44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 7, 2024 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake.
I am honoured to rise in the House and add the voice of the people of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte to today's debate. I want to take a moment to go over the unfortunate state of this country's finances after nine years of deficit budgets and how the Liberal government's inflationary policies are affecting families in my community.
Under the Liberal government, mortgage payments have doubled, down payments have doubled, rents have doubled, the cost of gas, groceries and home heating has skyrocketed and people cannot afford to eat, heat or house themselves. The Prime Minister said repeatedly that doubling the national debt would have zero consequences and the budget would balance itself. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister did not have the foresight to realize that doubling the national debt would drive up interest rates to historic modern highs, and now the government will spend over $54 billion in interest on the national debt. That is more than the government is spending on provincial health care transfers.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer, in his latest report, stated that budget 2024 marks the third consecutive fiscal plan in which the government's new measures, even after accounting for revenue-raising and spending reviews, have exceeded the incremental “fiscal room” resulting from economic and fiscal developments.
Conservatives had three simple demands leading up to this year's budget. We committed that if the Liberal government introduced measures to immediately pass Bill C-234 in its original form, require cities to permit 15% more homebuilding each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure money, and cap spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation, we would give our support to the budget. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister and the finance minister ignored our pleas for a balanced budget, lower taxes and more homes for Canadians, and decided to add more than $60 billion in new spending that will keep inflation and interest rates higher than Canadians can afford. That means higher taxes, higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher rents and higher mortgage payments.
I would like to spend some time discussing three central issues that I hear often from members of my community: the high cost of housing, the carbon tax and public safety.
First, one of the top concerns for residents in my community is housing affordability. In my riding, the cost of housing has skyrocketed under the Liberal government. Residents in my riding are now forced to spend almost $2,000 a month on a one-bedroom apartment. The only solution to this crisis is for the Liberals to build more homes. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister told Canadians directly that housing is not a federal responsibility, and bureaucrats in his own housing department have confirmed that the government has no plans to bring down housing costs by building the homes that Canadians need.
According to Statistics Canada, between January 1 and November 30, 2023, Canada built 17,000 fewer homes than in the previous year. Instead of taking real action to address this issue, the Liberal government is concerned with photo ops and ribbon cuttings. The numbers do not lie. The government has failed an entire generation of Canadians who fear that they will never be able to own a home.
I see the crisis surrounding interest rates playing out in my community. I receive calls and emails constantly from residents whose mortgage rates have doubled. Recently, a retiree in my riding saw their mortgage jump from $1,100 a month to $2,600 in less than a year. It has not always been like this in Canada. Nine years ago, the average down payment on a home was approximately $20,000. Now the massive cost of even a modest home in my community is forcing residents to save for longer and longer. It now takes 25 years to save up for the cost of a down payment, and the needed down payment for a home has doubled.
Roughly 64% of the average pre-tax monthly income is needed to pay the monthly costs associated with housing. This crisis has made the dream of home ownership impossible for all but the wealthiest few. In fact, 76% of Canadians who do not own homes believe they never will. The Liberal government had nine years to address this issue. The housing crisis is a policy and leadership failure from the Liberal government.
I will go on to an issue that is directly affecting families and farmers in my community: the carbon tax. Just a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister hiked his punishing carbon tax by 23% as part of his plan to quadruple the carbon tax over the next six years. The Parliamentary Budget Officer told members of this House that Canadians would be better off without the carbon tax, saying that they would experience higher income growth while the price of food would come down, but the Liberal government went ahead with its tax anyway.
To illustrate the impact this tax is having on the lives of Canadians, I want to share some of the correspondence I have received from people living in my community. I have a bill here from a family of six in my riding that is paying $142 a month plus HST in carbon tax on their home heating bill.
I have another Enbridge bill from a Barrie resident where the carbon tax makes up 33% of the total bill when the HST is factored in. This resident bought a programmable thermostat that automatically turns down the temperature in her home to 15°C from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. She believes that she is doing all she can do lower her gas bill, but she still feels punished by this costly carbon tax.
