SoVote

Apr/25/22 12:45:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I completely agree with my hon. colleague that it is key and critical that we move from gasoline-operated vehicles, which account, if I recall, for 40% of gas emissions, toward battery-operated vehicles. We are making investments, right from developing mines to processing minerals, manufacturing batteries and manufacturing vehicles so that there is a complete transition from gasoline-powered cars to battery-operated cars.

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Mr. Ken Hardie (Fleetwood—Port Kells, Lib.)

Apr/25/22 12:45:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the occasion to comment on the 2022 federal budget includes an opportunity not only to highlight certain aspects of the government's plan that people in Fleetwood—Port Kells and indeed right across Canada will find of great value, but also an opportunity to illustrate the budget as yet another sign of a choice Canadians have in their relationship with the federal government. Prior to 2016, we had 50 years of social and economic ideology that counted a great deal on the free market lifting us to prosperity. The results, though, have been economic and social inequities and gaps that have become more deeply rooted. The legislation our government has shepherded through Parliament, including our budgets, has sought to address the gaps that the free market cannot or will not address. These are economic gaps between those few who have the leverage to grow their wealth much faster and the rest of us, social gaps that threaten the well-being of too many marginalized people, and gaps in the security of achieving and maintaining a quality of life that those who work hard should reasonably expect in a nation as wealthy as ours. The highlights of budget 2022 I will cover today are the ones chosen by independent third parties. It is all right for us, as government, to say that this or that is important, but it is really interesting to see what people at street level, and the commentators and observers, have to say. My own thoughts will focus on areas where perhaps the budget itself has been silent. In the time available, I am going to concentrate only on the number one issue at home in Fleetwood—Port Kells: The budget's measures concerning housing. Budget 2022 takes steps to return some semblance of equity for first-time homebuyers. Here is an area where the underregulated laissez-faire free market has left the dream of home ownership entirely out of reach for too many and has left some Canadians literally out in the cold. The Edmonton accounting firm Hahn Lukey Houle highlighted the tax-free first home savings account, which would help first-time homebuyers save up to $40,000 to help with their down payment. Money going into the account would be tax-free and money taken out of the account to buy the home would be tax-free. The market could not offer something like this. Only the government could do it, and this one is. The market has been unwilling or unable to deal with practices that disadvantage homebuyers and distort prices along the way. The Vancouver legal firm Clark Wilson, the most named firm in rankings by the publication Business in Vancouver, highlighted the concept of a homebuyers' bill of rights in budget 2022. Over the next year, this bill of rights would put an end to blind bidding, where buyers have no idea what has been bid by others for a property. That is a key driver of higher housing prices. Prospective buyers would have the right to get the property inspected. Too often, it is a corner now being cut by people forced to rush some kind of a home purchase. There would be more transparency on the sale price history of properties and a new disclosure agreement for real estate agents if they happened to be working both sides of a transaction. The bill of rights could also include a requirement for lenders to offer a six-month deferral of mortgage payments when families experience a job loss or other major life event, such as a pandemic. Most media outlets have identified the provision in budget 2022 of a two-year prohibition in Canada on the sale of non-recreational residential property to foreign commercial enterprises and people who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Exemptions to this ban are expected to include refugees, individuals in Canada on work permits and international students who could be on the path to permanent residency. That last group has been identified by people I have spoken with as one that needs to be carefully monitored, because many believe the treatment of international students creates loopholes for foreign capital to buy up real estate. Most commentators expected something on property flipping, and the budget delivered. Any individual selling a property that has been held for less than 12 months would be subject to full taxation on any profits as business income. The measure would apply to residential properties sold on or after January 1, 2023. There would be some exceptions to this for Canadians who sell their homes due to certain life events or hardship circumstances. Another version of speculative trading in the Canadian housing market has to do with assignment sales. Those occur when someone reaches a deal to buy a housing unit that has not even been built yet and then flips the right to buy the unit for a profit. This can happen multiple