44th Parl. 1st Sess.
January 30, 2024 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, my colleague is a neighbour of mine, and we both represent parts of the great city of Vaughan.
The member says he supports making life more affordable for the citizens of Vaughan and those across Canada. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has made it clear that Bill C-234 would save Canadian farmers $1 billion by 2030, reducing the cost of food for Canadian families currently struggling to afford groceries.
I am wondering if the member can explain to the residents of Vaughan who are currently struggling to afford groceries why he will not support Bill C-234.
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Madam Speaker, when we look at all the measures that have been put in place to aid farmers in Canada, it is clear that we have the backs of farmers. Everyone knows that. The farmers themselves know that, and we will continue to make sure we support them.
Last week, I went on a tour of the Ontario Food Terminal, where $3 billion of economic activity takes place on an annual basis. I saw the potatoes, fruits and vegetables coming in from all over Canada and different parts of the world. We will always assist farmers so they can compete and we have food security and affordability.
On the affordability front, we have put in place a number of measures that have exempted fuel under the carbon pricing regime. We will continue to do that. Eight out of 10 Canadians are better off under the carbon pricing regime. We will continue down that path. We have to move to a carbon-neutral economy. We know that. The entire world is going there. Innovation is going faster than we in this House know; it will continue to go faster, and we will always have the backs of Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, housing has been a hot topic because it is clearly a need throughout Quebec and Canada. I was recently in Kuujjuaq. Poverty is rampant and the housing index is very low. Three or four families may end up having to live together. They are experiencing the unthinkable right now, and it is happening throughout Quebec.
Another hot topic has been the workforce. There are no incentives to get people back to work, either seniors or people who want to work. The cost of living is another hot topic.
What is this government doing about these issues with its bill?
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Madam Speaker, it is very important for our government to help Canadians across the country deal with the affordability issues caused by rising prices.
However, we see prices coming down and relief on the inflation front, which is important. We put in place prime measures, whether it is the Canada child benefit, early learning and day care, the Canada workers benefit, middle-income tax cuts, work on the housing front, the $4-billion housing accelerator program or the $4 billion for housing in rural and indigenous communities in the north or northern Quebec and those areas. Those funds are directed specifically to those areas.
I hope I answered the member's question.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is not only the MP for Vaughan—Woodbridge but also a former resident of the great city of Prince Rupert. The member mentioned housing. In Prince Rupert, the single most important investment to empower new housing development is replacement of the city's water mains, which are on the brink of imminent collapse. The Government of British Columbia has already invested $35 million in that project, and now it is time for the member's government to step up to the plate with a significant financial commitment to that urgent priority.
Does the member not agree that this should be made a top priority for the federal government?
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Madam Speaker, as a former resident, born and raised in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, of course I know the infrastructure in that community needs to be upgraded and fixed. Our government will work in collaboration, as it always has, with the current NDP government in British Columbia to ensure that residents of Prince Rupert have clean drinking water and the right infrastructure for their families. It is one of the most important port cities on the west coast for trade from north and central South America. It is increasingly becoming an economic engine for Canada. It is a logistics hub and major transportation point for our country.
I would like to say hello to friends and family who still reside in Prince Rupert. It is near and dear to my heart, as I was raised there. Canada is a beautiful country, and I am blessed to call two places home, Vaughan being my current home.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for King—Vaughan.
After eight years of this Prime Minister, two million Canadians are visiting food banks in a single month. After eight years of this Prime Minister, housing costs have doubled. After eight years of this Prime Minister, people are struggling to keep their homes, because their mortgage payments have doubled. After eight years, violent crime is up 39%. Tent cities exist in almost every major city, and over 50% of Canadians are $200 or less away from going broke. After eight years, this Prime Minister is simply not worth the cost.
Just last week, the Prime Minister said that the Conservative Party wants to “take Canada backwards”. If that means taking Canada back to a time when inflation was at historic lows or taking Canada back to a time when young people could afford to buy homes or back to a time when rent and groceries were actually affordable or back to a time when people felt safe in their own neighbourhoods, if this is what taking Canada backward looks like, then I am all in.
People rightfully wonder how it got like this. Let me explain.
