44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 14, 2022 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, one of the things I want to pick up on is the fact that we are clearly in an economic crisis, with Canadians struggling across the country just to put food on the table and heat their homes. They are struggling to get by. The answer from the government, time and time again, is to spend more money, when this spending is the very thing that is causing the inflationary crisis to begin with.
On this side of the House, we believe we should be measuring our success based on the results of the dollars we are spending, not just on how many dollars we can spend. When will the minister and the government recognize that, take action, stop the spending and ensure we can get things back on track for Canadians who are struggling?
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Mr. Speaker, I say to my hon. colleague that he can take a look at the numbers. We had an economy that was producing better than was even projected in budget 2022, and that is thanks to the hard work of Canadian businesses. Therefore, we took a prudent approach to paying down our deficit, which is much lower than predicted in the budget, and we invested money targeted to those Canadians who most need the supports at a time when they most need it.
We are investing in the economy so it will grow. We listened and responded to those Canadians who need it the most. We are making sure we have fiscal firepower for the future, and we are growing our economy so it works for everyone.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like my colleague to explain something to me. The word “inflation” comes up 115 times in the document, but there is no mention of concrete measures. I am thinking about seniors, who keep taking hit after hit. There is nothing here for them. It never ends.
Why is that? What does that have to do with the inflation we are seeing now and the looming recession?
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Mr. Speaker, we are clearly in an inflationary cycle. That is no secret. It is happening here in Canada, and it is happening in Germany, in France, in the United States and in the United Kingdom. It is important to note, however, that inflation here in Canada is among the lowest in the world, as are our interest rates.
What we have done for seniors is make sure all the benefits and supports they get, such as old age security, are indexed. They get their payments quarterly, not annually. That means there is a quarterly adjustment for inflation.
We will work with our counterparts the world over to slow inflation. In the meantime, we will invest in Canadians who need it most where they need it most.
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Uqaqtittiji, I would like to ask the minister if he could talk more about the Canada growth fund and how it will increase the under-represented groups of indigenous peoples and women in the trades.
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Mr. Speaker, the whole point of the Canada growth fund is not only to crowd in private capital so we can actually green the economy, but also to make sure we are taking a smart approach to how we work with under-represented groups. It is not just the Canada growth fund. The investment tax credits that we are proposing on both clean hydrogen and green energy programs are focused and have a labour provision.
For example, in the clean hydrogen tax credit, 40% goes to those companies that are going to not only pay a good salary but also have apprenticeships. Across the board, we are focused on making sure indigenous peoples, people of colour and people who are under-represented in the workforce are part of these investments.
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Mr. Speaker, the riding of Waterloo includes two universities and a college, so there are numerous students. I remember when I graduated from the University of Waterloo, I had Canada student loans and Canada student grants. After I graduated, I had six months to pay them back, but interest started to accumulate the day after I graduated. This took a really big toll.
Since then, many students have been asking for the removal of interest. Most recently, I met with the president of Conestoga Students Inc., who asked when the government would be able to deliver on this commitment. I would like to hear from the minister how quickly we can actually implement this commitment if we see swift passage of this legislation.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for putting her finger on the number one question: How soon can we get this legislation passed through the House?
We can see that in the new year, probably April, and moving forward, we will no longer have student loan interest on the federal portion of student loans and apprenticeship interest. This would benefit not only students at Conestoga, but students at universities, colleges and technical institutes across the country. I met with Polytechnics Canada last week, and they were thrilled to hear that this was our plan and that it was going to be part of Bill C-32.
To all the businesses operating in my hon. colleague's riding and to all members of the House, we are going to work with the banks to make sure that credit card fees get reduced. If the banks do not come to the table before the end of December this year, we are going to pass legislation in the new year to get credit card fees reduced, because it is what small businesses are asking of us. We are responding to post-secondary students and to small business owners.
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Mr. Speaker, I have to say to the hon. minister that it was very disappointing that during Veterans' Week, the fall economic statement ignored the need for veterans to have their spouses, if they married over age 60, recognized as actual surviving spouses so they can receive the benefits they would have received as a widow or widower after the death of their spouse who served this country. This was ignored in the budget. I noticed that survivors' benefits are dealt with, if we are looking at the multi-generational home renovation tax credit, as is what happens to that benefit for a surviving spouse, but there is nothing for our veterans if they married over age 60.
Would the government be open to amending this bill to end this injustice to our veterans and their families?
