- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Edmonton Manning
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $109,026.29
- Government Page
- Apr/30/24 11:44:06 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would excuse the hon. member opposite. It is like the Prime Minister asking him to sell a radish as a strawberry. They are trying to convince Canadians of their mismanagement and inability to balance the budget whatsoever. This is the situation. Philosophically, if the Prime Minister does not think about fiscal responsibility and fiscal or monetary policy, what does he think about? This—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Apr/30/24 11:31:38 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the people of Edmonton Manning have been very clear in the emails I have received in the past two weeks.
Franks says, “Stop spending our money like a drunken sailor, we cannot afford the debt.” Trevor tells me, “It is absolutely ridiculous as to how much tax Canada is being charged, where does it stop?” David asked me to “Please put pressure on the P.M. to start cutting Canada's debt and balancing the budget.” Mariette says, “This budget puts our kids further into debt.” Michael writes of his “utter disgust with the latest Federal Budget.”
The feelings are unanimous: This budget is a disaster. I can only conclude that no one in the government actually considered the contents. Maybe they were too busy watching television to think about managing the country.
I must confess that I do not watch much television. When I do, I watch documentaries or live sports events. Two of the things that I avoid completely are reality television and game shows. To me, there is very little reality involved, and the games do not seem to be all that real to me.
As a result, I have to admit that I have never watched the show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, which aired more than 15 years ago. It was a short-lived program with only five episodes made. The idea was to have a panel ask questions from elementary school textbooks to see if the contestants were smarter than a fifth grader. The top prize was a million dollars, tax-free. The idea probably offends the Liberal members opposite. They do not believe that anything should be tax-free, ever.
Contestants on the show have to answer questions about Canadian history, Canadian geography and Canadian culture. However, history, geography and culture were not the only categories covered on the show. There was also mathematics, which may be the reason no Liberal MP ever appeared on the program. When it comes to math, budget 2024 shows very clearly that the Liberals are nowhere near as smart as a fifth grader.
When children are in fifth grade, math is pretty simple: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It is not rocket science. Fifth graders know that if they receive a weekly allowance from their parents, they must spend that money wisely. Common sense tells them that they cannot spend more than they have. There is no such thing as deficit spending to a ten year old.
If they spend all their money, Mom and Dad will tell them that they have to wait until next week to get any more. They are not made of money. They have to live within their means and they expect their children to learn how to do that also, especially as they feel financially stressed by all the extra taxes the government has piled on them.
If children want some shiny toy that costs more than their weekly allowance, then they have to learn to save until they can afford to buy it. Stores are reluctant to extend credit to a ten year old, especially one who has not learned the value of saving.
As I look at this budget, I wish the Minister of Finance could go back in time and become a fifth grader once again. It is apparent that she and the Liberal Party failed to learn some important lessons in childhood, and now it is all Canadians who are paying for their inability to understand basic math.
A fifth grader could tell us that money does not magically appear. It does not grow on trees. We cannot just pick up loose bills on the sidewalk. A fifth grader could tell us that spending more money to pay the interest on the national debt than we have for health care is a recipe for disaster. Adding more debt does not fix the problem.
I will not delve deeply into economic theory here. However, the Prime Minister has asked Canadians to forgive him for not thinking about monetary policy, and it would probably be wrong of me to expect his caucus to have any more interest in such matters.
I must say, though, that there have been some changes over the past eight years in the way the government approaches its responsibility to manage the nation's finances. No longer does the government think it is possible to pluck numbers out of thin air, put them in a spreadsheet and magically produce a budget that balances itself.
Fifth graders could tell us that a deficit is not just a line on a piece of paper. It is a debt, borrowed money that has to be repaid at some point. They would also tell us that until that debt is paid interest will be charged.
In simple terms that even a Liberal could understand, running a budgetary deficit costs money. If interest has to be paid on a debt, then there is less money for the things that government is supposed to do for Canadians, things like health care.
Where does the government find money to pay its debts? It raises taxes. In other words, it charges Canadians for something they did not ask for and for some reason expects them to be happy to pay.
Parents who explain to their fifth graders how important it is for individuals and families to live within their means are being undermined by a government that spends and spends, while expecting someone else to pay its bills.
