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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Uqaqtittiji, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said at the finance committee that, “the $4 billion or $5 billion in this assistance for lower-income Canadians doesn't have a meaningful inflationary impact”.
Does the member agree that the windfall tax and the Canada recovery dividend are absolutely necessary so that these lower-income families that the Conservatives keep talking about can get the assistance they need from this bill?
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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 2:33:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government will blame everyone else for its inflationary spending, but when the Auditor General confirms that a minimum of $32 billion in COVID overpayments and suspicious payments need more investigation, there is little argument that this mess added to inflation. The Auditor General has sounded the alarm bells on the lack of control on COVID spending. There are lots of checks and no balances, and the government is continuing the same approach with current legislation and current programming.
How can Canadians trust the government?
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to speak to the fall economic statement this afternoon.
I have to say that I am, along with many Canadians, deeply disappointed in the fall economic statement because it was an opportunity to provide real leadership to Canadians, give relief to small businesses in this country and take action to address the rising costs we are seeing coast to coast to coast.
It seems that the Deputy Prime Minister has forgotten that we are in the worst cost of living crisis we have seen in a generation. Inflation, as we have talked about for months in the House, is at a 40-year high. Gas prices are still at record levels, especially diesel. Housing is more expensive than it has ever been.
Where did this crisis start? This time, the Liberals cannot blame the person by the name of Stephen Harper. They have had seven years to correct this. They want to blame global economic conditions, and sure, maybe that has a bit to do with it. However, what is the real root of the inflationary crisis we find ourselves in today? What has made everything worse in this country? The Liberals know, but they do not want to say. They know that the crisis has been caused by years of massive out-of-control Liberal deficit spending.
I was here in 2015 when the Liberals came into power, and Conservatives left them with a balanced budget and a very good economic forecast. That was left to them by a responsible Conservative government. They, in seven years, squandered it. I get it. The Prime Minister could not help himself. His agenda was failing, so he needed to try and buy votes every way he could think of.
However, the chickens have now come home to roost. The price of chicken, by the way, has doubled since the Liberals took office in 2015. All that spending they have done in the last seven years has driven inflation to a 40-year high. Canadians coast to coast to coast are struggling mightily.
Canadians are having to choose between filling their cars with gas, putting food on the table and heating their homes. A paycheque today does not go as far as it used to. Liberal inflation, combined with Liberal tax hikes, means that Canadians need to do more with less.
What does the government propose? It proposes to make everything worse in this country. This economic statement introduces another $20 billion of inflationary spending to drive inflation up even further. It also includes hikes to EI premiums next month and to CPP contributions, taking more money off of everybody's paycheque.
Instead of stopping their tax hikes, the Liberals are pushing forward with their plan to triple the carbon tax in 2023. That is right. In the dead of winter, the Liberals will be raising the cost of fuel, home heating and groceries.
Food bank usage, as we all know, is already at an all-time high in this country, with a 35% increase in the last year. In my city of Saskatoon alone, with a population of about 250,000, about 20,000 people a month visit the food bank. The city of Saskatoon used to be the economic engine of Canada.
Executive director, Laurie O'Connor, admits the numbers she sees coming through her door every day are very concerning. The donations of food and purchasing power have significantly decreased because food is so expensive. It is going to only get worse.
Members may recall that the 13th edition of Canada’s Food Price Report came out yesterday. It says a family of four will see their food bill go up by over $1,000, reaching about $16,000 a year. According to Stuart Smyth from the University of Saskatchewan, who helped in the report that was released yesterday, a family of six will pay over $21,000 in 2023 for food.
The problem is right in front of the Liberals' faces, and they have simply ignored it.
In Saskatchewan, the temperature today hit between -30°C and -40°C, and it is early December. People of my province are trying to figure out what temperature they can afford to set their thermostat to. If we think about it, in the last week in Saskatchewan, it was -30°C to -40°C already, and we are not even at January temperatures.
I want to know what the Prime Minister would say to the families who are already struggling to put food on the table when they see the last few dollars they have being used up when they move the thermostat up. The Prime Minister and the Liberal government has failed those families. They have failed retirees and the people living with disabilities who are on a fixed income.
What should the government be doing today?
First, without question, it should cancel all planned tax hikes and stop any government-mandated increases to the cost of living, with no hikes at all to payroll taxes and no tripling of the carbon tax. Canadians simply cannot afford any more of this Liberal tax increase.
Second, it needs to stop creating new inflationary spending. We know that government spending is only going to make inflation worse. If a minister wants to spend more money, he or she should have to find the equivalent savings in their budgets. Even the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned that a bit in the fall economic report. However, while she did mention it, the Liberals gave the CBC an additional $42 million over two years. Why? It is because the CBC had a tough time during the pandemic.
