44th Parl. 1st Sess.
January 30, 2024 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, that is a very sensible question. I agree with my hon. colleague. Seniors deserve the very best quality of life that we can give them. That is why our party has upheld the ability for seniors to retire at 65 and not at the Conservatives' suggested age of 67.
There are other things we have done. We have increased the old age security. We have reformed the Canada pension plan. We have increased the guaranteed income supplement. We have also done things like bring in the workers benefit, which has helped so many workers across Canada who work in low-income jobs and has allowed them to have that additional $2000-plus per month in benefits to support their families.
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Madam Speaker, the member opposite, in her speech, spoke a little about following rules, the rule of law and so forth.
I think that it has been interesting over the last few months. We have seen the incredible disregard that this government has for our institutions and for adherence to rules. We had the court rule, for example, that the government's imposition of the Emergencies Act was unlawful. We have seen, even today, how institutions are undermined when we have people in positions of authority, such as the Speaker, making outrageous rulings without any basis or precedent.
Can the member explain why her government and its partners in various positions consistently ignore precedent, ignore rules, ignore the law and think that they are somehow above the rules?
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question, because it gives me an opportunity to really talk about who is in favour of the rule of law. This is the same party that wants to withdraw from the United Nations and that wants to fire the head of the Bank of Canada. These are the kinds of things that we hear from the other side.
Let us talk about the Emergencies Act. Let us talk about the convoy on the streets of Ottawa in the absence of anyone dealing with that convoy. What would we have seen if the members opposite were in government? They would have walked away, ignored it and left the whole city in chaos, to implode. When there were people, radicals, camped out on the lawns of people's houses, when they had streets blocked and they were overtaking businesses, shutting down shopping centres, sending thousands of people in the city of Ottawa home and taking away their ability—
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- Jan/30/24 11:14:00 a.m.
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The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.
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Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member will agree that she and I have been in some good scraps over the years, but we come to this place for the betterment of Canada, so when I see the opportunity to create good-paying jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador being attacked by the Conservatives, and the Conservatives say they are going to stop jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador, I ask why. It is because they want to burn the planet.
What does it say to people in Newfoundland and Labrador that there are Conservative members who want to burn the planet and deny jobs and good, clean energy, while we see in America, on the Atlantic coast, that the Americans are getting thousands and thousands of jobs, clean jobs?
What does that say to the people in Newfoundland and Labrador?
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Madam Speaker, that is a good question. The Conservatives are voting against Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. They are voting against Nova Scotians. They are voting against the Atlantic accord. They are voting against 30,000 clean energy jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador. It is not only that, but the Conservatives do not have confidence in the governments to do the job that needs to be done. My colleague from Newfoundland and Labrador yesterday insinuated in committee that the premiers in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia were being hoodwinked by the federal government: hoodwinked into creating 30,000 new jobs in their province. They should give themselves some thought around that—
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- Jan/30/24 11:15:36 a.m.
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We have to resume debate.
The hon. member for Calgary Forest Lawn.
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Madam Speaker, before I get started I would like to say that I am splitting my time with the hon. member from the soup-and-salad bowl of Canada, Mr. Lake Simcoe himself, the hon. member for York—Simcoe.
Thomas Jefferson reportedly said that democracy would cease to exist when you took away from those who were willing and able to work and gave to those who were not.
Speaking from my own experience, coming as an immigrant to this country, my family, like many, came here looking for that Canadian dream that so many are coming to Canada for still. However, after eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, we know it is not worth the cost. We see now, more than ever, that it is harder, whether for a Canadian or for a newcomer, to survive in this country. It is so much so that more than 400,000 people left Canada just last year. That is not a good sign for any country to think that it can prosper when 400,000-plus people are leaving. I look at the reasons that people are leaving or wanting to leave, and the number one cause is the cost of living. Number two is that their credentials are not being recognized. Both are issues that Conservatives have plans for.
I do not believe that anyone moves to this country thinking that their government will work against them, but when they get here they are proven wrong, time and time again, by the Liberal-NDP government. Their paycheques are attacked; their civil liberties are attacked; their freedom is attacked, and their freedom of speech is attacked over and over again by the Liberal-NDP government. It makes them rethink why they came to this country in the first place.
