- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Barrie—Innisfil
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $99,360.72
- Government Page
- Mar/19/24 4:04:35 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the cost of living is currently on the rise across the country because the NDP has supported so many of the Liberal government's policies.
I do not think he heard what I was saying before, which is that there are families in this country who are paying more in the carbon tax than what they are getting back. According to the data from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, in Ontario, the province that I live in, the fiscal and economic net impact on a family is $1,820. I have no reason to not believe the Parliamentary Budget Officer; he is an independent officer of Parliament whose job is to assess this data and give us the information according to the data he assesses. This means the family is paying more than it is getting back in the carbon tax.
The fact is that there are premiers in this country who are now calling on the government to stop the carbon tax, to axe the tax on April 1. They are listening to their constituents, as I am doing, and 81% of my constituents have told me that they do not want this carbon tax to occur. They certainly do not want to pay for future increases that are going to happen under the Liberal government's plan.
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Madam Speaker, I am glad to rise on behalf of the residents and businesses of Barrie—Innisfil to speak to Bill C-59, the fall economic statement.
When my four kids were growing up, there was a TV show with Barney, the purple dinosaur, and the lyrics of one of its famous songs went:
If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops Oh, what a rain that would be!
If we were to listen to the Liberals debating the fall economic statement, or anything to do with their economic policy, we would think that Canadians had never had it any better and that things are rosy across the land. I can tell members that, after spending the last six weeks in Barrie—Innisfil speaking to residents and businesses, things are dire right now. They are dire for many reasons for a lot of families, and I will focus on what I heard from my residents and the businesses of Barrie—Innisfil over the last six weeks. In fact, I have been hearing from them for a long time because many of the economic policies that the government has implemented have disproportionately affected Barrie—Innisfil residents and businesses in a way that many may never recover from.
The first thing I will focus on is the carbon tax. We live an hour north of Toronto and do not have access to mass transit like they do in the city of Toronto. We have a Barrie transit system and a GO transit system that gets us where we need to go for special events in Toronto, for example, or from point A to point B in Barrie. However, the difficulty for many people who live in Barrie is that they drive, so they are being impacted by the cost of the carbon tax on their gas bills as they go to work, visit family and take their kids to hockey.
In many cases, hockey does not just happen in Barrie, but all over Ontario. I know that first-hand from having two kids who played AAA hockey. My wife and I often talk about the circumstance where she would be in Belleville and I would be in Peterborough, separately, each with one of our kids playing hockey, and the impact the carbon tax would have had on us as a family at that time. We could barely afford to put our kids in hockey then. I cannot imagine what families are going through right now having to pay the carbon tax on their fuel and everything else, such as heating, whether that is residential or for a business.
I had a bill sent to me today from a local business owner, who runs a restaurant, and his carbon tax, just last month, was $1,431. Members can assume for a second that this restaurant works off of 10% margins. They would have to sell an extra 14,000 dollars' worth of goods or services just to pay for the carbon tax. The fact is that the carbon tax is going to quadruple, so they would have to pay more. Certainly, the business would not get any of that back in a rebate.
Many families are showing me their gas bills, as I have asked them to, and they are saying the same thing, which is that they are not getting back in total what they are paying for gas, for natural gas or for groceries. They are not getting back from the carbon rebate, as the government claims, an equal amount to what they are paying in the carbon tax. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer spoke about exactly that. Many more families are getting less back in the rebate than they are paying in carbon tax, and it is disproportionately affecting low-income Canadians. Many of them are in my riding of Barrie—Innisfil.
I have, as we all have, sent out newsletters and mailers, and we have the ability to ask a question on the back of a mailer. There has been no other issue that I received more responses on than the issue of the carbon tax. The question was simple: Do you support the carbon tax?
I can say that, out of the hundreds of responses I got back from Barrie—Innisfil residents and businesses, 82.5% said that they do not support the carbon tax, 15% said they did, and 2.5% had no response. This was out of the hundreds of responses that were sent back. Also, there was an option to give comments, and here are some of the responses:
“What are they doing with the tax?” asked D.B. in Barrie. Another said, “I would be interested about what improvement our carbon tax collected has made on the climate change so far.”
We have already heard, through various reports, that our emissions have not been reduced significantly, save and except during COVID. That stands to reason because nobody was driving or doing anything at that time. The economy was effectively shut down.
We need to do much more to stop climate change, but I do not believe that the carbon tax in Canada is doing anything to change it.
H. H. in Innisfil wrote, “The carbon tax on home heating is unfair”, while another said, “Don't believe it effectively encourages less fuel consumption”.
D. Morrison from Barrie wrote, “The Government has no idea what goes on in the real country for the average person.” Another constituent wrote, “I pay 62% of my pension in tax. It is obvious to me that this money is not being spent in my best interest”.
