44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 25, 2022 11:00AM
- Apr/25/22 12:13:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as members know, the whole issue of health transfers was discussed earlier in the debate on a motion.
As we know, in the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government funded 50% of health care spending. That funding was cut repeatedly, and now the feds fund only about 22% through health transfers.
The Quebec government and all Canadian provinces are calling for an increase in these health transfers. Unfortunately, this budget does not include any such measures. What are my colleague's thoughts on that?
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- Apr/25/22 12:15:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is really important in 2022 that we look to the results of the government, which the member's party has just decided to keep in power regardless of its failures for Canadians, who are struggling with an affordability crisis.
The member has identified issues that are of great importance to the people who elected him to this place. Some people in my constituency explained that they were concerned about some of those issues. The government has abandoned that ground, and I would encourage the member opposite to prod the government to give some meaningful help to Canadians, instead of having this avalanche of spending.
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- 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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- 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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- 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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- 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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- Apr/25/22 2:44:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this morning, the governor of the Bank of Canada was very clear that inflation is no longer transitory. In fact, Mr. Macklem said, “Team Transitory has disbanded.” For months, the government has claimed that inflation was a passing global phenomenon, nothing to see. It continued to borrow and spend all the way to a skyrocketing inflation of 6.7%.
Why has the minister allowed her spending to fuel an affordability crisis, which has left millions of Canadians behind?
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- Apr/25/22 2:45:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the governor also announced that, because of inflation, every single Canadian pays $2,000 more a year. He said Canadians should expect more interest rate increases, leaving millions of Canadians paying more on their mortgages and on their loans. When the governor was asked what this government should do to preserve Canada's fiscal position, he said not to spend too much. Is the minister listening?
Will she finally control her spending, and why has she failed to address Canada's affordability crisis?
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- Apr/25/22 3:44:07 p.m.
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Then, Madam Speaker, I would retract the words “just” and “inflation”. I thank you for that.
We cannot spend our way out of this historic inflation. This budget before the House is a classic Liberal tax-and-spend budget. Canadians know that they are the ones on the hook for this $50 billion of brand new Liberal spending in this budget. This is not what Canadians signed up for when they voted Liberal this past summer. Canadian citizens did not vote for an NDP-Liberal government. They voted for a Liberal government, sadly, but now they are getting an NDP-Liberal budget. No one voted Liberal-NDP on the ballot box, yet this is exactly what Canadians have at this moment. It is shameful.
In Miramichi—Grand Lake, we rely on something to get things done: trucks. We rely on trucks to get things done. I live on a street with about 17 houses. There are at least four truck drivers and one transport company right on my residential street in Blackville, on Digby Street. That is why my office has been inundated with constituents concerned about the net-zero advisory body's annex of the Liberals' 2030 emissions reduction plan, where on page 192, it chooses trucks, vans and SUVs as public enemy number one. This NDP-Liberal government is doubling down on the people who drive trucks, vans and SUVs.
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Mr. Jake Stewart: The member across knows that, and he should be ashamed because he has constituents who drive trucks and SUVs and vans. My constituents cannot afford inflation, paired with a tax on trucks. What my constituents and I believe all Canadians want is for the Liberal government to get its hands out of Canadians' pockets, take them out of there and give people the break they deserve.
When I reviewed this budget with my staff, we were floored by the exorbitant amount of new spending that the Liberal-NDP government is planning on handing out. This is despite the fact that Canadians are experiencing a 31-year inflationary high. How bad does it have to get for the government and its multiple prime ministers, at this point, to address the reality that Canadians are facing every single day? I know the people of Miramichi—Grand Lake cannot afford another inflationary budget that adds to the crisis we are facing across this country. The fact that home prices have doubled since the Liberals formed government should be enough to call for a non-confidence vote, a vote that could never happen now that the NDP has been, what do we call it, bought off by the Liberal Party of Canada.
