44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 5, 2023 11:00AM
- Jun/5/23 2:20:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what is irresponsible are policies that drive up inflation and interest rates at a time when Canadian consumers are carrying the highest debt load in the G7. The fact is, consumers have the highest levels of debt. The total debt of all consumers in Canada is greater than the Canadian economy.
The inflation the minister is causing and admits to causing with her inflationary spending will drive up interest rates on the backs of these same indebted consumers, potentially leading to a crisis.
Will the Minister of Finance balance the budget in order to reduce inflation and interest rates before there is a crisis?
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- Jun/5/23 2:21:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it was just six months ago that the minister promised a balanced budget by the year 2027. She said that deficits fuel inflation. The former finance minister John Manley, a Liberal, said that while the Bank of Canada was slamming on the brakes of inflation with higher rates, the government was slamming the gas with higher spending. This could cause the whole engine to blow when all that mortgage debt Canadians hold comes up for renewal unless the rates come down.
Therefore, will she act now to put in place a plan to balance the budget to bring down inflation and interest rates?
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- Jun/5/23 2:23:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what is truly reckless is driving up inflation and interest rates on Canadian consumers who are the most indebted in the entire G7. In fact, the combined consumer debt is almost bigger than the entire Canadian economy. When the monster mortgages that Canadians took out, with the advice of the government back in 2021-22, come into higher rates for renewal there could be a massive mortgage meltdown.
Therefore, will the finance minister do what she promised only six months, and that is to stop putting fuel on the inflationary fire, balance the budget to bring down inflation and interest rates, yes or no?
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- Jun/5/23 2:31:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the finance minister can continue to lecture Canadians, but that will not pay their bills. She can continue to pretend like everything is fine, but that does not change the fact that people are hurting, and they are hurting because of her inflationary deficits, the tax increases and the broken promises of her boss's failed economic track record.
She said that she would balance the budget. She said that the debt ratio would go down. She said that there would be no more out-of-control spending. She did not keep her word. She does not answer questions in the House. Why would anybody trust anything she says?
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- Jun/5/23 2:34:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives will continue to block the Liberal-NDP government from piling on an extra $4,200 of debt on the backs of struggling Canadians.
The finance minister's deficits are continuing to fuel inflation, driving up the cost of everything, and driving more Canadians to food banks than ever before. Her inflationary spending made housing more unaffordable, and rents and mortgages have doubled because of the government's failed policies.
When will the finance minister finally show some responsibility and balance the budget so interest rates can come down and Canadians can finally afford to live and heat their homes?
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- Jun/5/23 2:50:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on July 1, the Liberal government is introducing a second carbon tax, an additional money grab from the pockets of cash-strapped Canadian families. With people already struggling to put food on the table, keep the lights on and make rent, how can the government justify yet another hurdle for them to overcome?
Running historic deficits and racking up reckless debt may be desirable for the government, but for many Canadians it is not an option. Will the government do the right thing and cancel its planned carbon tax increases?
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- Jun/5/23 5:08:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let me be very clear. What Conservatives are blocking is this Liberal-NDP government piling another 4,200 dollars' worth of debt on to the struggling backs of hard-working Canadians. That is what we will continue to block.
We have two simple asks. The Liberal-NDP government needs to lower the deficit and lower the inflation. We see nine out of 10 young people blocked out of home ownership, and we see mortgages and rents going up. That is because these two parties got together and put Canadians further into debt than any government before them combined, which raised the interest rates. Today, we have a housing crisis along with a crisis of cost of living. It is because of the failed policies of this government.
Conservatives will continue to stand up for Canadians, make sure that we lower the price and bring it home for them.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise to speak on behalf of the people of northern Saskatchewan. Debates such as this on Bill C-47 are good opportunities for members of Parliament to bring their own unique backgrounds and perspectives to the House. As a former accountant and mayor, members can imagine that I have dealt with a few budgets and many numbers in my day. I want to spend the first few minutes tonight talking about a few of these numbers, some very big numbers.
In 2015, when the Liberals were first elected, Canada's national debt was $612 billion. This budget projects Canada's debt to be $1.22 trillion by next March, which is $81,000 per Canadian household, and it will reach $1.3 trillion by 2028. A simple fact is that the Prime Minister has accumulated more debt in eight years than all of Canada's previous prime ministers combined.
