- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $99,486.97
- Government Page
- May/7/24 2:34:26 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, interest on our national debt is more than we spend on health care. The Prime Minister is spending more money lining the pockets of wealthy bankers and bondholders than making sure Canadians get the health care they need.
On Thursday, the bank governor told the finance committee that government spending was “not helpful” in bringing down inflation and interest rates. When will the Prime Minister finally start listening and get spending under control to bring down inflation and interest rates?
92 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
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.
1245 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/8/24 3:01:14 p.m.
- Watch
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?
83 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for King—Vaughan.
After eight years of this Prime Minister, two million Canadians are visiting food banks in a single month. After eight years of this Prime Minister, housing costs have doubled. After eight years of this Prime Minister, people are struggling to keep their homes, because their mortgage payments have doubled. After eight years, violent crime is up 39%. Tent cities exist in almost every major city, and over 50% of Canadians are $200 or less away from going broke. After eight years, this Prime Minister is simply not worth the cost.
Just last week, the Prime Minister said that the Conservative Party wants to “take Canada backwards”. If that means taking Canada back to a time when inflation was at historic lows or taking Canada back to a time when young people could afford to buy homes or back to a time when rent and groceries were actually affordable or back to a time when people felt safe in their own neighbourhoods, if this is what taking Canada backward looks like, then I am all in.
People rightfully wonder how it got like this. Let me explain.
In 2020 the Bank of Canada made a decision to increase the money supply in order to buy government bonds. The bank said it did this to keep interest rates low, but the reality was that the Liberals needed money, and lots of it. That money was ostensibly to pay for pandemic emergency programs, but soon after the pandemic, the Parliamentary Budget Officer found that $204.5 billion in new spending had absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic.
What happens when the central bank prints money? It means we have more dollars chasing fewer goods. Each dollar is worth less. Imagine that, in the whole economy, there were only $10, and that $1 was the price of a loaf of bread. Now imagine that, all of a sudden, there are $20 in the economy but still only 10 loaves of bread. Each dollar is now worth half, its value diluted by the creation of a new dollar. That is what caused inflation, not supply chains, not the war in Ukraine, not so-called “greedflation”, but money printing. That is the cause: money printed to feed the Prime Minister's reckless and inflationary spending.
From 1867 to 2015, the total federal debt was $600 billion. Today it is $1.2 trillion. The Prime Minister has doubled the national debt. He has borrowed more money than all other prime ministers who came before him.
What happens when we have inflation? How does a country get it back under control? It is forced to raise interest rates; that is how.
This is the monetary policy part, by the way, that the Prime Minister says he does not want to think about. He did not think that his out-of-control spending might cause a vicious cycle of inflation that would force the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates, but it did.
He now likes to call this spending “investments”, but what does he have to show for these investments? Our economic growth has flatlined. The OECD predicts that Canada will have the worst per capita GDP growth in the OECD for the next 30 years. Per capita GDP has actually declined. The Bank of Canada said in its monetary policy report just last week that it expects economic growth to be flat.
What do you call spending $600 billion for zero economic benefit? Economic malpractice is what you call it.
What about the high interest Canadians pay on all this debt? The Prime Minister likes to say that he took on debt so Canadians would not have to, but Canadians are stuck with the bill. Canadians are about to spend more money on interest on the Prime Minister's debt than on health care, on child care, on EI or on national defence.
The Bank of Nova Scotia economists have said that government deficits are adding two full percentage points to interest rates on the backs of Canadians.
The bank governor just confirmed in committee that the GST is adding 0.6% onto inflation.
Common-sense conservatives keep telling the government that Liberal spending is making life more expensive for Canadians. Did the Liberals listen? No. They just added another $20 billion of additional inflationary spending. At the same time, we have a housing crisis and out-of-control crime in this country.
A Conservative government would axe the tax, build more homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. It is time to rein in the NDP-Liberal coalition's inflationary spending and balance the budget to lower inflation and interest rates to ensure that Canadians can afford their lives again. Despite warnings from the Bank of Canada and the Canadian financial sector that government spending is contributing to Canada's high inflation, the Prime Minister ignored their calls for moderation and, yet again, decided to spend on the backs of Canadians, keeping inflation and interest rates high.
