44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 6, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, while today the government is asking the House to expedite its spending, we have the Auditor General revealing tens of billions of dollars in inflationary waste associated with the government's past spending. Tens of billions of dollars went out the door to people with clearly identified risk factors for not actually being eligible for the programs they were receiving money for: There were no spending controls before the money was spent and no spending controls afterwards. Essentially the government is handing out money through its programs on the basis of an honour system. If one says one is eligible, one gets the money, and there is no checking before or after. Over $30 billion in spending was identified, associated with very likely risk factors in the Auditor General's report.
I have a simple question for the minister with respect to the Auditor General's report. The Auditor General has come up with clear recommendations to try to address this problem of tens of billions of dollars of inflationary waste. Will the government accept and implement all the recommendations of the Auditor General, yes or no?
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan would like to talk to all the people in his riding who got CERB benefits or CEBA loans and were able to get through the pandemic, and if he would then say it was irresponsible spending. I wonder if he would be prepared to do that.
Quite frankly, we are seeing a primary contrast in this House. When we support Canadians, the Conservatives say it is a waste of money. We are investing in Canadians. We got them through the pandemic. We did the right thing. We got supports to people who needed them the most.
If we are talking about getting to the fall economic statement, and if the Conservatives would actually have substantive debate on the issue, perhaps we could continue, but their number one objection is to the short title of the bill. It is absurd; it is dilatory, and we need to move on and get supports to Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague, the minister, was unable to or did not want to answer the question from my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, but the Auditor General's report today is quite clear that more than 10% of the $200 billion the Liberal government put out as COVID relief programs is unaccounted for and very likely went to people who were ineligible for those programs.
I find it quite interesting that the minister is complaining that the opposition is doing its job of scrutinizing spending that is being proposed by the government. I was elected by my constituents in southern Alberta to do just that, to make sure every single taxpayer dollar is being used wisely and efficiently and going to the programs it was intended for. As the opposition, we voted in support of many of those COVID-19 relief programs. However, we did not vote in support of wasting more than $30 billion that the Auditor General is saying in her report today will very likely be unrecovered.
Despite the programs the minister is talking about, when $30 billion of taxpayers' money is being wasted we want to ensure there is some accountability there.
Is the opposition not doing its job? Why should my constituents trust the minister now, when he obviously did not earn that trust with the COVID-19 program?
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Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by telling my colleague from Shefford just how deeply I was touched by her observations this morning. I thank her for her comments.
Regarding Bill C‑32, we need to focus on democracy and meeting Canadians' needs when it comes to building the economy, putting Canada in a very strong fiscal position and providing support to Canadians who need it.
We have already had 27 hours of debate and 140 speeches on Bill C‑32. We will be spending more time on it and hearing more speeches about it today and throughout the week. Implementing the support measures in this bill is essential to the economy, to our fiscal position and to Canadians.
With that, we are here because we are ready to vote.
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Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member could answer a question for me. The Parliamentary Budget Officer identified $14.2 billion in what he called unannounced spending in the fall economic statement.
Can the member tell us what it will be spent on before we vote to approve it?
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Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to join the discussion today on the fall economic statement.
What we wanted to see is a plan for the future of all Canadians, but what we received from the Liberals in this fall economic statement is more reckless spending. We laid out two requests before the statement was delivered. One was no new taxes. The second was that if the government brought in more spending, it should find savings in the budget. That was not possible for the reckless Liberal-NDP coalition.
What we see right now is more spending and less money in the pockets of Canadians. We even heard the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, say that there is a made-in-Canada inflation problem. That is as a result of the reckless spending by the costly NDP-Liberal coalition.
I will go through a few of the spending items that we see as possibly unnecessary.
For one of them, the finance minister could not even answer a question. When asked about the $14.2-billion spend in the economic statement that is unaccounted for, she could not answer what it was earmarked for. As the finance minister of a G7 country, she should really have a better handle on where the money is going.