How did we get here? In 2015, the total expenditures of the government were $280 billion. This budget again calls for billions of dollars in new spending. The Prime Minister simply cannot help himself. This past year, total expenditures were $480 billion, and this budget projects to start at $497 billion and rise to $557 billion by 2027-28. That is an average of $526 billion in each of the next five years. That is also $246 billion per year or 88% greater than expenditures were in 2015.
If this is what the finance minister meant when she said, “we will review and reduce government spending, because that is the responsible thing to do”, I would hate to see what the irresponsible thing looks like.
I have a couple more numbers. Canada will have accumulated over $700 billion of new debt under the Prime Minister by 2028. As projected, the cost of interest on that debt will rise to over $50 billion per year. That is more than a 100% increase over 2021 and 2022, and it would then become about 10% of the total expenditures of the government. If I had run my accounting practice for the little City of Meadow Lake the way the Liberal government has run Canada's finances, I would have been out of business and run out of office.
Let us consider some promises made in 2015. First, the Liberal Party said it would run small deficits and return Canada's finances back to balance in 2019. I hate to break it to the members opposite, but not only did the Prime Minister overspend this promise by about $700 billion, but the budget was never balanced and there is no plan to ever balance it. It is no wonder that record numbers of Canadians no longer trust their government institutions.
Second, the finance minister talked a lot about the declining debt-to-GDP ratio. This was her fiscal anchor. She said, “This is a line we shall not cross. It will ensure that our finances remain sustainable.” That sounds like another promise. I hate to once again break it to colleagues opposite, but the debt-to-GDP ratio has risen every year since the government was first elected in 2015 and is projected to rise again in the coming year. When the Prime Minister and finance minister make promises about debt and deficits, forgive me if I do not hold my breath.
Sometimes one must invest in things to be successful, so it is important to measure what one gets in return for choosing debt and increasing spending. Let us consider the state of Canada after eight years of out-of-control Liberal spending and inflationary deficits. Food price inflation is at a 40-year high. Nearly half of Canadians feel they are less than $200 from insolvency. One in five Canadians is skipping meals to reduce the cost of food, and 1.5 million people used food banks in a single month. The average cost of housing, both to rent and purchase, has doubled since 2015. This is the record of the Liberal government and the measures it is proposing in budget 2023 will, in fact, make the situation worse for Canadians by pouring another $67 billion of new deficit spending fuel on the flames of inflation.
I am very proud of coming from northern Saskatchewan. I believe it is an area that is a very good benchmark to measure how Canada's economy is performing. It is a region that has many important sectors of our economy: mining, forestry, agriculture, oil and gas, tourism, etc. It is also home to a unique cross-section of communities and people, communities and people that, frankly, should be thriving. Instead, everywhere I visit when I go home, people speak about how frustrated and desperate they are with the current economic situation.
Municipalities are struggling. The cost of much-needed infrastructure projects has ballooned over the last few years. Whether it be upgrading a sewer line, building a recreation complex or improving a street, community leaders are being tasked to do more with less. The result is that not only do they have to do the heavy lifting for their people, but the conditions under which they are operating keep getting worse due to the economic policies of the NDP-Liberal coalition.
These same policies are negatively impacting small businesses in northern Saskatchewan. This winter, I was talking to a business owner. He supplies people living in remote and rural communities with home heating fuel. He described to me the difficult position he was in due to the rising cost of this home heating fuel. His customers were either being forced to buy very small amounts, or they were pleading with him to extend credit until they could pay. They were having to choose between feeding their families or living without heat in the middle of a northern Saskatchewan winter, and he was having to choose between possibly losing money or seeing these families live without heat. That is the choice that this small business owner was facing because of the NDP-Liberal coalition nightmare.
Small business owners are also continually telling me how the carbon tax disproportionately affects rural and remote areas like northern Saskatchewan. This is becoming a very serious situation for them. Not only are they dealing with a labour shortage crisis, but due to the rising carbon tax they are forced to increase prices. Now the costly coalition is adding a second carbon tax that will ultimately add 61¢ per litre to the cost of fuel.
