- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Edmonton—Wetaskiwin
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $178,671.82
- Government Page
- May/6/24 9:04:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to ask a question about incompetent Trudeau government overspending. Of course, it raises the ire of members on the other side sometimes when I talk about the Trudeau government of the 1970s and 1980s and the devastating cuts that resulted in the mid-1990s of 32% over two years from 1995 to 1997 for spending on health care, social services and education.
I am wondering if the hon. member shares the same concern about the incompetent Trudeau government overspending of the 1970s and 1980s and also of his own Liberal government as it relates to our ability to fund important social programs in the future.
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- Apr/9/24 12:34:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Miramichi—Grand Lake.
It is a pleasure to stand here on behalf of the constituents of Edmonton—Wetaskiwin.
That was an interesting exchange we just heard when the NDP member took issue with many of the things the Liberals are doing that are destroying the economy of our country right now. However, at the same time, when she and her colleagues have a chance to vote against the Liberal government and go into an election to change the government, they side with it every single time.
I just had the opportunity to come back from my constituency, where, like many colleagues, I was meeting with constituents. I had 6 two-hour constituent round tables last week. I had a chance to interact with dozens of constituents at these round tables, and a lot of issues were raised. Interestingly, the number one issue was not the carbon tax at those round tables. Time and again, in Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, what was articulated at those round tables by constituents was how we can get rid of the Liberal Prime Minister before he destroys the economy of Canada.
I will just mention a few of the other issues that were raised. The carbon tax was definitely the main policy issue raised, as well as housing, runaway deficits, safety in our streets, immigration and the recent challenges with the immigration system. Of course, health care is always raised, especially at a time when it is clear that we are going to spend more on interest on the debt the Liberal government has rang up than we will spend on health care in this country over the next few years, so there are a lot of issues to talk about.
I think it is helpful, in the context of what we are talking about today, to revisit the legacy of economic chaos that is in the DNA of the Liberal Party, and that is the Trudeau legacy. It is very important to revisit the Trudeau legacy of the 1970s and 1980s. It was a Liberal government that ran up 14 deficits in 15 years, and there were results of that time. Of course, that was a time of drastic economic experimentation by, at the time, the most left-leaning prime minister we had ever had. Obviously, that has definitely been beaten by the current government, but at that time, it was the most left-leaning government we had ever had. It undertook an economic experiment, and we saw crises, including an energy crisis, an inflation crisis, a housing crisis and a national unity crisis, that stretched right to the end of that government in 1984 and, interestingly, way beyond the time it was in power.
Of course, the nine years following that government was the Mulroney government. I remember when some of the Liberal members were new and would come into the House in 2015 and 2016 to talk about the biggest deficits in Canadian history being under the Mulroney government, but what they did not mention at that time was that those deficits were made up entirely of interest on Trudeau's debt. The deficits it ran were largely in balance, in fact, probably a bit in surplus, but the interest payments on the Trudeau debt caused us to run deficits for many years after that. That bill came due in about the mid-nineties, from 1995 to 1997, when we were under the Liberal Chrétien-Martin government. Some of these members served under that government. When the bill came due, we saw absolutely dramatic cuts, some of the most significant cuts we have ever seen, to health care and social services spending in this country.
That is interesting because Liberal members often stand up to ask what Conservatives are going to cut when we talk about bringing some sanity to our fiscal situation in this country, but what really made significant cuts to spending on things that are important to Canadians was that Liberal government, which in two years, from 1995 to 1997, cut 32% from health care and social services transfers in this country. Can members imagine a government in 2024 having to cut 32% from health care and social services funding? That is what happened from 1995 to 1997 because of the absolutely tragic economic legacy of a Trudeau government.
Here we are again. We are now eight years into a government. It has been eight deficits in eight years for the current government. I assume we will have a ninth coming up soon, so it will be nine deficits in nine years. That is 23 deficits in 24 years under the economic policies of the current Prime Minister and the Prime Minister Trudeau of the seventies and eighties.
