- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Niagara Falls
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $102,468.80
- Government Page
- Nov/1/23 7:26:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Calgary Midnapore.
A lot happened during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, which stretched over three years, from 2020 to 2022. It was a time when the Liberal government tried to give itself full spending authority without any opposition scrutiny. This was in the spring of 2020. Then, the Liberal government thought it was a good idea to prorogue Parliament in the middle of a raging global pandemic later that summer. After more than a year of social distancing, public health restrictions, masking and vaccines, the hypocritical Liberal government plunged the country into a pandemic election.
It is truly unthinkable, if one goes back to look at it. However, for the Liberals, it has never been about good and sound policy. It always was and always has been about politics. That is why we are here this evening, unfortunately, to discuss another disastrous Liberal policy objective, which did little to protect Canadians during the pandemic and almost single-handedly ruined any chance of a tourism recovery in 2022.
It is an honour for me to sit as a member at the Standing Committee on International Trade. I was assigned to the committee on February 28, 2022. We have since covered a wide range of topics and issues impacting Canadian trade. While some people might not realize this, tourism has important elements of trade, as an export industry. When COVID-19 hit our country, tourism was hit first and hardest. We all knew early on that it would take the longest to recover.
When we fast-forward more than three years, since the federal government agreed to close our international borders, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are still being felt in many parts of Canada's tourism economy. Recovery is not equal. Some areas are recovering more quickly than others, particularly those in rural, remote and northern communities.
Further, thousands of tourism operators across the country continue to struggle with high levels of debt after taking out pandemic loans, through no fault of their own, and with a tourism visitation base that simply has not returned to be as strong as it was before COVID.
Domestically, Canadians are now scaling back their spending and travel plans, impacted by stubborn inflation, increasing carbon taxes and higher interest rates, which make everything more expensive and life more unaffordable. Internationally, visitors are simply not coming as they did before COVID.
After eight years under the Liberal Prime Minister, Canada's tourism reputation has been damaged, and our country's overall tourism economy has lost its competitive edge to other countries. For reasons, many related to the Liberal mismanagement of our tourism economy, visitors are simply not making Canada their destination of choice as they once did.
The reputational impacts on Canada's tourism industry that were caused by the mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app should not be downplayed or ignored. When this dysfunctional $54-million app was made mandatory for anyone entering Canada, the issues faced by travellers were countless. Moreover, the issues were being faced by just about every person trying to arrive here, at every point of entry, ranging from major airports to land borders and international bridge crossings.
My riding of Niagara Falls is the number one leisure tourism destination in Canada, employing over 40,000 tourism workers. Before the pandemic, it was generating over $2.1 billion in tourism receipts. My riding includes the city of Niagara Falls, the town of Fort Erie and the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. As a border riding, we also have four international bridge crossings, with at least one bridge in each municipality.
From day one, simply put, the ArriveCAN app was an utter failure. Its impacts were so severe that I felt compelled to bring forward a motion to study this issue at committee. Upon agreement, we undertook this study, which eventually produced the sixth report, along with the motion and the amendment that we are debating here today. While I sincerely appreciate our committee's work on producing this report, the fact is that new and very troubling information about ArriveCAN has surfaced, beyond its astronomical price tag, which now stands at approximately $54 million. These issues should be of great concern to all parliamentarians, partisan politics aside, no matter one's political stripe. New allegations of misconduct, including identity theft, forged resumés, contractual theft, fraudulent billing, price-fixing and collusion involving contractors, ghost contractors and senior bureaucrats have emerged. Canadian taxpayers deserve answers.
I look forward to hearing from my colleague, the member for Calgary Midnapore, as she expands on some of these shocking revelations.
There is a reason we now call the app and its implications “arrive scam”. Given that new information about ArriveCAN that we simply cannot ignore has come to light, it is only reasonable to support this amendment to the motion to extend the ArriveCAN study to get to the bottom of these issues. As badly as the Liberal-NDP coalition wants to move on and forget about its mistakes, bad decision-making and reckless spending, there is still a lot of unfinished business to take care of from the pandemic years, and the ArriveCAN app absolutely must be included in this.