Now we hear that the government, because it feels that it has a narrative problem with respect to the carbon tax, is effectively going to try to put lipstick on a pig. It is going to change that narrative. It is going to try to advertise it in a way that more people understand it.
I can tell members that people do understand. They understand when they see their gas bill, go to the grocery store and put gas in their car that the carbon tax is costing them more. When we tax the farmer who produces the food, the shipper who moves the food, the producers and wholesalers who look after the food for distribution and the grocery stores, who ends up paying more? It is the consumer. How bad is it in this country? There are two million people using food banks.
I had an opportunity last week to visit the Barrie Food Bank. It told me that its utilization was 150% greater in December than it was the December before. It is seeing people using the food bank like it has never seen before. It is multi-generational as well. Families are coming in utilizing the food bank as though it were a grocery store because they cannot afford to buy food.
I was also at the Innisfil food bank. What precipitated my visit, in addition to donating $1,312.50 as a result of some fundraising that we did specifically for the food bank, was an email from its director, who wrote:
I finished the yearly report for the Innisfil Food Bank so am sharing some of the stats here. We have seen an overall increase of 29% over the course of the year. The majority (43%) of our visitors attended the food bank between 2 and 5 times this past year. 24% of our clients came 6-12 times/year. Our busiest months were October (our highest ever) and January (which is pretty standard). Over 55% of our people are supporting dependants.
The food bank's increase is consistent, or even less, than what we are seeing across the country, and there again is that multi-generational use. The email continues:
We are seeing an increase in multi-generational homes. This means that someone is supporting both children and parents or grandparents are supporting their own kids but also their grandkids.
This is in a G7 country where we are supposed to have abundance, where people are not just simply supposed to scrape by, but have the dignity of work, producing a paycheque and providing for their family. That is sadly not happening.
What we have seen with this fall economic statement is the government commit to another $20 billion in spending with no fiscal guardrails. We have debt and deficit increasing like we have never seen before in this country. Interest rates are continually at a level where they become unaffordable.
The other thing I heard about was the impact of mortgage rates and how it is affecting Barrie—Innisfil homeowners.
I was doing the Salvation Army kettle in Stroud. I had a self-employed person come up to me who said their bank would not provide them with a mortgage. That person had to go to a secondary lender, not at 4% or 5%, but at 9%, and will be at risk of losing their home. Mortgages are up for renewal for 900,000 homes in this country over the next three years, and as a result of the fiscal policy of the government, many are at risk.
Conservatives are going to be focused on four things in this session of Parliament: axing the tax; building homes; making sure we help the government fix the budget, with suggestions that are going to do that; and stopping crime. There is only one alternative to govern in this country, and that is Canada's Conservatives, so we can have common sense for everyone and restore common sense and decency for people in this country.
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Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise today for the people of Barrie—Innisfil, representing them as their member of Parliament, to talk about the fall economic statement.
Let me begin by saying that those who are residents of Barrie—Innisfil and the businesses within Barrie—Innisfil are really feeling the inflation and the affordability crisis that is happening right now. Despite the rosy picture painted by the government, this lollipops, gumdrops, rainbows and unicorns scenario, people are finding the affordability factor to be real. They are hurting. Businesses are hurting. People are wondering, as we head into the winter heating season, how they are going to heat their house.
I hear from seniors and families all the time about their circumstances and how bad things really are, particularly for seniors on fixed incomes who are making healthy nutrition choices about what they are going to eat. This should never be happening in a G7 country such as Canada, yet it is, and the government sits here with the fall economic statement somehow portraying this rosy picture, when in fact it is not the case.
I am just one of 338 representatives in this place, but I know from talking to my colleagues that they are hearing about it. I am sure those on the Liberal and NDP benches, and others, are hearing about the problem of inflation and affordability, the housing crisis and the issue of rent prices. We are hearing about the affordability and attainability situation with houses and about the many young people who are being priced out of the market. They are losing their hopes, their dignity and their dreams of aspiring to be a homeowner, which is being lost as a result of the self-inflicted wound of inflation and affordability that has been caused by the Liberal government.
I have spoken to many young people, not just within my riding but also across Canada. They feel like they have been lied to and let down by the Prime Minister and the government. I will go so far as to say that they are despondent. They are despondent they are not going to have the same opportunities, hopes and dreams as earlier generations. Something has to change, and this fall economic statement does nothing to change the current situation.
