Senator Martin: A National Bank of Canada report from earlier this month showed the average mortgage payments as a percentage of income in Canada are just under 61%. In Toronto, it’s 82.8%, and in Vancouver, it’s a whopping 94.9%. Again, this report came before the Bank of Canada increased rates to the highest level in 22 years. Canadians were already carrying the highest household debt in the G7. Now, many families are facing a crisis, as their mortgage payments could increase by up to 40%.

Leader, that number is not a partisan talking point. It’s taken from the Bank of Canada report released in May. How can you possibly say the Trudeau government’s economic strategy is a success, as you recently claimed?

Senator Plett: This means you should brace yourselves for the impending burden of skyrocketing debt servicing costs. Thanks to this government’s reckless spending, combined with interest rate increases, we are about to witness the highest debt servicing costs in Canadian history.

From $20.4 billion in 2021, interest on the debt took a 20% jump in 2022 and is forecast at 41% growth in 2023 and 27% growth in 2024. By 2028, annual debt servicing costs are expected to exceed a staggering $50 billion, surpassing the peaks reached in the 1990s.

Allow me to quote from Scotiabank’s March 29 Global Economics bulletin, where they noted the following achievements by this government’s reckless overspending:

It has contributed to some of the inflationary pressures that represent a highly regressive tax on lower and middle income Canadians . . . .

It has contributed to a higher BoC policy rate than would otherwise be the case.

It has contributed to worker shortages as public sector jobs are up 420k since just before the pandemic and account for 51% of all jobs created in Canada over that time. No wonder businesses are struggling to find workers!!

It has contributed toward higher wage pressures . . . .

It has worsened competitiveness problems through spending that is primarily focused upon redistributive social transfers.

The bulletin closes with this:

This budget adds to macroeconomic imbalances and divides folks at a time when unity is needed to address the country’s challenges. Governments . . . are now addicted to high spending and delivering divisive jabs at certain interests. Nothing is being done about productivity and competitiveness pressures that are mounting year by year. Big spending, big deficits, big debt, high taxes, high inflation and bond market challenges are not the path to prosperity.

No, colleagues; no, government leader — that was not written by Pierre Poilievre. That was Derek Holt, Vice-President and Head of Capital Markets Economics at Scotiabank.

Canadians simply cannot afford Justin Trudeau’s never-ending inflationary deficits. We see it every day — the prices of essential goods such as food, housing and fuel are hitting record highs.

Now, the NDP-Liberal costly coalition’s introduction of a second carbon tax only exacerbates the problem. This second carbon tax will drive carbon taxes up to 61 cents per litre, further hiking the price of gas, heat and groceries.

According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the average Canadian household will face an extra $573 per year without any rebate. Families in some provinces could face costs as high as $1,157. This means that the combined carbon taxes will cost Canadian families up to $4,000 each year.

Again, to quote from the Scotiabank report I mentioned earlier:

Big spending, big deficits, big debt, high taxes, high inflation and bond market challenges are not the path to prosperity.

Why do economists and everyday Canadians understand this reality, but the Liberal government does not?

Let me go back to Bill C-47.

In 2015, the Trudeau Liberals promised that they would not use omnibus bills. Again, they misled Canadians. Bill C-47 is as omnibus as an omnibus bill can be. It is 430 pages long, with 681 articles covering more than 60 different measures touching laws that have nothing to do with the fiscal and budgetary policy of the government.

Our Senate committees have pointed this out: Several measures in Bill C-47 should have been stand-alone bills. By putting so many different policy changes in one bill, the government is skipping proper scrutiny and debate on them. The Liberals rightly called this out in 2015. However, after eight years in power, they are still using this legislative “trick,” as they called it then.

By the way, in the same paragraph of their 2015 platform, the Liberals promised not to use prorogation “. . . to avoid difficult political circumstances. . . .” They broke this promise when the heat was on regarding the WE Charity scandal. I am eager to see whether they will do that again this summer to avoid scrutiny over their countless ongoing scandals.

Another thing worth mentioning is the use by the Trudeau Liberals of retroactive tax measures. Traditionally, this a territory where governments don’t go.

Taxpayers have the right to organize their affairs in order to reduce their tax burden. However, to do so, they must know what the rules are. Changing the rules of the game retroactively is unfair and is a very slippery slope. If a government starts doing that on a regular basis, we can predict that some insiders will learn about the coming change and will adapt, whereas other folks will just pick up a retroactive tab because they were not informed.

Furthermore, the government makes it more and more difficult to get all the information on its spending. Senator Marshall has decried this tendency for years now.

In his April 13 report on the budget, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said:

This lack of transparency presents challenges for parliamentarians and the public in scrutinizing the Government’s spending plans, as well as reconciling between previously provisioned amounts and their announcement.

