- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Huron—Bruce
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $120,348.62
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, let us not create more bureaucracy. Let us not create red tape. Let us not create more chaos on people figuring out how this all works. We already have a delivery mechanism. It is through the provinces. In the province of Nova Scotia, for those who are 14 and under, regardless of income, they get their dental. It is an X-ray, a cleaning, a checkup for kids and their cavities filled. That would have been a great place to start from coast to coast to coast, and from sea to shining sea. That would have been fair. That would have been equitable.
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Mr. Speaker, it would support kids, but the point is that the Liberals and the New Democrats are calling this “dental care”, but it is a dental subsidy. If they truly wanted to do dental care, they had plenty of time. The Liberals have been in government for seven years, and the NDP has been propping them up for many of those years. They have had years to put this together and years for consultation, and they have not.
Members can look through the press releases to find out where a federal-provincial health ministers' meeting took place with substantive discussion on dental care, the funding of dental care and best practices in dental care. They will not find it.
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Mr. Speaker, I would argue that from the NDP's point of view, this is a windfall. The government has received a windfall in the form of its increased tax collection because of inflation and oil and gas record profits, to be able to put into the government taxes. Let us think about what it would be if it were not. We would have a deficit that is double, triple or quadruple what it is today. Therefore, the coalition members should be happy about where they sit today, but the taxpayers in this country should not be happy.
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Mr. Speaker, it is great the member recognized it was 1%. The biggest difference is that we did not have the money printer on full speed. The Liberals have the money printer on full speed. We do not and we did not have it on full speed. The budget was balanced in 2015. If we are debating a balanced budget in 2015 with the Liberals' Bill C-31, we know they are taking on a lot of water with their bill here today.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today.
We are here talking about Bill C-31 and I thought, because it has to do with the inflation issues in Canada, I would quote the famous economist Milton Friedman. He was not a Canadian economist. Nonetheless, he was a Nobel Prize-winning economist.
This is what he had to say about inflation. He has been dead for years, but obviously this rings true today. He said, “There is one and only one basic cause of inflation: too high a rate of growth in the quantity of money—too much money chasing the available supply of goods and services.” That quote is from approximately 50 years ago, and it was as true then as it is today.
Another thing he said was that people learn and governments never learn. I think that is also true today.
If we look at what is happening in Canada with the M2 money supply and how it has continued to increase, based on the numbers I have, it has increased a lot in the last two and a half years. However, if we look at where it peaked, which my numbers say was in July, that is also roughly the time when inflation peaked in Canada, which was in June, at 8.1%. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the comments economist Friedman made many years ago ring as true today. They are evidence-based here in this country. There is only one place where inflation starts, which is with the government and the money tree, the printing of money.
Former finance minister Bill Morneau and the current finance minister, in my opinion, have very little credibility on where the cause of inflation started and even less credibility on how it should and shall be fixed. Let me go through some excuses that have been proposed in the last year alone.
In September and October of 2021, it was, “Don't worry, folks. Inflation is transitory.” Do members remember that?
I can hear a child crying in the gallery because she just found out how much she will be paying for her fair share of the debt.
In November, it was because of greedy corporations. Do members remember that? It was then said, in December, that it was because of supply chain bottlenecks. In February, the blame was laid on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the spiking of gas and oil prices. At the end of the day, the root cause of the inflation in this country can be laid at the feet of the finance ministers and the Governor of the Bank of Canada.
Another point of reference and data on inflation is from October 2015. There was a Conservative balanced budget and the inflation rate in Canada was 1%, further proving our point that fiscal policy directly impacts the inflation rate. In October of 2015, with the Conservative balanced budget, which was the last time we saw a balanced budget, the inflation rate was 1%, but today spending is out of control and inflation is over 7% or 8%.
If we went up and down the country roads and main streets to ask people where their biggest point of pain is right now with respect to inflation, almost 100% would say that it is the costs of heating their homes, paying their electricity bills, keeping their vehicles on the road, and putting groceries in their cupboards and fridges to feed their kids or family.
I am not saying these other things are not important, because they are, but if we were to ask people today what the most important things are, it does not matter what political party we are from, the people we represent are probably going to tell us that. We heard it today, and I am glad it was brought up because it has to do with consultation.
The idea of this bill goes back a long way. Jack Harris had a motion similar to this in the previous Parliament, Motion No. 62. That was my old buddy Jack.
With this particular bill on dental, it is obvious there have been no consultations. When the minister made the announcement, it was not with provincial health ministers. It was not with premiers to say look what we have done together. This was a direct cash payment support to keep the government of the day in government.
It would have been great to have a consultation with the provinces, health care professionals and dentists to ask what the benchmark is. I know our Deputy Speaker is from Nova Scotia, and there is a good possibility that Nova Scotia has one of the best dental care programs in the country.
In Ontario, the province I represent, it is the healthy smiles program. On average, the Nova Scotia plan is enhanced from what Ontario has. It would have been great for everybody to get together to say that Nova Scotia has a great plan. Maybe we would need to put it in over a number of years, but let us have it all hammered out and have a five-year plan or a 10-year plan to make it happen.
What we are looking at today, we can call it dental care, but it is not dental care. This is not a form of dental care. The provincial programs, I would argue, are a form of dental care. We can argue if they are good, bad or need enhancing, but they truly are forms of dental care. What we are seeing today is a direct payment to people to help pay for a dental bill.
If we went around the countryside and asked people what their number one priority is for health care, I do not believe dentistry would be in the top two or three answers, depending on who we asked. If we ask families what the number priority is, they would say not having a family doctor. That is probably the number on problem. If people are sick, they have no place to go other than the emergency room, and they have no doctor who has a reference of their medical history.
I just mentioned the emergency room. In the hospitals in the area I represent, their emergency rooms are closing at night or are completely closing. For many members of Parliament, it is just like it is in Huron—Bruce. If we asked the people in my communities, such as Clinton, Walkerton or Seaforth, what is more important, and they would say it is all important, but this is probably the most important thing for them: They do not want to wait 12 hours for a kid to be seen by a doctor to find out what is wrong with them. People who are parents have probably had that experience before. There are a lot of issues.
We can think about how the times have changed just in the last seven years. I heard an anecdote today on the television. It was someone saying that they used to worry about if they could get a parking space downtown. Now they are worried that, if they go downtown and park, they are going to get stabbed in the back by somebody and get robbed. This is all in just seven years. I do not completely blame the Liberals, obviously, on that one, but that is what people are thinking.
What I would say on the rental issue is that I am in a rural area. I know, Mr. Speaker, you are from a rural area. We have huge affordable housing needs in our ridings, along with many others. The dollars that are offered in this rental program will help, but if we are really looking at what can make a difference in the country and make a difference in rural communities, we should give that money to the provinces and let the provinces work with the counties and municipalities to build long-term affordable housing. That would have been a far better use for it. Mayors In Saugeen Shores, Kincardine, Goderich, Exeter and Clinton, in my area, would have been well-served by commitments for affordable housing.
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