times as a townhouse, condo or home is under construction, and each time, the ultimate cost goes up for the family who will eventually actually move in. GST will apply to all assignment sales of newly constructed or substantially renovated housing. That is going to happen very soon. It will be a week from Saturday, in fact, on May 7. Storeys, a real estate news and industry publication, noted that the housing accelerator fund will apply $4 billion in 2022 to help municipalities speed up their development permit and approval process. I know this is a huge issue in Surrey, one of Canada's fastest-growing municipalities and soon British Columbia's biggest city, but the long lag to get construction approved by city hall is driving up the prices of finished homes because labour and material costs increase over time, especially during the long lag that it takes to get something built. Add the flipping and assignment sales and the development cost charges, and the cumulative impact on prices is significant. I have heard stories too about another area that we really have to pay attention to. During the two weeks we had away from Parliament, I had a chance to touch base with a lot of people. I heard stories of people who leveraged the lift in their own home's value to qualify for another mortgage to buy a revenue property. Then, using the rise in that property's value, they got another mortgage for another property and so on. Is this actually going on? It would be worth finding out, because it sounds like the whole thing is a gigantic bubble, and if it pops due to mortgage rate increases, the banks could end up owning a lot of property. Then there are trusts. The Globe and Mail, in an article focused on money laundering, noted the still unresolved issue of large, suspicious transfers between lawyers' trust accounts. These transfers are shielded from reporting requirements that are in place for banks, accountants, real estate companies and securities dealers. Even casinos have to report, but lawyers do not. In 2000, the federal government passed a law that allowed FINTRAC to carry out warrantless searches of law firms and seize materials. The Federation of Law Societies lawyered up, and by 2015 it was ultimately deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, which told us to go back and improve the language. One would hope an improved version of that legislation is somewhere on someone's to-do list. More broadly, trusts are perceived as offering perfectly legal loopholes to avoid taxes and obscure the real ownership of property. Watchers at street level say there is a fairness problem here. While budget 2022 aims to tackle the long-standing need to identify the beneficial ownership of real estate through a public registry, right now it is only going to apply to federally chartered companies. This is a good start, but for the provinces it is voluntary, a gap that knowledgeable people say needs to be closed. Our government is attacking affordability issues that have been allowed to grow and mutate for decades. Fixing them is going to take time plus the talent and commitment to adjust and refine measures as we move forward. That said, all of us here should not underestimate the talent and commitment out there in the community to find ways around any step we take. This is more than a high finance or sound legal game of whack-a-mole. To the people faced with no prospect of qualifying for a mortgage, much less actually owning a home, this is not a game. It is in their interest that we get to the heart of a question our citizens ask at every election: What should government's role be when things are tilted against people? Just over a year ago, former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor Mark Carney spoke about what the role of government should be if Canadians believe in free enterprise but with a social conscience. Mr. Carney called our free markets “the most powerful instruments we’ve ever created. Their energy and dynamism can be...directed to serve great purposes, but the market is also indifferent to human suffering, and it can be blind to our greatest needs.” That's why politicians who worship the market tend to deliver policies that hurt people, and those who default to laissez-faire, or who leave the free market to its own devices, leave us unprepared for the future. Put simply, as he goes on, “Markets don’t have values, people do. And it’s our responsibility to close the gap between what we value and what the market prices. That’s the work of politics.” Or, in a view well represented in budget 2022, it should be and it will be.

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Mr. Clifford Small (Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, CPC)

Apr/25/22 12:56:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoy sitting with my hon. colleague on the fisheries committee, and I have a fisheries-related question for him. I am looking at the minister's mandate letter, and it says, “and develop a conservation strategy to restore and rebuild wild Atlantic salmon populations and their habitats.” However, I studied the budget, and I did not see any reference to Atlantic salmon whatsoever. I just came back from two weeks in my riding, and I had a quite a few questions asked of me on this. People are wondering why Atlantic salmon were left out of the budget. We want more conservation and we want salmon enhancement.

