44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 4, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, indeed, just the other night I stopped by for gas at the Centex station in Abbotsford. I had to fill up at $2.23 a litre to drive to the airport. I drive a RAV4, but even filling up a RAV4, at $150 for a tank of gas, is expensive.
Grocery costs at the Superstore in Abbotsford go up and up. I made a dinner for my family on Sunday night, and I noticed the price of the filet of fish, the Pacific cod that my family ate. It was over $30 for a piece of fish to feed my family that night. Fish is up 10.4%. This is a staple food in British Columbia, and it is getting harder and harder to buy. Butter and eggs are up 10% and 16% respectively. Margarine is up 37.5%; pasta, 32.5%; fresh fruit across the board, 13.2%; coffee, 14.2%; potatoes, 10.9%. I could go on, but the reality is that purchasing food is getting harder and harder for families.
In British Columbia we are also challenged with the highest housing costs in all of Canada and perhaps, in some cases, even many parts of North America. For the average home in British Columbia, the price today is over $918,000. Even for someone making a six-figure income today, the chances of being able to save up for that mortgage to cover the property transfer tax, the legal fees and everything involved in purchasing a house, are really, really slim. For a young father or mother working to support their family, even if they are making 100 grand, saving up for a townhouse or a condo is a challenge right now. Across the board, British Columbians are struggling.
Linda Paul from MNP noted in a survey that indeed, life is getting more unaffordable and Canadians are allocating more of their paycheques to cover these basic necessities that I just outlined. Further hikes and rising costs, she said, could drive more people into vulnerable positions.
That brings us to the bill before us today, Bill C-30, which amends the Income Tax Act in order to double the goods and services tax or harmonized sales tax credit for six months, increasing the credit amounts by 50% for the 2022-23 benefit year. Eligibility for the payment is based on one's income reported to CRA in the previous fiscal year. For my constituents and other Canadians who are listening, in July the government may send a letter outlining what credits people are eligible for. If someone's notice indicated that they should receive the GST tax credit, they can assume that the payment they get will be effectively double the amount on the notice. Payments are generally made three or four times a year. The next one is actually coming up tomorrow, on October 5; the second one is on January 5 and the third is on April 5. Assuming this bill passes both houses of Parliament, people can expect that on January 5 and April 5, their GST tax credit will be effectively doubled.
It is also important to know that the GST credit, generally across the board, if one were to look at the Government of Canada's schedule for payments, applies only to Canadians making below $60,000. The Parliamentary Budget Officer also outlined what, in general, this bill before us today would equate to for the average family. For a single person it would be $369, and for a single parent with a child it would be about $402 extra. Indeed, this measure is needed and welcomed by a lot of people struggling to get by with those basic costs, like groceries and gas, where more of their paycheques are going today.
I would be remiss if I did not outline that the government, despite putting this bill forward that the Conservatives will, in good faith, support, is not doing anything to address the structural challenges facing the Canadian economy today. The structural challenges are increasing. Businesses across Canada are having a harder and harder time planning for their future.
Small business insolvency is on the rise. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business reported that one in six businesses are considering closing their doors, with 62% of small businesses still carrying debt from the pandemic. In other words, the environment that businesses and workers find themselves in today is risky. It is scary. As I did in Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, I know MPs went and visited businesses this summer. If businesses in Liberal-held ridings are anything like businesses in the Fraser Canyon and the Fraser Valley, which I represent, Liberal members know that businesses are struggling and do not know what to do next.
I had the opportunity to visit the Lillooet Brewing Company, which is about to open up. Sam, one of the two owners, is an expert in the procurement of agricultural goods. He said that, first off, starting his business was the hardest thing he has ever done, but procuring the necessary equipment and products to make this business work is increasingly challenging, and he barely made it through. He talked about the ability to purchase an aluminum container in which the beer would be brewed. He talked about how the input costs for products like barley and malt are going through the roof. He does not know how he is going to solve all these problems.
