44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 30, 2024 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to rise and speak today to the ways and means motion, budgetary policy. More specifically, I appreciate this opportunity to comment publicly on yet another awful budget tabled in this place by the Liberals, which shows just how out of touch they really are.
We have had nine years of deficit budgets, which have led us to the mess Canadians are facing today. Budget 2024 also shows that the Prime Minister has learned nothing from his mistakes over the past nine years. He continues to push inflationary deficits that drive up interest rates and that make life more expensive for Canadians. By continuing to add to his massive debt, he is endangering jobs and social programs like health care and education. In fact, after nine years of disastrous governance, Canada will now be spending more on its debt than on health care for Canadians.
The failures of the Liberal government are clear in this budget. It pushed off issues, kicking the can down the road, and now, those issues have come home to roost. Housing, crime, immigration and inflation, to name just a few, are the issues created by the government. These issues did not materialize overnight, but they were well known to the government years ago, yet the Liberals stuck their heads in the sand and were content to spend more money on their pointless policies to support their divisive and destructive ideology. Now that these issues have become full-blown crises, they have conceded that there may be a problem. However, rather than address the problem, they have decided to repackage their old policies in an attempt to fool Canadians into believing they are taking action. It is hard to know whether they are simply overestimating the positive impact of their policies or are completely disingenuous in their intent.
In this budget, the government's plan to repurpose federal properties to provide thousands of homes has come up short. As reported by Blacklock's, the Liberal government has found less than 400 vacant federal properties, many of which cannot be used for housing. Some of those properties include Parks Canada parking lots, a former National Defence firing range and an empty lot near a remote Coast Guard lighthouse. The review of federal lands has been a promise of the Liberal government since 2015. In that election, its platform stated, “We will conduct an inventory of all available federal lands and buildings that could be repurposed, and make some of these lands available at low cost for affordable housing in communities where there is a pressing need.”
In 2024, after the Liberals created a housing crisis, they decided to go ahead and to finally start the review. Their budget states, “The federal government is conducting a rapid review of its entire federal lands portfolio to identify more land for housing.” Perhaps I should have included the definition of “rapid” here in my speech. They are hoping Canadians have forgotten that this is a nine-year-old promise they are attempting to repackage as a new initiative. Putting aside the fact that this is an old promise in a new package, this measure is not a solution to the housing crisis.
The Prime Minister is asking Canadians to believe that he will build thousands of houses in old parking lots and in firing ranges. This is a sign of desperation. He wants Canadians to believe that, after nine years of ignoring the problem or introducing policies that have made the problem worse, he will now make the housing market fairer. He is the one who stole the dream of home ownership from a generation. He is the one who broke the system. Now, after breaking everything, he wants Canadians to believe that he will somehow find the capacity to magically fix it all. However, he has had more than enough chances to make life more affordable, which he has failed to do at every opportunity.
Conservatives gave him a chance to cut taxes or to avoid raising taxes on all Canadians, but he carried on his plan and raised the carbon tax. He also continues in his efforts to gut and block Bill C-234, which would take the carbon tax off for farmers. He continues to ramp up spending in the hopes that Canadians will not see it for the pitiful attempt at buying votes that it is.
Canadians are not fooled and are fed up with the irresponsible spending of the NDP-Liberal coalition that is driving inflation. Instead of using this budget to demonstrate that the government understands the effect its disastrous policies have had on Canadians, it is doubling down on those same failed policies. Adding $40 billion in new spending will only add more fuel to the inflationary fire. The repeated promises from the government for fiscal restraint have gone by the wayside as it continues to spend unsustainably, trading away Canadians' futures for its own short-term political gain.
Like many of my colleagues, I had the opportunity this past week to speak with constituents. Three main themes were raised following this budget. I outlined in my speech the first concern I heard: deficits and overspending. The cost of government has skyrocketed under the NDP-Liberal coalition, while it spends on its pet projects. This is going to have serious repercussions for our children's and grandchildren's futures. The Prime Minister is not worth the cost for any generation.
I also heard about the wasteful spending. Many are watching what is happening in parliamentary committees and, more specifically, in the government operations and estimates committee, of which I am a member. Canadians are shocked at the massive outsourcing contracts for Liberal insiders and at the historic levels of corruption being uncovered by Conservatives, all while the NDP-Liberal government tries to cover it up.
Favouritism by the Liberal government is rampant, funnelling of tens of millions of dollars to Liberal insiders and their companies. This is particularly insulting to Canadians as they struggle with a cost of living crisis created by the Prime Minister. While Canadians are asking for too much, it is clear that the Prime Minister's friends can never get enough.
Finally, a major concern brought to me is the government's underlying commitment to the carbon tax, which does nothing for the environment, but it adds to the cost of everything. As we enter spring, my constituents are seeing the full cost of the carbon tax across a winter on the prairies.
The carbon tax drives up the cost of gas and home heating, which are vital for Canadians living in rural Canada. These increased costs also extend to food and other goods, which businesses pass on to the consumer. This passing on of the cost of the carbon tax from businesses to consumers is a simple idea to understand, but it seems that only those outside of the government benches can wrap their heads around it. These added costs are putting more pressure on Canadians who are struggling with the Liberals' cost of living crisis, and this budget does nothing to alleviate that pressure.