I hear this government boast often about the rural top-up of the carbon rebate. Meanwhile, we know that the calculations it made on who qualifies as a rural Canadian are deeply flawed. Residents in my riding who live in rural places like Anten Mills, Elmvale, Hillsdale, Midhurst, Minesing, Phelpston, and Snow Valley are deemed to be living in urban areas, according to the Liberal government's rural top-up formula. Budget 2024 finally says that the government will look to better define rural areas, but it only commits to putting forward a proposal to do so later in the year. This is unacceptable for residents in my riding who are forced to pay more in carbon tax, and it is proof of why we simply need to axe the tax for everyone, forever.
I will move on to how this tax is affecting the hard-working farmers in my riding. I am proud to represent a riding with a large, vibrant agricultural industry. I was recently sent an Enbridge bill for almost $10,000 from a farmer in my riding who runs a poultry operation. Their bill shows a carbon tax charge of $2,700 on the cost of fuel to dry grain corn. Shockingly, the carbon tax is more than the value of the gas before delivery and global adjustment. The Prime Minister just does not understand that if we tax the farmer who grows the food and the trucker who ships the food, we end up taxing the food that a family buys.
Finally, I will spend some time discussing the crime and chaos that the Prime Minister has unleashed, which is deeply affecting members of my community.
Small businesses bring life and a sense of community to our downtowns and neighbourhoods, yet they are sounding the alarm about the impacts of crime on their livelihoods. These businesses, including in my community, face significant challenges related to vandalism, theft, loitering, and public intoxication.
In my riding, a beloved Italian restaurant named Limoncello Bistro was recently broken into for the sixth time. Thieves who recently broke into Limoncello Bistro stole everything from the restaurant, even the meat and seafood. These repeated break-ins have cost the owners thousands and thousands of dollars. One of the owners of Limoncello Bistro has stated, “I find it hard to swallow that I have to pick up and leave a place where 5 short years ago this wasn't as bad as it is today. We fell in love with downtown Barrie. The waterfront, the community and the people. We as business owners shouldn't have to leave because criminals are putting us out of business.”
I agree. Small businesses like Limoncello Bistro are on the front lines of the Canadian public safety crisis, and we urgently need to address this issue of skyrocketing crime rates. We know that the Liberal government caused this problem with its soft-on-crime laws: Bill C-5 and Bill C-75.
Another issue that is directly affecting small businesses in my community is the Liberal government's nonsensical attack on law-abiding hunters, farmers, and sport shooters. The budget proposes to spend $30.4 million on a hunting rifle buyback plan that does not exist. This is on top of the $42 million it has already committed. Members can think about that. The Liberal government will now spend $72.4 million to buy exactly zero guns from owners and businesses. Not one gun has been bought back after spending $72.4 million.
I recently received an email from a small business owner in my riding. He is a responsible business owner who gives back to the community and is facing devastating financial losses because of this failed policy. He is now struggling to pay for his everyday expenses. He has over 40 firearms, worth almost $50,000, sitting in safes that cannot be sold but must be insured and housed in a secure rental space, while the Liberal government forces him to pay GST on them. The owner of this business says that this government is “clearly bent on just winning political points and not truly caring about the safety of the general public surrounding firearms and criminals who use them.” I agree with him. While the Prime Minister wants to protect turkeys from hunters, common-sense Conservatives want to protect Canadians from criminals.
The only way to reverse the damage the Liberal government has caused is by reversing course and doing the opposite. Canadians want change. They want lower taxes, lower mortgage rates, lower grocery bills and safer communities. Most of all, they want a change in government. The Conservative promise is simple: no gimmicks, no half measures. We will axe the tax, build more homes, fix the budget, stop the crime and bring home affordability for all Canadians.
I will be voting alongside my Conservative colleagues against the budget, and we will be voting no confidence in this costly NDP-Liberal coalition.
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- May/7/24 11:50:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise on behalf of the good people of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola. I will inform the House that I will be splitting my time with the incredible member of Parliament for Prince Albert.
I have been around this place long enough to see a clear pattern of what a Liberal budget is. What exactly is the pattern of a Liberal budget? We have to go back to 2015 for a moment. What happened back in 2015? The Liberal Prime Minister promised three years of modest deficit-spending budgets before he made a cast in stone promise to return to a balanced budget in 2019. What happened to that promise?
In each of those three years, the Prime Minister spent much more than he had promised. In 2019, he did not even try to keep his cast in stone promise about returning Canada to a balanced budget. In other words, this Liberal Prime Minister did not even try to do what he had promised.