I see a trend growing here, whether it is the refusal to review $15.5 billion in potentially ineligible pandemic wage benefit payments because it is not worth the effort, wasting more than $600 million on a risky pandemic election or not caring that $54 million was required to develop the dysfunctional ArriveCAN app. The reckless and wasteful NDP-Liberal coalition has become far too complacent with the tax dollars of hard-working Canadians. It must realize it has a spending addiction that is costing Canadians and the country dearly. It is our job as the opposition to hold the government to account. That is why I support my colleague's amendment to the motion, to amend the sixth report to include reference to the $54 million of hard-earned Canadian tax dollars wasted on the application, the inaccurate evidence government officials provided during the committee's investigation, the serious allegations of fraudulent contract practices and the statement made by the RCMP that it is investigating criminality in the contracts that were awarded. Now the Auditor General of Canada wants to update Canadians on where all the money went.
Canadians deserve answers. The people of Niagara deserve answers. This government's obstinance in removing the application until the fall of 2022 denied tourism recovery to those in my community and throughout Canada who were looking for it so badly. To add insult to injury, it is a government that feigned interest in responding to the concerns of our tourism community and simply did not care to ensure that hard-working Canadian taxpayers' dollars would be protected. Instead, we are now continually bombarded by scandalous revelations on how an application that could have been developed over a weekend wound up costing Canadians $54 million.
After eight years in office, the tired and inept government and Prime Minister are not worth the cost. Let us get Canadians the answers they deserve. It is simply the common-sense thing to do.
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- Feb/14/23 4:42:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in my remarks earlier, I talked about the Auditor General, who found that $4.6 billion went to ineligible individuals, and we estimated that at least $27.4 billion in payments to individuals and employees should be investigated further. Among the individuals who received money and should not have, $1.6 billion went to people who quit their jobs; $6.6 million went to people who were in jail the whole time; $3.3 million went to people who did not live in Canada; and $1.2 million went to dead people. Why do we not start there?
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- Feb/14/23 4:32:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when our Conservative leader first spoke before the fall economic statement was introduced last November, he made two very clear and simple demands on behalf of our Conservative Party.
First, we wanted the Liberal government to stop the taxes. This included cancelling all planned tax hikes and the tripling of the carbon tax. Fast-forward a few months to February, and it is clear that the current Liberal government is on track to do the exact opposite. Taxes went up on Canadians this past January, and this April it is only going to get worse.
Late last year, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation sounded the alarm about five incoming Liberal tax hikes in 2023. These hikes include increases that Canadians will see at the gas pumps, an alcohol escalator tax, increases to the Canada pension plan, hikes to employment insurance contributions and increases to payroll taxes for anyone making $40,000 or more this year.
This April 1, gasoline is set to go up by 14¢ per litre, and alcohol taxes are automatically set to rise by 6.3%. This is no cruel April Fool's joke. This is the damage done by bad Liberal fiscal policy. Locally, across Niagara, these taxes, particularly the alcohol escalator tax, will punish many wineries, craft breweries and distilleries, as well as anyone who enjoys consuming these wonderful Canadian-made products while visiting Niagara, which is the number one leisure tourism destination in all of Canada.
The second demand of our Conservative leader was for the Liberal government to stop the spending. Any new spending by Liberal ministers in the government must be matched by an equivalent savings. The government must cut wasteful spending and stop the inflationary deficits that drive up the cost of everything for Canadians. Again, fast-forward to this month, and the Liberals are failing to make good on this demand.
In fact, as time goes on, more and more wasteful and reckless Liberal spending is being uncovered. In the fall, there was the $6,000 luxurious hotel room that our Prime Minister stayed in for a one-night stay in Europe. Then, there was the $54 million wasted on the disastrous ArriveCAN app. Recently, the Auditor General blasted the CRA for its lack of rigour in trying to identify and recoup a minimum of $27.4 billion in suspected overpayments of emergency aid benefits, including $15.5 billion for the Canada emergency wage subsidy.
In response to the comment from the Auditor General, the government's own CRA commissioner had the gall to inform Canadians that “it wouldn't be worth the effort” to review and try to recover every dollar of the $15.5 billion in CEWS overpayments. That insufficient response from the CRA commissioner did not get by our Parliamentary Budget Officer, who recently said it was “a bit disconcerting when you hear that and the government is faced with a deficit.”
For these reasons and more, Conservatives are asking the House today to call on the Liberal government to cap spending, cut waste, fire high-priced consultants and eliminate inflationary deficits and taxes that have caused a cost-of-living crisis for Canadians.