I heard from the tourism industry in my riding, Fraser Valley RV and other similar businesses that are wondering whether they can plan to build and assemble more RVs with the increased input costs of equipment across the board. In many cases, when they combine the energy and property costs they are incurring, and the additional CPP and payroll taxes they will be paying on behalf of their employees, they are wondering whether they want to do business in Canada any longer. I heard the same thing from people at KMS Tools in Abbotsford, who said they were not going to invest in Canada anymore because they do not think the government has their back. All they want to do is create jobs and build things to help people live better lives, and they do not feel they can do that right now.
Therefore, my plea to the government today is very simple. It should look at the structural challenges facing the Canadian economy and the major supply chain issues that we need to address. It should look at how Canadian businesses are able to get the products they need to build things in Canada and address that problem. We are not going to get this done overnight, but what Canadian businesses want to hear is that the Government of Canada is going to make a reasonable effort to move in the right direction.
The second thing I would like to raise with respect to what the government could be doing right now relates to agriculture. I noted at the beginning of my speech that the price of margarine has gone up 37.5%. That is largely due to products like canola oil. Canada has an opportunity, especially given the global disruption in agricultural production, to stand behind Canadian farmers and play a role in addressing the food shortage. Canada wants to be a global player in food production, and the current government can help it get there if it gets out of the way and stops threatening farmers with future agricultural input costs on such things as fertilizer.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Banff—Airdrie.
It is really hard to talk to people in my community right now because they are really struggling. They are struggling so hard to make ends meet. I was at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago, and I watched a woman from my community in the bakery aisle take a loaf of bread, look at it, put it back on the shelf, take it again, look at it and put it back on the shelf again. I knew what she was doing. She was asking herself if she could afford it.
That is the crisis our country is facing right now, and that is the level of gravity each of us should be treating the country's finances and our economic policy with right now. People in our country are asking themselves if they can afford to put another loaf of bread in their cart. I have to ask myself why, and I really want to direct this to the Liberal backbench. Why are the liberals raising taxes right now? Why would they do this? Why would they do this to that woman who is trying to figure out if she can afford an extra loaf of bread this week?
There is no reason for the government to raise taxes, yet yesterday that is what the government, the Liberals, voted to do. They voted to raise taxes. Every single member of the Liberal backbench has the ability in their caucus meetings or on their own social media platforms to push back and hold the government to account just as much as I do. We all have that right.
In January, small business owners and employers should not need to be worried about their payroll taxes increasing. Canadians, including that woman who is thinking about whether she can afford that extra loaf of bread, should not be thinking about whether their take-home pay is going to go down because the government is taking more money off paycheques. It is ludicrous. We are in a generational inflation crisis.
This is something many Canadians have never had to deal with. Before this crisis even started, the Canadian economy was on the brink. We are seeing a mental health crisis and a housing crisis, and what are the Liberals doing? They want to raise taxes. It is not just the payroll tax the Liberals voted to raise. It is also voting to raise taxes on something that will increase the cost of everything.
Let us talk about a loaf of bread. The way the Liberals and the Prime Minister have approached dealing with inflation is by saying, “Okay, Canadians, you have a loaf of bread. We are going to take it from you and give you back the crumbs.” This is what we are debating here today, and that is not right, but let us talk about that loaf of bread.
For a Canadian farmer who is growing the wheat for that bread, the Liberals want to raise taxes on the power that goes into drying that grain. What does that do to the cost of a loaf of bread? It increases it at a time when we cannot afford it and when people are asking if they can put another loaf of bread in their cart.
What about when that grain is dry? How does that grain magically get to a processing plant? It is transported. If it is transported in a truck, the fuel that goes to getting that grain to a processing plant is going to increase with this tax increase. Who pays for that? It is the person who is eventually going to buy that loaf of bread.
Once the manufacturing plant that mills the flour, which might be looking to relocate because of payroll taxes and tax increases on their input costs, such as electricity, has somehow managed to mill that flour, then the flour needs to be transported somewhere else. What is going to happen? The tax on that gas will be increased too next year, in the middle of an inflationary crisis, when people are struggling to choose whether to put another loaf of bread in their cart.