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Mr. Ken Hardie

Apr/25/22 12:57:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is no small question, and indeed it is an important one. We cannot forget that the budget is a snapshot in time. It is like a movie going by at 64 frames a second. There are things that were put in place beforehand and things that will follow as the dollars stacked up in any given ministry are allocated according to the needs. As we know, those needs will shift and change. The member, another one over here from the fisheries committee and I are all going to get together to talk about the science. I think we share the view that the science either is not what we need or is not being used the right way. One way or another, we are going to get to the bottom of this and cast a way forward that would make the difference the member is looking for.

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Ms. Marie-Hélène Gaudreau (Laurentides—Labelle, BQ)

Apr/25/22 12:57:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. However, there is one thing that he did not mention, and that is the “Agri-vert”, or agri-green, program. We are very disappointed. Agriculture is very important in my riding of Laurentides—Labelle and during the pandemic we realized just how valuable our farmers really are. People on the ground wanted to see a better agri-green program. I would like the member to explain why the government planned for other types of investments in its budget rather than giving farmers what they wanted.

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Mr. Ken Hardie

Apr/25/22 12:58:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the budget can be faulted for not including a lot of different things. There are only so many lines and there is only so much room, but that does not mean to say that things are not going to happen. Our government has laid the foundation for a very strong agricultural sector, with the assistance that it has needed in various areas, including the whole business of sustainability in the environment. We are committed, by the way, to supply management, which I know is a huge force not just in the economics of farming, but also in the strength of communities where farmers live. While I cannot speak directly to the point that our hon. colleague raises, I would say that it is worth a look and is worth following, and where we can make improvements on what is planned, we will do that.

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Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

Apr/25/22 12:59:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member mentioned that things are tilted against the people. One big thing that is tilted against the people is the distribution of wealth in Canada: 1% of our population controls 25% of the wealth in this country. Past tax measures, both Liberal and Conservative, have failed to do anything to this total inequity. I am wondering why the Liberal government refuses to bring in a wealth tax in this country to really turn this ship around and get the wealth of Canada properly distributed so that everybody can share in this economy and its wealth.

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Mr. Ken Hardie

Apr/25/22 1:00:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, therein lies one of the key shortcomings of the NDP's approach to things: There is no simple solution here. If we bring in a wealth tax, the next sound we will hear is the sound of wealth fleeing Canada to friendlier places. Whatever has to happen may be along the lines of some of the things that French economist Thomas Piketty has been reporting on, and there are others. There is a lot of thought going into this. Our work to create an international base tax rate of 15%, for instance, is a start. It is not the complete story, but a good start.

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Mr. Bernard Généreux (Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, CPC)