In conclusion, it will come as no surprise that I cannot support this budget. It is more of the same failed policies from the NDP-Liberal coalition, which refuses to acknowledge its failures. Instead of having the humility to acknowledge its shortcomings after nine years, it refuses to take any responsibility and continues to blame everyone except itself. Canadians are suffering, and the government is refusing to help them.
Conservatives will bring common sense back to government after the next election, and that next election cannot come soon enough for Canadians.
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- Apr/30/24 10:26:20 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as we debate this budget today, we are seeing the results of the government's disastrous spending addiction.
After nine years of the government, as I have said, we have had nine deficit budgets. Canadians are struggling, and the government has no solutions. That member and his party should start listening to Canadians to understand what they need.
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- Apr/30/24 10:30:56 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to perhaps repeat some of the things I noted in my speech. As I said, we are seeing the results of the government's disastrous spending addiction. After nine years of the Liberal government and nine deficit budgets, Canadians are struggling. The government has no solutions. We see millions of Canadians going to food banks. Housing costs have doubled. Rent has doubled. Canadians are desperate for change.
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- Apr/30/24 10:31:32 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, spending last week in and around my riding of Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, two things were abundantly clear. The first was that spring has finally sprung. People are out enjoying outdoor activities and righting their lawns and gardens. Farmers and ranchers are busy seeding and calving. The second thing was that, despite the spring bloom, the economic outlook for most people was absolute gloom. The reason for that was the state of our nation's finances after nine years of the Liberals and the troubling path of wasteful spending and ever-increasing debt.
Let us talk about deficit spending. That is when the government spends more money than it brings in revenue from Canadian taxpayers. Governments have nothing, unless they have taken it from us first. The government's insatiable appetite for spending means it seeks to tax and increase taxes on most everything, even our carbon footprint. That footprint got 23% more expensive this year, as we know, and the Prime Minister and his radical environment minister are hell-bent on continuing to make it even more expensive.
Even with all these extra taxes, the Liberals still overspend. Under the current Prime Minister's leadership, Canada has seen its deficit spending increase significantly. In 2015, our federal debt was $616 billion, accumulated since the country was formed in 1867. Today, it has doubled to $1.2 trillion, which is over $30,000 per Canadian, thanks to the current Prime Minister's borrowing more than all of Canada's previous prime ministers combined.
In fact, it will cost Canadian taxpayers $54.1 billion in interest just to service our national debt this year. That interest payment is more than the government spends on the annual provincial health care transfers. It is also about the same amount as the government collects in the GST, and maybe the GST's name should be changed to the DST, the debt servicing tax.
The alleged intention behind this spending was to create sunny ways, to grow the middle class and to create fairness for all generations. These are all nice-sounding words, but in reality, when a prime minister does not think about monetary policy, nice words quickly get replaced by nasty results.
Housing costs have doubled. Interest rates have risen faster than at any time in our history. Mortgage payments, down payments and rents have doubled. The cost of gas, groceries and home heating have skyrocketed, and people cannot afford to eat, heat or house themselves.
This growing debt means that future generations of Canadians will be burdened with higher taxes and higher interest payments. That is why I, along with most Canadians, shook my head when the title page of this mess of a budget read, “Fairness for Every Generation”.
There is absolutely nothing fair about the Liberals wasting Canadians' money to buy the support of the NDP. It is a way of spending their own way to feed their addiction to power. There is nothing fair about running up scandal-ridden bills, changing an election date to secure pensions on their way out and then leaving that bill for our children and grandchildren to pay.
Conservatives are not the only ones who are critical of the Prime Minister's years of deficit spending. Economists and the financial sector have warned the Liberals that their spending is the major contributor to Canada's high inflation. Current Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, cautioned that this excessive spending will make it harder for the bank to lower interest rates. Even former Bank of Canada governor and Liberal supporter David Dodge says that the federal budget hurts the fight against inflation and that budget 2024 has the potential to be the worst budget since 1982.
Who was in charge back then? It was another Trudeau.
Speaking about inflation, more than 40 years ago, American economist and statistician Milton Friedman had something to say. It still holds true today, and maybe our Prime Minister and finance minister need to listen. He said:
Inflation is just like alcoholism. In both cases, when you start drinking or when you start printing too much money, the good effects come first, the bad effects only come later. That is why, in both cases, there is a strong temptation to overdo it—to drink too much or to print too much money. When it comes to the cure, it is the other way about. When you stop drinking, or when you stop printing money, the bad effects come first and the good effects only come later. That is why it is so hard to persist with the cure.... Every country that has had the courage to persist in the policy of slowing monetary growth has been able to cure inflation and at the same time achieve a healthy economy.
Besides the inflation problem that the Prime Minister and finance minister have created in Canada, we also find ourselves confronted by the concerning trend of decreasing productivity. What is more, while the government continues to spend, our productivity as a country is not keeping up. Our productivity is effectively how we efficiently produce goods and services. High productivity is key to improving our quality of life, increasing our wages and maintaining a competitive edge globally. However, Canada's productivity has seen a decline, which is a sign that we are not maximizing our potential.
I will read what the deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, Carolyn Rogers, noted in a recent speech in Halifax. She said, “Back in 1984, the Canadian economy was producing 88 per cent of the value generated by the U.S. economy per hour. That’s not great. But by 2022, Canadian productivity had fallen to 71 per cent.”
