- Member of Parliament
- Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada
Leader of the Opposition
- Conservative
- Carleton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $61,288.13
- Government Page
- Apr/10/24 2:27:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are finding out today from the Bank of Canada that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost.
In September, the bank governor said that if government spending were to grow, then interest rates would have to stay high. That was echoed by the former bank governor and incoming Liberal leader, Mark Carney, who indicated that he does not expect rates to fall quickly, and that it is partly because of a lack of fiscal discipline.
If the Prime Minister will not listen to me, why will he not listen to his successor and understand that he is not worth the cost of high interest rates?
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- Mar/19/24 12:39:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, no, it sounds like the government wins and the taxpayers lose. It takes in more money in direct tax revenues from the carbon tax than it pays back out in rebates. Worse than that, according to the PBO, the carbon tax destroys so much economic activity that it leaves people worse off than the direct carbon tax that they paid, and that is why, when we combine the economic and the fiscal cost to the average family, Canadians are losers.
However, the good news is that when common-sense Conservatives spike the hike and axe the tax, Canadians will be winners again.
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- Feb/28/24 2:39:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is doing neither at the same time. I should catch what he said: “on the face of it”, the carbon tax is terrific.
While the Parliamentary Budget Officer actually did the calculation of the full fiscal and economic cost for the average family, he found that every family in the middle class is worse off under the carbon tax. For example, in Ontario, the net cost for the average family, above and beyond rebates, is $627 this year.
How are they going to pay for that—
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- Nov/2/23 10:49:54 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's strategy is to hide and divide: to hide from debate and divide the population. That is how he thinks he will cling to power, but here is the problem: He can run away from debating me all he wants, but he cannot run away from his own party. His former environment minister Catherine McKenna said that he had broken her heart. A Liberal senator, Paula Simons, said that he betrayed her, because he had assured her that the carbon tax was going to make people better off but later admitted that people heating with oil were made far worse off by his carbon tax, thus needing a pause from that tax.
Liberal Senator Percy Downe wrote a spectacular piece just yesterday, in which he said:
The opportunity for [the Conservative leader to form] government was created by a lack of fiscal responsibility in the [Liberal] government, and the damage it caused our economy is now showing up in the opinion [polls]. Within the Liberal Party, many members who are in favour of fiscal responsibility...have given up on this current iteration of the Liberal Party.
He goes on:
Originally, these centralist liberals assumed that [the Prime Minister] and his crowd needed to be educated on the economic issues of the day.
That naiveté was replaced with the realization that they were not a serious government when it came to the economy, that they simply didn’t care and would throw money at anything that crossed their mind. The resulting interest rate hikes, increasing cost of living, and huge debt didn’t seem to concern them.
The Liberal senator goes on to say that the Prime Minister should be fired and replaced with a new Liberal leader. Meanwhile, the incoming Liberal leader, Mark Carney, is now firing shots at the Prime Minister, claiming that he would not have allowed two classes of Canadians on the carbon tax question.
This is carbon tax chaos. Canadians are paying the price, and all of it proves that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. He is not worth the cost of heat. He is not worth the cost of food. He is not worth the cost of housing. However, apparently, he is worth the cost to the NDP. The NDP was elected by good, solid, decent working-class folks in places like Vancouver Island, Skeena—Bulkley Valley and Timmins. I have met these these people, folks who pack their lunch, get out of bed every morning, work hard and build our country. However, they have been betrayed by the NDP, which now works for the Prime Minister and has sold out the working-class rural people of this country who were the foundation of that party.
It now has a decision to make. The NDP leader says that he disagrees with the dual-class citizenship approach of the Prime Minister on the carbon tax. I am giving him a chance to prove it. We have a motion before the House that simply says to give everyone the same tax-free heat this winter. The NDP leader has already stated that he agrees with that point of view, but he has to check with his boss, the leader of the Liberal Party, the Prime Minister of Canada. Everyday people in Timmins, in Kapuskasing, in Smithers, British Columbia, and in countless other NDP communities will be watching on Monday to find out whether the NDP leader votes for them or for the Prime Minister. If he does not vote for the people he represents, why should they vote for him in the next election?
The good news is that the Conservatives do not work for the Prime Minister. We work for the common people and for the common sense of the common people, united for our common home: your home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
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- Nov/1/23 2:51:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the irony is, and this question is, for the Prime Minister, that the carbon tax chaos is unfolding within the Liberal tent itself. We saw last week, just as I was about to hold a thunderous rally with a thousand common-sense Nova Scotians to axe the tax, the Prime Minister was in a sweaty ball on the ground. He had to flip-flop and hold a hastily called and humiliating press conference.
Now, Mark Carney has come out against his flip-flop, and Percy Downe, a loyal Liberal senator, has called for the Prime Minister to resign because of his fiscal irresponsibility. Is that why he is hiding under his desk and refusing to answer questions today?
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- Oct/17/23 10:11:40 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that,
(i) after eight years of this Liberal government, this prime minister has added more to the national debt than all previous prime minister’s combined,
(ii) a half-trillion dollars of inflationary deficits has directly led to 40-year inflation highs,
(iii) prior to budget 2023, the Minister of Finance said, “What Canadians want right now is for inflation to come down and for interest rates to fall […] and that is one of our primary goals in this year’s budget: not to pour fuel on the fire of inflation," and then proceed to usher in $60 billion in new spending,
(iv) in order to combat inflation, the Bank of Canada has been forced to increase interest rates 10 times in just 19 months,
(v) interest rate increases have increased mortgage payments, and since this prime minister took office, monthly mortgage payments have increased 150% and now cost $3,500 on a typical family home,
(vi) the Liberal-NDP government must exercise fiscal discipline, end their inflation driving deficits so that interest rates can be lowered,
in order to avoid a mortgage default crisis, as warned by the International Monetary Fund, and to ensure Canadians do not lose their homes, the House call on the government to introduce a fiscal plan that includes a pathway back to balanced budgets, in order to decrease inflation and interest rates, and to introduce this in the House of Commons prior to the Bank of Canada’s next policy interest rate decision on October 25, 2023.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Tobique—Mactaquac.
