So V ote

Context: House Hansard - 222 - Sep/21/23

Sep/21/23 2:36:40 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, the problem is that their inflationary spending is evaporating any benefit that Canadians might hope for. The Prime Minister admitted in this House that any benefit their programs might have provided Canadians was completely wiped out by higher inflation and higher interest rates. The former Liberal finance minister knows this. John Manley said, “This is a bit like driving your car with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake generally.... That’s not a good plan for controlling the direction of your vehicle, not a good plan for controlling the direction of the economy either.” This reckless driving is forcing Canadians out of their homes and pushing food off their table. When will they stop the inflationary deficits so that Canadians can stay in their homes?

135 words

Context: House Hansard - 162 - Feb/16/23

Sep/21/23 2:35:16 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, it is crystal clear that he is not worth the cost. His deficits are driving up inflation. Even his finance minister knows this. Just one year ago, she said that her goal was to “not pour fuel on the fire of inflation”. Then what did she do? She grabbed the jerry can and poured $60 billion of new spending on that dumpster fire. The result was higher inflation, which means higher interest rates, which means Canadians will have bigger mortgage payments and may not be able to stay in their homes. Time is running out. When will the government stop its inflationary deficits so that Canadians can keep a roof over their heads?

124 words

Context: House Hansard - 158 - Feb/10/23

Feb/16/23 2:21:22 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, eight years of inflationary deficits fuelled by Liberal waste and corruption have caused an incredible hardship for our Canadians. To fight that Liberal inflation, the Bank of Canada has massively hiked interest rates. Higher interest rates mean higher mortgage payments, meaning people have to pay more to the bank just to live in the house they already own. In fact, the average mortgage payment for a typical home in Canada has soared to over $3,000 a month. Will the Prime Minister take responsibility and admit that it was his waste and corruption that is causing this cost of living crisis, or will he get out of the way and let Conservatives fix his mess?

117 words

Context: House Hansard - 158 - Feb/10/23

Feb/10/23 11:32:17 a.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, the worst part about the Liberals' carbon tax is that they try to dress it up as an environment plan, but it is not working. They have not hit a single target. The Liberal plan was to drive up the cost of everything and hope that greenhouse gas emissions fell as a result. I can report to the minister that the first part of that plan, making everything more expensive, they nailed that, but the second part, not so much. Canada's Food Price Report is now saying that food prices are going to go up again in 2023 as a typical farm can see its taxes, with the tripling of the carbon tax, hit $150,000 a year. Again, all of that get passed on to consumers. Why is the government making Canadians—

137 words

Context: House Hansard - 144 - Dec/8/22

Feb/10/23 11:30:44 a.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, eight years of Liberal deficits, waste and corruption have driven inflation to record highs, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the grocery aisle. The Prime Minister likes to try to blame everyone else, but even the Liberals are now admitting that inflation is caused by domestic factors. One of those factors is the carbon tax. It makes everything farmers use to grow their crops more expensive, and those costs get passed onto consumers. The government is now going to triple that carbon tax. Why should Canadians believe anything the Liberals say about addressing the cost of living crisis, when they are deliberately making Canadians pay more for food?

112 words

Context: House Hansard - 144 - Dec/8/22

Dec/8/22 3:04:37 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, what the parliamentary secretary is not telling us is that 40% of all that new spending had nothing to do with the pandemic. The Auditor General has now told us that over $30 billion was wasted. That is what is causing inflation. The government's answer is to pour more inflationary gasoline on the raging fire. It is already taking a big bite out of Canadian households. As interest rates rise to fight inflation, Canadians have to pay more in interest payments to the banks, but so too does the Bank of Canada. The Bank of Canada has one shareholder, the Minister of Finance. How much money will taxpayers be on the hook for to pay off the Bank of Canada's losses?

125 words

All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 126 - Nov/14/22

Dec/8/22 3:03:54 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister spent so much money that he actually ran out of people to borrow it from, so he had the Bank of Canada create a complex scheme to pour billions of dollars into the accounts of wealthy financial institutions. As the bank raises interest rates to fight the inflation the government caused, the Bank of Canada is actually losing money. For the first time in Canadian history, as the bank loses money, how much taxpayer money will have to go to bail out the Bank of Canada?

