- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $99,486.97
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, this budget is ironically called “Fairness for Every Generation.”
After nine years of the Prime Minister trying to make things fair, he sure has not done a very good job. Things are not fair.
Is it fair to every generation that every year life is less affordable? Is it fair to every generation that rents are sky-high? Is it fair to every generation that one in four kids cannot afford to eat? Is it fair to every generation that it takes almost 20 years just to save up for a down payment?
The Prime Minister is not worth the cost for any generation. This is the ninth straight year of deficit spending. In 2015, the federal debt was $616 billion, accumulated from 1867, when Canada began. Today, it is $1.25 trillion, double. The Prime Minister has borrowed more money than all other prime ministers combined.
The result is that, after 20 years of low inflation and interest rates, the Prime Minister's irresponsible inflationary spending has upended Canada's stable economy.
This year, Canada will spend $54.1 billion on interest to wealthy bankers and bondholders, instead of to doctors and nurses, to service the Prime Minister's debt. That is the same amount collected in GST. We should change the name of that tax from the GST to the DST, the debt servicing tax. It is also more money than the government spends on health care or on the Canada child benefit.
This is what happens when a Prime Minister does not want to think about monetary policy. The result is that mortgage payments have doubled, down payments have doubled, rents have doubled, the cost of gas, groceries and home heating have skyrocketed, and people cannot afford to eat, heat or house themselves.
Instead of reining in spending to bring inflation under control, the Prime Minister acts like a pyromaniac, throwing another $40 billion on the inflationary fire. This is despite warnings from economists, including Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem, who cautioned that government spending is at the upper bound. This will make it much harder for the bank to lower interest rates.
This is not a partisan point. Former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page expressed this yesterday, telling Global News, “We gotta get those interest rates down. So on a net basis, this is just not good for inflation.” Former Liberal finance minister John Manley also warned this government months ago that it was pressing on the inflationary gas pedal with its spending. Even former Liberal-appointed governor of the Bank of Canada David Dodge said he believes that this will be the “worst budget” since 1982.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. After nine deficits and doubling the national debt, Canada is less fair and Canadians are worse off.
Now the finance minister says that what Canadians really want is a stronger government to make things fairer. By making government bigger, the Liberals have made citizens weaker. Conservatives believe that smaller government makes for bigger citizens.
This is not a government that gives people everything they want. It is a government that takes everything they have. Members do not have to take it from me. Just yesterday, in the Financial Post, it was written, “we’ve become a growth laggard and our living standards have largely stagnated for the better part of a decade.”
Part of our declining standard of living has to do with the fact that Canada has the worst productivity in the G7. Our GDP growth has been driven primarily by population and labour force growth, not productivity improvements. That may increase the total amount of goods and services, but it does not translate into increased living standards.
This is a real crisis. From 2000 to 2023, the growth rate of Canada's real per person GDP was 0.7%. That is meaningfully worse than the G7 average of 1% and the United States', whose GDP per person growth rate was 1.2%, almost double. Our country is facing a productivity crisis that threatens to erode this country’s standard of living and erase many Canadians' hopes for a more prosperous future.
Just a few weeks ago the Bank of Canada's deputy governor Carolyn Rogers said that we have a productivity emergency, and “in case of emergency, break glass.” Even former Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau says the budget is a threat to investment and economic growth.
It is time to take action by, for instance, reducing regulatory barriers to investment, celebrating entrepreneurship, bolstering the profit incentive for private investment and loosening the federal government's tight grip on the economy. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister does the exact opposite.
There has been one change, though. The borrow-and-spend Liberals are now the tax-and-spend Liberals. On top of gouging Canadians with their April 1 tax hikes, they have decided that they know better how to spend businesses' money than the hard-working Canadians who actually run those businesses.
This is not a partisan point. Dan Kelly, president of the CFIB, said, “What worries me the most about [these tax] changes is the potential to demotivate Canadians from getting into business in the first place or working hard to grow a small business to a medium-sized business”. He is not the only one.
Harley Finkelstein, president of Canada’s greatest tech company, Shopify, said:
We need to be doing everything we can to turn Canada into the best place for entrepreneurs to build.
What's proposed in the federal budget will do the complete opposite. Innovators and entrepreneurs will suffer and their success will be penalized—this is...a tax on innovation and risk taking.
Our policy failures are America's gains. At a time when our country is facing critically low productivity and business investment our political leaders are failing our country's entrepreneurs.
