44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 7, 2023 02:00PM
- Jun/7/23 2:13:12 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, a Liberal walks into a bar and says, “Drinks are on me.” Who is paying? Well, Canadians are paying: Canadians who are already paying double for mortgage and rent payments, Canadians who own businesses and farms who are struggling to keep their heads above water, and Canadians who, today, are seeing another quarter-point interest rate hike because of the Liberal government's misspending, a 4.5% increase in only a year and a half.
According to the IMF, Canada now runs the highest risk among advanced economies of missing mortgage payments. Do members remember when the Prime Minister said the government would take on debt so Canadians would not have to? The solution seems to be simple, but the government just does not get it. It must stop the inflationary spending, balance the budget and lower taxes.
It is closing time. The tab with the speNDP is past due, and Canadians need a new prime minister, a prime minister with common sense who will look after the common cents of the common people.
178 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 2:26:46 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, today, we are seeing yet another human tragedy unfold because of the huge, unexpected interest rate hike, which is going to force Canadians to either sell their homes or default on their payments.
The Prime Minister promised that interest rates would stay low for a long time. However, his spending fuelled inflation, forcing the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates.
How much will the average family see their monthly mortgage payments go up by over the next three years?
82 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 2:28:12 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the Governor of the Bank of Canada said that this government's deficits are driving up inflation. A former Liberal finance minister said this Prime Minister's inflationary deficits are like stepping on the gas pedal of inflation, while the Bank of Canada has its foot on the brake.
Canada has the highest level of household debt in the G7. Canadians can no longer afford these deficits.
Can the Prime Minister at least tell us by how much mortgage payments will go up over the next three years?
90 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 2:29:33 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, a sucker punch is what Canadians received from the Prime Minister. He promised them low interest rates for a long time. He said that debt was without consequence and that the budget would balance itself. None of those things came true, and interest rates are now 19 times higher than they were a year ago.
The Governor of the Bank of Canada, the former Liberal finance minister and countless other experts agree that the Prime Minister's deficits are ballooning inflation and, therefore, interest rates.
Families have to plan their finances. Will the Prime Minister indicate by how much the average family will see monthly mortgage payments go up over the next three years?
116 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 2:30:59 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, austerity is exactly what Canadians are feeling in their household budgets today, while the government budgets overflow with abundance. There has already been a 16% year over year increase in the number of Canadians missing their mortgage payments.
After eight years under the Prime Minister, we have the highest household debt in the entire G7. Household debt is now 7% higher than our entire GDP. Now the Prime Minister's inflationary deficits are shooting up interest rates.
How much more will the average family have to plan to pay in mortgage payments per month?
96 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 2:32:20 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it is not just me anymore pointing out that deficits drive inflation. It is Liberals. It is former Liberal finance minister John Manley, who said that the Liberal deficits are “a bit like driving your car with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake generally, especially if there's slushy conditions under your tires.” He is pointing out that the Prime Minister presses his foot on the inflationary gas pedal while the Bank of Canada has to press on the brakes. The engine is eventually going to blow.
We know Canadians cannot pay their bills. Will the Prime Minister be honest today and tell Canadians how much their mortgage payments will go up because of these rate hikes?
126 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 2:54:35 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, did the Prime Minister say, “erroneous fears”?
Tonight families will sit down with their kids at the dining room table to say, “Sorry, we have to sell the house because mortgage payments are going to go up by as much as $1,500 per month”. That is not from me. That is according to the Bank of Canada, which predicts a 40% increase in mortgage payments. People cannot pay $1,500 more in mortgage payments. They have only $200 left in the bank at the end of the month.
Will the Prime Minister acknowledge that these are real fears by real people and stand on their side?
113 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 3:00:18 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, he has not only doubled the national debt, adding more debt than all prime ministers combined, but he has overseen a doubling in the average cost of rent, the average mortgage payment and the average necessary down payment.
Household debt in Canada is now the worst of any country in the G7. In fact, our household debt in total is 7% bigger than the entire GDP of the country. The IMF reports that we have the largest risk of mass defaults of all leading economies.
Will the Prime Minister stop heaping on inflation and interest-rate hikes now?
107 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 3:01:39 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is not sending any help. Everything he spends he has to take. It reminds us of when he said he was going to take on government debt so that Canadians would not have to. The Liberals are now stuck with twice the national government debt and the biggest household debt of any country in the G7.
At the time, the Prime Minister flooded the economy with cheap cash, which increased housing prices and therefore mortgage debt. Canadians now have more debt than at anytime in our history, more debt than the size of our entire economy, and they are being hit with a 19-fold increase in interest rates.
How will they ever pay their bills?
121 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 3:08:45 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Prime Minister, our families' level of household debt is the highest in the G7.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Canada runs the highest risk of mortgage defaults among all of the world's advanced economies. The Prime Minister is increasing interest rates with his inflationary policies that are forcing the Bank of Canada to raise its rates.
What is he going to do to reverse his inflationary policies and lower the interest rates before Canadians lose their homes?
86 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 3:10:08 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, we do not need another drama performance, because at the end of the day, when theatrics collide with mathematics, the math always wins. After eight years of the Prime Minister, Canadians have a stock of combined debt that is bigger than our entire GDP. In fact, we are the most indebted families of any country in the G7. The IMF says that Canada is the number one at-risk country for mass mortgage defaults.
Will he reverse his inflationary and high interest rate policies before people go broke?
90 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 3:15:16 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has caused the mortgage crisis we now face. Back in 2021-22, he flooded the economy with cheap and excessive cash that went into the mortgage system. It bid up the price of housing. House prices had doubled under his leadership and then Canadians were forced to take on massive, and in some cases, million-dollar, mortgages in order to buy a home.