The Hill Times published an article on this recently. More than $30 billion of spending could not be scrutinized by Parliament. As is so often the case with the Liberals, one is left wondering: Is it because of their incompetence or because they want to hide more sinister news?

On March 29, The Globe and Mail called the budget a fiscal fantasy, saying:

. . . the Liberal budget is built on a cloud of sleight-of-hand projections and the hope that Canadians are suffering from collective amnesia. . . .

Sustaining the fantasy of Liberal prudence depends on Canadians acting like memory-challenged goldfish, forever surprised by each turn of the fiscal cycle.

I hope that senators will not suffer from amnesia, will not act like goldfish and will join my colleagues and me — not whipped, Senator Deacon, but who believe in fiscal responsibility. I hope you will all join me in voting against Bill C-47.

This is a flawed bill. We should defeat it and send the government back to the drawing board. But there is another reason for the Senate to defeat this bill: what is not in it. Forcing the government to come up with a new budget bill would give them a chance to address some issues that were not covered in Bill C-47.

First, the BIA hardly addresses the many challenges that Canada faces and that I outlined at the beginning of my speech. One thing that breaks my heart is that for young Canadians — like my grandchildren and your grandchildren — the dream of owning a home will probably remain that: just a dream. The Trudeau Liberals don’t have an answer on housing.

“This budget ignores the housing crisis,” was the assessment of economist Mike Moffatt with the Smart Prosperity Institute. In a detailed analysis of Budget 2023, Moffatt declared that most of its references to housing “were re-announcements of past measures and progress updates on yet-to-be-implemented measures . . . .”

Absent were any proposals to free up federal lands for home construction, measures to cut red tape for new builds or even tax credits on building materials.

There is no plan for our Armed Forces. Every NATO country seems to be able to reach the 2% threshold for military expenses except Canada. We, colleagues, are the freeloaders of NATO: happy to make speeches on the importance of defending democracy, but unwilling to make the effort. We should be ashamed.

There is no long-term plan to pay for all those candies the Liberals are throwing at their NDP allies. How will we pay for the dental plan, the childcare plan and the soon-to-be-announced pharma plan? No idea. I guess the plan is to borrow more money to pay for this. Maybe Justin Trudeau will ask us all to use our credit cards and help him. Remember that, in just one year, the cost of the dental plan has doubled. What will it be in five years?

Justin Trudeau also has no plan to fight inflation, no plan for reducing government spending and no plan for returning to a balanced budget. As Canadians are running out of money, Justin Trudeau is running out of ideas.

But even more worrisome is that it is evident that this government has zero solutions for the long-term prospects of the Canadian economy. Because of dismal productivity, poor business investment, labour scarcity and the need to shift to a lower-carbon future, the Canadian economy is expected to deliver very weak economic growth.

David Rosenberg, founder of independent research firm Rosenberg Research & Associates Inc. said this earlier this month:

This was the fourth consecutive decline in Canadian productivity and the 10th contraction in the past 11 quarters. The year-over-year trend is minus 1.8 per cent, or twice as bad as it is [in the U.S.] . . . .

He continues:

And get this: the level of productivity was lower in the first quarter of 2023 than it was in the first quarter of 2017. Nice legacy for the Justin Trudeau government.

The 2023 budget and Bill C-47 are silent on how this government intends to meet those challenges. It looks like words like “productivity,” “investment” or “growth” are foreign to the Trudeau Liberals. They are so busy redistributing wealth and virtue signalling for their target demographics that they forgot to do their job entirely: to create wealth and make sure everyone is better off.

We all know Justin Trudeau and Steven Guilbeault want to kill not only the oil and gas industry, but all other exploitation of natural resources. The mining and forestry industries are under attack, just like oil and gas. How will they replace these jobs? Oh, that’s easy: We will have green jobs.

The thing is, Joe Biden has decided that all those green jobs should be in the U.S. So much for his buddy Justin.

Biden’s hilariously named Inflation Reduction Act will give U.S. green energy developers about $400 billion of American taxpayers’ dollars, simply through tax credits. That is C$540 billion that we have to compete with.

Minister Freeland said it herself: We are engaging in a “race to the bottom.” And we are close to winning that race, colleagues.

As Bill Robson, CEO of Canada’s C.D. Howe Institute, said:

On the green tech stuff, I do have a problem with us being in a bidding war with the United States . . . They’re also in this kind of “tomorrow doesn’t matter, let’s spend for today” mood with all their subsidies.

We have already seen this in action with Volkswagen and Stellantis in Ontario. We are talking about over $30 billion of taxpayer money for these two businesses. This is not the total investment in so-called green jobs. It is just for those two companies.