91 words

Context: House Hansard - 119 - Oct/27/22

Nov/14/22 12:34:17 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, I will use the first few moments of my remarks to continue with the point I was making, because it really is astounding to hear that member. On a personal level, as House leaders, we all get to know each other a little. We have extra meetings throughout the week to talk about the business of the House, things like the Board of Internal Economy and other aspects about the place. I have always found that my counterpart on the government bench has been decent to work with, and I want to say that off the bat. We all come from different political perspectives, we are all human beings here, and I do appreciate that about him. However, to listen to a representative from the government talk about misinformation, divisiveness and the battle for the heart and soul of Canadians, this is a government that has been caught telling blatant falsehoods time and time again. I want to share with the hon. member that when I referenced the scriptural part about “Go and sin no more” would I ever presume to hold myself up to that standard. I can assure him that I make no pretensions whatsoever. However, I will let the member in on a little secret. In a couple of hours we will have question period, and we will hear misinformation and falsehoods coming from the government side. We will hear the Prime Minister deny that he has a role in inflation. We have a Prime Minister who has directly caused the worst inflation Canadians have had in 40 years, and on a daily basis he gets up and he denies that. He gets up and tries to say that it is all these external factors, that it is kind of like the weather, that inflation is just happening to us, so we better bundle up, add another layer and shove some twenties in our pockets as those prices will get us if we are not looking carefully. It is just nonsense. We know that his money printing and deficits caused the Bank of Canada to bankroll his out-of-control spending, a good chunk of which had nothing to do with COVID. That is why we have inflation, but we do not hear that. Instead, we hear misinformation and falsehoods, with the government trying to blame everybody else for the inflation we see. There is an expression many people are probably very aware of, which goes something along the lines of “Your poor planning does not constitute an emergency on my part.” The government House leader referenced a couple of examples of legislation that his own government is responsible for the delay. He talked about Bill C-9, which sat on the Order Paper for six months before the government called it. When it did call it, the Liberals were surprised that members wanted to speak to it, that they wanted to point out some of its deficiencies. They do not like that. The member also talked about Bill S-5 needing six days of debate, as if six days is a long time. Bill S-5 is comprehensive legislation that would amend several acts, has a whole bunch of new regulations as it relates to the chemical industry and all kinds of interrelated aspects. Members of Parliament need to draw out, in their time in the House, some of the flaws in that bill to raise awareness. Many stakeholders and industry groups will be affected by that legislation. When we come to this place, we do that due diligence and we take our time to highlight that. We allow time for people who are affected by the legislation to react, to educate their members or their colleagues or to educate us. Sometimes we start debating legislation and all of a sudden our agenda gets booked by people wanting to meet with us to tell us what the impact would be if the legislation is or is not passed, and all that takes time. The government does not give every single Canadian a heads up as to what it is doing. There is no daily Canada Gazette email to Canadians that says that in four or five months this is what the government will be doing so let it know what they think. There is a small notice period where the government tells the House what it is going to do and then tables it at first reading, and often we are on to the second reading debate the very next day. Many Canadians are getting that information for the very first time, and it takes time for people to inform their members of Parliament as to how they will be affected. Acting as if six days in the House before a bill gets to committee is an inordinately long period of time is ridiculous, especially when we consider that two of those days were one-hour debates. The government called the debate for second reading on short days. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the NDP critic for the legislation on Bill S-5 had to wait until the third day to conclude remarks because of that. If the government is saying that it does not want to listen to the NDP members give speeches, I have some affinity for that and some sympathy, but I do not think it is proper to ram through a motion like this and, as a result, not allow for enough time for NDP members to have their say. I certainly believe in hearing all points of view and all voices before the House takes a decision, so this is just a completely false and bogus argument altogether. There is nothing to it; there is no justification for it. What is it akin to? The government House leader spoke a lot about the need for the House to get things done. I think a lot of Canadians would agree with that. They see us in this chamber. We know the issues that are affecting them on a daily a basis and they want some action. They want their elected representatives to tackle those issues. However, they also do not want the government to have a completely unfettered hand. Every democracy tries to put in place not only mechanisms for decisions to be made, but mechanisms for those who oppose those decisions to, at the very least, have an impact and to limit the unfettered power that the executive branch may have. In Canada, we have some checks and balances. Other countries have more. Other countries make the inability to get things done a feature of their system. Many people might look to the United States and see a very complicated process that takes a lot of time and requires a political party to have control in all three branches of the government with respect to both houses, congress and the senate, and the presidency to really make ambitious changes. They might look at that and say it is a flaw, which it may very well be at times. The system may have been designed to make it difficult to get things done. The Canadian system was designed to make it easier for the government to implement its agenda, but it is not without checks and balances in and of itself. We have a second chamber in our Parliament, the Senate, that provides many of the same rights and privileges that many members of Parliament have. It goes through the same process. Once a bill leaves the House and goes to the Senate, it has its three readings. It has committee study. There have been occasions in Canadian history where the Senate has held up government legislation when acting as that kind of check. The calendar and the daily program is also a check on the government's power. The Prime Minister cannot come in and start moving legislation, have it rubber-stamped and sail it through. The government has to prioritize. It has to look at the calendar and the number of sitting days and prioritize its legislation. If it brings something in that the opposition has no intention of supporting, because it is poorly drafted or will have terrible consequences, then it has to understand that the House will take longer to pass that kind of legislation, which will have an impact on other bills it wants to pass. Therefore, by the government giving itself the power to extend these sittings, it really does take away a very important check on the unfettered power of the Prime Minister. It is going to weaken the ability for the House of Commons to put the brakes on some of these terrible ideas we see coming from the government side. The Conservatives will make no apology for fighting the government's inflation-causing agenda. Yes, we absolutely will go through pieces of legislation to ruthlessly scrutinize whether they will add to the cost of government, because we know the cost of government is driving up the cost of living. There is a direct correlation between the massive deficit spending that the Prime Minister has put Canadians through over the past years and the record-high prices Canadians are paying at the grocery store and the fuel pump. Therefore, every time the government brings in legislation, that is our first and foremost lens. The Conservatives get out the sharp pencils and the extra scraps of paper and we start to ruthlessly scrutinize it to see if it will add to the cost of government, if it will grow the obligation the state has to pay out of taxpayer funds or if it will add extra compliance costs to industries that are already suffering under some of the biggest regulatory and tax burdens among our major trading partners. It takes time to do that. It takes time to not just do that research, but meet with those stakeholders. I have been a shadow minister responsible for infrastructure. Among my colleagues today, I see many shadow ministers from a wide variety of portfolios. I know that I speak for all of us when I say that, when we get legislation, our speech in the House of Commons, the 10 or 20 minutes of analysis we provide, is just a small fraction of the work we do. We instantly start meeting with the people who will be affected by the legislation, to hear directly from them. The government talked about Bill S-5. I have never been in the plastics industry, but I sure as heck know a lot of people who are, and they know exactly how this legislation would affect them. I know people who work in various aspects of manufacturing, distributing and retail who would all be affected by some of the regulatory burdens in Bill S-5. We have to meet with them, take what one groups says and weigh it off against what another group says, and use our intelligence and wisdom to sift through all of that information before we make a determination as to whether or not we are going to vote yes or no. Debate in the House of Commons acts as a check on the government, preventing it from being able to ram through its agenda, and that is really important in today's context because the Canadian people have refused to give the Liberal Party a majority government in two elections. We all know that is very disappointing to the Prime Minister. He was hoping that an election might have cleansed his reputation after the corruption his government was involved in came to light with the SNC-Lavalin scandal and his own personal acts of racism, when he committed racist acts by putting on blackface so many times he has lost count. We know the Prime Minister was hoping to get a majority government to have a palate cleanse of those things and to redeem his reputation, but Canadians did not give him that. Canadians do not want this party to ram through its agenda. They want those checks and balances to make sure there is a lot of oversight and a lot of scrutiny on what the government is doing. Extending the hours on a selective basis is going to allow the government to ram through more of its agenda. It is trying to avoid that accountability by stealth. It is also very hypocritical. I am not using unparliamentary language when I quote the government House leader who called himself a hypocrite. I have to say that he has some justification for that when it comes to the government's excuse for this measure. He is talking about the fact that there is not enough time to get through the legislation when it was the party that prorogued just to get out of a corruption investigation scandal. For anybody watching who might not be up to speed on all the fancy words we use in this place, proroguing is kind of like a big reset button. It is like cancelling the rest of the House's sittings for a period of time, and it resets everything. It is like a big eraser on a whiteboard of all the bills. The government is saying it has to now sit late to enact all of the bills that had been completely cancelled and had to start from scratch. We did not do that. The opposition party cannot prorogue Parliament. There is only one person who can, and that is the Prime Minister. That is what he did. There is only one person who can call elections in this country, and that is the Prime Minister. The previous Parliament had a very similar makeup to what it does now. We had an election last year just because the Prime Minister decided that he wanted one, just like when he prorogued Parliament during the WE group of companies investigation. Do members remember that? In the early days of the pandemic, when Canadians were still suffering through some of the harshest lockdowns around the world and being told they could not visit their loved ones in hospitals, when children were being told that they could not go to school, and when young and healthy athletes were being told they were not allowed to play sports or finish their year, what did the Prime Minister do? The Prime Minister never misses an opportunity to take advantage and reward his friends. While Canadians were focused on their health and trying to save their businesses after these punitive restrictions prevented them from earning a living, while Canadians were all focused on the very horrifying impact on their lives in so many ways, what did the Prime Minister do? He took the time to take out the chequebook that is written on the taxpayers' bank account and reward his friends at the WE group of companies by giving them an untendered half a billion dollars of Canadian taxpayers' money. When he got caught, he pressed the big reset button. While that investigation was going on, he took out the big whiteboard eraser and— An hon. member: Oh, oh!