This is because everything does feel like it is broken here. People are getting taxed more. Their paycheques do not go as far as they used to. They are working harder. They are working so much that many people I have talked to are working two or three jobs. If I talk to anyone in any riding, one thing I am seeing as being more and more of a trend is that more people are picking up Uber jobs or Uber Eats jobs or Skip the Dishes jobs on top of the jobs they are already working. I remember, when growing up, that people would pick up taxi jobs or a job on the side just to make extra money above and beyond whatever their savings were. However, it is sad to see that after eight years of the current Liberal-NDP government, that is a must now, even to pay for the basic necessities just to live here in Canada.
The inflation that was caused by all the spending by the Liberal-NDP government, which continues to spend, made interest rates go up in the last 19 months at the most rapid pace seen in the last 20 years. In fact, the intensity of those rate changes is actually the highest in Canadian history. Because the government spent and wasted so much money, the Governor of the Bank of Canada had to tackle that inflation by raising interest rates.
The government's own housing department officials say that they have no faith in the current government to build the homes that are needed today. In fact, CMHC said in a recent study that homebuilding was actually down 7%. When we look at some of the factors, we see that builders are not building and buyers are not buying, because of those high interest rates. They went up once again, because of the overspending of the Liberal-NDP government.
When we look at Bill C-59, we see that the only thing the government has included with respect to housing is that it changed the housing department's name and increased the funding for more photo ops. There is no concrete action that would be taken to help with housing affordability. After eight years, we have seen rents double and mortgages double, and even the down payment needed for a house has doubled in just eight years.
Canadians pay today over one-third of their income in taxes, and the rest goes to housing, with little or nothing left for groceries, gas and home heating. This is very concerning. People are making their shelter payments, but all the other payments are starting to go more and more onto Canadians' credit cards. Utilities and groceries are going up. Even though people are paying more for groceries, they are getting a lot less in groceries than they used to.
This is because of high taxes, like the carbon tax that made the cost of gas, groceries and home heating go up, which the Liberals plan on quadrupling this year. The household debt in Canada, in totality, is more than the Canadian economy. This is not a good sign for a country where we want people to come and be successful and prosper. We are missing out on a lot of talent that could come here, with new energy and new investment, because Canada is not affordable anymore. It is not a place where people can come and be successful.
Canadians have record credit card debt, and over half are only $200 or less away from going bankrupt. The fact is that more and more people are putting more onto their credit cards. We are hearing horrific stories where students are living under bridges. Working people are living in their cars because they cannot afford housing. Mothers are putting water in their children's milk and parents have to choose less nutritious food because they cannot afford groceries. We are hearing about seniors who are having to wear blankets inside their houses because they cannot afford heat them and have to turn down their heat. That is how they have to get by because of this punitive carbon tax the government continues to raise.
Bankruptcy and insolvency are up. All the increases for small businesses are crippling owners, who are the backbone of our country. The IMF also warns, because of the interest rate hikes, that Canada is most at risk in the G7 for a mortgage default crisis. More than 70,000 mortgages a month are now being renewed, sometimes at double the rate. That could mean anything from a $400 increase to a $1,200 increase. This is not sustainable. With the recent inflation numbers, where inflation is above the target rate, the Governor of the Bank of Canada has been clear that there is a fear of these rates staying higher for longer, which means the pain will be higher for longer. There is no hope in sight. There is no light at the end of this inflationary crisis tunnel we see right now.
When we look at the economy today, after eight years we are in a worse position than we have ever been before. In fact, Canada's economy has contracted, whereas our U.S. partner's has grown. This is because of the bad restrictive policies of the Liberal-NDP government, which have stifled any type of economic growth in our country, let alone productivity or any type of investment that should be made in Canada. Canada is a lot less competitive because of its tax regime, which has held back the country.
The GDP per person is a determining factor for how successful each person is in Canada, and it has been declining since September 2022. Canada is last in the OECD for GDP per capita. GDP per capita today is lower than it was in the last half of 2018, which means five years of the wealth of Canadians has been completely wiped out.