Apr/25/22 1:01:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to discuss what disappoints us the most, as Conservatives, in the wake of the tabling of what could be described as a very bad budget on the Thursday before Easter break. I remember a time when the Conservatives were accused of acting in bad faith for tabling bills or budgets just before a long break. The transparency of this Liberal government leaves something to be desired. We are disappointed because this is a document that shows once again that the government sees Canada's finances through rose coloured glasses. Instead of focusing on returning to a balanced budget, it is offering a host a new spending to fund new programs in order to buy—indeed, buy—the NDP's support. We knew long before the pandemic that a budget does not balance itself. The Liberal government was running a deficit long before the pandemic. It had to add to the deficit during the pandemic, a necessary move that we agree with. However, the economy is now firing on all cylinders and government revenues have drastically increased, in large part because of inflation and the increased cost of energy products such as oil and gas. The Liberals have posted another deficit and plan to keep us in a deficit for five years, which is absolutely ridiculous. The government will claim that the deficit will help stimulate the economy and that the additional revenue generated by inflation will cancel out the deficit and reduce the debt. It will once again trot out the infamous debt-to-GDP ratio it loves to talk about every chance it gets. However, there are big differences between the current deficit and past deficits in response to economic crises, such as the Great Depression, the Second World War or even the 2008-09 financial crisis, which was comparable to the crisis in the 1930s. A lot of money went towards building sustainable infrastructure during and after the war. The governments at the time had the foresight to spend when unemployment was high and construction costs were much lower. This money was recovered over time, and much of the infrastructure built then is still used today, such as the many bridges that cross rivers all across the country. The previous Conservative government made similar expenditures through its recovery plan, which helped build some now-essential infrastructure in our communities, in particular in rural areas. I was there from 2009 to 2011. People today are benefiting from the Harper governments' investment in our communities' infrastructure, as will future generations. Fundamentally though, all the new spending in the current Minister of Finance's budget will go to new government programs, programs the NDP clearly demanded. As if the Liberals did not already have enough on their plate, now they are getting involved in areas under provincial jurisdiction, such as childcare, dental care and so on. These are things under provincial jurisdiction, but the government will be investing billions more and imposing conditions, and the Canadian provinces are really not happy about it. Here is the difference: Infrastructure is built once and its cost is amortized over a long period, with the relative weight of the expense diminishing over time. In contrast, a new program means annual funding that will vary and not shrink over time, as we have seen lately. These costs can only go up, and there is no doubt they will rise with inflation. Plus, does anyone truly believe that early childhood educators and dentists will not eventually demand wage and fee increases, with inflation at 6.7%? Of course they will. This budget has not even been approved yet, and spending estimates are already out of date. Interest rates are going up too; the Bank of Canada now has no choice but to raise them to fight inflation. Well over a year ago, we asked the government to make sure interest rates were appropriate. Who would have believed that, in the space of just a few months, the key interest rate would rise from 0.25% to 1%? Hold on tight, because it is expected to hit 2% in the coming months. New programs are being created that are not funded by current taxes, but by deficits. It is borrowed money that will have to be paid back later. Inevitably, there are costs associated with this. The interest costs are projected to be staggering for the federal government now and in the future. Furthermore, the interest costs are equivalent to the increase that the provinces are asking for in health transfers every year. Imagine that. Of course, surveys are being done. The media conducts surveys, all the political parties conduct surveys and the government conducts surveys. What comes up most often? The cost of living, the cost of living, and the cost of living. That is what we are experiencing right now. A visit to the dentist is expensive. That costs a few hundred dollars, but there is nothing as expensive as the cost of housing for the young and the not-so-young who do not already have a house in their name. The government may well claim that the staggering price increases experienced in recent years are a global and inevitable phenomenon. The Minister of Finance's defeatist attitude was evident in her budget speech in the House on the Thursday before Easter, as well as in the media interviews in the hours that followed. Because the federal Liberals have been mismanaging the economy since 2015, real estate has become the only attractive economic sector for investors. It has come to the point where between 30% and 40% of homes in Canada are not owned by people who actually want to live in them themselves, but rather by individuals who already have a home and want them as investment properties. I just got back from a trip to western Canada, to Jasper and Banff, an area where there are a lot of construction workers, especially for the Trans Mountain pipeline. These workers are given extra money for housing, because it costs $3,500 a month just to rent a room in someone's basement. It is completely ridiculous. It is crazy. This is out of control. Budgets do not seem to acknowledge how absurd this situation has become. The average price of a house in Canada is now over $850,000. That is the average price. It is not uncommon to see houses in some places, even quite modest houses, priced at between $1.5 million and $2 million. I am not talking about posh neighbourhoods in London, New York or Singapore. I am talking about the suburbs of Toronto. Many young people from generation Y and generation Z have no hope of owning a home. Time is of the essence if they even hope to have place to call their own, to pay off a mortgage and then diversify their savings so that they can retire at age 65. Contrary to popular belief, a home is not a retirement plan. The walls are not edible. Selling a home does not guarantee that there is something cheaper out there to live in. Using a reverse mortgage essentially means the home you worked for your entire life goes directly to the banks instead of to your children when you die. There seems to be no sense of urgency on the Liberal side, and even less so on the part of the NDP who support them, to address this problem. In some cases, they even try to normalize the situation. That is clear when we look at the ceiling for the new FHSA to help individuals access home ownership. By saving $8,000 a year for five years, they can reach $40,000. Imagine what saving $40,000 means for young people who earn on average $50,000 a year. We can agree that it is very hard to save $8,000 with the current cost of living. That represents a 5% down payment on an $800,000 home. Does the government think it is normal and acceptable that a young person or a couple today is starting out $760,000 in the red because homes cost $800,000 on average? The government estimates that it takes five years to save up a 5% down payment. How can it expect these people to repay the remaining 95% within 25 years? All financial planners agree that an acceptable price for a house is about three times the buyer's salary. According to Statistics Canada, the average salary in Canada in 2019 was $51,740. Multiply that by three and we get roughly $155,000. Try to find a $155,000 house in Canada. There are not many left. There are some in my riding, but I will say that they are not very big houses. I have not finished my speech, but unfortunately my time is up. I hope I will be able to answer my colleagues' questions. The government has totally mortgaged the future of today's young people. It is appalling. All the debt that the government has racked up over the past seven years is going to have an impact on young people's lives and future.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/25/22 1:11:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when the member makes reference to the issue of deficits, one of the things that has to be factored in is the fact that, over the last number of years, yes, the government has spent a great deal of money. We spent a great deal of money to support Canadians and small businesses, whether it was millions of people who found themselves without a paycheque or literally hundreds of thousands of businesses and others that needed supports such as wage subsidies and rent subsidies. By doing that, Canada was in a much better position to be able to recover from the pandemic. We are seeing that in terms of the job growth, as our economy continues to do better than any of the other G7 economies when it comes to job recovery. I am wondering if the member opposite has any remorse or regret, given that the Conservative party actually supported the many expenditures that we made, the billions and billions of dollars.