To add to the idea that the government right now is not in control of its spending, the Auditor General released a report today, and there are some very concerning things in it. A few of the numbers we saw today gave us a second to pause and wonder where the government is taking Canadians. One has to do with “overpayments to ineligible recipients” regarding COVID–19 spending. There was $4.6 billion in overpayments to ineligible recipients that the taxpayers of this country will never get back.
Let us not stop there. There is another one about “payments that should be investigated further” by the Auditor General. This was just released today, and there is $27.4 billion for further programs that we need to look into. One of my questions here, and I hope one of my Liberal counterparts will ask me about it, is whether the Liberals believe this needs to be investigated as well. Are they curious about where that $24.7 billion is that they said was necessary for COVID spending? I ask because we all remember the solemn hand-on-heart moment when Canadians were told by the Prime Minister that he has their backs.
Do members remember one of the last fall economic statements delivered by the current minister and the government? There was a famous line that will go down as one of my favourite quotes from the Prime Minister. He said the Liberals were going to take on debt so Canadians did not have to. How is that working for the government now?
I think Canadians across the country are wondering when exactly that is going to happen, because they have seen the government take on massive debt, more debt than all other governments combined. What I am seeing and hearing from Canadians across the country is they feel that this debt is now being passed on to them. That is how they feel. Where is this solemn pledge by the Prime Minister that the government is going to take on debt so Canadians do not have to? That is not a thing and Canadians are falling further and further behind.
I have a few examples of some of the discussions I have had.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to speak with the Association of Canadian Custom Harvesters in Saskatoon. People from all over the country do custom harvesting. By the way, in question period, the associate minister of finance, who is from Alberta, keeps saying that there have been massive crop failures across the country, yet I did not hear that from the people who actually harvest crops. That is another one of the fabricated stories the Liberals continue to tell to make sure they have a compelling narrative to keep shovelling out dollars.
At this conference in Saskatoon, it was great to hear about some of the innovations and new technologies these custom harvesters are using to lower emissions. There were questions they kept coming back to ask me: How much is enough? For the carbon tax, what level will make the government happy? I was dumbfounded. I did not know how to answer that because I do not think it will ever be enough.
One of the custom harvesters actually does work across the border in Montana and the Midwestern states, and then comes back up. I asked him what the difference in his fuel bill is when he is harvesting down south across the border compared to when he is harvesting in Canada. He said it is between $15,000 and $20,000 a week. Could members imagine doing business in a different jurisdiction where it costs an extra $15,000 to $20,000 a week on something they have no control over? They have to fuel their vehicles. They have to fuel their harvesters and trucks. I asked him how it makes sense to keep going back and forth across the border. He said it does not. Then and there it just hit me that this is why we are becoming so uncompetitive. That is why the jobs are going south. It is because the current government is taxing businesses out of existence.
Then I remembered a quote I heard from one of the Liberal backbenchers, the member for Whitby. It all made sense when he stood in his spot and said to Canadians that they will have to go through pain. Can members imagine a government member standing up and saying that it is going to get worse? Can members imagine him saying he is not sure it is ever going to get better, but that Canadians can be sure that, as long as the Liberals are in government, it is going to continue to get worse for them, with more pain and suffering? I say “kudos” to that member because that is probably one of the first honest statements I have heard from a member of the Liberal Party in being honest with Canadians and saying that under the Liberals it will continue to get worse.
We see that situation across the country. One of the biggest things that hits me when I look at some of the statistics here is that 1.5 million Canadians are using a food bank every month in our country when we are supposed to be the breadbasket of the world. We have the food, fuel and fertilizer the world needs and we cannot feed our own people.
I opened the mail the other day when I was at home and my wife brought a letter to me. We are both U of R alumni. It was from the University of Regina. Usually people get these fundraising letters when it is for a capital project or some kind of infrastructure project. My wife said, “You will never believe this is coming from the University of Regina.” I read the fundraising letter and it was literally to feed students. It was an anonymous letter from one of the students saying that they go to bed hungry almost every night. There are 58.6% of university students at the U of R who are going to bed hungry. This is in our country now and it is shameful. From where we were to where we are now as a country, the food bank usages are up. Students are living in hostels and going to bed hungry, and they were looking for a vision from this economic statement. The government cannot spend itself out of inflation.