Taxes are high. The tax code is too complicated. Taxes have been taken from working Canadians and their families for Liberals to give to their insider friends, consultants, bankers, bondholders, Liberal Bay Street buddies, bureaucrats and woke multinational corporations to advance the Liberal virtue signalling and its unjust job-killing transition.
Canadians are being forced to go to food banks more than ever because of the productivity gap and more taxes. While the Liberal-NDP government thinks the government is the solution, we believe people are the solution, and we need to give them the freedom to spend and to earn the way they want to, not restrict them.
Once we have a strong Conservative government under our Conservative leader, we are going to bring home those powerful paycheques again and an economy that is strong like it once was before, where the GDP per capita works for more and more people and where powerful paycheques will become a reality, because what people earn, they will be able to keep more of it in their pockets. We are going to keep it simple by doing four things to bring it home. We are going to axe the tax, we are going to build the homes, we are going to fix the budget and we are going to stop the crime.
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- Jan/30/24 11:25:51 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to inform the House that Thursday, February 1, shall be an allotted day.
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Madam Speaker, I always marvel when I hear speeches from the opposite side. The Conservatives paint themselves as these magnificent fiscal stewards. Pre-2015, the Conservative government ran nine out of 10 straight deficits.
I ask the member opposite to come clean with Canadians. What programs would he cut? Is he going to cut the Canada child benefit, the dental care program or the child care program? Is he going to raise the age of seniors from 65 back to 67?
He should come clean with Canadians and tell us what Liberal programs, which you did vote against, you will cut.
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- Jan/30/24 11:26:47 a.m.
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The member has to speak through me. I did not vote against anything.
The hon. member for Calgary Forest Lawn.
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Madam Speaker, first, we are going to cut the number of Liberal seats and replace them with Conservative seats so we will have a strong Conservative government. We are also going to cut waste, waste like the $35-billion Infrastructure Bank that has built zero projects. The government have padded the pockets of Liberal cronies and insiders with that.
We are going to cut things like the arrive scam app that cost $45 million, which went to, once again, Liberal insiders, and the $1-billion slush fund that is under investigation for the same reasons. We are going to cut the woke policies. We are going to axe the carbon tax to bring down the cost of gas, groceries and home heating. The $20 billion that has gone to Liberal consultants to cover up the cabinet's incompetence will be cut as well. That is just the beginning.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague talked a lot about the economy in his speech.
I think he will agree with me that small and medium-sized businesses are a key component of the Quebec and Canadian economies, and that they are extremely important. The pandemic has been hard on them. The government offered them a loan, which was coupled with a subsidy if they were able to repay the loan. It was called the Canada emergency business account, or CEBA. The repayment date was a few days ago, in early January.
I have been talking to entrepreneurs back home. Some of them are wondering whether they should close their businesses because they have not been able to reach a payment agreement with the government. The post-pandemic economic recovery we had hoped for has not materialized. In my mind, it is logical to think that the government would help these people, who contribute to the Canadian economy.
I would like to hear more from the member. Does he think this would have been a good measure for entrepreneurs, who are also facing the rising cost of living?
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Madam Speaker, I agree with the member that the recovery after the pandemic was harder than what people thought. The Conservatives have been saying all along that when there are too many dollars chasing too few goods that is exactly why a lot of the businesses are suffering today, let alone everyday Canadians. The government continues to spend.
Let us remind everyone that 40% of the pandemic spending had nothing to do with the pandemic in the first place. Money went to organized crime through the government. Money went to people who literally were dead, to people who did not live in Canada and to public servants. The government is spending more and more money, yet it is not helping small businesses. It is raising their taxes. It slammed on a second carbon tax that applies without any rebate whatsoever. These types of things are stifling the economy.
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Madam Speaker, I am very concerned. We are into the second year of Putin's brutal attack on Ukraine. We see that Trump has undermined Ukraine. We see that the far right, and we know the Conservatives have been meeting with the far right in Europe, is undermining Ukraine.