2532 words

All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 119 - Oct/27/22

Oct/27/22 5:01:48 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-31

Madam Speaker, I do not know if the member for Winnipeg North's mother ever used the expression, “Just because someone's friends go jump off a bridge does not mean they should too.” It is true. There are other countries that have inflation. They followed the same failed policies the government did. There are lots of times in human history when there seem to be a lot of people making the same mistakes. That does not make it right. To the Canadian who is going through the grocery store aisle and buying things we make here in Canada at inflated prices, it is no comfort to know that other countries are paying higher prices too. Other countries made the same mistakes. They printed money. They have inflation. Some countries did not print money to pay for their spending. Some countries, like Switzerland, maintained fiscal discipline, and that is why they are not experiencing inflation. That is the reason other countries—

164 words

Context: House Hansard - 116 - Oct/24/22

Oct/27/22 4:40:34 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-31

Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise today to represent the constituents of Regina—Qu'Appelle in opposition to the bill that would add more inflationary fuel to the fire. I caught the last few minutes of my hon. colleague's speech, the Liberal member for Winnipeg North, and I am astounded at how much he can get wrong in just a short 20-minute period of time. However, I give him full marks for efficiency. He crammed a lot of errors and misinformation into one 20-minute speech. I probably do not have enough time to address all of them in my speech because of the sheer volume of inaccuracies in his speech. I will start by helping the hon. member understand what caused inflation, because that is what this bill is supposed to be about. It is supposed to help address the suffering of families who are experiencing the sticker shock every time they go into a grocery store, a hardware store or any other store they might have to buy goods or obtain services from. Prices they have been used to over the past few years are now much higher. We know the Prime Minister does not think about monetary policy. I am not sure if anybody else in the caucus does that the member leads, but I will help him understand what causes inflation. The inflation that Canadians are suffering from is directly linked to the massive Liberal deficits that the government chose to run before the pandemic even started. Why do I say that? That is what the Bank of Canada admitted. The Bank of Canada, which is in charge of Canada's money supply, has acknowledged that it was the money creation that it embarked upon in March of 2020, just as the current government was racking up record-high deficits, the biggest deficits Canadians have ever seen. It was on its way to adding more to the national debt than every single other prime minister combined. The government added $500 billion to the national debt. When the government spends more than it takes in, it has to borrow. It has to find someone who has money to lend to it. That is normally carried out during normal economic times by the bond market. Large investors buy government treasury bonds that are basically IOUs that the government writes after borrowing money from someone who has it and spending it with the promise to pay it back. It is that promise to pay it back with interest that is costing the Bank of Canada money now. As a little aside, the Bank of Canada is now actually losing money for the first time in Canadian history. This has never happened before. However, I will get back to that in a moment. The government turned to the Bank of Canada and started floating these IOUs, these government bonds, and the Bank of Canada said it would buy the bonds the government was issuing with these massive deficits. The problem is that the Bank of Canada did not have anybody else's money. The Bank of Canada did not have lots of deposits from Canadians or deposits on account from financial institutions that it could use. When I say it did not have deposits, I mean it did not have any of its own money on deposit. It did not have some vaults of cash that it could buy those government bonds with. What did it do? It had to create the money. It created that money right out of thin air. It exchanged the bonds that other institutions had bought, large profitable banks like the big five banks in Canada and other types of large financial institutions that have accounts with Canada's central bank. They bought the bonds from the federal government and sold them to the Bank of Canada in exchange for brand new money that had never existed before. With little ones and zeros and keyboard strokes, the Bank of Canada just dumped cash into those big banks and large financial institutions and then took those bonds in exchange. That is how the Canadian economy was flooded with over $400 billion of brand new money. We have seen the effects of that, the Liberal government's trickle-down economics, where it pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the most wealthy and most profitable corporations in Canada: the big banks. It pushed that money through that system. The big winners, when it comes to this type of arrangement, is whoever gets the money first as there is a bit of a lag between rising prices and money creation, because the market has not yet learned that there is a whole bunch of new money chasing the same number of goods. The prices in the grocery store have not yet, at this point, started to go up, and the prices for commodities have not yet, at this point, started to go up. Those large financial institutions, those massively profitable banks, got to buy up all these assets. They got to push that money through on everything from commodities to real estate to anything else we can imagine, while the prices were still low. They got the new money first, bought as much as they could, and that is when the prices started to rise. By the time that new money hits Canadians' pockets, it is already too late. The prices at the grocery store have already skyrocketed. We have seen food inflation go over 8% for a couple of months now. The average inflation index, the CPI, has been hovering around 7% for several months now. By the time Canadians start to get the new money the government has created, the prices have already gone up, and that is when those big banks and financial institutions can sell. They make those massive profits on what they can buy low with newly created money and sell high after the inflationary effects are taken into account. That is why we saw record profits during and after the pandemic by Canada's largest banks. This is the result of the Prime Minister's economic policy, allowing the richest and most profitable corporations in Canada to make even more money, while Canadians subsidize that profit through higher prices in the grocery store aisles. That is why these inflationary deficits are so devastating, and that is why Conservatives are opposed to new measures that force the government to borrow more money to pay for new spending. It is a little like a superficial treatment to a problem. We can all think of examples of what might look like a course of action that would help with a problem but that actually makes the problem worse. We might have experienced in our lives and have seen public service videos about fire safety where they say to never pour water on a grease fire. However, we can imagine a young child perhaps or someone who was never educated along the lines of fire safety seeing a fire, and we are all taught from a very young age that water beats fire. We put out fires with water, and we always keep a bucket of water if we are having a campfire and things like that. We all understand that. We see pictures of firefighters putting out fires with big hoses of water. We can imagine someone about to dump water on a grease fire, thinking that they are helping, but we all know what will actually happen. We have to resist the temptation to apply a superficial antidote to a problem. We all know on this side of the House that instead of pouring water on that fire, we have to treat it in other ways. We have to put a lid on that fire and remove it from the heating element. There are others ways to tackle that fire rather than making it worse. A thirsty person might look at an ocean shore and think, “Boy, I'm so thirsty, I'm going to go down and take a nice long drink of water.” As Homer Simpson taught us, “Water, water everywhere, so let's all have a drink,” but that is not actually how the poem goes. It is “Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink,” because ocean water makes thirst worse. However, that is what we are seeing with this Liberal government bill. The member for Winnipeg North gave a speech pretending and trying to convince Canadians that this would help, that while prices are going up in many aspects of their lives, the government is coming along with a way to reduce some costs for them. Where are they going to get the money for that? They are going to have to borrow more money to pay for that, so any benefit that any Canadian might hope to receive under the government's plan that we are debating today will evaporate because of the effects of this new government plan. In other words, the government is trying to convince us that a government program will help alleviate the problems caused by government programs, and that is where Conservatives come along because we take a more comprehensive look at issues. The Liberals and their