- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- York—Simcoe
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 69%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $119,263.34
- Government Page
- Apr/18/24 4:46:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my hon. colleague and friend, the member for Simcoe North who we actually meet out in the middle of Lake Simcoe in rural Ontario.
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the 2024 budget on behalf of the hard-working residents of Bradford West Gwillimbury, the soup and salad bowl of Canada; East Gwillimbury; Georgina; and the Chippewas of Georgina Island.
After nine years of the Liberal government, Canadians are worse off than ever before. Sadly, this failure of a budget will only make things even worse. The Prime Minister and finance minister have refused to listen to common sense and have presided over a shrinking middle class and record-low levels of national productivity.
Prior to releasing this budget, the finance minister promised it would be a plan to unlock pathways to the middle class for the next generation. Wow, can members believe that? The Liberal government used to brag about its ambition to grow the middle class. The first chapter of the Liberal Party's 2015 platform was entitled “Growth for the Middle Class”. The 2019 platform emphasized “Forward: A Real Plan for the Middle Class”. Now, here we are in 2024, and instead of looking to grow the middle class, the Liberals are admitting that because of them, the middle-class lifestyle, which used to be a reasonable and attainable expectation for living life in this country, is now something that few Canadians will ever enjoy. It seems that, over nine years, the promise of Canada is gone.
This is the day-to-day reality facing Canadians. Two-thirds of young Canadians have resigned themselves to being worse off than their parents. Can members imagine that? With this budget, instead of restoring that promise for our citizens, the Liberals are sending a clear message to millennials, to zoomers and to everyone else left behind, saying that it's tough luck and that they should have been born sooner or in better circumstances. However, Canadians, both young and old, are well aware that it is the punishing taxes and the high-spending agenda of the Liberal government that are to blame, and the policies have locked Canadians out of so many of those pathways that people used to join the middle class.
The cost of living is out of control. It has left half of Canadians living paycheque to paycheque. After paying for their everyday expenses, Canadians just do not have money left over to save, and others are resorting to charities and food banks just to get by. It did not need to be this way. Common-sense Conservatives have been calling on the Liberal government to restore the promise of Canada and to bring home lower costs by axing the tax, building the homes and fixing the budget. Unfortunately, the Liberals did not axe the tax. In fact, the Prime Minister increased it by 23% on the first of the month, making it so that families, rural residents, farmers and small businesses suffer even more.
For months, I have been calling on the Liberal government to address the unfairness that has excluded rural communities, like York—Simcoe, from the rural top-up. The Liberals insist on classifying them as Toronto, making them pay more in carbon taxes than other Canadians. After ignoring this problem for years, budget 2024 finally says that the government will look to better define rural areas, but it only commits to put forward a proposal to do so later in the year. Let us talk about a day late and a dollar short. This is just further proof of why we have to axe the tax for everyone everywhere.
The Liberals also have not built the homes, after nine years of the Liberal government. The government promised to lower the price of housing, but now rents and mortgages in Canada have doubled, and middle-class Canadians are forced to live in tent encampments in nearly every city across Canada. Even small towns like mine are seeing the impacts, as all forms of shelter have become unavailable and unaffordable.
Budget 2024 will not make things any better. It will certainly give more opportunities to Liberal ministers to pose for photo ops, but it will not help Canadians who cannot buy a home or who cannot afford to renew their mortgage.
With $40 billion in new spending in budget 2024, it is obvious that the Liberal government has failed to fix the budget. The Prime Minister has failed to put a stop to the inflationary deficits and has failed to rein in spending. He will continue to make life worse for Canadians. The Liberals are now spending more on interest and more on the debt than on health care. There is more money for bankers than for nurses. It is no wonder there is still no hospital in York—Simcoe.
To protect our social programs and to lower costs, Conservatives have called on the government to cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation. That would require the government to find a dollar in savings for every new dollar in spending.
Instead, the Liberals are misleading Canadians, pretending that the rich would pay for the Prime Minister's spending. We all know that it is the everyday Canadians, the extraordinary Canadians, not the Liberal bigwigs and Bay Street billionaires, who have been paying the price. The government even admitted in its response to Order Paper question 2407 this week that it does not even know how many wealthy Canadians have fled the country and no longer paying taxes.
When Canadians look around at what this country has become, they see abysmal failures of the Liberals to address the problems that the Liberal government created. It is more clear now than ever that the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost.
I recently received a letter from a constituent of mine, Laura. I will read it into the record so that the government can finally understand the pain it is inflicting on Canadians.