Inflation is the cost of the spending that the government said would be free. We know that the Liberal-NDP government promised a utopia and it said that it would deliver results for free. It said that the cost of this spending would never hit Canadians because the budget would balance itself. It also suggested that because interest rates were so low, the government could magically keep increasing spending faster than the cost of living and the population grew, without any consequences.
Today, after eight years of this government and this Liberal-NDP Prime Minister, it is time to pay the bills. Canadians are seeing that reality in their mortgage payments, which have more than doubled, increasing by an average of 150%.
I talked to a worker in British Columbia who is now spending $7,500 a month on mortgage payments. I repeat: $7,500 a month. He is a middle-class worker with three kids. Of that amount, $4,000 is just for interest, not even to pay down the principal. This worker's family is losing nearly $50,000 a year in interest alone on their mortgage. It is an impossible situation for the average family, but it is the reality after eight years of this Prime Minister.
Ironically, this is the same Prime Minister who promised to help the middle class and those working hard to join it. He no longer says much about the so-called middle class, does he? We never hear him talk about the middle class. It has been forgotten, because he does not want to remind anyone of the suffering his policies have caused this so-called middle class. We now have middle-class Canadians who are homeless. Yes, it is true that, unfortunately, homelessness has always existed in all countries, including Canada. However, we have not seen homelessness amongst middle-class Canadians since the Great Depression. Now, it is becoming more and more common.
Across the country, we find people like nurses and carpenters living in their cars because mortgage payments went up so much, which also pushed up the cost of rent. The Prime Minister promised to bring down the cost of housing eight years ago, but since then, the cost has doubled. Rents have doubled, mortgage payments have doubled, and the down payment required to buy a home has doubled. In fact, when I was the minister responsible for housing, it cost half of what it costs today to pay the rent, the mortgage and the down payment.
The government's decisions have consequences. The government caused the amount of money in the economy to grow by $600 billion, increasing from $1.8 trillion to $2.4 trillion. This 32% increase meant the money supply grew eight times faster than real economic growth. In other words, the money to buy stuff grew eight times faster than the stuff money buys. This is why we have inflation.
The Bank of Canada has to respond by raising interest rates, again hitting the same people who are struggling to buy food and pay their rent or mortgage.
What is the government doing? It is still forcing the Bank of Canada to keep interest rates high. According to former finance minister John Manley, the government is stepping on the inflationary gas pedal by running deficits, which is forcing the Bank of Canada to slam on the brakes by raising interest rates. One might have expected the government to try to rein in deficits and work toward balancing the budget, but it did the opposite.
Six months ago, the government said it wanted to balance the budget by 2028. When budget time came, it suddenly changed its mind and said it would never balance the budget.
Last week, the Parliamentary Budget Officer told us that the deficit is 15% higher than the government promised in its budget. Things are completely out of control, and Canadians are paying the price, not to mention the price our children will have to pay in the future.
That is why we put forward common-sense solutions, including a “dollar-for-dollar” law, which would force the government to find a dollar's worth of savings for every new dollar spent, and the elimination of wasteful spending on things like the ArriveCAN app, the Canada Infrastructure Bank and other ideas that have jacked up the cost of government.
The goal should be to balance the budget in order to bring down interest rates and tame inflation so Canadians can keep their homes and feed their families. That is common sense.
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- Sep/19/23 2:23:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, doubling the debt on Canadians is not fiscal responsibility, and forcing Canadians to live in tents is not compassion. That is the reality.
After eight years of the Prime Minister, life is miserable, especially for the poorest among us. His solution is to make everything cost even more. Inflation is now accelerating. He has not brought it down. He stacked 4% inflation on top of the previous 8% inflation, which means Canadians cannot eat, heat or house themselves.
Will he reverse his disastrous policies so Canadians can pay their bills?
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- Jun/7/23 11:13:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we need to replace the pain that Canadians are feeling with the hope that they need. That is one of the reasons I am rising today in the House of Commons. It is not just to point out the suffering that the Prime Minister has caused by doubling the national debt, by fanning inflation to levels not seen in 40 years and by ballooning mortgage and government debt.
We need to acknowledge that this pain exists, but the official opposition also has a responsibility to offer an alternative to replace this pain and suffering with hope for the future. That is exactly what we are going to do. We need to recognize that hope is possible. We need to reverse the negative trends we are seeing and give Canadians hope for a better future. We are going to do that by using and recognizing the common sense of everyday Canadians.
What is our plan for doing that? What is the plan for bringing in a government that works for those who do the work?
First, we need to lower prices. We are going to do that by getting rid of the deficits and inflationary taxes that are causing the current problem. History has shown us that deficits lead to higher prices. More money chasing the same goods means higher prices. That is obvious.
To reverse that, we must control spending and put in place a law that requires politicians to save one dollar for every new dollar spent.
The United States implemented this policy in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was in power. This policy made it possible for the United States to balance its budget for the first time in 50 years. We know that the U.S. government was able do pay down $400 billion in debt, which led to a considerable increase in wages during a period of economic growth with very low inflation. This strengthened the government's finances.
Unfortunately, when that law was repealed, the U.S. government fell back into deficits, and it is still running deficits. This demonstrates once again that politicians need legal discipline to control their spending. All living things in nature must live with limits. For all living things in nature, there are never enough resources and there is always rising demand. Only politicians can avoid this problem by imposing these limits and lack of resources on other people by creating inflation, debt and taxes. The only way to limit the costs that must be borne by citizens is to pass a law that will force politicians to save.
