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 11:01:17 a.m.
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Imagine how many statements are made in an election platform and somehow the Conservative caucus believes that it is not responsible for that platform, that it can just opt out, much like it is opting out of the price on pollution. It makes one wonder about the Conservatives.
The Conservatives like to talk as if they know things about finances. Today it is about budgets and deficits, even though, compared to the G7 countries, Canada is doing exceptionally well.
I still remember when the leader of the Conservative Party was telling Canadians to invest in cryptocurrency, which is incredible. He still has not apologized for that. If people had followed his advice, they would have lost thousands, depending on how much they invested, 60%-plus of their investment.
We need to ensure that we put things into proper perspective. Yes, let us be concerned about inflation and interest rates. Let us take actions like bringing in Bill C-56.
I would suggest that the Conservative Party get behind legislation such as Bill C-56 and vote for it. It will ensure that more homes are built. It will ensure more stability in grocery prices. Actions speak louder than words.
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- Oct/17/23 11:13:17 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Mirabel.
In 2015, something remarkable happened in Canadian politics. At the time, the Liberals were in third place in the polls. At one point, the current Prime Minister made an extraordinary statement, something that people did not expect at all. He basically said that the Liberals were going to run deficits and that they liked doing that. He said that interest rates were low and the country is like a business, so, in those circumstances, we needed to invest in the economy. People looked at him dumbfounded and wondered what this was all about. At the time, I said that it was the first time in 40 years that a politician had said that he was going to run deficits and that he liked doing so. One thing we can say is that he really does like running deficits, because he has run up some big ones.
At the time, his premise, as economists would say, was that the interest rates were low and we needed to invest in the economy. What does that look like now? Interest rates have gone up 10 times since the pandemic ended. The rate is now 5%. I am no math whiz, but that means that interest rates are quite high now.
The money he is spending is not for investments, not at all, it is for current expenditures. Often, he spends frivolously. He has lost control. He is a compulsive spender. He likes that. He hands out money left and right. When he talks about spending he gets as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.
Let us look at where things stand today. There are current expenditures that are outside of his jurisdiction. He has become friends with the NDP. The NDP are not compulsive spenders; they are master spenders. They like that. They watch movies, they picture themselves spending, they imagine people spending and it is all amazing.
What happened is that the Liberals and the NDP started talking. The NDP said everyone needed dental insurance. However, that falls under Quebec's jurisdiction, but that was okay, the federal government was going to take care of it for Quebec. The Liberals then got to work to bring in dental insurance. I went to my dentist to get a tooth fixed, and he was in quite a state. I asked him what was the matter and he said he could not believe what was going on with dental insurance, that he had been thinking about it for two months. He said it made no sense. This spending is completely ridiculous. At one point, someone—I am not sure if it was the Parliamentary Budget Officer—talked about the excessive spending, saying that it was crazy, that it should never have been done that way and it should have been left to the experts, namely Quebec and the provinces.
We are also talking about $82.8 billion in subsidies for oil companies, which are making $200 billion a year in profits. No one was shocked, but we all should be. We are talking about $82.8 billion in subsidies until 2035 to those poor folks who are already making $200 billion a year in profits. Some might call that insanity, but that is what the Liberals are doing.
They bought a pipeline for fun. They say that they do not like oil, but that they are going to export oil like pigs and put the proceeds into the energy transition. I tried to explain it to my golden retriever, and he was beside himself. How can we explain that to people? The Liberals seem to believe it, to the tune of $30 billion and counting.
Then there is the inefficiency of the public service. A passport costs four times more to produce than a driver's licence. Look at health care costs. The few times the Liberals have administered health care, in veterans' hospitals, for example, it cost twice as much as in the public sector in Quebec and the provinces. That is outrageous. Processing an EI application costs 2.5 times more than processing a welfare application in Quebec. Why is that? It is because Ottawa has money from the fiscal imbalance. When it has that kind of money, it does not look at how much it is spending. The carpets are thicker in Ottawa than elsewhere, and the government is having fun.
We are telling them to rein it in. When the Liberals announced the 2023 deficit in November 2022, it was $30 billion. Now it is $46.5 billion. It keeps going up.
We are not necessarily in an economic crisis. We are at or near full employment, and according to Keynesianism, deficits should only be run in difficult situations like the pandemic or recessions. Right now, there should be few deficits, if any. Most importantly, we should have a plan to restore a balanced budget. That is the responsible thing to do. A plan might force the government to be more conscientious about its spending. It would compel the government to tell people that it is going to try to do better, manage its finances more effectively, and take steps to ensure that an objective set out in the plan is met.
As Émile de Girardin said, governing means planning ahead. This government has a hard time planning ahead. It is always reactive, but very rarely proactive. The important thing is that the plan would send a signal to the market that the government wants to get on the path to a balanced budget. This could relieve inflationary tensions.
The Conservatives want to see that plan by October 25. Why October 25? Maybe they have a party or something on the agenda. They picked October 25, but nobody knows why. Why not ask to see the plan alongside the fiscal update in November? That would make sense.