Why even promise to return Canada to a balanced budget when he had no intention of ever doing so? Of course, we all know the answer. The Prime Minister is willing to say literally anything if he thinks it will get him votes and help him gain voters' confidence. That is the real problem with what has become the trend in the libertarian budgets tabled by the Liberals and the Prime Minister, because Canadians have lost confidence in this Liberal government.
Let me provide yet another example of this.
To do this, we have to go back to the 2022 Liberal budget. Back in 2022, following the pandemic, the Prime Minister and his finance minister introduced what his Liberal government called the return to fiscal responsibility budget. That begs the question of what fiscally responsible spending was, according to the Liberal government in 2022. The answer is that the Liberals' 2022 budget proposed total federal government spending of $434 billion.
This is an interesting amount of money because it represented a $90-billion spending increase over the Liberals' very own prepandemic spending in the 2019-20 fiscal year, which had a budget of $338 billion. Now, here we are with the latest Liberal 2024 budget, which proposes total spending of $535 billion for the 2024-25 fiscal year. Let us pause for a moment to recap.
The 2022 return to fiscal responsibility budget was $434 billion. Now, here we are in 2024 with the current budget, and the proposed spending is $535 billion. This means that the latest Liberal budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year proposes to spend $100 billion more than what the Liberals themselves labelled a return to fiscal responsibility budget just a short time ago.
Let us look at the bigger picture for a moment. Before the pandemic began, in 2019-20, the Liberals were spending $338 billion. Today, the Liberals now propose to spend $535 billion. That is an increase of almost $200 billion a year in annual spending, and let us not kid ourselves. Everyone knows the Liberals will spend more than the $535 billion they are proposing in this budget. If anyone is in doubt of that, I will recall what the finance minister told us in April of last year during her 2023 budget.
In that 2023 budget, the Liberals told us that projected total spending would be $497 billion in 2023-24. That self-same Liberal budget projected spending would reach $556 billion in 2027-28. Now, here we are in 2024-25, and already the Liberals are proposing to spend $535 billion.
Can we all not see the clear pattern here? Every year, what we are told will happen never actually happens. The forecasts, the promises and everything the Liberals promise us end up being completely false. They do not even try to live within the fiscal limits they propose for themselves.
This particular Liberal budget follows the pattern that once again demonstrates that every commitment of a so-called fiscal guardrail made in previous Liberal budgets was a sham. Most offensive of all is that the Prime Minister's Office has the audacity to label this budget as the “Fairness for Every Generation” budget. I am literally aghast by this.
The 2024 “Fairness for Every Generation” budget proposes a $40-billion deficit for this fiscal year alone. This is noteworthy because the Liberals' previous debt forecast was $35 billion for 2024-25 and $27 billion for 2025-26. In the Liberals' mini budget last fall, their fiscal update increased the deficits projected for 2024-25 and 2025-26 to $38 billion and $38 billion respectively.
Now, why is this new debt significant? Given the current interest rates, the cost of servicing on the national debt has now exceeded federal spending on health care, and this problem only gets worse. There is an entire generation of young Canadians who are now entirely left out despite all the Liberal spending, and this is today. Literally, this problem is so bad that even the Prime Minister himself now openly admits that young people now feel like they cannot get ahead in the same way their parents or their grandparents could. However, it is much worse than that. The Prime Minister is leaving future generations of Canadians with record levels of debt and no plan whatsoever to return to a balanced budget, ever. The Prime Minister has failed in every single budget to do what he promised he would do in the budget the year previous, and I have established that with several examples in my comments today.
Let us ask the Prime Minister, who thinks he is pretty awesome, if, in the past nine years he has massively and completely failed to even come close to balancing the budget, what is he expecting future generations of Canadians to do because they are the ones who will be inheriting all of this Liberal debt?
What Canadians see is a desperate Prime Minister's Office trying to shovel as much money out the door as quickly and as recklessly as they can as they are hoping that something, anything, will stick as they try desperately to buy their way to remain in power because power is the one thing that the Prime Minister and his group of insiders really care about. I would submit that they will and, in fact, they are, willing to spend any amount of money in their quest to retain power. I believe the way they see it in the Prime Minister's Office is that this ends in one of two different ways for them. Either they will be successful and remain in power or, if they are unsuccessful, well, they do not care about the fiscal mess they will leave behind because it will be future generations of Canadians, but more importantly not them, who will have to clean the mess up and pay for it. I submit that this is really what is occurring here.