Then how is that loaf of bread going to get to the grocery store? How does that happen? It does not magically happen. It needs to be transported, again using something the Liberals are increasing the cost of. They are again raising taxes on this. Of course that increase in taxes goes through the entire system. It raises the cost of everything.
The other thing is that the Liberals try to tell people that somehow that bit of grain, that loaf of bread, can magically get from one place to another because they failed to put any sort of substitute good for carbon on the market, in spite of raising these taxes.
What have they done instead? They have raised the costs of these goods. They have made it harder for that woman to choose whether or not she is going to put that loaf of bread in her cart. They have done this while making us more dependent on countries such as Iran and Russia for their oil. Greenhouse gas emissions have risen under the government. It has to stop.
The Liberal backbench members should hold their leader to account. One of them actually said something that made sense. They were quoted in a news article after their caucus meeting, and they said something to the effect that they wished the leadership of their party would stop being so woke and focus on inflation. Now is the time.
Every single one of their community members is struggling with that question of whether or not to put another loaf of bread in their cart, and they do not want silence. Courage is lacking in that backbench right now. We should not be raising taxes. The Liberals had an opportunity yesterday to prevent the raising of taxes, yet what did they do? They voted to raise taxes. It has to stop. This is not the time to do that.
Some will say that they are spending money on x, y, and z. Let us talk about what the Liberals have been spending money on. There was a federal election in 2021 that got us a polarized electorate. It did not do anything else for the Liberals. We just found out that the Liberals spent a half a billion dollars making it easier for people in upstate New York to jump the immigration queue in Canada. The other thing the Liberals have done is spend how much money, and on what? It takes two, three, four, five, six months to get a passport, so we are seeing not only the government raise taxes in the middle of an inflationary crisis, but also service delivery being worse. This is it, and that is not good government.
What we have here is a scandal-plagued government that does not give a rip about the price of bread. The government members do not give a rip. They do not understand what people in my community or any of their communities are going through to try to make ends meet after filling up their tank of gas.
It is beyond me that the Liberals would raise taxes right now, and we will fight back. This is crazy. They should not be raising taxes in the middle of an inflationary crisis. I would ask them to give their heads a shake. This is not a game. That is what each of the members of the Liberal backbench should be saying. The Liberals have to do something to actually address the inflationary crisis, and taking Canadians' loaves of bread, trying to give them a few crumbs back and saying it is good enough is not good enough. It has to stop.
Canadians are sharing this message. Even people who voted for the Liberals in the past have said they have had enough, as one of their backbench said, of this woke stuff. They want solutions. They want a solution to the problem.
We should have energy sovereignty. We should not be waiting for OPEC+ to raise or lower production and raise the cost of energy on us because we do not have energy sovereignty here. The Liberals should be addressing the labour shortage instead of making it easier for people in upstate New York to skip the line into this country. They should be addressing that we have the poorest levels of service in government programs in generations, all while it is impossible for people to make ends meet.
We should all have had enough with the cabinet and the government's failed approach to economic growth while our country stares down the barrel of a looming recession, and it is the government's problem. It has failed to repatriate manufacturing. It has failed to inspire investment in our country. It is making it harder for women in my community to put loaves of bread in their cart.
I have had enough. People in this place have had enough, and people across the country have had enough. Tomorrow morning is their caucus meeting, so I challenge every Liberal backbencher here today to stand up and say what that one person said off the record to a reporter: Enough with the woke shit.
Mr. Speaker, I take that back. I apologize immediately for my unparliamentary language. I am very sorry.
Enough with the woke stuff and let us get on with the plan. It is right to be passionate with this. We have to do better things to protect Canadians from inflation.
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- Oct/4/22 2:55:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with grocery inflation at 40-year highs, half of Canadian households are struggling just to be able to feed themselves. Food bank shelves are nearly bare. Canadians are beyond just struggling. Most of them, many of them, are hanging on by a thread. Canadians are tough, but they have a government that continues to punish them while they are just trying to get by.
Will the Liberals cancel their plans to triple the taxes on gas, home heating and groceries?
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