We are getting to another point where, if there are two more interest rate rises in this country, we are going to see a rash of bankruptcies. What is the Liberals' plan for that? Times are getting tough. I know people on variable mortgages whose mortgages have gone up $600 or $700 a month. Now it has come out that grocery bills are going to go up $1,000 to $1,500 per month. Eventually, there is nothing left.
In our country, under the current Liberal government, taxes now exceed take-home pay for people who are going to work every day. This is unsustainable in our country. We need a vision and we need a plan. We need to start making paycheques pay again. We need to make it so that people who are going to work have the ability to support their families and do not have to put water in their milk so they can make it go further for the kids. Parents are literally now scared to take their kids to the grocery store. I have constituents who have sent pictures to me of what $100 in groceries is buying for their family now, and it is sad. It is a couple of loaves of bread, maybe a jug of milk, some pasta and some pasta sauce. That is not good enough.
I will leave members with a quote. It is something Premier Wall always said when we were in government. He said that the best thing a government can and should do is leave things better than it found them. The current government has failed on that miserably.
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Mr. Speaker, if we are being honest, I would also like that member to be honest with his constituents when they are not getting as much back from the carbon tax as they are paying. Every day in question period, we ask straightforward questions of this government, and the government members get on their feet and say that eight out of 10 Canadians are better off under their system and their carbon tax scheme, which is a tax scheme not an environmental plan. It is simply untrue.
If we are going to be honest, we should talk about controlling spending and where the $14.2 billion in this economic statement is actually going. If we are going to be honest, I would like the Liberal member to be honest with his constituents and say with hand over heart, “We have your back, but $200 billion out of the $500 billion that we spent on COVID spending, we do not know where it went.”
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' spending is out of control. They are completely out of touch and do not have a clue about how the vast majority of people in Canada live.
Unlike their elite friends, whom they so fondly dole out tax dollars to in scandal after scandal, most people in this country work hard for what little money they have. The government is spending billions upon billions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars on frivolous vanity projects, on initiatives that no one other than their seatmate at the World Economic Forum would really care about. All the while the government is raising payroll taxes, tripling the carbon tax and implementing inflationary policies that weaken the dollar, which prices essential goods out of reach.
The callousness on display, the elitist attitude of cancelling one’s Disney+ subscription to save money coming from the people who are not hurting and who do not struggle to keep food on their tables or heat their homes, has to stop.
After seeing another load of spending and learning about Canada’s national debt of over a trillion dollars, one constituent of mine, Chris, wrote in to say, “I’d like to see them in our shoes that is the middle class or low-income households, with our wages. With high inflation for food, gas, heating, rising Bank of Canada interest rates, the soon to be tripling of the carbon tax, pay our bills, our mortgage, our debts, and see if the budget balances itself. I don’t need a handout of my own taxpayer dollars. I need a government that will fix the real issues behind Canada’s problems.”
My message to this resident of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, and to all Canadians who share this view, is that if we want to see change, we need to vote Conservative in the next election.
Our leader, the member for Carleton, knows the same simple fact that nearly everyone but our Prime Minister understands, that budgets do not balance themselves and that more spending, like what was announced in this fall economic statement, only adds inflationary fuel to the fire.
This is not the only feedback that I have received about waste and misplaced priorities. Recently, a 12-year-old wrote to me with a message that has more common sense in it than this government has displayed in years. This is from Everett.
Everett says, “I have been thinking about why the Prime Minister wants to further tax our hard-working farmers and their families. This tax will dramatically increase the cost of food to the consumer.
“Here is what I would say in Parliament and to the politicians: 'Mr. Speaker, if the federal government continues to enforce laws that control our farmers, there will be widespread criticism to the Liberal government, which has already spent billions of wasted tax dollars. Canadians have already faced difficulties in the beginning of the decade. Forcing our farmers to pay a tax on livestock methane will only lead to farmers who can barely get enough money to pay the ever-increasing carbon tax! It will lead to more bankruptcies in the country. Canadians are fed up!'