Simply put, after eight years of the current Liberal government, Canadians pay more today for their goods and services and are getting less. Groceries, gas, home heating and more are getting more expensive by the day because of the reckless Liberal spending habits. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, the cost of groceries is up almost 11%. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, half of Canadians are cutting back on groceries. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, 20% of Canadians are skipping meals.
In Niagara, a recent report found that almost 39,000 people are being assisted by local food banks across the region. Those serving on the front lines are witnessing people struggling who have never struggled before. Under these deteriorating conditions, Canadians work harder to try to get ahead, but they take home less money because of higher costs for the things they need to buy and the higher taxes they will have to pay.
Just yesterday, in fact, we had new data provided by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, which reported that nearly four in 10 Canadians are now borrowing money to pay for groceries, shelter and other daily expenses. According to the report, “many Canadians are facing the biggest financial challenges of their lives. More are borrowing money to cover their day-to-day expenses, including by using high-cost loans.” It is no wonder Canadians feel like everything is broken and they have lost control. Many are falling behind, even as they try hard to get ahead.
It comes as no surprise that the same reckless Liberal spending habits, which have played a big role in driving up inflation, have also caused our national debt to soar. Debt interest payments have become so big under the Liberals that the costs are projected to be larger than what the federal government spends on the budget for the Department of National Defence. We should remember that the next time we have to scramble our outdated and under-equipped CF-18s and watch the Americans shoot down airborne threats over our territory.
It is getting so bad that some former Liberals are finally starting to acknowledge it. One random Liberal is former finance minister Bill Morneau. He has said that the government probably spent too much during COVID. Meanwhile, former Liberal deputy prime minister and finance minister John Manley said that the Liberal Prime Minister's fiscal policy is making it harder to contain inflation.
There are direct consequences to the Liberal government's recklessly spending the cupboards bare. Will the government be able to live up to the expectations it set for its new federal tourism growth strategy? The tourism minister has spent the last several months asking the industry to think big on ideas to expedite economic recovery from the devastating impact of COVID-19, yet fear is now beginning to grow in the tourism community that the Liberal government is once again failing to understand that the industry is still in recovery mode. It appears that, once again, the Liberal government is setting itself up to over-promise and under-deliver. That is a great shame for tourism communities across the country, such as mine in Niagara, which welcomes visitors from around the world.
As well, what is to happen to the wine sector support program, which was put in place because of the Liberal government's ineptitude on trade policy? The two-year, $166-million program has ended, yet the industry has asked for it to be extended, and there have been no updates about its renewal. Last year's budget showed that the government would raise $390 million over five years in new revenue by now applying the excise tax to 100% Canadian-made wines. Where are those funds going?
For months, Conservatives have been warning the government that its out-of-control spending would lead to an increase in interest rates. The government responded by telling Canadians not to worry and to go ahead and take out big loans since interest rates would remain low for a long time and there would not be any negative consequences. Well, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, 45% of variable rate mortgage holders now say they will have to sell or vacate their homes in less than nine months due to the current interest rate levels.
After eight years of the Liberal government, everything feels broken, and Canadians are having a harder time not only getting by, but simply hoping to try to get ahead. After eight years of this Liberal recklessness, Canadians have to work harder, work longer and even work multiple jobs just to take home less earnings and to get by.
Enough is enough. While Liberals are expecting Canadians to pay for their reckless spending habits, Canadians can count on Conservatives to provide them with the sound financial planning and path ahead when they elect us into government after the next federal election.
Canadians must realize that as the Liberals make more and more promises for a better tomorrow to distract us from the issues of today, none of the problems they have created, which Canadians now face, are getting fixed. Canadians need real solutions to these real problems that they are facing right now, and only a Conservative government can deliver on this for Canadians.
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Mr. Speaker, before the Minister of Finance introduced Bill C-32, the fall economic statement implementation act, on November 3, the Conservative leader made two clear demands on behalf of our party.
First, we wanted the Liberal government to stop the taxes. This included cancelling the planned tax hikes and the tripling of the carbon tax. Second, we wanted the Liberal government to stop the spending. Any new spending by Liberal ministers in the government must be matched by an equivalent saving to cut wasteful spending and stop the inflationary deficits that drive up the cost of everything for Canadians.
Unfortunately, neither of our demands was met by the government and, for that reason, I will be voting against this bill.