For nine years, the Prime Minister has told Canadians that the rich would pay for the cost of his spending, but the truth is that it has been everyday Canadians who have been the ones paying. The Prime Minister has already raised his punishing carbon tax by 23% on April 1, and with $40 billion in new inflationary spending, Canadians will continue to pay the inflation tax that hurts the poorest among us the most. Whatever the Prime Minister says, it will not be him and his billionaire friends who pay for new spending. It will be single moms, workers and small business owners.
We cannot tax our way to prosperity, and no government program can increase productivity better than the power of the free market, spurred on by Canadian entrepreneurs. We need to celebrate entrepreneurship in this country, not punish it.
Conservatives had three simple demands for the budget: axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234 in its original form; build the homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities to permit 15% more homebuilding each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure money; and cap spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation. The government must find a dollar in savings for every dollar of spending.
The Prime Minister did none of those things, and for those reasons, Conservatives will not be supporting the budget.
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- Apr/8/24 3:01:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what is keeping interest rates so high is Liberal deficit spending. That is what. Now we can add Scotiabank to the long list of economists saying that after eight years, the NDP-Liberal government is not worth the cost. Record-high deficits are keeping housing, food and fuel at record-high prices.
Will the Prime Minister fix the budget and adopt our common-sense Conservative policy by bringing in a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down inflation and interest rates?
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- Oct/16/23 2:59:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, a half a billion dollars in inflationary deficits has fuelled 40-year inflation highs, causing the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates. In the midst of a housing crisis, mortgage defaults and forced home sales are on the rise. People are losing their homes.
This Prime Minister is just not worth the cost. Will the Prime Minister finally put an end to his inflationary spending so that Canadians can keep a roof over their heads?
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- Sep/20/23 2:13:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in June, the finance minister said, “Canada’s plan to bring down inflation is working.” She called it a “milestone moment”, taking credit for the reduction.
Yesterday, we learned inflation has gone up to 4%, an increase of 43% since she made those comments. Now inflation is higher here than it is in the United States. Mortgage payments are up 151%, to $3,560. Rent has doubled.
Before the Prime Minister took office, it took 25 years to pay off a mortgage. Now it takes 25 years just to save for a down payment. The NDP-Liberal government wants to blow the bank. The Prime Minister has added more debt than all previous prime ministers combined.
Common-sense Conservatives would bring homes people can afford by reducing inflationary deficits and taxes to bring lower interest rates. After eight years, the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost.
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- Jun/12/23 3:03:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious problem. Massive Liberal deficits are fuelling inflation. Inflation causes interest rates to go up. Higher interest rates lead to higher mortgage payments and more mortgage defaults. To stop mortgage defaults, we need to balance the budget, end the big deficits and reduce interest rates.
Will the Prime Minister end his inflationary deficit spending so Canadians can afford to live?
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- May/31/23 2:11:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, inflationary Liberal deficits have caused a world of hurt.
After their latest carbon tax increases and their $43-billion deficit-busting budget, the inflationary pain Canadians are feeling continues to rise. Rent and mortgages have doubled. Food inflation stands at 8.3%. Our ability to spend is not infinite. What Canadians want is for inflation to come down now. While millions visit food banks, the Liberals choose to pour fuel on the inflationary fire. The Prime Minister wants Canadians to believe that they have never had it so good.
However, a new day is dawning. A new Conservative prime minister would turn that hurt into hope by ending inflationary deficits, by scrapping the carbon tax on heat, gas and groceries, by cutting taxes and making paycheques powerful again, and by building homes that workers can afford.
It is the common sense of the common people. For their home, my home, our home, let us bring it home.
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- May/15/23 2:54:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the finance minister plans to spend $490 billion in this budget but is refusing to show up at the finance committee for just two hours to answer questions. The budget would drive every Canadian family another $4,200 into debt. Canada has the fifth-highest increase in government spending and the third-largest increase in our debt-to-GDP ratio. Our debt has increased faster than that of almost every other advanced country. Just last November, the finance minister promised to balance the budget by 2028. In this budget, her deficits go on forever and ever. Why is she breaking that promise?
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- Apr/27/23 12:17:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to talk about “a line we shall not cross.” Only one short year ago, the finance minister said, “let me be very clear: We are absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline.” It did not. In fact, it went up. She also said, “Our deficits must continue to be reduced”, which they were not. She said, “The pandemic debt we incurred to keep Canadians safe and solvent must—and will—be paid down.” It was not. “This is our fiscal anchor. This is a line we shall not cross”, she said. Just last November, the Liberals predicted that the budget will have a $4.5-billion surplus in 2027. Now, they say there is going to be a $14-billion deficit in 2027.