“They had already said it in the beginning of 2022. The government silenced them. With inflation, it will make it harder for Canadians to get past this winter. Canadians will be starving and this government will have caused another famine and caused people to starve.
“When will the federal government end the mandates against Canadian farmers?”
Well said, Everett. I thank him for sending that in. I agree. It is true. The government cannot see the forest through the trees, which is funny because they have committed to planting so many of them. I think it was two million trees, and they have planted zero. Is that not another Liberal commitment that has flown by the wayside, just like their promises for accountability and transparency?
It is no wonder that they have to resort to using Conservative ideas to give their fall economic statement any substance.
What ideas could those be? Well, investing in Canadian-made, clean, green technology. That is something we on this side of the House, Conservatives, have been calling for for years.
In fact, making investments in and growing Canadian capacity to be a global leader in clean green tech is exactly what we put forward in our last two platforms. It is an idea, I should add, that creates jobs and helps the environment, which was opposed by the Liberals before.
After learning that their current war against the Canadian energy sector had cost 170,000 Canadian workers’ jobs without a credible plan to back up their big assumptions and magical thinking, it is about time that they saw the light.
We should also note that the first figure is on top of the 180,000 energy jobs that were already destroyed under the Liberal government. That is 350,000 jobs, and counting, killed to satisfy the Liberal government’s imagination. While these Canadians look for work, the government buys the oil and gas we need from dictators instead.
Canadians need more common-sense initiatives, and it should be obvious that it is Conservatives who will give them that. It is Conservatives who will support our domestic resource industries and make positive changes that benefit all, even if the government tries to hide its mistakes and take credit for our ideas.
Do members know that the average before-tax income of a millennial in Canada is under $50,000? Do they know that the average Canadian family pays $39,000 in taxes? For Canadians aged 25 to 40, that means it is nearly impossible to get ahead. It means they will not be able to afford a home until retirement age, and that is if they get to retire. It means every dollar recklessly wasted by this government to grow inflation only puts them further behind. Tripling the carbon tax and increasing payroll taxes so the government can keep spending taxes does not give them hope.
This situation is surprisingly similar to what Canadian seniors currently face. They have sacrificed to save their money. After years of working hard, they gave it all to grow our nation, to make it successful and a great place to live. However, many are telling me they are feeling left behind and abandoned, forgotten by a government that no longer sees them as useful, a Liberal regime that would rather offer them death than sufficient medical or mental health care. They see no hope coming from spending announcements. They only see their bills piling up, groceries getting more expensive and becoming unaffordable, and a winter ahead of them with not enough money to keep the heat on. This is all thanks to the Liberal government's spending and mismanagement of Canada's finances.
From our millennials to our seniors, Canadians are saddened to see this once-prosperous, thriving country with an incredible reputation on the global stage become what it has become today under the government: a tax-and-spend nation that is driving people into poverty and is quickly becoming the laughing stock of the world.
I can see from the faces of those opposite that they do not believe me, but they should pay attention to this next bit of testimony.
A senior from my riding, from Wallaceburg, wrote that they are on ODSP and their cheque has been cut by $500. It's winter right now, they said, and they need that because of the price of heating oil. The senior said it cost $1,800 to fill the tank, and that is what they now get from ODSP.
This Canadian has nothing to live on and no other options.
What do members think about this heartbreaking story from another young mother? She wrote that she had spent the whole day consoling two brothers aged one and three, sick with a bad virus. If she could have given them Tylenol or Advil, she said, they would have had a bad day but they would have survived. Instead, these two very active boys cried and moaned, threw up and begged to be carried. They slept in her arms and were miserable all day.
Instead of acting quickly to see that Canadian children have the medicine they need, the government waited. Instead of working to make certain Canada never faces a similar shortage, it announces boutique spending policies that help no one.
This economic statement does not address the cost of living crisis that the costly NDP-Liberal coalition government has created. Its reckless spending and mounting national debt is simply not fair to future generations.
I have also been hearing from young people that with inflation and the cost of housing, they will be living in their parents' basements until at least the age of 30 and they have given up on their dream of owning a home for their family to live in.