This is exactly what a waiter, a mechanic or a small business does when they choose between one expense or another, or when they try to make two purchases, but at a good price. It is the kind of self-imposed discipline shown by Canadian families and small and medium-sized Canadian businesses. It is the kind of discipline that I am going to impose on politicians. Canadians have had enough of cutting back on their spending. The time has come for politicians to show a little discipline themselves.
I am talking about discipline, not the austerity the government is imposing on families. Yes, the government has plenty of money, but that means less money for the workers, the entrepreneurs and the seniors who actually worked.
We will have a smaller government, which will allow Canadians to be bigger. This will also eliminate waste. It will force public servants and politicians to look around for ways to find savings in the bureaucracy, because there are opportunities to save money.
I mentioned an example earlier. There is a federal program that used to send CDs to people so they could listen to audio books. However, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind said it was too expensive and impractical to continue sending CDs. This is the 21st century, after all. Why not send them books digitally online? This meant cutting costs while increasing the number of books available to visually impaired people. It is a win-win situation for everyone.
Therefore, it is possible to reduce costs while improving services if we apply common sense to government management. That is exactly what this pay-as-you-go policy will accomplish, by continually forcing politicians to find ways to deliver services more cheaply. That is exactly what every other Canadian is doing, and that is exactly what my government will do as well.
We will stop giving contracts to consultants. We are going to shut down the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which receives funding to the tune of more than $35 billion and has been around for over five years, but has yet to complete a single project. We will eliminate a program that exists but offers nothing to taxpayers so that we can save money and leave that money in the pockets of ordinary Canadians, reduce debt and balance the budget in order to shrink inflation and interest rates.
People need bigger paycheques. These days work no longer pays. When a single mother with three children who earns $60,000 a year manages to earn an extra $1, she loses 80¢ of it, because the government makes deductions and imposes taxes. After payroll taxes and benefit deductions, she can lose up to 80¢ per dollar. She is penalized for working. The government is penalizing the people we need. There is a labour shortage, but the government is penalizing seniors, mothers and others who work. Why?
The government should be imposing penalties on those who drive too fast on the highway, those who commit crimes and those who break the law, but, in Canada, workers are the ones who are penalized the most. It is shameful to penalize work. An anti-work policy leads to a weaker economy. We need to reform the tax and benefit system so that Canadians take home a greater share of every dollar they earn and so that hard work once again pays off in Canada. I am going to implement that type of reform and cut taxes to support those who work and ensure that they are properly compensated, here in Canada.
In order to work, however, people need to be able to get to work, to make it there. That is why the war on cars has to stop. The woke Bloc and the Liberals are against cars. They tried to kill a major project in the Quebec City region, a third link that Quebeckers could have used to cross the St. Lawrence. Now, that is gone. The woke brigade have an anti-car agenda. It makes no sense. People in the suburbs and in the regions need cars to get to work.
That is why a government under my leadership, a common-sense Conservative government, will support public transit, but also highways and bridges so people can get to work. We are not going to make that more expensive. The Liberals and the Bloc want to raise the gas tax by 20¢ a litre. Quebeckers cannot afford an extra 20¢-a-litre tax. Quebec already has some of the highest gas prices in North America. We are the only party that will cancel this second carbon tax that the Bloc and Liberals are planning on charging. We believe that to save the environment, we need to make green energy less expensive, not make traditional energy more expensive. We are going to protect the environment through technology, not taxes.
As members can see, I am saying exactly the same things in English and French because common sense is universal. Common sense exists in every language. We are going to bring back bigger paycheques by getting rid of the red tape that is preventing energy production.
I have been challenged to express support for nuclear energy in French. Yes, I will support nuclear energy. It is very popular in France, by the way.
I know that the Minister of Environment, who is a radical and an extremist, is against any source of energy. He is even against nuclear energy. He wants to prevent Quebec from building hydroelectric dams. He says he will allow them, but it will take six or seven more years to conduct duplicate environmental assessments.
I have confidence in the Quebec government, which is one of the most advanced governments in the world in terms of environmental protection. The Quebec government will definitely want to protect the environment. There is no need for a second assessment for the same project. We will accelerate the approval of hydroelectric projects.
If we want to fight climate change, we must produce more electricity. How will our green friends charge electric cars if we do not have hydroelectric dams? What is the plan to double the amount of available electricity? We need dams and we need quick approvals for dams. I will eliminate the obstacles being put in place by the federal government so that Quebec can continue to build dams and generate more electricity.
When Stephen Harper's Conservative government was in place, there was a major global economic crisis. Projects had to be built quickly and without delay. The minister at the time, John Baird, said: one project, one assessment.
There was no reason to have a municipal assessment, a provincial assessment and a federal assessment, because prior to that, all three were needed. Sometimes the same consultant was hired three times by three levels of government to delay the project and prevent construction, increasing costs for everyone. At that time, however, projects had to be completed quickly to combat the effects of the global crisis.
The minister did something else. He told his officials he wanted a one-page permit application, because they were having to fill out 200 pages for one application. They said they were okay with the 200 pages. He said no, one page. They suggested a compromise of 100 pages. He repeated that he wanted one page. They said 100 pages. He insisted on one page. They said 50 pages. He again said one page. They offered to agree on 10 pages. He persisted and told them one page. In the end, the officials managed to produce a one-page permit application for a project.
Can we have more of that?