This budget would increase government spending and taxes and would bring us no closer to a balanced budget than we have been at any time in almost nine years of Liberal fiscal mismanagement. Apparently the Liberals' coalition partners in the NDP approve of this highway of economic ruin. This budget would bring in $40 billion of costly new spending that Canadians cannot afford.
In 2022, the finance minister said that the budget would be balanced by the year 2027. In 2023, the date was revised to 2028. Why do the Liberals not just admit that they have no idea how to balance the budget, since magic is not working?
Before the Liberals were elected in 2015, their leader suggested that perhaps his government would run modest deficits, about $10 billion annually before returning to the balanced books that he inherited from the previous Conservative government. We all know what happened. Record deficits followed record deficits to create a national debt never seen before in the history of Canada. With this latest budget, the Liberal-NDP government is farther than ever from doing so.
What we have now is a government that will spend more money next year servicing the debt than on health care. There is no sense in that, except perhaps to the members opposite.
Canada's per capita GDP is now lower than it was six years ago. While other countries have grown their economies, Canadians are poorer. The government's solution is inflationary spending and more taxes. It needs to go back to the fifth grade.
There is a glimmer of hope. Soon we will have a Conservative government with members who are indeed smarter than a fifth grader. Conservatives will balance the books, making the spendthrift finance minister and her fiscally unaware boss a bad memory.
The common-sense Conservative plan will axe the carbon tax, balance the budget and build homes, not bureaucracy, to bring lower prices to Canadians. Even a fifth grader knows that the Liberal government is not worth the cost.
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Madam Speaker, the members opposite have finally become aware of a problem that is obvious to every Canadian except for the Prime Minister and his cabinet. Inflation is a problem. Canadians are being hurt by it. Liberal government policies are making things worse.
I am pleased that the Liberals have finally realized inflation is a problem for our country. I am less pleased with their solution. Apparently, they do not understand that their attempts to fix the problem, a problem they created with reckless government spending, will only make things worse.
I can understand that there is confusion across the aisle when I say that. How can I say their well-meaning plan will not only not work but will make things worse? This does not make sense to them. For those who truly believe that budgets balance themselves, I can understand that the concept of inflation is also a little difficult to understand. Therefore, perhaps we should take a look first at just what we are talking about. According to Wikipedia:
[I]nflation is a general increase in the prices of goods and services in an economy. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reduction in the purchasing power of money.
Wikipedia also tells us:
High or unpredictable inflation rates are regarded as harmful to an overall economy. They add inefficiencies in the market, and make it difficult for companies to budget or plan long-term. Inflation can act as a drag on productivity as companies are forced to shift resources away from products and services to focus on profit and losses from currency inflation. Uncertainty about the future purchasing power of money discourages investment and saving. Inflation can also impose hidden tax increases. For instance, inflated earnings push taxpayers into higher income tax rates unless the tax brackets are indexed to inflation.
With high inflation, purchasing power is redistributed from those on fixed nominal incomes, such as some pensioners whose pensions are not indexed to the price level, towards those with variable incomes whose earnings may better keep pace with the inflation. This redistribution of purchasing power will also occur between international trading partners. Where fixed exchange rates are imposed, higher inflation in one economy than another will cause the first economy's exports to become more expensive and affect the balance of trade. There can also be negative effects to trade from an increased instability in currency exchange prices caused by unpredictable inflation.
This is Wikipedia. It is common information there, but the difference is that some understand it and some do not. Some refuse to even look at it or understand it. To put it simply, in terms that even a Liberal can understand, inflation harms the economy and hurts the people of Canada. Government policies should not make inflation higher. That should be a common understanding. It is simple and should be something that we all should live by.
This now brings us to the Liberals' response to inflation, which is to create Bill C-31, an act respecting cost of living relief measures related to dental care and rental housing. The Liberals, with their imperfect understanding of inflation, are trying to make things better. They are ignoring the economic experts who say that increasing government spending adds to inflation. The Liberals' solution does not fix the problem, but will just make it worse.
It may come as a surprise to the Liberals, but their children's dental care is not a high priority for many Canadian families these days. Parents wish they could be more concerned about dental health and the state of their children's teeth, but when they are having difficulties finding the money to feed their children they are not spending much time booking dentist appointments.