To afford food, to be warm this winter and to give hope to the next generation of Canadians, Conservatives will always stand strong against the Liberal government's reckless spending and fight for common-sense policies.
Finally, here are some questions from average Canadians that no one has been able to answer yet: Where is this carbon tax going? Who gets it? What is it being spent on? No one believes that it is coming back to them, like the Liberals claim. Since the inception of the carbon tax, many have been asking how paying money to the government stops the global temperature from rising. How does money going from their bank account to a slush fund for the Prime Minister's self-glorification clean up the atmosphere, especially when China is the world's biggest polluter by far? How does paying a tax stabilize the weather, when the sun is the biggest influencer of the earth's climate? How does my handing money over to the least transparent, least democratic, most expensive government in our nation's history stop a hurricane from hitting the east coast? It is time to scrap the carbon tax.
Liberal spending is out of control. For the reasons outlined, I cannot support this economic statement.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today.
We are currently in a closure period imposed by the government, with the support and co-operation of the NDP, to limit the debate on the economic update. It is hard to consider this anything but unfortunate. As my Bloc Québécois colleague mentioned earlier, this is the twentieth time that the government has called upon its new NDP friends to stifle debate in the House. This is completely unacceptable and unfortunate and we must denounce it.
We are here to debate the economic update. We Conservatives are always very attentive to the government's reckless spending and mismanagement. Clearly, we have had a lot to say on the subject today, which is unfortunate for Canadian taxpayers.
Just today, the Auditor General released an initial report regarding the management of public funds during COVID‑19. The least that can be said is that it is quite disastrous for people who believe in the sound management of public funds.
The Auditor General “found that Employment and Social Development Canada established performance standards by focusing solely on the speed of payment” and identified at least $32 billion in overpayments and suspicious payments that require a thorough investigation. In short, to paraphrase the Auditor General, it was sloppy. This has been exactly the trademark of this government over the last seven years.
When the government indicated that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance would be tabling an economic update, which happened barely a few weeks ago, we made two very simple requests that were motivated not by ideology but by an acknowledgement of reality.
What do we do when we know that there are tough times ahead? Just like a good mother who has a family budget to manage, we need to stop the taxes, and above all, stop spending. If we have to make additional expenditures, it must be with caution and in a very specific and focused manner. Those were the two requests that we made; they were entirely logical and responsible, but sadly, the government did not heed them.
Should we be surprised that the government has continued in its seven-year-long tradition of spending recklessly? To hell with the expenses, as we say around here.
Let us not forget that, in 2015, those people stood for election and had the audacity to say that they were going to be bold, but responsible. They said they were going to run three small deficits in the first few years to stimulate the economy and then achieve a zero deficit in 2019.
That is the truth about that situation. After four years of the government's being in office under the Prime Minister, there were three huge deficits and another huge deficit in 2019. Liberals were elected saying there would be a very small deficit, but the truth is there are huge deficits, while, when the economy was reeling all around the world in 2008 when the Conservatives were in office, we were the first country in the G7 to get out of the crisis because we were serious in our administration.
Unfortunately, in their first term, the Liberals spent recklessly when, by rights, they should have been setting money aside for a rainy day.
Now, they are obviously going to tell us that, when they ran deficits, it was not their fault, it was because of COVID-19.
Well, we will play along. Sometimes, in a crisis, it is necessary to spend more. We recognize that. In 2008, 2009 and 2010, when we were in government, we ran deficits. The difference is that we brought them under control and then paid the money back and returned to a balanced budget.
However, since COVID-19 and since the Liberals have been in government, there has been a cumulative deficit of $500 billion. The deficit is like a bill we are leaving for our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren to pay, because we are living beyond our means. That is the reality.
Some will say it is not their fault that COVID-19 happened, but the Auditor General found that over 40% of this deficit has absolutely nothing to do with COVID-19, so that argument should be taken with a grain of salt.
The confirmation that the Liberals spend recklessly is that they are currently spending 30% more than before the pandemic. That is because they have been unable to control spending.
As for the excessive spending, we know these people have no shame.