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Mr. Bernard Généreux

Apr/25/22 1:12:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I said in my speech, like the government, we had no choice but to support the pandemic spending. Obviously, we are not disputing that. We think that the government did far too much, but that is another issue. Then there is the matter of young people. I am a businessman, and I have some young employees. They are not getting paid $80,000, $100,000 or $200,000 a year, but these young workers want to earn a living and buy a home. Here is the problem with the deficits. Other members will tell me that the government is not a business, and I agree. However, the fact remains that, if I applied the current government's way of thinking and logic to my business, I would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. It makes no sense. The country was in a period of economic growth when the current government took office. There was no deficit when this government came to power. In 2015, the budget was balanced. Mr. Trudeau promised to run three small deficits of $10 billion, and now I do not even know how big the deficit is.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/25/22 1:13:36 p.m.
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I remind the hon. member not to use the name of the Prime Minister or other members in the House. The hon. member for Laurentides—Labelle.

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Ms. Marie-Hélène Gaudreau (Laurentides—Labelle, BQ)

Apr/25/22 1:13:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the government started out by saying that now is not the time to talk about health transfers, yet the budget it presented seems more like a postpandemic budget. Considering that Quebec and the provinces are demanding an unconditional transfer and considering that my colleague is quite familiar with the situation in Quebec, what does he think about the proposal to hold a health summit, given that we are clearly in the postpandemic period.

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Mr. Bernard Généreux

Apr/25/22 1:14:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Laurentides—Labelle. She is right to point out that the government can hold as many summits as it wants, but the provincial governments, through the Council of the Federation, have demanded an increase in health transfers. The Conservative Party promised to unconditionally increase health transfers during the last election campaign. Based on this budget and on the federal government's attitude towards the provinces, especially with respect to health, it seems clear that the Liberals want to increase services through their agreements with the NDP, but that they also want to dictate how that money will be spent. That is not how open federalism works. That is not how a government works with the provinces.