Simply put, the fall economic statement does not address the cost of living crisis facing Canadians right now. In fact, it makes the crisis worse. After seven years of the Liberal government, we pay more today for goods and services and get less. Groceries, gas, home heating and more are getting more and more expensive by the day because of the Liberals' reckless spending habits, the same reckless spending habits that have played a big role in driving up inflation.
Many of the inflationary issues and concerns we face are of the government's own making. For months we have been warning the Liberals that their out-of-control spending would lead to an increase in interest rates. The government responded by telling Canadians not to worry and to go ahead and take out big loans and mortgages, because interest rates would remain low for a long time and there would not be any negative consequences.
Well, fast-forward to now, and interest rates are increasing at the fastest rate in decades. Families that bought a home five years ago with a typical mortgage that is now up for renewal will pay $7,000 more a year. The Bank of Canada has signalled that interest rates will have to rise even higher to tackle inflation. Many Canadians will not be able to afford their mortgages and will risk losing their homes.
Through the government's bad spending habits, as inflation soars, so does our national debt. Since they were elected in 2015, the Liberal government has doubled our national debt, spending more than all previous governments combined since Confederation in 1867. Let that resonate for a moment.
Here are some recent examples of reckless Liberal spending contributing to inflation and our national debt.
The government wasted $54 million on the disastrous ArriveCAN app, yet it refuses to tell us who got rich off those massively excessive contracts.
The federal government paid out generous bonuses to Destination Canada executives when the tourism industry badly needs to recover.
The Liberal government recklessly spent $400 million on random testing at our borders, when medical experts said this policy was no longer needed.
Just last month, the Prime Minister spent $6,000 to stay for one night in a luxurious European hotel room.
Despite all the reckless and record Liberal spending, Canadians have less to show for it and are worse off because of it. Is it any wonder, then, that Canadians are struggling? The cost of groceries is up almost 11%. The cost of transportation is up over 10%. Gas is up over 22%. Next April, the excise tax on alcohol will increase by nearly 7%.
Under these deteriorating conditions, people work harder to try to get ahead, but they take less home because of the higher cost of the things they buy and the higher cost of punishing taxes to afford all this reckless Liberal spending. As a result of the Liberal government's incompetence, goods and services are more expensive and we have less money to pay for them.
How are Canadians reacting to this new reality? Families are downgrading their diets to cover the jump in food prices. Food bank usage is at an all-time high. Seniors are delaying their retirement and watching their life savings evaporate with inflation. Younger adults who did everything right are now trapped in 400-square-foot apartments or living in their parents' basements. No wonder Canadians feel like they have lost control. Many are falling behind, and others are struggling to get ahead.
The fall economic update shows that federal government revenues have increased by $40.1 billion this year alone. As Canadians suffer financially, the Liberal government is actually profiting from increased inflation that it generates and Canadians pay for.
How did it do that? Well, when Canadians pay higher prices on goods and services, they are also paying higher taxes. When they pay higher taxes, the government makes more money.
My NDP colleagues in this place have a history and reputation for taking issue with big corporate greed, yet when it comes to big government greed, apparently it is different and they turn a blind eye.
Rather than rein in the spending to begin slowing down the vicious cycle of spend and inflate, the Liberals drive the cycle of inflation even faster by spending more money at every opportunity they get. In addition to driving inflation, the federal government is also incurring tremendous amounts of debt. In fact, debt interest payment costs will have doubled this year. Next year, interest payments will be nearly as much as the Canada health transfer, and it is projected to be larger than what the government spends on the budget for the Department of National Defence.
Let us think about that. This is not good governance. It is dangerous governance. Anyone with a stake or interest in the good governance of our country should be alarmed and concerned.
Today, the federal government spends more money than any federal government before it. It is bigger, in terms of workforce, than ever before, yet what are the results? Millions of immigration applications are backlogged. Passport applications are severely delayed. New NEXUS and FAST applications are far behind schedule. The Phoenix pay system disaster continues. Government transparency is all but gone as journalists, researchers and Canadians cannot access federal information because the access to information system is broken in many federal departments.
Another irony I will point out is that despite the record number of federal employees and a track record of nothing working, this big-spending Liberal government spent $14.6 billion last year on outsourcing contracts to businesses outside of the public service to do public service work. This is yet another indication that the federal government is too big, which is causing it to break down.
