- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Calgary Forest Lawn
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,041.76
- Government Page
- Feb/14/23 10:16:38 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that,
(i) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, inflation is at a 40-year high,
(ii) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, the cost of groceries is up 11%,
(iii) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, half of Canadians are cutting back on groceries,
(iv) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, 20% of Canadians are skipping meals,
(v) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment across Canada’s 10 biggest cities is $2,213 per month, compared to $1,171 per month in 2015,
(vi) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, 45% of variable rate mortgage holders say they will have to sell or vacate their homes in less than nine months due to current interest rate levels,
(vii) after eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, average monthly mortgage costs have more than doubled and now cost Canadians over $3,000 per month,
(viii) the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, has said that “inflation in Canada increasingly reflects what’s happening in Canada”,
(ix) the former Governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, has said: “But really now inflation is principally a domestic story”,
(x) former Liberal finance minister, Bill Morneau, has said that the government probably spent too much during COVID,
(xi) former Liberal Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, John Manley, said that the Liberal Prime Minister’s fiscal policy is making it harder to contain inflation,
the House call on the government to cap spending, cut waste, fire high-priced consultants and eliminate inflationary deficits and taxes that have caused a cost-of-living crisis for Canadians.
He said: Madam Speaker, Biggie Smalls once said, “Mo Money Mo Problems”. With the Liberal government, it seems like the more the Liberals tax, spend and waste Canadians' money, the more problems Canadians have.
After eight years of the incompetent Liberal government and its economic mismanagement, Canadians are feeling the pain. A 40-year high in inflation, high interest rates, and tripling taxes have led to Canadians running out of money.
Even before COVID hit Canada, the Prime Minister was spending record amounts on consultants and his Liberal insider friends. On top of all that, there was $100 billion in deficit spending. Of course, the spending has never ended. During COVID, the government felt good about adding half a trillion to the national debt, 40% of which had nothing to do with COVID spending.
We know now that the Prime Minister's nearly $700-billion spending spree has been more about helping insiders than actually supporting Canadians. Instead of making life better, the Prime Minister spends $15 billion a year on high-priced consultants with whom he has personal connections. Lucrative contracts have gone to companies like SNC-Lavalin and the WE Charity, as well as a company run by former Liberal MP Frank Baylis. He flushed Canadians' money down the toilet each time just to make his friends richer.
The Auditor General has even reported that $32 billion went to subsidizing criminals, foreign nationals and even dead people. Will the government get Canadians' tax dollars back from the people who should not have gotten them? Of course not. Is it going to be knocking on those coffins or tombstones to ask for the money back? The CRA seems more interested in going after law-abiding, living, breathing Canadians than Liberal-friendly corporations and criminals.
No wonder everything feels broken in this country today. Even our health care, airports and trains are a mess, and standard government services like passports or immigration are so backlogged it will take years to undo the damage once the Conservatives take over.
The cost-of-living crisis in this country is only getting worse. Inflation remains three times higher than the Bank of Canada's 2% target. Grocery prices are inflating by 11% every single month, and Canadians cannot afford home heating even if they can afford a home.
The fiscal policies of the Liberal government have left Canadians in a hole. The Prime Minister, who admits he does not think about monetary policy, is clearly not thinking of fiscal policy either. The result of hundreds of billions of dollars being added to the national debt is that the government has created inflation, which has taken the money out of everyday Canadians' pockets. It has taken the food out of Canadians' mouths and the roof from over their head, and the possibility of retirement is now just a dream. Now one in five Canadians is out of money, skipping meals, or accessing charities for help just for basic necessities; 60% of Canadians are cutting back on groceries, while 41% are looking for cheaper, less nutritious options.
Even if people can get their grocery bill down, the Liberal government's inflation is making everything else expensive. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment across Canada's 10 biggest cities is $2,213 a month, compared to $1,171 a month in 2015. That is an almost 90% increase in rent. One of the issues complicating the price of renting is the need for more supply. Inflation has made the price of building housing units substantially more expensive while increasing red tape and taxes, disincentivizing builders from creating much-needed units.