The Prime Minister, as we discovered a couple of years ago, does not know the cost of a pound of bacon. Just to let him know, it has gone up again. Grocery prices are up by 10.8% on average, rising at the fastest pace in 40 years. Fish is up 10%. Butter is up 16%. Milk is up 21%. Eggs are up 10%. Margarine is up 37%. Bread, rolls and buns are up 17%. Dry or fresh pasta is up 32%. Fresh fruit is up by 13%. Oranges are up by 11%. Apples are up by 18%. Coffee is up by 14%. Soup is up by 19%. Lettuce is up by 12%. Potatoes are up by 10%. A family of four are spending an average of $1,200 more a year for groceries than they did in 2021. As well as record food prices, they have to deal with increases in heating, gasoline and housing costs.
Canadians are having to make hard choices about whether to put gas in the car in order to get to work in the morning, or put food on the table. This should not be happening in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The government does not seem to understand that it is part of the problem. It says to spend, spend, spend and hopes that the problem will go away. If we ask any economist, they will tell us a government cannot curtail inflation by spending.
The Liberal government is driving up the cost of living. The government's proposals do little to solve the problem. Proposals on dental care and housing will provide jobs for civil servants, but will not help most Canadians. The GST rebate will provide some welcome relief, but it is short-term and will not address the real problem: Inflationary deficits and taxes are driving up costs at the fastest rate in nearly 40 years, and that rebate will not pay for very many groceries.
As government spending increases, the deficit rises and the national debt increases. Today's spending will be paid for by our children and grandchildren, who will not thank us for our actions today.
If the Prime Minister was serious about making life more affordable for workers, families and seniors, he would cancel his planned carbon tax increases immediately. The Prime Minister is increasing the carbon tax on Canadians by three times, tripling it, and he is suggesting that he wants to help Canadians. If he wanted to help Canadians, he would not increase the carbon tax three times.
Canadian families are struggling with rising costs due to Liberal inflation. Now is not the time to raise their tax burden and make their lives worse. Instead of freezing taxes, the government is raising taxes on people who are struggling to make ends meet. Inflation is making groceries unaffordable for many people. The government is making things worse with its taxes and inflationary spending.
Those things combined are raising the stress on millions of Canadians. Many are turning to food banks as the only way to feed their families. Here in Ottawa, inflation is being blamed for record-high food bank usage. Food banks in Toronto say they are facing the highest demand in their history. In Edmonton, the University of Alberta's Campus Food Bank reported 200 new clients in September alone.
Raising the tax burden on Canadians so they have to turn to food banks to feed their children may be the Liberal policy, but it is not the policy of a compassionate government. Last year, the Prime Minister asked Canadians to forgive him for not thinking of the monetary policy. Given the fiscal trouble individual Canadians and the entire nation face, I do not think we are going to do that.
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Madam Speaker, from time to time, I have been critical of the record of the Liberal government when it comes to fiscal matters. It has consistently shown that it has no clue how an economy works and what policies are good for Canadians.
In fairness though, I feel I must congratulate the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety for their unintentional boost to the Canadian economy with Bill C-21. It is so rare that a Liberal policy is designed to provide economic stimulus that I feel this is worth noting.
Maclean's magazine's Ottawa bureau chief Shannon Proudfoot featured an interview with gun shop owner Ryan Simper. He said that after this bill was announced, his store sold every handgun it had in stock. Apparently, there is no better stimulus for the economy than scarcity of a product.
Maybe if the Liberals truly want to stimulate the economy, they should try other bans and see if that helps. I encourage them to look for areas where there may be an abundance of supply and lagging sales, and see if they can help those sectors of the economy. Maybe if they banned broccoli, for example, it would help vegetable sales. In the absence of a true economic plan, such acts would at least show them to be doing something worth while.
Handguns are already well regulated in this country. Anyone who wishes to own one legally must take a safety course and undergo background checks. It is an extensive, time-consuming process, and one that gun owners understand is there to provide reasonable protections for society.
However, those protections, like this bill, do nothing to stop the flow of illegal handguns in Canada. Gun violence and gun crime problems in Canada do not come from those who have taken a firearms safety course and have been cleared for gun ownership after their background check.
Responsible handgun owners, the ones targeted by this bill, are collectors or target shooters. They are not criminals. Those who want to join their ranks should not be prohibited from doing so merely because the government does not know how to deal with crime and the flow of illegal firearms being smuggled into Canada.