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Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP)

Apr/25/22 1:15:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech. One of the most popular NDP proposals during the last election campaign was that people should have access to dental care, meaning that the government should foot the bill. What does my colleague say to people in his riding who do not have the means or are too poor to afford a dentist? What does he tell them about the fact that his party is opposed to the poorest and the middle class having access to government-paid dental care? I do not want to hear him simply say that it is too expensive, when two weeks ago, he was in favour of tripling spending for the Canadian military.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/25/22 1:15:54 p.m.
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The hon. member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup has just enough time for a brief reply.

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Mr. Bernard Généreux

Apr/25/22 1:15:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my answer will be very brief. Considering the NDP's showing in my riding, I would hazard a guess that it was not such a great idea.

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Mr. John Brassard (Barrie—Innisfil, CPC)

Apr/25/22 1:16:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am really pleased to get up this afternoon, on the first day back after a couple of weeks back in our ridings, to speak about the budget. It reminds me of that old adage that people of integrity expect to be believed, and when they are not, time will prove them right. Time is certainly proving us right on predictions that were made a year and a half to two years ago, when the money-printing machines were going at full force to provide the types of supports that were needed for COVID. There were predictions on this side at that time, and right across the spectrum economists were predicting that inflationary pressures would begin to increase. We are now seeing those inflationary pressures affecting Canadian families in a way that they have not for a generation. I have been in my riding for the last couple of weeks, as all members have, and received emails, phone calls and text messages from the people of Barrie—Innisfil, who are quite concerned about the inflationary pressures that are happening within my community and in communities across Canada. This morning I happened to be watching the finance committee, and the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, was on there. He was asked a point-blank question by our shadow minister of finance: “Can we still consider inflation as transitory?” His answer was no. We are entering into a period of permanent inflation, it seems, and we know, based on Statistics Canada, that last month it was at 6.7%. We can think of the impact that has on Canadian families and the families I represent in Barrie—Innisfil. The price of everything is skyrocketing. The prices of gas, home heating, consumables, groceries, commodities and the necessities of life are increasing dramatically right across this country, and the expectation, according to the Governor of the Bank of Canada, is that this inflationary period we are in is going to be lasting for a long time. This is going to further impact affordability for families, further erode their retirement savings and really dramatically impact their ability to pay for things, especially at a time when they can least afford them. We heard, even in the last couple of weeks, in some of the surveys that came out, about how Canadians are desperately clinging to affordability. In many circumstances, over half of Canadians do not have enough money at the end of the month to pay for the things they need, the necessities of life. This budget actually increases government spending. There are certain things that are sure in life, and the one thing we can count on is that this budget is going to pass. Because of the coalition between the NDP and the Liberals, the New Democrats have signalled that not only are they going to support this budget, but they are also going to support subsequent budgets. We can sit here and criticize, and I have some things that I want to bring up specifically with respect to the budget as it relates to local issues in my riding of Barrie—Innisfil, but when we want to get an assessment of what people think about this budget, we can go to the experts. People do not have to listen to us; they do not have to listen to the government or the other opposition parties. They can listen to what respected economists are saying about this budget and the impact it is going to have on Canadians. Don Drummond, who is a former senior Department of Finance official, former TD Bank chief economist and current Queen's professor, said this: If I were in the business world I’d be extremely depressed, because we are at some point going to have to turn to how we fund all this spending, and it would seem the go-to funding source is corporate income tax. It was the first seven words, “If I were in the business world”, that caught the eye of another expert, who said: The problem is, we are all “in the business world,” whether we like it or not—as workers, consumers, and taxpayers. Tax business, and you tax almost everything we consume and most of the services we depend on. Those services will be hardest hit as a result of this. We have spoken about this many times. The impact of this type of continued spending is that taxes go up and services get cut. It is that simple, especially entering into a period in which we have higher interest rates. Even the—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/25/22 1:20:54 p.m.
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I want a little order in the House. I would ask members who are having conversations other than listening to the member to take their conversations outside and allow the member the respect of having the floor without being disturbed. The hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil.