Under the current Liberal government, backed up by the NDP, we have doubled our country's debt. Taking a look at the things that could help that, and thinking about the conversation we are having today, what might help us in terms of our economic situation right now and the chaos we are seeing economically and otherwise is, perhaps, revenues from oil and gas. That might actually help.
I took a look at the oil and gas import numbers for 2022, the most recent numbers we have to date, and they would be astonishing to Canadians who assume we have a lot of oil and gas production in Canada. Obviously, we are one of the world leaders in terms of our vast resources and the potential that comes with our oil and gas resources, but what a lot of people do not realize is that Canada, every year, imports oil and gas, because the policies of the current Liberal government have made it impossible to build a pipeline in this country. Instead, mostly to eastern Canada, we are importing oil and gas.
In 2022 we imported $21.5 billion in crude oil alone. That was up 46% from 2021. Of course, the Americans are the number one supplier of oil and gas products like crude oil to Canada. The number two and three countries are Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, totalling over $5 billion in crude oil alone coming into Canada. On refined petroleum products, we are talking about even more: $26.1 billion in 2022 alone, which was up 55% from 2021. We were importing about $47 billion between the two of those in 2022, and that is product that could absolutely have been sourced here in Canada.
The reason that situation exists is that we hold Canadian producers, hard-working producers and workers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador and across the country, to a higher standard than we hold producers in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. We do not ask producers in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia to account for upstream emissions, for the impact on the environment or for the impact on the social fabric of their countries.
It was interesting that about a year ago we had the minister before committee and I had a chance to ask him about this. His was response was that, of course, Canada has no ability to hold those countries to account. Their own domestic governments control those types of things, and Canada cannot walk in and hold them to account, but we definitely hold Canadian producers to account for that. The one thing we can do is refuse to take oil and gas from countries that do not meet the Canadian standard, the same standard we apply to Canadian producers.
This is the world the Prime Minister has created in eight years. If we go back eight years and take a look at the situation that existed eight years ago, and our leader summed it up very well this morning when he spoke, it was a world where we had a balanced budget. In 2015, we had worked hard, coming out of the economic slowdown, and The New York Times spoke of Canada having the richest middle class in the world, having just overtaken the Americans after decades. It was a situation where we did not have the housing crisis we have right now.
I look forward to speaking some more about these things when we take questions from the other parties.
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- Dec/1/23 11:57:14 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberals love to bury the very real hardships of Canadians in ridiculous non-answers such as that.
The per capita GDP numbers represent the real world, where Canadians actually live and where they are getting to be worse off. It has not been this bad since the Trudeau economic rampage of the 1970s and 1980s, which took us decades to recover from.
Does anyone over there have the courage to look the Prime Minister in the eye and tell him that following the Trudeau economic blueprint is destroying our economy?
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- Dec/1/23 11:55:49 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this week, we learned that our Canadian economy shrank by 1.1% in the last quarter, while the U.S. economy grew by 5.2%. When our leader pointed this out, a Liberal minister responded by saying, “we actually have an economic plan”. Rarely has the word “actually” been less convincingly used in a sentence than that. The last time we saw a plan like this was from the equally incompetent Trudeau government of the 1970s and 1980s, which obliterated our economy.
When will the government realize that those Trudeau economics are as bad for Canada now—
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- Oct/30/23 6:08:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it would be hard to accuse me of not standing up for the rights of people with disabilities or vulnerable Canadians in this House.
The Liberals fearmonger about cuts all the time. The only time that significant cuts were undertaken, unbelievable, mind-numbing cuts, was under a Liberal government, when 32% was cut from the Canada health transfer and the Canada social transfer in two years under a Liberal government because of the disastrous Trudeau economic legacy of the seventies and eighties, 14 deficits in 15 years.
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Madam Speaker, it has been really interesting to sit in the House today and listen to Liberal speaker after Liberal speaker declaring victory on the housing situation, talking about all of the fantastic things they are doing right now and announcing new fancy program title after new fancy program title. We have seen, over the last eight years, ever-larger announcements in terms of spending, but never as part of the conversation do we get to actual outcomes. By “outcomes”, I do not mean the fancy titles or the big numbers; I mean actual homes being built for Canadians.