In 2020 the Bank of Canada made a decision to increase the money supply in order to buy government bonds. The bank said it did this to keep interest rates low, but the reality was that the Liberals needed money, and lots of it. That money was ostensibly to pay for pandemic emergency programs, but soon after the pandemic, the Parliamentary Budget Officer found that $204.5 billion in new spending had absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic.
What happens when the central bank prints money? It means we have more dollars chasing fewer goods. Each dollar is worth less. Imagine that, in the whole economy, there were only $10, and that $1 was the price of a loaf of bread. Now imagine that, all of a sudden, there are $20 in the economy but still only 10 loaves of bread. Each dollar is now worth half, its value diluted by the creation of a new dollar. That is what caused inflation, not supply chains, not the war in Ukraine, not so-called “greedflation”, but money printing. That is the cause: money printed to feed the Prime Minister's reckless and inflationary spending.
From 1867 to 2015, the total federal debt was $600 billion. Today it is $1.2 trillion. The Prime Minister has doubled the national debt. He has borrowed more money than all other prime ministers who came before him.
What happens when we have inflation? How does a country get it back under control? It is forced to raise interest rates; that is how.
This is the monetary policy part, by the way, that the Prime Minister says he does not want to think about. He did not think that his out-of-control spending might cause a vicious cycle of inflation that would force the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates, but it did.
He now likes to call this spending “investments”, but what does he have to show for these investments? Our economic growth has flatlined. The OECD predicts that Canada will have the worst per capita GDP growth in the OECD for the next 30 years. Per capita GDP has actually declined. The Bank of Canada said in its monetary policy report just last week that it expects economic growth to be flat.
What do you call spending $600 billion for zero economic benefit? Economic malpractice is what you call it.
What about the high interest Canadians pay on all this debt? The Prime Minister likes to say that he took on debt so Canadians would not have to, but Canadians are stuck with the bill. Canadians are about to spend more money on interest on the Prime Minister's debt than on health care, on child care, on EI or on national defence.
The Bank of Nova Scotia economists have said that government deficits are adding two full percentage points to interest rates on the backs of Canadians.
The bank governor just confirmed in committee that the GST is adding 0.6% onto inflation.
Common-sense conservatives keep telling the government that Liberal spending is making life more expensive for Canadians. Did the Liberals listen? No. They just added another $20 billion of additional inflationary spending. At the same time, we have a housing crisis and out-of-control crime in this country.
A Conservative government would axe the tax, build more homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. It is time to rein in the NDP-Liberal coalition's inflationary spending and balance the budget to lower inflation and interest rates to ensure that Canadians can afford their lives again. Despite warnings from the Bank of Canada and the Canadian financial sector that government spending is contributing to Canada's high inflation, the Prime Minister ignored their calls for moderation and, yet again, decided to spend on the backs of Canadians, keeping inflation and interest rates high.
What are the ramifications for ordinary Canadians? The IMF warns that Canada is the most at risk in the G7 for a mortgage default crisis. High interest rates risk a mortgage meltdown as billions of dollars in mortgages renew over the next three years. At finance committee, the representative from The Mustard Seed food bank told us that food bank usage has increased 78% since 2018, with a marked increase in double-income families. Many Canadians are having to choose between buying food, heating their homes and paying rent. People's dreams of purchasing their first homes have been crushed. It used to be that Canadians were paying off their mortgage in 25 years. Now it takes that long just to save up for a down payment.
The good news is that it was not like this before this Prime Minister, and it sure will not be like this once he is gone. For the last eight years, all the Liberals have to show for housing are broken promises, half measures and endless photo ops. Their precious national housing program has only completed 106,000 homes. CMHC officials say we need to build over five million homes by 2030. Only in Canada has housing become so unaffordable so quickly. Toronto is ranked as the world's worst housing bubble, and Vancouver is the third most unaffordable housing market on earth. They are worse than New York City; London, England; and Singapore, a tiny island with 2,000 times more people per square kilometre than Canada.