The Conservatives pull things out of thin air, like this date, October 25. Then they make things sound deceptively simple. They latch onto these mantras. They talk about inflation and convince themselves that they can make it go away just by talking about it. Do they have any actual proposals? No they do not. They have this kind of mystical approach to public finance. They are sitting there with a Ouija board hoping for answers. They are very good at whining and complaining, but they have no concrete proposals. When one of them does come up with a concrete proposal, the others turn a deaf ear. They do not know what to make of it. “What are you talking about?” they say. They decided to complain and talk about the cost of living, the cost of turkeys and carrots. If ever they come to power, those problems will miraculously disappear.
They have no concrete proposals for helping seniors. When the grocery CEOs paraded before the committee, the Bloc Québécois offered up some proposals. Our agriculture critic came armed with a whole list of them. The Conservatives complained that it was pointless and useless. Given that they are the ones talking about the cost of living, they should have some ideas about how to address it. They say the cost of living is appalling. They are right, but do they have any concrete proposals for fixing that? The answer is no.
They are also talking about the housing shortage. Stephen Harper did nothing during his nine years in office. The current situation is one of the consequences of the Conservatives' inaction. The Conservatives are not making any proposals for fixing this issue either. My colleague, the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, spoke about the $900 million. The federal government needs to give this $900 million to the Quebec government so it can build housing. Do we ever hear a Conservative saying that the $900 million should be paid out? The answer is no.
Then, they had an idea, which is always cause for concern. Their idea is to force municipalities to increase housing construction by 15% every year or face cutbacks in subsidies. Where does that 15% come from? They took out a Ouija board and that is the number that came out. I have spoken with municipal officials in my riding. There is a moratorium in one municipality because of a water shortage. I told the officials in that municipality that they would be forced to increase housing construction by 15% if the Conservatives were to be elected. They said that they are running out of water, and I replied that the Conservatives would cut back their subsidies. They said that if that were to happen, they would run out of water altogether. What do the Conservatives not understand?
They do not talk about the labour shortage either, but that does not matter. Oil prices are high, and renewable energy is a competitor. That is what will save us from spiralling fossil fuel prices. Do the Conservatives ever talk about that? They do, actually; they say that it is futile and pointless. Seriously? In light of climate change, it is a vital solution that must be taken into consideration.
As Talleyrand famously said, “All that is exaggerated becomes insignificant.” I think the Conservatives tend to exaggerate quite a bit when it comes to inflation. My colleagues may extrapolate from there.
I taught economics for 20 years. When discussing the causes of inflation, I used to spend four or five hours on the subject. My students would get sick of listening to me go on and on about inflation, but it is an important subject. I would explain all the different causes, including deficits. However, we have to be careful because it is not as simple as that.
When someone says that deficits equal inflation, we need to be careful. Incidentally, inflation is happening around the world, so the deficit is not entirely responsible for inflation. Of course eliminating the deficit would help, but it is not a magic solution. At some point, the Conservatives are going to have to wake up, because anyone who keeps telling lies is going to become insignificant.
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- Oct/17/23 11:43:31 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to a Conservative motion that is not what it pretends to be, presented by a Conservative leader who is not who he says he is. What I mean by that is that this motion pretends to be an analysis of the causes of inflation in Canada, except that it only includes one factor, which is government spending and government deficits. Yes, there is a deficit. Yes, there has been government spending. Yes, some of that may have contributed in some ways to inflation. However, that is far from the whole story. Canada has had deficits at the federal level in periods when there has not been inflation, or at least not inflation of this significant type that we are living with today. It has been inflation within the target zone. The seven consecutive large deficits that the Harper Conservatives ran when they were in power did not coincide with the kind of significant inflation we have seen.
Obviously, there are other factors at work here. It is dishonest to pretend that only government deficit is what is driving inflation, or even that it is the major factor in what is driving inflation. There are supply chain constraints that arose through the pandemic, a reordering of purchasing, first towards goods and then back towards services. There are a number of strictly market forces that we could talk about. Chief among those is the role that corporate greed plays. It is a glaring deficiency of this motion, and not just this motion but also the Conservatives' analysis generally, that they do not talk at all about the role that corporate greed has been playing in fuelling inflation.
What do I mean by that? When we look at corporate profits, for instance, in the grocery sector, at the very same time that Canadians are struggling, and we are hearing more and more about Canadians having to choose between paying rent and paying for groceries, we have seen massive increases in the profit margins of Canada's largest grocery retailers. That is not a function of their simply passing on costs from the carbon tax, supply chains or whatever else to their consumers. If they were just passing on the cost, their profits would not be increasing. The fact of the matter is that the profit is going up because they are charging Canadians more than the additional costs they are facing right now. That is important to talk about.
When it comes to the Liberal government, corporate greed is just as much missing from their analysis of what is driving inflation as it is from the Conservatives', and they are doing just as little about it, which is certainly a frustration of ours in the New Democratic Party. The Liberal government called the big grocery retailers to Ottawa to give them a slap on the wrist, ask them to do better and ask them to not reduce but stabilize prices, which is to say, to consolidate the gains they have made by raising prices unfairly over the last number of years so Canadians have to continue to pay that going forward, rather than talking about ways to try to make food more affordable than it currently is.