He promised them that rates would be low for long but then his deficits juiced inflation, which pushed up interest rates and now, over the next three years, many of those same families will face 40% increases in their mortgage payments.
How is he going to save their homes now that he put them in peril?
124 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 8:27:41 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I think we can all agree that if the member from Kingston is our role model, that is a good reason why we are in so much trouble today.
This spending that has led to the inflation was utterly predictable, but its consequences have been utterly devastating. It is obvious by looking at the lineups at food banks across the country, which, in many cases, actually go many blocks down the street and around the corner. There are the cases of the young people who now estimate that they will be in their fifties before they will be able to move out of their parents' homes. These are not anecdotes.
Just the other day, one prominent financial institution estimated that if a family was earning a quarter of a million dollars, it would take them 25 years in Toronto to save up for a down payment. It used to be that 25 years was the term it took to pay down a mortgage, now it takes that long just to get a mortgage, which illustrates the immense contortion that our economy has suffered. This is not without notice around the world. The IMF now says that Canada has the economy that is most at risk of default crisis out of all the countries in the advanced and developed world. Right now, household debt is 107% of GDP, which is to say that the combined debt of Canadian families is 7% bigger than the entire GDP of our country, and we have the worst household debt of any G7 country.
This debt was not an accident. When governments create cash, they are sloppy about it. They do not simply print the money and hand it over to the Prime Minister to spend, although I think he might prefer that kind of efficiency, rather they have a central bank purchase government bonds on what is called the “secondary market”. In other words, the government sells the bonds to the financial institutions and the central bank buys them back.
This creates an artificial private-sector demand for government debt, which makes it very easy for government to borrow money. After all, if I say to members that I will sell them a bond today for $1.00 and buy it back tomorrow for a $1.10, it is pretty easy to imagine that members would accept that transaction so that they could arbitrage the 10¢ profit on the back and forth. This allows government to spend cash very easily and it also increases the money supply. It balloons government and the financial industries. It is why, when the Federal Reserve is engaged in this practice of so-called quantitative easing, it has been wildly popular in both Washington and on Wall Street among Democrats who like big government and among Republicans who like big banks, because both of them actually profit when government creates cash to inflate financial assets and to inflate the spending capacity of itself.
Therefore, what ends up happening is that those who benefit off government expenditures profit, those who benefit off the financial sector profit—
522 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/7/23 8:38:41 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, now that we know what worked and what did not work, we have to understand the consequences of the fact that the government took the wrong path. I do not need to go on at any length about the ravages of inflation. We have all heard the stories. We can all tell heartbreaking stories.
I see a member right now looking at emails on his phone from people who cannot pay their bills. I see a member across the way saying that our member for Barrie—Innisfil is in trouble for looking at an email from a constituent. He should be looking at those emails. Maybe that member would benefit if she looked at emails from her constituents as well. I understand that, if she were to do so, it would be a great burden on her personal guilt to learn of the single mothers who are skipping meals, the families who are now defaulting on their loans from a 16% year over year increase and the number of Canadians who are missing their mortgage payments. She could take a moment to look into the eyes of the 37-year-old who has been working all his adult life and still cannot afford a home. She could talk to the farmer who borrowed so he could expand his farming operation under the government's promise that the interest rates would be low for long. If she looked at their emails, then maybe she would be less arrogant in supporting the very inflationary policies that have caused all this misery. Maybe, if the Liberals would listen to the people who pay the bills in this country, just for once, we would not be in the mess we are in right now.
This was all so predictable. The great Nobel Prize laureate and economist Milton Friedman said, “Inflation is taxation without legislation.” He also said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” In Friedman's view, central bankers try to avoid their last big mistake. Every time there is a threat that the economy will contract, they overstimulate it by printing too much money. This results in a rising roller coaster of inflation, with each high and low being higher than the preceding one. Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. So said the greatest expert on monetary economics in the history of the world, as recognized by the Nobel Committee.
Thomas Sowell, one of the greatest economists ever, said that “inflation is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. It is the most universal tax of all.” He said that the first lesson of economics is scarcity. That is, “there is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. Meanwhile, the first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
The great Hayek said, “With government in control of monetary policy, the chief threat in this field has become inflation. Governments everywhere and at all times have been the chief cause of the depreciation of the currency. Though there have been occasional prolonged falls in the value of metallic money, the major inflations of the past have been the result of governments either diminishing the coin or issuing excessive quantities of paper money.” He also said, “A great many of the activities which governments have universally undertaken in this field and which fall within the limits described, are those which facilitate the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the facts of general significance. The most important function of this kind is the provision of a reliable and efficient monetary system.” That is something the government has failed to provide.
Furthermore, the great French philosopher Frédéric Bastiat said, “Money serves only to facilitate the transmission of these useful things from one to another.... When legislators, having ruined men by war and taxes, persevere in their idea, they say to themselves, ‘If the people suffer, it is because there is not enough money. We must make [more].’”
The tactic the Prime Minister deployed was nothing creative or new. It has been the tactic of emperors, kings, presidents, prime ministers, and incompetent and self-indulgent leaders. When they run out of other people's money, they create more cash.
I think of the story of Henry VIII, who spent lavishly and without restraint on himself, spoiled his court and, of course, ran out of money. However, there was a difficulty in creating cash in his time. That was because the British pound was actually a pound of silver. When people ran out of silver, they ran out of the ability to make money. Henry VIII had a silver coin. How could he create cash when he had no more silver left? He had already spent it all. What did he do? He had his smelters melt it down and remint it with copper on the inside and a tiny layer of silver on the outside. Then he could multiply the number of coins almost without limit.
I know members are anxious to hear the rest of the story.
897 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