Members can imagine leaving our kids behind a prepaid Visa, but in reality, that prepaid Visa card has a negative balance of $10,000 owing on it. The joke is on them. In the real world, no one would actually do that, but the Prime Minister is doing exactly that, and he has the audacity to pretend to call it fairness for every generation.
There is nothing fair about racking up huge debts in an attempt to buy votes and leaving future Canadians to foot the bill. It is the most unfair thing that the government can do to young Canadians, but that is precisely what the Liberal government is doing.
Rather than accept and respect the fact that many Canadians see and oppose what the government is doing, the Prime Minister's Office is doubling down and proposing more of the same.
This is a budget, yes, but it follows a dangerous pattern. The Liberals continue to say whatever it takes to stay in power. They have no intention of following through on their promises. They do not care. They just care about power. That is not good enough for this chamber. It is definitely not good enough for Canadians, and I will not be going along with this plan to again spend whatever it takes, to throw that money at the wall, to see how long they can stay in power.
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- May/7/24 12:01:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not support any initiative of the Liberal government, because the government will do whatever it takes to stay in power.
If the member is so confident that particular deal is going to be so great for every Canadian, why has the government not brought up the business case? Why has it not shown us the contracts?
The latest Liberal budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year proposes to spend $100 billion more than what the Liberals themselves labelled as a return to fiscal responsibility just a short time ago.
The member and the Liberal government will say whatever they need to say to stay in power. He needs to admit that to himself.
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- May/7/24 12:35:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree, the government should just focus on taking care of the things it is responsible for. I think that would be the most efficient way of proceeding. The Quebec government knows what needs to be done. Maybe it needs more resources. Ottawa is spending money in Quebec's areas of jurisdiction because it may have too much money. That is what we call the fiscal imbalance.
Ottawa should take care of its own responsibilities, and Quebec should take care of its own responsibilities too, with the resources at its disposal. I am not saying this will work, since Quebec would like to be in control of every area of jurisdiction, but the fact remains that we do not want our jurisdiction to be encroached upon.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time.
Three weeks ago today, the government's Minister of Finance delivered Canada's budget for this fiscal year. Today we are debating the budget implementation bill. In the current Parliament, it has been titled Bill C-69. That is a vile title. The last Parliament that lasted long enough to get to 69 government bills was the 42nd Parliament, the Liberal government's first Parliament.
It has been downhill ever since. The Liberal government thrives on divide-and-conquer misinformation narratives in order to keep Canadians unfocused on how much worse this country's prospects have become after nine years of aimless management. I say “aimless” benevolently, as if the Prime Minister and his flock do not actually know the harm they are causing the economy and the country.
However, I worry that it is much worse. I worry that Canada being the first post-nation state means we dismantle all that Canada has stood for, all that Canadians value in their institutions and all that new Canadians strive to be part of as they seek to build a new life in this once great nation.
After nine years, we are far less than we have been. Our economy is the sick child of the G7. Our international standing in the world has suffered greatly. Our friends no longer see us as a dependable ally. Our military is limping along, and we continue to underfund our capabilities in what is clearly becoming a more dangerous, less secure world. The world is now seeing more conflict than it has seen since the end of the Second World War, almost 80 years ago.
The Liberal government remains oblivious to what is on the horizon, because it is content to navel gaze and mislead Canadians about where we actually stand in the world.
Bill C-69 still has a clang to it that has crystallized what has been misguided about the government from its outset. The last Bill C-69, from six years ago, was successfully challenged all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. There, finally, the constitutionally offensive parts of the legislation were overruled. However, that was a legal journey that took years.
It was as if it could not be foreseen and avoided. We had years of divisiveness in this country, of project delays and of holding back taxpaying sectors of Canada's economy while shovelling money out the door to well-connected insiders. We had years of economic destruction and of watching our closest competitors move forward in a rapidly changing world while Canada's opportunities were held back. We had years of the Liberal government feeding propagandists billions of taxpayer dollars to trumpet its recycled narrative, to no benefit for the country but much benefit to the pockets of connected insiders.