After seven years of Liberal policies, Canadians are facing record-high inflation and a skyrocketing cost of living, leading to higher grocery and gas prices and a growing housing affordability crisis. More than half of Canadians are $200 or less away from not being able to pay their bills or rent, with three in 10 already falling behind at the end of the month. It is heartbreaking to hear the stories of families, in Miramichi—Grand Lake and across the country, being forced to go from shopping at the grocery store to now visiting the food bank. These are hard-working Canadian parents, struggling to feed their families.
Now is not the time to add an emission tax on to farmers, yet that is exactly what the government is doing. What is this fixation on farmers, construction workers, oil and gas workers, and people who drive trucks, vans and SUVs? This is the type of government that is literally zeroing in on certain groups of Canadians and making their lives twice as miserable as the inflationary times we are already faced with because of the government's decision-making to begin with.
These costs are being passed on to the consumer, driving higher costs in the grocery store aisles, and Canadians are feeling it. People in Miramichi—Grand Lake are feeling it.
History is repeating itself. As we saw in the late 1970s and early eighties, Canada's government is spending outside of its means, and Canadians are paying for it at the gas pumps, grocery stores and every time we buy anything. Inflation is currently 6.7% nationwide, but in my home province of New Brunswick, inflation is 7.4%, with no sign of slowing down. Moncton, New Brunswick, has the highest MLS listing hike in home prices year over year, at almost 60%. At what point will the government start working with the different levels of government to get a proper solution, instead of trying to spend its way out of the crisis? That just does not work.
The Liberal-NDP spending solution is one of the major reasons we are in this mess in the first place. This budget is adding $3,500 per household in national debt. How is passing the buck on to taxpayers having their backs? I would like the explanation for that.
When looking at the budget and seeing how the government is planning on approaching the housing crisis, all I saw was a macroplan that will take many years to see any results. Many of those results will not be positive, if there are any, and there is no plan for immediate action. This will only add fuel to the inflationary fire, with no immediate help for Canadians trying to buy their first home.
There are constituents calling me asking how a new registered savings plan would help them get into their first home when they are scraping by to pay their current bills. The Liberal-NDP government currently does not have Miramichi—Grand Lake's back. It does have its hands directly in both of our pockets, and probably the front pockets too. It is a government focusing on the perfect headline. What it really needs to be doing is focusing on a solution that will work. The government needs to get off its high horse, roll up its sleeves and get to work.
I am thankful for the opportunity to speak. This is a bad budget for Canadians. The Conservatives have a better plan, as always, and I am happy to speak against this budget. The Liberals do not have Canadians' backs.
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- Apr/25/22 3:54:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my question for my colleague is one that I will repeat many times for many of his colleagues within the Conservative Party. They have made it very clear that they do not support spending on things like pharmacare, dental care and supports for seniors, and I am wondering how he justifies that to his constituents in New Brunswick. How does he justify that he does not think the people in his constituency deserve dental care?
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- Apr/25/22 3:58:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise, as it always is, in this chamber to talk with my colleagues. We are talking about the budget today, so it is helpful to first ask the question and set where we are: Does the budget meet the expectations that Canadians had?
Gas prices have almost never been higher. Our food prices are going up and up. Retail prices are continuing to increase. Construction material prices and housing prices are going up too, and that includes rent, so both home ownership and rental accommodations are becoming incredibly more difficult to obtain for Canadians.
On the day after the budget, Canadians woke up. There was no immediate relief, no tax holidays and no tax rebates. In fact, on April 1, the government increased the carbon tax, which we know causes inflation. The Bank of Canada has been so kind to tell us that it has provided at least 0.5 of a percentage point to the inflationary measure that StatsCan puts out every year. The real question is, why is the government not doing everything in its power to reduce inflation?
I will give it to the government that all the inflationary pressures are not domestic. We have supply chain issues. We now have a war in Ukraine. However, the government has an easy lever to pull with respect to the inflationary pressures that it creates. It is the spending and carbon tax.