Further, a recent Financial Post article observed that, over the current government's time in office, labour productivity has declined by an average of 0.8% per year. How can the government, based on the entirety of the budget, plan on strong labour productivity growth by recent standards? In reality, it is a “fudge it” budget, where they make up the numbers to try to make the budget work.
The Liberals are treating productivity as just a number that they can manipulate to make their budget look slightly less horrible. However, productivity is not just a number; it is about how well we can sustain our quality of life. We must confront these challenges head-on, and it starts with demanding accountability and prudent financial management from our leaders in government. It starts with treating our proud resource development sectors and all the family-supporting jobs they provide with respect, instead of using them as a scapegoat.
For example, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany asked Canada to be a trusted supplier of LNG. Other countries have also made that request. What is our Prime Minister's response? In effect, it is, “Oh, sorry folks, there is no business case for that here in Canada.” We can look at what has happened with that. Our American neighbours stepped up and are reaping the benefits. Their productivity went up 2.6% last year, while the Liberals were happy to see ours decline.
Since 2019, the American GDP per capita has grown 7%; Canada's has fallen 2.8%. This is the single largest underperformance of the Canadian economy in comparison to the United States since 1965. Stats Canada recently published a report confirming that Canadians have gotten poorer under the current government. Our GDP per capita is now 7% lower than it should be, meaning that Canadians are $4,200 poorer per person. With the Liberals in charge, we should not be surprised by these numbers.
We also need to be investing efficiently in areas that genuinely boost productivity, such as skills training, technology and innovation. We need to ensure that spending will bring about real, sustainable growth, not just a temporary quick fix. It is about finding balance in terms of supporting our current needs without compromising the ability of future generations, and Canadians, to meet theirs. We need a balance between investing in our country and ensuring we are not reckless and recklessly adding to a mountain of debt that would be impossible to climb down from.
Mr. Speaker, the path forward requires courage, leadership and discipline. By advocating for responsible spending, investing wisely in our future and boosting our productivity, we can ensure that Canada remains a prosperous, vibrant place for generations to come. The time to act is now. The time to fix the budget is now, to ensure that Canada's financial health, productivity and the hope of Canadians are not just restored but allowed to flourish. Conservatives are ready and able to make that happen.
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- Apr/30/24 10:42:30 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I can confirm that my colleagues and I will be voting against this budget unequivocally, but not because of what the member suggested. All anybody in Canada has to do is look at the amount of revenue that the energy sector creates for this country to sustain our growth for infrastructure and the spending that we need to do to keep our country going. Therefore, the reason the member suggested is a fallacy.
The truth of the matter is that the energy sector is a major contributor to our GDP and the revenues that our government currently enjoys spending.
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- Apr/30/24 10:44:31 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what I support is an effective plan that actually makes a difference for the well-being of Canadians. That plan would not include the term “safe consumption sites”; there is no such thing as a safe consumption site.
Some time ago, I went to the Downtown Eastside and East Hastings Street to talk to addicts. They are killing themselves right in front of people. I asked them questions. They said that people do not want them to get healthy, that the system does not want them to get healthy. They call the people driving around looking after them “poverty pimps”. Why? It is because they do not care. They said they do not go to consumption sites, as they are not what people thought they would be like.
The reality is that we have an overdose crisis in this country. In B.C. alone, 2,511 people died last year. That is unacceptable. Why did this happen? It was because of drug policies. We need a balanced approach, treatment and addiction services. We need all those things that happen. Wasteful spending on a government budget such as this one does not allow us to spend that kind of money. It is being misdirected to services that the government thinks will help, but safe supply is not the answer to this problem.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour and pleasure to bring the voices of Chatham-Kent—Leamington to this chamber. Today I am rising to address budget 2024.
A common definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. This budget is, again, a “tax more and spend even more” budget. It is this government's ninth budget, or more correctly, eighth budget, since it did not bother coming to this chamber during the pandemic. It just kept spending.
I do not personally claim to be a financial expert, but I have run and have been part of businesses. I have borrowed funds, and I have been expected to pay them back. I have also had the privilege to be involved with and chair several organizations, so I have had the experience of being accountable to others for their money and for stewarding organizations to their collective goals. Responsible stewardship of one's own funds and, even more importantly, of others' funds, leads to growth and prosperity of one's business, one's organization, or, as we are discussing today, one's country.
Please do not take my word for it on this budget that it is evidence of insanity. Let us look at what others have to say.
Across the country, many people are sounding the alarm bells over the budget. Aaron Wudrick and Jon Hartley from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute state that the growth expectations and projections for Canada are “an anemic 1.2%” for Canada versus 2.7% for the U.S., largely driven by declines in the level of business investment. The OECD supports this severe prognosis as it projects that Canada will have the lowest real per capita GDP growth among advanced economies between now and 2060.
Our very own Parliamentary Budget Officer has projected that economic growth will remain “sluggish through 2024” due to restrictive monetary policy resulting from rising budgetary deficits. Furthermore, Yves Giroux, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, states that the math simply does not add up on the expectation that the federal public service will shrink due to natural attrition by 5,000 FTEs over four years. He says that the Liberals have made too many promises, pledged too many things and made too many announcements for that to even have a shred of credibility. He says that we can expect the public service to grow, not shrink.