Canada is becoming a nation of renters. According to RBC, the number of renters has increased at three times the rate of the number of homeowners in just the past 10 years. It is not only young Canadians who are increasingly turning to rent. The shift to renting is across age groups and geographic areas. RBC is projecting that the rapid growth in renters is not going to slow down, and it is clear that the home affordability crisis plays a significant role in that. The number of new homes completed in a year has increased only by 13% from 2015 to 2022.
I am glad to share my time with the great member for Simcoe North.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation says that if the current rates of new construction continue, housing supply will increase only by 2.3 million units between 2021 and 2030. CMHC projects that Canada must construct an additional 3.5 million units by 2030 to restore house price affordability.
What is most concerning to me is the lack of understanding that the government has of Canada's housing supply crisis. Instead, the Liberals continue to blame other factors or people for their own failures. We do not import land, workers or many of the supplies needed to build a house. I was in the homebuilding industry before coming to this place. I know first-hand that houses can be built using Canadian lumber, metal and workers. Russia, Ukraine and China do not play a part in that, yet house prices have doubled and Canada has the fifth-biggest housing bubble.
While home prices have come down from the crazy highs of last year, they are still significantly higher than prepandemic levels. The government's solution is to give tax credits and handouts, which do not address the housing supply issue, and provide more money to drive home prices. Even if homebuilders can meet the need for 5.8 million new units by 2030, Canadians still face high mortgage costs and diminished purchasing power.
Inflation has decimated paycheques and for first-time homebuyers, paying for a new home is daunting. As of 2021, Canadians would have to spend over half of their disposable income to purchase a home, and that number is only growing. Mortgages are now costing Canadians 60% to 70% of their paycheque and, at the same time, banks continue to raise mortgage payments to respond to the eight consecutive rate hikes by the Bank of Canada. Over 80% of homeowners with a variable rate mortgage have hit the point where their mortgage payment is made entirely of just interest and none of that on the principal.
I hear from industry experts and people in the financial sector that they are already seeing a rise in the number of people turning in their keys and defaulting on their mortgages, a sign that we are dangerously close to repeating the Pierre Trudeau era. The ratio of household debt to disposable income is at an all-time high of 183%, proving that Canadians are over-leveraged amidst the Liberals' overspending. Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem is using this as a reason for pausing interest rates, despite him and the current finance minister telling Canadians it was okay to spend and borrow as much as they liked because interest rates were going to be so low for so long.
Now, when Canadians face this affordability crisis and high inflation and interest rates, Governor Macklem and the finance minister seem unconcerned with the potential for a debt default crisis. Instead, the Liberals are so ignorant that they keep spending on inflationary waste like their insider consultant contracts.
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- Feb/7/23 10:23:13 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, after eight long years of the current Liberal government's economic mismanagement, Canadians are paying the price. The Liberals' reckless government spending, coupled with their love of taxes, has caused this inflation crisis. Their failed policies have left this country with a 40-year high inflation, interest rates not seen since the 2008 recession, and continually rising taxes that seem to end up in the hands of wealthy Liberal insiders or sent out the door in inflationary spending. Worst of all, the government is going to triple, triple, triple the destructive carbon tax and add a second one on top of it.
The reckless spending by the current government started even before the COVID–19 pandemic. The Prime Minister's promise of $10 billion was broken when, even before the pandemic, he had already spent $100 billion. After telling Canadians he would have only modest deficits, he broke that promise completely. Of course, during COVID, the current government kept the money printers going, adding half a trillion dollars to the national debt, and 40% of that spending was not even pandemic-related.
Former finance minister and random Liberal Bill Morneau has admitted that the government overspent during the pandemic. Lucrative government contracts have gone to companies like SNC-Lavalin, WE Charity and the company run by former Liberal MP Frank Baylis. Of course, Canadians got nothing out of those contracts in all those cases, but the Prime Minister's friends were happily paid off and it cost Canadians. The Auditor General has even reported that $32 billion went to people who should not have received COVID benefits, including prisoners, dead people and even foreign nationals. It seems the Prime Minister ranks Canadians lower than even criminals.