We cannot look to the Conservatives for solutions on food prices, because they have nothing to say other than to reduce the carbon tax, as if those very same grocery retailers who have shown that they are quite happy to raise prices to eat up whatever extra disposable income Canadians get would not just turn around and do that very same thing. Conservatives are silent when it comes to corporate greed in the oil and gas sector, which has been driving inflation for Canadians. When we talk about the role that energy costs play in driving inflation, it is important to note that the price increases on energy far exceed the increase in the carbon tax. That is why, from 2019 to 2022, oil and gas companies in Canada saw an increase in profits of 1,000%. Where is the analysis from the Conservatives on what that does to grocery prices?
If oil and gas companies are going to gouge the farmer who grows the food, gouge the processor who makes the food and gouge the shipper who ships the food, Canadians are going to get gouged at the grocery store, notwithstanding anything that happens in this place or the level of tax. They are going to get gouged based simply on the outsized increases in oil and gas prices that oil and gas companies are using to pay larger dividends to their shareholders and bigger cheques to their CEOs.
We have to talk about that if we are going to get real about the challenges Canadians are facing. We have a Conservative Party that talks about very little else other than inflation and about the housing sector. Canadians are experiencing pain, but to pretend that somehow deficits derived from payments so kids can get their teeth fixed is causing inflation in the housing market is either stupid or dishonest. The fact of the matter is that there is a ton of private capital in the Canadian real estate market, domestic capital that is bidding against Canadians when they are trying to buy a family home, in order to turn that house into a long-term investment. That is a big part of the story of what is going on.
Conservatives talk about how we need lower taxes in spite of the fact that now, 1% of Canadians own 25% of the wealth in this country, while fully 40% of Canadians have to live sharing only 1% of the wealth being created in this country. The 1% that owns the 25% is a big part of the problem in the housing market. They have a lot of extra cash, which they did not get from government and which they are investing back into the housing market to buy up more housing and make more money off the backs of Canadians who are already strapped.
That is not to knock business. Small and medium-sized businesses are an important driver of economic growth in this country. They are important employers. They help make the world go around, and there is a lot of room for legitimate business. We know that a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises are actually struggling right now. They are not the ones that are the problem, so let us not conflate our criticism of big corporations and big capital with the small business owner who is providing services in their community and trying to break even in a very difficult time.
I heard earlier from a Conservative MP, “Well, don't go after the wage payer if you want to help the wage earner.” When we talk about the oil and gas industry, look at what happened the day after the Alberta election. A big oil and gas company laid off 1,500 workers, despite the fact that it is extracting more oil than ever and making more money than ever. The fact is that more and more employment in the oil and gas industry has been decoupled, through technological advances and other things that do help with productivity growth, from the employment of Canadians. That oil and gas company timed the announcement of those layoffs in order to help its political friends in the Conservative Party in Alberta, to spare them the embarrassment of bringing that fact to light during an election.
That is why this motion is not what it pretends to be. Furthermore, as I said earlier, it has been presented by a Conservative leader who is not who he pretends to be. He talks about the housing crisis. In fact, earlier in his speech on this very motion, he took credit, naming himself as the minister who was responsible for housing in the Harper government. This was the government that lost 800,000 affordable units during its tenure. It was the government that, when operating grants to create affordable rents were set to expire because they were tied to 40- or 50-year mortgages signed in the sixties, seventies and eighties in order to make rent more affordable, took the decision not to continue providing that operating grant money but to let it drop.
That is why we are seeing places like Lions Place on Portage Avenue in Winnipeg get sold off because, without the operating subsidies, they cannot continue to provide the deeply affordable units that they were providing. What happened there? A big corporate landlord swooped in. It is going to superficially renovate the building, kick out the existing tenants and start charging a lot more rent for the people who can afford to move in. I do not begrudge those folks the housing, because we know that no matter where one is in the housing spectrum, there is a need. We do not have enough supply of any of those kinds of housing.
I will not begrudge Canadians' taking the opportunity to find a home they can afford, but it is no excuse for a government that is not willing to do what it takes to make sure that those people who need those deeply affordable units have a place to go. That is where we need a federal government that is willing to take responsibility for that. I am sorry, but we have not seen that from the government. We are not building enough deeply affordable and affordable units in this country. We are simply not. If we leave it to the market, it will never get done. As a developer at the finance committee said yesterday, they are never going to build affordable housing. It is not their job. Their job is to build housing that they can make a buck on, and they are not going to make a buck if they undercharge on the rent.
We know that. That is why the federal government for decades made serious repeated, regular and predictable offerings in the social and affordable housing space for a generation. That is why, during that generation and for a little while after, we did not have the kind of housing crisis we currently have. The problem is that we have a government that is focused too much on simply effecting market solutions in the very market that let us down and that said it would not fix the problem.