Canadians are paying for reckless Liberal spending. We are not benefiting from it. In fact, future Canadian generations are at risk because of that and the debt the Liberal government has incurred. Canadians must realize that as the Liberals make more promises for a better tomorrow to detract us from the issues of today, none of the problems they have created, which Canadians now face, are getting fixed. After seven years of Liberal government incompetence in Ottawa, Canadians are realizing they are worse off today compared to when the Liberals first took office in 2015. We need real solutions to these real problems that Canadians are facing right now.
Instead of creating more cash, the Conservatives would create more of what cash buys. Enough with the talking, we need to get more homes built. We need to make energy more affordable, and to do so we would repeal anti-energy laws and get Canadian energy out to market. We would cut corporate welfare and axe the carbon tax. We would tackle climate change by making alternative energy cheaper, not by making Canadian energy more expensive. We would reform the tax system to ensure that whenever people work an extra hour, take an extra shift or earn an extra bonus they are always better off and would keep more of that dollar for themselves and their needs, not for the government's political agenda.
Conservatives have an ambitious vision and plan for when we form government after the next election, but for now, I am going to do my part by voting against Bill C-32.
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- Oct/20/22 3:00:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' continued use of the ArriveCAN app destroyed any chance of recovery this summer for our Canadian tourism sector. Canadians are struggling and deserve so much better, so they can be excused for being upset when the government committed $54 million to the disastrous ArriveCAN app.
Canadians simply want to know two things: Who got rich at their expense and when will we scrap this app?
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- Oct/7/22 11:45:33 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, Canadians cannot afford this costly coalition between the Liberals and the NDP. We all know they want to triple the carbon tax. Now The Globe and Mail has reported the government is on pace to more than double its spending on the disastrous ArriveCAN app. This app has cost the Canadian tourism industry its 2022 summer tourism season, has wreaked havoc on border communities, caused chaos at our airports and has hurt Canada's reputation as a world-class tourism destination.
Canadians are wondering two things. Who got rich at their expense and when will the government finally scrap this app?
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place today to debate Bill C-19, an act to implement certain provisions of budget 2022.
I will say from the outset that I will be voting against this high-spending federal budget, which proposes to dig Canada deeper into debt and drive our deficits ever higher. It simply hurts and squeezes middle-class Canadians even more through the Liberals' inflationary policies, which have created a cost-of-living crisis for Canadians in this country and a competitiveness crisis for Canadian businesses.
The Liberals and NDP often rise in this chamber to claim that they have the backs of Canadians, but their actions, as demonstrated by this reckless budget, prove otherwise. They will argue that it helps Canadians, when in fact it does the exact opposite.
If people were hoping for a return to some form of fiscal responsibility in this most recent federal budget, I am sure they were as disappointed as I was when the Liberal government revealed its $452-billion spending plan on April 7. If there was any cut in this budget, it was in the size of the document itself, which went from 725 pages in last year's budget to 304 pages in budget 2022. Perhaps that is progress, but only for a Liberal, I would presume.
Let us think about this for a moment. Federal government spending is now 25% higher than it was prepandemic. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, each Canadian’s share of the national debt is now $31,700, and it is growing quickly.
It is clear throughout budget 2022 that the Prime Minister, his Minister of Finance and his NDP friends have failed to deliver on a plan that is fiscally responsible. Instead, they have added another $50 billion in uncontrolled borrowed spending. This will only fuel inflation and result in higher taxes, because one day these costs will have to be paid.
Despite all this new spending, there was very little support announced for our hardest-hit tourism sector. There is no mention of repayment extensions for CEBA or RRRF, and there was no extension to the tourism and hospitality recovery program, which ended already last month. These were key requests made to the government by the tourism industry to assist in its recovery, yet they were all rebuffed by a government committed to the talking point that it invested $1 billion in tourism. They fail to mention that this was in last year's budget, and it was still grossly insufficient given the economic toll the pandemic raged against this industry.
At a time when tourism recovery is still very much an aspiration for many and not yet a reality or certainty, the Liberal-NDP government, through this budget, has pulled the rug from under the feet of the tourism sector by not listening to its concerns and input on these important federal business support programs.