I want to ask why that member, his leader, his defence critic and his foreign affairs critic stood up to vote against funding to support the people of Ukraine in their time of need. That sends a very message that the Conservatives are on the Putin troll machine.
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Madam Speaker, what we voted against, what will continue to vote against and what we always have voted against is a punitive carbon tax that the NDP-Liberal government is more than happy to put on Canadians. It is so ideologically obsessed with the carbon tax and ensuring people pay more for carbon that it wants to do that to the war-torn country of Ukraine. It does not want to help anybody. The fact that those parties have helped to try to cripple our energy sector is only empowering Putin to use the money from his energy sector to fund his war. Shame on them.
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Madam Speaker, when I look at the economic situation impacting Canadians right across the country, I cannot help but wonder this. Had the Prime Minister never entered politics, and had a more regular upbringing typical of most Canadians, he would very likely be cutting it on a drama teacher's salary. If he were, could he afford to live under the very same policies and economic conditions he is imposing on Canadians today?
Under these circumstances, I cannot help but wonder how the Prime Minister, if he were not the Prime Minister, could stretch his budget to cover feeding his family, clothing, mortgage payments, car expenses, cellphone bills and all the other obligations facing ordinary, but truly extraordinary, Canadians.
However, we know that the actual circumstances of the Prime Minister are far different than those facing most people across the country. He does not know what it is like to struggle to put food on the table or gas in the car, but Canadians are doing this, all the while going about their daily lives.
Increasingly, more Canadians are paying attention to what is taking place in Ottawa and what the government is doing, because they must. They can no longer go about their lives without being directly confronted and negatively affected by the actions and failures of the Liberal government. This is because everything is broken in Canada under the Prime Minister.
There has been a record two million food bank visits in a single month. Housing costs have doubled. Mortgages payments are 150% higher than they were before the Liberals formed government. Canada has been warned that it is the most at-risk country in the G7 for a mortgage default crisis. Violent crime is up 39%. Tent encampments can be found in most major cities. Over 50% of Canadians are $200 or less away from going broke. Average household debt makes up 100% of the income of Canadians. Business insolvencies have increased by 37% this year. Despite our growth in population, there are fewer entrepreneurs and fewer new businesses than ever.
This is the day-to-day reality facing Canadians because of the generational high inflation and the fastest rise in interest rates in Canadian monetary history, an issue the Prime Minister says, if members recall, he does not think about. However, regular people do. Every single person living in our country has been impacted by rising costs; homelessness amid an unaffordable home ownership and rental market; not to mention rampant crime; and a destabilized society where basic government services, travel, medical care and so much more have become inaccessible, unreliable or non-existent.
Canadians know that the Liberal government has caused this misery with the rampant overspending, a record $600 billion of inflationary debt and countless tax hikes that increase the price of the goods we buy and drives up the interest we pay.
Now, when Canadians are looking to the federal government and the Prime Minister responsible for everything being broken to see what is being done to tackle these issues, they see this, the 2023 Liberal fall economic statement. Talk about a day late and a dollar short.
The government did not implement any of the common-sense proposals the Conservatives called for to address the problem facing our country's citizens. Instead, the Liberals are forcing $20 billion of new spending on Canadians that will further drive up taxes, inflation and interest rates.
Never before has a federal government spent so much with so little to show for it. Now Canadians are paying the price. In fact, the Liberal policies in the economic statement only make the problems piling up in our country so much worse.
The Liberals are now spending more on interest on the debt than they are on health care. Let us think about that. It is no wonder York—Simcoe still does not have a hospital. When justifying the failure of the economic statement, the Deputy Prime Minister said, “Canada is not and never has been broken.” Can people believe that?
Canadians are paying attention and they are being told by the Deputy Prime Minister, who is tasked with tackling these issues, that actually there are not any. She says everything is fine and Canadians have never had it so good. We should not be surprised. This is the same Deputy Prime Minister who spends thousands on limos while bragging she does not need to own a car. She can just walk out the door and get on a subway.
