- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Board of Internal Economy
Deputy House leader of the government
- Liberal
- Kingston and the Islands
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $112,228.33
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I always get a kick out of it when Conservatives say they left this House in good fiscal order at the end of Stephen Harper's reign.
They are clapping when I say I get a kick out of it, and it is really interesting, because if we actually look back over Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, there were only three budgets that were balanced in the entire 13 or so years that they were in power for.
More importantly, when he talks about how they balanced this budget in 2015, they did it by selling off shares of GM at bargain prices, by slashing EI and by slashing veterans services. They did all that so they could “balance the budget”. They thought that when they went into the election in 2015, that would inspire people to bring them back into power. Of course, we know that never happened, because people saw right through it.
Can the member reflect on whether he thinks it was a good idea for the government of the day to balance the budget by slashing veterans services and EI, and by selling off the shares of GM at bargain prices?
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- Oct/17/23 1:37:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in today's opposition motion debate. I first want to congratulate the Conservatives on bringing forward a motion that is not directly associated with the issue they have been bringing forward time after time in the House. Now, we get to talk about something a bit different, although I do have great concern with the premise of the motion they have brought forward. The “whereas” clauses and the assertions they have made are, I think, wholly inaccurate, and I look forward to explaining that in the next 10 minutes or so.
This country certainly took on a lot of debt in order to support Canadians from coast to coast during the pandemic, and we have certainly had to take on our fair share to do that, much of which was unanimously approved by the House, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic. However, it is always important to look at things in terms of context. Obviously, debt is significantly affected by GDP, the amount a country is able to produce in terms of economic activity, because that is exactly what will end up supporting that debt. When we talk about the debt in this country and when we look at the debt-to-GDP ratio, Canada is actually doing quite well.
As a matter of fact, if we look at our debt-to-GDP ratio, we are at 14%. Some people might ask whether that is good or bad. That is fair, because I do not think everybody is an economist and knows the default answer to that, but let us compare that 14% in Canada to the percentage for our G7 partners. France is at 99%. Germany is at 47%. Italy is at 129%. Japan is at 161%. Probably the two most comparable to us, the U.K. and the United States, are at 95% and 96%. When we talk about our debt levels, it is extremely important to compare where we stand on them to the position of our G7 counterparts, our most comparable economies in the world. In that regard, we are in an extremely good position.
I would add that I will be sharing my time with the member for Kings—Hants today.
That is very important for context. I know that Conservatives, including this lot here, like to come into the House and routinely tell us about how theirs is the only party that knows how to introduce a balanced budget. They may want to go ahead and cheer and clap now, because usually they do that when I try to pay them a compliment, before I add the “but”.
It is really important to consider this: Conservatives will tell us that they know how to balance budgets, but if we look back to—
An hon. member: We do.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, they said “we do”. They will then have to explain the following facts to me and why they did the following. Since 1990, there have been only two prime ministers who have significantly added a surplus or balanced a budget. They were Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. This is interesting, because Conservatives will always say that Stephen Harper balanced budgets, but no, he did not, and Brian Mulroney never had a single balanced budget. Stephen Harper did not really either, and I will explain why. The first two budgets Stephen Harper brought into Parliament were on the heels of Paul Martin's surpluses that he had been running for years. The Conservatives certainly squandered those surpluses and went into a deficit position very quickly.
Of course, Conservatives also like to tell us, and I have heard it already this morning, that they left the fiscal state of this country in great shape in 2015 with the last budget they presented in a last-ditch effort to get Canadians to vote them into office one more time. They brought forward a “balanced budget”, and for the purposes of Hansard, I should say I am putting “balanced budget” in quotes, but they did it on the backs of veterans by closing Veterans Affairs offices. They sold off our shares of GM at the time at bargain prices in order to get that off their balance sheet. They did a whole host of things in order to portray the illusion that they had balanced the budget, when they really had not. They did it at the expense of Canadians and the investments the government had on behalf of Canadians.
I know that many will say this was so long ago, 10 years ago for Harper and even longer for Mulroney. Fine, let us just get back to this lot of Conservatives right here. All of them who are here today ran on Erin O'Toole's plan in the last election, and that plan was to run deficits for a minimum of 10 years. Here we have a group of Conservatives who are now coming into the House with a motion that says to develop a plan for a balanced budget by October 25 of this year, a week and a half from now. Meanwhile, they had no intention of doing so when they were running in the last election. They did not care when they were knocking on doors and presenting their plan to Canadians. The plan from Erin O'Toole and the Conservatives was to run deficits for at least 10 years. That is the reality of it.