I am stuck on the words “a line we shall not cross”. High-sounding words of integrity they are indeed, but so many lines have been crossed. In 2015, the Prime Minister promised that the budget would be balanced by 2019. It did not happen. This year alone, the government will go another $43 billion into debt. In 2019, the Prime Minister said that the debt-to-GDP ratio would go down. It did not happen. Do members remember his abandoned promise from 2019? He promised to cut mobile phone rates by 25%. It never happened.
The Liberals then said, in 2021, that they would create a $5-billion mental health transfer, which was a major promise of transfer to the provinces. It did not happen. It is not mentioned in the budget at all. Do members remember 2015? The Prime Minister said that the election would be the last first-past-the-post one. It did not happen. In 2019, he said, “we will plant two billion trees”. It never happened. How about the carbon tax and the claim that “Canadians get back more than they pay”? This is not true, says the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer. Let us not forget the perennial pharmacare promise in almost every Liberal platform over the last 30 years. In this budget, the word “pharmacare” does not even appear. There is not one mention.
How about the claim that interest rates will remain low, or that we need to be worried about deflation, not inflation? How about the promise of affordable housing or rent? The Liberals have spent $89 billion on a national housing strategy that hardly creates more housing. Since 2015, mortgage payments, down payments and rents have doubled. They promised to help students, but instead cut the Canada student grant from $6,000 to $4,200 a year.
The Prime Minister promised to keep our streets safer, yet violent crime is way up. Another promise, “We will make information more accessible by requiring transparency to be a fundamental principle across the federal government”, did not happen. He also promised to stop money laundering. Canada is now such a haven for money launderers that it has its own name: snow-washing. This is not a badge of honour.
Let us talk about crossing a line. The Prime Minister just appointed, and I cannot believe I am even saying this, as it sounds so ridiculous, the sister-of-law of the intergovernmental affairs minister as the Ethics Commissioner. The minister himself has been charged by the last ethics commissioner.
It is time for Conservatives to cross a line, the line between this side of the aisle and the government side of the aisle. We will cross that line after the next election, members can be sure, when the member for Carleton is the next prime minister of Canada.
Conservatives were looking for just three reasonable things in this budget: lower taxes for Canadian workers, an end to inflationary deficit spending, and meaningful measures to make housing more affordable. None of the three Conservative demands has been met, and there is not a chance that Conservatives will support this anti-worker, tax-hiking, inflationary budget.
Let us talk taxes. Nearly all economists agree that raising taxes during or just before an economic slowdown is absolutely terrible economic policy, yet this government continues raising taxes for ordinary Canadians. The Parliamentary Budget Officer shows that the carbon tax will cost average families way more than the rebate they receive. There is a war on work in this country. Higher taxes mean less take-home pay. Do we know what happens when we punish work? We get less work. Just this year, the Prime Minister raised payroll taxes on workers and small businesses. A worker making about $66,600 will be forced to pay an extra $305.
By increasing the excise tax on alcohol by 2%, Liberals are still raising taxes on the restaurants and breweries that are struggling to survive. Just when service industry workers are trying to get back on their feet from the pandemic, the current government's brilliant plan is to make it more expensive for Canadians to dine out.
Let us talk about inflationary spending. In 2015, the total federal debt was about $600 billion. Today, it has doubled, to $1.2 trillion, which is $600 billion from Confederation to 2015 and $600 billion from 2015 to 2023. That is nearly $81,000 per household in Canada. To make matters worse, this year alone, interest on this massive debt will cost Canadians $43 billion. To put that into perspective, it is almost as much as what the federal health care transfer will be, at $49.4 billion. That is interest, going to pay wealthy bondholders and bankers, that is more than enough to fund the health care transfer. Even with revenues way up, the government is going to borrow another $175 billion between now and 2028, bringing the debt to over $1.3 trillion. The spending in this year's budget is $63 billion higher than it was a year ago. That is $4,200 for each and every Canadian, which is almost enough to house the Prime Minister in the hotel room for one whole night.
The massive federal bureaucracy is costing Canadians in a major way. Here is a troubling statistic: Personnel spending over the past two years increased by 30.9% to $60.7 billion. In spite of that, we now have the biggest strike in Canadian history. That takes a very special kind of incompetence.
