- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Huron—Bruce
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $120,348.62
- Government Page
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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- Mar/25/22 10:34:01 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-8.
The first thing I want to do is go back a bit in time. Madam Speaker, I think you were there as well for those times. It goes back to when Jim Flaherty was the finance minister. He had a budget that was called the “economic action plan”. It was a main event back in those times. Economists and business owners and people from all over looked at this economic action plan as the path forward for the Canadian economy, especially in those times of the huge economic downturn in 2007 and 2008. It was really a shining light, I would say. It allowed us to get through that time and by 2015 to present the new Liberal government with a balanced budget.
Back in that time of 2015 and over the next four years, the government spent $100 billion extra over what it collected. That will go into history and will be a guiding light for future governments. It goes back to when we were kids and our grandparents were telling us that when times were good, we should salt a bit away. That way, when times get bad, we would have a bit more to spend to keep going.
The Liberals actually really spent when times were good, and when times were bad, they really spent a lot. In 2015 the federal debt was about $600 billion, and in seven short years we are at the point that we have doubled that debt to $1.2 trillion. We have not doubled it; the Liberal government has doubled it to $1.2 trillion so that the amount that each and every Canadian owes has doubled. It is unfortunate.
I understand the times. Yes, there was some money that went to helping Canadians tremendously. We obviously know that, but nevertheless, the numbers are the numbers.
There are a couple of things I want to point out. One thing is inflation. We hear this on the news. Ten years ago, we did not really hear about inflation. Even five years ago we did not hear about it. Now there are different excuses for inflation. In September, it was transitory. In October, it was transitory. In November, it was greedy corporations; it was their fault. In December, it was the supply chain. In January, it was the supply chain. Now, in February, it is Russia. Can members believe this? In a matter of six months, we have had at least four or five different reasons to blame for the inflation. That is an impossibility.
We know that when there is a limited or decreasing supply of goods and an increasing monetary supply, we are going to have inflation. Some have estimated a 40% increase in the monetary supply in this country in the last two years. The only people to blame for such increased spending are the people sitting across the hall here in the House of Commons. They are the only reason. They cannot blame Ukraine and they cannot blame it on being transitory. They have gotten rid of that term now because it was debunked.
The other thing I hear, more than time to time, is GDP growth. The finance minister has talked a number of times about GDP growth. However, to my mind and to many other people's minds, when inflation is close to 6%, the highest in 30 years, and when some economists say that if we calculate inflation as it was calculated 40 years ago or 30 years ago, inflation is over 10%, how can they claim to have GDP growth of 4.2% in 2021? It is all new monetary supply and it is all inflation.
The Liberals even have, in their fall economic statement, a term called “GDP inflation”. That should put to bed all of the finance minister's claims about robust GDP growth. In fact, there are so many warning points and warning signs in the fall economic update about headwinds and what if this happens and what if that happens that this fall economic statement is what I would call priced to perfection. Anything less than perfection is going to produce a catastrophic result.
Let us look at what is going on right now. Brent crude this morning is $113 U.S. That was not in any projections. It is doubtful that GDP growth will be as high as it was in 2021. That will reduce government revenues. There are a lot of issues with this fall economic update.
The Bank of Canada claims to have stopped quantitative easing. That is great, but it has not started on quantitative tightening. What the bank calls it now is “quantitative reinvestment”. We are creating all these new terms for things, and really it is just fooling around with the money supply.
If we go back in time and really look at money and the Bretton Woods agreement, which came about during the Second World War and remained in place until the gold standard was abandoned in 1971, money was actually backed by something. Money is just debt. That is all money is today, and it is unfortunate that the government of the day does not respect money. It does not respect the taxes that people pay.
I saw an article just the other night, maybe last night. It was in the Toronto Star, so we know it must be true if they are reporting it on the Liberals. It said what the government was spending on Harrington Lake, and I could not believe it. It was something like $14 million that has been spent on the old property at Harrington Lake, and we know the Prime Minister built a new place at Harrington Lake for $9 million. The government has also spent $3.6 million on the Rideau Hall property, the Governor General's property.
I am not going to go into all that, because in the big scheme of things we are talking about trillions and billions of dollars, but this just goes to show the lack of respect for the taxpayer dollar and for the small business owners who have been grinding it out and grinding it out. They see that and have a lot of unique words that they use when they describe how much they dislike the spending.
As for gold, in the sixties the government owned 1,000 tonnes of gold. By 2003 there were only 3.4 tonnes of gold left, and we know who was mainly in government during that time. The Government of Canada sold the last of its gold in 2016, as far as I know, and it sold it at $1,245 an ounce. If we look today at the price of gold, we see it is almost $2,000 U.S. an ounce.
There are a lot of talented Liberal members of Parliament. I would not dispute that, and we hear of the Prime Minister's golden touch or Midas touch, but I would argue that pretty much everything the Prime Minister touches is the opposite of the Midas touch or the gold touch. Pretty much everything he touches is a disaster. We can even look at selling the gold. He sold low in a good time, so I do not know about that.
Another one is the green bond. That is in the economic update. In my riding I have the largest nuclear facility in the world, Bruce Power. It is a huge job creator. It generates baseload power for the Ontario grid, and unbelievably, to the shame of the environment minister, nuclear power was left out. There are so many jobs in Liberal-held ridings in Toronto and around the GTA that I cannot believe the members in that caucus would go for that. I would be furious.
The idea of a green bond is to reduce emissions. In the province of Ontario, there were smog days 20 years ago. Anybody who lives around southwestern Ontario remembers those days. Those are gone, and it is because of nuclear energy. To put nuclear power in with tobacco and all the other things they put it in with is really an insult, and I have heard from a lot of nuclear power employees who are quite outraged by that.
Another issue is around COVID tests and vaccinations. I would like the government to table how many vaccines have been thrown out in the last six months. I estimate the value in the tens of millions of dollars and maybe the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The other thing is COVID tests. This is another disaster. Maybe it will come up in questions.
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- Feb/21/22 2:09:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are more divided than ever before, but one topic all Canadians can agree on is the cost of living. Every visit to the grocery store, every time we fill up our vehicles or we get our home heating bills, Canadians are reminded of the Prime Minister's inflationary monetary policy.
Inflation was 4.8% in December and 5.1% in January. Many economists say the true cost of inflation is over 10%. Housing costs have doubled, rent is unaffordable and in some cases used cars are now worth more than new cars. Who would have ever thought?
Seniors, working families, rural Canadians and urban Canadians are all stretched to the max. It is time for the Prime Minister and the finance minister to get their heads out of the Davos clouds and start listening to Canadians.
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