This should be concerning to Canadians, because this is not the first time that we are seeing hypocrisy come out of the Conservatives. It is actually the second time. They also ran on a plan to introduce a price on pollution and to modify the existing price on pollution that this side of the House had. They ran on that, too.
This morning, somebody challenged them and asked a Conservative member why they ran on that. That Conservative member stood up and said, “I did not believe in it.” That is funny, because that is the second or third Conservative I have heard say they were not running on a price on pollution or a carbon tax. However, they had no problem going along with the plan during the election. They did not say a single word in opposition to it at the time. Now, suddenly, they come in here and think that the buzz phrase of the day is going to be “axe the tax”, and this would bring them into power. That is not the position that somebody who is aspiring to be the leader of this country should be taking, asking what buzzwords happen to work today that would get him into power.
I also find it very interesting when we talk about inflation specifically. Today we have seen that Statistics Canada has reported that the inflation in Canada has dropped to 3.8%. I should add that all the economists who were predicting this in advance of today said it would be anywhere between 3.8% and 4.2%. It ended up being on the lower end of that. Conservatives are laughing.
Maybe it is time to compare that. I did it earlier, and I can compare it again. Let us compare it to the G7 countries. Again, Canada and the United States are tied for second place in terms of the lowest inflation. I think it is extremely important when we talk about our comparative countries.
Canada is heading in the right direction when it comes to inflation, but interestingly enough, when we look at inflation and the different sectors of the economy, transportation is one of the only sectors of the economy contributing to inflation, and it is the biggest contributor. It is interesting because the member for King—Vaughan was up earlier, and I asked her what proposals she would have to reduce the inflationary impact around transportation. Of course, the exact answer that I think everybody in this room would have expected, and I certainly did when I asked the question, was to get rid of the carbon tax, because the carbon tax is contributing to inflation.
The reality of the situation is that the carbon tax is not contributing to inflation. Tiff Macklem, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, recently said that the overall impact of the carbon tax to inflation is 0.15%. I believe he was in Alberta at a Chamber of Commerce meeting. We could chalk that up to a rounding error. Now I know the default for my Conservative friends would be to jump up and say that they do not trust Tiff Macklem; they have already made their position on that very clear.
I have a whole list, and I will not bother reading it right now, of Conservative MPs who have stood up in this House and invoked the name of Tiff Macklem as the expert when he has all the right things that they want to say at the moment. They cannot pick and choose when they want to use somebody as an expert in the field.
It goes without saying for the rest of us in the House, other than Conservatives, that Tiff Macklem is an expert in this field. When he says that the carbon tax contributes 0.15%, I am sorry to the member for King—Vaughan, but getting rid of the carbon tax is not going to be helpful. It is not going to be the solution as it relates to inflation specifically.
Once again, we are confronted with a motion by Conservatives. All they are interested in is political games and cheap shots at the Prime Minister.
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- Oct/17/23 12:37:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know that before this member, the member for King—Vaughan made the comment that only Conservatives know how to bring in a balanced budget. I am assuming this member thinks the same thing.
An hon. member: That's right.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, she just yelled that I am right.
The unfortunate thing for her is that no Conservative has ever done it, not in Brian Mulroney's time and not in Stephen Harper's time. Let me correct that record. It is true that Stephen Harper had two surpluses in the beginning, but those came off the heels of Paul Martin's budgets. The only prime ministers since 1970 to actually run a surplus, a balance or have no deficit have been Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. There is absolutely no historical record that would suggest that Conservatives actually have the know-how to do that.
Could the member please inform the House as to exactly how Conservatives would do that, and without the rhetoric of bringing down interest rates to lower inflation?
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- Jun/21/23 6:22:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question.
The member for Carleton, the Leader of the Opposition, came into the House and said that he had sent out fundraising emails about how he would filibuster forever or until he got what he wanted. Then he came in here and talked for about three and a half hours. That was it.
I have seen him filibuster for closer to 20 hours, since I have been in this House. To me, it just says that the member for Carleton is really losing steam. He does not have that spunk he used to have. This is really going to translate into how he is able to sympathize—
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- Jun/21/23 6:21:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have no idea what that had to do with the motion we are debating today. That sounded more like just a Bloc Québécois list of grievances that he wanted to express to the House.