Here is another perspective: The former Liberal Bank of Canada governor David Dodge has warned that he believes that this budget will be the worst since 1982, and I will not say who was in this chamber then.
Canada will not reach par growth with other developed countries until 2060. Why is that? It is because this government's out-of-control spending has created an economic black hole that we will not be able to dig out of for 36 years, according to others' words. Again, members need not take my word for it.
Let us move to a more recent Bank of Canada representative's statement. Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, noted, in a recent speech in Halifax, “You know those signs that say 'In an emergency, break the glass?' Well, it's time to break the glass.” She cited the lagging Canadian productivity rates as one of the contributing factors. She went on to say that one of Canada's main issues dragging down our productivity rates is the lack of business investment.
While business investment has declined in Canada since 2014, in other countries, including the U.S., it has continued to grow. As a result, Canada's GDP per hour worked, the key measure of productivity growth, is among the lowest in the OECD. This budget will only continue this trend, as it does not incent business investment.
Another Bank of Canada guy, Tiff Macklem, our present governor, agrees and states that this budget has not significantly changed the government's fiscal path and it is unlikely to affect the government's macroeconomic trajectory in the near term. Why is there all of this discussion about economic growth? Why is it important? Should we not just focus on helping people?
Economic growth is what allows a government to responsibly and sustainably deliver social programming. Irresponsible fiscal management is exactly what jeopardizes a government's ability to maintain a strong social safety net and create the fiscal conditions for Canadians to thrive, in mainly low, predictable inflation and lower interest rates.
Even the often touted future Liberal leader, Mark Carney, stated that there is not enough focus on the net economic growth in this budget. Former Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau, in his book related to the Prime Minister, would routinely announce bigger numbers for more spending because bigger numbers sound good. I agree that bigger numbers sound good within one's own bank account, but not so much when they add to the public debt.
Former Liberal Finance Minister John Manley said that, while the Bank of Canada was trying to press on the brakes of inflation with higher interest rates, the Prime Minister was pressing on the inflationary gas pedal with his spending, which had ballooned interest rates in the first place.
The Prime Minister seems hell-bent on destroying the economic fabric of this nation for his own political gain, with no regard for the future generations he is fiscally handcuffing. He refuses to listen to reason, and here is the main point of my speech, he refuses to even listen to his fellow Liberals. He has added more debt than all previous prime ministers combined. It now stands at $1.255 trillion, and there is no plan to bring that in balance or to control inflationary deficits.
Doug Porter, a chief economist with the Bank of Montreal, put it best when, in describing the value of growth, he cautioned that higher government spending is perhaps not where we want to see that growth. However, what does budget 2024 do? It includes $40 billion in new spending, which will continue to drive up the cost of goods we buy and the interest rates we pay.
This year, the Prime Minister and his Liberal government are forcing Canadians to spend $54 billion just to service his debt. That is the same amount that the GST brings in in government revenues. Sometimes, when we talk about millions and billions, and debt and deficits, it is hard for us to comprehend what that means in our everyday lives. Let us think about it this way: The GST has now become the DST. Instead of the GST raising funds for social programming, every single cent of it now goes to service the Prime Minister's debt. The goods and services tax has become the debt servicing tax. It is these very deficits and debts that have contributed to higher inflation and the resulting higher interest rates necessary to try to tap down inflation.
According to Scotiabank, the Bank of Canada would have only had to raise interest rates to 3% if government spending had not stoked inflation, meaning that rates are a full 2% higher than they need to be. Why is this important? The Liberal government's mismanagement has directly affected the lives of Canadians. Housing costs have doubled, as have mortgages and rents.
The Financial Post reports that 3.4 million Canadians will renew their mortgages by 2025, and a total of $900 billion in mortgages will need to be renewed in the next three years. More Canadians are going to have to sacrifice the basic necessities, such as food or clothing, to afford their rent or mortgage payments.
In 2015, the Liberals were elected on the promise of small and temporary deficits, less than $10 billion per year. They were elected on the promise of stable inflation and low interest rates forever. They were elected on the promise of sunny ways. Do members remember? After nine long years, it is clear the Prime Minister is definitely not worth the cost, and the budget does nothing to solve the problems that Canadians face.
Despite all the negativity that I have referenced in this speech, largely voiced by Liberals and independent officials, I do have hope. I have hope in Canadians because we have come back from disasters like this before, and we can do it again. After World War II, many families had suffered personal loss, and many soldiers either did not come home or came home wounded, but many came home after rescuing democracy and set to rescuing our economy, which was heavily indebted after the war effort. Record government surpluses that followed the war addressed the debt and a long period of economic prosperity followed.
Today, there is also hope on the horizon. A Conservative government would axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234 in its original form. We would build the homes, not more bureaucracy. We would also cap spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation. Under a Conservative government, my children and grandchildren would know that, if they worked hard, home ownership would be a reality. It is their home, our home, my home. Let us bring it home.
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- Apr/30/24 11:26:49 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government has a long track record of announcements of budgets, etc. Often that leads to more spending, but it does not lead to the good outcomes. Every family and every business knows that they have to make priorities and have to sacrifice some things, even though they might be good measures, for long-term health and to bring about balance. This is what the government has not done. It has been phenomenal at photo ops and announcing good intentions.
