44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 1, 2023 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I listened to my Conservative colleague's speech, and I must admit that he placed a great deal of emphasis on the importance of having a balanced budget and sound finances. I do not disagree. I think he will be happy to hear me say that. I am in no way opposed to a balanced budget. On the contrary, it is a good thing to have a balanced budget in many circumstances.
After listening to him, though, I get the impression that things are all doom and gloom, that everyone is on the verge of bankruptcy come tomorrow morning and that, if this continues, the government is going to hand the keys to Parliament over to the banks.
However, if we look at the budget closely, there is a nice chart showing Canada's debt forecast for the future, and it would seem that, by the year 2055, Canada—the federal government—will be debt free. In the meantime, local governments, such as provinces that would like to become countries, are burdened with debt, while the federal government has plenty of financial leeway.
I would like to know whether my colleague is concerned about the fact that the federal system we are stuck with is financially suffocating the government of Quebec, in particular, as well as the other provinces. That is where the money is most needed.
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Mr. Speaker, the federal government often touts the fact that its federal debt is in not too bad of shape vis-à-vis other OECD countries or other G7 countries. The member is absolutely correct that when we take a total of our total sovereign and sub-sovereign debt, we are in trouble.
I do not mean to sound apocalyptic, but I did start my adult career in the early eighties and I remember interest rates. As a result of spiralling inflation, they got out of control as a result of spending. I am concerned. That is why my speech was as it was. The member is absolutely correct on the combination of debt that Canadians face and, more important, what the results of that will be for our kids and grandkids.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to stand up and speak to Bill C-47, the Liberals' budget bill. Certainly, I have had an opportunity to speak with my constituents with respect to the concerns that they have about this Liberal legislation. The thing that has been raised the most is that, going into the budget, they were told by the Liberal finance minister that there would be some fiscal restraint. Maybe for the first time in the Liberals' eight years in power, there would be a commitment to fiscal common sense. However, that certainly did not happen in this budget; we now see a $43-billion deficit. If that is the Liberals' definition of fiscal restraint, I would hate to see what happens when they turn on the taps and say that they are going to spend unreservedly.
When it comes to Canadians, the Liberals are now asking every single Canadian family to contribute an additional $4,300 to the Liberal government coffers to pay for their spending. I want Canadians across the country to have a different perspective on what the Liberals are asking them to do. I am asking Canadians to consider themselves shareholders in the corporation of Canada. Every single Canadian is a shareholder in this country. When the Liberals say they are taking on this debt so that Canadians do not have to, it is extremely misleading. The main funder of this corporation of Canada is the Canadian taxpayer. Therefore, if I am the Liberal Minister of Finance and I am asking Canadians to fund our $43-billion deficit spending with an additional $4,300 per family, as the shareholder of that company, the first question I am going to ask is this: “What is my return on investment? What is my ROI on an additional call-out for cash from the Liberal government?”
If the Liberal government has to explain to Canadians what their ROI is on that additional tax grab, it is a pretty tough sell. We Canadians have a $30-billion-plus Infrastructure Bank that has not built a single project. We have chaos at the airports. We cannot get a passport if we want one. People might not be able to get their questions on their tax returns answered by the CRA. The carbon tax is going up, and we are going to have skyrocketing inflation and food prices. We have lost the respect of our most trusted trading partners. We cannot fund our own military and defend ourselves or respond to crises around the world. Other than that, Canadians' investment is well spent with the Liberal government in the corporation of Canada.
How would any common-sense Canadian feel that this has been a good return on their investment? I would say that there is not a single Canadian who would say that the current Liberal government has been a good steward of Canadian tax dollars. I would say there is no government in Canadian history that has spent so much to achieve so little. I do not think there is a Canadian government in history that has spent so much on the bureaucracy and the public service to see it come to a state of such dysfunction. I do not think there is a Canadian government in history that has been so committed to taxing Canadians into submission.
I do not think there is any better example than the Liberals' carbon tax. At a time of 40-year record-high inflation and a struggling economy coming out of COVID and the pandemic, no other government in the world was increasing taxes through a carbon tax. Our number one trading partner, the United States, does not have a carbon tax; the carbon tax is putting us, our farmers, our ranchers, our food producers, our manufacturers and Canadian industry at a stark competitive disadvantage.
