44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 6, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, we will not oppose Bill C‑32, which implements the government's economic statement. Seasons may change, but this government's economic statements remain the same. We are not very excited, because this one is virtually the same as the spring economic statement, which contained nothing in the way of a constructive or reassuring vision for the people of Quebec and Canada.
The Bloc Québécois decries the economic update, which mentions inflation 108 times but does not offer a dime in extra support for recognized initiatives, such as transportation electrification, or for seniors, the unemployed, or families trying to put a roof over their heads. The cornerstone of this government's everything-old-is-new-again approach to solving problems is interference. When it comes to interfering in areas under Quebec's and the provinces' jurisdiction, none can equal this government.
Let us think about that for a minute. Retirees who contributed their entire working lives to the economic and social development of their communities, who humbly and honestly paid their taxes, as my colleague from Drummond was saying earlier, and who suddenly are 65, or 70 or 74, are being completely ignored by the government. However, the contributions they made while working were used to run the public service, including the seats in this place. Now, we thank them by telling them to go back to work, to do something else, to find a way to earn some income, to go to food banks, because there is no money for them.
All of a sudden, at 75 years of age, they receive a cheque. It is extraordinary. Sometimes magic happens, but we do not know why. We do not know what justifies it and the reason behind it.
In fact, I think that the government does not know its citizens. In any case, it does not know the citizens of Quebec. Does it have any idea what their reality looks like? That is the question. Does the government know Mr. Lucien, who no longer has affordable housing, who has to use the food bank and make tough choices to be able to afford his medication? Does the government know Ms. Mariette, who has to pay for essential home care services to be able to continue living at home because that is what she wants more than anything? She has to turn the heat off at night and eat only one meal a day so that she can continue to live at home. Does the government know Ms. Agathe and Mr. Georges, who did not make much money when they were working? Even so, they worked for 45 years and were honest about paying their taxes. Ms. Agathe is in a wheelchair because she worked as a waitress all her life and no longer has any circulation in her legs. She lives on the outskirts of the city and so she has to take public transportation to get health care. Her husband, who is a little younger than her, retired unexpectedly early because he saw that his wife was unable to get around. Today, they live at home. They have not had any additional income for more than 15 years. They are aged 72 and 65 respectively.
With inflation taking a heavy toll on seniors' meagre incomes, old age security offers little in the way of actual security because fixed costs, rising food prices and gas taxes are not going away.
What really worries me is that seniors have been getting poorer for a very long time. The government has not taken them into account when making decisions for a very long time. I think society agrees on that. We can blame a lot on the pandemic, but the health care issues we are dealing with now have everything to do with the fact that the pandemic amplified indifference, complacency and callousness on the part of both governments—for these decisions were not made by just one government—toward the people who built the Canada and Quebec we know today. By the time people reach old age, they have built their lives and contributed in the hope of benefiting from a decent social safety net. What we are seeing now is people who, if they had more money, would manage to live at home instead of crowding long-term care facilities and hospitals.
There is a whole network of interconnected issues that are the result of the government not paying attention to the seniors who built this society. I find that particularly painful, because I know many of them in my riding. They are upright, reliable and honest people who have really given everything in the hope of receiving a little something. Now the government is telling them that it is not going to happen.
It seems that there is no accountability at the federal level these days. No one is accountable for anything. Things go wrong, but it is nobody's fault. Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals are accountable for their past actions. To hear them tell it, each party has done much better than the other and nothing is their fault. It must be that thing called fate, or the evil pandemic, or the global inflationary crisis.
Then there are the excessive oil investments and environmental failures—both of which make people sicker and sicker—but they are nobody's fault. Elderly people and the unemployed find themselves on the street, but it is nobody's fault. Small and medium-sized businesses are closing down because there are no accommodating tax provisions for them, while foreign and oil mega-corporations conveniently squirrel their profits away in tax havens, but that is nobody's fault.
On top of that, people need to be asked more and more to have confidence in politics, so we go on plastering faces on placards during every election campaign, when we have the nerve to tell people we will be forming government and doing great things for them. Yes, the government will do things like interfere and impose its position and its assessment of the reality facing seniors, as if there could suddenly and magically be two categories of seniors. It will also interfere by determining how much money will be paid into the health care system and, more importantly, how the provinces will spend it, when the federal government has no idea what choices the provinces must make in managing health care.