My riding of Niagara Falls, which includes the beautiful towns of Fort Erie and Niagara-on-the-Lake, is Canada's top leisure tourism destination. Before the pandemic, Canada’s national tourism industry generated $105 billion, which is 2% of our country’s GDP, and it employed one in 10 Canadians. Meanwhile, Niagara Falls alone contributed $2.4 billion in tourism receipts, and it employs nearly 40,000 workers in Niagara in our local tourism sector.
For tourism businesses in Niagara, the 2022 summer tourism season is its first real chance at recovery in two years. The sector, which will generate 75% of its income in the next four months, will be challenged to achieve recovery in 2022, specifically as a result of the government’s policies. By not listening to the concerns of the tourism sector, the government has essentially tied one hand behind the sector’s back by ending important relief programs, all while continuing to have in place restrictive travel mandates, which serve to depress visitors from travelling to Canada for business, to visit family or for vacation.
Instead of allowing tourism to do what it does best, which is to welcome visitors from throughout the world, the Liberal-NDP government has decided to double down on its efforts to hurt the Canadian tourism and travel sector. In fact, through budget 2022, the government is allocating an additional $25 million to support the disastrous ArriveCAN app at our international border crossings and ports of entry for travellers coming into Canada.
From a tourism perspective, which is so important to Niagara, it makes no sense that this is a funding priority of the government in this budget. Instead, the Conservatives are calling on the government to scrap this app. We did not need this app to travel or welcome tourists before the pandemic. Surely, we will not need it to travel or welcome tourists after the pandemic. As the world reopens from COVID, these questions and criticisms of ArriveCAN are important and necessary to highlight and press the government about.
It was astonishing to hear the recent testimony of the Parliamentary Budget Officer in the Senate yesterday. When asked if the finance minister's long-term deficit reduction plan was believable, he said it was not. To quote media reports from the Senate hearing, the Parliamentary Budget Officer stated, “I personally don’t believe it’s credible that there will be that level of spending restraint in the period from 2024 to 2027, given all the expenditures that remain to be implemented by the government over that period of time.” Well, I have a suggestion for the government. Perhaps it can save the $25 million it has allocated to the ArriveCAN app in this year’s budget, which will do nothing to help our tourism sector recover.
Another issue that is hampering the recovery of the Canadian tourism and travel sector is the massive backlogs at our local passport offices. Simply put, constituents of mine are experiencing nightmare conditions of service that are completely unacceptable. Obtaining a passport and renewing a passport are basic services that Canadians can rightly expect from their federal government as citizens and taxpayers, but the incompetence of the Liberal-NDP government has been laid bare by this example of mismanagement. This strong demand for Canadian passports and passport renewals as this pandemic ends was completely predictable, yet the government is clearly unprepared to deal with it, which again proves it does not have a plan to actually help Canadians or our travel and tourism sector, which my riding depends on.
Budget 2022 also raises far more questions than it provides answers for regarding businesses and workers in Canada’s wine industry, which is so important to Niagara and Niagara-on-the-Lake in my riding. First, this budget provides zero details about what the important trade legal excise exemption replacement program will look like. The expensive new excise tax will be hitting Canadian wineries on July 1, which is about three weeks away, just 22 days from now. Wineries across the country badly need to learn these program details so they can prepare and brace against the impact of this new tax.
Interestingly, while no program details have yet been revealed, the federal government does show it expects a revenue windfall, forecasted at $390 million over the next five years, after the excise exemption is repealed. How they arrived at this forecast is unexplained, and it does not indicate whether they expect the industry to grow, remain stable or contract as a result of this new expensive excise tax.
Then there is the question of the $34-million difference between the $101 million of federal support over two years promised in budget 2021 and the $135 million of departmental revenue forecasted for the first two years after the excise exemption is repealed. We know that the wine industry said the $101-million commitment in budget 2021 fell way short of what was needed to offset the costs of repealing the excise exemption in order to keep the industry whole as it is.
Will the federal government commit to returning to the wine industry the $34 million that it expects to generate in tax from the wine industry? Again, we do not know. The expensive new excise tax and all these unanswered questions risk future prosperity in Canada’s wine sector, which is so important to Niagara’s identity and economy.
Budget 2022 fails Canadians and fails Niagara. It proposes to grow the federal government even bigger, when the most basic of federal services, such as passport offices, are already failing and dysfunctional. More importantly, it fails to support our important tourism and wine sectors. For all these reasons and more, I will be opposing budget 2022.
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