- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $143,434.52
- Government Page
- Feb/1/24 4:59:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after such an eloquent speech from my colleague, the bar is set high. I will try to live up to that standard.
I am pleased to rise today to speak to our party's motion to axe the carbon tax.
As members can imagine, I am extremely disappointed in this government, not just since last fall, but for the past eight years. In 2015, this government promised to run three small deficits—I will never forget that—and to return to a balanced budget in 2019. Instead, since 2015, it has run eight consecutive deficits, totalling more than $600 billion, which could force us into a recession. I am not the one saying this. Many experts are saying that we are already in a recession. We need only look at the number of companies that are currently laying off a significant number of employees.
Despite all the red lights it is facing, the government continues to do as it pleases. It plans to not only add another $60 billion to the deficit this year, but also add possibly $12 billion in additional permanent spending for a national pharmacare system, in order to satisfy its dance partner, the NDP. It is just doing this to stay in power. It is already planning to run more deficits this year.
The worst thing is that in the fall of 2022, the Minister of Finance said that we needed to stop pouring fuel on the inflationary fire and that we absolutely needed to return to a balanced budget. That was in November 2022. In March 2023, the budget was tabled, but there was no mention of returning to a balanced budget, not a word. It was gone. It vanished.
Under this government, the deficits continue to grow year after year. Now, with its dance partner, the NDP, the government wants to pile on another $12 billion for a pharmacare system. By the way, the Canadian provinces, including Quebec, already have very good systems in place. The government wants to pile even more on top of the things that have been brought in over the past few years. This $12 billion is in addition to the government's recurring deficits.
The Prime Minister said that it made more sense for the government to go into debt instead of Canadians because interest rates were low and were going to stay low. Everyone remembers him saying that during the pandemic. Now it is 2024. About three and a half years ago, he said that the government would take on that debt and that he was not going to let people go into debt, because interest rates were low and would stay low. However, three and a half years after that statement, interest rates jumped from 0.5% to 5%. As a result, our debt servicing costs have ballooned to nearly $75 billion a year.
Members will recall that all of the provincial premiers met and asked for an additional $25 billion to be distributed across Canada for health care. The government gave them a pittance, and that is what they currently have to make do with. Today, because of this government's ongoing deficits, we are paying tens of billions of dollars more to service the debt. It therefore stands to reason that the government, whose Prime Minister said that the budget would balance itself, does not have a clue, is doing nothing to balance the budget and has no intention of doing so.
Our common-sense demands have been ignored for years. This is not complicated. We have been repeating what we want for the past week, ever since we got back on Sunday. We want to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Those are our top four priorities for making this a country that we recognize again, because it is totally unrecognizable right now.
These are simple things that could generate productivity, innovation and greater government revenues and make our streets safer.
When the Prime Minister answers our leader here in the House of Commons, he engages in deliberate disinformation on the assumption that our leader, once elected Prime Minister, would stop funding the programs that this coalition government has introduced in recent years. Obviously, these statements are completely untrue and aim to frighten the public. The member opposite added insult to injury earlier by comparing us to the Americans, among others. Obviously, this is Canada, and we are completely independent of the United States. This is not the first false statement that this Prime Minister has made.
I want to circle back to our proposals, which would make our country more vibrant and, more importantly, less divided. One of the most important of the four proposals I outlined earlier is to lower taxes for Canadians. It is important to do this given the current crises in housing, inflation and interest rates, which are making it difficult for people to afford food, shelter, clothing and home heating in particular. We have to bring back common sense. I cannot say it often enough.
We need to axe this carbon tax. The Bloc Québécois will tell us that the tax does not apply to Quebeckers. Of course the Bloc fully supports the government on this. The reality is that in a country like Canada, which Quebec is still part of, the carbon tax applies in the provinces where it applies. This means that when Quebec imports products from other provinces, this tax inevitably applies indirectly to Quebec as well. That is a fact. There is no denying it.
I think it is important to axe this tax as soon as possible to help all Canadians. As my colleague said earlier, the impact will be huge: It will reduce inflation by 22%. That will leave people with a little more money in their pockets. All of the policies we want to implement are geared toward reducing taxes to put more money in workers' pockets. Canadian workers work very hard, but, unfortunately, their paycheques are decimated by all the taxes they have to pay.
This carbon tax is supposed to help the environment. That is the measure the government opted to put in place, but the evidence indicates that it has changed absolutely nothing over the past eight years. The government has never met the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets that it set for itself. There is no getting around the fact that the evidence shows this is not the right approach.
We keep hearing that the Conservatives have no plan for the environment. Of course we have a plan, as our leader has said many times. We want to work on green projects like hydroelectricity. We want to cut through red tape to speed up project approvals and the like. The same goes for nuclear energy, wind energy projects and more. Canada's advanced expertise in green technology is recognized around the world. We want to go even further by funding innovation and wealth creation through these technologies.
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- Apr/20/23 2:59:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, since this Prime Minister took office, the average cost of mortgage payments has doubled in this country. Worse yet, because of the successive increases in interest rates, the cost of interest on mortgage payments was up by 26.4% in March compared to February. It is the largest increase ever recorded. Canadians continue to go into debt and have to give up their dream of home ownership.
Will the Prime Minister finally take measures to curb the inflation he himself created?
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- Nov/4/22 11:53:50 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are definitely not living in the same reality.
Families are struggling and they are being forced to use their credit cards more and more to stay afloat and meet their basic needs.
A recent Equifax study shows that the average credit card balance has reached a record high in Canada. Over half of Canadians polled said that they were concerned about their level of personal debt. They need to catch their breath.
Will the Prime Minister listen to them and not increase taxes in 2023?
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- Mar/21/22 1:12:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, our country's debt has doubled over the past six years. It took 150 years for the debt to reach $600 billion. Now it is over $1.2 trillion. The size of Canada's debt is almost inconceivable. We have to pay all that borrowed money back, and that affects the value of our dollar.
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- Mar/21/22 1:08:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what is true is that the government has spent $600 billion over the past six years. That is the reality, and no one can ever take that away from them. Unfortunately, they will be stuck with that legacy forever.
That is why everyone is paying, and will continue to pay, more money in interest. It is beyond belief that the Liberals have more than doubled the debt in six years.
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- Mar/4/22 11:40:24 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for the past few days, the cost of gas in Rivière‑du‑Loup has been more than $1.85 a litre. The cost of groceries will jump by more than $1,000 over the next year. That has been announced.
This year, costs are spiking everywhere, and I am talking about just those two things. I am not even talking about housing. With the $500‑billion deficit that the government added to our country's debt, inflation just keeps on climbing.
When will the government start to address inflation?
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