Let us talk about spending. Let us go through a few numbers and facts that are irrefutable. These are from the government's own documents. In 2015, the government spent about $300 billion. In 2019, the government spent $426 billion. In 2022, it is projected to spend about $452 billion. That is a 25% annual growth rate for this year compared with 2019. It is 53% growth in annual spending from 2015 to today. All the economists have been telling the government to take its foot off the pedal of spending because it is increasing inflationary pressure, so any assertion that this budget is prudent is comical.
Furthermore, we are led to believe that, while the government has been increasing spending by 7% to 8% every year since 2015, now all of a sudden, from this year going forward, it will hold the rate of spending growth to 2% to 3%. The only problem is that nobody believes the government. Absolutely no one thinks that it is possible for the current government to hold spending growth to 2% to 3%. In fact, in this budget, we do not even have projections for spending on the promise of pharmacare. We do not have projections for the spending on new health care transfers. We are just coming out of a pandemic and the government is saying that it is not going to increase health care transfers.
However, we have a fiscal anchor, we are told. The debt-to-GDP ratio is going to continue going down. The only reason the debt-to-GDP ratio is going to go down is inflation. The entire government's fiscal plan is based on inflation. It is the only way it is going to work. In fact, in just one year, from last year to this year, the government is projecting $170 billion in new revenue that it did not project last year. That money is coming from Canadians in the form of higher prices. That is money people are having to pay. Their dollar is not going far enough. It is a silent tax and it hurts the most vulnerable in our society.
In fact, in the tightest labour market in a generation, the government has spent money on hiring 10,000 civil servants a year every year since 2015. What do we have? In the tightest labour market, the government still wants to spend money and hire new civil servants. Where are these people going to come from? All of our small business owners across the country are crying for more people, so the government's decision is to hire some more people. Those are individuals who now cannot work in the private sector, cannot help a business grow and cannot help a business get back on its feet.
They pay taxes and salaries. That is going to lead to private sector growth, but let us talk about some specific measures. I am a balanced person. There are some good things in the budget, no doubt.
Employee trusts set up an opportunity for individuals to pass their business on to employees, and I think that is a welcome measure. What the government proposes to do with the ready, willing and able initiative, which is a policy, by the way, that was started under former finance minister Jim Flaherty, is to give organizations some additional funds to encourage those people with intellectual disabilities to enter the workforce. It should be applauded.
The Great Lakes fishery investments are well needed, and there is some money for freshwater cleanup. On the freshwater cleanup, it was nice to see Lake Simcoe referenced. However, it is a much smaller number than what had been previously promised.
Everyone talks about how Conservatives just like to talk about all the spending and not about what they are going to cut. Here we go. Here are some ideas for the government to consider.
On the infrastructure investment bank, breaking up is really hard to do, it seems. Instead of walking away from something that is not working very well, the government expands the mandate and gives it more money. Not only that, but it is taking the same failed model and saying it is going to create a new $15-billion innovation fund. Again, superclusters are reintroduced, with some expanded money. It would be unparliamentary to say the word I am thinking of right now.
The government is planning on spending money on a buyback program for guns, instead of taking that money and putting it into reducing crime. We need to do much more of a comprehensive spending review. It is nice to see that there was one mentioned, but it is not nearly going to be enough.
Let us talk about young people for a minute. The new, shiny, tax-free home savings account sounds amazing, except when one finds out that it is going to take a full year before it comes into effect, and then it is going to take another five years for an individual to max out on the contributions. Also, the home tax-free savings account cannot be used with the homebuyers plan, so people must make a choice. It is one or the other. Really, one program is going to be gutted and replaced with another, for a shiny new object. It is mostly a marketing ploy, in my opinion.
Instead, what the government could have done was to tell individuals who use the homebuyers plan that they do not have to pay the $35,000 back. That would have been a far more effective way to accomplish what it is trying to accomplish and have an immediate effect.