We are committed to helping Canadians where they need those supports. That is why we have rolled out countless measures in the last number of months and years, and why we will continue to do that.
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- Jun/21/23 6:19:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I can assure the member that homelessness did, and always has, existed in her riding. It is nothing new. Maybe she is just realizing it now, but I can assure her that homelessness in her riding is most likely something that is not unique.
What I would say is that we have an obligation to support Canadians in the best way that we can. We have seen the various different measures that have come forward, whether it is the grocery rebate, the housing top-up or child care. We have brought countless measures into this place to help Canadians.
I hope the member realizes that the Conservative motion put forward today calls on us to balance the budget, which means that a number of those measures would have to be eliminated. The Conservatives have yet to tell us which measures it would be. I certainly would like to know because I am sure that would impact those who are homeless in her community.
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- Jun/21/23 6:08:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to the opposition motion that has been put before the House.
I will start by saying that I am concerned about the rhetoric in the preamble. However, the motion and the result clause is fairly short. It talks about a balanced budget and committing to a balanced budget immediately.
I found this very interesting because I asked the member for Bay of Quinte how many times Conservatives introduced balanced budgets in the House, and I even gave him the answer. It was three times in the last 30 years that Conservatives have introduced balanced budgets in the House, under Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper. There was a grand total of 20 budgets introduced, and three were balanced.
Do members know when they came? The first came in 2006-07. This was on the heels of Paul Martin's surplus, which was a $13-billion surplus. Stephen Harper axed that the next year, and in 2007-08, the surplus was only $9.6 billion. After that, he started to run deficits immediately. He blew away that surplus that Paul Martin had left for him and started running deficits immediately. Then, of course, there is the famous balancing of the budget in 2014-15, when Stephen Harper slashed veterans services and sold off GM shares at bargain prices just so that he get himself in a position on paper that he was bringing in a surplus because he felt he needed to do that to solidify his base that was demanding it.
However, rather than dwell on the fact that Conservatives have done this historically, at least in recent history, I think we have to ask ourselves something: Why do governments run deficits?
There are two reasons. A government can run a deficit, one, because it is expecting the taxpayer to pay more to make up that deficit and plans to charge or tax them more or, two, because it is investing. The whole idea behind investing is assuming that a government will get something in return for that investment. When governments are running deficits to invest in Canadians, they are doing it with the expectation that something is going to come out on other end to grow our economy. When we grow our economy, people are better off and there is more wealth in our economy.
What about population growth? We are growing at historic rates. We are just past 40 million people in Canada. When we continue to grow in such a fashion, we need to make new investments, and we are seeing it on the other side through the growth, which is why Canada is continually rated to have one of the best credit ratings in the developed world. That is why we have such a low debt-to-GDP ratio, which is what people really need to focus on. However, I know that it is not intuitive for people to want to focus on that, especially when Canadians are managing a household budget, and they cannot look at it the same way, but the reality is that we have to look at our debt in relation to our GDP.
As our GDP continues to grow, if we are spending less than that growth, we have a net benefit at the end of the day, which is essentially what we see when we bring forward these budgets that are investing in Canadians. Quite frankly, that is something that Brian Mulroney understood. It is something that Stephen Harper understood, and it is something that former Liberals, such as Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien, understood.
They understood that, if we invest in Canadians and actually use the money to invest in Canadians when running those deficits, we will get to a place eventually where Paul Martin got to, which was a $13-billion surplus, and a surplus the year after that as well. We will get to those places naturally. The point is that we can get to that place by investing in Canadians because we see the economic growth, see the opportunities, see people being better off and see the debt-to-GDP ratio. We see the debt specifically as it relates per capita to the lowest among the G7, as we are hearing.
There is one thing we should be concerned about, and I rightfully share it with so many other people. It is the debt level each household is experiencing right now in Canada, but we have to ask ourselves why. Why is that? Is there something unique about Canada and our spending habits that puts us in that position? It has a lot to do, I would suggest, with the age of our population.
In the G7, Canada has one of the youngest populations. These are people who are buying new homes and investing for the first time. These are people who do not have the retirement savings that other G7 countries have. Am I excusing anything? I am not. I am saying that we have to be mindful of this and we have to be vigilant in the approach and ensure Canadians do not put themselves into situations they do not want to be in.