About a year ago, the government decided to implement the sadly notorious ArriveCAN app for people arriving in Canada or those travelling abroad and returning to Canada. Travellers had to fill out a very complicated form. It made no sense. Worst of all, it cost taxpayers $54 million, when one IT company said that it was the type of job that would have taken them a weekend at most and cost a quarter of a million dollars. In short, instead of spending $54 million on something that did not work very well, and sometimes did not work at all, the government could have spent $250,000 and gotten the same thing done at a lower cost and more efficiently. Instead, this government overspent.
It was the same during the pandemic. Money was no issue, as they say. A $237‑million contract was awarded to Frank Baylis, a former Liberal MP, to manufacture 10,000 ventilators. Also, need I remind the House that CERB cheques were sent to prisoners and members of organized crime? It is a bit embarrassing, but it is a fact.
It is understandable that, in an emergency, processes are sometimes sped up. However, the Auditor General's assessment was scathing. The government mismanaged $32 billion during the pandemic. It makes no sense in this type of situation.
Also, as the member for Carleton, who is now the leader of the official opposition, said in April 2020, government should never punish or limit work.
All my life, I will remember going through the first summer of COVID‑19 as an MP. Every day, I met business owners who were angry and upset.
They were angry, because they were upset to see young people staying at home instead of working. That is the reality of what we faced the first summer, when young women and young men decided to stay at home and pick up the $2,000 from the CERB instead of going back to work.
I will never forget meeting the manager of a restaurant in Val-Bélair. I will not name the restaurant because he may not want me to tell this story. He came to see me and was very angry. He told me that it did not make sense and that it had to stop because it was not right. He said that a 17-year-old young man had come to see him and laughed as he told him that it was great because he would not be working over the summer.
That is not how a government should be run. That is not the right message to send our young people. When people are 16, 17 or 18 and working their first summer job, they are proud to get up in the morning and enthusiastic about working and earning their first three-figure paycheque.
We had the courage to identify the problem, but the Liberals went on as though nothing were wrong. Now we are dealing with inflation, the worst inflation crisis in 40 years. It is hurting everyone, particularly the most fragile and most essential sector of all: food.
As I noted yesterday during question period, the next few years are not looking any better. Four universities conducted a study and found that food inflation will remain above 10% inflation in the coming year. It is not a good sign when food banks report increasing demand and people who were donating to the food bank last year are now knocking on the door of that same food bank for goods and food. I see it in my riding.
That is why we will be voting against Bill C‑32. We believe that the government has not done its job properly in terms of sound management of public funds. It has spent recklessly. It has absolutely no control over its spending, but that has not tempered its ambition and desire to raise taxes.
The Liberals can say what they will, but raising taxes during a period of inflation is the worst-case scenario.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent's speech, and we disagree on some things.
First, I think he is generalizing when he says that only young people benefited from the CERB. That is not true. I want to see his data. I do not agree with him.
Second, my colleague talked about government spending. We agree on that, but I think he has forgotten about one expenditure, namely the wage subsidy for businesses. The Conservative Party received nearly $1 million through that taxpayer-funded subsidy, which was intended to help businesses stave off bankruptcy and keep the lights on. The former leader of the Conservative Party, the hon. member for Durham, talked about that before the election campaign.
The Bloc Québécois demanded that the parties pay back that money, which came from honest taxpayers and was not intended to fill the coffers of political parties. I would like my colleague to tell me whether the Conservative Party has begun paying back the wage subsidy that was intended for businesses.
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- Dec/6/22 2:23:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government is now exposed for having wasted massive sums over the last several years. According to the Auditor General, there is $4 billion of known waste and another $27 billion of suspected waste. There is $60 million of spending that is under criminal investigation. There were 190,000 people who quit their jobs and therefore were not eligible to receive the CERB benefit but did anyway. They even sent the CERB to 1,500 prisoners.
Why did the government waste so much and make Canadians pay the price?
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- Dec/6/22 2:31:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today, the Auditor General released a damning report confirming that Liberal mismanagement led to at least $32 billion in inflationary spending. This is more costs and no control. The Liberals' lack of transparency contributed to the affordability crisis. The Auditor General is deeply concerned by the lack of controls, and her report shows the Liberals are going to keep their failed approach for current and future programs.