Let me give an example. In Quebec, we want to encourage seniors to remain in their homes. If the government offers money on the condition that we invest only in hospitals and long-term care facilities, is that a good condition for Quebec? The answer is no. That is one reason why we do not want conditions. We want the money that, in principle, is owed to us.
The government likes to interfere in provincial jurisdictions, and so it is interfering in the protection of the French language with a bill that I would describe as odious and that will paralyze all of Quebec's efforts to impose the use of French in federally regulated businesses and to teach French to new Quebeckers. The government is also interfering in the housing sector and property taxes. It watches everything and tries to make its way into every sector.
It is also perpetuating the status quo on employment insurance. We have been waiting for EI reform for years. There are new realities in the labour market such as seasonal work and self-employed workers. With respect to employment, there are support measures for people who suffer from serious illnesses, illnesses that are becoming more prevalent than they were 15 or 20 years ago. I am also thinking of Émilie Sansfaçon, who left behind two children. She came to this place, despite being under treatment and not feeling well, to raise awareness and ask the government to change its position and support seriously ill people looking to heal with dignity.
I will conclude my speech by saying that the independence movement did not come out of nowhere. It is not a delusion. It is not a bubble in the brain of someone who appeared just like that. The independence movement is a movement that advocates free management of its own public funds, a movement that wants to take its own direction.
I think that the Government of Canada is a Titanic right now. It has not noticed, but the hull has been breached. I hope it will realize this fact before meeting the iceberg of opulence, because opulence is fatal in the eyes of our constituents.
In Quebec, our hull is solid and our engines are remarkable. We are successful. Resources are invaluable and almost unlimited. We have unique economic development levers—
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Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to the government's fall economic statement, a fiscal and economic blueprint that falls short.
The Conservatives called on the Liberals to do two important things. First was to stop the deficit spending that is fuelling inflation and driving up the cost of living for everyday Canadians. Second was for the government to commit to no new tax hikes. After all, Canadians are facing a cost of living crisis as a result of 40-year-high inflation being driven by the Liberal government's reckless spending. Food inflation has hit double digits. One in two Canadians is $200 away from insolvency, and an astonishing 1.5 million Canadians are going to a food bank every month, which is a 35% increase from last year.
The Liberals often say that they have the backs of Canadians. Well, in the face of a cost of living crisis, the least one would expect from a government that truly had the backs of Canadians is for it to commit to no new tax hikes. However, what we learned is that those are just more empty Liberal words, because they did not do that; they did the opposite, with tax hikes that are going to hit workers, seniors, families and small businesses.
This starts with a payroll tax hike on January 1, not to be outdone by a carbon tax hike on April 1, which will further drive up the cost of essentials, including gas, groceries and home heating. The carbon tax, by the way, has done nothing to reduce GHGs, which have gone up not down under the Liberals' watch. It is a carbon tax that the Governor of the Bank of Canada has determined exacerbates inflation, causing a 0.4% increase in inflation, further worsening the cost of living crisis.
When it comes to spending, the government doubled down on its failed inflationary policies. We saw $20 billion in new inflationary spending, and that is on top of half a trillion dollars in new deficit spending over the past two years.
The Liberals will claim that this is as a result of COVID, except the Parliamentary Budget Officer has clarified that it is not and that 40% of the half a trillion dollars in spending pertains to non-COVID-related measures. The evidence of this is that after all the COVID programs and supports expired, government spending increased an astonishing 30% in just two years. The government has a spending problem.
Why all the spending? Simply put, the government measures its success on how much it has spent, as opposed to what it has delivered, and the results are not positive. Let us look at a few Liberal lowlights.
It gave $35 billion to the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which was supposedly going to leverage private sector investment to get infrastructure projects completed. However, after six years, not a single infrastructure project has been completed. After $35 billion and six years, there is not a single infrastructure project. Talk about taxpayers not getting value for their money.
The Liberals brag about spending $40 billion on housing. Has that increased the housing supply? Has that made home ownership more accessible? No. Housing prices have doubled on the Liberals' watch.
Then there is the $54-million app, the ArriveCAN scam, as it has become known, that should have cost $250,000 instead of $54 million to complete. It should have never been built in the first place given that it caused travel chaos and resulted in more than 10,000 healthy Canadians needlessly having to quarantine.
Today, there was a shocking Auditor General report that determined that $32 billion of the Liberals' COVID spending went to recipients who should not have received the money. It was $32 billion out the door and wasted. To put $32 billion in perspective, the government spends $45 billion on the Canada health transfer, so nearly three quarters of what the federal government spends on health care annually was wasted, out the door and gone.