I was the MP for Nepean. The founder of Nepean, Aubrey Moodie, was the region's mayor. He used to tell the story of a man who came to his farm at 6 o'clock in the morning and told him that he had bought some land and wanted to build a car dealership. The next day, they met with the city's lawyers, and on Tuesday, two days later, construction had begun. That is how common sense works. Cut through the red tape. Eighty years later, that same company is still there. It sells cars and pays its employees. That is common sense. By removing bureaucratic obstacles, we are going to facilitate bigger paycheques and people will still be able to build in Canada. That is common sense.
When I am prime minister, I am going to issue a challenge to provincial premiers and municipal mayors. We are going to meet and I am going to tell them that, of all OECD countries, Canada will be the place where building permits can be obtained the fastest. We can do it. We can protect the environment and ensure safety, and we can do it quickly. We can get things done. We can still get things done in Canada. Yes, we can.
We want our young people to be able to buy a house. Right now, nine out of 10 young people cannot. Canada is the second-largest country in the world by landmass, but there are not enough houses for our young people. That does not make any sense. What is the reason for that? The reason is that Canada is the second-slowest country when it comes to issuing building permits. That is why we have the fewest houses per capita in the G7. Houses in Canada cost almost double what they do in the United States, and yet the U.S. has 10 times more people to house in a smaller territory. The price of houses in the U.S. is lower because they can get building permits.
Here, we should be encouraging our municipalities to build housing more rapidly. I will ensure that the funding for municipal infrastructure corresponds with the number of houses that the municipality manages to build. I will require every big city to increase building permits by 15% per year or they will lose their infrastructure funding. On the other hand, if they build more housing, they will get more infrastructure funding.
We will compensate successful municipalities. We will give more money to those that build more housing. We are going to force the big cities to build a lot more apartments near transit stations. We will bring in more immigrants who can build things. We are going to promote trades, not just professions, by supporting colleges and trade schools, not just universities. We are going to support the working class of the future.
For those who do not believe me when I say that housing can be built faster, just look at what the Squamish Nation has done in downtown Vancouver. In Vancouver, a single building permit costs $600,000 per house. That is the cost just for the permit, not for the materials, not for the workers, not even for the land. That is how much the government charges for the paperwork.
Fortunately, the Squamish Nation, part of which is located in the city of Vancouver, does not have to follow those rules and fill out that city paperwork. It is indigenous reserve land. They control it themselves. This has enabled them to build 6,000 apartments on 10 acres. That means 600 apartments for every acre. It is incredible. That means 6,000 families, 6,000 young people, 6,000 seniors who will have a place to live thanks to the Squamish Nation's ability to get things done and start building.
By following this example, we could build housing across the country. Let us follow the example of our Squamish friends and build housing more quickly. We will build homes that Canadians and Quebeckers can afford. We are going to make homes affordable again.
We will also bring back safety. The Liberal government and the woke Bloc are so out of touch with the real world that they are trying to ban hunting rifles. When the Bloc members saw the list of long guns that the Liberals wanted to ban, they thought it was a great idea, that it was the list they had long been waiting for and that they would be happy to ban all these hunters' guns.
Suddenly, the Bloc found out that there were hunters in their ridings. Many people go hunting in la belle province, but the Bloc did not know that. This is a tradition that has been passed down for thousands of years. Even before the arrival of the Europeans, there were indigenous people who hunted. Even after the French arrived and founded la belle province, there was a lot of hunting. It is a tradition that has existed since time immemorial. Many patriotic Quebeckers still hunt today.
The only party that was there to defend hunters against this unwarranted attack was the Conservative Party. We will never allow the Prime Minister to realize his dream of banning hunting here in Canada. Instead, we will invest that money in strengthening our borders. That is just common sense.
We know that 80% of gun crimes are committed with illegal weapons smuggled in from the United States. Why spend $5 billion to harass sport shooters who have licences, are trained and have already undergone RCMP checks, when we can invest that money in strengthening our border and providing more resources to our police so they can arrest the real criminals and street gangs? Common sense will keep every Canadian safe in this country. I am simply talking about common sense.
We will also bring back freedom. I know that freedom is a foundational principle of our country. The federal government wants to censor the Internet. The CRTC, a woke agency, wants to impose its values on Quebeckers. It is unbelievable to see what the Bloc Québécois, which calls itself a sovereignist party, is doing. It wants to give more power to the federal state, to a minister of the Canadian government, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, and to other woke bureaucrats here in Ottawa, who will control what Quebeckers can see and say on the Internet.
Only the Conservative Party defended the individual sovereignty of Quebeckers to choose their own thoughts, their own words and their own identity. I will never allow the federal government to dictate to Quebeckers what they can think or what they can say on the Internet. I will restore freedom of expression.
The days of being lectured to are over. The same goes for our universities. I applaud the government of Quebec for introducing an academic freedom policy. Unfortunately, the federal government is trying to force wokeism on Quebec universities by issuing the funds it pays for research and development to universities pursuing a woke agenda. Universities have to be woke to get money from the Liberal government. I will never allow that.
I am going to co-opt the freedom of expression policy that the Government of Quebec implemented to ensure that all students and teachers are able to express themselves without censorship and without being controlled by the woke.
We will never allow the central bank to create digital currency. We will protect the monetary freedom of every Canadian to have their own private bank account that is not monitored or controlled by the state. That is how we are going to protect economic freedom, which is just as important as freedom of expression and other freedoms.
If I had to create a party from nothing, it would be a “mind your own business” party. Letting people make their own decisions is the best way to run a country. The laissez-faire approach comes from the French. We need to let people make their own decisions. I believe in the common sense of ordinary Canadians.
These people are often referred to as ordinary people, but that is not true. The waitress who works a 12-hour shift, who has to juggle 10 plates at a time while serving 15 difficult customers at once, who gets home at 8 p.m. and then has to teach her child math while balancing her budget on minimum wage, is not ordinary. She is extraordinary.
