- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Conservative
- Wellington—Halton Hills
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $120,269.09
- Government Page
- Nov/9/23 2:36:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I campaigned on a revenue-negative carbon tax. The Liberal government's environmental plan is revenue-positive, with a mishmash of taxes and regulations that are dragging the Canadian economy down.
Emissions still have not risen to prepandemic highs. That is because the economy still has not recovered. Per capita GDP and productivity are lower this year than in 2017.
After eight years, will the Liberal government admit that its environmental plan is not working and that its economic plan is not working, with productivity and per capita GDP lower today than six years ago?
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- Jun/13/23 1:05:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her question about the report's 14th recommendation.
I agree that more affordable housing is needed across the country, including in my riding of Wellington—Halton Hills. At the same time, Canada is in a crisis situation.
We cannot rely on only building affordable housing units. The only apartment units being built in Canada are being built with public subsidies. The private sector should be building much more than just affordable housing units that have been subsidized with public subsidies. They should be building apartment units for people to rent, but they are not because of some of the macroeconomic policies that I just highlighted as a problem at the federal level.
While I support the construction of new affordable rental units, more than that, we need many more rental units to help drive down the cost of renting an apartment. That would be a far more powerful way to make housing more affordable for low-income Canadians than any single government program.
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- Jun/13/23 1:03:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I believe in are macroeconomic policies of the Government of Canada that are going to ensure that, in the long run, housing returns to 3.5 times a typical family's income. Today in this country, in many communities, it is more than triple that, and as a result, Canadians are struggling under record high levels of household indebtedness. The House can pass all the motions it wants about housing as a right, but the reality is that, in practice today in Canada, affordable housing has become a distant reality for many Canadians because of these ill-founded macroeconomic policies.
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Mr. Speaker, not once in my speech did I mention government debt or deficits. I focused on our declining standard of living.
In the five-year period from 2017 to 2021, economic output per capita was flat. We have not had any per capita growth, and that is why Canadians are struggling to pay the bills. The government has focused its economic agenda on consumption rather than investment. In the long run, only through investment, whether private sector investment or government investment in public infrastructure, are we going to get to higher levels of productivity, with the attendant increases in wages and prosperity for all Canadians, but the government has not been doing that.
In fact, it has been doing the opposite, which is why our per capita GDP is now much lower than that in the United States. Per capita GDP here is $44,000 U.S., while it is $61,000 U.S. south of the border. The American economy now has fully 40% higher output, per capita, than we have here in Canada, and that is affecting our ability to pay for social programs, such as health care and education.
That is what the government does not get and is incapable of addressing.
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member would comment on the following.
He has said that foreign investment has plummeted during the time of government, while at the same time acquisitions by state-owned and state-controlled enterprises have gone through without review. That has resulted in something that was best captured in last week's Globe and Mail article titled, “The growing threat of a low-wage future for Canadians”. I just want to quote two lines from that editorial.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ranks this country last in potential economic growth over the next 40 years.
If that OECD forecast becomes reality, the Canada of 2060 will be a relatively poorer country, falling further and further behind other advanced economies into second-tier status.
Would the member comment on that?
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- Jun/1/22 8:08:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think that democracies need to work more closely together not just on diplomacy or the military, but also on economic issues. An example of that is precisely in Sweden and Finland. Finland is a global leader in telecommunications technologies.
The Scandinavian countries have long produced telecommunications giants, such as Nokia and others, that could help us develop 5G and 6G technologies that would help us build a secure national communications infrastructure to ensure that we were no longer threatened by authoritarian states, such as China, that have their own 5G systems through companies like Huawei, which the government has recently banned. I note that Sweden has a robust domestic defence industry. It produces the Gripen fighter jet.
There are many other economic strengths that Canada could take advantage of by working more closely with those two countries.
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