I am a numbers guy. I come from business. What do the numbers say? The numbers tell me we are spending $54 billion now on servicing a debt built on good intentions and poor outcomes. We have ballooned the public service. There are so many places where priority decisions need to have been made, and the government has not done that. It is the very people the government purports to help who are being hurt the most.
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- Apr/30/24 11:31:38 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the people of Edmonton Manning have been very clear in the emails I have received in the past two weeks.
Franks says, “Stop spending our money like a drunken sailor, we cannot afford the debt.” Trevor tells me, “It is absolutely ridiculous as to how much tax Canada is being charged, where does it stop?” David asked me to “Please put pressure on the P.M. to start cutting Canada's debt and balancing the budget.” Mariette says, “This budget puts our kids further into debt.” Michael writes of his “utter disgust with the latest Federal Budget.”
The feelings are unanimous: This budget is a disaster. I can only conclude that no one in the government actually considered the contents. Maybe they were too busy watching television to think about managing the country.
I must confess that I do not watch much television. When I do, I watch documentaries or live sports events. Two of the things that I avoid completely are reality television and game shows. To me, there is very little reality involved, and the games do not seem to be all that real to me.
As a result, I have to admit that I have never watched the show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, which aired more than 15 years ago. It was a short-lived program with only five episodes made. The idea was to have a panel ask questions from elementary school textbooks to see if the contestants were smarter than a fifth grader. The top prize was a million dollars, tax-free. The idea probably offends the Liberal members opposite. They do not believe that anything should be tax-free, ever.
Contestants on the show have to answer questions about Canadian history, Canadian geography and Canadian culture. However, history, geography and culture were not the only categories covered on the show. There was also mathematics, which may be the reason no Liberal MP ever appeared on the program. When it comes to math, budget 2024 shows very clearly that the Liberals are nowhere near as smart as a fifth grader.
When children are in fifth grade, math is pretty simple: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It is not rocket science. Fifth graders know that if they receive a weekly allowance from their parents, they must spend that money wisely. Common sense tells them that they cannot spend more than they have. There is no such thing as deficit spending to a ten year old.
If they spend all their money, Mom and Dad will tell them that they have to wait until next week to get any more. They are not made of money. They have to live within their means and they expect their children to learn how to do that also, especially as they feel financially stressed by all the extra taxes the government has piled on them.
If children want some shiny toy that costs more than their weekly allowance, then they have to learn to save until they can afford to buy it. Stores are reluctant to extend credit to a ten year old, especially one who has not learned the value of saving.
As I look at this budget, I wish the Minister of Finance could go back in time and become a fifth grader once again. It is apparent that she and the Liberal Party failed to learn some important lessons in childhood, and now it is all Canadians who are paying for their inability to understand basic math.
A fifth grader could tell us that money does not magically appear. It does not grow on trees. We cannot just pick up loose bills on the sidewalk. A fifth grader could tell us that spending more money to pay the interest on the national debt than we have for health care is a recipe for disaster. Adding more debt does not fix the problem.
I will not delve deeply into economic theory here. However, the Prime Minister has asked Canadians to forgive him for not thinking about monetary policy, and it would probably be wrong of me to expect his caucus to have any more interest in such matters.
I must say, though, that there have been some changes over the past eight years in the way the government approaches its responsibility to manage the nation's finances. No longer does the government think it is possible to pluck numbers out of thin air, put them in a spreadsheet and magically produce a budget that balances itself.
Fifth graders could tell us that a deficit is not just a line on a piece of paper. It is a debt, borrowed money that has to be repaid at some point. They would also tell us that until that debt is paid interest will be charged.
In simple terms that even a Liberal could understand, running a budgetary deficit costs money. If interest has to be paid on a debt, then there is less money for the things that government is supposed to do for Canadians, things like health care.
Where does the government find money to pay its debts? It raises taxes. In other words, it charges Canadians for something they did not ask for and for some reason expects them to be happy to pay.
Parents who explain to their fifth graders how important it is for individuals and families to live within their means are being undermined by a government that spends and spends, while expecting someone else to pay its bills.
This budget would increase government spending and taxes and would bring us no closer to a balanced budget than we have been at any time in almost nine years of Liberal fiscal mismanagement. Apparently the Liberals' coalition partners in the NDP approve of this highway of economic ruin. This budget would bring in $40 billion of costly new spending that Canadians cannot afford.
In 2022, the finance minister said that the budget would be balanced by the year 2027. In 2023, the date was revised to 2028. Why do the Liberals not just admit that they have no idea how to balance the budget, since magic is not working?
Before the Liberals were elected in 2015, their leader suggested that perhaps his government would run modest deficits, about $10 billion annually before returning to the balanced books that he inherited from the previous Conservative government. We all know what happened. Record deficits followed record deficits to create a national debt never seen before in the history of Canada. With this latest budget, the Liberal-NDP government is farther than ever from doing so.
What we have now is a government that will spend more money next year servicing the debt than on health care. There is no sense in that, except perhaps to the members opposite.
Canada's per capita GDP is now lower than it was six years ago. While other countries have grown their economies, Canadians are poorer. The government's solution is inflationary spending and more taxes. It needs to go back to the fifth grade.