The problem is that we are not building enough homes fast enough. We built fewer homes last year than we did in 1972, when our population was half the size and I was 10 years old. This is happening because the Prime Minister subsidizes government gatekeepers and the red tape that prevents builders from getting shovels in the ground and people into homes they can afford. In Vancouver, regulations add a staggering $1.3 million to the cost of an average home. In Toronto, government adds $350,000. That means that over 60% of the price of a home in Vancouver is due to fees, regulations and taxes.
Conservatives have a plan to fix this. It would be called the building homes not bureaucracy act. It would put keys in doors and people in homes by giving more money to the municipalities that are building homes and taking money away from cities that are not. It would incentivize unaffordable cities to build more homes and speed up the rate at which they build homes every year to meet housing targets. Cities must increase the number of homes built by 15% each year. If targets are missed, a percentage of their federal funding would be withheld, and it would be equivalent to the percentage the target was missed by. We would reward big cities that are getting homes built by providing a building bonus for municipalities that exceed a 15% increase in housing completions.
Also, we would make sure that cities build high-density housing around transit stations. Transit-oriented development is a major solution to our housing crisis. All of this is just common sense. Thanks to the Prime Minister, this is the worst time in Canada's history for Canadian people, and particularly for the middle class. The good news is that we have a common-sense plan that would axe the inflationary carbon tax to bring home lower prices, cap spending, cut waste to bring down inflation and interest rates, and remove bureaucracy to build more homes so that, once again, people could afford to rent or pay their mortgages. Conservatives will work every day to make Canada a country that works for the people who do the work.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned government gatekeepers as being the problem behind the housing crisis, and he promised transit-hub-oriented development. In the region I represent, there are no transit hubs. I also do not think one could characterize the village council of the Village of Telkwa, the town council of the Town of Smithers or the city council of the City of Terrace as being gatekeepers. These folks can approve housing development in a matter of days or weeks.
The challenge in these communities is infrastructure. Does the member support investing in key municipal infrastructure, as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has called for, and as the City of Prince Rupert has called for, where his leader just was? Does the member commit to investing the tens of millions of dollars required to ensure that our communities can deliver a quality of life for their residents?
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Madam Speaker, the member knows well that municipalities set their own infrastructure priorities and decide which infrastructure needs to be built. All we are saying is that, through the build homes not bureaucracy act, we would reward cities that build more infrastructure to get more homes built. That is really what the program is all about. Ottawa is not in the business of telling municipalities where to build their infrastructure, but we do have financial tools at our disposal to incentivize municipalities to get more homes built, and that is what we will do.
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Madam Speaker, I find it interesting that the member just said that Ottawa is not in the business of telling municipalities what to do, when the leader of the Conservative Party just recently called two municipal leaders incompetent: the mayor of Montreal and one other. I wonder if the member has had the opportunity to talk to his leader about how inappropriate those comments were.
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Madam Speaker, to the first part of the member's question, what I said is that the federal government is not in the business of telling municipalities what infrastructure they should build. We are in a position, though, to incentivize municipalities through financial contributions to build more homes. That was the point I was making.
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Madam Speaker, Bill C‑59 mentions the creation of a federal department of municipal affairs, to be known as the department of housing, infrastructure and communities. This could open the door to more interference, more disputes and more delays, despite the urgency of the housing crisis.
My colleague also talked about removing the bureaucracy. What are his thoughts on the creation of a federal department of municipal affairs?
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Madam Speaker, it is important we distinguish between levels of government and their jurisdictions. Municipalities are best positioned to decide what infrastructure to build and where it should be built. I spent time on a municipal council myself, and I certainly respect the hard and important work that they do.
We do have a housing crisis in this country. CMHC says we need to build well over five million houses by 2030, and the government's own housing program has only built 106,000 homes, so whatever it is doing is not working. We need to respect municipalities but provide the financial tools municipalities need to get more homes built.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley talked about the need to focus on affordability, but I did not hear him talk at all about the increased corporate profits that are leading the rising inflation we are seeing. One of those examples is the oil and gas industry. In fact, 18¢ of every dollar at the pump that folks are seeing increases on are going directly toward increased profits of the oil and gas industry, leading to $36 billion for the top five companies in 2022 alone.
Does the member support, at the very least, a windfall profit tax on even just 15% of the profits above a billion so we can invest in affordability measures across the country?