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Mr. John Brassard

Apr/25/22 1:21:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleagues' passionate discourse on this and the fact that they were more or less agreeing with what I was saying. When the Liberals were out selling the budget and travelling around Canada contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, the Parliamentary Budget Officer issued a report on Friday that was quite troubling with respect to the budget. He flags several downside risks in the recent federal budget, the biggest being big-ticket campaign promises that have yet to make an appearance in the government's fiscal forecast. What they've forecasted is in the budget, but there are things that are not forecasted that are going to cause some significant costs later on. The PBO's largest concern is expenditures looming outside of the budget, including some of the Liberal campaign pledges and lobbying by provinces for big increases to health care transfers. On the spending side, he said there could be a significant delta. This is the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Yves Giroux. He went on to say some of those election promises were slated to start up in the current fiscal year, most notably the commitment to increase annual payments to seniors receiving the guaranteed income supplement. He said many of these costs, including a promised increase to Canadian mental health transfers, do not appear in the budget. Universal pharmacare, which is of course a large part of the NDP-Liberal alliance, could cost billions of dollars a year. The Liberals pulled up short of a commitment to a full-blown program during the campaign, but the agreement struck with the NDP last month says that the government will make continuing progress toward such a program. However, there is no forecasted cost to that. Those costs will come up later on. When the Parliamentary Budget Officer is warning about this particular budget, then I think all Canadians should heed those warnings. As I said earlier, I spent the last couple of weeks in the riding, and I heard from a lot of people. I know the Liberals' argument, because I have heard it a couple of times this morning, has to do with some of the geopolitical problems happening around the world being a cause of current inflation, whether it is supply chain issues or others. However, as I said at the onset, this was predicted to happen when the money printing presses were going at full steam a year and a half to two years ago. Even then, people were concerned about the cost of living. Some emails I received August 25, 2021, almost eight months ago, begged me to do something about this, if not for them, then for their future children. They say the government needs to fix this broken situation as it relates to housing. One from August 25 reads, “I'm not sure who I would send this letter to, but I wish to express my concern with current rental and housing shortages in Barrie and surrounding areas.” This is a serious issue and many people are struggling as a result. I know there are billions allocated toward housing, but there have been billions allocated in the past, and we have not seen any measurable increases. There are affordability projects right now that are waiting for approval from the government. I wrote a letter to the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion three or four months ago. Still, no decision has been made for an already existing project that is waiting to go through the rapid housing initiative. It is to be a joint partnership between Simcoe County and what we hope would be the province and the federal government, but we have not heard anything at this point. There are a lot of announcements, but the list is long. The emails and texts about the anxiety and the affordability crisis people are facing right now are long. Adding on billions and billions of dollars for more long-term, unsustainable programs, from the affordability standpoint, is awfully difficult for Canadians. The last thing I will speak to is my profound disappointment about Lake Simcoe. In 2019, Conservatives were promised $30 million for the re-establishment of the Lake Simcoe cleanup fund. Just two or three days before the election in the advance polls, the then deputy prime minister, the now finance minister, came to the shores of Lake Simcoe promising $40 million for the reinstatement of the Lake Simcoe fund. Just a couple of days after the election, my colleagues and I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister about it. In this budget, only $19.7 million was allocated, and it is not for direct funding for Lake Simcoe. It is to be spread across the country. There was $60 million spent to clean up Lake Simcoe. We saw measurable improvements. I am extremely disappointed that the commitment made in 2019 was not lived up to in this budget. We are going to continue to fight for Lake Simcoe.

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