It gets even worse. At the same time, expenditures for external contracting have more than doubled since 2015, to over $20 billion, with billions going to wealthy companies like McKinsey and other consulting firms that are totally unaccountable to taxpayers. Never before has a government spent so much to achieve so little. As Canadians are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet, the current government is raking in record revenues. It will receive $413 billion this year, which is up $151 billion from 2015. In fact, Canada's per capita economic growth has been the weakest among the OECD countries, despite all of this spending.
The dream of home ownership has died for young and new Canadians under the current Prime Minister. Nine in 10 people who do not own a home believe they never will. We have the most expensive housing on the planet, higher in some of our cities than in New York, Los Angeles and other major cities. That makes no sense, with only 38 million people living on the second-largest land mass in the world. Young people who have done everything we have asked them to do, such as go to school and work hard, are living in their parents' basements.
Conservatives will make sure that the municipal gatekeepers get out of the way so we can get some homes built. We will sell off 15% of federal buildings for affordable housing and will bring back the dream of home ownership.
Grocery price inflation is in the double digits for the seventh month in a row. Record numbers of people are using food banks. One in five Canadians is skipping meals. The Prime Minister now stands up in the House and brags about all the cheques he is sending for this or that, but the government has no money. It first has to take it from Canadians before it gives it back. Why not leave it where it belongs in the first place? The so-called grocery rebate will not come close to covering the rising cost of food that the inflationary Liberal deficits and tax hikes have caused. The “Canada Food Price Report 2023” predicts that a family of four will spend up to $1,065 more on food this year.
We must bring home a country where people bring home powerful paycheques. Canada must work for the people who have done the work. Conservatives will bring home powerful paycheques, with lower taxes. We will scrap the carbon tax so hard work pays off again. We will bring home lower prices by ending the inflationary debts and deficits that drive inflation. We will make sure that homes are affordable for young Canadians again. That is what Conservatives will do.
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- Apr/27/23 12:14:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I note that the member did not discuss the deficits that are projected in the budget. If we look through to 2027-28, they project that the combined debt of Canada will be over $1.3 trillion, which is more than double what it was when the government took office. Does he think that qualifies as being fiscally responsible?
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- Dec/7/22 3:08:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have seen $52 billion in new inflationary spending and $500 billion in deficits in just two years. Yesterday the Auditor General reported that $32 billion in overpayments and suspicious payments just went out the door. The Governor of the Bank of Canada said that if Liberal spending had been less, inflation would have been lower, and today interest rates went up by another half a per cent.
The Prime Minister's big spending is now hurting Canadians. Will he stop the spending, stop the waste and get inflation under control finally?
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies.
A staggering $1.2 trillion is how much debt the finance minister tells us we will be up to our necks in by just next year. The Liberals have doubled our national debt since they came to power. The Prime Minister has incurred more debt than all prime ministers who came before him. The Liberals have doubled the debt, they have tripled the carbon tax and, to make matters worse, they have quadrupled people's mortgage payments, because Liberal inflation has led to Liberal interest rate hikes.
A favourite quote of mine is from Winston Churchill, who famously said, “Gentlemen, we have run out of money; now we have to think.” Well, it turns out the Prime Minister not wanting to think about monetary policy has had absolutely devastating consequences for Canadians.
The Conservatives had two simple asks: one, no new taxes, and two, no new spending unless it is paid for with equal savings. However, the Liberals did just the opposite. They are going to triple the carbon tax and increase spending by $21 billion. That is their brilliant plan to combat inflation. It is obvious that a Prime Minister who does not mind spending Canadians' hard-earned tax dollars on a swanky $6,000 hotel room and a finance minister who defines belt tightening as cancelling her Disney+ subscription just do not get it. However, do members know who does get it? It is everyone else.
This economic plan does nothing to address Canada's cost of living crisis. With a $40.1-billion increase in revenues just this year, this statement shows that inflation is not only increasing the cost of living but increasing taxes on Canadians. Instead of giving Canadians much-needed relief during this time, the costly coalition seeks to profit off increased inflation.
Canadians are out of money and the Prime Minister is out of touch. Members opposite do not seem to know the facts. Do they not know that interest payments on our debt will double this year, costing nearly as much as the Canada health transfer? Do they not know that Canadians continue to cut their diets, and mothers are putting water in their children's milk because they cannot afford 10% annual food inflation? Do they not know that home prices have doubled over the last seven years, forcing young Canadians to live in their parents' basements? Do they not know that food bank usage has soared to an all-time high, recording 1.5 million visits in just one month? No, they do not know, but the Conservatives know what it will take to solve this inflation crisis. Let us stop creating more cash. Rather, we should create more of what cash buys.