It has been eight years that the government has been in power, and it is now in partnership, coalition or whatever we want to call it with the NDP. We have never, ever, been so short of homes in this country. Rents have never been higher than they are right now. The cost to purchase a home has never been higher than it is right now. It is harder for Canadians to get housing than it has ever been in our history. Today it is harder than ever, after eight years of the Liberal party's being in government, yet speaker after speaker has come out there and, with a straight face, declared victory and made ever bigger pronouncements.
I do have to point out that I will be sharing my time with the hard-working member for Peterborough—Kawartha, and I thank my colleague beside me here, who snuck a little note in. Some might have noticed that, and every colleague of the House knows what that is like.
The interesting thing about this is that it has never been worse, but the only time it was even close was in the disastrous Trudeau years of the seventies and eighties. Many, but not all, members of the House remember the disastrous Trudeau legacy. We had a housing crisis, an inflation crisis and an economic crisis. We had a unity crisis. Does that sound familiar? Sometimes it gets a bit confusing when I talk about the disastrous Trudeau legacy, and some Liberal members from time to time bounce up and get defensive of their own government right now, another disastrous Liberal government. I understand the confusion, but if we remember those days, the real difficulty around them and the real tragedy around what happened in the seventies and eighties were not just the 14 deficits in 15 years that led to that unbelievable economic pain for families. Many of us remember it; we have just heard another member talk about how difficult it was during that time. However, we were not trading short-term pain for long-term gain; we actually had long-term pain as well, so it was short-term pain and long-term pain, because in the mid-nineties, from 1995 to 1997, another Liberal government had to pay the price for all of the deficits we ran up.
We ask this question on a regular basis in the House: How much interest is the Government of Canada going to be paying today on the debt it has run up over the last eight years? We never get an answer from the Liberals, but the answer is that it is in the $44-billion range, and the suggestion is now that, because of interest rates, that number could be higher. We pay the same on interest, on nothing, as we pay in the Canada health transfer right now in this country, after eight years of a Liberal-NDP government. We are throwing away between $44 billion and $50 billion a year on interest payments that we could be spending on other things that are important. We could be unlocking the potential of our housing sector if we just got a handle on our economy.
The Liberal answer, if they had that money, might be to just spend $50 billion, do a big announcement and call it something fancy, but we would say on this side that our leader today did a fantastic speech as he introduced his bill, Bill C-356. I would highly recommend that people check out his speech on social media: on X, Facebook or Youtube. His message is resonating with a growing number of Canadians. There are many points in the speech that people can reference. If people want to get a bit of hope and a bit of wind in their sails as they are trying to deal with crisis after crisis that they have seen befall them because of actions undertaken by the NDP-Liberal government of the day, they should read Bill C-356 and watch the speech the Conservative leader, the future prime minister, made today. I guarantee them they will find some hope in that speech.
However, we are dealing with the issues we have right now, and we could be dealing with this issue for two more years. It was very interesting today to hear NDP speakers. Many of them are very passionate about these issues and have very different views of the world than I would have. They have very different ideas than we have over here on how we achieve results for Canadians. It was very interesting to hear them speak so critically of the Liberal government and meanwhile every single day they vote to keep the government in power. As bad as an incompetent Liberal government is, it is even worse to be the party that is voting consistently to keep its members in power and is propping them up day after day.
I will touch on another thing that is kind of interesting. Over the last few days, when we talk about the economic situation, these things all connect together of course as we deal with the devastating economics. As we learned from the Trudeau debacle of the seventies and eighties, everything is connected and eventually there is a cost.
Over the last couple of days, we have had this conversation around the carbon tax. Apparently there are places in this country where Liberals hold seats but they are worried they will not hold them for very much longer. We found out that those Liberal members of Parliament have a lot of influence over their government, because the government is so scared it is going to lose those seats as it looks at the polls. It not just Atlantic Canada; it is other places too.