We asked young people to stay at home for two years. We asked this of all Canadians, but young people in particular put their lives on pause for two years for a virus that represented very little risk to them. Yes, Canada had a very low death rate, and I think that is a positive outcome of the pandemic and some of the responses. However, young people have now come forward and are re-emerging back into the economy. What have they found? The thanks they have found is that they now have a national debt that has doubled and that they are now responsible for, and a housing market that is completely unattainable. The Bank of Montreal released a report and singled out Orillia, which is in my riding, for having a 300% increase in house prices in six years. It is incredible to think of how young people are looking at this housing market and believing it is attainable.
I have talked about the bank tax before in this chamber. If the government thinks there are excess profits in that industry, we should really be revamping competition law. My prediction right now is that we will see an increasing number of bank branch closures across this country, particularly in rural Canada. It is no surprise that just last week, after the budget, banks made closure announcements in small communities across this country, including one in Brechin, which is in my riding, along with others in Pefferlaw, Cannington and Stayner.
I will close on another matter that is very close to my riding: the boat tax. There are 25 marinas and 15 boat dealers in my region. The government thinks that if a person can afford a boat, they deserve to be taxed. With the price of cottages and housing, these individuals are looking for other options for recreation, and boating is one of them.
However, this tax is only going to push jobs and investment elsewhere. These individuals are going to buy their boats south of the border and bring them here. That is going to hurt the people in my community, and that is going to bring in far less revenue than the government believes.
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- Apr/25/22 5:44:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place and talk about things that my constituents, the great people of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, care about and to talk a bit about the budget.
Obviously, the budget is the social economic blueprint for the government to give the bureaucracy direction as to what it wants to have done. I looked at the budget in its totality, and it has been billed in so many different ways. It was billed as an affordability budget, which it is not, and as an innovation budget, which it is not. It has been billed as a fiscal return to reality budget, which it is not. It has also been talked about as being a growth budget, but it is really a mass of discombobulated measures. Obviously, a government has to pay attention to a lot of different things. As I said, a budget is its biggest social economic blueprint, but by the same token, I have never seen a budget that seems to be so disconnected from reality.
I am going to pick a couple of different areas where I will list what the government has said it wants to do in this budget and some of the things it has done previously to point out that it is following a very similar path. For example, on the innovation front, we have something called a Canada growth fund. This is brought to us by the government that brought us superclusters, which were not so super, and the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which Canadians cannot bank on. Now we are on this Canada growth fund.
On page 61 we can read the following:
The fund will be initially capitalized at $15 billion over the next five years. It will invest on a concessionary basis, with the goal that for every dollar invested by the fund, it will aim to attract at least three dollars of private capital.
In standing up the Canada Growth Fund, the government intends to seek expert advice from within Canada and abroad. Following these consultations, details about the launch of the fund will be included in the 2022 fall economic and fiscal update.
Essentially, the government is saying that we have a new shiny object, much as at one point it had the Canada Infrastructure Bank. We do not have any idea yet about the details. The government puts it in the budget and then it will ask people how it can make it work, but it will put aside lots of money for it.
On the money side, Paul Wells, in his shiny new Substack, which, unlike this shiny new program, did not cost taxpayers anything, sought to get to the bottom of this new shiny Canada growth fund and how much it would spend. He could not get an answer on the cost. He asked the government what it would cost. It said that it would cost anything from nothing to who knows what.
This is not the first time an agency was created. In fact, back when Bill Morneau was the finance minister, the Liberals eliminated the Public-Private Partnerships Canada Crown agency, PPP Canada, rather than change its mandate, and brought in the Canada Infrastructure Bank. I asked the minister about this at committee. I said that it would take five years before the government even figured out the governance policies for it, and I asked why it would do that. He said that it was because we needed to get big transformational things done.
Here we are and the only big and transformative thing this bank has done is give its executive and workers bonuses. Therefore, this way of putting out a shiny new object, putting billions of dollars aside for it, and then trying to figure out how it is going to make it work just goes down again as another idea to distract and say that it wants it. Really, the mandate of this new growth fund is almost identical to the infrastructure bank, for which the government has also changed the mandate. It just seems strange to me that it is doubling down on these policies that have been not proven to work in the past.