Who can forget the $54 million spent on the ArriveCAN app, which failed to do anything but wrongly send vaccinated Canadians into government-run quarantine centres? What is worse is that the Liberals thought they should add $15 billion a year in spending on contracts that go out to high-priced consultants who have personal connections to cabinet ministers and even the Prime Minister. As the Parliamentary Budget Officer once said, this is not “keeping one's powder dry”.
The Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, has said that inflation is a homegrown issue. He admitted to the finance committee that the current Liberal government's out-of-control spending drove up the inflation that plagues Canadians today. He even indicated that the eight consecutive interest rate hikes were necessary because the Liberals cannot help but spend, spend, spend.
The former Bank of Canada governor and future Liberal leadership candidate Mark Carney told senators that inflation is a domestic problem. Former Liberal deputy prime minister and finance minister John Manley said that the Liberal spending is working against the efforts of the Bank of Canada to control inflation. He added that Liberal spending is fuelling inflation.
Inflation has also been fuelled by the current Liberal government's adding tax increases after tax increases. There is the triple, triple, tripling of the carbon tax, the new, second carbon tax coming this year, the payroll tax and the undemocratic escalator tax on the drinks Canadians enjoy.
When asked by Conservatives, the Bank of Canada governor admitted that the failed carbon tax is driving up inflation. It is not hard to see why. While inflation caused by Liberal spending has made everything more expensive, the Liberals' carbon tax is punishing Canadians, businesses and farmers for living their lives. Agriculture producers are dealing with higher prices for farm fuels, fertilizers needed to grow crops, and the feed they need to keep livestock alive. We know that, once tripled, the failed carbon tax will cost a typical farmer $150,000 a year, and the agriculture industry could lose upwards of $50 million on fertilizer emissions costs. The price of natural gas will jump as the tripling carbon tax adds about 30¢ per litre. Businesses are taking on the higher costs of buying goods, paying for transportation and paying for refrigeration and storage.
If farmers and businesses want to survive in the Prime Minister's Canada, they have to raise their prices. At the end of the day, they still need to pay their employees, pay the rent and pay for the Liberal tax increases. When producers making the goods are forced to pay more, it costs more for businesses to buy, transport and store goods, so it is not rocket science to see that it costs Canadians more to pay for the gas, groceries and home heating they need to survive in Canada.
It is that cost of living that is the issue. One in five Canadians is out of money. They are skipping meals or accessing charity services just to meet their basic needs; 60% of Canadians are cutting back on groceries, while 41% are looking for cheaper, less nutritious options. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment across Canada's 10 big cities is over $2,000 a month, compared to $1,171 a month in 2015. That is an almost 90% increase in rent. The average homeowner's mortgage payments have more than doubled since 2015, going from about $1,500 to more than $3,000 a month. Inflation on the interest on mortgages is up 18% year over year. It takes 60% to 70% of Canadians' paycheques to pay the mortgage, while inflation and the cost of living eat up the rest.
As we see skyrocketing home heating prices, due to the Liberal government cancelling good, clean energy projects that could have been made here in Canada, we also see that the carbon tax takes up about 18% to 20% of everyday Canadians' home heating bills. When Liberals triple, triple, triple the carbon tax, it would take anywhere from 40% to 60% of the bill alone, just on carbon tax.
Eighty per cent of variable rate mortgages have now hit the point where their mortgage payment is entirely just interest. The bank is forcing Canadians to pay more to pay down the principal part of their mortgage, and 45% of those homeowners on a variable rate mortgage will have to sell their homes in nine months. People living in one of the hot housing markets, like Ontario, could lose 30% on the sale of their house if they bought it in the last 12 months.
This carbon tax is a complete failure. It has failed to reach the Liberal emissions targets. In fact, Canada ranks 58th out of 63 countries in climate change performance. We rank lower than China and the U.S., and just barely perform better than Russia. It is clear the Liberal carbon tax is not an environmental plan; it is a tax plan. If Canada is to succeed on the environment and in our economy, government needs to get out of the way, incentivize businesses and let them thrive.