To me, it seems that the government, not knowing how to deal with the problem, wants to pretend to show the public that it is doing something. This bill will not help, but the government will not admit that. I think everyone in the House can agree that both gun violence and gun crime are not acceptable in Canadian society. Where we might differ is how to best deal with the issue.
It has been my experience that the Liberals are so blinded by their ideology that suggestions for improvement to their legislation fall on deaf ears. Nevertheless, I would like to offer them some ideas to accomplish their goal of reducing gun crime in Canada.
The idea of strengthening border controls and authorities to combat firearms smuggling, trafficking and related offences is something we can all agree on. I call on the government to make that the focus of this legislation. Drop the attacks on legal, law-abiding gun owners and concentrate on those who are already breaking Canadian law.
I should also point out that there are contradictions in this piece of legislation. There are some individuals who will be exempted from the provisions and would still be allowed to purchase handguns. That includes elite sports shooters who compete or coach in a handgun discipline recognized by the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee. The exemption makes sense.
We Canadians are proud of our Olympians, and we have had some success at pistol shooting competitions. In 1984, Linda Thom won the gold medal in pistol shooting at the Los Angeles Olympics, the first Canadian woman to win an individual gold medal in the summer Olympics since 1928 and the first Canadian to win a gold medal in the summer Olympics since 1968. She was given the honour of carrying Canada's flag at the closing ceremonies.
As an elite shooter, she would still be allowed to purchase a handgun if this legislation were to pass unchanged. However, what about those who want to follow in her footsteps?
I cannot think of any sport where one becomes a world-class athlete overnight. It takes hard work, dedication and training, usually for years. Wayne Gretzky had to learn to skate before he could even begin to put a puck in the net. How will the next Linda Thom become available, or a future Canadian Olympian become an elite shooter?
Even members of the government must understand that it requires practice, practice and more practice for a shooter to reach the level necessary to compete at the Olympics. Under Bill C-21, new participants in this sport would not be allowed to purchase a handgun to practice with. Apparently, the Liberals have decided that this is one sport they do not want to see Canada excel in.
The Conservatives have always stood for common sense firearms safety and strong consequences for those who commit firearms offences. We do not understand why the government wants to punish law-abiding firearms owners and make it difficult, if not impossible, for those who might want to take up a sport such as pistol shooting.
The government was first elected in 2015, and gun crime has gone up steadily each year, despite its arbitrary bans and its complicated and expensive buyback program. This increase in gun crime is not because those who own weapons legally are suddenly turning to lawlessness, but because illegal weapons are being smuggled into Canada and used by criminals. It has taken seven long years for the government to understand that there is a problem.
This belated realization comes only after it blocked a Conservative bill to toughen consequences for gun smuggling. If only it had concentrated on crime and criminals, I could have applauded its better-late-than-never efforts. Instead, it is once again targeting responsible gun owners who have committed no crimes, which makes us wonder how serious it is about really being tough on crime. After all, this is a government that intends to remove through other legislation mandatory minimum sentences for robbery with a firearm, weapons trafficking, discharging a firearm with intent, using a firearm in the commission of offences, and possession of a firearm knowing its possession is unauthorized, and more.
Members will forgive me for thinking that this new revelation that gun smuggling needs to be dealt with is just a lot of words. There are already laws on the books to deal with such acts if the government has the will and the police have the resources to enforce them. If it were serious about crime, it would not be trying to target responsible gun-owning Canadians who have followed all the rules and restrictions that come with gun ownership. Of course, they are an easy target for a government that does not seem to know how to address the issues of most concern to Canadians.
Canadians are tired of false promises from the government. This bill once again proves that the Liberals do not understand where they should be focusing their efforts in order to protect the people of Canada.
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- Apr/29/22 10:48:34 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, the weight of a Canadian one-dollar coin, what we call the loonie, is 6.27 grams. This is a simple number that even a child can understand. I bring that to the House's attention because it seems me that members opposite have lost touch with reality, while at the same time losing their ability to manage Canada's economy. Let us go back to basics in the hope that the Liberals and their NDP friends can gain a glimmer of understanding. I will try to use simple numbers, ones that even a Liberal can understand.
Bill C-8, the economic and fiscal update 2021, adds an additional $70 billion to government spending and brings our national debt to $1.2 trillion. Until the government, such a number was inconceivable, which means the members opposite can be forgiven for not understanding the number, even if Canadians cannot forgive them for their spendthrift ways.