allies in the costly coalition, the NDP who are pushing all this new spending and working hand-in-hand with the government to drive up the costs of living with higher spending and more borrowing to pay for it, is where this is coming from. That costly coalition's approach is always very superficial. We can make the comparison to candy before supper. There is a problem, so here is a simplistic solution: We are just going to have a new government program to dole out more money. Conservatives understand that we have to treat the fundamental issues that caused it first. We would be doing Canadians a far greater service, including low-income Canadians who are being hit hardest by inflation, if we came to this place every day trying to reduce the cost of government, looking for ways to reduce spending and cutting out inefficiencies, like the half a billion dollars the government tried to give to its friends at the WE organization or the $54 million for the arrive scam app that did not work, was not needed and could have been designed and programmed in a weekend for a fraction of the $54 million taxpayers had to pay for it. The Prime Minister might have looked at ways to visit London where he did not have to charge $6,000 a night for a single room. Those would be the types of things. We could all come together and every member of Parliament could go back to their offices tonight and scroll through the public accounts, which were just tabled this morning. We could all put our collective heads together to look for ways we could eliminate wasteful spending and bring down that cost of government, so that the government could pay back those IOUs, retire those bonds and take that brand new created money that is floating in the system out of the system to return it back to normal, where that money is backed up by real economic activity and not just ones and zeroes on the computer terminals at the Bank of Canada. If we did that, we would put a lot more purchasing power back in the hands of Canadians who have worked so hard to earn it. That is why they call inflation the hidden tax, the most insidious tax of all. When the government raises a tax rate, it has to do it in the House for all to see. It has to bring forward a motion or a bill to raise those taxes, opposition parties hold it to account and every Canadian has an elected representative who can vote yes or no, based on that proposal. However, when the government causes inflation through the Bank of Canada by forcing the bank to purchase those government bonds, there is no vote in the House, there is no debate and there is no accountability. Not any one of us got to read the proposal, make a decision and vote based on our constituents, and our constituents cannot hold us to account because none of that ever took place. It just happens. It happens because those powerful unaccountable officials just made a decision one day, and that is why Conservatives are opposed to this legislation, knowing it would make the problem worse. There are other ways the government could tackle the cost of living crisis. This opposition has proposed a very concrete proposal, which we should be debating today instead of a bill that would add more borrowing costs on the government and, therefore, lead to even worse inflation. We are about to head into the winter months, and many Canadians are already getting a taste of what those home heating costs are going to look like over the next few months. I want to take a few moments right now to inform members that the higher costs that Canadians are about to get hit with, and some have already started to experience, are not some accidental outcomes from government policies. These are not unintended consequences. It is not like the government was trying to do something and accidentally caused home energy costs to rise. This is a feature of the NDP and Liberal coalition's plan to make home heating costs more expensive. They want Canadians to pay more for filling up their tanks and for heating their homes. Members do not have to take my word for it. They have admitted it. They have built a fake environmental policy around the idea of making Canadians pay more for fuelling their cars, for purchasing goods that have to be transported to Canada and for the crime of heating their homes in the winter. That is what they want. They want Canadians to feel pain when it comes to those types of goods. They admit it. It is in the rationale for the carbon tax. Here is the thing: The carbon tax is not working. Canadians are getting all of the pain and none of the environmental gain. The government has not hit a single target it has set for itself. The people who are concerned about climate change the most should be opposed to the carbon tax the most, because the government has gone all in on a failed policy that, for seven years now, has been proven not to work. That is why the official opposition and Conservative members of Parliament have been working so hard, since this fall sitting began, to convince the government to do no further harm when it comes to borrowing and spending and driving up inflation, to control some of the things it can control and to cancel the planned tax hikes. The government's plan is to triple the carbon tax. The member for Winnipeg North might like to make jokes about the Tim Hortons double double, but there is a reason we are highlighting it and a reason we want Canadians to understand. It is because it is already hard enough to make ends meet for the vast majority of Canadians. We are hearing really shocking stats. Canada is a G7 developed country, and 1.5 million people visited a food bank last month. That is unbelievable. It is a record high. It has gone up 15%. There have been 15% more visits to food banks last month than the month before. It is Canadians who are working, who have two jobs in some cases, and those in double-income households. Because they have to pay more for their mortgage as interest rates go up and costs are higher at the grocery store, they now have to turn to charity at food banks just to be able to feed their children. What else is very alarming is that food banks are running out too, because Canadians have fewer goods to donate to the food banks. That is the thing about Liberal-NDP coalition economic policies. They lead to scarcity. When Conservatives are in government, we lower the cost of government. We leave more money in the economy and more money in the pockets of hard-working Canadians, and that does more good for low-income Canadians, because there are more jobs to fill and there is more opportunity. When Canadians have more at the end of the month, they can make decisions to be charitable. They can fill up those shelves at the food banks so that the less fortunate have more choice, more options and more support when they need it. NDP and Liberal policies that drive up the cost of fuel, home heating and other essentials and chase away jobs and investment mean there is less at the end of the month for Canadian families to donate to charities, so those families who do need it have less. That is the constant and unblemished record of failure of the government and its failed policies. That is why Conservatives are fighting this instead of voting in favour of a bill that would just add to the cost of government, leaving Canadians with a situation in which the government has to go out and borrow more, paying higher interest rates. I mentioned at the beginning of my speech how the Bank of Canada is losing money for the first time in Canadian history. This is the perverse outcome of the bond purchase program the Bank of Canada initiated to help pay for the government deficits. When it bought the bonds, the Bank of Canada bought them at very low rates. The Bank of Canada had lowered its overnight rates as low as 50 basis points; it was down to 0.5%. The interest the government had to pay on the bonds the Bank of Canada holds was at 0.5%. Let us remember that the way it bought those bonds was by putting large deposits into the bank accounts of the large financial institutions. For example, TD Bank and CIBC have accounts at the Bank of Canada, and there are deposits in those accounts for the bonds the bank sold to the Bank of Canada. As interest rates rise, the Bank of Canada has to pay more interest to those large financial institutions than the government pays the Bank of Canada in interest. That is unbelievable. This is a direct transfer of wealth: Hard-working taxpayers pay money to the government; the government then turns around and pays the Bank of Canada interest, and the Bank of Canada does not have enough, so it is going to lose money. I believe it has indicated that it expects to lose about $4 billion this year. That is from the bank's website. If the member for Winnipeg North thinks I should not believe everything I read on the bank's website, he should maybe call his friend, Tiff Macklem, and ask him to be a little more accurate. The question for the government is, is it going to have to bail out the Bank of Canada with taxpayers' money? After taking taxpayers' money to pay interest on the bonds it sold, it will now have to underwrite the difference that the Bank is paying out to other large banks. If we follow the logic here, basically the government is going to have to underwrite the deficits that the Bank of Canada is racking up due to its own deficit spending. It is a triple insult to Canadians, when we look at all the interest that is being paid. I will close by urging my colleagues on all sides of the House to stop digging when they are in a hole and to not pour water on that grease fire. Let us have no more inflationary spending that will make the problem even worse.

