44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 14, 2023 10:00AM
- Feb/14/23 10:32:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure in this place. Today, I want to talk about inflation and spending. I have been here for just over a year. I have driven all over Ottawa, and I still cannot find the money tree that the government seems to have in its backyard, which it finds to spend on just about everything.
Let us find out why spending matters. It drives inflation. There are two kinds of inflation. There is demand-side inflation, where there is too much demand for too few goods or, as we often hear, too much money chasing too few goods. There is also supply-side inflation, which is not enough goods to meet the demand. We have both of those in Canada.
The problem is that the government would have us believe that the only issues causing inflation are supply-side issues that are outside of Canada's borders. However, many are now pointing out that inflation is being driven by too much demand in Canada, because we have too much money chasing too few goods. That is because we extended COVID supports longer than we needed to. We have prominent Liberal members, former members of Parliament, former finance ministers and former governors of the Bank of Canada suggesting that there is too much demand in Canada.
The Bank of Canada is trying to lower demand. That is why it keeps raising interest rates. However, when one raises interest rates, it really hurts people, including those vulnerable folks who are looking for shelter.
Inflation is even worse. Inflation hurts the lowest-income people, seniors and the most vulnerable Canadians the most. Every time they go to the grocery store, they feel like they are getting squeezed. They see it every day.
One of the main drivers of inflation is energy prices. It has been happening for the last number of years. Consistently, on this side of the House, we have put forward ideas to reduce the cost of energy. If one reduces the cost or the price of the thing causing inflation, one will reduce inflation.
I talked about spending and COVID supports. The government would have us believe that this is a binary discussion, and if one does not believe in government spending, then one did not support any of the COVID supports. That is not what we have been saying on this side of the House. In fact, this side of the House supported, in the very earliest days, the government putting forward programs to help people.
However, as COVID wore on and it became clear that there was abuse and that people were receiving COVID support payments that they should not have received, including prisoners, people who were lying, fraud artists and organized crime, people said, hang on a second, maybe we should consider making some changes. Even the Auditor General recommended that the government make some changes to the process they were using.
The government said not to worry. At the end it would go back, it would audit everybody and it would recover the money. However, the cheques were cashed and the money is gone. The CRA, which is supposed to be in charge of auditing the payments, said that it is not really worth the effort to go after everybody the Auditor General identified. That seems a little unnerving.
We are talking about $32 billion that the Auditor General said should be investigated. That is for payments that went to individuals who were ineligible but who got money anyway. There are also additional billions of dollars that went to people who were eligible, because of the government's poor design of a program, who should not have been eligible. That includes corporations that paid dividends to their shareholders, and they took the wage subsidy. They also had money to repurchase shares. That was about $7 billion or $8 billion. The Canadians for Tax Fairness put out a report yesterday showing how much abuse there was of the wage subsidy by very high-earning corporations.
In addition, we gave money to students, when the economy was open, to stay home and not work. That was another $8 billion or $9 billion. We are talking about almost $50 billion of COVID support payments out of a total $200 billion that might have gone to people who should not have had it. That is like 25% of the program.
That is why we are concerned. That is why we think that the Auditor General has given the government pretty good advice when she says that it should identify, go after and recover the payments.
It will increase Canadians' confidence in the integrity of the system. If the government just hopes that we all forget about it, Canadians are not going to believe that the government is working in their best interests. In fact, we need the government to take more seriously those who abuse the system so that it ensures the integrity of the system.
Canadians' support for institutions is falling, because the institutions are failing Canadians. We cannot simply say it is going to be too hard to look at these payments or to recover the money, so it is not really worth the effort. It should always be worth the effort to make sure that we recover payments that were improperly paid to Canadians.
We could have an honest discussion about those very low-income individuals who made an honest mistake when they applied. The amount is probably one or two billion dollars, and we could have a discussion about what kind of program, repayment or amnesty would make sense.
