- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $99,486.97
- Government Page
- Jun/21/23 9:42:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, finally I hear another member of Parliament say it is a good idea to have a plan to balance the budget.
I hope that the members of the Liberal Party are paying attention to the good common sense of the Bloc MP, the instruction of the IMF, and not just relying on how they view partisan interests of other members of Parliament.
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- Jun/21/23 9:29:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to take a moment to thank the great folks of Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley for placing their trust in me to represent them in this austere chamber, as we have reached the last day of the session. It has really been the honour of a lifetime, I have to say.
The topic we are discussing today, at the end of the day, is a fairly simple concept. The motion is just asking the House to call upon the government to table a plan to return to balanced budgets. I have been listening patiently to the speeches from opposition parties tonight, and other than in the Bloc, it is difficult to find a member in the Liberal or NDP caucuses who can even really say the words “balanced budget”. It is almost like it is sacrilege to even raise the topic or it is somehow a partisan argument to say that governments should strive to balance their books. It is like they are allergic to the concept.
However, it has not always been that way. Liberals have not always been this way, and the NDP has not always been this way. I remember back in the early 2000s, in my home province of Manitoba, when Gary Doer was Premier of Manitoba. He was Premier of Manitoba for just over 10 years. It is interesting. I know the members of the NDP caucus are fans of Gary Doer, and many Manitobans are still to this day fans of Gary Doer. In fact, he was appointed as the Canadian ambassador to the United States by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a very well-respected parliamentarian.
Do members know what Gary Doer did for 10 years between 2000 and 2010, every year? He brought in balanced budgets: 10 of them.
Another interesting thing about Mr. Doer, and the reason I am talking about him, is that one of his MLAs was a lady by the name of Jennifer Howard. Jennifer was a very popular MLA. She was part of that government that brought in 10 balanced budgets, and she voted every year, 10 years in a row, for all these balanced budgets. Today, Ms. Howard is the chief of staff to the leader of the NDP, so I am hoping that at least Ms. Howard might have a conversation with the leader of the NDP and talk to him about the real history of the NDP and the sense of fiscal responsibility that the NDP has had throughout its history.
When it comes to the Liberal Party, we do not have to go back very far to find the desire to have balanced budgets. I mentioned earlier in one of my questions that Paul Martin recognized this. Unfortunately, he was forced to recognize it. The Government of Canada had hit the wall by 1995. It could not borrow any more on international markets; news media sources were calling Canada an economic basket case.
The government had no option to get things under control, so contrary to the partisan spin many of the Liberals like to say, that Liberals would never cut anything, the fact of the matter is that the deepest cuts in Canadian history were made by finance minister Martin and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in 1995 cut transfers to provinces. I remember it very well, because Gary Filmon was the Premier of Manitoba, and he was all of a sudden looking at billions of dollars in shortfalls to fund health care in Manitoba, and provinces across the country were scrambling.
To be fair to Paul Martin, I do not think he did it because he wanted to. He did it because he had to, but the problem is that it should have never gotten to that point, and that is the point of my speech.
We have the chance to right the ship. All we are asking the government, and it is a very reasonable request that I do not see how one could say is partisan in any way, is just to come up with a plan to say how it is going to balance the budget. It is actually not so remote, even for the current government, at all, or for the finance minister, because in November she tabled the fall economic update.
In the fall economic update, she projected a balanced budget, in fact, a $4.5-billion surplus in the 2027-28 fiscal year. Obviously, the Liberals had a plan to bring the budget back into balance. I really think this was a very reasonable request.
I want to talk a little more about the motion. It basically says that budget 2023 adds more than $60 billion of new spending, or $4,200 per family, and that inflation in Canada increased following the introduction of the $60 billion in new Liberal spending.
I should have mentioned earlier that I will be splitting my time with my esteemed colleague, the member for Calgary Centre. I apologize for not mentioning that earlier.
The reality is that members opposite will make the argument that inflation has come to our shores. It is not the government's fault, it is a worldwide phenomenon that Canada is certainly not immune to. The problem with that is that many economists have now confirmed that inflation is homegrown. In fact, one of them is the Governor of the Bank of Canada. We had the opportunity to question him in the finance committee. I asked him if government spending had been less, would inflation have been less. He said that, yes, inflation would have been less.
Clearly, fiscal policy has an impact on inflation, as does monetary policy. I know members opposite do not want to take it from me. They view all Conservatives as coming at this from a partisan perspective, but maybe they will take it from the IMF, which just released a report. The International Monetary Fund, which Canada has a member of since 1944, put out a report that urged Canada to bring back a debt anchor—
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- Jun/21/23 9:24:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that seemed like a very well-reasoned, well thought-out speech. However, the motion that we are debating right now has a question, and the question is whether or not the government should be called upon to table a plan to return to balanced budgets.
I wonder if the member would agree that governments, no matter what their political stripe, should strive to at least create a plan to have balanced budgets?
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- Jun/21/23 8:22:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to clarify one thing. The member said the motion called for the government to balance the budget. Actually, the motion simply calls for a plan from the government to balance the budget. I thought it had one, because in November it tabled the fall economic statement, which called for a balanced budget in 2027-28.
The member has equated, somehow through his warped logic, that balancing the budget equates to cuts. Given the fact that the government's plan is to balance the budget by 2027-28, what is it going to cut?
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- Jun/21/23 6:32:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I very much enjoy working with my colleague from the Bloc at the finance committee. I find him to be an articulate and thoughtful member of the committee.
Our motion is basically to call on the government to balance budgets. I will note that, during the 2015 campaign, the Prime Minister promised he would balance the budget by 2019. Just recently, in the fall economic statement, the government had projected a surplus in the 2027-28 year. It quickly reneged on that in this budget on March 28.
Could the member share his thoughts on how anyone can believe anything the government says when it comes to balancing budgets?
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