This is the problem. Rather than, for example, the government saying what it wants to do and then giving out small trial balloons of money to various teams to actually show they have business models that can work and then choosing from among those options if they bear fruit, the government does the worst of big government thinking. It throws money at the wall, see what sticks, and then continues on to throw money at another wall to see what sticks, so we have a Canada Infrastructure Bank we cannot bank on and now we will have a Canada growth fund.
This is the worst element of big government, and the worst part of it is that we are all paying for it and will continue to pay for it even if it does not bear fruit. That is what the current government seems to do. It is always about more; it is never about doing it right.
As to new programs, I have heard a few members talk about this. I want to remind my friends in the NDP, who are going to be taking credit for a new dental program, that the only NDP premier in the Confederation is in my home province of British Columbia. John Horgan is the one who is actually leading the charge in asking the government to please not put money into new government programs since we need it for health care. I spoke to someone in Princeton the other day who has cancer. He is seriously ill and does not have a doctor. I spoke to a would-be medical student too, and for the second year in a row, despite having all the grades, UBC Okanagan does not have a spot for him. In our health care system, the backlog from COVID is large, yet the government is pushing into new areas.
A dentist called me the other day and said that as long as they have been a dentist, they remember the healthy kids program and B.C. one. The healthy kids program is for young people so they can access dental services. B.C. one is for low-income adults. These programs are being provided, and government members are saying this is going to be done this year. I have never seen a new program established that quickly, so it will be interesting to see.
Moving on to a key aspect from a financial perspective, there is no greater challenge to this country right now than inflation. Inflation is hitting Canadians hard and it is affecting our economy. Stephen Gordon, an economics professor at Université Laval, said, “We're at full employment, inflation has burst out of our comfort zone and the Bank of Canada is embarking on an agressive tightening cycle. This not the time for expansionary fiscal policy.”
Stephen Tapp, chief economist from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said, “Here's the thing: Even after raising its nominal policy rate by 75 bps in last two announcements up to 1%, and ending further GoC asset purchases (starting ‘Quantitative Tightening’ next week), BoC policy remains highly stimuluative. The ‘real’ rate has never been this low! Not only is the nominal rate well below the elevated rate of current inflation, so the real rate is negative. The nominal policy rate (1%) is still below the Bank's estimate of neutral (2-3%). Until its rate rises above 2-3%, the Bank is pouring gas on the inflation fire.”
Stephen Tapp is saying that the current policy today is pouring fuel on inflation, and the government is adding more spending. It is completely unheard of. At least the Governor of the Bank of Canada came to committee today with some humility. He said mistakes were made and they are trying to reverse them. They are trying to raise interest rates, obviously being mindful of the fact that we have so much debt in this country.
The government is full charge ahead. It is the spend-DP, as I call it. Again, the ship of state right now is pointed at a spend-DP iceberg. Let us all agree that inflation, especially if it becomes unanchored and persistent, is what makes an economy less efficient at best or hollows it out at worst. We need to make sure that government is constraining its spending so that we do not make inflation worse.
Last, on housing, a member stood up previously and said that we have a first-time homebuyers' tax credit and that it was doubled from $750 to $1,500. This is a tacit admission by the government. House prices have doubled under the Liberals' watch, and this is the very least they can do. We talked about the first-time homebuyers' savings account. Most people do not have $40,000. We have millennials who get bounced by the Liberals' stress test every day.
In summation, the government has thrown a lot into this budget. It is inflationary. It does not do what it needs to. It is the very worst of big government. I hope that the government will start to tighten up and do things it needs to, like getting flood supports to areas that are affected in my riding and in other areas of British Columbia. That would be helpful. However, with the way the government works, it is just pointing the ship of state, as I said, toward that spend-DP-Liberal iceberg.