She wrote that her family lives in Pefferlaw in a small bungalow. They are a single-income family. She is a stay-at-home mom of two, and her husband works 60 hours a week, just so they can survive financially. They received their gas bill, and over the months, the carbon tax has steadily increased up and up. Now, it has officially become more than their actual usage. They, like so many others, are struggling after the bills are paid and the groceries are purchased. Her grocery shop one day was $167 for just four bags of groceries. They have nothing left over.
She does not pretend to know the intricacies of big government, but she is also not a fool. She really feels like they, and everyone else, are being cheated by the Liberals, who rob from the poor to feed the rich because they lack the ability to budget taxpayers' money. They do not go on vacations. They do not eat out or take their kids to the movies. They live like that, apparently, because the Liberals need their money more than her family does.
The Liberals can choose to keep ignoring the common-sense proposals put forward by Conservatives, but it is shameful that they continue to ignore the plight of everyday Canadians like Laura. Every Canadian knows what a budget is and what it is supposed to do. By definition, it is a means to determine financial goals. With budget 2024, it is evident that the Liberals have no financial goals, no vision, no plan to bring back balanced budgets to our country and affordability to the people. Their only objective is to spend as much of Canadians' money as they can before they are sent packing. The needs of ordinary Canadians be damned.
Canada is broken. Canadians are broke. I will be voting, alongside my common-sense Conservative colleagues, against this budget.
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- Apr/27/23 4:13:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is spending, spending, spending. There is one thing that should concern all members in this House, something that is not really being talked about. We touched on it at the finance committee: the Bank of Canada, with $600 billion on the balance sheet. It was $120 billion in 2020.
For the first time in 87 years, the Bank of Canada lost $522 million last year. We do not see that in the budget. How are the Liberals going to account for that loss? Is the Canadian taxpayer, because there is only one, going to be on the hook for that?
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Madam Speaker, with respect to the speech of the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, I did not get that far into the budget implementation act. I may be 25% of the way through.
The member and I had a conversation earlier about the funding for the Great Lakes and Lake Simcoe, Lake Winnipeg and the Fraser Valley. For freshwater resources, $650 million over 10 years is only $65 million a year.
The Deputy Prime Minister promised $40 million for Lake Simcoe four years ago. Again this is inaction on behalf of the government.
I wonder if she could comment on the insignificant funds for freshwater resources across Canada.
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Madam Speaker, it is so important.
We should be number one in the world in Canada with agriculture. I have always said that a General Motors plant can be moved but a farm cannot be. We have the most arable land in the whole world. That has to come into the vision for Canada. That is one thing I talked about missing in the budget. Where is the vision?
We should be number one in the world with agriculture. We should be teaching people throughout the world how to grow food and have fresh water. We need to keep pushing for agriculture.
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- Apr/17/23 12:45:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Canadians are struggling worse than anyone has in generations. With the Liberal government’s 2023 budget, I cannot help but think it is missing some pages. I looked, and there must be pages missing. It has to be the case because there is no vision for the country. Where is the plan to make things more affordable? Where does it show that the Liberals are focusing on priorities that matter most to Canadians?
With this budget, it is clear that the ordinary people, who are in truth extraordinary people, but the everyday people who live in the small towns and suburban communities, just like those I represent in York—Simcoe from places such as Ansnorveldt, Bellhaven, Cedarbrae, Pefferlaw, Willow Beach and Bradford, are once again on the outside looking in.
At 5.2%, inflation is still the highest it has been in 30 years. Prices for everyday items, including groceries, electricity, fuel and other necessities, continue to skyrocket. It is no wonder 68% of Canadians are concerned they may not be able to afford gasoline and 60% are worried they will not have enough food to feed their families.
This might not mean much to the Liberal government members and their friends on Bay Street, who profited from the pandemic and who have been well insulated from the increases to the cost of living. They will say, “Is meat too expensive? Let them eat lentils.” They will respond to higher gas prices by telling Canadians to just go buy an electric car. They do this in complete ignorance of the economic realities working families are facing in Canada.
There are Canadians who have resorted to feeding their children Kraft Dinner day after day, with no end in sight. The newest vehicle most people in my riding can afford is a 10-year-old car. It is not a shiny new EV right off the lot. All of this has become heartbreaking and depressing for Canadians who want so much more for themselves, their children and their grandchildren.
While the Prime Minister and his cabinet jetted across Canada trumpeting this budget and telling people to wrack up more debt on their credit cards, I was in my community of York—Simcoe doing what I normally do, which is speaking to the everyday residents who live there about what matters most to them. I spoke to a clerk in a hardware store in Sutton who told me she is retired now but had to go back to work and is working two jobs just so she will not go hungry.