The Minister of Rural Economic Development told the entire country, in an interview, that the reason people are getting a break in one part of the country on the carbon tax is not because it makes environmental sense or even because it makes economic sense but because it makes political sense. If someone votes Liberal, they will be rewarded with tax breaks, but if someone is in a part of the country that does not vote Liberal, they do not get those same rewards.
As we are having this conversation, I started thinking about where this goes next. Is there going to be another interview next weekend that is going to talk about a housing program, for example, that is going to benefit municipalities that vote Liberal? I do not think the NDP has this kind of power, but does it maybe extend to NDP ridings too? I do not think NDP members have been strong enough negotiators to work that into their deal, but perhaps. These are reasonable questions Canadians might have. Where does this end?
The Liberal Party is clearly panicking. It is clearly plummeting. It is in a free fall right now and making decisions that, in a normal context, would not make any sense. It has been making those types of decisions for the last eight years, which has brought us to where we are right now, but Canadians are waking up to this.
My hope is our NDP colleagues start to see this as well and that at some point in time we have an opportunity to have a confidence vote in this Parliament, like we have on a fairly regular basis. Maybe this confidence vote would be different. Maybe rather than just saying with words that they do not have confidence in the government, because we all understand that, they will actually vote that way on behalf of their constituents. Maybe we can have these debates in a meaningful way, get this country back on track and have these debates during potentially an election time even. That is how dire the situation is right now.
As I wrap up, I really look forward to questions. I hope in the questions coming from the Liberals' side maybe they will ask us about Bill C-356. I have some points I can get to if they are curious to know answers to some of the challenges we have.
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- Oct/30/23 4:21:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to that lengthy speech. It was long enough that the member for Kingston and the Islands probably could have put out about three polls on Twitter.
When I listen to the member, I always come back to thinking about the disastrous Trudeau legacy of the seventies and eighties. These guys get a little confused sometimes between the disastrous Liberal legacies, but the legacy of the seventies and eighties led to an economic crisis, a housing crisis and a unity crisis. During the member's speech, he talked about the situation with housing in some provinces being more severe than in other provinces. The other thing that the most severely affected provinces have in common is that none of their residents were given a break on the carbon tax in the recent announcement by the government. It applied to only one part of the country.
After the comments of the Minister of Rural Economic Development over the weekend, I want to know, and my constituents and Canadians want to know, if the member can assure us that housing funding under the Liberal government will not be allocated on the basis of Liberal electoral outcomes.
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- Oct/27/23 11:52:54 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the disastrous Trudeau economic legacy, 14 deficits in 15 years in the 1970s and 1980s, led to untold devastation for Canadian families and massive cuts to Canadian health care spending and critical federal programs for seniors and families. After eight more long years, the family legacy has now resulted in 20 consecutive deficit budgets under former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and his son. The family legacy is definitely not worth the cost.
Some are now saying that we will spend more on interest payments this year than we do on the Canada health transfer. Is that true?
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- Oct/20/23 11:43:39 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians who grew up in the seventies and eighties remember a disastrous Trudeau economic legacy that most definitely was not worth the cost. Fourteen deficits in 15 years led to an inflation crisis, an energy crisis and a housing crisis. The long-term impact of interest payments on that Trudeau debt forced another Liberal government a decade later to cut a devastating 32% from transfers for health care, education and social services.
The Liberal-NDP government is going down the exact same road. How much will they spend on interest on their record debt this year?
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- Jun/7/23 7:56:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberal approach to this debate has been completely unserious. We listened to the member, just like other members before her, talk about the wildfire situation. The government has been in power for eight years and somehow the wildfire situation we are facing is everybody else's fault. It has been in power for eight years.
The Liberals talk about cuts and fearmonger about potential cuts. Do members know when we had the worst cuts in Canadian history to health, social services and education? In 1996-97, the Liberal government of the day cut 20% from transfers for health, social services and education, and then the next year cut another 12%. It cut 32% over two years because of the absolutely disastrous economic policies of the last Trudeau government, the Trudeau government of the seventies and eighties, with 14 deficits in 15 years.