3347 words

All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 116 - Oct/24/22

Oct/24/22 2:33:40 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, Liberals like to pretend that inflation is kind of like the weather, as though one could bundle up as the inflation front rolls in and mothers will line their children's pockets with extra twenties in case prices go up. We all know it is caused when governments spend more money than it has and then run the printing presses to pay for it. The carbon tax is not working. The people who are concerned the most about climate change should be opposed to the carbon tax the most, because they have not hit a single target they have set for themselves. The Prime Minister's own watchdog has said that most Canadians pay more than they get back. Will they abandon their plans to hike the carbon tax on Canadian families this winter?

136 words

Oct/24/22 2:32:20 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, Liberals like to try to blame everyone else for the inflation they have caused, but Canadians know it was the Prime Minister's massive deficits and money printing that has driven inflation to record highs. It is too late to undo the inflation that the government has already caused, but it is not too late to do something about soaring energy costs going forward. Analysts are predicting that home heating costs will skyrocket this winter, where many families will be paying twice as much this winter than they did last winter just to stay warm. Will this costly coalition abandon its plan to triple the carbon tax and give Canadians a break on their home heating costs?

119 words

Sep/29/22 10:20:42 a.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, the motion we are debating today proposes a concrete measure to help Canadians. Today's measure is a concrete proposal. It is a very simple, straightforward proposal to help Canadians deal with the Liberal-caused inflation. It will allow them to keep more of their hard-earned dollars. The government is devaluing the dollars they are earning, so the very least it can do is to let Canadians keep more of the dollars they have worked so hard for in the first place. We have to get back to the root cause. It will do Canadians and seniors no good to increase something with the left hand, but with the right hand take away all of that benefit with rising prices. As long as the government continues its vicious circle of increased spending and the borrowing that goes along with it, we will continue to have inflation. It will just make the problem worse. That is why we have to tackle the root cause of inflation. I should point out that for several months we have had 8% inflation in this country. It is back to school time and I have been helping my daughters with their math, and 8%, I figured out, is just about one-twelfth. That is as if one were to go buy a case of beer, open up the first one and just dump it right down the drain. It just evaporates, or it is like working all month, day in and day out, and at the end of that month one finds out one worked for nothing. That is the effect of 8% inflation. Canadians are tired of working one month out of the year for nothing. The very least the government can do is to let them keep what they have earned the other 11 months.