If we look to the Conservatives, how are they different? They are not, because they too only offer solutions predicated upon the market. It is not that we do not also need market solutions, but if we focus too much and only on those market solutions, we are never going to get to where we need to be. We have a Conservative leader who wants to talk about housing and says that he has the answer, but who, just like the government, is overly focused on market mechanisms instead of the kind of non-market housing that we need and used to have in the past, in the period when Canada was not facing this kind of housing crisis.
He is not who he pretends to be. He says that he wants workers to have powerful paycheques. I agree; I want workers to have powerful paycheques. That is why when workers are on strike, I am out on the picket lines with them, supporting them to bargain for better wages, working conditions and health and safety standards in their workplace. I have never run into that guy on a picket line. I have never seen a picture of him on a picket line. I have never seen him support picketing workers with a tweet, a post or anything. What I have watched him do is vote with the Liberal government on back-to-work legislation to prematurely end strikes on terms that are favourable to the employer, so do not tell me that this guy has the backs of workers.
We watched as he sat at the cabinet table and raised the age of retirement from 65 to 67, denying Canadian seniors their old age supplement for a further two years. Why was that done? It was to keep them in the workforce. That is not having the backs of Canadian workers who have worked their whole life in order to be able to enjoy their retirement. Anyone who has had a member of their family fall ill with cancer in their sixties knows how precious those two years can be and what a difference it can make in their life and that of their family in benefiting from some of the things they worked hard to build during their life. Those two years are not nothing.
I have watched the Conservative leader bring three opposition day motions in the last five months. He has put them in his name. He has given the lead speeches for them. I watched a special debate about the allegations that the Government of India had killed a Canadian on Canadian soil as a result of his political beliefs and activity. I watched as just about the whole Conservative caucus, except for its House leader, was silent. I watched a very intense protest and counterprotest on the rights of children to be safe and to make some of their own judgments about what is safe or not in their home. I watched as the Conservative leader told his members not to go, not to speak and not to post.
This is the apparent champion of freedom of speech, but just not for his caucus, I guess. I watch as Conservative MPs rehash the same member's statement over and over again, clearly formulated out of the talking points of their leader, who says that he wants people to say what they will. I want to know why, if the Conservative leader does not trust Conservative MPs to speak for him, Canadians should trust Conservative MPs to speak for them in this place. I watched when the Conservative leader was a member of the Harper team that pioneered the electoral tactic of telling its candidates they were not allowed to go to local debates, speak their own mind and offer their own position. Perhaps he is worried that if they speak too much, they will reveal that he is not who he says he is.
I noticed earlier that the Conservative MP for Tobique—Mactaquac got up and said that he never supported a carbon tax. Maybe if he had read his platform in preparation for debate in the last election, he would have noticed there was a carbon price in that platform. Maybe the Conservative leader does not want his MPs talking too much in this place or elsewhere because they would expose the fact that what he is saying now is not what they have said in the past and is not what they will do in the future.
I heard the member say that we cannot support wage earners without supporting wage payers in respect of the oil and gas industry. As I said earlier, the wage payers in the oil and gas industry are making more money than they have ever made before and are laying off workers, so I really do not think that is an example we can take to heart.
This motion calls for a financial plan with a path back to a balanced budget, which is fair enough. I don't think that is a bad thing. Perhaps we will see something like that in the fall economic statement, but I will not hold my breath. We listen to this guy talk about the incompetence of the government, and there are some very compelling arguments on that front. We may not make all the same arguments, but we certainly have our own. Then he wants Canadians to believe it is plausible for them to come up with a plan to balance the budget in a week's time. Come on. It is not serious, and fundamentally, the Conservative leader is not serious.
This motion is not serious either, because it does not get to the bottom of what is driving inflation in Canada. It just singles out one thing that incidentally is to his electoral advantage to have people believe and leaves out all the ways he will help the corporate players that are driving inflation in Canadians' household budgets. He does not want Canadians thinking about that, because then they would know those problems will persist.
He likes to quote a former Liberal minister, John Manley, which is curious because we have seen him be very disparaging of anyone with any connection to the Liberal Party. I understand the impulse, but I find it passing strange that a long-time Conservative and strong public servant of this country, David Johnston, could have his character assassinated by the leader of the official opposition when he happened to not necessarily agree with everything the Conservative leader thought. Then he is willing to turn around and hold up a former Liberal minister, whose advice I never took very seriously but who is now suddenly an authority for the Conservative caucus.
It is the surest sign of despotic tendencies in a political leader when they are willing to disparage and engage in character assassination, even of their own folks who come out of their own political movement, for the simple cry of disagreeing with the leader and then hold up people they would otherwise criticize as authorities when they agree with them. To do that in a context where he has shown he is quite happy to silence his own people in order to make sure they do not expose some of the web he is weaving and the wool he is pulling over Canadians' eyes is another sure sign.