The Auditor General has called into question some of those payments. The Parliamentary Budget Officer also identified that over 40% of all spending that happened during COVID never actually went to helping Canadians through COVID. Those are two respected, independent officers of Parliament who have called into question the government's entire COVID support plan.
In times of inflation, we should always worry about top-line government spending, because when the government spends, it competes for goods. The government is spending 25% more per year, every year, than it did pre-COVID. The government calls that fiscal restraint. I have never met somebody who increases their spending by 25% and says they are spending a lot less money than we think they are.
We also have the tightest labour market ever seen. Unemployment is at an incredible low, yet the government continues to hire employees at a blistering pace. The private sector is trying to hire employees. They want to grow their businesses, to recover from COVID, to employ people who pay taxes and who pay corporate taxes. They cannot find anybody to work.
We have hotels with entire floors shut down, because they cannot find anybody to work there. It is not that they do not have the demand. They are turning people away. However, they do not have people to work, to open the rooms, to get the revenue, to pay the taxes, to pay the labour and to grow the GDP. Instead, the government wants to hire all those individuals and have them work for the government. That is not the way to grow ourselves out of this issue.
The government said, for almost five or six years, that we have to spend money because interest rates are so low. When the government was asked what happens if interest rates go up, it said not to worry because interest rates were going to remain low for the foreseeable future. When the government was asked what would happen to the cost of servicing the debt if interest rates went up, it said that was never going to happen.
Just this year, the government is going to spend $43 billion a year servicing and paying interest on the debt. Last year, it was $24 billion. Do members know how much we will spend on health care transfers to provinces next year? It will be $45 billion. We are going to spend almost as much money on servicing the debt as we will on transfers to the provinces for health care.
Everybody is wondering where we could find more money for health care. How about we spend less money on interest on the debt so that we would have more money for the things that Canadians rely on. However, that means we would have to spend less money on the things that are not important. The government has so many priorities that it has absolutely none at all.
The other issue is that the government does not need more revenue. The government has decided to continue to increasing taxes on things like the excise tax, which is a great example. The excise tax is going up on alcohol, beer, spirits and wine. It is going to cost industries tens of millions of dollars, which may even increase the price of those libations that members of Parliament and Canadians enjoy.
The government is increasing the excise tax because it linked it to inflation. However, when it decided to link that tax to inflation, no one believed that inflation was going to be 7%. All reasonable people are saying to take a pause on raising that tax. We do not need to continually hurt people as they try to purchase a six-pack of beer, a bottle of wine or a bottle of their favourite spirit.
The government does not need the revenue. It is making more money than it has ever made before. It is breaking records every day. The government needs to reduce its spending, to make sure that it is not taking on as much debt, to reduce the interest cost on the debt and to make sure that it does not compete with the private sector.
We need to make sure that we reduce inflation and to make sure Canadians can afford to live in this country.
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- Feb/14/23 10:55:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Trudeau legacy of the 1970s and 1980s was a disastrous inflation crisis, energy crisis and fiscal crisis that was terrible for Canadians at the time over those 15 years when that government ran deficits in 14 out of 15 years. A generation later, it led to $35 billion in cuts to transfers for health care, social services and education under the Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments. It was $35 billion in cuts because of the disastrous Trudeau economic policies of the 1970s and 1980s.
Is the member concerned today that, at a starting point, the $4.5-billion broken promise on a Canada mental health transfer, a promise her own party made in the last election and cannot afford to keep, is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of things that will have to be cut for Canadians because of the disastrous economic policies of her government?
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- Feb/14/23 12:59:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was hoping that the Bloc would have had an opposition day motion based on health care transfers. I think this is the first time in a generation when we have had such a long-term commitment toward a truly national health care system. It has just been signed off on, with the provinces now agreeing to the principles of the $198-plus billion over the next 10 years. There is a history of fiscal transfers. We have the highest number of federal dollars going toward health care in the history of Canada.