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Mr. Speaker, I take the hon. member's point directly. My sense is the change from PacifiCan to Industry Canada, as I am a minister in the IC portfolio, is actually for speed and coordination on the ground.
I am happy to meet with my hon. colleague after this session to give him specific details and to work with him directly to ensure that the citizens of Lytton are able to get the money they need to rebuild their community. I will take up that matter personally.
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Mr. Speaker, I am seeking unanimous consent to split my time.
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- Nov/14/22 3:48:08 p.m.
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Is it agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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Mr. Speaker, I have only been here for a year, but I have been driving all over the city and I still cannot find the money tree. I do not know where it is, but the government spent $100 billion of added debt before COVID and spent $500 billion of debt during COVID. Forty per cent of the money spent during COVID was not even related to the pandemic. That is not from us. That is from the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Annually, spending is now 30% higher than it was prepandemic. The only answer that this government has to any problem is to spend, spend, spend. Every six months, its members come back to the House and say they found fiscal restraint and do not worry. However, they just keep moving the spending line up; they just shift it up on the graph. Every time they do, they say, “Wait. From here going forward, we are only going to increase spending by 1% or 2%”, but when the real tally comes in at the end of the year, spending is up 6% or 7%, as it has been for every single year.
By the way, this spending profile, the 1% to 2% by which the Liberals are saying spending will grow, does not include new money for pharmacare. It does not include new money for the disabilities act we are passing in the House. It also does not include any new money for long-term health care. After a pandemic, one would think the government would want to give provinces additional money to spend on health care. We are seeing health care systems crumbling across the country, and the Liberals campaigned in 2015 on increasing health care funding long term.
The government initially said not to worry; it can spend because interest rates are so low. The Governor of the Bank of Canada said not to worry because interest rates are going to stay low forever. It was people on this side of the House who asked what happens if interest rates go up. Now we are going to spend more next year in interest on the debt than we do on national defence. We are going to spend almost as much on interest on the debt than we are transferring to the provinces through the Canada health transfer, which is what they spend on health care. Members can let that sink in. In 2024, the government is going to spend $24 billion more, for a total of $54 billion, on interest on the debt.
This is also a government that said inflation was not going to happen. It initially said that we would have deflation. The Deputy Prime Minister even went on TV and asked for people to please send her their ideas so Canadians could spend the cash they have in their bank accounts. I wonder if she still feels the same way.
The Liberals are now slowly sleepwalking us off a cliff. We are walking into economic uncertainty, and they refuse to admit that the world has changed. They are also committed to raising taxes. In the face of economic uncertainty, we are the only country in the world to raise taxes. We are going to raise the carbon tax and are going to raise EI premiums. By the way, I hope members do not like beer, because in June of next year, the excise tax on beer is going up 6.3%, which is incredible.
All the while, the government has also been growing the size of government. It has added 10,000 to 12,000 new full-time equivalent people every single year since 2015, yet services are going down. People cannot get a passport, cannot get immigration papers and cannot get a new pilot licence. Transport Canada will not even review medicals for people who want to become air traffic controllers. It is incredible.
What is the Liberals' answer? Well, it is okay; they will just spend more money. There is $400 million more in this economic statement for the CRA to hire more people, and I hope they are going to be answering the phone. In 2017, the Auditor General said that out of 50-some-odd million phone calls that went to CRA, 27 million got a busy signal. That is incredible. I hope those new individuals are not going to be auditing small businesses and middle-class Canadians across the country to make up for the spending hole that the government put us in.
Let me talk about the interest on student debt for a minute. The government is now going to give interest relief on the debt of students, which some might think sounds like an okay idea. However, here is the issue: We are in a deficit. The government is going to spend $500 million a year on taking interest away from the debt of students who are in post-secondary education.
The government's role should be making sure that additional students go to post-secondary education, not giving people a break who are already there. The government should be playing at the margins to increase the number of people, if they can go, who can afford to go to post-secondary education. It should not be giving that money to people who are already there, as this $500 million a year is money we will not have. Do members know who gets the economic benefit of going to post-secondary education? It is the student.
In fact, Alex Usher, who is a very well-known post-secondary education expert analyst, has tracked that students graduate with about the same amount of debt as they did in the early 2000s. That number has not gone up. It has been anywhere between $23,000 and just under $30,000 every year since the early 2000s.