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Madam Speaker, frankly, I am just tired of socialist members of the House wanting to penalize success in our society. Of course we would not support something like that. We want private enterprises to be successful so they can employ more people, provide good-paying jobs and make sure we have more powerful paycheques in society. More than that, and I have said this before in the House, I find it astounding how some members think that increasing taxes on Canadians will make life more affordable for Canadians. It simply will not.
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- Jan/30/24 4:51:47 p.m.
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Order.
It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, Natural Resources; the hon. member for Kitchener Centre, Persons with Disabilities; the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot, Public Services and Procurement.
Resuming debate, the hon. member for King—Vaughan has the floor.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House on behalf of Canadians. Today, I rise to speak to what I call the “false promise statement” implementation act. Everything is looking up. Prices are up. Rent is up. Debt is up. Taxes are up, and time is up.
When the Prime Minister took office, he inherited a rich legacy. Interest and inflation rates were at record lows. The budget was balanced. Taxes were falling at a record pace, and it took 25 years to pay off a mortgage, not to save up for one.
Our next prime minister, the leader of the official opposition, would not be as fortunate. Today, interest rates are at an all-time high. Inflation is out of control. Taxes are up, and a new measure announced in this false promise statement is a 90-year mortgage. I will let that sink in for a moment: a 90-year mortgage. I have never heard of such a thing.
The Prime Minister has added more debt than that of all our previous prime ministers, combined. Canada’s growth for the next four decades is projected to be the worst of the developed countries. The finance minister told Canadians that the budget would be balanced by the year 2028. Canadians have found that to be an interesting statement, considering her boss believes the budget will balance itself. However, since she made that statement, she has announced another $100 billion of additional debt. This year, the Prime Minister will spend more taxpayer dollars servicing the debt than he will funding our health care.
This mini-budget would do nothing to help Canadians who are struggling to put food on the table. Under the NDP-Liberal government, we are witnessing millions of food bank visits in a single month. According to Food Banks Canada hunger in Canada statistics, seniors are the fastest-growing group of food bank users. The government should be ashamed. Across the country, food bank visits have increased 78% since 2019.
Trevor Moss, the CEO of the Central Okanagan Food Bank, is projecting a 100% increase in the next three to four months. During the last break, I had the opportunity to visit the Sai Dham Food Bank. Co-founders Vishal and Subhra educated me on the crises Canadians are facing. I was shocked to find out that, in one month, the food bank served 3.17 million meals and delivered groceries to 3,000 seniors in the GTA.
Seventy-two-year-old Linda Godin lives on a fixed income in Edmonton and is among those who have had to turn to food banks due to the rising cost of living. She told CBC news that, despite her best budgeting efforts, it is hard to make ends meet. The skyrocketing cost of food and housing is due to the high interest rates, which have been caused by the reckless overspending of the Prime Minister.
The finance minister suggested that cancelling one's Disney+ subscription would fix the issue. She is on the right track, but it is not Disney+ that needs to be cancelled. It is the carbon tax. Since the NDP-Liberal government refuses to do that, it is time it was cancelled.
Let us take a look at the impacts of the carbon tax. Farmers who grow the food are taxed. What is the result? The cost goes up. Truckers that ship the food are taxed. What is the result? The cost goes up. What would be a common-sense way to bring relief? It would be to axe the tax.
I scoured the entire document and found it to be very useful as a paperweight. The Liberal-NDP government has nothing in this budget to help seniors. Its members talk a good talk; they have referenced OAS and GIS, but they have proposed nothing. They have simply reannounced current policies under the Prime Minister. Seniors are worse off than they were eight years ago. If the Liberals continue this trend, things are only going to get worse. There are seniors who are on the brink of homelessness and forced to live in their vehicles or other unsafe places. Working moms cannot afford to feed their families. The NDP-Liberal government is playing politics with their lives while Liberal insiders get rich.
After years of careful financial planning, Maria, a senior in Vaughan, retired. She thought she had the funds to support herself, but after eight years, the Liberal-NDP government has forced her to go back to work. Eight years ago, if someone told me something like this would happen, I probably would have laughed. Today, this is the reality of far too many Canadians, and no one is laughing.