I wonder if the hon. member and her friends, who have scrambled around to be in the background of her shot, will promise to stick around and will be open to being persuaded by the Leader of the Opposition's speech tonight.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Jun/5/23 9:09:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it has been an interesting debate tonight. There were a couple of things that I heard from the Liberals and the NDP, one of which I expected to hear a lot about and one which I did not.
What I did not expect was a couple of NDP members doing victory laps over the Alberta election results time and time again. As I watched the election results, I was struck by the fact that a Conservative government, having gone through a pandemic and a leadership change, unsurprisingly lost a couple of percentage points and formed a strong majority government.
The NDP may want to celebrate the fact that it gained about nine percentage points at the expense of the Alberta party, but hopefully all of us can hope for the very best for the Danielle Smith government in Alberta, because that would be really good for Albertans across the board. I, for one, congratulate that government and hope that it succeeds on behalf of all Albertans over the next four years of its very strong mandate.
What I expected to hear and have heard a lot of today, over and over again, is Liberal fearmongering about cuts that some potential Conservative government might threaten or initiate or whatever the case might be. It caused me to look back at history. It is important to look at where there have been cuts, because maybe we can learn from situations in the past when we have seen actual cuts. I had to go back a long way to find real cuts to health spending, social services spending, education spending and the transfers that fund those things.
I went back to 1993, 1994 and 1995, when we saw cuts at the very start of a newly elected Liberal government, but then it was astonishing to see the cut that occurred in 1995-96. In the 1995-96 Liberal budget, $18.4 billion was spent on health care, social services and education, and then in 1996-97, the very next year, we went from $18.4 billion to $14.7 billion, a reduction of almost $4 billion in important transfers for health, social services, education and those kinds of things. The next year, 1997-98, we went from $14.7 billion to $12.5 billion in those transfers.
I mention those figures because, as a result of the spending during the reign of a fiscally incompetent Trudeau government, a government that ran 14 deficits in 15 years while it was in power, we saw a crisis in energy, a crisis in housing and a crisis in inflation. I do not know if that sounds familiar to anybody around here. There were 14 deficits in 15 years in the 1970s and 1980s, and that led to these devastating cuts in 1996-97 and 1997-98, going from $18.4 billion for health, social services and education to $12.5 billion two years later. That was a Liberal government dealing with the devastating effects a generation after another Liberal government, a Trudeau government, had absolutely zero idea of what to do to run an economy.
I fear that we are in the same boat now. We have heard Liberal speaker after Liberal speaker get up and ask how Conservatives can vote against this thing, and they will cherry-pick one thing, or be against this other thing. All of the things they talk about sound great, but I hearken back to the debate on May 1 in the House of Commons, and one comment, though there were many comments like this, struck me. The comment was in response to a question during question period from a Conservative member of Parliament. The Liberal finance minister, talking about the grocery rebate, said, “The grocery rebate is going to deliver support to 11 million low-income Canadians who need it.” How have we come to a place in 2023 when the finance minister is bragging about the fact that we have 11 million low-income Canadians who need support to buy groceries? How are we at that place in 2023?
We look at the government's own budget documents and we take a look at the numbers in these documents and we think about those important transfers we are talking about and other programs. The Canada health transfer is set to be, in 2023-24, $49.4 billion. Do members know that the projected cost to service the debt will be in the same year? It is $43.9 billion, so because of the fiscal incompetence, and there is no other way to say it, of the government that has been in power for eight years, we are going to spend as much in interest as we are going to spend on health care in this country as a federal government. There is no other way to say it: That is absolute incompetence.
When we take a look at the Liberal budget, one of the things that strike me is that they cut their deal with the NDP, and we hear the NDP talk about the different things that they were able to negotiate into this Liberal budget, but I will tell members one thing that was negotiated out of the Liberal budget.