Why are Canadians continuously on the hook for Liberal failures?
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- Dec/6/22 2:33:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we took important action when we understood that the high cost of living was having an impact on Canadians. In fact, yesterday the Financial Post noted that our child care policy has been a success. It said, “government policy has played a role in getting women back in the workforce...especially when it comes to child care.... Women feel more confident going back into the workforce because they won’t be spending their whole paycheque on child care.”
We are there for Canadians and we are delivering.
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- Dec/6/22 2:37:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that the member opposite gave us that answer when the government has completely lost control of public spending. The Auditor General confirmed that the government is trying to track down $32 billion in benefits that were paid to ineligible recipients. What are the consequences of that?
Nationwide, Canadians' debt is increasing. People do not have enough money, so they are charging their groceries to their credit cards. The Liberals have allowed themselves to lose billions of dollars.
Once again, will the Liberals show compassion and not increase taxes?
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- Dec/6/22 2:43:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, perhaps that member would like to have a conversation with the Auditor General.
In her report this morning, she made it clear the government is on track for almost $2 billion in wasted vaccines by the end of this year, over 15 million doses wasted so far, with the potential of the majority of another 55 million doses set to expire in 26 days. The government took vaccines meant for underdeveloped countries, the only G7 country to do so, while wasting billions in expired vaccines.
When will the government stop its wasteful spending of taxpayers' dollars?
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Madam Speaker, in the Parliamentary Budget Officer's review of the fall economic statement, Bill C-32, he categorized $14.2 billion as unannounced spending. I am just wondering if, before we go to actually vote on this bill, the member would tell us what the details of that spending are.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservative members always express concern with respect to the government spending. I do not know to what degree they recognize the true value of some of the spending that has taken place. We can talk about child care from coast to coast to coast. We have seen massive reductions for the first time with the national child care program. We have seen historic amounts of health care transfers to support provinces and address the needs of Canadians and their expectations on health care. In fact, we brought in a national dental program for children under the age of 12.
Would my colleague not recognize these are the types of programs on which Canadians expect their national government to deliver?
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Mr. Speaker, one thing the member talked about was spending. I will point to the Auditor General's report. The Auditor General found, “Employment and Social Development Canada established performance standards by focusing solely on the speed of payment”, and identified at least $32 billion in overpayments and suspicious payments that required further investigation. We are focused on that kind of spending.
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Madam Speaker, it is an important question, and I only have 10 minutes.
I talked about some of the things that I think are going to be important, including the regulatory measures. I hope the member opposite would agree it is simply not a spending race, in terms of the government being able to draw private capital. Yes, that matters, and as I mentioned in my speech, we have seen our Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry drawing private capital here.
I am not sure we are necessarily going to be able to match the level of spending we have seen in the United States, but I agree with him that there are measures in the fall economic statement that are important. I suspect the government will have other measures in the budget for 2023. However, I will remind him it is not just about spending. It is also about other measures that can draw private capital in to help make a difference and drive these projects forward as well.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to speak to the fall economic update.
“Canadians have never had it so good,” is the message we get when we listen to Liberal members talk about what is going on in Canada. They say things are great, that Canadians should be grateful for everything that is going so wonderfully here in this country. They talk about how it is so wonderful because of all the money they have spent. The answer to every problem in Canada, if one is a Liberal, is to spend money. That is the solution, so spend they have.
The Liberals have doubled the national debt. The amount of debt of every prime minister up to the current Prime Minister, the Liberals have doubled. Every prime minister before accumulated a certain amount of debt, and the current Prime Minister and government doubled it in a few short years. They say that as a result of that, things are great.
Maybe we should talk about how great things are as a result of all this spending. First of all, we just heard from the Auditor General that a lot of the spending did not really go anywhere that it should have. There were $4.6 billion in confirmed overpayments during the pandemic and $27 billion in suspicious payments, so we are looking at $32 billion of money that went who knows where, not where it should have gone. This includes the fact that 1,500 people in jail received these benefits.
