- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Abbotsford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $146,571.88
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I want to ask the member a question relating to promises made by the finance minister.
Last year, in the budget debate, she made it very clear that her government had a plan to return to balanced budgets. In the more recent fall economic statement, the minister again said that she had a plan to return to balanced budgets, or, in other words, the government living within its means.
The most recent budget has no commitment anymore to returning to balanced budgets, so I would ask my good friend and colleague across the aisle this. Why is it that the government has now abandoned any commitment to returning to balanced budgets?
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Madam Speaker, I am very proud of the Harper years. During the Harper years, of course, the globe experienced an economic crisis that Canada also had to address. The member knows that Canada was the last country in the G7 to enter that global recession and the first to emerge from it. This occurred because of the management of Stephen Harper. I am very proud of our accomplishments.
By the way, the member is right that, in 2015, we left the Liberal government a surplus of $2 billion. We had balanced budgets. Since that time, the Liberal government has been unable to achieve balanced budgets. In fact, the deficits this government has incurred are actually atrocious when we look at the generational debt that has been created for my children and my grandchildren and for his.
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Madam Speaker, I think my colleague and I might agree that the EI system must be reformed but disagree on how it should be reformed.
In terms of his suggestion that I would advocate for shrinking government, I will say that I did not mention that in my speech. I talked about controlling spending. If we control spending and grow the economy, we suddenly have the capacity to deliver the services that Canadians need. It is about balancing those two things, and I believe that, as a Conservative government, we will be able to get that done.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague across the way just had an opportunity to ask the defence critic that question.
I would suggest to the member that it was her finance minister who, last year, said that she could balance the budget in four years. How would she have done that? It would have required controlling spending and being responsible with taxpayer dollars, which is something the finance minister has been unable to do. That is why we will not support an irresponsible budget.
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Mr. Speaker, I quote:
...let me be very clear. We are absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline and our deficits must continue to be reduced. The pandemic debt we incurred to keep Canadians safe and solvent must [and will] be paid down.... This is our fiscal anchor. This is a line we will not cross.
Who said that? It was our finance minister. A year ago, she made that bold statement, said those bold words, when she proclaimed to the world that Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio would be Canada's anchor and that she would not cross the line of allowing it to increase.
Here we are a year later. Can we guess what happened? Our finance minister took a big step across the line. The issue for Canadians is this: Whom do they trust to manage this country's finances?
We asked for three things. We asked that the war on work and lower taxes for workers be ended, that the inflationary deficits that are driving the sky-high cost of living be ended and that the gatekeepers be removed from home construction across Canada so Canadians can have their dream of home ownership restored. None of those three requests were followed through on by the Liberal government.
I want to touch on a couple of issues, including affordability and inflation, the problem of uncontrolled spending, the staggering cost of government and, finally, economic performance. I do not know if I will have enough time to cover all those issues, but I will do my best.
First is affordability and inflation. Taxes on everything are going up. There is a reason that Canadians should not trust the current government to manage finances. It is a tax-and-spend government under which the cost of living has skyrocketed, including the cost of groceries, gas at the pumps and home heating.
Let us not forget the cost of housing. Under the Liberal government, nine out of 10 Canadians now say that dream of home ownership has disappeared. It is a dream I grew up with. I assumed it was attainable for most, if not all, Canadians. Today, nine out of 10 young Canadians say that dream is no longer a reality for them. A down payment on the average Canadian home, the average mortgage payment and, quite frankly, the average rent payment have doubled in Canada over the last seven years under the Liberal government.
Inflation has eroded what a dollar buys. We see stagnating wages across the country. It is at the point now where the gap between the rich and the poor is growing ever greater. Those with assets are growing richer, whereas those who earn paycheques are growing poorer. We now have one in five Canadians skipping meals just to get by and have enough to eat. Let us think about that. There is a perverse situation in which the poor are going to food banks and asking for medical assistance in dying, or in other words, assisted suicide. This is not because they are sick but because they do not want to go hungry. Is that the perverse situation in which we find ourselves in Canada? The government is expanding access to medical assistance in dying, while at the same time, it is not providing the resources Canadians need to at least survive and have some kind of satisfaction in their lives.
I will talk about the problem of uncontrolled spending, which is a critical issue for this country. Today, the government is spending $151 billion more than it did in 2015, when it came to power and took over from the Harper government. That spending has created unprecedented inflationary pressures that are driving the skyrocketing cost of living for Canadians, who just cannot afford life in Canada anymore. Today, we have a deficit of $43 billion. Does everyone remember when the Prime Minister, back in the 2015 election, promised tiny deficits of no more than $10 billion? Every year since then, budget deficits have been much greater than that.
We all acknowledge that, during COVID, there had to be supports and benefits provided to Canadians to allow them to make it through that very troubling period. However, we are out of COVID now, and the deficits continue despite the government's promises to return to balanced budgets. The Minister of Finance promised we would return to a balanced budget. She promised that last year, just one year ago, and today she broke that promise. Promise after promise after promise is broken by Canada's corrupt and failed government.
The result, of course, is that over the last seven years, Canada's national debt has doubled. In fact, the government has racked up more debt than all other Canadian governments combined. That, by definition, is profligacy. That is irresponsible use of taxpayers' money. The government does not understand that we have to live within our means, the way any Canadian family has to.
I will go on and talk about the staggering cost of government. Under the current government, the federal public service has increased by nearly 31%. In seven years, over 80,000 new federal government positions have been added. I can ask an average Canadian citizen out there whether they are getting better service. Those 80,000 professionals who have been hired by the government must be providing an enhanced level of service. How are passports doing? What a failed program that is. How are visas doing? That is a failed program. Immigration is a failed program. It goes on and on and on. Service is going down, and the cost of government is going up. Who pays for it? Canadians do.
Finally, I will talk about economic performance. One thing I had hoped the government was going to include in the budget was something addressing the issue of competitiveness. We compete with other countries around the world for capital, for investment and for human resources, and we have a productivity gap in this country that continues to grow. Canadians are producing less and less product. That is undermining our national competitiveness, and it is driving inflationary pressures. Every economist will tell us that. There was nothing in the budget to address that gaping hole in our productivity.
I have had so little time to flesh out why we, as Conservatives, cannot support the budget. This is a failed budget. Canada has a failed government, and Canadians deserve better.
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Mr. Speaker, the way Canadians judge a budget is by looking at the previous year's budget to see whether the government has actually implemented the promises it made in that budget.
I went back and looked at the previous year's budget, and there was a commitment that the government was going to introduce a policy to ensure that “profits from flipping properties held for less than 12 months are taxed fully and fairly”. I would love to hear the member's comments on how that implementation has gone. Has the government actually implemented any policies that would basically cut down on the flipping of properties and the financialization of housing in Canada? How is that process going?
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