305 words

All Topics

Sep/29/22 10:18:49 a.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, there we have it. The Liberal message to Canadians is to thank their lucky stars it is not even worse. It is a bit like an arsonist saying to a homeowner, “Well, I know I set your house on fire, but look, your neighbour's house is even more on fire.” I do not think a single Canadian is going to be reassured by that message. When it comes to what this party has supported, we have always supported tax relief for Canadians. We certainly did not vote in favour of the government's wasteful and corrupt spending, such as when it sent $1 billion to its friends at the WE organization or when it gave $35 billion to an Infrastructure Bank that has turned into a corporate welfare machine and has not got a single project built. On this side of the House, we recognize that when Canadians work so hard for their paycheques, they should be able to keep as much of it as possible. That is why we are so focused on this measure. The government should cancel the upcoming paycheque tax hikes so that Canadians can keep more of their hard-earned dollars.

201 words

Sep/29/22 10:17:17 a.m.
Watch

I still will.

3 words

Context: House Hansard - 75 - May/19/22

Sep/29/22 10:06:50 a.m.
Watch

moved: That, given that the cost of government is driving up inflation, making the price of goods Canadians buy and the interest they pay unaffordable, this House call on the government to commit to no new taxes on gas, groceries, home heating and pay cheques. He said: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to this very important and timely motion. The government's economic policy can be summed up in four simple words: smaller paycheques, higher prices. The cost of government is driving up the cost of living. What do the Conservatives mean when we say that? If we look at why prices are rising, it is directly linked to the massive deficits the Prime Minister has been racking up pretty much since his first day in office. In its first year in power, the government made a conscious decision to spend more money than it received and plunge this country into those deficits. That weakened our economy before the pandemic. It is fair to say that nobody could have seen the COVID pandemic coming, but it is also prudent for a government to predict that the unknown could occur. We might not have known that it was going to be this crisis, but governments must be prepared for any number of world or global events that it might be forced to respond to. Plunging the country into those deficits when times were good was therefore a foolish thing to do. Obviously, in retrospect, it was massively unhelpful, as our country had to deal with the COVID pandemic from a weakened position because of the government's policies. I know so many of my colleagues want to speak to this very important motion, because it is affecting people's lives in such a real and practical way, so I will be splitting my time this morning to allow for more members to participate in this debate. How did the government's deficits lead to that higher spending? Well, the government had to go out and borrow a bunch of money that it did not have, so it turned to the Bank of Canada, and the Bank of Canada made a decision to underwrite the government's deficit spending by purchasing government bonds, or IOUs. When a government has to borrow money, it writes a promise to pay the money back. That is called a bond. Normally, individuals or institutions can buy those bonds and expect to get paid the interest, and the government pays the bond back at the end of the term. However, the Bank of Canada did something a little different: It created new money right out of thin air to buy those government bonds. It started creating five billion dollars in new currency every single week, starting in March 2020, to buy those government bonds. That new money, not backed up by new production, not backed up by economic growth and not backed up by any extra production of goods or services, washed through the system. There could be big winners when the government creates money out of thin air. The big winners are the large financial institutions that get the money first, because they go out and gobble up assets. They buy property and commodities. They do that with the new money before everybody realizes there is a whole new influx of currency in the system. When everybody else gets that money when it eventually makes its way through the economy, prices start to go up. Those large financial institutions and wealthy investors can then sell those commodities and make money on the difference. That is why prices have gone up, and it is also why we have seen record profits at large financial institutions like the big banks. That is why we say that the cost of government has driven up the cost of living. Literally, the government's extra spending, wasteful spending, forced the Bank of Canada to underwrite those deficits, creating that new money and causing prices to rise. That is the higher prices. What about the smaller paycheques? Well, what the government is planning to do on January 1 is take a bigger bite out of Canadians' paycheques with an increase in paycheque taxes. Canadians are going to be forced to pay more right off the top on their paycheques, and the government is going to take part of the extra tax it collects, scoop it out of the EI fund and spend it. We know this. We know the government's plan for the EI increase is simply going to be gobbled up by regular government spending. In fact, the extra premiums the government will collect will put the EI fund into a $10-billion surplus over the short term, and all of that will be taken by the Prime Minister to finance his pet spending projects. Where is a big chunk of that extra money going? It is going to the interest on our national debt. The Prime Minister has racked up more debt than every single other prime minister combined, and the PBO report indicates that just the interest on our national debt, which Canadian taxpayers will be forced to pay, will double. Soon, the portion of our tax dollars that go to pay just the interest on that national debt will be higher than the amount that is spent on the Canadian Armed Forces. That is the scale we are talking about. What is the result? Well, we have all heard the heart-wrenching stories in our ridings. We have all heard from the seniors who have had to delay their retirement and watch their life savings evaporate with inflation. Thirty year-olds are trapped in tiny, 400-square-foot apartments in our large cities or, even worse, are still living in their parents' basement because the price of homes has doubled under the Liberals. Single mothers are putting water in their children's milk so they can afford the 10% year-over-year increase in the price of groceries. It is no wonder that people are worried. Most are lucky just to get by, but so many are falling far behind. There are people in this country who are just barely hanging on. These are our friends and neighbours, and we in the House are their servants. It is up to us to take real action to address this Liberal-caused inflation crisis. The Conservatives are bringing forward very simple and practical solutions to help Canadians across the country. Today, the Conservatives are calling on the government to not make the situation worse. The Liberals have already done damage with higher prices. They do not need to shrink Canadians' paycheques, which is what this government is planning to do. Not only are they adding inflationary fuel on the fire with their continued plans to increase spending, but they are reducing Canadians' ability to cope with the government-caused inflation by shrinking those paycheques. A new poll out today is just jaw-dropping: 90% of Canadians are tightening their household budgets due to inflation. Almost half, or 46%, say they are worse off now than they were at the same time last year when it comes to their own finances, which represents a 12-year high. Over half say that it is difficult to feed their household, and this number rises to seven in 10, or 68%, among those with household incomes below $50,000. Canadians cannot keep up. As for grocery prices, I have five children and our grocery bill is big enough as it is with a few teenagers in the house. Those prices have skyrocketed, up over 10% and rising at the fastest pace in 40 years. With inflationary pressures at this rate, the government's supports do not even help the problem but contribute to it, as that extra spending is added to the amount of money the government needs to borrow, which is causing that vicious circle of higher inflation. The average Canadian family now spends more of its income on taxes than it does on basic necessities such as food, shelter and clothing combined. By comparison, 33.5% of the average family's income went to pay taxes in 1961. Thirty-three per cent of income in 1961 went to taxes and now that number is 43%, so more is spent on taxes than food, shelter and clothing combined. It is simply jaw-dropping. On Tuesday, the Conservatives proposed that the government should cancel its plan to triple the carbon tax. The cost of everything is set to skyrocket as the government triples the amount that it charges Canadians on home heating and fuel, with all the effects that has on literally everything else that Canadians have to buy. Groceries, lumber and household items all go up when the government raises the carbon tax by 300%. Today, we have another practical solution: The government should get its hands off Canadians' paycheques and let Canadians keep more of their hard-earned dollars. It has already robbed Canadians of the purchasing power that they are already earning, and their existing paycheques are already devalued because of the government's inflationary policies. It is never a good time to raise taxes, but the absolute worst time to raise taxes on Canadians' paycheques is when they are already struggling so hard to get by with day-to-day goods. I hope every member of the House supports this common-sense, practical motion to stop the government's tax hikes on Canadians' paycheques.

