44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 21, 2023 02:00PM
- Jun/21/23 7:16:09 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, just to set the record straight, on average, 9% of OECD countries' revenue comes from corporate taxation. I have this from the OECD report. In Canada, it is 12%. Tax revenue that comes from corporate taxation is 30% more in Canada. Therefore, to say that we are somehow below the average in the amount of taxation we take from corporations is simply not true.
I heard the member criticizing both Liberals and Conservatives. He went on about some of the things that the Liberals are doing wrong. We agree that the Liberals have a deficit and debt that is way too high. We have interest rates and inflation. We might disagree on the cause of that, but we are seeing negative consequences. We have food bank usage doubling.
Will the member vote non-confidence in the government?
139 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/21/23 8:27:48 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, it is a privilege and honour to rise tonight in this House of Commons, perhaps on the last of this cohort of Parliament. I will be splitting my time with the fabulous member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, who was first elected in 2000 when she was 12 years old, the youngest parliamentarian in Canadian history.
It is an honour and privilege to serve and to talk about this motion today. Of course, this is the Conservative Party's opposition motion, and I must say that it is very reasonable. I am hoping we will get unanimous support across the aisles on it.
The motion raises the concept that we need a balanced budget. In fact, it does not even ask that the government commit to a balanced budget. We are merely asking it for a plan to get to a balanced budget.
As my colleague from Manitoba said earlier, it is something the Liberals had in their plans less than nine months ago. In their fall economic statement, they actually called for a balanced budget in 2027-28. However, much has changed since then, including $60 billion in new spending and an increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio, despite the fact that the finance minister said just nine months or so ago that we would not see an increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio. She said, “This is a line we will not cross.” Well, the line was crossed, and now the trajectory is for the debt-to-GDP ratio to go up.
Our motion notes the IMF has warned that Canada is at the most risk for a massive mortgage default. That is just a fact. I am sure everyone can agree with that. Average mortgage payments are up 122% since the Prime Minister took office. That is a fact too, just like saying the grass is green and the sky is blue. Canadian households also have the most debt as a share of GDP out of any country in the G7. Once again, that is just a fact.
As I said, I am hopeful that we will get unanimous support for our motion. We are not even saying that the government needs to balance the budget. We are asking for a plan to balance the budget.
Let me explain this a bit and give some context as to why the government may not support this motion.
When we look at balancing the budget of a government, it is really, in high-level terms, not much different from balancing the budget of a household or a business. We have revenue on one side and expenses on the other. I am going to start by talking about revenue and the struggles the government is no doubt having and why it may not be able to get to a balanced budget.
According to Philip Cross, former lead statistician for Statistics Canada, in the last decade, we have had the lowest economic growth since the Great Depression, since the 1930s in other words. It is 0.8% per capita over the last 10 years, which is basically stagnant or no growth over the last 10 years. That is a fraction of what it is in the United States, a fraction of what it is in Switzerland and a fraction of what it is in Ireland. We are an outlier given our poor economic growth per capita.
It is true that if we look at the entire GDP of the country, there is a bit more of a positive note, but that is simply because we have had high levels of immigration. It is not really a great thing to say that even though we are bringing in newcomers, which is fantastic, we are not actually increasing the GDP per capita. We have newcomers coming in, but unfortunately they have economic struggles. They cannot find housing. Of course, we have had the recent immigration scandal with students. We need to be much more accommodating and welcoming to our newcomers, in my opinion, but that is a digression. The reality is that per capita GDP is at 0.8% over the last 10 years. That is the lowest in the G7 and the lowest in the OECD, and it is an absolutely abysmal number.
Why is revenue so low on the government side? Why are we not getting that economic growth? Well, there are some policy reasons for that. One is that our productivity is among the lowest in the OECD and among the lowest in the G7. Productivity is measured in contribution to GDP per worker per hour. If we look at Switzerland, it is at $55. If we look at the United States, it is at $65. If we look at Ireland, it is at $84. These are 2018 numbers, and members can source them.
These are countries without our land and without our incredible resources. Most notably, we have the hardest-working, most educated and smartest people in the world here in Canada, yet we have a lower productivity than most of the advanced economies. We are, to finish my story, at $50.
There is a notable exception in Canada. We do have one sector of our economy that is absolutely blowing out the roof and doing fabulously. That is our energy sector, which is well over $500 per hour, 10 times as much as the average.