If I had to sum up the fall economic statement in one word, do members know what word I would use? I would use the word “deceptive”. It is deceptive because its central theme is this farcical tale that tough times might be ahead of us, but hey, Canada is on the right track, our fiscal policy is sound and at least we are doing better than everyone else. It is deceptive because it portends to be fiscally responsible when it is not. It is deceptive because it portends to rein in spending when it does not. It is deceptive because it portends to rein in inflation when it does not. It is deceptive because it portends to offer relief to Canadians when it does not. It is deceptive because language like “economic slowdown” belies the reality of a looming recession.
Now, we know that the Liberals are experts at shirking responsibility. Inflation is not their fault. Blowing up people's mortgage payments is not their fault. If one cannot get a passport, it is not their fault. If we cannot afford gas, groceries or home heating, that is not their fault either. Who do they blame? Well, it is Putin, of course, the war, supply chains, COVID or corporate profiteering. It is never their fault. They will blame anything. However, when we pose the question asking whether inflation was caused by a failed domestic monetary policy that ballooned the money supply by 27% in two years from $1.8 trillion to $2.3 trillion or by massive deficit spending, they will say no, that is not it; it is the war. Do members not see that it is Putin?
This is what is happening. The cost of government is driving up the cost of living. Half a billion dollars in inflationary deficits means more money chasing fewer goods, which drives up the cost of everything. Inflationary taxes drive up the cost of goods. The more the Liberals spend, the more things cost. Their argument that inflation was not triggered by domestic policy simply stretches credulity.
In recent weeks, experts from across the country have presented the government with an uncomfortable truth: The inflation crisis is in fact a domestic crisis. After doubling our national debt, now the finance minister says it is time to be fiscally responsible. It is time to turn off the taps, and more spending would, in her words, “force the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates even higher. It would make life more expensive, for everyone, for longer.”
Remarkably, in the same statement, she increases spending anyway, by $21 billion. By the way, spending is already way up. In 2020, just before the pandemic, federal program spending was $338 billion. Now the finance minister says in 2023 it will be $437 billion, a whopping 29% increase in spending over prepandemic levels.
When it comes to COVID, I will offer the Liberals a bit of an olive branch. The pandemic necessitated a certain degree of spending, which Conservatives voted for. However, the problem is, of the $500 billion they spent in deficit, over $200 billion had absolutely zero to do with COVID. Even before 2020, in the good old days of sunny ways, the government added a staggering $112 billion to our debt.
I understand why the Liberals do not want to think about this. When Canadians realize how badly their tax dollars have been mismanaged, make no mistake, they will hold the government to account.
Here is another uncomfortable truth. For far too long, Europe was content with getting its energy from a brutal despot, but today that is no longer an option. Now the continent prepares for a winter that can only be described as hellish. We could have been there for them. However, the Liberals once again dropped the ball. While Canada sits upon the most ethically produced supply of natural gas on the planet, our friends in Europe are being held for ransom, begging to buy overpriced blood natural gas from Putin.
We could have been there for them, but the Prime Minister decided not to invest in exporting our natural gas. We could have been there for them, while creating good-paying Canadian energy jobs. We could have been there for them while generating revenue for Canadians, but the Prime Minister did not want to think about developing Canadian natural resources, and now Europe is paying the price. Canada does not get the sale, and Putin rakes it in, all the while funding his brutal war.
It is frustrating to see the Liberals being so inflexible and so ideological that they refuse to accept this fact almost 10 months into this brutal war. Talk about choosing posturing over prosperity.
I wish I had something positive to say about the fall economic update. I wish I could commend the government for exercising even an iota of the fiscal discipline that it claims to have suddenly converted to. This so-called fiscal discipline is relative only to the massive spending over the last two and a half years. Just about anything is a success when working with such a low benchmark. It is the financial equivalent of gorging on Halloween candy, minus a few chocolate bars here and there, and telling the world that the diet is “going well”. Ironically, when Conservatives propose fiscal responsibility, Liberals brand it austerity. When Liberals feebly try to do the same, it is called fiscal discipline.
We have been trying to reach across the aisle for months now. Just a few weeks ago, it looked like we had seen some progress when the finance minister endorsed our “pay as you go” approach to her cabinet colleagues. However, there is not a word of that policy in the update. When will the government commit to a real plan to balance the budget and stop adding fuel to the inflationary fire?
It goes without saying that $1.2 trillion is a lot of money to owe. Right now, I say that Canadians have 1.2 trillion reasons to reject the Prime Minister's failed economic policy.
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