For decades, the private sector has been the innovators and developers of the technology that drives our economy forward. The right approach to addressing climate change is through technology and innovation, not tax. Liberals have crushed the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit and have even driven away investment. Since 2015, Canada has only seen a decline in investors wanting to bring their money to invest in our world-class businesses and industries, because of uncertainty caused by out-of-control Liberal spending, inflation and taxation.
We need to restore affordability and confidence to the Canadian economy. To do that, government is not, and will not be, the solution. Instead, it is time to fire the gatekeepers, cut the red tape and end the punishing tax burden on Canadians. Canadian workers and businesses are ready to get this economy back on track, restore good paycheques for our workers and reverse the damage caused by the Liberal government.
On this side, we know that the only way out of this affordability crisis is to stop the crazy government spending and instead make more of what money buys: affordable homes, affordable Canadian food and affordable, responsibly sourced Canadian energy. At a time of crisis for Canadians, Conservatives and our Conservative leader are listening and ready to act. Canadians are ready too, but they need to get the government out of the way. It is time to end the inflationary spending spree, end the cushy Liberal contracts and stop the tax increases. It is time to axe this failed carbon tax and let Canadians keep more in their pockets.
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- Nov/1/22 10:34:25 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is more and more of an example of the government creating more Ottawa jobs and not helping our small businesses create jobs. Small businesses are the real job creators in this country.
We know that, over the pandemic, the Liberals bragged about more jobs being created. The reality is that more than 85% of those jobs were created in the public sector, not the private sector. The government has done the best job it could to drive down small businesses and make investment run away. By not supporting our energy sector, it has driven away good jobs and great energy.
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- Nov/1/22 10:33:21 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it ought to take lessons from us, because it keeps teaming up with and propping up the Liberals over and over again. It is a costly coalition, which Canadians can no longer afford, and which keeps sending more people to food banks. The NDP needs to answer to Canadians.
Why does it keep supporting and propping up this corrupt, unethical and incompetent Liberal government?
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- Nov/1/22 10:32:32 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, did the member walk here, or did he get here on a plane? The reality is that Canada has the most responsible energy sector in the entire world. The world needs more Canadian energy.
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- Nov/1/22 10:31:09 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course we are consistent. The Liberals give us enough ammo with all their corruption, scandals and wasteful spending. Of course we are going to stay on the same topic all the time. All those things are costing Canadians more money, driving more seniors, children and families into food banks, and we do not see an end to any of this spending. The Liberals need to stop the spending, stop the pain and stop sending more people to food banks.
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- Nov/1/22 10:21:45 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, from scandals to failed programs, spending Canadians' money is a favourite pastime for this costly coalition. In the lead-up to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Liberals had already added an additional $110 billion to Canada's debt. That alone should have raised the alarm for any reasonable members across the aisle, but obviously it did not.
Instead, the money printers kept rolling to the tune of half a trillion dollars of new debt during the last two years, over half of which was not even COVID-related spending. In the last five years, overall government spending has increased by 44% while the size of an already inflated bureaucracy has just kept growing.
The Liberals dragged out their measures longer than any of our other allies when it came to COVID restrictions, using political science instead of real science. Countries with lower vaccination rates reopened faster and they removed barriers to business and tourism. Those countries did not persecute their citizens for making personal choices. Meanwhile, in Canada, we remained restricted to much of the world as the Liberals continued spending on random testing, forcing Canadians into quarantine and keeping loved ones apart.
ArriveCAN is exhibit A of the government's failed drawn-out COVID policies. At $54 million, one would expect an app that could not only do what it was promised to do but that would prevent disruptions to people's lives by making it easier to travel. What taxpayers got instead was an app that failed at nearly every turn. ArriveCAN turned out to be arrive scam.
Because of one glitch, over 10,000 healthy, fully vaccinated people were forced into government-mandated quarantine. Those who did not comply received threatening emails, phone calls and even visits from law enforcement. Travellers entering Canada were even fined because of the app. Seniors were threatened with $5,000 fines if they did not have the app, even when they did not own a phone.