The tax point shift was made back in, I believe, the late 1970s, toward tax points versus actual health dollars. I am very happy to say that, because of this particular agreement, we are going to see a permanent, solid presence of health care throughout the country. There will be more transparency and accountability and a higher sense of a national program, which I think all Canadians will be very proud of.
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- Feb/14/23 1:02:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here debating the opposition motion moved by the Conservative Party.
The motion focuses on affordability. This is of the utmost importance to all Canadians at this time. It is important for people around the world because inflation is a global issue. It affects all of the world's economies.
First, I would like to talk about some government programs that target low-income Canadians. The rest of my speech will focus on issues with the competitiveness of our businesses.
In her fall economic update, the Minister of Finance created a GST credit for low-income Canadians. It is a temporary measure, but it is very important to those who need help now.
There is the national child care program. We introduced a bill in the House to ensure that this program will remain in place for future generations. That is one way to help families with children save money. It is also a way to create spaces for rural communities, remote communities and all Canadians.
I would also like to mention the 10% increase in old age security for those over 75 years of age. That is another measure put in place by the government to help vulnerable people.
Lastly, there is the subsidy to help renters pay their rent.
We have a number of programs in place that really speak to affordability. We know it is a tough question, and it is ultimately about making sure that the government is there to help support, in a targeted way, without adding to inflation.
I will speak to the opposition motion.
The questions around affordability are fine to raise, but the way the motion reads, of course, it is not designed for any member on this side of the House to support it whatsoever. It is framed in a way that any issue, any challenges of the day, are simply at the foot of the government. I want to talk about some of the elements that I thought the member for Calgary Forest Lawn missed in his opposition day motion.
There is not one word on competitiveness. I really think that we have seen the government step up, and the member for Winnipeg North talked about the fact that the government has been here to help support with additional money. However, it looks as though those bilaterals are going to be coming into place over the next couple of months.
We, as a government and a country, have to respond to the Inflation Reduction Act. The Americans have put down a significant package that is going to, frankly, drive investment decisions for clean energy for generations to come. Our country and our government would be unwise to not do something to respond to that.
I guess my questions to those across the way would be these: Do my Conservative colleagues not agree with that type of spending? Should the government not be moving in that direction? There is no mention of that whatsoever and no mention of competitiveness. This will be a lens that I will talk about in my remaining time.
Yes, right now, we are spending on health. We are going to spend on clean energy transition. However, we have to get more creative on things that do not cost money that could drive benefits for stakeholder groups and benefits for the competitiveness of the Canadian economy, and I intend to give members a few of those here today.
One that I have talked about before is the idea of a presumptive approval. Every day, Health Canada regulates products from hockey helmets to fertilizers to crop protection products. However, certainly on new products that are coming to the market, applicants are usually coming with an approval in hand from larger jurisdictions, because the reality is that a company that makes some of these products is going to start to try to get regulatory approval in the United States or in Europe before it comes to Canada. They are just larger markets and the smarter play for companies.
Usually applicants arrive at Health Canada with an application in hand from a trusted jurisdiction. I would submit that, if the United States goes through a process to grant approval of a particular product, we can trust that was a rigorous scientific approval and not some kangaroo approval from a jurisdiction that may not take those issues seriously. It is the same thing in Europe, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the United Kingdom. I could name certain jurisdictions that I think have that alignment, yet we do not have an expedited model where an applicant can get a presumptive approval to allow that product to be available to Canadian farmers, or whatever the case may be, through Health Canada.
There is a way we can close the gap by simply providing the presumptive approval based on the science of other jurisdictions and go through the regulatory process. If there are any issues along the way, a red flag could be raised and that presumptive approval could be dismissed until such time as that the application is in good standing. There is one example of a regulatory innovation that we could use that would drive competitiveness in this country.
I want to talk about streamlined approval of major projects. I have spoken in the House at great length about my requisite concern about the need to drive major projects that would focus on our decarbonization and our future. That can be different things to different people, in the types of industries and technologies we can use.
