- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Simcoe North
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $121,028.17
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, yes, sometimes inflationary readings indicate economic uncertainty. The government's own numbers were projecting 3.1% growth next year, and now it is projecting only 0.7% growth. There are economic challenges on the horizon. The government wants to talk about making the EI system better. We abandoned the EI system during COVID because it was inadequate. I would ask the government where the reforms are that it promised on the EI system to cover more individuals. I agree with the member's comments, and I thank her for her contribution.
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- Nov/23/23 2:39:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government's record is inflationary deficits driving up the cost of living. In fact, one year ago, the finance minister stood in the House and presented a plan that would balance the budget in 2027. When asked whether that was by mistake or by design, the minister took great boastfulness in saying that it was deliberate and by design. Except now we learn that the budget will be balanced in the year never.
Does the government actually have a plan to ever balance the budget and bring down inflationary deficits so Canadians can keep their homes?
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- Nov/23/23 2:37:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal government, everything is up. Mortgages are up, rent payments are up, inflation is up, groceries are up and taxes are up, yet the Bank of Canada has asked for help keeping inflation down. It has asked for governments to limit their spending growth to 2.5% each year, except guess what the government just announced: An increase in growth of spending of over 5% for next year.
Is the minister trying to make misery go up for Canadians too?
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- Nov/20/23 2:38:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my message for any provincial premier is the same as the message for the Prime Minister: Take responsibility for government spending because it is driving inflation and making interest rates unaffordable for Canadians.
The Bank of Canada says that all governments need to spend less than 2% growth in order to keep inflation under control. The government's own projections in the budget in the spring says that the government will spend over 3.5% growth next year versus this year.
When are Liberals going to get that they are part of the problem and they have to balance the budget so Canadians can keep their homes?
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- Oct/23/23 2:34:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, spending is out of control and inflationary deficits are pushing up mortgage costs. The Parliamentary Budget Officer says that the deficit this year will increase to over $46 billion. Everyone now agrees that spending is driving interest rates.
Every month, 70,000 households are renewing their mortgage and they are realizing that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost.
Will the government rein in inflationary deficits and put forth a plan to balance the budget so Canadians can keep their homes?
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- Sep/19/23 2:35:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, how about a fact? When one month in 27 months the interest rate goes below 3% the current finance minister declares victory. She said that the government's plan to bring inflation down is working, but that is not what is happening. In fact, it is going up because of rising energy costs, but the current government is determined to make energy more expensive by increasing the carbon tax. Here is an idea. Why does it not reduce the carbon tax or other taxes on energy and make it affordable again for Canadians?
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- Sep/19/23 2:34:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, mortgage costs for Canadians are going up because of the Liberal-NDP government's spending and deficits. Even the current finance minister said that spending and deficits are like pouring fuel on the inflationary fire. John Manley said that it is like pressing on the gas pedal while the Bank of Canada is pressing on the brake with higher interest rates.
Canadians are realizing that the current Prime Minister is not worth the cost. When will the government stop its inflationary deficits so that Canadians can keep a roof over their heads?
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- Jun/13/23 2:58:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it was a previous Bank of Canada governor who said that government deficits made interest rates go higher this year.
However, let us talk about the government's predictions. It said interest rates would remain low forever. They have not. It said inflation would not come. It has. It said once inflation came, it would be here just a short time. It is still here.
Now the government is telling everybody that inflation is coming down and the economic uncertainty is over. Do all the ministers agree with the finance minister? How many predictions does someone need to get wrong before they are held accountable?
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- Jun/13/23 2:57:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it was a little puzzling last week that, on the same day the Bank of Canada raised interest rates, the finance minister said, “We are very close to the end of this difficult time, and to a return to low, stable inflation and strong, steady growth.” Now, experts are saying the risk is that inflation will not come down, which means interest rates and mortgage rates will be higher.
Is it not time the government cut inflationary deficits, or inflationary taxes like the carbon tax, so interest rates and mortgage rates can come down for Canadians?
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- Jun/5/23 2:44:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House, we are proud of a record that, during the last recession, cut taxes for Canadians.
However, let us talk about energy and food costs, which are some of the biggest contributors to inflation. It is puzzling that the government continues to increase taxes on both fuel and food and making them more expensive by continuing to increase the carbon tax. These carbon taxes, as the central bank says, are inflationary, and this government wants to impose a second carbon tax, which will just make food and fuel more expensive, because we have to ship the food to the table and farmers use fuel in their operations.
When will the government realize that its policies are making inflation worse?
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- Jun/5/23 2:43:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Liberal deficits drive inflation and Canadians are paying the price.
John Manley said that government fiscal policy is making it harder to contain inflation, and Stephen Poloz said that government deficits last year made the Bank of Canada raise interest rates higher, which means Canadians are paying a higher price for government spending. Just last month, inflation went higher when the Minister of Finance said Canadians should expect inflation to go lower.
Is there a plan to end inflationary deficits and spending to bring down inflation and interest rates?
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- May/29/23 9:07:35 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, it is very clear that the Minister of Finance does not want to stand behind her government's record and its choices in issuing debt.