The previous Bill C-69 was a vile affront like no other, and this one can only pale in comparison.
Budget 2024, as delivered, was a 416-page document, with lots of back-patting and nonsensical narratives, plus a 74-page supplement. It was entitled, “Fairness for Every Generation.” What a great marketing slogan that is. Was the title because excessive overspending would affect every Canadian equally badly? I would caution that it is particularly bad for young Canadians, those who are being saddled with paying for the cost of $1.3 trillion of Canadian debt, which is growing with no end in sight.
How do we tell new Canadians or those entering the workforce, “Congratulations, you are now inheriting your share of debt for money thrown away by a spendy government that knew nothing about fiscal management”? It is $30,000 per head, in addition to the provincial debt that, in many cases, doubles that number; their mortgage debt, if they are lucky enough to own a home; and their student debt, consumer debt and auto debt payments. Is it any wonder that Canadians are considered some of the most indebted people in the world?
Many times, I have clearly stated in the House that the metric the government tries to use, the debt-to-GDP ratio, is neither comparatively useful nor, in fact, honest. It tries to re-collect the amounts that Canadians have had deducted from their paycheques specifically for their retirement, both in the Canada pension plan and the Quebec pension plan. The government pretends that those amounts, over $800 billion, should be used as collateral for the government.
It does not work that way elsewhere, but the Liberal government is content to mislead Canadians so they can use this in their justification of showing financial prudence. It is dishonest.
If the government's backup plan for maintaining fiscal stability in the future is to take back, and I should say “steal back”, the funds Canadians believe belong to them, independently managed for their retirement, then tell that to them directly. The Minister of Finance should directly say, “Canadian workers, all pension earnings are our collateral, used to capitalize our overspending.”
This budget implementation act that we are debating takes what was in that nearly 490 pages of budget information and puts it into legislative format, 660 pages of legislative changes to be addressed, debated and voted upon, an omnibus bill. It would be interesting if it had much to do with the budget, but as always, it is a mishmash of legislative changes, much of which have absolutely nothing to do with the 490 pages presented in the House of Commons three weeks ago.
I was really looking for the parts of it that were relevant to young Canadians who are trying to buy a home or who are trying to rent a home in a rising housing market with stagnant salaries, while inflation is making their purchasing power for food, rent, clothing, heat, light, education and the basics more challenging.
The budget was presented with much fanfare. It is called “Fairness for Every Generation”. The government seized on the problem being felt most acutely by Canadians, particularly young Canadians, and presented an array of programming to address the real issue of housing, the inability to house Canadians.
The cost of buying a house has doubled under the government's watch. The cost of renting a home has doubled under the government's watch. Has take-home pay doubled? Absolutely not. As a result, the ratio of housing prices and rent to income has doubled in these past nine years. Housing is not just twice as expensive. The ability to fund one's home now takes twice the percentage of one's take-home pay.
Canada's economy has withered in relation to our peers. Nothing gets done in this country unless the government writes someone a cheque to do it: “Please, set up business here with taxpayer money.” It will pay $4 million to $5 million per job provided, as long as it is in the right area or what it thinks is the right industry, flavour-of-the-day stuff, chasing what everyone else is chasing, risky business, taxpayer-funded corporate welfare and funds that will never be recouped in the economy.
I counted the number of initiatives the government would take to alleviate housing concerns, the most resonant concern to the public. There were 53 measures to address housing: building, financing, mortgaging, targeting, bribing, pontificating. I then went through the 660-page bill, and I found two points that were relevant to housing.
The first is the increase to the homebuyers withdrawal plan limit from $35,000 to $60,000. I would like to see the size of that target market, a Canadian who has over $60,000 in their RSP and does not have a home. That is definitely not the financial makeup of the great majority of Canadians who have found themselves squeezed out of Canada's housing market.
The second measure allows the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to increase its mortgage default insurance limit from $750 billion to $800 billion. Remember, that $750 billion was temporarily increased from $600 billion in 2020 to deal with the effects of the pandemic, long passed. I suppose some temporary effects last longer than others.
This is $800 billion of risk that the government bears for mortgages in Canada. That is in addition to the almost $1.3 trillion in debt the Government of Canada owes money managers around the world or the $350 billion of liabilities at the Bank of Canada.