When I look at the mining approval process in this country, the Minister of Natural Resources himself recognizes that is a 12-year to 15-year process in some cases. We need the critical minerals. Canada is going to be relied upon globally to meet that. Yes, this government, and I commend it for it, has been putting money on the table to help drive innovation, to help work on processes, but at the same time, there are some things we could do to help streamline those approval processes without compromising our values. It is easier said than done, I understand, but otherwise we are going to be facing a situation where we do not have the critical minerals to drive our decarbonized future.
I have a couple of suggestions on that. It is no mistake that I have been a strong proponent of nuclear energy. I have talked about it often in this House. I think it is going to be needed to drive our future. Right now, under the Impact Assessment Act, there is a threshold. If the project is over 300 megawatts, it goes to the Impact Assessment Agency. If it is under, it goes with the Nuclear Safety Commission.
We should be leaving the determination of whether or not projects are safe to the actual experts and deal with a regulator that is recognized around the world. Let us either increase that threshold or leave nuclear projects that are being contemplated, SMR or otherwise, to the nuclear regulator. That is one suggestion I have that would drive competitiveness in the important decarbonization that has to happen for our clean energy future.
The next suggestion concerns provincial approvals and federal approvals. How can we find a one-window approach where, if the Impact Assessment Agency and DFO are asking for the same thing, as well as transport and other agencies, how do we not allow that to be a duplicative process and just allow one agency to take the lead? That is something we need to do a better job on. It is not necessarily an absolute critique of this government, but it is something that I want this government to take notice of and that we all as parliamentarians should be pushing for, because that matters for our clean energy future. That matters if we are genuinely serious about decarbonization and getting emissions down. We have to seriously focus on these types of issues.
The last suggestion involves transport regulations. I have had conversations with agriculture interests. The government just introduced ELD, which is an electronic logging device. It is to make sure that we have safety for truck drivers in this country. I absolutely agree with the premise of what we are doing. However, there is a need for Transport Canada to provide a policy clarification for truck drivers. Although they might be at the very upper echelon of what they are allowed to drive in this country, if there is an adverse weather delay and animal safety is in question, we need some clarification that truck drivers would be able to finish perhaps even 30 minutes of driving as opposed to waiting eight hours on the side of a highway.
These are some of the examples among the many out there that we all need to be focused on to drive in the days ahead. It matters for our competitiveness in this country, and I really want to see all of us talking more about these types of things.
The Conservatives talk about the capping of spending. I am okay with looking at fiscal restraint and where we can find efficiencies in the government sector, but we have heard very clearly that the leader of the official opposition supposedly would not vote down any type of measures that we are putting on the provinces with health. They talk about capping spending. Would they not meet the moment right now in the spending that will be needed to drive our transition to a lower-carbon economy and to make sure that we have a place in the industrial revolution that is happening in relation to clean tech? That has yet to be determined. They like to talk out of both sides.
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- Feb/14/23 1:13:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member talked about inflation. As I mentioned, it is a global challenge. There are a number of reasons that are driving that, including demographics in the western world, supply chains and some of the resulting impacts of the war in Ukraine.
Some of it, a small portion, is going to be related to government spending, but that member opposite was the same member who, in the 43rd Parliament, was calling on the government to do more to spend and help support businesses during that time, so it is easy to be an armchair critic on the other side and suggest somehow the government did too much. When we look at how the economy has rebounded and the amount of people who are working in this country today, we see I believe somewhere around 800,000 more Canadians working today than prior to the pandemic. Our job numbers are strong.
We are still in a strong fiscal position, as it relates to our G7 comparator countries. On the CRA question, because I want to address that, yes, CRA has said that it will respond and it will make sure there is an ability to recoup that money. We have to do that reasonably in a way that actually makes sense with the resources we have, but the government has been very clear that this will be a policy moving forward.
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- Feb/14/23 2:22:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that they think it is normal to pay $6,000 for a night at a hotel. After eight years under this Prime Minister, Canadians are worse off. Inflation is eating away at their wallets. Today we are debating a motion calling on the government to cap its spending, stop wasting resources and eliminate the taxes and deficits that are causing the cost-of-living crisis.