This is the state of where we are. We in this place oftentimes can agree that there are certain things that need our attention. We might have different ideas on how we address those things, but we can agree there are certain things that require attention. One thing that we all agreed on during the last election campaign was the fact that there is a mental health crisis in this country. We all had different platform ideas that we put forward. We ran an election. Canadians looked at those promises we made, because we make promises in election campaigns, and I would think Canadians would expect us to keep those promises. Admittedly, we made promises that were different from those of the Liberals and the NDP on mental health, but we all had substantial promises in there.
The Liberals promised, on page 75 of their election platform, very clearly in a black-and-white five-year costed layout of their election platform, a $4.5-billion investment in mental health called the “Canada Mental Health Transfer”. That was something the Liberals promised. Every Liberal in this House went to doors during the election campaign and promised things to Canadians, many of whom would have been struggling with their mental health, especially as we were still in the midst of a pandemic. We were moving hopefully toward the end of it, but at that point in time people were obviously very significantly affected.
Canadians struggling with their mental health had a Liberal member of Parliament or a Liberal candidate go to their door and promise they were going to spend $4.5 billion on a Canada mental health transfer.
What happened next? Immediately the Liberals signed their deal with the NDP. No NDP member has actually yet taken credit for negotiating this out of their agreement, but clearly it must have been something that the NDP said. They must have said that they wanted to put NDP priorities on the agenda instead of the Canada mental health transfer. No one has talked about why that was negotiated out, but it is very clear that the Liberals have decided that this promise they made is no longer important and that there are other priorities, or, if it is still important to them, that they have come to a point where the fiscal situation is so bad that it was in their cabinet meetings.
I do not know if the leader of the NDP is in the Liberal cabinet meetings or if the House leader of the NDP is, but the Liberals had to go into these cabinet meetings. They had to have conversations and say that things are really tough here and that they had decided to fund some program, one of the many programs they are listing, but they were no longer going to be able to afford this thing they promised on page 75 in their election platform.
I do not know what those conversations looked like; all I know from taking a look at the budget we are debating tonight and from taking a look at the numbers we are talking about tonight is that we are going to be in a situation where Liberal governments and this coalition, however long it lasts, are going to be having conversations like that, because they have come to a point where life is just not only unaffordable for Canadians but unaffordable for the government.
It becomes unsustainable at some point. It is just like when we were dealing with the results of Trudeau Liberal incompetence in the mid-nineties because the Trudeau government of the seventies and eighties had run up all of those deficits over all of those years. I fear we are going to be in the same situation moving forward. During questions and comments, I hope some Liberal will rise up and explain that maybe my concerns are somehow misplaced. Hopefully there will be some explanation and some understanding tonight of the situation we are in.
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- Jun/5/23 7:44:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was interesting to listen to the Liberal member fearmongering about cuts, as many Liberal members do. If we take a look at actual history and facts, we will find that the last government to significantly cut transfers for health care, social services and other important programs was the one of finance minister Paul Martin's budgets of 1995-96 through 1997-98, where we went from $18.4 billion in 1995-96 to $14.7 billion in 1996-97 to $12.5 billion in 1997-98 because of the absolutely disastrous economic policies of the last incompetent Trudeau government, a government that racked up deficits in 14 out of 15 years. We now see another incompetent Liberal government doing the same thing.
Does that not concern the hon. member in the least?
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- Apr/27/23 12:56:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have had a chance to chat with the hon. member about some issues, and I know we are concerned and care about similar issues regarding vulnerable Canadians.
I brought up earlier, as I do many times in the House, one of the things I am concerned about. Looking back, the Liberal government of the late 1990s had to cut $35 billion in transfers to provinces for things such as health care, social services and education, many of the things that most impact the most vulnerable of Canadians. It had to do that because of deficits run up by the Trudeau government in the 1970s.
Is the member at all concerned with these record-breaking deficits, the record-breaking levels of spending that we are seeing right now, and that there might be a similar challenge down the road, in the future, caused by the record levels of spending we are seeing right now?