What are the ramifications for ordinary Canadians? The IMF warns that Canada is the most at risk in the G7 for a mortgage default crisis. High interest rates risk a mortgage meltdown as billions of dollars in mortgages renew over the next three years. At finance committee, the representative from The Mustard Seed food bank told us that food bank usage has increased 78% since 2018, with a marked increase in double-income families. Many Canadians are having to choose between buying food, heating their homes and paying rent. People's dreams of purchasing their first homes have been crushed. It used to be that Canadians were paying off their mortgage in 25 years. Now it takes that long just to save up for a down payment.
The good news is that it was not like this before this Prime Minister, and it sure will not be like this once he is gone. For the last eight years, all the Liberals have to show for housing are broken promises, half measures and endless photo ops. Their precious national housing program has only completed 106,000 homes. CMHC officials say we need to build over five million homes by 2030. Only in Canada has housing become so unaffordable so quickly. Toronto is ranked as the world's worst housing bubble, and Vancouver is the third most unaffordable housing market on earth. They are worse than New York City; London, England; and Singapore, a tiny island with 2,000 times more people per square kilometre than Canada.
The problem is that we are not building enough homes fast enough. We built fewer homes last year than we did in 1972, when our population was half the size and I was 10 years old. This is happening because the Prime Minister subsidizes government gatekeepers and the red tape that prevents builders from getting shovels in the ground and people into homes they can afford. In Vancouver, regulations add a staggering $1.3 million to the cost of an average home. In Toronto, government adds $350,000. That means that over 60% of the price of a home in Vancouver is due to fees, regulations and taxes.
Conservatives have a plan to fix this. It would be called the building homes not bureaucracy act. It would put keys in doors and people in homes by giving more money to the municipalities that are building homes and taking money away from cities that are not. It would incentivize unaffordable cities to build more homes and speed up the rate at which they build homes every year to meet housing targets. Cities must increase the number of homes built by 15% each year. If targets are missed, a percentage of their federal funding would be withheld, and it would be equivalent to the percentage the target was missed by. We would reward big cities that are getting homes built by providing a building bonus for municipalities that exceed a 15% increase in housing completions.
Also, we would make sure that cities build high-density housing around transit stations. Transit-oriented development is a major solution to our housing crisis. All of this is just common sense. Thanks to the Prime Minister, this is the worst time in Canada's history for Canadian people, and particularly for the middle class. The good news is that we have a common-sense plan that would axe the inflationary carbon tax to bring home lower prices, cap spending, cut waste to bring down inflation and interest rates, and remove bureaucracy to build more homes so that, once again, people could afford to rent or pay their mortgages. Conservatives will work every day to make Canada a country that works for the people who do the work.
1481 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Oct/16/23 2:59:58 p.m.
- Watch
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?
86 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, a simple Google search by her about economists and quantitative easing increasing the money supply will confirm to her what economists have been saying for a long time, which is that increasing the money supply by $600 billion has diluted the value of our currency and that is primarily driving inflation in Canada.
55 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Sep/20/23 2:13:24 p.m.
- Watch
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.
155 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/21/23 9:37:53 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the compliment. I know everybody is waiting with bated breath to hear what I have to say next. I will try not to disappoint.
The fact of the matter is the IMF is now urging Canada to bring a debt anchor and to keep fiscal policy tight. What does that mean, keeping fiscal policy tight? It means moving toward balanced budgets, not just relying on what they might call fiscal guardrails or reducing debt-to-GDP ratios, but actually having a hard fiscal anchor. This is the IMF talking, not me. A hard fiscal anchor. What they mean is a plan to get back to balanced budgets.
The Bank of Canada, to its credit, has been engaged in a policy of fiscal tightening, trying to reduce the money supply and raising interest rates, trying to grapple with the scourge of inflation. The problem is that the fiscal policy of the Government of Canada is running counter to that.
We have loose fiscal policy in this country, meaning that billions and billions of dollars are still going out the door of the budget this year. It was $495 billion, almost half a trillion dollars. Mr. Speaker, I know you have been here for a while, and I know you know that is a lot of money. It is way more than it was even in 2019.
We have a real issue in this country, and I think we need to bridge the gap. We need the government and its coalition partners to take this concept seriously, go back to the drawing board and at least come back with a plan. That is all this motion asks for, not to balance the budget tomorrow or at two o'clock this morning when we are voting on the appropriations, but to come back soon with a plan, just like they had for 2027, to bring the budget back into balance.
