Canada is, in fact, about the opportunity and freedom to forge one's way in life. Canada has long held out the hope of achievement and prosperity for those who do the work and follow the rules, that a comfortable, secure, middle-class existence is open to anyone from any walk of life, from anywhere in the world, who works to earns it.
In year nine of the Liberal government, life in Canada has never been more unaffordable. The middle class is just a distant dream for far too many. Canadians looking for the Liberals to change things in their budget this year must be feeling incredibly disappointed, with reckless spending, deeper debt and deficits and, of course, the harmful carbon tax.
With these and other policies, Liberals are fuelling inflation and an affordability crisis, pushing middle-class aspirations even further out of the reach of many. Struggling families cannot afford more inflationary spending that drives up their cost of living. They cannot afford the interest rates on their mortgages, their taxes, all of these things.
Even Liberal spending on social programs is not as it actually seems. Many of the measures announced in the budget are deferred, so that the government can make feel-good promises now and then try to find loopholes to get out of them later. We have seen that with dental care and the other social spending Liberals have rolled out that did not quite come anywhere near as advertised. We are seeing it with defence spending promises that stretch out 20 years into the future, when they are needed now.
After nine years, the Liberals' budget is just more of the same that brought us into this mess in the first place. The Prime Minister is proving that he is not worth the cost for any generation, and it will be generations well into the future that will have to repay all of his debt.
It is clear that only common-sense Conservatives have a plan to stop the inflationary deficits that are driving up interest rates. We will protect Canada's social programs and jobs by stopping the piling-on of more federal debt.
Only common-sense Conservatives have a plan to bring down the cost of energy, food and everything else. We will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Conservatives will govern with common sense for this country, for all its people, in all its regions.
Canada's middle-class dream can once again eclipse the Liberals' debt and deficit nightmare.
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- Apr/29/24 8:37:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise this evening to speak about the measures that our government is taking to ensure that all generations are able to get ahead and doing so in a fiscally responsible way. Inflation is down from a peak of 8.1% in June 2022 and has now been within the Bank of Canada's target range for three months in a row.
We know that for too many Canadians, especially the younger generations, the promise of Canada is at risk. Our plan is a plan to build a Canada that benefits all generations.
A good example of this is our Canada-wide early learning and child care system. While it allows parents to save thousands of dollars per year on child care, it has also allowed Canada to reach a record high for working-age women's labour force participation in our history.
I am proud to say that we are in the process of making further investments to create even more child care spots so that more families can benefit from the system.
Another example of this is the Canada dental benefit. More than 1.7 million Canadians who have already signed up and nine million uninsured Canadians will have dental coverage next year. With the tabling of the pharmacare act just a few weeks ago, we are paving the way to build a Canada that is not only equitable, but also more affordable for all.
The first phase of our pharmacare program will give more than nine million women better access to contraceptives and help more than 3.7 million Canadians who rely on diabetes medications such as insulin.
As announced in budget 2024, we are delivering more measures to get more houses built in Canada faster. This is what building an economy that lifts everyone up and creates fairness for every generation looks like. We are committed to making investments to ensure all generations get ahead, while doing so in a fiscally responsible way. Canadians know how important it is to responsibly manage a budget. That is exactly what we are doing, and it shows.
Canada's net debt-to-GDP ratio is well below that of our G7 peers. Our deficits are declining, and we are one of only two G7 countries rated AAA by at least two of the three independent credit experts. That enviable fiscal position gives us the ability to invest in our economy and the people who power it. We are making transformative investments in clean energy, creating lifelong careers, improving housing affordability and supporting a business environment that gives investors confidence in Canada's economy. All this while sticking to the fiscal objectives laid out in the fall economic statement, setting both deficits and the federal debt on a downward track.
While the Conservatives offer nothing but slogans and want to cut services to Canadians and their families, our government will continue to build an economy where every generation has a real and fair chance to succeed. Our economic plan will lead our economy toward growth that lifts everyone up, because it is about fairness for all generations.
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- Apr/29/24 8:41:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am proud to be part of a government that has a plan to ensure that everyone has a fair chance to build a good middle-class life. The Conservative leader was quick to say that he will not support this year's budget. Our economic plan clearly shows that we can support fairness for every generation while protecting our fiscal anchors. The Conservatives have no plan other than cuts and austerity.
Will the member opposite support our budget?
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