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- Apr/27/23 12:31:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is astonishing to me to hear the NDP and Liberal members stand up in the House, with the record-shattering levels of debt and spending they are undertaking together, and call for, in the debate today, more spending.
I hearken back to the Trudeau government of the seventies and eighties and the massive debt and deficits they rang up. This resulted in record cuts to social services, like health, education and all of those different things, in the late nineties, by another Liberal government, precipitated by the massive levels of debt taken on by the Trudeau government of the seventies and eighties. I wonder if the hon. member could reflect on what it was like in the late nineties, when we saw $35 billion cut from health, education and social services transfers in this country.
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- Apr/24/23 6:15:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not sure whether the offensive reference was “old” or “Muppets”. Usually they get their back up when I start talking about the Trudeau legacy. We have had this happen on multiple occasions as we talk about budgets and disastrous Liberal economic policy. We get talking about the Trudeau legacy. Of course, I am talking about the Pierre Trudeau legacy.
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- Feb/14/23 12:29:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member for Kingston and the Islands got me thinking. I am just reflecting, but I feel like there was a Prime Minister Trudeau before the current government who ran massive inflationary policies that led to economic devastation in the seventies and eighties and massive cuts in the mid- to late nineties to health care, social service and education. I am wondering if my hon. colleague remembers that as well.
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- Feb/14/23 10:55:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Trudeau legacy of the 1970s and 1980s was a disastrous inflation crisis, energy crisis and fiscal crisis that was terrible for Canadians at the time over those 15 years when that government ran deficits in 14 out of 15 years. A generation later, it led to $35 billion in cuts to transfers for health care, social services and education under the Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments. It was $35 billion in cuts because of the disastrous Trudeau economic policies of the 1970s and 1980s.
Is the member concerned today that, at a starting point, the $4.5-billion broken promise on a Canada mental health transfer, a promise her own party made in the last election and cannot afford to keep, is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of things that will have to be cut for Canadians because of the disastrous economic policies of her government?
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and take part in this conversation. I had the opportunity last week to engage in some of the questions and answers. It was interesting to see emotions rise a little on the Liberal side when I talked about the Trudeau legacy.
In our part of the world, when we talk about the Trudeau legacy, emotions rise as well. Of course I was talking about the Pierre Trudeau legacy, but confusion arose because, when we are talking about incompetent Liberal governments, it is hard to distinguish one from the other. I think that was the difficulty on the Liberal side.
When I made those comments, it was interesting because the Liberal MP to whom I was asking a question actually answered or responded. There are not a lot of answers coming from over there these days. The member responded, clearly reading from the Prime Minister's Office talking points.
I will read a couple of quotes from her answer. She said that Canada is the third-largest triple economy in the world. I am not sure exactly what that means. She referred to the Moody; she said that the Moody has reaffirmed, just after the statement, the AAA rating deficit.
Certainly the government's recent deficits deserve a AAA rating. I think she might have been misreading the PMO talking points she had. However, it is an important point.
Credit ratings are AAA until the time that they are not, and when they are not, governments and countries get in trouble. We saw that with the Trudeau legacy. It is important to talk a little about that legacy, as it seems that many members of the Liberal Party today have virtually no understanding, no recollection, of what happened during those years.
During the 15 years that Pierre Trudeau was the prime minister of this country, Canada ran deficits in 14 of those 15 years. Coming into that time frame, there was almost no debt in Canada, very low debt. The Trudeau government ran deficits in 14 out of 15 years.
Then we came to 1984 and a Conservative government. The Liberals like to point out that the Mulroney deficits were, at the time, the highest in Canadian history, but what they do not point out is that because of rising interest rates, because of inflation similar to what we are seeing right now, the deficits the Mulroney government ran were basically interest on the Trudeau government debt, the debt that Trudeau ran up in 14 of the 15 years he was here.
