Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, my question is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate. Senator Gold, this question actually comes from Justin in Ottawa. His question is specifically about Employment Insurance, or EI, premiums, which Justin from Ottawa describes as a direct payroll tax, a tax that your government will be raising in a few months at a time when Canadians can ill afford another tax increase. He asks: “Why the Prime Minister chose to raise EI premiums — a direct payroll tax — for him and every other Canadian?”

Of course, government leader, that was Justin Trudeau in 2013 in the House of Commons. In 2022, Mr. Trudeau is trying to claim this isn’t a tax increase, but I digress.

My question, Senator Gold, is why is the Prime Minister raising taxes for Canadians who are already struggling to make ends meet as a result of his fiscal mismanagement?

Senator Housakos: Government leader, that’s exactly the response I expected because it’s the response we’ve been getting all along now for years.

We had a Justin Trudeau in 2013 who believed in accountability when he was in the opposition. The irony is, he was trying to hold to account a government that had historically low inflation, a fiscally responsible government and a government that left the country in 2015 with a balanced deficit. Seven years later, we have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with historic record-high inflation, historic record-high deficits, historic record-high debts and a cost of living that is destroying middle-class Canadians and those working hard to join that class.

At the end of the day, to go back to the question, my supplementary is simple: In the real world, we have something called accountability. It exists in corporations, in academic institutions — it exists in almost every walk of life. Maybe one or two institutions don’t have that realm of responsibility. For this economic inflationary catastrophe that middle-class and poor Canadians are going through, who are we going to hold responsible? Clearly, from your answer, it’s everybody’s fault but the government’s.

Do we hold the Bank of Canada responsible? Do we ask him to resign? Do we blame the two Liberal finance ministers, one of whom was already thrown under the bus to make up for the WE scandal? Is it the current finance minister? Or, at some point, can we hold responsible for “JustinFlation” the Prime Minister in general?