Will the government take the necessary fiscal and budgetary measures to get the country out of this disastrous inflationary crisis?
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- Feb/14/23 4:32:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when our Conservative leader first spoke before the fall economic statement was introduced last November, he made two very clear and simple demands on behalf of our Conservative Party.
First, we wanted the Liberal government to stop the taxes. This included cancelling all planned tax hikes and the tripling of the carbon tax. Fast-forward a few months to February, and it is clear that the current Liberal government is on track to do the exact opposite. Taxes went up on Canadians this past January, and this April it is only going to get worse.
Late last year, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation sounded the alarm about five incoming Liberal tax hikes in 2023. These hikes include increases that Canadians will see at the gas pumps, an alcohol escalator tax, increases to the Canada pension plan, hikes to employment insurance contributions and increases to payroll taxes for anyone making $40,000 or more this year.
This April 1, gasoline is set to go up by 14¢ per litre, and alcohol taxes are automatically set to rise by 6.3%. This is no cruel April Fool's joke. This is the damage done by bad Liberal fiscal policy. Locally, across Niagara, these taxes, particularly the alcohol escalator tax, will punish many wineries, craft breweries and distilleries, as well as anyone who enjoys consuming these wonderful Canadian-made products while visiting Niagara, which is the number one leisure tourism destination in all of Canada.
The second demand of our Conservative leader was for the Liberal government to stop the spending. Any new spending by Liberal ministers in the government must be matched by an equivalent savings. The government must cut wasteful spending and stop the inflationary deficits that drive up the cost of everything for Canadians. Again, fast-forward to this month, and the Liberals are failing to make good on this demand.
In fact, as time goes on, more and more wasteful and reckless Liberal spending is being uncovered. In the fall, there was the $6,000 luxurious hotel room that our Prime Minister stayed in for a one-night stay in Europe. Then, there was the $54 million wasted on the disastrous ArriveCAN app. Recently, the Auditor General blasted the CRA for its lack of rigour in trying to identify and recoup a minimum of $27.4 billion in suspected overpayments of emergency aid benefits, including $15.5 billion for the Canada emergency wage subsidy.
In response to the comment from the Auditor General, the government's own CRA commissioner had the gall to inform Canadians that “it wouldn't be worth the effort” to review and try to recover every dollar of the $15.5 billion in CEWS overpayments. That insufficient response from the CRA commissioner did not get by our Parliamentary Budget Officer, who recently said it was “a bit disconcerting when you hear that and the government is faced with a deficit.”
For these reasons and more, Conservatives are asking the House today to call on the Liberal government to cap spending, cut waste, fire high-priced consultants and eliminate inflationary deficits and taxes that have caused a cost-of-living crisis for Canadians.
Simply put, after eight years of the current Liberal government, Canadians pay more today for their goods and services and are getting less. Groceries, gas, home heating and more are getting more expensive by the day because of the reckless Liberal spending habits. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, the cost of groceries is up almost 11%. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, half of Canadians are cutting back on groceries. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, 20% of Canadians are skipping meals.
In Niagara, a recent report found that almost 39,000 people are being assisted by local food banks across the region. Those serving on the front lines are witnessing people struggling who have never struggled before. Under these deteriorating conditions, Canadians work harder to try to get ahead, but they take home less money because of higher costs for the things they need to buy and the higher taxes they will have to pay.
Just yesterday, in fact, we had new data provided by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, which reported that nearly four in 10 Canadians are now borrowing money to pay for groceries, shelter and other daily expenses. According to the report, “many Canadians are facing the biggest financial challenges of their lives. More are borrowing money to cover their day-to-day expenses, including by using high-cost loans.” It is no wonder Canadians feel like everything is broken and they have lost control. Many are falling behind, even as they try hard to get ahead.