This is the type of spending that has got to stop in this country. The CBC, the public broadcaster, already gets between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion, but they will then be given an additional $42 million over two years. Plus, we found out today that it is going to be at the trough when Bill C-18 gets cleared through the House. The public broadcaster will be one of the biggest beneficiaries from Google and Facebook when that bill passes through the House.
When the Prime Minister was first elected he promised that deficits, as we all recall, were not going to exceed $10 billion and that he would balance the budget by 2019. We all know that was a farce.
The pandemic is not the only thing to blame here. Forty per cent of the government's new spending measures had nothing to do with the last two years of COVID. Since coming to power, the Prime Minister has introduced $205 billion in new inflationary spending, which had nothing to do with COVID, and I just mentioned the public broadcaster.
The cost of the interest payments on the federal government's debt has doubled. The payments are nearly as high as the cost of the health transfers to the provinces. Imagine what could be done today if that money were directed elsewhere.
Instead, due to this Liberal mismanagement, we have interest rates that are increasing faster than they have in decades. In fact, we expect another 50 basis points tomorrow by the federal Bank of Canada. Mortgage payments, as we all know, are going sky high. Therefore, anyone who bought a house a few years ago and has to renew their mortgage could pay up to $7,000 more a year. Many Canadians cannot afford that. Some, unfortunately, are losing their homes.
While the Liberals are focused on making the problem worse, Conservatives are going to propose some solutions for Canadians. Instead of printing more money, a Conservative government would create more of what money buys. We will get more homes built and make Canada the quickest place in the world to get a building permit. Young Canadians who have never been able to afford a home and start a family under the Liberals will find a more competitive and more affordable market under our Conservative government.
A Conservative government will make energy more affordable. We will repeal the anti-energy laws and axe the carbon tax. We will not punish Canadians for heating their homes or simply driving their kids to activities, if they can even afford those activities in 2023.
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this House to speak. Today I am speaking to Bill C-32, an act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 3, 2022 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022, and the fiscal update.
When I spoke on the government's last fall economic statement and fiscal update in February, I shared how frustrated the people of Flamborough—Glanbrook were feeling about the cost-of-living crisis and the housing crisis. I am sad to report that over the course of the past year, and certainly after hearing the fall economic statement that was delivered earlier, their frustration has only become worse.
Canadians wanted hope, and instead they got increased heating and grocery bills. They wanted a plan for the economy and for the recovery, and instead the PBO and other organizations predicted private sector growth will be sluggish or even worse. Canadians wanted to hear an update that would give them confidence in these uncertain economic times, and instead what the government delivered was an update that failed to address the out-of-control cost-of-living crisis. It actually adds fuel to the inflationary fire. With more government spending and more taxes, Canadians have never felt more pessimistic about their financial future.
When I spoke last winter, the inflation rate was only the worst it had been in 20 years. By the spring it was only the worst it had been in 30 years. Now it is the worst it has been in 40 years. How much more can the government expect Canadians to suffer?
I spoke recently to Mary, a senior in Waterdown, a community in my constituency. She expressed how gravely concerned she was with the rising cost of rent, utilities and groceries, and how they had risen so quickly that she is barely able to manage the basics anymore. Her exact words were, “I just manage to survive, never thought my retirement years would be so sad.”
Those words “my retirement years would be so sad” break my heart, and they should break the heart of all members of this place. Seniors like Mary have worked hard their entire lives, and they deserve to enjoy their retirement years. The reckless policies of the government are robbing them of that.
It is not just seniors that are feeling the pinch; it is also young families. A couple of months ago, at one of the fall fairs in my riding, I spoke to Will, who is a father of a young family in my constituency. His mortgage renewal is coming up in a few months, and he is very concerned. Not only is he seeing his grocery bill double, but he is also seeing the cost of fuel to get to work increase dramatically. He is now seeing his heating bills increase as winter and the cold weather start to set in. In the back of his mind, he has the fact that his mortgage is coming up for renewal. We know there are higher interest rates happening because of the inflationary spending of the government.
Out-of-control government spending has created more dollars chasing fewer goods, causing higher inflation, leading to higher interest rates. We know that tomorrow the Bank of Canada is going to announce the latest in a series of rate increases, the seventh, I believe. This is going to further increase the cost on families like Will's. It is really the cruellest tax of all.
In growing suburban Ontario communities like mine, people like Will are putting on a brave face and are trying to plow through, but they are dealing with these inflationary pressures on food, home heating and they are looking down the road at their mortgage rates as well.