As we witness the misery that the Prime Minister has created, I cannot believe how far we have fallen as a nation. This country deserves better. Sunny ways are not quite so sunny anymore unless, of course, one is the Prime Minister and takes an $84,000 family vacation to Jamaica.
Do the Liberals even listen to what Canadians are telling them? It appeared for a hot second that the member for Avalon heard the voices of Canadians; he told a Radio-Canada reporter that he believed the Liberal Party was in desperate need of a leadership review.
Canadians need financial relief, not billions in more spending, which will only result in more taxes. Instead of listening to common-sense Conservatives, the Prime Minister decided to fund half measures, which will do nothing to resolve the problems that everyday Canadians face.
Under the Liberal-NDP government, housing costs have doubled. Toronto has been rated the worst housing bubble in the world. Canadian homes now cost 50% more compared with homes in the United States. One can buy a 20-bedroom castle in Scotland for less than a two-bedroom home in Kitchener.
Before someone across the aisle jumps up to sing the praise of the $4-billion housing initiative, let us take a look at that program. It is, in its very design, set up to favour projects in Liberal ridings, and the numbers prove it. It has recently been reported that the funds were disproportionately allocated. Let us look at the numbers. Thirty-four per cent of the country is represented by Conservative members of Parliament, but those areas received only 15% of the funding. However, the areas represented by Liberal MPs received 49% of the funding. I guess this just proves the point made by the member for Long Range Mountains that if one wants special treatment, one needs to vote for a Liberal MP.
This document is nothing more than a last-ditch attempt for the finance minister to drum up support. However, 48% of Canadians are within $200 of financial insolvency, and the government expects Canadians to trust it with their tax dollars. Canadians cannot afford any more of the Liberal-NDP government. It is time for my colleagues across the floor to reflect on the approach they have taken and on the misery they have unleashed on this country.
However, there is some good news. Conservatives have a common-sense plan, and we will axe the tax to bring home lower house prices, cut wasteful spending to bring down inflation and interest rates, and remove the bureaucracy to build more homes so people can afford to rent and pay their mortgages again. Under a Conservative government, Canada will once again become a country that rewards hard work rather than penalizing a strong work ethic, a country where Canadians are motivated to work hard. The Conservative Party understands that, as elected officials, we are servants, not masters. We are united under our common home. For members' home, my home and our home, let us bring it home.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague in this House, my neighbour in the city of Vaughan, which we both get to represent, along with another member. We have the most entrepreneurial and most generous residents in the city that we live in.
The hon. member is the shadow minister for seniors. Our government is putting in place a Canadian dental program that, right now, is enrolling millions of seniors in the hon. member's riding of King—Vaughan, in my riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge and in all 338 ridings. This will literally benefit millions of seniors. We are going to reduce costs for them. We are going to provide them oral care and dental care, which we know is part of health care. It is a transformational measure that all members of this House should support.
Is my hon. friend and colleague across the way going to vote for the Canadian dental care program for seniors in King—Vaughan, yes or no?
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Madam Speaker, the Liberal government cannot even deliver benefits to government employees, and now it is asking Canadians to trust it to deliver benefits to everyone else in Canada.
Many Canadians are worried that they are going to lose coverage. How can we trust this wasteful government to ensure that it is going to have a plan that will not encroach on the current system?
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Madam Speaker, the member and I are both on the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, so we work together on issues relating to the status of women.
Another file that interests both of us is seniors. She is her party's critic for seniors. We have had a number of very interesting conversations. I completely agree with what she said on the subject. This economic update lacks measures for seniors. There is nothing in it for them. The Bloc Québécois has long been asking the government to do something for seniors. That is one of the Bloc's priorities, and it is one of the things we have asked for in economic updates and budgets. Seniors have been getting poorer and poorer for too long.
Next week, the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities will begin its study of Bill C‑319.
Will the Conservative Party actually do what seniors are asking them to do, seniors like the ones from Saguenay and Chicoutimi that I met with just last week? They want the House to pass Bill C‑319 to make things fairer for seniors. They do not want seniors to be divided into two classes, those under 75 and those 75 and over.
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