The farmer who has a firm grasp on how to work with the soil and the weather to get food from his field to our plate is not ordinary. He is extraordinary. The electrician who helps light the House of Commons is not ordinary. He is extraordinary. These extraordinary people are the people we all work for.
We have to remember that they do not need a lesson. No more giving lessons. It is time to let people to live their lives free from the excessive interference we see from this government and all governments. We have to remember that we are servants.
The word “minister” means servant. The Prime Minister is the first servant of the country, not the master of the people. That is why we are calling for a fiscal policy that gives control back to ordinary Canadians, the people who do the work and pay the bills.
That is why I told the Prime Minister that I would end this speech as soon as he gave me the following two guarantees: First, that he would balance the budget to reduce inflation and the interest rates; second that he would stop all carbon tax increases. These two things would allow people to regain control of their money and be compensated for their hard work. Putting people back in control of their lives is our goal. It is common sense. Let us bring back common sense.
I could stop this speech on a moment's notice if the Prime Minister would walk in here now and just commit to me to make two commitments come true: one, that he will balance the budget to bring down inflation and interest rates, and two, that he will cancel all future increases to the carbon tax. Two simple demands, and I would stop speaking. Two demands is all it would take.
The Prime Minister will not do it because he wants to take more from the people. He believes he knows better; he knows how to control their money and run their lives better than all of those ordinary people.
These people are not ordinary. The waitress who balances 10 plates, serves 15 customers, helps her kid with math and balances her budget on a $15-an-hour salary is not ordinary; she is extraordinary. The farmer who brings the food from his field to our forks is extraordinary. The electrician who captures the electricity from the sky and runs it through a copper wire to light up this room is extraordinary. These are the common people for whom we fight. It is the common sense of the common people, united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
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Now the interest costs on the national debt have doubled. We are spending double the national defence budget on the interest costs on the national debt. It is ridiculous. We are spending nearly as much money to pay the interest costs on the debt as we are spending on health transfers. These interest payments hinder the government's ability to provide services to everyday Canadians, people who pay the bills.
Let us look at other facts. The $3 trillion in spending and the massive deficits will throw fuel on the inflation fire and cause the interest rates to increase even more. During the last year that our Conservative government was in power, spending for programs was $280 billion. Now it is $465 billion. That is a 63% increase. According to the numbers, the government is going to increase spending until it reaches $543 billion. That is an increase in spending of nearly 100%, or double.
Have Canadians received twice as much for health, public safety or quality of life in Canada? No, that is not really the case. That is the point. The Liberals measure their success on the fact that they cost a lot of money. Imagine a restaurant where the food is disgusting, where the service is bad, where the atmosphere is terrible, but it costs $500 to eat there. That must be the best restaurant. That is the Liberals' logic.
Every time I ask why the crime rate has increased by 32%, the Prime Minister tells victims of crime that there is no problem because he is spending a lot of money on public safety. When we talk about firearms crossing the border, he says not to worry because he is spending more money to protect our borders.
Failure is not acceptable but it is even worse to pay dearly for failure, and that is what this government is doing right now. These exorbitant expenditures have given us a country that is truly broken.
What is broken is the fact that people can no longer walk in the streets and feel safe when the crime rate has gone up 32%. Street gang murders have increased by 92%.
We can also think about the number of families who need to use food banks each month. There are 1.5 million Canadians who cannot feed themselves. One in five Canadians has to skip a meal because food is too expensive. Nine out of 10 young Canadians cannot even dream of owning a home some day, because mortgage payments, rent and costs associated with purchasing a home have doubled, even though the government spent $89 billion on affordable housing.
The country is worse off after all this spending, and everything is broken. Worst of all, the contract that existed between the citizens and this country is broken. It was a very simple contract: Here in Canada, people who work hard can have a house, good food, a good quality of life and can achieve all of their dreams. That is why immigrants come here. They do not come for the weather; they come here for that contract. When people come here, they basically sign that contract when they make their declaration of citizenship. People declare that they will work hard and obey the law, and that way they can have a home and a good quality of life. That was the contract between our country and ordinary people. It is just common sense.
That is why people chose Canada, but that deal is broken. We, the Conservatives, will restore that contract between the country and the people. Our country will work for those who work. We believe in common sense, and we want to bring common sense back.
We are going to bring the loans back to a lower rate by eliminating government waste, the carbon tax and inflationary deficits.
We are going to reward work by eliminating and reducing penalties and taxes on paycheques thereby boosting their value. Here in Canada, people are punished for working. They can lose 89¢ on every additional dollar earned when all the government taxes and penalties and all the payroll taxes are added up. A government I lead will eliminate those penalties and make working more profitable.
We are going to give Canadians back the ability to buy a home. We are going to eliminate the red tape and barriers to building houses across the country.
We are going to make Canada's streets safe again so that people feel safe. We are going to do that by eliminating the bail and parole policies that the government put in place so that we can put the real criminals in prison.
We will ban drugs like heroin, fentanyl and others to protect our citizens. We will also stop spending taxpayer money to pay for drugs for people who are addicted. Instead, we will ensure that people get real treatment. We will go after the big pharmaceutical companies that caused the crisis in the first place. We will bring our brothers, sisters and friends home by helping them end their addiction and rebuild their lives.
We are also going to bring freedom back to Canada. Freedom will be protected and strengthened when I become prime minister.
We will also bring democratic power back to Canada by eliminating foreign interference in our electoral and democratic system. The capital of Canada is Ottawa. It is not Beijing or Davos. This is our home, and we will make our own decisions for the future.
We are going to give back to Canadians control of their lives and give them the power back. We will make Canada the freest country in the world by giving people back control of their lives.
What I am talking about is just common sense. It is the common sense of ordinary Canadians, working people who are paying the price for this incompetent government's overspending. That is who we are working for. That is our mission and that is what we will do as Canadians and as a Conservative government.
