44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 17, 2023 10:00AM
- Oct/17/23 10:11:40 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that,
(i) after eight years of this Liberal government, this prime minister has added more to the national debt than all previous prime minister’s combined,
(ii) a half-trillion dollars of inflationary deficits has directly led to 40-year inflation highs,
(iii) prior to budget 2023, the Minister of Finance said, “What Canadians want right now is for inflation to come down and for interest rates to fall […] and that is one of our primary goals in this year’s budget: not to pour fuel on the fire of inflation," and then proceed to usher in $60 billion in new spending,
(iv) in order to combat inflation, the Bank of Canada has been forced to increase interest rates 10 times in just 19 months,
(v) interest rate increases have increased mortgage payments, and since this prime minister took office, monthly mortgage payments have increased 150% and now cost $3,500 on a typical family home,
(vi) the Liberal-NDP government must exercise fiscal discipline, end their inflation driving deficits so that interest rates can be lowered,
in order to avoid a mortgage default crisis, as warned by the International Monetary Fund, and to ensure Canadians do not lose their homes, the House call on the government to introduce a fiscal plan that includes a pathway back to balanced budgets, in order to decrease inflation and interest rates, and to introduce this in the House of Commons prior to the Bank of Canada’s next policy interest rate decision on October 25, 2023.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Tobique—Mactaquac.
Inflation is the cost of the spending that the government said would be free. We know that the Liberal-NDP government promised a utopia and it said that it would deliver results for free. It said that the cost of this spending would never hit Canadians because the budget would balance itself. It also suggested that because interest rates were so low, the government could magically keep increasing spending faster than the cost of living and the population grew, without any consequences.
Today, after eight years of this government and this Liberal-NDP Prime Minister, it is time to pay the bills. Canadians are seeing that reality in their mortgage payments, which have more than doubled, increasing by an average of 150%.
I talked to a worker in British Columbia who is now spending $7,500 a month on mortgage payments. I repeat: $7,500 a month. He is a middle-class worker with three kids. Of that amount, $4,000 is just for interest, not even to pay down the principal. This worker's family is losing nearly $50,000 a year in interest alone on their mortgage. It is an impossible situation for the average family, but it is the reality after eight years of this Prime Minister.
Ironically, this is the same Prime Minister who promised to help the middle class and those working hard to join it. He no longer says much about the so-called middle class, does he? We never hear him talk about the middle class. It has been forgotten, because he does not want to remind anyone of the suffering his policies have caused this so-called middle class. We now have middle-class Canadians who are homeless. Yes, it is true that, unfortunately, homelessness has always existed in all countries, including Canada. However, we have not seen homelessness amongst middle-class Canadians since the Great Depression. Now, it is becoming more and more common.
Across the country, we find people like nurses and carpenters living in their cars because mortgage payments went up so much, which also pushed up the cost of rent. The Prime Minister promised to bring down the cost of housing eight years ago, but since then, the cost has doubled. Rents have doubled, mortgage payments have doubled, and the down payment required to buy a home has doubled. In fact, when I was the minister responsible for housing, it cost half of what it costs today to pay the rent, the mortgage and the down payment.
The government's decisions have consequences. The government caused the amount of money in the economy to grow by $600 billion, increasing from $1.8 trillion to $2.4 trillion. This 32% increase meant the money supply grew eight times faster than real economic growth. In other words, the money to buy stuff grew eight times faster than the stuff money buys. This is why we have inflation.
The Bank of Canada has to respond by raising interest rates, again hitting the same people who are struggling to buy food and pay their rent or mortgage.
What is the government doing? It is still forcing the Bank of Canada to keep interest rates high. According to former finance minister John Manley, the government is stepping on the inflationary gas pedal by running deficits, which is forcing the Bank of Canada to slam on the brakes by raising interest rates. One might have expected the government to try to rein in deficits and work toward balancing the budget, but it did the opposite.
Six months ago, the government said it wanted to balance the budget by 2028. When budget time came, it suddenly changed its mind and said it would never balance the budget.
Last week, the Parliamentary Budget Officer told us that the deficit is 15% higher than the government promised in its budget. Things are completely out of control, and Canadians are paying the price, not to mention the price our children will have to pay in the future.
That is why we put forward common-sense solutions, including a “dollar-for-dollar” law, which would force the government to find a dollar's worth of savings for every new dollar spent, and the elimination of wasteful spending on things like the ArriveCAN app, the Canada Infrastructure Bank and other ideas that have jacked up the cost of government.
The goal should be to balance the budget in order to bring down interest rates and tame inflation so Canadians can keep their homes and feed their families. That is common sense.
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- Oct/17/23 10:19:01 a.m.
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After eight years of the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government, we are starting to see the hard reality that inflation is the price one pays for all of the programs the government told us were free. We will remember that the Prime Minister said he could double the debt, but not to worry, because the budget would balance itself. He said that interest rates were low, so not only were deficits permanently affordable, but also we could not afford not to spend. Here we are, with the devastating human consequences not so long after that because, as Pythagoras says, numbers rule the universe. No matter how many words are spoken, no matter how many soft lullabies are sung, the reality is that when we spend what we do not have, we drive up the cost for everyone else.