We talk about waste and mismanagement, but the Liberal government is not one to learn lessons, because in the fall economic statement, $14.2 billion was found to be unannounced by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. There were no details about where that $14.2 billion is going. When my colleague, the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, asked the finance minister where the $14.2 billion was going, she could not say or would not say. All we know is that it is a blank cheque to who knows what. Talk about a lack of transparency. Talk about a lack of respect for the sweat-soaked tax dollars of hard-working Canadians.
For all of this spending, what do we have? We have 40-year-high inflation. If we listen to the Liberals across the way, they act as though they are bystanders to the 40-year-high inflation, except they are not. Their policies have driven it. Let us look at the facts.
To pay for half a trillion dollars of deficit spending, the Liberals, through the Bank of Canada, embarked on a policy of quantitative easing, something the Canadian government has never done before. It is essentially money printing. What happened over two years? The money supply increased by half a trillion dollars, on par with the Liberal government's half a trillion dollars in deficit spending. This is not a coincidence. What we have seen is a 27% increase in the supply of money at only a 2% rate of economic growth. We cannot have cash outbid goods and services tenfold and not have inflationary pressures, and that is precisely what has happened as a result of the government's out of control spending.
The finance minister is fond of saying she will not take lessons from the Leader of the Opposition. I would say to the Minister of Finance that she should start listening to the Leader of the Opposition, because it was the Leader of the Opposition who was among the first to sound the alarm that all of this spending was contributing to inflation. Had the finance minister listened to the Leader of the Opposition, we would not be in this inflationary mess that is pummelling everyday Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, the member does not talk about the facts. He says that we as a government are responsible for Canada's record-high inflation rate, but he does not look at the world's circumstances. We are responsible for having a lower inflation rate than the United States of America, England and many other European countries. Compared to the G7 and the G20, Canada's inflation rate is better, but it is still not good enough for this government. That is why we continue to bring in supports for Canadians, which the Conservative Party consistently votes against.
Would the member not recognize or give us credit for the fact that in comparison to other countries in the world, in particular the United States of America and those in Europe, we actually have a lower inflation rate?
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Madam Speaker, the fact that the United States or the United Kingdom has worse inflation than Canada is cold comfort to everyday Canadians who are struggling.
No matter what the parliamentary secretary says, he cannot evade responsibility for the policies of his government that have driven 40-year-high inflation, with the supply of money outpacing goods and services tenfold as a result of the half a trillion dollars thrown out the door, billions of which were wasted. On top of that, the government is making life even worse with tax hikes in the new year.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C‑32, which seeks to implement the government's fall economic statement.
To be clear, let me just say that my pleasure stems not from the content of the bill, but rather from the fact that I get to stand up and be the voice of Canadians and the people of Beauce regarding what should have been included in the bill.
To begin with, I would like to take a moment to denounce the inflation created by the Liberal government itself. With punitive policies like the carbon tax, this government is destroying local businesses while at the same time driving up grocery prices. This out-of-touch government has also imposed an equally disastrous fertilizer tariff on farmers. Even as our country grapples with the worst food inflation in 40 years, the worst since the days of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, as I recall, the government is still looking to line its pockets with new taxes. Ours is the only G7 country to have imposed a tariff on fertilizer during the most difficult time in recent years.
Food bank use is growing so quickly that organizations in my riding, such as Moisson Beauce, are struggling to meet demand. In Beauce, a third of new food bank users are children. This government refuses to look in the mirror and admit its shortcomings. The Conservatives have been fighting for months against these taxes and tariffs, but this NDP-Liberal coalition has a hidden agenda, so it refuses to do the right thing. As a country, we should be taking care of the things that we can control. Everything starts in our own backyard. We need to help farmers lower production costs so that, by the time the food they produce gets to store shelves, people can afford to feed their family. Currently, one in five Canadians is skipping meals to stay afloat financially. That is shameful. This needs to change.
In this budget, agriculture is not even a minor priority for this government. We would think that after seven years, the Prime Minister would understand that feeding our population is essential and that it starts at the farm. Farmers have been ignored long enough. It is time to give them the tools they need to grow our economy and produce affordable food for everyone. This is a powerful economic driver for our country, and we have to exploit its full potential. We just need a leader who can open his eyes and see that.