It is just like when it comes to the opportunity my private member's motion offers to Conservatives to curtail the powers of the Prime Minister to unilaterally prorogue this place and dissolve this chamber, providing more political accountability for that. One would think the Conservative leader would be interested in putting some meaningful constraints on the gatekeeping powers of the Prime Minister, but he is not. The Conservatives were first out of the gate to say they would not support that motion, and it is because this leader wants those powers for himself, not because he has an objection to the gatekeeping powers of the Prime Minister's Office.
Those are just some of the reasons the Conservative leader is not who he says he is, just as this motion is not what it says it is, and that is why the New Democrats will be voting against it.
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- Oct/17/23 12:21:32 p.m.
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Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.
History continues to repeat itself today as we see the Liberal-NDP government force the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates due to their out-of-control spending habits. This Liberal Prime Minister is just not worth the cost.
The Liberal-NDP government must exercise fiscal discipline over its 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 government must introduce a fiscal plan that includes a pathway to balanced budgets in order to decrease inflation and interest rates. Alternatively, it needs to get out of the way, so that Conservatives and our Conservative leader can fix what the Liberals have broken and bring hope back to Canadians.
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- Oct/17/23 12:28:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to start by congratulating my good friend, the passionate member for King—Vaughan for her incredible speech. She is a great advocate for her community,
Canadians are going through housing hell right now. Nine out of 10 young people say they have lost the dream of home ownership. Newcomers will not be able to achieve home ownership. The IMF is now saying that Canada is the most at risk in the G7 for a mortgage default crisis. There is a major housing crisis in this country, which we need to take seriously before people start losing their homes.
We need to understand how we got here in the first place. The Liberal-NDP government spent more money than all governments before it combined. Let me put this into context. Between 2015 and 2023, the Liberal-NDP government spent more money than every single government did from 1867 to 2015, combined. That has led to 40-year highs in inflation, which has led to the most rapid mortgage interest rate hikes we have seen in the last three decades.
The Bank of Canada had to counter with something, and it did so with the interest rate hikes. That was done in reaction to something, and that something was the government deficit. It is not just Conservatives who admit that government deficits fuelled inflation, making interest rates go up. Random Liberals and others have said the same thing.
I will point to the three Ms: Manley, Macklem and Morneau. They have all admitted that government spending fuels inflation. Mark Carney, who could possibly be the next Liberal leader, also said that inflation was due to domestic pressures. It was nothing to do with outside pressures, as the Liberals and NDP try to make everyone believe. They say that it is always someone else's problem and never theirs. Even someone who could become a Liberal leader admits that the inflation we see today is due to domestic pressures.
Even the current finance minister has admitted this. Though she does not believe in it, she still admitted that government deficits do fuel inflation. It is too bad that, after she said she wanted to be careful to not fuel the inflationary fire, she dumped a $63-billion jerry can of fuel on that inflationary fire. What ended up happening? Inflation went up and so did mortgage interest rates. Once again, this is why Canada is now the most at-risk country in the G7 for a mortgage default crisis.
The Liberal-NDP government shows its incompetence over and over again. These are the geniuses who ended up spending $89 billion, almost $90 billion, on housing only to have housing costs double in this country. Mortgages have doubled. Rents have doubled. Let us look into that a bit deeper.
Why have mortgages doubled in this country? As I identified, it was a domino effect. All the money printing the government did was bounced off by bonds. What ended up happening? We flooded the market in doing that, and there was too much money chasing too few goods, which is literally the definition of inflation.
When inflation went up due to all the government deficits, the Bank of Canada had to do the opposite of what the government is doing. Former Liberal finance minister, John Manley, put it perfectly. He said that today's situation is much like the Liberal-NDP government deficit. It is like it is pressing the gas, the inflationary gas, while the Bank of Canada is slamming on the breaks as hard as it can with its interest rate hikes. Both things are happening at one time. They are working in opposite directions and the engine is going to blow.
Who will be left paying for this mess? Canadian taxpayers will be. There is only one party in the House that cares about taxpayers' money and wants to make sure that Canadians do not lose their homes. That is why our leader, the next prime minister of Canada, the hon. member for Carleton, put this motion forward. It is because we are more worried than ever that Canadians may lose their homes because of the out-of-control deficit spending of the Liberal-NDP government.
Housing costs have gone up. They have doubled in this country after the Liberals spent $89 billion on housing. How does that even happen in a country like Canada?
This is the reality of the failed policies of the Liberal government. I met a single mom in Calgary recently, a single mom with three kids. Her rent went up by $600 a month. She was already struggling to feed her kids and keep a roof over their heads. She was literally in the stat of being the one in five who are skipping meals today. She told me her heartbreaking story of, because of the cost of her rent going up due to these deficits, having to move back in with her abusive ex-husband.
This is the reality of Canadians today. The Liberal-NDP government's failed policies have put Canadians in these types of positions. We can only imagine how many more of these stories we will hear as we travel the country. It is a sad state in Canada today. It should not be. However, after eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, it is definitely not worth this cost.