Here we are. The cost of government has driven up the cost of living. Half a trillion dollars of inflationary debt has bid up the goods we buy and the interest we pay. According to former Liberal finance minister John Manley, government spending is pressing its foot on the inflationary gas pedal, which forces the Bank of Canada to press on the brakes with higher interest rates. Now, I bump into people across Canada who are living in financial terror. A shipyard worker in Vancouver told me that his monthly mortgage payment is now $7,500. He is a shipyard worker. Of the $7,500, $4,000 is just for interest. His family is basically spending $50,000 a year on interest for their mortgage. This is after the Prime Minister, his budget documents and his bank governor told that man that rates would stay low.
One would think the government would reverse its policies, but it is doing the opposite. A year ago, it said it would balance the budget by 2028. Six months ago, it changed its mind and said it would never balance the budget. Last week, we found out from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the deficit is 15% bigger than the government claimed only six months ago. It has totally lost control of the spending.
Our common sense plan is to cap spending and cut waste in order to balance the budget and bring down interest rates and inflation. Let us do it before the hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages renew into these higher rates. Let us save people's homes and our future. It is common sense. My colleagues will work to bring home this common sense here in Canada. It is your home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
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- Oct/17/23 10:22:59 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, boy does he ever need to get out of this place and talk to real people if he thinks Canada is doing well. Holy smokes. Maybe he has not been to the tent cities that have formed right across the country, which never existed eight years ago. Perfectly pristine and safe neighbourhoods are now overtaken by misery and pain from people who can no longer afford to pay their rent.
Maybe he needs to go door to door and ask people what they are paying on their monthly mortgage payments. Maybe he needs to talk to the one in five households skipping meals because they cannot afford the food. Maybe he needs to go to the bread lines that go block after block and street after street next to food banks. Those kinds of bread lines we do not see outside of either the Great Depression or the Soviet Union. If he thinks things are going well in Canada, he needs to get out and talk to the real people who are suffering from coast to coast.
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- Oct/17/23 10:25:03 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are defending consumers against the Bloc Québécois, which wants to radically increase taxes at the pump for ordinary Canadians.
The Liberals have a tax that applies to Quebec. They call it “regulations”. They can call it whatever they want, but it is a tax, and it increases the cost of gas by 17¢ a litre. The Bloc Québécois is against it, but only because they do not think it is high enough.
The Bloc said it wanted to radically increase taxes for Quebec consumers. That is crazy. Voting for the Bloc Québécois is costly. We Conservatives are the only party guided by the common sense of ordinary Quebeckers.
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- Oct/17/23 10:27:01 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the people living on the streets and in the tent cities. Where is it the worst? It is worst in NDP-controlled British Columbia. That is where the tent cities started, in the Downtown Eastside, where NDP policies were tried out like—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Oct/17/23 10:27:24 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the experiment that the NDP tried on the people of the Downtown Eastside, to decriminalize and provide taxpayer-funded opioids, to the great profit of the pharmaceutical companies that caused the crisis in the first place, caused misery and despair, a 300% increase in drug overdose deaths.
They then took that experiment, under the NDP Prime Minister, and, yes, he is an NDP prime minister, and they spread it right across the country. We now have 30,000 people who have lost their lives. The working class has been devastated under this NDP-Liberal coalition. There is only one party that stands up for the hard-working people and their wages in a drug-free, growing economy that gives people a chance to get off the street and into homes and better lives. That is the Conservative Party.
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- Oct/17/23 2:21:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, eight long years, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost of mortgages. The cost of housing has increased by 100% since he took office. He printed $600 billion, which inflated real estate prices and forced people to take out large mortgages. Then, his deficits drove up interest rates.
When will he reverse his inflationary policies to lower interest rates and allow Canadians to keep their homes?
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- Oct/17/23 2:23:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years under this incompetent Prime Minister, Canadians are already living with austerity, while the government, which is not worth the cost or effort, is living large. I met a worker from the Seaspan shipyard who bought an ordinary house in Vancouver. Because of interest rate hikes, he is now paying $7,500 a month for his mortgage, and $4,000 of that is interest.
Will the Prime Minister finally reverse his inflationary policies so that this worker can keep his house?
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- Oct/17/23 2:24:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight long, miserable years, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. He massively increased the money supply by $600 billion, inflating housing costs by over 100%. That forced one Seaspan shipyard worker, who I met last week, to buy a normal house for over a million dollars. Now interest rates have gone up because of inflationary deficits, something the Prime Minister promised would not happen, and he is forced to pay $7,500 a month on his mortgage while supporting his three kids.
Will the Prime Minister reverse his inflationary spending so that this gentleman, his wife and three kids can afford to keep their home?
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- Oct/17/23 2:26:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the middle-class shipyard worker paying $7,500 a month on his mortgage is living austerity now. What the Prime Minister is talking about is abundance for the government and austerity for working class people, who must carry him and his overpriced bureaucracy around on their backs.
That gentleman has three kids, in their adolescence, to raise, paying for their sports while keeping a roof overhead. How does the Prime Minister expect them to pay $7,500 a month to fund his overpriced interest rates that result from his deficits?
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- Oct/17/23 2:27:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost.
What would I cut? I would start with the $54-million ArriveCAN app, which is now under police investigation. Then I would get rid of the $35-billion Infrastructure Bank, which pays bonuses but has not completed a single infrastructure project. Why do we not throw in the $100 million-plus contracts to McKinsey, a company that helped cause the opioid crisis.
Speaking of all the waste that the Prime Minister forces on Canadian taxpayers, when it comes to the ArriveCAN app, it is now under police investigation. He covered up previous bad behaviour under SNC-Lavalin. Will he at least co-operate with the RCMP investigation into the ArriveCAN app?
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