This is not the United States. I know the government likes to import all of the U.S.'s problems here, but we do not have a student debt problem like they do in the United States. We can surely find better uses for this $500 million. Maybe we should give grants to low-income people who are not going to post-secondary education but who could afford it if they had more support. Instead, we are just going to give it to people who are already there for a problem that does not even exist. It is also expensive.
Dental care featured quite prominently in the House in a previous debate and also in the economic statement, so it is worth spending a couple of minutes on that now.
The government is going to spend almost $100 million in administrative costs to write cheques to people. It is going to use the same process that it used to give out the CERB, which relies on a self-attestation. Two results will occur: There will be fraud or there will be very little use of the program because people will be worried given what is happening now. They are getting calls from the CRA saying they need to give money back for the CERB.
The Auditor General is reviewing the process that the government used for the CERB and has not reported back her findings. I suspect that the government wanted to rush the dental care bill through this chamber before the Auditor General had a chance to tell us what she thought about the process for the CERB. Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer has serious concerns with the fraud that can happen.
I listened to a very good podcast called All-In. There is a guy on it, David Friedberg, whom I agree with maybe the least, who always says there is room for nuance in everything. He says that everything is not black and white, it is not elite or populist and it is not left or right. He is encouraging us to embrace nuance, but the government wants people to believe that if they are against the dental care plan, they are somehow against kids getting healthy smiles. If the government was really interested in that, it would have taken the same $100 million, given it to the provinces to increase the provincial programs' eligibility criteria and used the exact same funding mechanism that already exists.
Thinking that people on this side of the House are not interested in healthy smiles is not what this is about. This is about process. This is about efficiency. We are going to spend $100 million in money we do not have to set up a cheque-writing scheme that is going to be used for a few years. It is incredible. This is all happening while service levels are going down and employee and staff costs are going up. Canadians do not have any more patience with this high-spend, high-tax Liberal government.
In closing, I would like to say that the government seems more interested in wealth redistribution schemes than it does in growing the economy. That is pretty clear. Every program is taxed more, put in a pot and then given away to Canadians at their choosing. The Liberals hold strings over the provincial governments, which is very paternalistic, and meddle in a bunch of provincial affairs, saying they have to spend money on this and have to spend money on that, instead of just getting out of the way, giving more money to the provinces and letting them do their jobs.
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Mr. Speaker, we do not have a student debt problem in this country. About 65% of the working-age population have post-secondary education. It is wrong to ask 100% of the working-age population to subsidize that 65%. The government should have taken the same amount of money or half the amount of money and put it toward grants for low-income students who are not otherwise able to attend post-secondary education. That would have been a far better use of $500 million a year.
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Mr. Speaker, the economic update mentions inflation no fewer than 108 times. Inflation means financial hardship for most people given that wages do not keep up with rising consumer prices. Historically, high inflation has meant that a recession is on the way. One usually follows the other. A recession means that many people will lose their jobs. The economic update and the bill do absolutely nothing to improve employment insurance, which is outdated and discriminates against 60% of claimants.
I wonder if my colleague could comment on this oversight in both the bill and the economic update.
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Mr. Speaker, I have heard many of the Conservatives in today's question period speak about their concerns with the cost of living increasing and Canadians' ability to keep putting food on the table. I have also spoken about this. The concerns from constituents in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith are about not being able to keep putting food on the table.
It is interesting, however, that we are not hearing from the Conservatives about the big grocery chains that are profiting. Loblaws was profiting $1 million a day at a certain point this year, as one example.
Would the member support the government's extending the Canada recovery dividend to big box stores that are clearly benefiting from people's hardship and put this money back into the pockets of those who are struggling most?
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Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that growing the size of the government is going to fix the inflation problem. I support the NDP opposition day motion, which called for a study on greedflation with respect to grocery stores. I hope we do not prejudge the end of that study. I am looking forward to that study being done, as well as the one by the Competition Bureau. It is very important work. Any companies that are price gouging should be held accountable, and we should be looking at other industries too. I would welcome the study of other industries before we start saying whether we would agree to additional taxes at this time.
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The amendment is in order.
Questions and comments. The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.
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- Nov/14/22 4:15:48 p.m.
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The hon. parliamentary secretary is rising on a point of order.
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- Nov/14/22 4:16:07 p.m.
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That really is descending into debate. If we get another round, I will make sure I acknowledge that the member can ask another question or maybe a follow-up.
The hon. member for Calgary Forest Lawn.
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