1591 words

All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 75 - May/19/22

May/19/22 5:25:18 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-253

moved that Bill C-253, An Act to amend the Bank of Canada Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee. He said: Madam Speaker, it is truly an honour to rise today and speak to my private member's bill, Bill C-253, the Bank of Canada accountability act. Members may know that the Auditor General is empowered, under the Auditor General Act, to perform audits on government agencies and departments. However, there is a special carve-out, an exemption, in the Financial Administration Act that specifically excludes the Bank of Canada from the oversight that the Auditor General provides. We are all familiar with Auditor General's reports. It is always a big day on Parliament Hill when the Auditor General tables a report after an investigation on behalf of Canadians into various departments, agencies and programs. Of course, it was the Auditor General's report many years ago that first brought to light the excessive expenses of the long gun registry. It was thanks to her work, at the time, that Canadians got to know the billion-dollar price tag of that useless and ineffective program. We can all think to times when the Auditor General has identified massive problems with the government's handling of everything from immigration protocols to transportation, and that is what this bill is all about: Bringing the Bank of Canada into line with other departments and agencies to provide that oversight so that the Auditor General is empowered to do the same types of audits that he or she does on all other agencies and departments. Many in the Liberal establishment are opposed to this bill. The Prime Minister once said that “sunlight is the best disinfectant”, and then he ran around pulling the shades down on all the windows to keep things hidden. He is afraid of accountability and transparency now. In fact, he is so allergic to it that he has made a deal with the NDP to help cover things up at committees and in the House. It is not a surprise that Liberal parliamentarians and Liberal politicians are opposed to this bill, but Canadians are demanding this type of accountability and oversight. They are demanding it, because we are seeing unprecedented action by the Bank of Canada and unprecedented decision-making that is directly affecting the value of the money they have worked so hard to earn. Many of the arguments against this bill that I have already heard through corporate, taxpayer-subsidized and government-subsidized media and Liberal politicians are all bogus. First of all, one of the critiques is that the bank is already audited. That is true. The bank is already audited by private-sector firms in Canada, but those are not the same types of audits that the Auditor General does. The Auditor General does not simply do a balance-sheet audit. It is not like the Auditor General goes in and tallies up everything on the left side of the ledger and makes sure it balances with everything on the right side of the ledger. No one is assuming that someone is leaving the Bank of Canada with bags of cash over their shoulder. In addition to balance-sheet audits, the Auditor General does performance audits, and that really is the whole point of this bill. The Bank of Canada has made many decisions that have had a profound negative impact on Canadians. It decided, for example, to buy corporate bonds. It had a corporate bond purchasing program. Now, if we go to its website, it spells out some of the general criteria of what minimum thresholds companies would have to meet in order to have their bonds purchased by the bank. I should point out that it is a huge advantage to a company to have its bonds purchased by the central bank. A bond is basically an IOU. It is debt. It is a company saying, “We don't have the money today, but loan it to us now and we will pay you back later.” Corporations have to pay for that. They have to pay interest on those bonds. When fewer people are willing to buy the bonds, those corporations have to raise their interest rates to sweeten the deal to attract more potential buyers, and that costs the corporations more money. When the Bank of Canada comes along and says, “We'll buy some of those bonds”, that is a huge benefit to the corporation that is selling the bonds. Which bonds did the Bank of Canada buy? Why did it buy a bond from company A and not company B? Those are the types of things that we do not know. We do not know all the criteria that led to the decision-making. It could very well be that in very competitive marketplaces, say the airline industry, one airline's bonds were purchased by the bank and another's were not. It is the same thing in the telecommunications sector. Perhaps one company's bonds were bought and another's were not. Let us be clear. It is not buying these bonds with its own money. The Bank of Canada creates money. When it buys these corporate bonds, it is creating new money right out of thin air, which has an impact on the purchasing power of the money Canadians have worked so hard to earn. In fact, it dilutes that every time new money is created. In addition to the corporate bonds, it has been buying government bonds, and boy has it ever. It has been on a buying spree for almost two years. From the beginning of the pandemic, when the Prime Minister ran out of other people's money to borrow, he had to turn to the Bank of Canada, and the Bank of Canada was only too happy to oblige. The Bank of Canada, since about April of 2020, has been bankrolling the Prime Minister's deficit spending to the tune of about $400 billion. That is $400 billion of new money created right out of thin air. That is what is causing the inflation today, and that is why Canadians have a right to know what the bank was doing and what criteria it was following, and report back to Parliament and ultimately to Canadians. We have never seen this type of intervention in our monetary policy in our nation's history. Back in the great global recession of 2008, the previous Conservative government held the line on monetary policy. It was a difficult time. Many of my colleagues were in the House at that time. A lot of difficult decisions had to be made, but the previous Conservative government understood that if money starts to be printed out of thin air it makes an already difficult situation even worse. That is what we are seeing today as we are coming out of the pandemic, after two years of hardship and the emotional toll it took on Canadians individually. People had to go long periods of time without seeing their loved ones. Many small business owners were watching their entire life's work evaporate as restrictions prevented them from opening their doors and serving their customers. Coming out of that, now Canadians are being faced with punitive rates of inflation. Things that had cost $10 or $12 are now going for $18 or $20. One almost needs to get a pre-approval on a new loan to go grocery shopping these days as we see the prices escalating. Tools, lumber and all types of everyday purchases Canadians make are going up and up. The government would have us believe this is just something that happens and that it is like the weather: “We are going through an unexpected cloudy period, and inflation is up a little this quarter.” That is nonsense. Inflation does not just happen. It is a direct result of the monetary policy of the Bank of Canada working hand in hand with the government of the day. That is why this proposed act is so necessary. We need to restore the independence of the Bank of Canada. The Bank of Canada's independence has been undermined by the government's decisions to