Similarly, I would like to draw members' attention to another failed Liberal plan, the plan to open our Canadian borders to all Ukrainian meat products. The Conservatives are all for supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia, but there are much better ways of doing it. On Friday, in a press release, the government authorized import permits for unlimited quantities of chicken from Ukraine, without even conducting an impact analysis to see how that would affect the Canadian markets. To top it all off, the Liberals did not even consult stakeholders before signing this agreement.
Our American counterparts put off accepting Ukrainian meat for food safety reasons, and I cannot blame them. We could provide Ukraine with financial support while helping famine-hit countries closer to it by sending them those products. This is not just about taking care of our country's food system first. It is also a matter of global food safety. The last time the Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspected a chicken factory in Ukraine was in 2019, yet the government expects sanitary conditions to have remained the same in a war-torn country. How can this government be so naive?
Furthermore, given that this government promised to protect supply management, why did it sign this agreement to open up the market after stating over and over that it would make no further concessions with respect to supply management? The Liberal government is playing with fire at a time when we must be extremely vigilant.
Avian flu is becoming more prevalent in North America, and the problem is just as bad in Europe. Countries such as Poland, one of Ukraine's neighbours, have had several cases of avian flu in recent months. How can we have any assurance that imported meat is safe if we have no protective measures in place?
I would now like to move on to another topic, that of immigration in this country.
Canada's immigration system is broken. The Liberal minister rises in this place, makes bold promises and uses the same talking points every day, but nothing is happening in that department.
Every day, my two offices in Beauce receive multiple requests for updates from people who need help and from business owners about the system backlog. According to recent studies, there is a backlog of 2.3 million applications. Whether we are talking about applications for permanent residence, work permits or sponsorship, everything is at a standstill because of the government's poor management. Businesses in my riding are losing contracts and threatening to move abroad because they cannot get the temporary foreign workers they need in time.
Doctors are waiting for work permits and documents when they could be working in local hospitals and helping my constituents. It is shocking. It is not just the immigration system in this country that is broken. Name any department and there is a good chance that it is broken as well. Whether it is Service Canada with pensions, the guaranteed income supplement or the passport fiasco, the list of failures goes on and on.
When my staffers talk to employees on the phone, it is clear that things are disorganized and there does not appear to be any direction from the top. Employees are bouncing from department to department, burning the candle at both ends.
Training has slowed to a crawl, and most officers are too junior to help with complex cases. Some employees are still working from home. When is the government going to get its public servants back in the office and on track to better serve our communities?
The workers cannot be blamed for the government's incompetence. I sincerely respect these officers and the tough job they do, but something has to change. There is only so much they can do with the tools they have been given.
Now I want to touch on some issues that my colleagues have often heard me talk about here in the House. Rural Canadians are being left in the lurch. My riding does not have public transportation. We have to drive to get to work and take our kids to their activities. The people of Beauce are hard-working, as evidenced by our 2.1% unemployment rate, which I believe is among the best in Canada. Unfortunately, the carbon tax is eating up Canadians' paycheques. Cell service and high-speed Internet are not even close to what they should be in 2022, but there is nothing in the budget to fix that problem either.
Now, this government also wants to prohibit my law-abiding constituents from owning certain hunting weapons. Many Canadians make their living in part from hunting. This is one way we feed our families, but the government wants to eliminate that option too.
I could go on and on, but since I am running out of time, I have a message for Canadians. The Conservative Party of Canada will continue to be there for them and fight for what Canadians need, which is more money in their pocket at the end of the week and healthy, affordable food on the table for our families this holiday season.
A Conservative government would have made much more tangible changes if we, the Conservatives, had had the opportunity to introduce our own budget. I hope that Canadians are taking note of what this NDP-Liberal government is doing to our country. The time for change is approaching, and I hope that the Liberal government will be held accountable for the disastrous choices it has made.
I will continue to defend the people of Beauce and all Canadians by condemning this inflationary government in the House at every opportunity.
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Madam Speaker, unfortunately, my speech will have to be curtailed, which is something that should have been thought of before the Liberals came up with Bill C-32.
The fall economic statement, which could have done so much to help people in need, does absolutely nothing to address the real crises that Canadians are facing, like inflation, the cost of living and more taxes. Where it could have stopped new taxes and tax hikes and stopped new spending and wasteful spending, it fails to do so and only adds to the inflationary economy. The people of Saskatchewan cannot afford these out-of-touch policies that take their hard-earned money out of their pockets and put it into government coffers.