Canada's federal government debt payments now total $54 billion a year. That is more than the government spends on health care. That is more than Canadians pay through the GST.
The issue with housing is a cautionary tale. Housing should be a sound investment, one that holds its value over time, especially if the homeowner provides the proper upkeep, a store of value for years when incomes will be lower. It is a savings plan and it is a contrast to paying rent, where one's payments will always rise with inflation and the value accumulated is paid to someone else. Sometimes that makes sense, but most Canadians benefit from owning a home.
For the sake of young Canadians who hope to one day raise their families in homes like their parents did or like they anticipated when they moved to Canada, let me advise the government to listen to all of the voices that are telling it this, including the Bank of Canada governor: Get the budget balance back. Stop causing inflation. Let the economy grow, and stop punishing sectors that are not its chosen sectors.
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- May/7/24 1:20:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague just mentioned the federal housing accelerator fund. It is hilarious that the Liberal government had the gall to call it that. It took two years to make an announcement in Quebec under that program. There is not even a mention of anyone who actually moved into those units.
In the past year, I toured Quebec to talk to people about housing. People talked to me about a lot of things. Right now, municipalities are building housing units, managing zoning and issuing permits. Quebec and the federal government both have housing programs. Everyone told me that there are too many people involved in housing. We need to streamline the process.
The federal government has fiscal capacity. It could quickly sign cheques and send them to Quebec for social housing, but no, it continues to interfere and negotiate. With this budget, we will have housing in four, five, even eight years.
Is my colleague not just a little ashamed to call a program the housing accelerator fund when it is the Liberals who are delaying everything?
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- May/7/24 1:39:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it turns out that budgets do not balance themselves. After nine years of the Prime Minister and the NDP-Liberal government, they are zero for nine, as they are not even coming close to balancing the books here in Ottawa. Not only has the government not balanced the budget at all, but it has also doubled our national debt to $1.3 trillion and counting, with $43 billion alone being added in the deficit to our national debt this year. That is in just one fiscal year.
The budget is big, a document that is a couple of inches thick. One can go back to look at the charts to see if the Liberals ever plan to balance the budget. The answer is no. There is no date, no year and no circumstance that the Liberals and NDP have proposed to balance the budget. The worst part is that there are tons of broken promises that they have made, which they have yet to fulfill, that will only result in more spending, driving our deficit up even further in this country.
This is important in talking about the budget because balanced budgets have been a part of the common-sense Canadian consensus in this country for generations, for nearly the entire history of our country. There has been an idea that deficits are the exception, not the norm. Deficits were timely, targeted and temporary. Previous Liberal and Conservative governments, for the most part, over the years, followed that line of thought. Instead, we now have permanent and painful deficits hurting our country year after year, with no end in sight. Back in the day, when I was a mayor in rural eastern Ontario, the same principle and expression applied. It was easy to tell people what we would spend money on. The hard part was how to pay for it.
What we see here are never-ending deficits, with budgets that do not balance, along with endless tax hikes, whether it is the carbon tax, being the main point, the excise tax or numerous other examples of the Liberals and NDP being more than happy to add to the tax burden, particularly at a time when Canadians can least afford it. After nine years, they still use the same tired lines when it comes to their budgets. They say the wealthy will pay, that the rich will pay for all these new things. After nine years, they are still not getting that average Canadians are moderate to low-income families that are struggling to get by. They are seeing the carbon tax and the excise tax being added for them, for example, and they are seeing the value of their paycheques becoming less and less powerful the longer and longer the Prime Minister remains.
Deficits matter as well because they require money printing. This is half a trillion dollars by the Bank of Canada. The Prime Minister, in his nine years, has doubled our national debt, more than every other prime minister combined in our country's history. They are still not even close, being $40 billion off from getting the budget to be balanced. There is now more money being printed, and it is chasing fewer goods, which is resulting in record inflation that has not been seen in at least 40 years.
The Prime Minister has said not to worry as interest rates are low and it is not a big deal. Again, all that extra money printing has led to inflation. Canadian households have been hurt very badly by this with skyrocketing mortgages and rents. Interest rates have been driven up by this out-of-control inflationary spending. Food prices are increasing continually at levels that are unsustainable.