What is the government doing? It is trying to eliminate Canadian energy. If our productivity numbers do not look good now, and they do not, in the absence of our energy sector we would be in deep trouble. Our prosperity as a country would be in jeopardy.
We have that productivity issue. If we look under the hood at what is creating that productivity, that is another problem. There are a number of issues. One is we are forecast to have the lowest capital investment in the OECD over the next 20 years. All the numbers I am saying can be sourced and cited.
When we do not have capital coming into the country to refurbish machines in factories, to build new buildings and to create new infrastructure, the infrastructure, equipment and buildings all go out of date, and that reduces our competitiveness.
If we have a machine in a factory that was built in 2023 and we are competing against another factory that has a machine built in 1960, obviously the one built in 2023 is going to have a huge advantage, and the government is pushing away capital. How is it doing that? It is by adding uncertainty.
Just in the most recent budget alone, there were two provisions for retroactive taxation. Retroactive taxation is going back in time and saying that someone was told their bill was X, but now it is being changed to Y.
That is something we see in economies that are not advanced, something we see in countries with poor economic performance. That is something, quite frankly, that we see in authoritarian regimes. We cannot just go back in time and change what the bill was on the customer. In this case, it is the taxpayer. We are pushing away that capital.
Another significant issue that is undermining our productivity numbers is our innovation framework. Our innovation framework in Canada is among the worst in the G7 and among the worst in the OECD.
Canadians are producing great ideas. I say “ideas” instead of “intellectual property” because our ideas are not becoming intellectual property, as we do not have the appropriate government regulation and framework in place to capture those ideas and make sure that Canadians prosper from them.
What is actually happening today, unfortunately, is that while our universities, our young people, our innovators and our entrepreneurs are coming up with amazing ideas and those ideas are actually becoming commercial successes, the trouble is that it is not in Canada.
They are becoming successes in the United States of America. They are becoming successes in Ireland. They are becoming successes around the world, but not here in Canada, because we do not have the government framework to capture those ideas to put in place the precedent conditions to make sure we exploit those resources fully.
Our ideas go offshore. They manufacture products and create services, with no money going to the Canadian public, and then they are sold back to us at an incredibly high price. We get hurt both ways.
I wish I had another 20 minutes to talk, but I only have a minute left. I have only talked a little about the revenue side, but I will talk briefly about the expense side.
The Prime Minister came into office saying that he would balance the budget within a couple of years. We never saw the budget get balanced. In the fall economic statement, we saw that there was a plan to balance the budget, yet we see no balance in sight now, according to the budget.
When we have a government that is sucking the oxygen out of the economy, that is pulling the fuel from the economy and taking it out, it is slowing down the private sector, which is leading to a productivity crisis in Canada, which is putting the prosperity of our nation at risk.
We need a leader and a government in this country that will balance our budget and turn hurt into hope for your home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
1589 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/21/23 8:39:00 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, Winston Churchill perhaps said it best when he said, “For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
The government does not create wealth; the private sector does. As the government takes more fuel from the private sector and wastes it on things like Asian infrastructure, “arrive scam” and numerous other government fiats, it will destroy our economy and continue to put the future of Canadians at risk.
92 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/21/23 8:40:33 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, my answer is relatively easy. There are millions of dollars of waste. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been sent to the Asian infrastructure bank. There was $50 million to MasterCard. Millions of dollars went to Loblaws. There was millions of dollars for “arrive scam”.
I am confident that when the Conservative Party forms government, we will be able to put in place the savings necessary to maintain the great social safety network we have while being prudent and ensuring our prosperity for years to come.
With respect to pipelines, we would have never socialized the pipeline; we would have allowed the private sector to do it. We need Canadian energy because Canadian energy is keeping our economy afloat.
123 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/21/23 8:42:37 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the marginal effective tax rate for people making under $50,000 is more than 50%, so when the member is calling for tax hikes, he is hurting the most vulnerable. The reality is that in Canada the corporate tax rate is 12% and in the rest of the OECD it is 9%, which is 30% to 40% higher.
Neil Brooks, NDP member and my law professor, said to me many years ago that corporations do not pay taxes, but workers, shareholders and employees do. Therefore, when the member wants to slash and burn corporations, he is hurting workers, and that is what the NDP desperately needs to understand.
110 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