The government cannot give people anything it has not taken away. The Liberals have no money over there. All the money they spend belongs to other people. There are only three ways they can extract it: by taxing, borrowing or inflating. The current government has done all three. It is incredible.
Just weeks ago, the finance minister admitted that deficit spending leads to inflation; it pours fuel on the inflationary fire. This admission was a long time coming. I have to admit I was waiting anxiously. It only took her three years after I started warning her about that. Slowly but surely, a group of random Liberals started to agree with me.
First it was the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who had originally predicted that deflation would result from his money printing. He came around to the view that inflation is caused by government deficits and money printing. Then it was a former Liberal deputy prime minister. John Manley said that all this spending is going to drive up the cost of living. Then it was another random Liberal, Bill Morneau, the former finance minister. Bill Morneau, who has become “Bill no more”, said that we would have inflation as a result of all this spending. Then, finally, the finance minister we have now came out and said that spending money we do not have drives up the cost of living.
It was a wonderful epiphany, and we thought that weeks later it would translate into a budget that would show responsibility with the people's money. Instead, after the Liberals doubled the national debt, adding more debt than all previous prime ministers combined, they decided to dig even deeper.
Let me share some of the astounding facts that the shadow minister of industry dug up about the government's financial plan. The budget sets cumulative spending for the next five years at a record $3.1 trillion. That is bigger than the entire GDP of Canada.
Remember that we cannot believe almost anything they project, but if these numbers are to be believed and they do not add more spending, they admit that they plan to add another $130 billion to our debt. The debt will rise to $1.3 trillion. Interest on the national debt this year is $44 billion; it would rise to $50 billion under this fiscal plan.
To put that in perspective, the Liberals have literally doubled the amount that Canadians have to spend on bankers and bond holders since the Prime Minister promised that interest rates would stay low and there would be no cost to all this debt.
We now spend more on interest for debt than we spend on our military, child care benefits and transfers for education and social services to the provinces and almost as much as we spend on health care. Instead of giving the money to soldiers and nurses, the Prime Minister gives it to wealthy bond holders and bankers. This is exactly the opposite of what he promised.
The Liberals admit that the spending this year will be a staggering $456 billion. This is an increase of 63% since the Prime Minister took office just eight years ago. That is almost a 10% year over year annual increase in spending.
If we believe their projections, spending is set to rise to over half a trillion dollars over the life of the five-year plan we have before us. That means they will have literally doubled government spending.
What is twice as good in Canada today? Can members think of anything? Are our streets twice as safe? We just have to look around this week to get an answer to that question.
A father was stabbed to death in broad daylight at a Starbucks in front of his kids for asking someone not to blow smoke from a vaping instrument into his children's faces. A 16-year-old was stabbed to death on the Toronto transit system by someone who had multiple prior criminal offences. In the last 36 hours from the time I stand and give this speech today, two young people have been stabbed, and one of them killed, on Calgary's transit system.
Violent crime has increased by 32%. Gang killings have gone up by 92% under the government. We do not have streets that are twice as safe under the twice-as-costly government.
Have we got twice as affordable housing? No, it is exactly the opposite. The average mortgage payment and average rent have doubled. The average required down payment to get into a home has doubled.
We do not have better health care. The time it takes to get treatment has gone up to 26 weeks, which is double what it was when the Prime Minister took office.
What are we getting for all this money? Every time we stand up and highlight problems that are raging out of control in this broken country of ours, the Prime Minister stands and defends himself by bragging about how much money he has spent. It is incredible.
It is like saying he got a car. It breaks down on the road, and the air conditioning does not work. One of the windows was broken when he drove away from the dealership. However, we should not worry because he paid $200,000 for it, so it must be a terrific car. That is how Liberals judge success. It is by how expensive they can be. They have no common sense.
The average single mother would do a far better job of managing this budget than the Prime Minister does because she understands budgets do not balance themselves.
The good news is that we are going to turn the hurt that he caused into the hope that Canadians need. We need to bring home a country that works for the people who do the work. That means bringing home lower prices by eliminating the inflationary spending, deficits and carbon taxes.
We know that more money chasing fewer goods always equals higher prices. We need to reduce the burden of government on the shoulders of people to bring down costs and bring home more dollars with more purchasing power for people to have a better life.
We are going to bring home more powerful paycheques by ending the war on work the Prime Minister has unleashed in this country. At some income levels, when one earns an extra dollar, one loses as much as 89¢ in income tax, payroll tax and clawbacks of benefits that governments give out. We wonder why people do not want to work and why we have a labour shortage. If one taxes labour, one gets less labour.
We have become a country that does not reward good or punish bad. If a hard-working person puts in an extra day's work, they lose it all to clawbacks and taxes. If a criminal goes out in the streets and commits a violent crime, they pay no penalty. We do not differentiate between good and bad behaviour, and that is why we see everything coming crashing down across the country and in the lives of everyday Canadians.
We need to reward the good work of the people who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules. That is why a Conservative government would reform our tax and clawback system to make work pay so people can once again bring home powerful paycheques in this country.
Bringing home powerful paycheques means we also need to get out the gatekeepers who prevent those paycheques from coming home in the first place. Brilliant immigrants come to our country ready to contribute but then are prevented from working in their very professions. Right now, we have a doctor shortage of 40,000 doctors. We have 19,000 immigrant doctors who are banned from working in our hospitals. Most of them are qualified to do the work.
I had to help one doctor who had been doing heart surgeries in Singapore get his licence to practise here in Ottawa. I hate to break it to members, but Singapore is actually a more advanced country than Canada is; yet we block someone like that from doing surgeries at the Ottawa Heart Institute. We have 19,000 foreign-trained doctors who could be helping in our medical system but for these government gatekeepers. There are 34,000 foreign-trained nurses blocked from working in our health care system.