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- Apr/25/22 5:59:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a challenge because the Liberals continually promise things that they either have no idea how to deliver or no intention of delivering. We have seen this with infrastructure. Again, they dangle out that they are going to fund certain things and then they do not do them. When they are promising to deal with transit or even military spending in this budget, here is the question. Three times they tried to procure Browning pistols, yet somehow they say that we are going to be putting more into military spending. They can say they are going to, but whether they actually do it is another thing, until they fix that broken system.
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- Apr/25/22 5:59:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to rise and add the voice of the people of Thornhill to today's debate. I am deeply concerned on their behalf by the latest NDP-Liberal budget. Every single day, we ask the government what it is doing to make life more affordable for Canadians, and every day it tells us how much it is spending. I was hopeful today that we could see some results for the money spent rather than just a projection of answers we will get when, again and again, we ask the government what it is doing to make life more affordable.
The answer for the people of Thornhill and Canadians across the country is that it is doing nothing much. We can skip the partial answers and gloss over the large sums of money in an effort to distract Canadians from the government's failure to deliver actual results for a while, but Canadians had every reason to fear the federal budget, especially after a deal between our colleagues on the other side of the House. The deal is frightening to the future of the fiscal health of Canada, driving the government further and further astray in an effort only to hold on to power, because after seven years, many simply cannot understand the plot.
Canadians were treated to over $50 billion of new spending, which, of course, could have been far worse given the government's propensity to spend beyond its means at every available opportunity. I suppose aiming for “it could have been worse” is the best that we can hope for, but with spending levels that far exceed the prepandemic highs, it could have been much more responsible, and it should have been.
Most troubling, however, is what was absent from this budget, which was any meaningful attempt to address economic growth by lowering taxes and reducing the choking regulations raised by nearly every industry, every stakeholder and every union at every opportunity, only to fall on what are seemingly deaf ears. Families are struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. That much is clear. In survey after survey and poll after poll, they have made their voices heard loud and clear. Two-thirds of Canadians say that inflation and affordability are their top concerns. It is hard to get by. That is what that means.
I know members of the House hear that refrain constantly when they are at home in their constituencies. It is hard not to. It is hard not to run into somebody we know at the grocery store or the gas station who does not bring up the cost of living as the first issue they talk about, yet after two of the highest spending sprees in Canadian history, even before the gigantic splurge during the pandemic, the Liberal government had bigger spending plans all along. Child care, dental care and the possibility of pharmacare in 2023 represent the biggest social program expansion in the past couple of decades. While there might be gleeful cheers from the other side, I think Canadians, including members opposite, need a reality check on the numbers. They tell a very different story about our fiscal health than the fairy tales we have been hearing about.
Liberals are coming in with a federal debt projected to reach $1.25 trillion this fiscal year. Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio is 47.6%. We have a $52.8-billion deficit. We have a record high of personal indebtedness to disposable income of over 186%. We have inflation at a staggering 6.7%, and the reality that the Bank of Canada will aggressively raise interest rates beyond what we have already seen. There is more. There will be more reality checks for those who will be responsible for the sharpest rise in cost-of-living expenses in a generation.
The problem is that inflation is only going to get worse, not better, over the coming months. It will be much worse than I have ever seen and than most adults today have ever seen. Maybe they heard stories from their parents' trials and tribulations or saw a historical reference in a book, but while some in the House are not students of monetary policy, and that is fine, others will know that the latest inflation numbers do not account for the increase in the carbon tax or the annual increase in alcohol and tobacco taxes.
Also missing from that number is the recently hiked interest rate. It is the first of the aforementioned number of raises that may, of course, lower inflation over time, but in the immediate term, will drive up housing and borrowing costs. There is more. We also learned that Stats Canada will add used-vehicle prices to the CPI in next month's report. For those who are still keeping score, that may bring us to about 8%. This will be a new number for many Canadians, and most certainly a disastrous new number for average Canadians.