What it means is that Canadian taxpayers will be paying twice for green energy: once through the federal carbon tax, and a second time through tax credits and other subsidies. U.S. citizens don’t pay a carbon tax. And, adding insult to injury, the U.S., without a national carbon tax, met its greenhouse gas emissions reduction target for 2020, which Canada — with the same target — failed to meet. U.S. emissions were down 20% compared to 2005 levels in 2020, and Canada’s is only 9.3%.

And what if we are making the wrong bet? What if a better battery technology appears in five years? What if cars are no longer electric but propelled by hydrogen? All that money will be gone.

Justin Trudeau has decided that Canada would fight climate change with taxes and subsidies. I don’t think we are going in the right direction, colleagues. The Trudeau government has never met a single carbon emissions reduction target in all their years in power — not a single one. These are targets that they adopted from the Harper government.

Remember that, in a report tabled at COP 27, the United Nations ranked Canada 58 out of 63 nations on environmental issues. Canada is back, as Justin Trudeau claimed at the Paris Conference. Canada is back, way back, in fifty-eighth position.

Carbon taxes are going up, that’s for sure. The problem is that our carbon emissions are also going up. We all see the devastating effects of climate change: the forest fires, the floods and the extreme weather. But to think that there will be fewer of those events if you force Canadians to pay more taxes is preposterous. And when Steven Guilbeault is called out about that, all he can do is call his critics climate deniers.

Let me quote the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, the son of our former Speaker, the very Liberal Andrew Furey:

I take great exception to the federal minister always forcing this into a dichotomous issue “either you believe in exactly what we say or you don’t believe in climate change.” That’s completely illogical, it’s a false dichotomy, it’s a false dilemma, and it’s as insulting to us as it is simplistic.

The climate change policy of the Trudeau Liberals is not about climate change; it is about taxing Canadians. It is not an environmental plan; it is a tax plan. And in answer to Joe Biden’s policies, the government has introduced a second part: a corporate welfare plan.

Canadians are now giving massive amounts of money to foreign multinationals, hoping to recreate the success of the car industry in Ontario. Given the track record of this government, you will allow me to be nervous about these bets.

Colleagues, remember that the brains behind these bets are the same brains behind the other failed environmental policies of the Trudeau government, and the same brains that saddled Ontario with a ridiculous energy policy for which taxpayers will be paying for years to come.

Several senators — on debate on Bill C-47 or in committee — criticized this bill and the economic policies of the Liberal government. Well, colleagues, it is time to put your vote where your mouth is. You know this bill is broken beyond repair. You know the policies of this government are driving Canada into a wall. Stand up with us. Vote against this bill.

I am speaking about those senators who I know see themselves as fiscally responsible. I am especially speaking to senators who were appointed as or even elected as and who say they are Conservatives. Use this message. Use this vote. Stand up for Canada. Send a message to the government: Enough is enough. Get serious. Show us you’re fiscal Conservatives, show us you’re Progressive Conservatives, and show us that you care about Canada.

If Bill C-47 is defeated in the Senate, the government will not fall. There will not be an election, but the government will have to do better. And chances are we will be back here in three months with a new and improved BIA.

I want to conclude with one last rant and a message of hope. I am sick and tired of the government not taking responsibility and acting as if they are just extras in a movie. Just like my good friend Senator Gold during Senate Question Period, they huff and they puff every time someone points out one of their numerous failings. They claim they are not responsible for anything. They Blame Stephen Harper, Donald Trump, Pierre Poilievre, the provinces in general and each and every premier in particular. Sometimes they blame Canadians themselves, as some of us may not be as enlightened as the Liberals would like us to be. They will explain that it is because of the international situation or a decision taken elsewhere. They deflect with, “What about them?” They lament, “We did not have time to address this issue in eight years.”

Colleagues, Canadians have had enough. The Liberals — specifically, Justin Trudeau — must take responsibility. They have been in power for eight years, and with the help of the NDP, they can do anything they want. The Liberals control the House of Commons. They have a supermajority in the Senate and on the Supreme Court. The public service is as obedient as it always is when the Liberals rule. No minister would dare question the leader’s position.

So what is the problem? Why can’t they offer us a plan? As I said earlier, they have no vision. They forgot why they want to be in power, other than to enjoy their perks. They have no idea about what to do, except when a communications person comes out of a focus group with a new gimmick. They are not briefed by their staff. They don’t read their emails. They don’t question the bureaucrats. This ship is drifting, colleagues, and there is no one at the helm.

Thankfully, there is an alternative, and I’m going to suggest it to you right here. Here is my message of hope: Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives will make Canada work. We will bring home lower prices by ending inflationary carbon tax 1, carbon tax 2 and deficit spending that drives up inflation and interest rates. We will bring homes people can afford by removing government gatekeepers to free up land and speed up building permits. We will bring back to Ottawa the common sense of the common people. But first, colleagues, we must defeat Bill C-47 and force the government to do its job. Thank you, colleagues.