After over 70 updates, the app still failed and never lived up to the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars the Liberals forked over. This is money that, it turns out, cannot even be accounted for. CBSA originally said that ThinkOn received a $1.2-million contract related to ArriveCAN. That was news to the company, which said it does not provide the mobile QR code scanning and verification services that CBSA said it paid ThinkOn for, and the company never received payment from the Liberals.
Now CBSA is saying that Microsoft received the $1.2 million. While the government figures out where it was spending all this money, Canadian developers were proving how big of a waste of money arrive scam really was. It took the CEO of a Toronto technology company and his friends a weekend to clone the app and show how fast and cheap it would be to build. In all, it should have taken two days and cost $250,000 to build the junk the government paid $54 million to create.
This is a symptom of a more significant problem. It again shows Liberal misspending is costing Canadians. Since taking office, the Prime Minister has had misspend after ethics violation after scandal. All of this was at taxpayers' expense. From vacations on private islands to politically interfering in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, resulting in the Prime Minister firing two strong women cabinet ministers, he has proven himself not to be trustworthy. It again showed when he gave the federal contract to the WE Charity to administer the almost billion-dollar Canada student summer grant program.
Liberal misspending also extends beyond arrive scam. My colleague from Calgary Nose Hill recently received a response to her Order Paper question, where we learned that the estimated cost to run the random testing at airports was at least $411 million. That was half-a-billion dollars spent on random testing in the year they were shutting it down. This spending was on top of the $150 million the Liberals gave to their old friends at SNC-Lavalin for field hospitals that were not even used. The government gave another $237 million to a former Liberal MP for ventilators that were not even used.
Even before the pandemic, the Liberals spent $12 million on new fridges for Loblaws while small businesses received higher carbon and payroll taxes. There is also the $35 billion the government spent on the Infrastructure Bank, a bank that has done nothing to help build infrastructure in Canada. Instead, this bank spent $5.7 million in short-term bonuses to 79 employees in the past five years.
There are so many other things that $35 billion could have been used for, such as addressing the housing supply shortage to prevent home prices from soaring, building energy projects to keep gas and home heating bills down this winter, and finally connecting rural Canadians to the Internet and stable cell service. Instead of showing fiscal restraint, the Prime Minister has spent and spent, and Canadians are the ones who have to pay the price.
The tourism industry, before the pandemic, was valued above $100 billion and now is down to $80 billion. After spending $54 million, we have clogged up airports and delivered a massive hit to one of Canada's largest industries, which has cost us jobs and businesses.
It is not just tourism. The inflationary spending of the government has meant higher prices, while failed policies like the carbon tax and cancelling energy projects mean more dollars chasing fewer goods. That is just inflation.
Our agriculture sector is hurting as farmers, ranchers and other food producers cannot afford to run their equipment, heat their barns or buy feed for their livestock. The energy sector continues to get squeezed by “leave it in the ground” policies and the tripling of the carbon tax.
What this means for Canadians is less money in their pockets and impossible choices between heating their homes or putting food on the table. Among Canadians, one in five are cutting back on meals or skipping them altogether. In one month alone, 1.5 million people visited a food bank in this country, and one third of them were children.
Home and rent prices are out of reach for too many Canadians and their families. Instead of addressing inflation, the government has forced the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates, making mortgages even more expensive. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister spent $24,000 in four nights on a hotel in London, the same amount that an average rent of one year costs here in Canada.
The situation is desperate for Canadians, who are doing what they can to save money however they can, yet they look at the government and see wasteful spending and scandals. It truly is more critical than ever for the government to respect taxpayer dollars and eliminate unnecessary spending, such as the arrive scam app.
I rise today to support this motion to have the Auditor General conduct a performance audit on ArriveCAN. It is time that Canadians get to see where the payments really went, who really got the contracts and sub-contracts, and whether, in the end, the Prime Minister was telling the truth.
The arrive scam app is a symptom of the larger problem. Canadians cannot afford any more of the costly coalition. They are out of money, out of patience, and done with this. Liberals need to stop the pain, stop the carbon tax, stop spending and stop raising taxes.
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