What is required here, and I know Conservatives put this forward in advance of the fall economic statement, is the need to lower taxes. We need to put a halt on the carbon taxes, stop the payroll taxes and the CPP taxes, which are impacting not only the people who are employed but also employers. We did fire a warning shot across the government's bow that we would support the fall economic statement if certain measures were put in, but this one was not. It was that, for every new dollar being spent, the government would find a dollar in savings from government waste. There is nothing in the fall economic statement that actually addresses that.
In fact, I read the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report this week, and interestingly, in it he talks about an additional $14.2 billion in spending with no indication at all of how that money is going to be spent. One would think a government, when proposing $14.2 billion in additional spending in its fall economic statement, would at least have line by line items or details on what it is going to spend that money on. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that there was nothing in the fall economic statement to give that indication.
Here we are, as parliamentarians, looking over a fall economic statement that talks about billions and billions of dollars in additional spending without the ability to hold the government to account or ask those questions on a line-by-line basis. The government and the Prime Minister expect we are just going to willy-nilly pass this thing through.
That is not the function of Parliament. It is not the function of parliamentarians. Our function is to hold the government to account, and the government needs to reciprocate that by being as transparent as it can. The fall economic statement, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, does little of that. Those were the two criteria we set, and we gave the government ample advice and ample warning that we would support the fall economic statement if those two issues were met, and neither one was.
We find ourselves in a situation right now where, yes, we are going to dispute the fall economic statement. No, we are not able to support the measures the government is going to implement, because it did not abide by those simple principles, like every Canadian family does: If we are going to spend something, then we have to find those dollars.
Throughout COVID, we have seen a lot of wasteful spending. In fact, recent reports show that $200 billion of the $500 billion that was purportedly allocated toward COVID measures were actually not put toward COVID measures. Where did the money go? We are starting to find out. There was the multi-million dollar arrive scam app. We found out about $240 million in ventilators that were never used. There was $150 million for SNC-Lavalin to provide field hospitals that were never built.
Parliamentarians on this side of the House have every right to question government spending. They have every right to question what is in budgets and in this fall economic statement. I know the government does not like that, but that is our job.
As I said at the outset, there are many things going on around the country, not just in Barrie—Innisfil, but it is important to highlight some of the challenges this inflationary and affordability crisis is causing for Canadians.
Debt interest payment costs have doubled this year. Next year, interest payments will be nearly as much as the Canada health transfer. We are back in that cycle again, under a Liberal government, where the cost of servicing debt is more than the health transfers that are provided to the provinces. Something has to give. It always does when we increase debt and deficits. One of two things happens, which we are certainly seeing this with the government: Taxes go up or services get cut.
Interest rates, as we all know, are increasing at the fastest rate in decades. Families that bought a typical home five years ago, with a typical mortgage that is now up for renewal, are paying $7,000 more a year. The Bank of Canada has signalled that interest rates will have to continue to rise even higher, and that will continue the pain.
I mentioned the carbon tax earlier, and that is expected to triple. This is despite the promise of the Prime Minister heading into the 2019 election that it was going to be capped at $50 a tonne. A year after that election, the government announced that the carbon tax was going to increase to $170 a tonne. That is a threefold-plus increase in the carbon tax.
Who is paying for that? Homeowners are paying for it with home heating, hydro, groceries and everything else. Wholesalers and producers are paying that on the manufacturing and production side, and they are passing that down to the consumers. It is having a cascading effect across the economy. The government's argument is that this is what it needs to do to fight climate change.
We found out this week from COP27 that Canada ranks 58th out of 64 in the world for a reduction of carbon emissions. Clearly, the plan is not working, but Canadians are suffering as a result of the carbon tax that is being imposed. The government will then again argue that more families in Canada are getting more money back than what they pay in the carbon tax. The Parliamentary Budget Officer again says that is not true. The government picks and chooses what it wants to hear from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is an independent agent of Parliament, but when he tells the truth, it does not like the truth.
That is part of the problem that exists today. Liberals are not living in reality. They have lost touch. Their ideology will not allow them to solve the problems that they have created with respect to inflation. Until and unless we get to a point where we reduce government spending, or at least if there is new spending then attach it to dollars found and start reducing taxes to make life more affordable and attainable for Canadians, this situation will be prolonged for a long time. Canadians will continue to suffer, and the only way that we can change that is with a change in government.
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- Jun/3/22 11:22:28 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, due to the Prime Minister's failed economic policies, Canadians are worse off now than they were when the Liberals formed government. Former finance minister Bill Morneau acknowledged that in a speech when he said, “I'm much more worried about our economic prospects today, in 2022, than I was seven years ago.” I am sure the Liberals will accuse Morneau of spreading disinformation.
Young Canadians cannot afford a home, seniors cannot afford groceries and Canadians cannot afford to fill up their cars. The Liberals have completely mismanaged the Canadian economy. Why do they not just admit it, like Bill Morneau did?
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