There is a glimmer of hope. Soon we will have a Conservative government with members who are indeed smarter than a fifth grader. Conservatives will balance the books, making the spendthrift finance minister and her fiscally unaware boss a bad memory.
The common-sense Conservative plan will axe the carbon tax, balance the budget and build homes, not bureaucracy, to bring lower prices to Canadians. Even a fifth grader knows that the Liberal government is not worth the cost.
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- Apr/30/24 12:14:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the government will now spend more money servicing our debt than it does on health care transfers.
Our hon. colleague spent a lot of time in her speech talking about youth. The leading cause of death for youth in my province of British Columbia is overdose. Would the government not be better off fighting overdose and the opioid crisis than spending billions on its failed drug policy?
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Madam Speaker, it is fantastic to be able to rise once again on behalf of the great people of the province of Saskatchewan, particularly the people in the southwest corner, whom I have the privilege of representing.
Right off the top, I want to just talk about the month of May, which is MS Awareness Month. One of the big asks of the MS community, in particular by MS Canada, is to have the government fund $15 million towards research on the disease, as well as the prevention and repair side of things, for people who suffer with MS.
Normally, I do not get up to ask the government to spend more money, because we know the Liberals are fantastic at spending boatloads of money and accomplishing nothing with it. However, in this particular case, we know that there is over $3.4 billion in costs to the government and in lost wages by people who suffer from MS. A $15-million investment would actually result in a tremendous amount of savings for the government for the taxpayer. It would also result in a higher quality of life for people who suffer from MS.
I just wanted to start off my budget speech by mentioning that. If the Liberals were truly listening to what Canadians want and would like to see, this is something that they could have included in this budget to make sure that they are actually working to better the lives of people in Canada. Canada has the highest rates of people who suffer from MS in the world, with my wife being one of those people as well.
I could not help but notice in the budget that there is a very small amount listed for agriculture. In fact, I believe that agriculture is first mentioned on page 131 of the budget, and it continues for the next page and a half.
One of the issues in the budget concerns the livestock tax deferral. I just want to talk about that briefly, because a lot of ranchers in my riding have been dealing with droughtlike conditions for the last number of years, which is nothing new. We live in southwest Saskatchewan, a part of the country where rain has never been a feature. It is not something that we regularly get, so it is not new for us to have droughtlike conditions.
There is a government program called the livestock tax deferral. What happens is that the local RM has to declare a state of disaster. Then the government takes a look at the rainfall and the forage percentage over the year to see if it has fallen below 50%, I believe. There is quite a process involved in implementing or triggering the livestock tax deferral. Clarification around that would go a long way to help producers to have more certainty in their industry. An issue too, though, is that the livestock tax deferral can only be used for one year. We know that, in Saskatchewan, it sometimes takes more than one year for one's pasture to regenerate. A lot of producers and organizations, such as the Canadian Cattle Association and the Saskatchewan cattle association, are saying that allowing the livestock tax deferral to be used over a period of three years would actually be a lot more beneficial. It would allow for better environmental protection and for pastures to be able to regenerate.
My riding name is Cypress Hills—Grasslands. The “grasslands” part of the name comes from the fact that we have some of the largest amounts of still untouched native prairie grass in my part of the country. It has not been broken up. It has been grazed for years. Buffalo used to be the keystone species there; they have since been reintroduced to the grasslands. Cattle have done a tremendous job of being the keystone species in the grasslands.
For ranchers who have native prairie grass on their ranch, in their rotation, it is of huge value to them to be able to preserve that grass. When ranchers sell their herd, they will get the one-year livestock tax deferral. If they are forced to rebuy and to spend more on cattle to get them back on the land, there will be a degradation of that land. Having a three-year window would actually allow for the pasture to properly regenerate. Even if there is only a small amount of rainfall, that three-year time window would allow for better regeneration of the pasture. The environment would be taken care of in a way that would allow producers to purchase cattle, regraze the land once again and keep that keystone species on the land as well.
That is something that would happen with the livestock tax deferral. If the government were truly listening to the producer groups it mentions in the budget, then that is something it would actually be talking about and looking to implement. After nine years, it definitely has not done that.
One of the other parts about it, which actually took up about a page of the page and a half in that, is the government's commitment to starting consultations, once again, on interoperability. It is really funny that this is in there. I had the privilege to sponsor Bill C-294, which is an act to amend the Copyright Act for interoperability. There are many fantastic short-line manufacturers in Saskatchewan, and quite frankly all across this country, that make great agricultural products. They also make products for other industries, but I am going to focus on the agricultural side of it.
It is funny that this section is included in the “Affordable Groceries” section of the budget. The government is finally realizing that when agriculture is treated with respect and producers are allowed to grow food in the most economical way, if we let them have a choice, they will be able to grow food in a more efficient manner, which, in the long run, is going to have a positive impact on the price of groceries and hopefully lead to groceries being more affordable.
However, Bill C-294 was tabled over two years ago and still has not received royal assent. It did pass this House about a year ago now, and nothing has been done with it so far. In the 2023 budget, the government said it was going to start consultations then. It still has not done it. In 2024, it is once again committing to starting consultations, in June. It has a specific time frame in which it wants to start consultations, but given its previous track record of not doing it, we will wait and see what actually happens.