If we fast-forward about 15 years, we get to another Liberal government, and that is where the lesson on credit ratings comes in. We get to the Chrétien-Martin government in the mid to late 1990s, and suddenly Canada's credit rating was lowered. The government was faced with a really difficult decision. Of course at the time, it had to slash $35 billion from transfers to the provinces for things like health care, social services and education, $35 billion slashed because the Trudeau government had run up deficits or debt in 14 out of its 15 years over time.
This is exactly the situation we are facing right now. If I were to talk about the Trudeau legacy of an inflation crisis, a housing crisis, an energy crisis, there would be lots of confusion. Lots of members on the other side would stand up and say, “Quit talking about us.” I would be talking about the Pierre Trudeau government when I am talking about the Trudeau legacy; however, it is almost indistinguishable from the Liberal government we have right now.
Let us take a look at the interest right now on our debt. We are going to spend almost $20 billion more in interest alone in 2023-24 than we were spending in 2021-22, just two years earlier. It is almost $20 billion more. We are going to be spending almost as much on interest as we spend on the Canada health transfer, and we all know the challenges the health system is having in Canada. We cannot afford to be spending that much on interest, but we are going to be because of decisions the government has taken over the past few years.
We stand up in question period day after day and talk about the fiscal crisis facing the country. What we get in terms of responses is absolutely meaningless language, mind-numbing references to having Canadians' backs as Liberals talk about spending money as though the current Prime Minister is writing cheques from his own personal bank account. However, that is not the case. That money all comes from Canadians. It does not just come from Canadians now; it is actually coming from Canadians in the future. There is a mind-numbing reference to that.
There is a reference to tax refunds and tax rebates, which is basically that the government is collecting tax and then it is blessing Canadians by giving back to them their own tax dollars that the Liberals have spent.
There are references and a lot of criticism from the other side. When we talk about the amount of spending the government is doing and the lack of fiscal responsibility, there is a lot of criticism from the other side. The Liberals will list off yet another new spend the government is doing and then demand why Conservatives cannot support it.
I will tell them why Conservatives cannot support that. It is because, right now, in 2022, if we look back seven years and talk to our constituents, and I am sure those on the other side who were here in 2015 talk to their constituents as well, it is very rare, almost non-existent, to have a conversation with a constituent who says, “My life is better off today than it was in 2015 from a financial standpoint.”
We are facing crisis after crisis, and when we take a look at program expenditures from the government, in 2022-23, post-COVID, which is our hope, at least post-COVID massive spending, we are going to be looking at 72% more in program expenditures than the 2014-15 budget put forward by our Conservative government, a budget in which we balanced the finances of the country. Now we are spending 70% more and we are obtaining fewer results. Conservatives are just not going to give a blank cheque to this government to spend even more with the results it has gotten over time.
I am really looking forward to hearing questions from the other side. It is questions and comments, so maybe folks might decide to comment on how they have come to a realization. Maybe they will make a commitment to go back and take a look at the record of the Pierre Trudeau government of the 1970s and 1980s. Maybe they will go back and ask their government, with all of the spending they are doing and the fiscal situation we are in right now, how they cannot even find the $4.5 billion the Liberals promised in their election campaign for a Canada mental health transfer. Where is that $4.5 billion? With all of this spending, the Liberals cannot even find the money to pay for things they promised in their election platform a year ago.
I will conclude with that. I really look forward to hearing some thoughtful questions from the government side, hopefully.
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Madam Speaker, we can debate all day which Liberal government was more of an economic disaster, but right now I am talking about the former Trudeau government of the 1970s that ran deficits 14 out of 15 years, and then a generation later had to slash tens of billions of dollars, $35 billion in fact, in health care, education and social services funding. It also had the lowest level of international development spending in Canadian history.
I am wondering if the hon. member wants to tell me whether anybody on her side in the Liberal caucus ever reflects on the potential for that situation to reoccur.
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Madam Speaker, like so many Liberals, the hon. member was very excited to list off all the spending that the government is doing.
I want to ask a question about the Trudeau legacy. There is a lot of economic disaster in the Trudeau legacy, which gets confusing at times, but back in the 1970s and 1980s—
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