I spoke to a senior in Baldwin who worked hard her entire life as a personal support worker. She dedicated all of her years toward caring for the vulnerable. This senior has now become vulnerable herself, spending the final years of her life in a trailer park with almost no pension and barely getting by each and every month. She cannot afford to put food on the table or pay for hearing aids, glasses and other necessities. Desperately, in the face of these struggles, she asked me whether medically assisted dying was available to her, simply because the cost to live has become so expensive.
These stories are becoming all too common. How is it acceptable that Canadians, people such as the senior in my riding, would consider euthanasia as a better alternative to the poverty and hardship imposed on them by the Liberals’ fiscal irresponsibility? Sadly, reports in the media over the past year have confirmed this desperation. Many Canadians have taken this option. What does that say about the Liberal government? What does it say about our country when it is easier to access assisted dying in Canada than it is to secure affordable housing or afford groceries and other essentials?
With the state of the economy, far too many Canadians are losing hope. They no longer see this country as a place where they can own a home, start or maintain a business, or raise a family. Instead of the Liberals’ deflections and false narratives, Canadians from all walks of life in every industry and in every sector across Canada require real solutions to tackle skyrocketing inflation and the cost of living crisis.
When we look at the 2023 budget promises and the commitments by the Liberals to correct their many failures, those solutions are just not there. In fact, the 2023 budget will make matters worse. With this budget, the Liberals are continuing their war on work by increasing taxes and driving up the debt.
Under the Prime Minister, Canada's federal debt for 2023-24 is projected to reach $1.22 trillion. That is nearly $81,000 per household in Canada, $10,000 more than the income of most families in York—Simcoe. The amount the government is spending on servicing the debt is almost as much as it is sending to the provinces as health care transfers. It is no wonder that, in my riding of York—Simcoe, we have few doctors, no hospital and no physical hospice. It is completely outrageous.
This speaks to one of the problems with the budget and with the Liberals’ approach to the economy in general. Instead of addressing the wider issues, the government will point to the narrowly applied measures they are funding and say that the job is done.
We can take the completely unattainable housing market, for instance. The Liberals’ only plan is a flawed tax-free home savings account. How does this out-of-touch government expect new and young Canadians, already struggling with inflation, wage stagnation and the cost of living crisis, to dedicate $8,000 of their income per year to this scheme?
With the minimum down payment in Canada exceeding $122,000, the FHSA limit of $40,000 is almost laughable, even if aspiring homeowners could afford to put away $8,000 over five years. The Liberals may say that they have now solved the housing affordability crisis, but Canadians can see that this budget will not result in any additional houses being built or a family affording a home who otherwise could not.
Budget 2023 also fails our Canadian farmers, who provide our food security. Our country should be a global leader in agricultural production. I have always said that one can move a General Motors plant, but one cannot move a farm. Instead, the Liberals have stacked the deck against our farmers with fertilizer tariffs, carbon taxes and lack of energy infrastructure, such as natural gas or upgraded hydro infrastructure.
This has made it a struggle for Canadian farmers to compete in the global market while ensuring our own food security here at home. The meagre proposals in budget 2023 do little or nothing to mitigate these challenges and support the people who grow our food.
Finally, I note that budget 2023 contains a promise for some small funding for Lake Simcoe, which is shared between all the Great Lakes across Canada and most major freshwater lakes and rivers in Canada. This is the fourth promise of funding for the lake from the Liberals since they cancelled the Lake Simcoe clean-up fund in 2017.
Residents who live in the watershed or rely on the lake for drinking water are sick and tired of the broken promises. They know that the Liberals are all talk and no action when it comes to the environment. Band-aid solutions and microtargeted measures might sound good at the podium at the Empire Club or at the WEF, but they do not result in any meaningful relief for Canadians carrying the financial burden of the Liberals’ economic failures.
The Prime Minister is spending more than $120 billion in budget 2023. What do we have to show for this out-of-control spending? What is the result of the Liberal spending after eight years? Members can ask themselves that. Any Canadian who has had to sit in a hospital waiting room, try to buy children’s medication, buy or rent a house, renew their passport, take a flight or pay their taxes will tell us that the result has not been much, sadly.
We have no domestic manufacturing capacity here, and across every sector, growth is in decline. Where is the productivity? Members can think about this: After ballooning the size of the federal government by 30%, there is a bigger and costlier government with more red tape, but there are worse outcomes for Canadians.
Fundamentally, the most important purpose of this budget was to restore the formula that worked in this country for the better part of 156 years, which is that, if one works hard, one should be able to provide for one’s family, work toward one’s dreams and give back to one’s community.
The fact is that this budget is not actually missing pages, but it is missing meaningful action to fix that broken formula, and I will be voting no to this budget.
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