Each and every household in this country is feeling the effects of the Liberal incompetence when it comes to managing inflation and the cost of living. This year alone, government revenues have increased to $41.1 billion. Where is that money coming from? It is coming from the single mother who is skipping meals to make sure that her kids have enough to eat each week. It is coming from the families who have to pick between putting gas in their cars or keeping the lights on that month, because they are all paying higher taxes.
These are things the Prime Minister does not worry about and has never had to spare a thought for in his entire life. He is completely out of touch with his inflationary deficits, which are now at half a trillion dollars. It is clear that he has no problem profiting off the backs of Canadians and leaving the issues for future generations to deal with. He does not have their backs. He is profiting off their backs.
As we all know, this is Christmastime and a festive season for many. People are trying to get out, celebrate and help where they can. However, they are concerned, especially when a report that came out yesterday said that the cost of their food is escalating and, in 2023, prices will be 5% to 7% higher. Families will pay $1,065 more for groceries in 2023.
My wife goes out of her way yearly to assist with baking for hospitals, charities and people who have lost loved ones, as well as my family. Yesterday, she was making some cookies and went to buy some supplies. One box of graham cracker crumbs, two small cans of Eagle Brand condensed milk, two oranges, two lemons, a small 125-millilitre bottle of artificial vanilla and two 450-gram sticks of butter, which fit into one bag, was a total cost of $82.54. That is a lot of money for cookies, and next year it is going to be closer to $100.
The Liberals are killing rural communities and are doing it without even batting an eye. Measures like the carbon tax are killing businesses both small and large, including farming operations that have stood the test of time for generations. It is a tragedy to see family farms having to sell off their operations just so they can pay the bills. Many ranchers and farmers are close to walking away from the industry because of these escalating input costs.
As we all know, the Prime Minister has a pattern of promising something and doing the complete opposite. Many years and many billions of dollars ago, he said that he would not exceed $10 billion of debt. How soon people forget. The Prime Minister has now added more debt than all previous prime ministers combined. Furthermore, an alarming 40% of all new spending measures, roughly $205 billion, has nothing to do at all with COVID.
Ultimately, it is going to come down to what I call the “heat or keep” principle. In Saskatchewan, winters get brutally cold with temperatures dropping down into the minus forties multiple times during the season. In fact, as I speak today, it is below -30°C. Thanks to measures like the carbon tax for the last few years, people have been wondering if they can afford to heat their homes, a concern that no Canadian should have to grapple with. Now, because of the ever-rising interest rates and inflation, they are wondering if they will be able to keep their homes. The Prime Minister could never begin to imagine the stress that is felt by those who have to decide to heat or keep, but this is what it has come down to.
If we take a look at the numbers, the outlook is grim. Families who are financially on the brink who bought a typical home five years ago with a typical mortgage that is now up for renewal will pay $7,000 more a year. This is completely unsustainable and has the potential to financially devastate many hard-working homeowners who are just trying to live the life that they have earned and deserve. For example, someone with a mortgage of $400,000 amortized over 25 years with a monthly payment of $2,400 is not eligible for the relief that the Liberals are touting as the solution to the problem.
Speaking of the carbon tax, this could be a great opportunity for the government to actually help Canadians who are struggling to make ends meet. The Liberals could make the decision to cancel the tripling of the tax, but they will not.
Another big issue that I have with this economic update is that it fails to adequately address the Inflation Reduction Act that the U.S. passed in August, specifically with respect to investment in emissions reduction technology here in Canada.
The fact is that the Liberals have missed every single emissions reduction target they have set, yet they are still not doing enough to incentivize investment in clean technology. That is shameful. The United States has a 45Q tax credit that is straightforward, easy to understand and provides industry with certainty over things like regulation prices and timelines. By contrast, the measures created by the Liberal government are largely ineffective due to the high level of bureaucracy involved, with a mess of programs and credits layered on top of each other that create confusion and lack clarity.
We have already seen projects worth billions of dollars choose to operate in Texas over Alberta because of the ease of doing business in the U.S. The Liberals are choosing not to listen to industry experts who are prepared to assist and advise on clean tech like carbon capture and storage, or CCUS, because they do not want to be associated with the word “coal”. Is it the industry they are trying to kill, or is it the emissions?
Surely it is the emissions and the fact that CCUS can do it is something that we should be investing in. It is something that this economic statement does not move forward on and assist all Canadians by investing with private money, not public money.
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