We ran a survey of the people in Flamborough—Glanbrook this past fall. We asked them how the cost of living was impacting them. We already knew the answer from all of these anecdotes. Over 900 people responded and the results really told the story. Ninety-four per cent surveyed said they were feeling the financial pinch, and more than half of those were going to change their habits or hold off spending plans as a result. The pinch, of course, is not limited to people in my riding. Six in 10 Canadians across the country have said that they are feeling the impact of inflation in their daily lives.
A study out of Dalhousie University reports that a quarter of Canadians are cutting back on essentials like food, housing and utilities. We know that when people go to the grocery stores these days, they are cringing at the price of some basic items. Meat is up 7.6%. Dairy is up 10%. Bakery products are up 15%. Vegetables are up 12%. Those are the figures from a couple of months ago. We know they are probably higher today.
Food banks, as has been noted, are seeing a record number of visits, with 1.5 million Canadians visiting food banks. That is a dramatic increase. It is an all-time high. It is a shame. How much more does the Prime Minister expect Canadians to take?
People like Mary and Will cannot afford to pay their mortgage and rent, while our Prime Minister is spending $6,000 a night on hotel rooms in London. Is there a more blatant example of how out of touch the Prime Minister is? How much more can the government expect Canadians to take before they break? They are looking for hope. They are looking for strong and competent leadership.
There is a host of problems and inconsistencies throughout this bill. First of all, I do not see actions lining up with words.
The government talked about the fact that Canadian farmers grow the food that feeds the world. We know we have an abundant food supply here, but we have seen the government attack farmers and slap a fertilizer tariff on them and the carbon tax on the heating and cooling of barns and the drying of grain. The growing of those crops that feed Canada and the world are breaking their operations.
Also, in the statement they said that we have the natural resources to support our allies with energy security, which sounds great, but the Liberals have been ensuring we cannot get these resources out of the ground. Just last week we saw Germany finally give up on us and sign an agreement to import LNG from Qatar instead.
Perhaps the biggest inconsistency of all is the fact the economic update was purported to help make life more affordable for Canadians. How can we make life more affordable for Canadians when we are tripling, tripling, tripling the carbon tax and increasing other taxes as we head into winter? A Conservative motion was put forward to exempt home heating fuel from some of those taxes to bring a bit of relief. That is important to people in my constituency who heat with propane or home heating oil because there is not the natural gas infrastructure in certain parts of the riding and they do not have that option. However, the Liberal and the NDP coalition voted to defeat that motion.
If I can conclude anything from Bill C-32, it might be that the Liberals are true to their form. They will tax and spend believing that will get us out of a cost-of-living crisis. We saw $30 billion more in spending. There is perhaps a grab bag of credits to give the appearance of supporting Canadians. While we certainly support relief through the GST credit, we saw a whole bunch of other money spent. What is happening is the Liberals are taking more money out of one pocket and giving a bit back and pretending it is actually going to help people.
What is happening is Liberals are profiting from inflation. They are increasing taxes on things like home heating and food, and there is the resulting interest rate increases. One of their solutions was for people to cut their Disney+ subscription. Canadians want a better answer than that.
We know the interest on the national debt that has been racked up by the government is going to exceed in the coming years the amount of money that is spent on the Canada health transfer. We have $27 billion in interest payments this year. That is money that should be and could be spent helping farmers, families and seniors rather than gobbling up their bank accounts to pay for more government spending through taxes.
That is why a Conservative government would commit to any new spending being matched by a dollar-for-dollar equivalent in savings, just as households manage their own budgets, rather than just racking up the credit card endlessly. At the end of the day, they are paying for that plus the interest rate increases they are going to see as a result of the inflationary spending.
Instead of creating more cash, Conservatives would create more of what cash buys, more homes, more gas and more food. We certainly have all the resources in Canada to do that. We will make energy more affordable by repealing some of the anti-energy laws and getting Canadian energy out to markets so we can generate jobs and economic activity here. A tax plan is not an environment plan. It is actually a tax plan. We have an opportunity to change that.
We will also make Canada one of the better places—
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Madam Speaker, absolutely, we are opposed to inflationary spending, because what that is doing is increasing the interest rates. We are going to see that again tomorrow. People in my community who have housing prices now approaching $1.2 million on average are going to pay for that in interest rates. We know that the average homeowners in Canada are going to see, when it is time to renew their five-year mortgage, a $7,000 increase in mortgage payments. In my community, we are above the average, so people are going to see about $1,000 a month more in expense.
I think Canadians would rather pay less on their mortgage and less on interest than for the inflationary spending and policies of the government.
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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, 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, that is definitely an important component. However, when I look at all the inflationary policies this government has brought in, particularly in the latest budget statement, I think that even if it manages to recover larger amounts of money, the consequences of all the new taxes coming in the next few months and next year will be far more negative than positive.
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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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