This is the same finance minister who is holding back the rural top-up fund from the carbon tax from the first nations in my riding of York—Simcoe, forcing them to pay more in carbon taxes simply because of where they live. That is dividing based on geography. She will pretend that a AAA credit rating matters, as if that will fill the stomachs of Canadians lined up at food banks. It does not matter to her that this rating is only maintained on the backs of Canadians through higher taxes and interest rates.
She will also brag that Canada supposedly has the lowest debt and deficit in the G7, but she ignores the fact that when we account for general government debt, federal, provincial and territorial, Canada has the 10th highest debt-to-GDP burden in the OECD. With this economic statement, the Liberals would have people believe that, because the federal debt is only 42% of our GDP, it is all good. However, the truth is the government debt is 113% of our GDP when we account for all of it.
The Liberals’ refusal to admit that Canada is broken, that people in this country are suffering and that a change of course is necessary, proves to Canadians without a shadow of a doubt that the government is out of touch and incapable of responding to the crises it has made. There are crises. Let us look at the headlines from the past few months: “Canada's worst fiscal crisis in generations is brewing”, “Federal efforts to solve Canada’s housing crisis” are failing and “Surgery backlogs...no family doctor: ...Canada's health-care crisis”. There are so many more covering affordability, opioids, foreign interference, food insecurity and mental health. There is crisis after crisis after crisis.
After eight years, Canadians have never been more unhappy, more uncomfortable and more unsafe. This economic statement proves that the biggest crisis facing this country, and the root of all others, is a crisis of leadership. The approach of the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government is not working. Prices are up, rent is up, debt is up and taxes are up. Time is up. Canada is broken and the only people who will not admit that are the very same people who caused it: the tired, corrupt and out-of-touch Liberal government.
There is a better way. Conservatives will axe the tax, balance the budget to bring down inflation and interest rates to bring home lower prices for Canadians in a Canada no longer defined by crisis. We can only speculate what could have been if the Prime Minister was never Prime Minister. I am confident that we will not need to wait much longer before the Prime Minister is not the Prime Minister anymore. With the many issues facing our country, and the repeated failures by the government to address them, what will his legacy be?
It is increasingly looking like he will forever be remembered as the Prime Minister who broke Canada. Instead of our out-of-touch policies, we need a vision for the country and a prime minister who believes in Canadians the way Canadians believe in their country. The Leader of the Opposition will be that prime minister, and Conservatives will axe the tax and fix the budget.
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Madam Speaker, the member puts out the bumper sticker of “broken Canada”, and nothing could be further from the truth. If that was anywhere near the truth, one would have to say that we have a broken world.
When we look at how Canada has performed in comparison to others in the G20, such as the United States, England, France or Germany, Canada comes out quite well, whether it is the creation of jobs, interest rates, inflation or on the issue of affordability, and it continues on.
Maybe the member could step away from the Conservative spin and take a dip into reality. Can the member at least acknowledge one fact, that investment from abroad coming into Canada on a per capita, dollar amount is the best in the world? Would the member not acknowledge that that is a good thing?
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Madam Speaker, we see that the hon. member for Winnipeg North is obviously not out in his riding talking to Canadians.
The people of York—Simcoe are on the outside looking in. I know the member for Winnipeg North quite well. We have talked about the Lake Simcoe clean-up fund for example. The Liberal government is all promises and all press releases. Since 2019, the government has promised the Lake Simcoe clean-up fund. We are in 2024 now, and there has been zero on it. That does not surprise me.
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Madam Speaker, every Conservative MP is claiming that their party will be forming the next government. Sooner or later, they are going to have to take a position and offer up some clear proposals.
Considering all the shouting back and forth lately, the Bloc Québécois is pretty much only the adult in the room. We therefore intend to keep our feet on the ground.
The Government of Quebec is asking the Liberal government for $470 million to pay the costs associated with taking in asylum seekers. The Government of Quebec requested this $470 million quite a while ago now. No one on the Conservative side has told me what they would do in the Liberals' place.
If Conservative MPs are a government-in-waiting, they should have an opinion on the matter. What is it? Would they give the Government of Quebec $470 million to cover this cost?
I want to know what they would do, because, so far, they have not put any proposals on the table. All they do is engage in partisan attacks.
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