We are talking to industry stakeholders and everyday Canadians. We are hearing that people cannot get into housing because of supply. We are also talking to the people who actually build the homes. The number one issue today is interest rates, which were fuelled by the government's deficits. Builders will be sitting on land, and they will not be able to build. In some cases it does not make sense, with all the bureaucracy and with all the red tape created by the government. Along with a willingness to let municipalities create more and more bureaucracy, it is getting harder and harder to build, let alone how much housing costs have gone up for the builders. In some cases it does not make sense to build.
That is why we need to see a balanced, fiscally responsible plan for back-to-balance budgets. I hope the Prime Minister finally understands that budgets do not balance themselves.
An hon. member: Don't hold your breath.
Mr. Jasraj Singh Hallan: Madam Speaker, my colleague says, “Don't hold your breath”, and I will not.
Let us put this back into the context of why we brought forward this motion in the first place. It is because of a looming crisis that could take place in this country if the Liberal-NDP government does not bring back balanced budgets. I want to remind Canadians, once again, that it was the finance minister, back in November, who told Canadians, and promised Canadians in writing, that she would bring in balanced budgets in 2027-28.
I will take a step back to before that. It was the same finance minister who told Canadians to go out and borrow as much as they want, that interest rates would be low for a very long time. People started getting mortgages. We saw a big boom in people wanting housing. What those borrowers did not expect, after she said that, was that she would dump hundreds of billions of dollars of fuel on the inflationary fire, which made their interest rates go up. Now there is a looming crisis.
In November of last year, the finance minister promised to bring in balanced budgets. We had a hope that maybe the Liberal-NDP government had seen the light. However, once again, it was only months after that when she said that she was just kidding, that she was never going to balance budgets anyway, and then promised to balance the budget in the year never. Canadians lost all hope.
What we need to do today, under our common sense leader, is bring in a common sense plan to balance the budget, to bring down the inflation and to make sure that Canadians do not lose their homes. When the member for Carleton becomes the next prime minister of this country, we are going to bring home more homes, which people could actually afford; bring down costs; bring home lower prices by axing the failed carbon tax, which is inflationary and making the cost of everything go up; make sure that once we bring down the inflation by controlling deficits, people will not lose their homes.
We are going to bring it home for Canadians.
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- Oct/17/23 12:39:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, while the member was asking his question, I was looking for the Liberals' plan to balance the budget or how many times they have done so. I obviously could not find anything, and I will remind the member that it was the Prime Minister who thought budgets would balance themselves.
The Liberals were left with a surplus when they formed government in 2015, and they withered that away. It was the Liberal-NDP government that said it would not run deficits of more than $10 billion. Now we are sitting at half a trillion dollars in deficit, which drove up interest rates, and now we are in this looming crisis.
The government needs to get its deficit under control so that Canadians do not lose their homes.
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- Oct/17/23 12:39:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservatives have all kinds of things to teach us on this opposition day. However, they need to be reminded that the last Conservative government ran deficits for seven years straight.
I would sure like to know what today's Conservatives, whose leader was part of the Harper government, would do differently from what they always did in the past—should they come to power—so they can finally stop being a party that habitually runs deficits.
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- Oct/17/23 1:12:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.
It is a pleasure to rise in the House today to speak to today's opposition day motion, because after eight years of the Liberal-NDP government and the Prime Minister, Canadians are hurting. The Canadian dream that my parents came to this country for is starting to slip away. Life is unaffordable.
Rent has doubled. Housing costs have doubled. The amount needed for a down payment has doubled. Mortgage payments have doubled. They have risen over 150%. Why? It is all because of the Liberal-NDP government's inflationary spending and fiscal mismanagement, which have been continuously fuelling the inflationary fire.
Inflation is nearly double where it should be, and Canadians are now paying more for heating, eating and housing. Canada's federal debt for this fiscal year is projected to reach $1.22 trillion. If we do the math, we are looking at nearly $81,000 per household in Canada. The Prime Minister is simply not worth the cost.
The Prime Minister said, as I am sure many members remember, that deficits were supposed to be temporary, tiny deficits of not more than $10 billion. He said he would only run modest deficits, but he broke that promise. He then promised to return to a balanced budget in 2019, but he broke that promise as well. Now the Prime Minister has broken the banks of Canadians.
To be perfectly clear, the Prime Minister and his Liberal-NDP government have added more national debt than all previous prime ministers combined. The current finance minister acknowledged that one of her goals was not to pour fuel on this inflationary fire, but she continues to spend, spend and spend. All this inflationary spending is causing a domino effect.
Mismanaged federal budgets, like budget 2023, which is adding an additional $60 billion in new spending, are driving up our deficit. Deficits are fuelling inflation, and inflation is causing interest rates to rise. This cannot be argued because we have seen the Bank of Canada in action. The Bank of Canada has raised interest rates 10 times in the last 19 months. Even former Liberal finance minister John Manley said, per the National Post, “Trudeau's deficits press on the inflationary gas pedal, which forces the Bank of Canada to press harder on the brakes”—
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- Oct/17/23 1:18:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member made reference to the issue of deficits. He was not here at the time, so I will forgive him for not necessarily being aware of the fact that the Conservative members of his caucus voted in support of billions and billions of dollars to support Canadian businesses and individuals. A couple of years later, they are upset with the government for spending billions and billions of dollars.