A trillion dollars is a million million dollars. That is a one with 12 zeroes, if we are writing it on paper. It is tough to visualize a trillion dollars. However, if we were to take that debt and pay it off with loonie coins, the weight of cash would be 8,400,000,000 kilograms. That is still a difficult number to comprehend, but since the Liberals have no plan to ever reduce the debt, let alone pay it, maybe it does not matter if we cannot visualize it.
Let us look at it in a different way. Using imperial measures, this debt of 1.2 trillion loonies would weigh 7,860,428 tonnes. This is also an unfathomable number, but let us visualize this. The Liberal disaster weighs 150 times as much as the RMS Titanic, the unsinkable ship that went down off the coast of Newfoundland 110 years ago this month in one of the biggest maritime disasters in history, or of all time, to be specific.
The government's fiscal management is a disaster that is 150 times as bad. It is no wonder the Liberals hide behind the big numbers that they hope people do not understand. They have used the pandemic as an excuse to make changes to the economy, to bring in $176 billion in new spending completely unrelated to COVID-19. They are hoping Canadians will not notice, that they will be too distracted by events to notice that the Liberals are spending without any concerns about the future.
Canadians are, on the whole, a financially responsible people. We know that we should not spend more than we earn and that bills must be paid. We know that money for government programs comes from taxes paid by each Canadian. Canadians understand that we are already taxed at the breaking point. The taxpayers of this country cannot afford new taxes and tax increases. At least most Canadians understand that. Those who do not apparently become Liberal or NDP members of Parliament. Those two parties seem determined to spend this country into bankruptcy.
I was born in a country where the government has had to declare bankruptcy. The suffering of ordinary citizens there is heartbreaking. I do not want to see this happen here in Canada.
People in my riding of Edmonton Manning are concerned about rising prices. They feel they will not be able to make ends meet. They want to know when the Liberals will get serious about the economy. They are not happy that the answer seems to be “never”.
Inflation was 6.7% in March, the highest level in more than 30 years. The government response has been a collective shrug. It is an international problem, they say, as they add more inflationary taxes to Canadians' burdens. As gasoline prices reach record highs, the Liberals' response is to raise the tax on fuel to make things more expensive for Canadians. Gasoline costs are up almost 40% in the last year, and groceries are up by almost 10%. Furniture prices are up about 8% in March alone. Housing prices have doubled under the government.
Young Canadians used to dream of graduating from university, getting a job and buying their first home. These were the milestones of adulthood and rites of passage. With the Liberal government, that dream has changed to a nightmare of crippling student debt and living with parents forever because they will never be able to afford a house of their own.
My constituents are concluding that either the Liberals do not understand the problem or they do not care. Canadians deserve a government that will take real action to fight the cost of living crisis and outline a clear commitment to control inflation. We will not find that in Bill C-8.
Under the government, the cost of a typical house has risen from $435,000 to $810,000. With inflation, purchasing power is down, not up, and wages are not keeping pace. Who can afford a house under this titanic disaster of a Liberal policy? Our economy has hit an iceberg and is sinking fast under the weight of 150 Titanic ships.
We are told inflation will cost Canadians $2,000 each this year. We already know the Prime Minister does not shop for his own groceries, so he has not noticed the increases in prices on everything in the store. Bread, milk and other dairy products, meat and vegetables are all more expensive than they were this time last year. What is the government doing to address the concerns of Canadians concerned about their ability to afford nutritious food? It is doing absolutely nothing.
Rising prices and inflation are happening everywhere, they say. That is just an excuse for inaction. If the government does not understand how the economy works, if it cannot figure out how to help average Canadians in their time of need, maybe it should do the honourable thing, step aside and let someone else fix its problems, someone who will have Canadians' backs instead of stabbing those backs with high prices. That, of course, is not going to happen. The Liberals have no idea what a trillion dollars is, or how much 1.2 trillion loonies weigh. They do not seem to understand that there is a problem.
The Prime Minister has asked Canadians to forgive him for not thinking about monetary policy. That is a disaster. How can we forgive him and his government for polices that make things worse for families and worse for the middle class? How can we forgive him for a $1.2-trillion debt that our grandchildren will still be paying off?
The government is a fiscal disaster of titanic proportions. There is nothing in this bill that can hide that fact.
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