I stress that there is a reason for the circumstances we are in, but regardless of all of this, Canada still puts itself in a position of being among the best in the G7, as it relates to the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio and the lowest deficit-to-GDP ratio, and I think it is very important that, as we reflect on this, we consider that.
I have brought these up on a number of occasions recently, and I want to talk about them again. They are the recent comments made by former prime minister Brian Mulroney on the job this government has been doing. I mean no disrespect to any living Liberal prime ministers, but I have not even heard a former Liberal prime minister speak this highly of the current government.
Brian Mulroney said, “I have learned over the years that history is unconcerned with the trivia and the trash of rumours and gossip floating around Parliament Hill. History is only concerned with the big ticket items that have shaped the future of Canada”. The article continues, “He said [the current Prime Minister] and the premiers 'conducted themselves as well as anybody else in the world' in dealing with COVID, something Mulroney called 'the greatest challenge that any prime minister has dealt with...in 156 years.'”
We have heard Conservatives tell us many times in the past how we failed the country on NAFTA, but here is what the architect of NAFTA, the Prime Minister who was the lead at the time and negotiated the original NAFTA deal, had to say about the job this government did. The article describes, “On NAFTA, Mulroney said that he saw first-hand how the current Prime Minister made 'big decisions at crucial moments' and won 'a significant victory for Canada'. He said, 'It's due to the leadership that we saw from the government of Canada'”. That is Brian Mulroney, a former Conservative prime minister, absolutely praising the work this government did in relation to keeping our economy in a good position when we had to renegotiate NAFTA.
I remember the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle at the time standing up in question period demanding the government capitulate to Donald Trump's demands, but we did not. The government stood firm. Our finance minister negotiated this, and we got a better deal at the end of the day. Brian Mulroney will even tell us that. Also, we can look at the various other things that have occurred.
I know that my time is running to an end. I think that once again we have an opposition motion in front of us that is troubling. I am getting tired of challenging the Conservatives day in and day out, but here we are. It is the last one. Hopefully when we return in the fall, we will have motions with perhaps a little more substantive measures to them than what we are seeing now.
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- Jun/21/23 5:48:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, over the last three decades, there have been 20 Conservative budgets introduced in the House. I am wondering if the member knows how many of those 20 Conservative budgets actually were balanced or ran a surplus.
I ask because when he discovers that the answer is only three, he must know that there is a reason for that.
Why is it that between Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, of the 20 budgets that were introduced in the House, only three ran a surplus or were balanced? Why is that?
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- Jun/21/23 5:39:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not recall hearing the Leader of the Opposition indicate he was sharing his time.
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- Jun/21/23 5:33:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, at least we always know when a Conservative is wrapping up their speech. It is a good cue.
I have a question for the Leader of the Opposition. He has been very critical of the government, the government's responses to COVID and the various measures that have been put in place. However, I want to read what one of his predecessors, a previous leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, said. Brian Mulroney said that the Prime Minister and the premiers “conducted themselves as well as anybody else in the world” in dealing with COVID, something Mulroney called “the greatest challenge that any prime minister has dealt with in Canada in 156 years.” The Conservatives are laughing at Mulroney. With respect to NAFTA, Mulroney said he saw first-hand how the Prime Minister made “big decisions at crucial moments” and won “a significant victory for Canada”.
How can the current leader of the Conservative Party differ so much from the leader of his party a few decades ago?
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- Apr/4/22 5:47:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would be happy to talk to the member about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and how they were infringed upon as soon as he can bring forward to the House an actual example of how that has been determined to be a fact by the court, which it has not. Nonetheless, if the member is so concerned about being labelled far-right, he might want to talk to his seatmates and indeed personally reflect on the comments that he is making because doing that will certainly give him the ability to control that narrative.
However, we are here talking about this motion and this particular report. I am going to focus my comments on pages 191 to 193 of the report. That is the dissenting report from the Conservative Party, those that decided to dissent on this report.
What I found very interesting about their dissenting report is that it is a quick read with not a lot of complex words. People can get through that pretty quickly. It is only two pages long and a sentence, so I would encourage anybody out there to read it and see for themselves that this is not a report to provide recommendations. There is not a single recommendation in it. It is just whining on with the same talking points that we hear over and over in the House. There is not a single actual recommendation of how to do something different.