I wonder if he feels there is any sense of hypocrisy when the Conservatives at one time were saying yes but now seem to be saying no. It sounds more like it is political wins that seem to be dictating Conservative policy.
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- Oct/17/23 1:37:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in today's opposition motion debate. I first want to congratulate the Conservatives on bringing forward a motion that is not directly associated with the issue they have been bringing forward time after time in the House. Now, we get to talk about something a bit different, although I do have great concern with the premise of the motion they have brought forward. The “whereas” clauses and the assertions they have made are, I think, wholly inaccurate, and I look forward to explaining that in the next 10 minutes or so.
This country certainly took on a lot of debt in order to support Canadians from coast to coast during the pandemic, and we have certainly had to take on our fair share to do that, much of which was unanimously approved by the House, particularly at the beginning of the pandemic. However, it is always important to look at things in terms of context. Obviously, debt is significantly affected by GDP, the amount a country is able to produce in terms of economic activity, because that is exactly what will end up supporting that debt. When we talk about the debt in this country and when we look at the debt-to-GDP ratio, Canada is actually doing quite well.
As a matter of fact, if we look at our debt-to-GDP ratio, we are at 14%. Some people might ask whether that is good or bad. That is fair, because I do not think everybody is an economist and knows the default answer to that, but let us compare that 14% in Canada to the percentage for our G7 partners. France is at 99%. Germany is at 47%. Italy is at 129%. Japan is at 161%. Probably the two most comparable to us, the U.K. and the United States, are at 95% and 96%. When we talk about our debt levels, it is extremely important to compare where we stand on them to the position of our G7 counterparts, our most comparable economies in the world. In that regard, we are in an extremely good position.
I would add that I will be sharing my time with the member for Kings—Hants today.
That is very important for context. I know that Conservatives, including this lot here, like to come into the House and routinely tell us about how theirs is the only party that knows how to introduce a balanced budget. They may want to go ahead and cheer and clap now, because usually they do that when I try to pay them a compliment, before I add the “but”.
It is really important to consider this: Conservatives will tell us that they know how to balance budgets, but if we look back to—
An hon. member: We do.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: Madam Speaker, they said “we do”. They will then have to explain the following facts to me and why they did the following. Since 1990, there have been only two prime ministers who have significantly added a surplus or balanced a budget. They were Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin. This is interesting, because Conservatives will always say that Stephen Harper balanced budgets, but no, he did not, and Brian Mulroney never had a single balanced budget. Stephen Harper did not really either, and I will explain why. The first two budgets Stephen Harper brought into Parliament were on the heels of Paul Martin's surpluses that he had been running for years. The Conservatives certainly squandered those surpluses and went into a deficit position very quickly.
Of course, Conservatives also like to tell us, and I have heard it already this morning, that they left the fiscal state of this country in great shape in 2015 with the last budget they presented in a last-ditch effort to get Canadians to vote them into office one more time. They brought forward a “balanced budget”, and for the purposes of Hansard, I should say I am putting “balanced budget” in quotes, but they did it on the backs of veterans by closing Veterans Affairs offices. They sold off our shares of GM at the time at bargain prices in order to get that off their balance sheet. They did a whole host of things in order to portray the illusion that they had balanced the budget, when they really had not. They did it at the expense of Canadians and the investments the government had on behalf of Canadians.
I know that many will say this was so long ago, 10 years ago for Harper and even longer for Mulroney. Fine, let us just get back to this lot of Conservatives right here. All of them who are here today ran on Erin O'Toole's plan in the last election, and that plan was to run deficits for a minimum of 10 years. Here we have a group of Conservatives who are now coming into the House with a motion that says to develop a plan for a balanced budget by October 25 of this year, a week and a half from now. Meanwhile, they had no intention of doing so when they were running in the last election. They did not care when they were knocking on doors and presenting their plan to Canadians. The plan from Erin O'Toole and the Conservatives was to run deficits for at least 10 years. That is the reality of it.
This should be concerning to Canadians, because this is not the first time that we are seeing hypocrisy come out of the Conservatives. It is actually the second time. They also ran on a plan to introduce a price on pollution and to modify the existing price on pollution that this side of the House had. They ran on that, too.
This morning, somebody challenged them and asked a Conservative member why they ran on that. That Conservative member stood up and said, “I did not believe in it.” That is funny, because that is the second or third Conservative I have heard say they were not running on a price on pollution or a carbon tax. However, they had no problem going along with the plan during the election. They did not say a single word in opposition to it at the time. Now, suddenly, they come in here and think that the buzz phrase of the day is going to be “axe the tax”, and this would bring them into power. That is not the position that somebody who is aspiring to be the leader of this country should be taking, asking what buzzwords happen to work today that would get him into power.