bankroll its deficit spending with all that new money creation. That is why prices are going up today. It is actually rather simple. If we have the same number of goods but dramatically increase the number of dollars going around, prices will go up. It is not rocket science. In fact, these are basic laws of economics. More dollars chasing fewer goods equals inflation. That is precisely what we are seeing today. The government will try to have us believe inflation is happening because of external factors. Do members remember when it tried to blame the war on Ukraine? It tried to blame inflation on Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine. Guess what? Inflation was happening long before the invasion of Ukraine. The previous summer, on the eve of the election, inflation was already ticking up to record levels. We all remember the famous quote the Prime Minister said in the middle of an election when inflation was only at about 4%. Do members remember those days, when inflation was only as bad as 4%? Our party started to challenge the Prime Minister and the Liberals on this and highlighted to Canadians it was their economic policy causing the inflation. What did the Prime Minister come back with? He said, “you'll forgive me if I don't think about monetary policy.” Well, we do not forgive him. He should think about monetary policy. I guess he does not understand it, otherwise he would know that he is to blame for all that inflation. Liberals try to say that it cannot be the Prime Minister's fault, that, yes, there is inflation in Canada, but there is inflation in other countries, too. That is true. Other countries that made the same foolish decisions to run the printing presses during a time of economic contraction are also experiencing record levels of inflation. Some countries did not do that. There are several countries around the world that preserved the value of their currency and are not experiencing the same punitive levels of inflation that Canadians are having to pay. The government's argument is a little like if someone told me I was putting on a bit of weight and I might want to look at my eating habits, and I said that obesity is a North American problem, that obesity rates in North America are the real challenge and that it cannot be anything I do because I live in a continent where it is a challenge for a lot of people. No, of course not. It is because of the decisions of each individual, just like it is the decisions of each individual country that are causing the inflation we are seeing today. At the end of the day, the dollars that we carry around with us, the ones and zeros in our bank accounts, have no intrinsic value. We cannot do much with a 20-dollar bill or a 100-dollar bill. The only reason why other people accept it as payment is that there is a level of trust. There is a level of trust that someone else will accept it as payment and give the same value that was received. When the Bank of Canada undermines that trust by creating all that money washing through our system, it devalues the value of the money that people work so hard for. It is a form of fraud. If people agree to provide labour to an employer for a given salary and then at the end of the quarter or the end of the year the money they receive for the work they have done is worth less, they have been defrauded of what they agreed to. They cannot go back and take away 6% to 10% of their labour. They cannot go back and tell the employer that the dollars they were paid with are now worth less, so they would like some of their time and energy back. They cannot do that. They have already given that to their employer, and the money they receive is now worth less than what they agreed to. That is why inflation is the worst form of tax. Of course, governments love inflation, because it makes the debt they have accumulated easier to pay off. Inflation is great for people who have the ability to borrow, and that is what we saw during the pandemic. As the Bank of Canada washed all that money through the system, the people who got the money first got to buy things before prices went up. These large financial institutions and investors who had access to that early money first were able to accumulate all the assets. By the time the rest of us get the money, through wage increases and other phenomena, the prices have already gone up and those wealthy investors get to sell at record profits. That is why there have been such big winners during the last two years. Members should look at the stock market and check what bank shares have done in the last two years. Bank shares have gone up dramatically since the start of the pandemic. When we look at the Bank of Canada's balance sheet and the money supply charts, factoring in all the money in Canada, everything from the ones and zeros in our bank accounts and the digital money that we all have in our chequing and savings accounts to the cash and all the various credit products that exist out there, the rate of increase in the money supply tracks almost identically with the balance sheet at the Bank of Canada. That is what this bill is all about. It is about providing the first steps toward accountability and transparency so that Canadians can have their confidence in the Bank of Canada restored. The independence of the Bank of Canada has been undermined by the political decisions of the Prime Minister. If we want to get our finances under control, if we want to get the value of the money that we have worked so hard to earn stable, we need this first step toward accountability so we can understand what the decision-making process was and what the costs were to Canadians. I have one final point. We are going to hear arguments from the opposite benches about why this bill will undermine the Bank of Canada's independence. In fact, it is quite the contrary. The Bank of England is subject to parliamentary oversight through its equivalent of the Auditor General. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has the same types of audit provisions that I am proposing today. The European Central Bank has similar types of provisions, with its version of the Auditor General. In fact, Canada is a bit of an outlier in the fact that it is allowing its central bank, which has such enormous power over our economy, to be excluded from this oversight. This bill is long overdue and I hope all members of the House will support it.

2569 words

All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 8 - Dec/1/21

May/19/22 2:11:02 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, inflation is not like the weather. It is not something that just happens like a snowstorm in May. The inflation that Canadians are suffering from today is a direct result of the deficits the Prime Minister racked up, bankrolled by the money printing of the Bank of Canada. When the Prime Minister ran out out of other people's money to borrow, he turned to the bank, and the governor was only too happy to oblige. The Bank of Canada created over $400 billion in brand new money to purchase the government bonds to pay for the out-of-control Liberal spending. Any time we get more dollars chasing fewer goods, we get inflation. The decision to bankroll the government's deficit spending undermined the bank's independence. It has one main mandate: to keep inflation at 2%. It has completely failed and Canadians are right to demand accountability. To restore the bank's independence, the leadership at the bank needs to stop acting like it is the Prime Minister's personal ATM. As Milton Friedman said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”. We cannot expect the Prime Minister to know that. He brags that he does not even think about monetary policy.

209 words