They do have four points in here, which I will address specifically. They say in their first point that there is no plan that has been recommended by the committee to balance the budget. I find that very interesting, coming from a party that ran on balancing the budget not after one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight or nine years, but 10 years. The party opposite, which in this report is so incredibly critical of this government's position on running deficits during this pandemic as a way to empower Canadians and our economy to get through this, somehow is able to be so incredibly critical of it. However, their former leader, the member for Durham, was more than willing to tell the Canadian public back in September that he was willing to wait 10 years to balance the budget, yet they have the audacity to be so overly critical about it.
Let us go to point number two. There is no plan to control spending. That is what the Conservatives are saying, but we might recall from that same platform that I just referenced that the party ran on a platform of spending way more money than our party did when we were elected in the fall of 2021. I find it fascinating how they are suddenly so concerned about running deficits and about balancing budgets when they literally ran on the exact opposite six months ago.
Point three is interesting. They said in their report that they have concerns over the fact that there is a lack of attention paid in this report to supporting growth and prosperity. We have the highest GDP in the G7. How can they possibly make that claim, if nothing more than to try to score political points from the hundreds of thousands of people who will read this report, that we do not have a thriving economy when we have the best GDP right now in the G7?
Hon. Ed Fast We have the lowest investment, Mark.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, the member for Abbotsford is correct. We do have the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio. What does that mean? That means it puts us in the position of being able to rebound out of the economic hardships of the last two years better than any of our counterparts. That is what it actually does. They failed to mention that, and they said that we do not have a plan.
I would argue with them, as the member for Winnipeg North and other people have mentioned, that growing the economy is not strictly done by reducing taxes, in particular for the wealthy, which is what the Conservatives would like to do. There are other ways of doing that. One of the ways is to empower and put more people into the workforce. There are two ways they can do that. One, we can get more parents who are sitting at home with kids into the workforce. How are we doing that? I do not know. Maybe we will do it the way that every single premier of Canada agreed to, including all the Conservative ones, and bring in $10-a-day child care. We do not have to look that far to see it is a successful program. Just look at Quebec.
Quebec, for quite a while, has had a low per-day child care rate. It is $7-a-day child care, and look at the success. More women, in particular, are in the workforce in Quebec, and so that is one way we put more people into the economy and grow our economy.
What is another way we can do it? It is by having robust, meaningful immigration programs that can bring more people into our country, just like the programs that attracted my parents in the 1950s after World War II. These programs can bring more people into our country so we can help to stimulate and grow our economy even faster.
Therefore, when the Conservatives say that there is a lack of attention being put on prosperity and growth, they are absolutely out to lunch. The actual data does not support their claim. It is very well known that we have one of the strongest economies in the world. Indeed, we have programs in place, or that are coming online, that will even further enhance that.
The fourth and final point, which I find to be very interesting in the Conservatives' report, is that they talk about significant proposals to attack the immediate threat to Canadians, specifically in respect to housing. They seem to be suggesting that there is nothing in the committee report's recommendations to support that. I know that there are 220 recommendations in the report, and maybe they did not get to read all of them before filing their dissenting report, but there is actually a recommendation in there, recommendation 203, that calls for the creation of half a million, quality, affordable homes. There is a plan in there, despite the fact that the Conservatives are suggesting in their dissenting report that there is not.
In conclusion, as it relates to the dissenting report, I would suggest that the next time the Conservatives put together a report to try to be critical of the work the committee has done, they should do two things: One, put some thought into what they are putting down on paper and see if it reflects the actual report; and two, perhaps more importantly, put some suggestions in there as to what they are recommending we do.
It is very easy to be critical. We hear it all the time from across the way. They are always critical about this person and that person, or that something is happening in this part of the economy or in this sector, but there is never an actual suggestion, unless it is to unlock more oil. There is never an actual suggestion to do anything that would have an impact. It is all just a rambling on of complaints about this government, which we could get just by sitting here in QP.
In my remaining time, I would like to talk about a couple of the initiatives that are in the report that I really appreciate and really like. I will start off with those that specifically have to do with the electrification of our environment, of our vehicles and of just about anything.
The world is changing. I know that the Conservatives, whenever the word “energy” comes out of their mouths, are only ever talking about oil.
An hon. member: Hear, hear!
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, they even just said “Hear, hear!” However, believe it or not, energy comes in other forms than just oil. I do not know if the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, who just heckled me, would know this, but I encourage him to walk into—
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