- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Board of Internal Economy
Deputy House leader of the government
- Liberal
- Kingston and the Islands
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $112,228.33
- Government Page
- May/21/24 11:25:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, she was not successful, because she gave one and then she had to look down. She could learn a lot from the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, because his delivery was really good.
I go back to exactly what I said before, which is that what matters the most is how the economy is performing in relation to the deficit that is projected. That is what matters the most. Conservative prime ministers have known that. Conservative premiers know that. Everybody has always operated in that manner.
If what the member is saying was true, then one would think that these fiscally responsible Conservative prime ministers all throughout Brian Mulroney's time and all throughout Stephen Harper's time would have just done exactly what the Conservatives are saying, but they did not.
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- May/21/24 11:23:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on the first part, I want to congratulate the member because he is one of the members who can get all four of those out perfectly. He did not lose eye contact and did not show that he may be forgetting one. It was very well done.
To answer his question, I would ask him this: In what year did Brian Mulroney balance the budget? In what year did Stephen Harper balance the budget?
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, I am answering his question.
For growing economies, we know that, as long as our growth is outpacing our deficit, we are in a fiscally responsible position, and that is the reality.
They are laughing right now, but they should talk to Stephen Harper because that is all he did, or Brian Mulroney. It is exactly what they did. They never balanced a budget. They balanced one budget in 2015, apparently, by slashing veteran services, and then they had another surplus in 2007 on the heels of Paul Martin's surplus. However, the reality is, and this is exactly what Conservatives do because they know that, as long as our economy is outgrowing our deficit, we are in a fiscally responsible place.
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- May/21/24 11:17:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, for starters, monetary policy is something that is done by a central bank. Fiscal policy is done by a government. Maybe the member should just Google those terms so he knows what he is talking about in the future.
When he asks about who is leading the debate, he makes it sound as though this is the first time we have talked about this. This is the fall economic statement. We have debated it.
An hon. member: It is summer.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: He is right: It is summer. Madam Speaker, that is because the Conservatives will not let this debate collapse. They just keep dragging it on and on. The finance minister has spoken to the bill, probably on more than one occasion. He suggests I am the lead on this when we have been debating it for nine months.
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- Mar/19/24 12:56:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Winnipeg North.
The only thing the Conservatives want to axe is the rebates people are getting. They have no interest in helping to provide for Canadians, especially in their time of need, and we have seen that through various votes. We have seen that through the initiatives that the Leader of the Opposition has taken this week, what he has said and what he has directed his members to do, which I will get to in a second. What they really want to axe is the Canada carbon rebate. That is it.
The Canada carbon rebate currently provides, or will provide, in this fiscal year, on average, to each family, the following: Alberta, $1,800; Manitoba, $1,200; Saskatchewan, $1,500; Nova Scotia, $825; P.E.I., $880; Newfoundland and Labrador, $1,192; New Brunswick, $760; and in my province of Ontario, $1,120. That is an average.
I will give members the raw data as to how people are benefiting and how more people are better off through those rebates they are getting than what they are paying.
I took the opportunity to do the exercise myself. I went back to 2023 and dug up all my gas bills from Enbridge for heating my home. I calculated the federal carbon amount that was added to each bill, and after adding up through 2023, it came to $379.93 that was paid in 2023. I drive an electric car, but I wanted to be as fair as I could, so I looked up how much fuel is needed for a car for the average person. The average is 1,667 litres. I then multiplied that by the federal carbon tax for 2023, and it brought me up to $238.
Let us assume that because I live in a household where we have two cars, we have to multiply that by two. After all is said and done, taking into account what I paid to Enbridge for the carbon tax and what I would have paid through purchasing gas at a gas station, the total amount that I paid in 2023 was $855. In my household, I receive the rebate directly into my bank, and when I looked at my bank statement, the amount I received in 2023 was $885. Before even considering any initiatives that I could have taken, and I have taken some, for example, I am driving an electric car, but before even taking any initiatives—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: I hear Conservatives heckling me. I will not name names, because that would not be fair, but I have sat in the House and had Conservative members walk up and say, “Hey, Mark, by the way, just so you know, I drive an electric now, and I absolutely love the car.” Of course, they would never actually get up in the House of Commons and say that, because that would go against their entire narrative. In the interest of protecting the identity of the people who have done that, I will not say who they are, but I get a kick out of how they are heckling me now while I am saying this.
Before I even attempt to do anything to improve my carbon footprint, just from the basic math, I am already ahead. The reality is that 94% of households with incomes below $50,000 a year get rebates that exceed their carbon taxes. I have demonstrated to members that in a household of four with two vehicles, it is already very plausible.
When we start to tap into some of the many initiatives that the federal and many provincial governments have to make one's home more efficient, to install heat pumps, for example, to make conversion away from fossil fuels, we can very quickly see that if I put a heat pump in my home, that $379 I paid in 2023 no long exists, and I will be receiving in excess of $380 a month. If we also add into that the various other initiatives I could take and the choices I could make, I would end up even further ahead. It is very clear that the vast majority of Canadians receive more than they pay.
I was very relieved to hear today, and I have heard on a number of occasions, the House leader, the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, at least starting to talk about the rebates. Earlier today, I actually heard him concede that, by his information, 40% of households are getting more back. I say that we are at a place where we can work toward educating the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle. I do not think we are that far off before we can get him from that 40% to the real number of 80%. At least Conservatives are starting to come around.
However, make no mistake about it. Conservatives want to axe the Canada carbon rebate, which is money that is being put into the pockets of Canadians, that is helping to deal with the effects of climate change and that is incentivizing them to make more energy efficient choices in their homes or in what they drive. Even if one only moves from a gasoline-only vehicle to a hybrid vehicle, one will start to see savings. One does not even have to go all-electric. Again, that just further increases the excess amount one receives as opposed to what one pays.