321 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/12/23 3:04:16 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, that is certainly not a very serious answer.
The bank governor is working to rein in inflation by increasing interest rates. At the same time, the Prime Minister's massive $60-billion spending spree is fuelling inflation and has caused yet another interest rate hike just last week. While the Liberals are making the Bank of Canada's job even harder, it is ordinary Canadians who will be dropping their keys off at their banks and saying goodbye to their homes.
Will the Prime Minister put an end to his inflationary deficit spending and let Canadians keep their homes?
101 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/12/23 3:03:04 p.m.
- Watch
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?
66 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/23 2:11:27 p.m.
- Watch
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.
166 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/29/23 9:40:47 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Chair, its main job is to keep inflation at 2%.
How much does the minister's budget project inflation will be this year?
24 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/29/23 9:39:52 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Chair, how much was Canada's inflation rate in April?
11 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/27/23 3:00:25 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Prime Minister, former bank governor, Stephen Poloz, now says that Liberal deficit spending drove up inflation. The current bank governor said the same thing last fall. If he will not listen to us, maybe the Prime Minister will listen to the bank governors.
Inflationary Liberal spending and taxes drive up the cost of everything. People cannot afford to eat or even heat their homes. To make matters worse, now the Liberals are going to triple the carbon tax.
I have a simple question. Will the Prime Minister commit to no new taxes?
99 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/17/23 11:52:27 a.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, everything feels broken. Just yesterday, the Governor of the Bank of Canada confirmed that the carbon tax is adding a full half percentage point to inflation. While Canadians are struggling just to feed themselves, the Liberals are now planning to triple the carbon tax, making inflation even worse.
When will the Prime Minister take responsibility for the inflation he caused, axe the tax or move out of the way so Conservatives can fix the problem?
85 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/7/22 3:08:13 p.m.
- Watch
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?
94 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/29/22 2:13:15 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government says that inflation in Canada is not its fault. Blowing up people's mortgage payments is not its fault. High interest rates are not its fault. If one cannot afford gas, groceries or home heating, it is not its fault either. However, now we know the truth.
The Governor of the Bank of Canada has confirmed “inflation in Canada increasingly reflects what's happening in Canada.” Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney even said, “[Inflation] is quite broad...most of it is now domestically generated inflation.”
The truth is that the cost of government is driving up the cost of living. The more the Liberals spend, the more things cost. Just last week, the Governor of the Bank of Canada admitted as much when he confirmed that, if government spending had been just half of what it was during the pandemic, we would be seeing lower inflation today. He said that inflation is costing each Canadian an extra $3,500 per year.
The Prime Minister is out of touch and Canadians are out of money. Instead of creating more cash, it is time to create more of what cash buys.
200 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/24/22 3:05:32 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the reality is that 40% of spending that took place during the pandemic, according to the government's own appointed Parliamentary Budget Officer, had absolutely zero to do with the pandemic. The member's response is cold comfort for those who cannot afford to heat their homes because of the carbon tax or cannot afford to stay in their homes because of interest rates, or cannot afford groceries because of inflation. The fact of the matter is that the Governor of the Bank Canada has now confirmed what we all feared: excessive government spending is the cause of made-in-Canada inflation.
Will the Prime Minister stop this problem, stop the spending and get inflation under control?
119 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/24/22 3:04:11 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, since 2015, the Prime Minister has doubled our national debt to $1.2 trillion. Over $100 billion of that was even prior to the pandemic. He has incurred more debt than all other prime ministers combined. Just yesterday, the Governor of the Bank of Canada told me that, but for this massive spending, inflation would have been less.
This is a very important question: Will the Prime Minister finally admit that his failed fiscal policy is costing Canadians more for everything?
83 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I will agree with my colleague on one thing, which is that so many things are broken. It seems like the government could not create a program that it could not bungle so badly. Canadians cannot get passports. They cannot get through to the CRA.
The worst is the inflation. The failed monetary policy of the government by a Prime Minister who does not want to think about monetary policy has caused inflation, which is really hitting Canadians hard. More than that, it is enriching the pockets of the government. Kitchen cabinets are looking pretty bare right now, but the Liberal cabinet is pretty flush with all the new tax revenues inflation has granted to it.
118 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