What makes it more frustrating for those Canadians who are being asked to contribute more to the Liberals' out-of-control spending is that the Liberal carbon tax has been proven to be a sham. The latest reports confirm that the Liberals have not met a single environmental emissions target they have set for themselves. Now the Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed what we have pretty much known all along, which is that the carbon tax costs Canadians more than they get back from the Liberals' sham of a rebate. In fact, it is going to cost every Canadian family and certainly every Alberta family about $1,500 a year. What a surprise that Canadians are not better off paying a higher tax. I would ask the Liberal government to show me any tax that has made Canadians better off.
We knew this when the Liberals brought in the carbon tax rebate for farmers that was supposed to make farmers whole. It was going to be revenue-neutral. However, we have now seen the numbers, and farmers get about 15% back in the carbon tax rebate from Bill C-8. This is nothing new.
The Liberals have been telling Canadians for years that they get more money back than they pay in the carbon tax through rebates, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer made it glaringly clear that this is not the case. It is costing Canadians money. Rather than admit their mistake and say that the carbon tax is a scam, the Liberals are doubling down. They increased the carbon tax again on April 1, and on July 1, it will be imposed on Atlantic Canadians: happy Canada Day.
What the NDP-Liberal carbon tax coalition does not understand is that there are very real consequences to these types of decisions. For example, when the carbon tax is tripled by 2030, it will cost an average Canadian farm $150,000 a year in carbon taxes alone. It is going to put the financial viability of Canadian agriculture and agri-food in jeopardy. It makes us uncompetitive. We already had the most expensive harvest in Canadian history last year, and this is only going to add to those input costs.
For the average Canadian, the consequences are very simple. Higher carbon taxes mean higher production costs and higher prices at the grocery store. Every single Canadian is paying the price for the carbon tax coalition, and they are paying for it at the grocery store when they buy bread, pasta, fruit, vegetables, meat, milk and eggs. They are paying for it over and over again.
I had a constituent family with four kids tell me their grocery bill went up $700 a month. I do not know very many Canadian families that could afford that. Again, we are seeing the consequences of that when one out of five Canadian families is skipping meals because they cannot afford groceries. They cannot afford to put food on the table for their families. They are having to make that decision to pay their mortgage and their heat and power bills by skipping a meal.
We had the CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto come to the agriculture committee a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about food security. His comment was that their numbers in March quadrupled from what they would normally see in visitors to the food bank. He called the numbers they are seeing “startling” and “horrific”. He has been quoted as saying, “we are in a crisis. The Daily Food Bank and food banks [in Toronto] are at a breaking point”. There are very real consequences when we increase costs and taxes on Canadians and food production. The numbers we are seeing at the food bank are a direct consequence of that.
Canada's food price index is showing that groceries for a family of four are going to go up another $1,000 in 2023. Unfortunately, it is only going to get worse if the Liberal government continues with the policies it is imposing. A recent study that came out last week from Dalhousie University is bracing Canadians for even higher food prices. The study says that, by 2030, the average food price is going to go up 35%. Bread will go up 35%; dairy, 40%; fruit and vegetables, 29%; and meat, 45%. That is what may happen if the Liberals continue on this ideological policy drive that they are on. Increased carbon taxes are increasing production costs, regulation and red tape on transportation and supply chain, which means direct costs to Canadians.
The solution to higher food prices and higher food costs is simple, and one of the steps the Liberals could take is eliminating the carbon tax. It is not meeting any environmental targets that they are setting themselves, and it is certainly causing more pain than anything else. When the carbon tax is tripled, it may cost an average Alberta family $2,200 a year.
In conclusion, I ask the NDP-Liberal carbon tax coalition to reflect on the hurt and the pain they are putting on Canadians. In fact, the NDP used to be the party of Canadian farmers. I wonder why it has lost that support over the years. Maybe they should take some time to reflect on what happened.