It is not just doctors and nurses; it is all professions. We had the head of the Aviation Association testify that there was an aviation mechanic working for Air Canada in Munich for 20 years. Then he moved to Canada, assuming he would just keep his job with Air Canada. However, they would not let him do the same job on the same planes that he did in Germany. This is insane.
A Conservative government, led by me, would bring in a common sense blue seal standard, a national merit-based test to determine who is qualified and who is not. Therefore, our internationally trained professionals can take a test, get a “yes” or “no” based on their proven abilities within 60 days and get to work in their fields.
We would back up 30,000 small study loans so our immigrants can take time off work to study up to our standard. We would make it possible for future immigrants to this country to begin preparing to get licensed to practice in their field before they even arrive in Canada. That way, our immigrants could have big, powerful, inflation-proof paycheques, and we could have more doctors, nurses and engineers in this country.
Bringing home powerful paycheques means getting the gatekeepers out of the way of our resource sector. We have the sixth-biggest supply of lithium on Planet Earth. The government now wants to spend $80 billion on subsidies for so-called green businesses.
Would it not be nice to actually harvest the lithium we have in this country and put that lithium in the batteries of the future rather than relying on slave camps in other parts of the world, in dictatorial parts of the world, or relying on China to refine 60% of all the lithium that comes to surface? Do members know how much lithium we had mined in Canada in 2021, after six years under the Prime Minister? It was zero, nada, nothing. We did not even get a tablespoon of the stuff. Why is this? It is because, by the government's own admission, it takes up to 25 years to get a mine approved in this country. No wonder every other country in the world is leaving us in the past.
We could be shipping our natural gas overseas. There were 15 proposed natural gas liquefaction plants on the table when the Prime Minister took office. Zero have been built, even though the Americans have built seven in the exact same time. The Germans built an import plant, from the application process through the final construction, in 194 days. We could be shipping our gas overseas.
With me as prime minister, we could remove the gatekeepers, deliver fast permits, build natural gas liquefaction plants, cool that gas down to -161°C, and ship it over to Europe to break the European dependence on Putin and over to Asia to break the Asian dependence on dirty coal fire. We would turn dollars for dictators into paycheques for our people in this country.
We are going to bring homes that people can afford again. It is hard to believe that housing was cheap in this country eight years ago before the Prime Minister. A person could buy the average home for $450,000. That was all it cost. The average mortgage payment was a reasonable $1,400. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Canada's 10 biggest cities was $1,100. What is it now? The average mortgage payment is now well over $3,000. It has doubled. The average down payment required for a minimum down payment of 5% is $45,000. It has doubled. The average rent is now $2,200. It has also doubled.
Why has this happened? There are two obvious reasons. Inflationary deficits are driving up interest rates on mortgage borrowers and local government gatekeepers are blocking construction from happening in the first place. That is why we have the fewest houses per capita of any country in the G7. In fact, according to Scotiabank, we actually have fewer houses today, per capita, than when the Prime Minister took office.
In Vancouver, the cost of government gatekeepers and red tape is $650,000 for every single unit of housing. We are not building anything because we are ranked 64th in the world for the time it takes to get a building permit. If they cannot build houses, they cannot house people. They want to bring in half a million people every single year and they have no idea where they are going to put them all. They are setting us up for a massive financial and social catastrophe over the next two years as people have nowhere to live and nowhere to go. We are going to see a massive breakdown in our communities as a result of this policy.
Luckily, we can get the gatekeepers out of the way. Do colleagues know who showed us how? The first nations people in Vancouver. There is a reserve in Vancouver, inside the city of Vancouver. The Squamish people took on 10 acres of land. They are building 6,000 units of housing. That is 600 units per acre. The reason they are able to do it is because they do not have the rules of the City of Vancouver. They are their own boss and they got the gatekeepers out of the way. They did what would have never been possible with big-city mayors.
There has been this tradition that prime ministers do not criticize mayors and use all of the fluffy language we read in press releases about “working together in collaboration and partnership for a better future”, all the garble that we are so used to hearing.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: It sounds like you're pretty familiar on what to say.
Mr. Pierre Poilievre: You're right. You had better believe a big change is coming.
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister accused me of fighting with the mayors. Damn right, I am going to be fighting. I will be fighting to get housing for our people. Our young people deserve to live in a home and I will be putting in place serious financial penalties for big-city mayors who block housing construction and big building bonuses for those who get out of the way and allow housing to be built. Yes, absolutely, we will bring it home. Their solution is to shovel another $4 billion into municipal bureaucracies so that there are even more gatekeepers to block construction.
My view is very simple. I will pay for results. Their infrastructure budget from the federal government will be based on the number of keys in doors. The houses will have to be finished and there will have to be people moving in for every dollar they want to get in federal infrastructure money. I will require every federally funded transit station to have high-density apartments built around and over top. Why is it that Hong Kong has the only profitable transit system on Planet Earth? They sell the air rights right over the stations so that people live right on top of the transit. That is the most effective way to do it. However, in Canada, the gatekeepers and the rich, leafy neighbourhoods filled with champagne socialists do not want anybody else living in the neighbourhood. They want the transit stations all to themselves. That is not going to happen any more. If I am going to fund transit stations, I am going to require that working-class people are allowed to live next to them and they will be able to live there without even having to work there.
We have these big, ugly buildings, 37,000 federal buildings. Most of them are actually empty with people working from home. These big, ugly, empty buildings are shrines to the incompetence of the government. I will sell them off to developers so that they can be converted into low-income housing. It warms my heart to think of the beautiful family rolling up in their U-Haul to move into their wonderful new home in the former headquarters of the CBC.