For the average Canadian in this country, at a time when the benchmark is that people should not be spending more than 30% of their household income on shelter, people are spending over double that. Over 60% of Canadian household income is now going just to putting a roof over their heads, before they buy food, put gas in their car or do anything else, just to make ends meet. Not only has all of this inflationary spending and the interest rates and mortgage rates that have increased hurt Canadian households, they have done a bad number on the finances of the federal government as well this year. Despite the financing of all this massive new debt with interest and mortgage rates all going up, the Prime Minister did not seem to think it was a big deal. The government planned to borrow the money when interest rates were low.
Since rates have gone up, as all this borrowed money and refinancing has renewed, we have seen an astronomical increase in the interest on debt-servicing costs alone. We spent $54 billion, not to pay down the national debt in any way, but just to pay the interest on the $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion in national debt that we have. We spend more now on those interest payments than we do on health care transfers. We are giving money to bankers and bondholders, as opposed to more money to doctors, nurses, hospitals and long-term care.
The solution is simple, and it is common sense. It is a dollar-for-dollar rule. Conservatives have said that for every new dollar of spending in a Conservative government, we would find a dollar of savings. That is not some wild, radical idea. Look no further than to the U.S. It was Bill Clinton, a Democrat, then president of the United States, and Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, who negotiated that deal. As a matter of fact, that same dollar-for-dollar rule was the last time the budget in the United States was balanced. It shows that it can be done here and, more important than anything, that we have to get our finances under control.
After nine years of the Prime Minister, the more he spends, the worse it gets. The more he spends, the higher our debt, our deficits, our interest payments and the burden, not only today but also on future generations.
I want to talk about the carbon tax. The carbon tax is the number one issue I hear in my travels throughout Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry and Cornwall. In this budget, the Liberals and the NDP keep their plan to be completely out of touch, extreme when it comes to their approach on the carbon tax. They are happy with where it is right now, which is about 18¢ a litre on the price of gas and 21¢ a litre on the price of diesel, and they want to quadruple it in the coming years, as part of their plan.
Here is the quick summary of exactly how they are going to do that. They never come out and tell Canadians the way that it is going to be and that it is going to be 61¢. We have to piece it together as they try to do the shell game and hide all of it. There is carbon tax number one, and again, as we all know, farmers will be paying $1 billion on their natural gas and propane in the coming years, just on that, with no rebates. Trucking companies that ship food, goods and services get no rebates. Small businesses get no rebates.
There is no confidence whatsoever. The Liberals have been talking for years about offering rebates, and they will continue. There is no detail and no plan to actually do that.
At the end of the day, those rebates are phony, because the Parliamentary Budget Officer says that just on that first carbon tax, eight out of 10 families are going to be, or are, paying more in carbon tax. For example, an Ontario family is going to pay hundreds of dollars, $478, by the time we look at everything, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
That is the first carbon tax.
The second carbon tax is a fuel standard that the Parliamentary Budget Officer says is going to add 17¢ a litre in the coming years. There are zero rebates for anyone, anywhere on that.
If it is not out of touch enough to have carbon tax one at 37¢ and carbon tax two at 17¢, coming in, then how out of touch, tax hungry and tax-increase obsessed are the Liberals and the NDP if they are going to tax the tax? They are going to tax the tax by continuing to put the HST on all those other carbon tax increases to get to 61¢ a litre.
I got a letter recently from the Army, Navy and Air Force Club in Cornwall. Do members know who also does not get a rebate? Community halls and community centres. They sent me their natural gas bill for just one month this winter. The carbon tax and the HST on it was $275 of an $1,100 bill, just to service that. Those are halls, community centres and legions that are paying a carbon tax with zero rebates, further driving up their costs, for just a simple not-for-profit cause in our community.
I want to address the NDP, as we always do, and the budget. If there was only something they could do about it. We hear them in question period. We hear them in the budget debate. They complain about all the terrible things the Liberals are not doing, saying that they promised something in the budget and that they never delivered. They talk tough. The leader of the NDP made a speech a couple of weeks ago, saying that he was not in favour of the carbon tax anymore. Then, he flip-flopped and said that he was again. He flip-flopped on his flip-flop, if members are keeping track. The NDP talk tough in question period. When the first vote on the budget was called here within the last week, once again, the NDP propped up the Liberals. There were no questions asked. It is just the way it is.