It comes as no surprise that the same reckless Liberal spending habits, which have played a big role in driving up inflation, have also caused our national debt to soar. Debt interest payments have become so big under the Liberals that the costs are projected to be larger than what the federal government spends on the budget for the Department of National Defence. We should remember that the next time we have to scramble our outdated and under-equipped CF-18s and watch the Americans shoot down airborne threats over our territory.
It is getting so bad that some former Liberals are finally starting to acknowledge it. One random Liberal is former finance minister Bill Morneau. He has said that the government probably spent too much during COVID. Meanwhile, former Liberal deputy prime minister and finance minister John Manley said that the Liberal Prime Minister's fiscal policy is making it harder to contain inflation.
There are direct consequences to the Liberal government's recklessly spending the cupboards bare. Will the government be able to live up to the expectations it set for its new federal tourism growth strategy? The tourism minister has spent the last several months asking the industry to think big on ideas to expedite economic recovery from the devastating impact of COVID-19, yet fear is now beginning to grow in the tourism community that the Liberal government is once again failing to understand that the industry is still in recovery mode. It appears that, once again, the Liberal government is setting itself up to over-promise and under-deliver. That is a great shame for tourism communities across the country, such as mine in Niagara, which welcomes visitors from around the world.
As well, what is to happen to the wine sector support program, which was put in place because of the Liberal government's ineptitude on trade policy? The two-year, $166-million program has ended, yet the industry has asked for it to be extended, and there have been no updates about its renewal. Last year's budget showed that the government would raise $390 million over five years in new revenue by now applying the excise tax to 100% Canadian-made wines. Where are those funds going?
For months, Conservatives have been warning the government that its out-of-control spending would lead to an increase in interest rates. The government responded by telling Canadians not to worry and to go ahead and take out big loans since interest rates would remain low for a long time and there would not be any negative consequences. Well, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, 45% of variable rate mortgage holders now say they will have to sell or vacate their homes in less than nine months due to the current interest rate levels.
After eight years of the Liberal government, everything feels broken, and Canadians are having a harder time not only getting by, but simply hoping to try to get ahead. After eight years of this Liberal recklessness, Canadians have to work harder, work longer and even work multiple jobs just to take home less earnings and to get by.
Enough is enough. While Liberals are expecting Canadians to pay for their reckless spending habits, Canadians can count on Conservatives to provide them with the sound financial planning and path ahead when they elect us into government after the next federal election.
Canadians must realize that as the Liberals make more and more promises for a better tomorrow to distract us from the issues of today, none of the problems they have created, which Canadians now face, are getting fixed. Canadians need real solutions to these real problems that they are facing right now, and only a Conservative government can deliver on this for Canadians.
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- Feb/14/23 6:31:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the narrative, although I do not think there was a response at all to my question.
In fact, with respect to the narrative about the Parliamentary Budget Office and how much Canadians are paying, I think he should read that report, because it shows that in my province alone the net fiscal economic effects are over $2,000 on average per family. I encourage him to read it, and to actually read it on the floor of the House of Commons, but I know he will not do that.
I know the narrative here. It is that we are doing better, that we are charging Canadians more, that they are paying more for everything, but that we should not worry about it because it is not the government's fault, but the fault lies somewhere else in the world.
We are moving jobs offshore consistently in this country. The reality that the current government seems to try to skid over here is that carbon taxes, if applied on their own, are designed to be inflationary. They make everything cost more. That is their effect. If the member would like to address how this is the reality versus what the intended outcome is, I would be happy to hear it, but right now the end is meeting exactly what it is supposed to be doing.
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- Feb/14/23 6:32:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Canadians can count on our government to continue supporting those who need it the most while carefully managing our finances and protecting our environment. We have a responsible fiscal plan, the lowest net debt and deficit in the G7, and an AAA credit rating. We have created more than 800,000 jobs since the pandemic.
As we prepare for the federal budget, Canadians can rest assured that we will continue to position Canada for success while ensuring that our most vulnerable get the support they need and keeping our finances on a sustainable, long-term fiscal track.
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