We are going to honour the trades. We need tradespeople who can actually build stuff. We are going to make sure, unlike Liberals, who turn their noses up at working-class tradespeople, that trades and apprenticeships get the same support from government that universities and professionals do.
We are going to accelerate bringing in more tradespeople from abroad and we are going to make sure that young people are told that working in the trades is every bit as honourable and prestigious as working in a profession. Our tradespeople are the backbone of this country.
We are going to bring home safe streets again. We know that the crime, the chaos and the savage violence that has been unleashed across the land is the direct result of Liberal-NDP policies, which have flooded our streets with violent criminals and dangerous drugs. They brought in catch-and-release, so that the same violent criminals get released again and again. The same 40 people were arrested 6,000 times in Vancouver in one year. That is 150 arrests per person per year, as a direct result of the Prime Minister's bail reform.
My government will end the catch-and-release and bring jail, not bail, for repeat violent offenders.
Secondly, we are going to tackle the scourge of drug overdose deaths that have been unleashed in this country under the policies of the Liberals and the NDP.
They told us that they had all the evidence to do the things that made no sense to common-sense people. They said that if we only legalize drugs and we use taxpayers' money to give people the drugs, then there will be no more overdoses because we will be able to guarantee that these drugs are safe.
They actually have heroin vending machines that they are funding with tax dollars. They are very proud of it. They say that they are using biometrics so that people can walk up and put their fingerprint out and out pops hydromorphone.
Oxycontin causes the opioid crisis. Hydromorphone is three times more powerful than oxycontin. It is almost heroin.
What happens? The users take those drugs and they find that they are not strong enough after a while, so what do they do? They sell them to kids and they take the money and use it for fentanyl.
This government is spending, in this budget, hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funds to provide even more drugs that will kill our people.
This policy is an unmitigated nightmare. The lower Eastside of Vancouver has turned into hell on earth. The number of overdose deaths is 300% higher in British Columbia than when this Prime Minister took office.
We are now seeing, across Canada, 22 overdose deaths every single day. It does not make sense.
By the way, the same disgusting pharma companies that started the crisis in the first place are going to get some of the money from this budget to sell the hydromorphone that will perpetuate the ongoing addiction. The same corporate scumbags that unleashed this crisis by deliberately turbocharging sales and encouraging overdoses, with bonuses for distributors who caused them, are now getting money from this government to pay for the so-called safe supply of what is nearly a heroin-grade opioid.
This is the most disgusting and outrageous policy perhaps that the government has ever implemented.
We have a solution. We are going to ban hard drugs. We are going to stop using tax dollars to hand out those drugs. We are going to provide treatment. We are going to make it easier to get treatment than it is to get drugs.
We are going to make the pharmaceutical companies that caused this crisis pay the bill when I launch a $45-billion lawsuit to recover the money from them. That is what I am going to do.
We are going to bring home our brothers, sisters, friends and neighbours, drug-free. We are going to restore the hope that anything is possible in this country for them, that there is always a chance at redemption, that anybody can turn their lives around. We have seen what treatment can do, the countless stories that I have heard when I go across the country.
I met a nurse in Timmins who had been a nurse until she got hooked on opioids in the hospital. She lost her job, lost her family and ended up on the street, but went and got treatment and recovered. Now she has a job as a waitress. She has her daughter back, she has her dignity back and she has her life back. There are going to be many more stories like that when we bring home our friends and family drug-free.
We are going to bring home our freedom to this country. The more government we have, the less freedom remains. This big, powerful government forgets its core responsibility. First and foremost is our national defence. We are going to bring the dollars out of the back office and onto the front lines and stop wasting defence dollars on big corporate procurement screw-ups. We will make sure the money goes into the soldiers' hands and into the support of our soldiers, sailors and airmen. We are going to end the woke culture that is driving our young people away from the military and restore pride in our armed forces again.
Bringing home our freedom means bringing back democratic decision-making to this country by fighting against foreign interference, including by introducing a foreign interference registry and stopping foreign governments from interfering in our elections. Our capital is Ottawa; it is not Beijing and it is not Davos. By the way, I would be banning every single minister in my government from any involvement in the World Economic Forum.
We would bring home free speech by repealing Bill C-11, which attempts to give government the control of what people see and say on the Internet. We think that there are already 37 million Canadian content regulators. They are called the citizens of Canada and they have the right to decide what they see and say on the Internet in a free country.
I pointed out earlier that we had a deal in this country that if people work hard they get a good living and a good life. It is a deal that, like everything else in Liberal Canada, is broken. However, it is not the first deal that has ever happened in the history of our democracy. The first deal was over 800 years ago when a spoiled, power-hungry inheritor of the Crown, King John, had taken the Crown from his father. Does that remind people of anyone? He was overtaxing his people. He was taking away their freedoms: arresting without charge, confiscating without compensation and violating all the rules that we now take for granted. However, the commoners forced him to the fields of Runnymede and required that he sign the deal: the Magna Carta, the great charter, which, for the first time, brought liberty under the law and made what is now called “the state” a servant and not a master of the people. That is our purpose here as well.
We understand, on this side of the House, that we are servants. We are not masters. This is the House of Commons, the house of the common people. It is green because the first commoners met in the fields of Runnymede, which were also green. They were the ones who harvested that field. They are the ones for whom we work. We stand for the common sense of the common people, united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
Some hon. members: More.
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- Oct/31/22 2:20:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the $500‑billion inflationary deficit has caused the highest rate of inflation in 40 years.
Canadians are cutting back on food so they can afford groceries, and 35-year-olds are having to live in their parents' basement.
The fiscal update presents an opportunity for the government to reverse the policies that have caused this crisis. Is it not ironic that the only solution to this crisis is for the government to reverse 100% of what it has done for the past seven years?
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