Everything, everywhere in northern Saskatchewan must be trucked. There is no other option. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, this will cost the average household in Saskatchewan $2,840 per year. Increasing taxes at a time when people are struggling to get by is not a recipe for economic success. Is it any wonder that the people I talk to are fed up?
That anger can also be felt when I talk to farmers back home. The government members seem to forget that agriculture is the economic backbone of Canada. A stabilizing sector and one that provides the food we all rely on deserves better from its government. Let us imagine being the Minister of Agriculture in Canada and voting against Bill C-234, a bill that would give farmers carbon tax exemptions to produce the food we need. If the minister will not stand up at the cabinet table for farmers, who will?
Let us face it. When it comes to agriculture, these Liberals have become the living definition of biting the hand that feeds them. In a country that feeds the world, Canada is now a place where people cannot afford food. For many people in northern Saskatchewan who were already struggling with the increased cost of living, the skyrocketing price of food has become a crisis.
“This isn't working” are the words of a food bank chair from northern Saskatchewan, who adds, “Everything is increasing—gas, rent, food, heat.... I just don’t know how people are supposed to manage.” The food bank's monthly food budget is $5,000, and it now provides half the number of food hampers that it did just three years ago. The Liberals' mismanagement of the economy, assisted by their NDP enablers, has created conditions that directly harm the most vulnerable in our communities the most.
All of this is while the people from northern Saskatchewan and Canada have a Prime Minister who spends $6,000 a night on a hotel in London, but would not admit to it for months and still takes no responsibility; a Prime Minister who vacations in Jamaica at a luxurious estate of Trudeau Foundation donors; a Prime Minister who spends $8,000 a month on groceries; a Prime Minister who is embroiled in a foreign election interference scandal and uses Trudeau Foundation members and friends to investigate; a Prime Minister who named an interim Ethics Commissioner who is the sister-in-law to a cabinet minister, who is also a long-time family friend, to replace the former commissioner who grew so frustrated by the continued Liberal ethical lapses that he finally walked away. This is not leadership by any measure at any time in our history.
Budget 2023 is not an economic document. It is the political document of a government led by a Prime Minister who has chosen power over principle.
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Madam Speaker, I have listened to a number of speeches on this year's budget and on Bill C-47, the budget implementation act, at all stages of debate.
I have been inspired by some of these speeches. I really enjoyed the one delivered by the hon. member for Abbotsford. He spoke about the lines the Minister of Finance said last year she would not cross. It was about the increase in a ratio called the debt-to-GDP, or gross domestic product.
I agree with him completely. It seems as though the government, from so many of its ministries, tells Canadians what to expect from them and then ignores those seemingly brave words. It spoke of short-term deficits of $10 billion to bring us back to balance by 2019. I remember that one quite well. Then it spoke of a carbon tax that would never rise above $50 per tonne. That was in the 2019 election platform, not so long ago.
I love when the Liberals say, “We have got Canadians' backs.” What does that even mean? They say, “We are laser focused on solving this problem.” Sure. The one I like best is, “We are not worried about inflation. We are worried about deflation.” I think they would like to erase those words from the record at this point.
Talk is cheap in today's politics, until Canadians actually see the consequences of breaking the real pillars that hold up our country's financial well-being. There will be reduced opportunities in an underperforming, non-resilient economy for generations.
Social programs such as health, education and welfare will be compromised because bankers will get paid first and the amount of priority spending is increasing. This means the amount of money we have to spend as Canadians taxpayers paying the interest on our debt is a rising rate and a rising number. It is escalating quickly.
Deficits do not solve themselves. They take planning and resolve. The consequences of not solving them are upon us with rising inflation, rising taxation and rising income inequality. There are rising labour tensions, as we saw with the recent strike at the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Canadians are just trying to have their wages and salaries keep up with the rising cost of living that the government's negligence has caused.
Inflated dollars buy less. They buy less food, less shelter and fewer social services. We are all poorer by degrees. The government just hopes Canadians do not notice it too much. Canadians are noticing, and they are wondering how a modern country is throwing away its future and has forgotten the lessons from the last time this scenario unfolded just four decades ago. Politicians change, but institutional memory, the decision-making, should learn from the lessons of history, especially recent history.