Here is another question. How much more will the government have to pay if inflation does not come down and interest rates do not come down, as it is projecting them to come down in its own budget, when it rolls over its debt in the next two years?
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- May/17/23 2:44:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, before tabling the budget, the finance minister said that “by exercising fiscal restraint” and by not pouring fuel on the inflationary fire, the Liberals would ensure they could responsibly invest in Canadians. However, we need to pay attention to what the government does and not what it says, and what the government did was increase spending by $60 billion, or $4,300 for every family in Canada.
When will the government take its own advice and realize its spending is making life more unaffordable for Canadians?
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- May/15/23 2:47:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the finance minister and the government have quite a bad track record for making predictions. They told us interest rates would remain low, so we must spend. They told us that deflation was more likely than inflation. When inflation came, they said it would be here for just a little while. The minister assured us the economy would continue to grow, and now it has slowed to a halt. They are always playing catch-up, and Canadians are paying the price. We are now spending as much on interest on the debt as we are sending to provinces for health care.
How can Canadians afford any more of the Liberal government?
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- Mar/7/23 2:07:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on April 1, the government is increasing the excise tax on alcohol, beer, spirits and wine by over 6%.
As if inflation is not hurting Canadians enough, now they have to dig deeper in their pockets to enjoy their favourite libation. It is expected that this would cost taxpayers, Canadians, consumers and businesses $125 million more next year. It is enough to drive one to drink.
The excise tax affects all producers, big and small, including local breweries such as Quayle's Brewery in Oro-Medonte, and the entrepreneurs who are just starting out, who will now have to manage a higher cost.
Why does the government not just pause the tax hike, even for just a year, or cap it at a reasonable level when inflation is out of control? It needs to put a cork in the escalator, free the beer, and let Canadians enjoy their favourite spirits without having to dig deeper in their pockets.
What would Bob and Doug McKenzie have to say? They would say, “Stop hosing us, eh.”
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- Feb/14/23 10:45:54 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will consider any recommendation that sees the energy bills of Canadians reduced.
In addition, if the member wants to talk about profiteering corporations, I am not sure how a windfall tax is going to lower inflation for Canadians. However, I do support reviews by the Competition Tribunal and other independent officers as to whether there is unnecessary profiteering or price gouging going on. These are officers and agents of the country. We should be listening to them and taking their advice. There is a grocery study happening at committee. The Competition Tribunal is also looking at the grocery study. If we want to do more of that, I would be open to that as well.
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- Feb/14/23 10:43:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will resist the temptation to quote Nickelback, but if the hon. member listened to the speech, I had recognized that there are two causes of inflation. One is demand and the other is supply, both of them cause inflation in this country. More recently, economists, former Liberals and Bank of Canada governors are suggesting that the causes of inflation are more domestic than they are international. That means the things that happen here at home are causing inflation.
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- Feb/14/23 10:32:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure in this place. Today, I want to talk about inflation and spending. I have been here for just over a year. I have driven all over Ottawa, and I still cannot find the money tree that the government seems to have in its backyard, which it finds to spend on just about everything.
Let us find out why spending matters. It drives inflation. There are two kinds of inflation. There is demand-side inflation, where there is too much demand for too few goods or, as we often hear, too much money chasing too few goods. There is also supply-side inflation, which is not enough goods to meet the demand. We have both of those in Canada.
The problem is that the government would have us believe that the only issues causing inflation are supply-side issues that are outside of Canada's borders. However, many are now pointing out that inflation is being driven by too much demand in Canada, because we have too much money chasing too few goods. That is because we extended COVID supports longer than we needed to. We have prominent Liberal members, former members of Parliament, former finance ministers and former governors of the Bank of Canada suggesting that there is too much demand in Canada.
The Bank of Canada is trying to lower demand. That is why it keeps raising interest rates. However, when one raises interest rates, it really hurts people, including those vulnerable folks who are looking for shelter.
Inflation is even worse. Inflation hurts the lowest-income people, seniors and the most vulnerable Canadians the most. Every time they go to the grocery store, they feel like they are getting squeezed. They see it every day.
One of the main drivers of inflation is energy prices. It has been happening for the last number of years. Consistently, on this side of the House, we have put forward ideas to reduce the cost of energy. If one reduces the cost or the price of the thing causing inflation, one will reduce inflation.
I talked about spending and COVID supports. The government would have us believe that this is a binary discussion, and if one does not believe in government spending, then one did not support any of the COVID supports. That is not what we have been saying on this side of the House. In fact, this side of the House supported, in the very earliest days, the government putting forward programs to help people.
However, as COVID wore on and it became clear that there was abuse and that people were receiving COVID support payments that they should not have received, including prisoners, people who were lying, fraud artists and organized crime, people said, hang on a second, maybe we should consider making some changes. Even the Auditor General recommended that the government make some changes to the process they were using.
The government said not to worry. At the end it would go back, it would audit everybody and it would recover the money. However, the cheques were cashed and the money is gone. The CRA, which is supposed to be in charge of auditing the payments, said that it is not really worth the effort to go after everybody the Auditor General identified. That seems a little unnerving.