It is time to call a carbon tax election so that Canadians can have their say on the future of this country. I have zero confidence, after nine years, in the Prime Minister to manage our country.
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- May/7/24 1:49:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to ask the member a question about the unbelievable fiscal management the Conservative Party thinks it has. He talked about nine years a few times, with nine years this and nine years that. The party in power before us, for nine straight years, ran a deficit. That is a fact. The Conservatives ran a deficit. Yes, they balanced the budget in the 10th year because they put some GM stocks and an EI rainy day fund in the pot to balance the budget, but they ran a deficit for nine straight years. That is a fact.
How can the member opposite justify saying that the Liberals are so bad running deficits through COVID, and other things, when the party that was in power before us ran one for nine straight years?
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- May/7/24 2:35:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yet again, this is just basic disinformation from the Conservatives.
What the Governor of the Bank of Canada said to the finance committee last week, speaking about our budget, was “I don't expect that it's going to have a significant macro impact relative to our previous [fiscal] forecast.” He said that meeting the fiscal guardrails is helpful. Moody's has reaffirmed our AAA rating. These are not partisans.
Our budget is fiscally responsible. Conservatives are simply not telling the truth.
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- May/7/24 4:02:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, obviously, I disagree wholeheartedly with the member's characterization of what the government is currently doing. We have landed massive investments in the EV supply chain. We are number three in the world in foreign direct investment. We have maintained a AAA credit rating.
The Bank of Canada governor was at the finance committee recently and said that the government's current budget has stuck to the fiscal guardrails that we have set out and will not be adding any fuel to the fire of inflation, which is good news for Canadians. These investment tax credits and other measures within the budget, including $2.4 billion for artificial intelligence, would help to bring in investment and increase productivity.
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- May/7/24 7:12:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, five months ago I asked the Prime Minister to acknowledge that the carbon tax was at the root of food inflation in Canada. The response I received was irrelevant.
I will try to address inflation, its causes and the government's complicity in raising prices for Canadians again, and we will see if anyone is prepared to acknowledge and respond, given the Liberals have had some time to brush up on the economic challenges that inflation has caused in our economy and our society.
Food, in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, ranks as the base physiological level, long before any self-actualization, or any need or desire for a government that constantly looks for ways of expanding government spending. Canadians see that spending, and the resulting tax grab, as an overreach and as being out of control.
Inflation is measured in Canada by Statistics Canada, a government agency, which gives an approximation of how Canadians experience inflationary effects and reports it as the consumer price index, or the CPI. In 2023, the CPI was measured at 3.9%. In March 2024, that measure had fallen to 2.9% the way it measures it. The April CPI number will be available on May 21. What April's number will show is the 23% increase in the carbon tax, which was implemented on April 1. It is a tax on food, fuel, home heating and everything else. Let me help predict that there will be a hiccup in our supposed decline in inflation.
The Bank of Canada will take its cue from this report for its June decision on interest rates. An inflation uptick would reinforce the decision to not drop interest rates, thus keeping rates high, primarily for mortgage holders. Real estate inflation is the worst effect of the government's failed fiscal policies. The Governor of the Bank of Canada has repeatedly spoken about how the government's policies are causing inflation, while the government is taking the lessons, as it always says. The Bank of Canada openly predicted last year that the carbon tax added 0.15 points to the interest rate, so inflation may have been 3.7% to 3.8% without the carbon tax increase last year.
Inflation is the rate of increase, so last year's increase is baked into a new, higher base cost for food, fuel, home heating and everything else. What would happen to that base effect when this ineffective tax on everything is removed? Canadians would get real pricing relief immediately. Food price inflation peaked at the beginning of last year at close to 12%. Members can think about that. It is down now to about 2%, but let us acknowledge the base effect. The increased costs add significantly to continued increases in food costs across Canada.
If the government wants to pay attention to the effects of the food inflation it is causing, I would ask it to pay attention to the increasing rise in the use of food banks. Last year, food bank use rose to over two million monthly visitors, up 32% year over year. This year that increase is expected to be an additional 18%.
It is time the government started paying attention to the harm it is causing, which is very evident in food inflation. This carbon tax needs to be repealed.
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