We cannot support this budget. As Conservatives, we are going to stand up for Canadian families and affordability, not the ideological policy that is hurting Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, now we are at the point where members of the NDP benches are coming out and cheerleading the government. It is not enough to just be a part of a coalition agreement where those members support the government; they are even bailing it out in questions and comments and in speeches. I wish that the member and his caucus would find their opposition roots and think whether they were elected to support the government or not.
With respect to his question, if he listened to my speech, it was only 10 minutes, and I could only say so much. I focused on the deception of the government, and I certainly think its track record and its numbers are nothing to be proud of. It promised that the debt-to-GDP ratio would never increase. It is increasing. The Liberals cannot be trusted on anything they say. They should be opposed.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague across the way for his intervention. It was enjoyable to hear him speak. With his experience and knowing what he knows, right off the top he talked about how the Liberals lost their way with that fiscal anchor. We have a debt so high right now that people are using food banks, as he mentioned.
However, the point I want to hone in on is child care. As the critic for child care, I think he brought up a very interesting point we are working on at committee right now, which is access.
This budget does not address the fact that thousands of families cannot access affordable child care. This is hurting women everywhere. They cannot go back to work because they cannot find child care. What are his thoughts on the budget and how they are allocating money to child care?
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Madam Speaker, I am tying it in. For my colleague from Timmins—James Bay, this is very important, and the way I opened up my speech was to discuss the $13.5 million that was budgeted. Perhaps that was not enough. Why are we actually here dealing with this today? With all due respect, when the budget does talk about $50 million, at foreign interference, everything encompassed in that, including what happens to individual members in this House, is germane. I said what I have to say and was coming to the end of those comments anyway.
I will move now to the budget itself. We have cumulative spending, and I am quoting from one of my Nova Scotia colleagues who did a great deal of work. We are looking here at the national debt rising in the next five years to, in my view, an untenable level. The interest on the national debt will rise from $44 billion today to $50 billion in five years, if the interest rate calculations from the Liberal government are actually correct.
I did a quick search on how much the federal government sends to the provinces in health care transfers. According to a CBC article I reviewed briefly, $49.1 billion is going to be put in health care transfers. We are at the point now where we are putting forward the same amount in federal health care transfers than we are in servicing our debt. I think about that and about how it is problematic on so many different levels.
One of the reasons it is problematic is because the debt has doubled under the current government. When we are talking about how much interest we are paying, so much of it really does lie at the feet of the Prime Minister, because the Prime Minister has done so much when it comes to our debt. This is something I am concerned about.
I am also concerned about inflation, obviously. I was reading about heartbreaking situations. People were talking to me through newsletters by writing back saying that they are a senior who cannot afford groceries. Somebody in his early fifties wrote to me that he cannot afford a condo.
Inflation is a reality. I know the government has finally acknowledged that, but what took a long time was to acknowledge its role in the inflationary fire. I am not sure the government has fully acknowledged that to this day. The government will say it is going to give this or give that. The problem is the price of housing has gone up so high, the price of rent has gone up so quickly and the price of groceries has gone up so substantially that government assistance is meaningless.
In my riding of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, I think of people who are paying probably $2,000 for a one-bedroom suite. That is what a whole house used to go for. That is what inflation has led to, and that is part of why we have a problem.
The doubling of the national debt is something we cannot overlook. This is also a confidence issue that gives me pause as to why I will not be supporting the government, because I do not have confidence in the government. I do not have confidence in the government's numbers. I do not have confidence food will be more affordable.
One of my colleagues spoke not long ago about the carbon tax and the impact it is having on affordability. The reason that is so contentious is not just because of its impact on affordability, it is also because of the fact the government has missed every single target.
I obviously have much more to say, but I see my time is up and I will answer any questions from my colleagues at this time.
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Madam Speaker, the point I was trying to make was not that we are spending too much on health care. The point I was trying to make is that health care is one of the most pivotal needs in this country. Health care, housing and cost of living are what my constituents are telling me about. What I was trying to draw to the attention of the House and my hon. colleague is the fact that we are now spending as much money servicing the debt, the debt that the NDP is voting for, as we are on health care, and that is problematic.
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