I also find it very interesting when we talk about inflation specifically. Today we have seen that Statistics Canada has reported that the inflation in Canada has dropped to 3.8%. I should add that all the economists who were predicting this in advance of today said it would be anywhere between 3.8% and 4.2%. It ended up being on the lower end of that. Conservatives are laughing.
Maybe it is time to compare that. I did it earlier, and I can compare it again. Let us compare it to the G7 countries. Again, Canada and the United States are tied for second place in terms of the lowest inflation. I think it is extremely important when we talk about our comparative countries.
Canada is heading in the right direction when it comes to inflation, but interestingly enough, when we look at inflation and the different sectors of the economy, transportation is one of the only sectors of the economy contributing to inflation, and it is the biggest contributor. It is interesting because the member for King—Vaughan was up earlier, and I asked her what proposals she would have to reduce the inflationary impact around transportation. Of course, the exact answer that I think everybody in this room would have expected, and I certainly did when I asked the question, was to get rid of the carbon tax, because the carbon tax is contributing to inflation.
The reality of the situation is that the carbon tax is not contributing to inflation. Tiff Macklem, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, recently said that the overall impact of the carbon tax to inflation is 0.15%. I believe he was in Alberta at a Chamber of Commerce meeting. We could chalk that up to a rounding error. Now I know the default for my Conservative friends would be to jump up and say that they do not trust Tiff Macklem; they have already made their position on that very clear.
I have a whole list, and I will not bother reading it right now, of Conservative MPs who have stood up in this House and invoked the name of Tiff Macklem as the expert when he has all the right things that they want to say at the moment. They cannot pick and choose when they want to use somebody as an expert in the field.
It goes without saying for the rest of us in the House, other than Conservatives, that Tiff Macklem is an expert in this field. When he says that the carbon tax contributes 0.15%, I am sorry to the member for King—Vaughan, but getting rid of the carbon tax is not going to be helpful. It is not going to be the solution as it relates to inflation specifically.
Once again, we are confronted with a motion by Conservatives. All they are interested in is political games and cheap shots at the Prime Minister.
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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 2:26:16 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 2:36:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is not working. It has been eight years, and the only thing Canadians know after eight years is that the Liberals are not worth the cost. Canadians are struggling, and the Liberals are continuing their ballooning deficits that drive up inflation. Even the Liberals are saying that deficits increase interest rates.
Will the finance minister finally confirm for Canadians that she will balance the budget in a specific year so that interest rates can come down and Canadians can keep their homes?
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- Oct/17/23 2:59:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the minister of industry has just admitted that 40 million Canadians are struggling to put food on the table. Eight years of out-of-control spending by the NDP-Liberal government has caused that inflation. This harmful inflation has pushed up interest rates, doubling and tripling mortgage payments and rent. Ninety per cent of Maritimers are having to make tough choices between eating, heating and paying the rent.
When will the Prime Minister stop harming Canadians with his inflationary deficits and balance the budget to lower costs on Canadians?
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- Oct/17/23 3:00:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal minister is talking about search and rescue when Canadians cannot put food on their tables.
Melody Horton of Bridgewater had to sell her dream home because of the increase in her mortgage costs. She does not agree with these Liberals that they have never had it so good. The new projected deficit of $46 billion for this year means higher costs and higher monthly payments for Melody and for all Canadians, including that Liberal minister's constituents.
The Prime Minister is not worth the cost. When will the Prime Minister stop harming Canadians with his inflationary deficits and balance a budget to lower costs on Canadians?
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- Oct/17/23 3:01:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, seniors, such as Ford Snow of Gander, are finding out after eight years that the Prime Minister and his Liberal-NDP coalition are not worth the cost. Reckless inflationary deficits have driven up interest rates, forcing landlords to raise their rents. They have had no choice. Ford's rent has gone up by 22% in a year. He is left without a nickel to spare.
Will the Prime Minister stop his inflationary spending to reduce interest rates and give renters like Ford a break on their rent?
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- Oct/17/23 4:00:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think that there are some things on which we can agree. First, public spending is needed in times of crisis, that is obvious. Even when we are not in a crisis, public spending is needed, which can sometimes create deficits. Of course, balancing the books must not be synonymous with brutal austerity, like in the disastrous days of triumphant neo-liberalism.
At the end of the day, what this motion calls for, despite the Conservatives' usual overblown rhetoric, is the introduction of a plan. To govern is to anticipate, as they say. The government will table a plan. When this plan is before us, we will debate it to see whether it is a good plan to get back to a balanced budget.
What is wrong with that?
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- Oct/17/23 5:03:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this question would apply to any member of the House.
After eight years, we have seen that the Prime Minister has added more to the national debt than all prime ministers in the past. However, I would like to take us back to just over 40 years ago, when the Prime Minister's father was prime minister and was running out-of-control deficits and inflation was out of control. When he rolled through my town in North Okanagan—Shuswap, he gave the one-finger salute to a few previous Liberal supporters who were standing on the railway platform protesting his car when it stopped.
I would ask the member if she believes there is any difference between that prime minister, who rang up deficits and inflation so incredibly, and the current Prime Minister, or if this one really does not care and is simply not worth the cost.
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