What would be even better is if Bill C-294 were able to get royal assent. My bill passed the House of Commons unanimously. When it went through committee stage, we were able to accept a friendly government amendment to the bill, which put it a bit more in line with some of the government's priorities but with the law as well. This is important because we want as much certainty as we can possibly get, even though we had done some legal work in the buildup to the bill. We accepted that friendly amendment. This is a bill that is non-controversial, but it is something that would get things done. It would have a whole-of-economy effect and impact.
If the government wants to go through consultations, I am going to make it even simpler. What the government can do is go back and read the report that was done by the government branch that used to be called Western Economic Diversification, which is now PrairiesCan. The government can go back and read the report, which was released in 2020, on this very issue. What it will find in that report is the economic impact that agricultural manufacturing has across the entire country. This is not just a southern Saskatchewan issue; this is a whole-of-Canada issue.
The government can read that report. It can see the dollar value assigned to it. It can see how every single province benefits from it. It is a nation-building exercise. It does not even have to do the consultations; that has already been done. The government department already did the report. The government can read it. The consultations are done.
We are counting on the Senate passing and giving royal assent to Bill C-294 as quickly as possible.
If the government wants to impact the price of groceries, what it could also do is have this House pass Bill C-234 in its original form. It came back from the Senate with a huge amendment that gutted the original intent of the bill, which was to put an exemption in place for all on-farm buildings for all types of fuel, which is important when we consider greenhouses, dairy barns, chicken barns and pig barns. There is a huge level of cost that goes into running those facilities with the carbon tax, so passing Bill C-234 in its original form would have a huge impact on the Canadian economy. It would have a huge impact on the price of food.
Removing the carbon tax in its entirety would be beneficial as well, when we look at the transportation costs and the costs to the grocery stores. It is a huge detriment, so scrapping the carbon tax altogether would also be of huge benefit, and I do not see any of that in the budget either.
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- Apr/30/24 1:34:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have seen over the last nine years that our country cannot afford the Prime Minister's budget. I am wondering if the member has any comments on the deficit spending. The Conservatives have noticed that all of the GST that will be collected in the coming year will go only to pay down the interest that is being accumulated on our national debt. I wonder if the member has any thoughts on that.
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- Apr/30/24 1:35:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, during the pandemic, we had to help all sectors, however imperfectly, to prevent them from collapsing. Where were the Conservatives when these expenditures were incurred? They were sitting around the table with Minister Morneau, spending tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars. If I were the hon. member, when he talks about the nine years of the current government, I would be a bit embarrassed.
He is right about one thing, though, and that is that the federal government will be looking for additional revenue. For me, it is not so much the debt servicing that bothers me, although that is problematic, it is the fact that they are using these revenues to violate Quebec's jurisdictions, to violate the Constitution, to trample on Quebec and interfere in just about everything and nothing, rather than transferring the money to Quebec and letting Quebeckers be responsible for their own programs. That is what the members of the official opposition should be outraged about.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years of reckless spending, the only thing the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government have succeeded at is making life worse for Canadians.
With families across the country struggling to make ends meet, the Prime Minister continues to spend more borrowed money than ever before. Gas prices have increased dramatically, with some areas of the country seeing the highest prices in years, due to the carbon tax, which adds nearly 20¢ a litre. Farmers, the very people who feed Canada and the world, are having to pay thousands of dollars more each year to run their operations because of the carbon tax, which increased by 23% earlier this month and will only continue to go up.
Given the Prime Minister's inflationary spending that drives up the cost of everything and keeps interest rates high, it is no wonder that Canadians are poorer. He needs to axe the tax on farmers and food by passing Bill C-234 in its original form.
Canadians need relief and, sadly, they will not get it from the current Prime Minister, who simply is not worth the cost.
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- Apr/30/24 3:36:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, a generation of young people has become acutely aware of the fact that the government has put their future at risk.
I would like to ask the member this. In light of the fact of all this spending that people hope is for real, what has the government done to create funding to be available? How many of its consultants has it fired and how much money has it set aside now of real money to do these things on behalf of young Canadians?
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Huron—Bruce.
Just before I begin debate, I would like to wish a happy graduation to my niece. She has worked hard and deserves all life has to offer, and Auntie Tracy is proud of her.
I rise today on behalf of the residents of Kelowna—Lake Country to speak to the 2024 budget, one of the most consequential pieces of legislation the House of Commons debates every year. This is now the ninth year the NDP-Liberal government has chosen to run deficits in its budget. I was in my community all last week meeting with businesses and not-for-profit organizations and attending all kinds of events. I had days with back-to-back meetings with people who reached out. Not one person said they were happy with the Liberals' budget.
One resident said the budget is like throwing spaghetti at a wall. Another said her family has lived in the Okanagan for generations and now the whole extended family is considering leaving Canada as no one can get ahead. Another person explained how moderately successful people who have worked hard and followed all the rules are being crushed by the government. A small business owner said, “So much for building up my small business to fund my retirement.”
For nine years, the Liberal government, propped up by the NDP, chose together to double the size of the federal debt, which is on track to lead to a generational debt crisis for the children of today and tomorrow. Together, those parties chose to support expensive, third-party consultants, at the same time as seeing a decline in accountability in federal department services, with many departments not meeting their own minimum service standards. They chose together to increase taxes, including the carbon tax, excise tax and payroll tax.