We are talking about $32 billion that the Auditor General said should be investigated. That is for payments that went to individuals who were ineligible but who got money anyway. There are also additional billions of dollars that went to people who were eligible, because of the government's poor design of a program, who should not have been eligible. That includes corporations that paid dividends to their shareholders, and they took the wage subsidy. They also had money to repurchase shares. That was about $7 billion or $8 billion. The Canadians for Tax Fairness put out a report yesterday showing how much abuse there was of the wage subsidy by very high-earning corporations.
In addition, we gave money to students, when the economy was open, to stay home and not work. That was another $8 billion or $9 billion. We are talking about almost $50 billion of COVID support payments out of a total $200 billion that might have gone to people who should not have had it. That is like 25% of the program.
That is why we are concerned. That is why we think that the Auditor General has given the government pretty good advice when she says that it should identify, go after and recover the payments.
It will increase Canadians' confidence in the integrity of the system. If the government just hopes that we all forget about it, Canadians are not going to believe that the government is working in their best interests. In fact, we need the government to take more seriously those who abuse the system so that it ensures the integrity of the system.
Canadians' support for institutions is falling, because the institutions are failing Canadians. We cannot simply say it is going to be too hard to look at these payments or to recover the money, so it is not really worth the effort. It should always be worth the effort to make sure that we recover payments that were improperly paid to Canadians.
We could have an honest discussion about those very low-income individuals who made an honest mistake when they applied. The amount is probably one or two billion dollars, and we could have a discussion about what kind of program, repayment or amnesty would make sense.
The Auditor General has called into question some of those payments. The Parliamentary Budget Officer also identified that over 40% of all spending that happened during COVID never actually went to helping Canadians through COVID. Those are two respected, independent officers of Parliament who have called into question the government's entire COVID support plan.
In times of inflation, we should always worry about top-line government spending, because when the government spends, it competes for goods. The government is spending 25% more per year, every year, than it did pre-COVID. The government calls that fiscal restraint. I have never met somebody who increases their spending by 25% and says they are spending a lot less money than we think they are.
We also have the tightest labour market ever seen. Unemployment is at an incredible low, yet the government continues to hire employees at a blistering pace. The private sector is trying to hire employees. They want to grow their businesses, to recover from COVID, to employ people who pay taxes and who pay corporate taxes. They cannot find anybody to work.
We have hotels with entire floors shut down, because they cannot find anybody to work there. It is not that they do not have the demand. They are turning people away. However, they do not have people to work, to open the rooms, to get the revenue, to pay the taxes, to pay the labour and to grow the GDP. Instead, the government wants to hire all those individuals and have them work for the government. That is not the way to grow ourselves out of this issue.
The government said, for almost five or six years, that we have to spend money because interest rates are so low. When the government was asked what happens if interest rates go up, it said not to worry because interest rates were going to remain low for the foreseeable future. When the government was asked what would happen to the cost of servicing the debt if interest rates went up, it said that was never going to happen.
Just this year, the government is going to spend $43 billion a year servicing and paying interest on the debt. Last year, it was $24 billion. Do members know how much we will spend on health care transfers to provinces next year? It will be $45 billion. We are going to spend almost as much money on servicing the debt as we will on transfers to the provinces for health care.
Everybody is wondering where we could find more money for health care. How about we spend less money on interest on the debt so that we would have more money for the things that Canadians rely on. However, that means we would have to spend less money on the things that are not important. The government has so many priorities that it has absolutely none at all.
The other issue is that the government does not need more revenue. The government has decided to continue to increasing taxes on things like the excise tax, which is a great example. The excise tax is going up on alcohol, beer, spirits and wine. It is going to cost industries tens of millions of dollars, which may even increase the price of those libations that members of Parliament and Canadians enjoy.
The government is increasing the excise tax because it linked it to inflation. However, when it decided to link that tax to inflation, no one believed that inflation was going to be 7%. All reasonable people are saying to take a pause on raising that tax. We do not need to continually hurt people as they try to purchase a six-pack of beer, a bottle of wine or a bottle of their favourite spirit.
The government does not need the revenue. It is making more money than it has ever made before. It is breaking records every day. The government needs to reduce its spending, to make sure that it is not taking on as much debt, to reduce the interest cost on the debt and to make sure that it does not compete with the private sector.
We need to make sure that we reduce inflation and to make sure Canadians can afford to live in this country.
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- Nov/15/22 3:04:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians should judge a government by what it does, not what it says. What the government does is spend, spend, spend. Spending is up 30% versus pre-COVID levels and Canadians are paying the price. Inflation is at a 40-year high level. Next year, we are going to spend almost as much on servicing the debt as we do on health care transfers to the provinces.
Canadians cannot afford much more of this costly coalition. Will the government end its inflationary spending?
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Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that growing the size of the government is going to fix the inflation problem. I support the NDP opposition day motion, which called for a study on greedflation with respect to grocery stores. I hope we do not prejudge the end of that study. I am looking forward to that study being done, as well as the one by the Competition Bureau. It is very important work. Any companies that are price gouging should be held accountable, and we should be looking at other industries too. I would welcome the study of other industries before we start saying whether we would agree to additional taxes at this time.
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