I do not want to leave the impression that Conservatives are interested in any way in helping Canadians. That has been said in the House already. The Leader of the Opposition, on March 14, sent a letter to his MPs saying that Conservatives will stand in the House and will force votes they can oppose on many different items in order to perpetuate and continue the false narrative Conservatives currently have that the vast majority of people are not getting more back more than they are paying.
Let us talk about some of those things. Perhaps Conservatives will be a little smarter this time around when we go through a marathon voting session. Perhaps they will more strategically pick what they might want to vote against, because they are lining themselves up to vote against things that are based on communication from the Leader of the Opposition and that are based on a false narrative; he believes the price on pollution is not actually putting more into the pockets of Canadians.
Conservatives are lining themselves up this week to vote, once again, against three motions that affect Ukraine. These represent over 15 million dollars' worth of equipment to Ukraine, Operation Unifier supports Ukraine with $130 million, and then $285 million goes to Operation Reassurance to assist Ukraine. They are going to vote against RCMP members who have been injured on duty, which is at a cost of $20 million. Over $1 million is for Reaching Home programs to help address homelessness, and $12.5 million is for the collection of banned assault firearms. The very heat pump program I talked about earlier, which provides over $40 million in grants to Canadians, they will be voting against it. There is an anti-racism strategy, a round table on missing and murdered indigenous girls and LGBTQ+ people, which is over $1 million, and of course, there is the Canada housing benefit, which represents over $100 million.
The Leader of the Opposition has set up a false narrative that people do not get back more than they pay into the price on pollution when the vast majority do. He is willing to hedge his bets on that false narrative and, at a cost of doing so, is going to vote against all those items I just listed.
I would strongly encourage the Conservative Party of Canada members to have a good look and self-reflect on where they have come over the last number of years, from Stephen Harper, who spoke in favour of a price on pollution, up to their most recent leader and their most recent election campaign, when they knocked on doors and talked about pricing pollution. It is time to have serious look in the mirror and to reflect on exactly what it is they stand for. The reality is that the only thing they are showing themselves to stand for now is misinformation.
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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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Madam Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion:
That, notwithstanding any standing order, special order or usual practice of the House,
(a) Bill C-45, An Act to amend the First Nations Fiscal Management Act, to make consequential amendments to other Acts, and to make a clarification relating to another Act, be disposed of as follows:
(i) the bill be deemed concurred in at report stage, as amended, upon the adoption of this order;
(ii) the bill be ordered for consideration at the third reading stage later today after the taking of the deferred recorded divisions,
(iii) when the bill is take up at the third reading stage, one member of each recognized party be allowed to speak for not more than 10 minutes followed by five minutes for questions and comments,
(iv) at the conclusion of the time provided for this debate or when no member rises to speak, whichever is earlier, the bill shall be deemed read a third time and passed; and
(b) the order adopted earlier today under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3) still apply to the proceedings on Bill S-5, An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, to make related amendments to the Food and Drugs Act and to repeal the Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination Act, and that today's proceedings on the bill count as the further sitting day allotted for debate at report stage.
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- Jun/22/22 10:18:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member is starting to sound more and more like our Conservative colleagues across the way, not so much in terms of concern about inflation but more in the rhetoric and manufactured outrage, in my opinion, that he seems to be displaying.
I apologize to him that he has asked this question five times. I hope he listens carefully, because my answers will be extremely direct. I will not talk about child care, I will not list countries and I will not talk about payments coming back to people from the price on pollution, despite the fact that they are all extremely important programs.
Indeed, I will talk about affordability being top of mind for our government, just as it is for most Canadians these days. We understand that Canadians are worried about inflation and that they are rightly asking what their government is going to do about it.
The current high inflation is a global phenomenon, driven in large part by the lasting impacts of a once-in-a-generation pandemic and amplified by China's ongoing COVID-zero policies and Russia's illegal invasion in Ukraine. These are not excuses; I am putting out the facts so that the member clearly understands where the problem originated.
As inflation is a global and multi-faceted issue, our government understands the importance of taking targeted measures here at home to help Canadians make ends meet. How have we supported Canadians, and what are we going to do to continue to support them? To answer the member's question directly, this was top of mind when the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance highlighted, just last week, the five real and tangible steps we are taking to help get inflation under control and make life more affordable.
First, the government recognizes the central role of the Bank of Canada. For more than three decades, it has been the bank's responsibility to tackle inflation here in Canada, and we will let the bank continue to do this important work.
Second, as we made clear in budget 2021, we will also address the shortage of workers in this country. Our plan to do so is part of a set of measures that Janet Yellen, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, has described as modern supply-side economics.
Third, our government also understands that fiscal restraint is key in combatting inflation. Our government is determined to see our debt-to-GDP ratio continue to decline and our deficits continue to be reduced.
Fourth, our government is also committed to making sure that there are enough good middle-class jobs for Canadians. By doing so, we will continue to see our economy be prosperous, as we know that the middle class is so critical in ensuring that prosperity.
Last, we will help Canadians directly with the challenge of affordability, in issue the member has raised. Through the affordability plan, we will provide just under $9 billion in new support for Canadians. Our plan includes enhancements to the Canada worker benefit; a 10% increase to old age security for seniors over 75; a $500 payment this year to nearly one million Canadian renters who are struggling with the cost of housing; lower child care fees for families across the country; and benefits indexed to inflation, including the Canada child benefit, the GST credit, the Canada pension plan, old age security and the guaranteed income supplement.
This is how we will make life more affordable for Canadian families while controlling expenditures and maintaining Canada's AAA credit rating.
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- Apr/4/22 4:23:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on the point of order, there are 221 recommendations in this report that address just about every fiscal—
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