What are the results of the Liberals being propped up by the NDP? It is a cost of living crisis that is destroying the spending power of working-class families and causing a record number of Canadians to have to go to the food bank. People are losing hope.
After nine years of the Prime Minister, it now takes the same amount of time to save for a down payment on the average home that it used to take to pay it off. People have a lower quality of life than previous generations. People have more mental health and addiction issues than at any time in the past.
I was hopeful that the Liberal ministers, in their ninth year of government, might listen to Canadians.
Conservatives were clear about what we wanted in this budget in order to support it. We wanted the government to axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234 in its original form, which would give farmers in my community and across the country much-needed tax relief. We wanted the Liberals to build homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities to permit 15% more homebuilding each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure funding. We wanted the government to cap its wasteful spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation, which presently impacts Canadians in many ways, including mortgage renewals.
Just like a family managing its household budget, Ottawa should always look to find a dollar in savings before looking for a dollar in new spending. Sadly, the NDP-Liberal government did not meet any of these common-sense requests. The finance minister has again chosen the same inflationary deficits that have pushed Canadians into a cost of living crisis.
In listening to the Minister of Finance present her budget, I was particularly struck by one line. In her budget speech, the Minister of Finance discussed the importance of not passing on ballooning debt to our children. That is exactly what the budget does.
That is what the NDP-Liberal government has been doing for nine years; just look at the numbers. Budget 2024 forecasts that the federal debt will rise to $1.2 trillion this year and the interest Canadians will pay in servicing that debt will increase to $54 billion this fiscal year. That is more than the government intends to spend on provincial health care transfers.
The budget also shows that the government raised $51 billion in revenue from GST last year. That means that every cent of GST that every Canadian, business or not-for-profit organization may pay on the products and services they buy will not go toward a single government service program. It does not matter if someone buys a key chain or a car. If they pay the government GST, it will not be used to pay for roads, health care or armed forces. Instead, that amount will be used solely to pay the interest on the government's credit card.
Canada is not paying down its debt. Canada is paying the interest on our debt, while the debt still grows. That means these payments will only increase by a projected $54 billion again next year, $57 billion the year after, $60 billion after that and $64 billion after that. From now until the end of this decade, taxpayers will provide the government with $289 billion, which would not be used to pay for any public services Canadians depend on.
As the shadow minister for persons with disabilities, I have been greatly concerned with the government's string of broken promises regarding the Canada disability benefit, which all parties in the House supported. The Liberal Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities will not even acknowledge that persons with disabilities are in a cost of living crisis.
I asked her three times yesterday at the human resources committee, and the most she would say is that it has been “a challenging time”. We heard testimony during the Canada disability benefit legislation at the human resources committee that persons with disabilities were considering medical assistance in dying because they could not afford to live.
The Liberal government's pushing off implementation until late into 2025, with a peek into the limited regulations and amounts that might be, saw widespread backlash from my local residents and from national groups representing persons with disabilities. Many persons with disabilities are already among the hardest hit by the cost of living crisis, but apparently the minister does not agree.
Five years of Liberal minister photo ops and announcements on this benefit have produced another broken promise. Ironically, the NDP-Liberal government's 2024 budget title is “Fairness for Every Generation.” Skyrocketing federal debt will consume more of our tax dollars, while potentially threatening future social, environmental or security initiatives. This is not worth the cost to any generation, and it certainly is not fair to young adults and kids who will bear the brunt of paying the debt down.
This unwavering commitment to higher debt and deficits has characterized the Liberal government's last nine years. We have seen a doubling of rent, mortgage payments and down payments. There are reports of people not meeting the mortgage stress test and having to sell their homes to rent, only to find rent to be more expensive than their mortgage payment. It is a real concern that there is a big wave of both residential and commercial renewals coming this summer. Insolvencies are already increasing.
This budget projects unemployment to rise to 6.5% this year. Despite the employment minister telling us, at the human resources committee in December, that he had a plan to address it. We have not seen that plan.
All these issues are not coincidences. They are the consequences of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal deficits driving up costs.
David Dodge, the former Liberal-appointed governor of the Bank of Canada, said that this budget is the worst he has seen since 1982. The previous finance minister, Bill Morneau, has also criticized it. The Bank of Canada and former Liberal finance minister, John Manley, both confirmed that the federal Liberal government's deficit spending was pressing on the inflationary gas pedal, forcing the Bank of Canada to balloon interest rates.
Liberal ministers have been travelling the country to create photo ops for their new spending. However, new spending outlined in budget 2024 would not meaningfully impact consumer costs if inflation is not brought under control, therefore, lowering interest rates. The government, at the same time, continues to increase taxes. Rising food and gas prices are predicted to rise through 2024.
I have no confidence in the government. My Conservative colleagues and I will vote against the Liberal government's ninth deficit-and-debt budget.
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- Apr/30/24 3:53:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, thank you for clarifying that we are here to talk about the business of government and budget 2024.
It has been such a balm of the government. It has had photo ops all across the country, but it has been an absolute failure. The government thought that rolling out the budget in advance, piece by piece, would have a huge uptake in the love of the budget, and that is absolutely not what has happened.
We are debating the budget here today. I spoke quite a bit about all of the issues that have been created by deficit spending, and it is not working. Nine years of deficit spending is not working, and it is crushing Canadians' bank accounts.
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