While members opposite will twist themselves into a frenzy listing off the countries and their corresponding inflation rates, Canadians should know that, if this was an entirely international problem, then others would mirror our rates, others like Japan or Australia. I could do the same thing.
There are two ways to control inflation. One, of course, is the rate hikes, the aggressive rate hikes we are about to see, and the other is to slow spending. We see no evidence of slower spending. That should be of great concern to the over 65% of Canadians who have indicated that inflation and affordability top their list of anxieties.
Many of these numbers may be abstract to those across the aisle, because it is the only plausible explanation for why they continue to spend at this rate, but let me remind members of the real toll that these abstract numbers have on Canadians working harder and simply not getting ahead. Gasoline is up 11.9%, compared to just February, and a shocking 39.8% compared to a year earlier. Some might find glee in that, whispering to themselves quietly that the plan is working. To them I say that it is actually not working. It is hurting Canadian families. It is hurting our industry. It is hurting our recovery, on the odd chance that the government might want to include oil and gas in their plans.
How about the groceries? I cannot think about why a government would be ideologically opposed to food as they would be opposed to oil, so let me try to get its attention with the cost of groceries in the country. It is an area where people notice it the most. It is an area that I am sure members opposite have heard about in their constituencies from their neighbours time and time again.
Overall, grocery prices have gone up 8.7%, but most items are much, much higher. On average, the basket was $100 last March, and it is almost $109 this March, but for some items, the increase is much, much more severe, such as for milk, cheese, butter, cereal and beef. These are the staples.
These are unsustainable increases for most family budgets, and most families will tell us that. To make matter worse, our country is confronting supply chain constraints, scarcity of materials and labour shortages, all compounded, of course, by a war in Ukraine. We are seeing the continued rise of unaffordable housing for those trying to make the dream of home ownership a reality, as well as urgent military commitments in a time of global instability and an infrastructure deficit lacking the private capital investments we need to actually get things built. Even more concerning is the lower productivity and lagging long-term growth and what that means for GDP per capita.
Its decline relative to those of our allies is the appalling reality of the government's policy failures and the likely failure on the horizon for the magnitude of promises in the wings, which we have not even seen reflected in the government's upcoming fiscal document. The government's approach has become a silly mix of virtue signalling and expensive promises and rerun after rerun of not being able to deliver on them. How does a government spend so much and accomplish so little? How does a country rack up so much debt for the goodies that it believes we need today without thinking for a moment about tomorrow?
What is of greater concern are the policies of intrusion into people's lives, the intrusion into provincial jurisdiction, the pretend projects about tree planting and an ideological drive against the country's natural resources at a time when the world is begging for them.
The government has trafficked in divisiveness, othering those who do not agree with them while affecting economic fortunes at the cost of choosing winners and losers in different geographies based on different identities they see as tolerable and therefore worthy of their reward. Now the concern is that the NDP influence will accelerate this spending, pump up the virtue signalling and leave future generations with a bill, just so activists and alarmists could be placated in 2022 without thinking about a day in the future.
A laser focus on growth would have helped the multitude of fiscal, economic and social problems brought on by the government, and still, I suppose we should be relieved, though hardly gratified, that this could have been worse. If the government was aiming for “it could have been worse”, then, I guess, mission accomplished, but on this side of the House, we think Canadians deserve better.
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- Apr/25/22 6:13:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, just a few days ago Conservative MPs, including this one, were in the House arguing that we needed to increase our defence budget by $24 billion, but they opposed the increase in dental care that many Canadians, including ones in her riding, would benefit from.
How does the member justify denying people the dental care they need because it is too expensive, but also wanting to spend three times as much on our defence spending?
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- Apr/25/22 6:14:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the government does neither in this budget. The government promised to increase defence spending to the 2% NATO target, and it fell short of that. If the member wants to come to my riding, he can run in a provincial election that is happening in Ontario on June 2 to provide dental care for the residents of Ontario. That is an incursion into provincial jurisdiction. The member knows that, and this is a false promise.
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