To this point, there is absolutely no real plan to get any of this money back. Liberals say they are working on it and the wheels are in motion, when they are not saying the Auditor General was pushed into making this report by the opposition and trying to undermine the Auditor General. It is an interesting position for a government to take, when it appointed the Auditor General.
We look at all that spending and at the issues across the country from coast to coast to coast. Many members have been rising in this chamber to talk about the issues in hospitals all across the country. The premiers have said the federal government should be transferring more money to the provinces for health care, and the government is saying that the cupboard is kind of bare.
I am thinking that $32 billion, if it had been properly managed, would therefore have been available for health transfers, but that ship has sailed and the government is doing virtually nothing to get that money back.
There is $27 billion a year now being paid in interest on the debt, which has doubled over the course of the last number of years under the Liberal government. That is $27 billion every year that could be spent on things like health care. Right away, if we put those things together, one year of the massive interest on the massive debt plus the $32 billion spent on who knows what, and we would have over $50 billion for health care.
There are some hospitals and some provinces across the country that would very much be interested in receiving some of that money, but of course they cannot, because the Liberals have spent it on other things.
The interest on the debt is actually going to go to $43 billion a year by 2026. Let us think about that number. It is staggering: $43 billion a year simply to pay interest on the credit card.
When one raises issues like this, the government says it spent so Canadians did not need to spend. Well, Canadians are spending now, through their taxes, paying $27 billion a year in interest, which is moving to $46 billion. However, that is okay, because everything in this country is fantastic. Canadians have never had it so good.
Right now, inflation is at a 40-year high. People in this country are having to choose to eat or to heat their homes, but Canadians have never had it so good.
In one month, 1.5 million Canadians used a food bank. It is unprecedented. The struggle of Canadians after seven years of spending by the government is worse than it has ever been, so the rationale that we have spent all this money and things are great is completely debunked, because things are not great.
There are so many Canadians who are within a few hundred dollars of not being able to make ends meet, and inflation is eating into that every single day, but, right, everything is great. The money was spent to make the lives of Canadians better, except that their lives are not better. By virtually every measurable index, the lives of Canadians now are worse than they were 10 years ago.
There is no apology from the government on this. It will say things like, “Yes, but we are going to pay this benefit here or this little benefit there.”
When a person is $200 away from not being able to make ends meet, a one-time payment of $500 is not going to help. It might get them through the first couple of months, but there are 10 other months in the year in which we have to try to make ends meet.
One in five Canadians are skipping meals, but all this spending was so great for Canadians.
The result of the economic policies of the government has been to impoverish the nation, and that is where we are when we look at all the statistics that are adding up.
There is absolutely no recognition of this by the government. There is no apology for it. It simply says, “We have this little program here. We have another program here. That is all Canadians need.”
The other glaring omission from the government has been any meaningful response to the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States. It is a transformational document on how the United States is going to have its economy move going forward. No, we cannot match, dollar for dollar, the kinds of programs the United States is offering, but it offers these things in very clear ways. It offers tax incentives for governments. It offers production incentives for businesses.
What we are being promised here in Canada are programs. There is going to be a program here that a business can apply for, an opaque program. At committee, we heard industry representatives say that these programs are given according to a naughty list and a nice list. If one is on the naughty list, one has no idea why one is on the naughty list, and one does not get the funding.
When the government is picking winners and losers in business, everyone loses. The response is not sufficient, and the response it is offering is not going to help Canadian businesses.
We have heard over and over again from witnesses that this is a game-changer in the United States and that the government needs to act quickly. Well, my definition of “quickly” is not waiting for the budget in two, three or four months to announce some measures, sprinkling a couple of things here in the update and then saying to businesses, “Do not worry. Everything is going to be fine when the budget is released.”
Businesses cannot wait three, four, five, six or seven months. Investments are happening in the United States right now.
The government has impoverished Canadians over the last number of years, and now it risks losing out on the manufacturing bonanza for electric vehicles, etc., that is coming, because it is just acting so slowly.
This is an update that we cannot support and Canadians cannot afford.
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