I would say Canada's debt-to-GDP is a somewhat useless ratio, as it only compares how bad our ability to provide balance for tomorrow's taxpayers is with that of other spendy governments in the world. The debt-to-GDP is increasing, and there is no benefit to having a high debt-to-GDP. There is only a cost, and it is a rapidly rising cost.
As so many have indicated, that rising cost has rising consequences. The government presents in its own set of data that its sacred ratio will peak next year, this time at 43.5%. Let me caution colleagues on this opportunistic representation of data and remind everyone how last year, the Minister of Finance said that this ratio had peaked and would not increase further. Those are words and promises without meaning or real intent. I think we know the answer to that choice.
Let us look at what is called a national accounts basis, as the rest of the world looks at these metrics. That is that there is only one gross domestic product and there are a number of government debts in Canada. If we add in each of the provinces, on top of the federal government's debt, we get a ratio that is higher than 95% on the ratio.
We also have to subtract out the funds that do not belong to the government that it likes to include in its calculation. That is the amount it subtracts from workers who have to set aside money for programs, such as the Canada pension plan and the Quebec pension plan. I should point out that that is one of the costs to workers that is increasing substantially this year.
Canadians need to tell the government that these funds do not belong to the government. They belong to the people who have earned those pensions. The government should get them out of the calculations, trying to make its numbers more justifiable. These are not the Government of Canada's assets. They are being held in trust for Canadians at arm's-length organizations. The government has no recourse to these funds, or does it?
Does the government want to explain how it might have recourse to these funds, which Canadians think are sequestered for their retirement? I ask this question because the government went out of its way to freeze Canadians' bank accounts last year, and freezing earned benefits would pale in comparison to freezing a basic bank account, so someone could buy food and pay for their shelter in Canada.
In any event, for the financially literate, let us stop painting a rosier picture of reality. The government does not get to pick and choose which numbers it uses. Sustainable finance theories aside, and these are mock theories, the government does not get to pick and choose the numbers that affect people's lives. It should just be presented factually.
The irony is that the Liberal government presents a scenario in which provincial budget balances have collectively turned positive in 2022, and thus contributed to Canada's overall turnaround. Let us be clear. That is based on the surplus in one province, Alberta, and those revenues are predicated on world resource pricing of, yes, oil and gas, which the government scorns daily in the House.
As is said, comparing badly run jurisdictions in the world, Europe is a collection of poorly managed economies with no resource wealth, whereas Canada is a very poorly managed country with a backstop of significant resource wealth. It is very clear the country needs better management. We are in line for the job, and we are just waiting for the shareholders to fire this underperforming team.
I went through much of the budget presentation, and I noted a number of fictions that the government actually prints on government paper.
How is this? “The federal government’s fiscal anchor—reducing the federal debt-to-GDP ratio over the medium term—remains unchanged and is being met.” That is wrong. There is also this: “Even with higher borrowing costs, public debt charges as a share of the economy are projected to remain at historically low levels“. That is wrong, again.
The $44 billion in interest payments is up from $24 billion just two years ago, and a larger portion of the GDP than it had been in over 15 years. The government says these metrics are going in the right direction and hope that Canadians are not paying attention.
However, they are emulating themselves in the House of Commons by now putting nonsense on paper. Let us just keep spending and everything will balance itself.
How about this one? It says:
Budget 2023 proposes substantial measures as the next steps in the government's plan to “crowd-in” new private investment by leveraging public investment and government policy. The goal of this approach is not to substitute government for the private sector, nor supplant market-based decision making. It is to leverage the tools of government to mobilize the private sector.
No, it is not. That is fantasy. It is a false narrative based on giving taxpayer money to connected friends of the Liberal government.
We are giving foreign companies subsidies amounting to double the amount they are investing in this country to put Canadian taxpayer dollars in the pockets of foreign investors. That is how the Liberal government thinks it makes friends.
Who is laughing all the way to the bank? It is not Canadian taxpayers. It is not the $200 billion in project financing that was in line in Canada before the government created absolute market uncertainty.
What is not in this budget implementation bill? Anything to do with climate financing, just like last year. The budget speech indicated moving forward on climate initiatives, yet these exist nowhere in Bill C-47.
What is in this bill? A whole bunch of items that have nothing to do with the budget, including CEPA changes and jurisdictional oversteps. It is just tax, spend and divide. That is not the way to manage Canada's finances.
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