SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 313 - May/10/24

Mr. Greg McLean (Calgary Centre, CPC)

May/10/24 11:05:35 a.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, on April 22, John Adams, the President of Valour Canada, presented the annual General Sir Arthur Currie Award to one of Calgary's finest, George Brookman, often referred to as Mr. Calgary. There is much I can say about George and his contributions to Calgary and to Canada, but I would be here for quite a while. His recognition for this award is due to his role in steering events that contribute to our understanding and support of our military. Like the general honoured in the award he received, George Brookman is a true leader. We thank George for all he does for Canada's military heritage and so much more. Valour Canada is an organization that educates young Canadians about our shared military heritage by developing learning opportunities to foster a deeper understanding of who we are as individuals, as citizens, and as a nation. We thank John Adams and his team at Valour Canada. We are indebted to them for their work.

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Context: House Hansard - 313 - May/10/24

Mr. Greg McLean (Calgary Centre, CPC)

May/10/24 12:24:31 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the speech from my colleague over there, but can he tell me how his government is getting control of the agenda? In the same week, we are addressing the fall economic statement, something that was delivered in the House six months ago, and we are also debating the budget implementation act for a budget that was delivered three weeks ago. Canadians are a little confused about the legislation being put forward by the government. It suggests what it is going to do, and then it has been taking a long time to put it into actual legislation. This budget implementation act, which was tabled this week, had a whole bunch of legislation from the fall economic statement. This is all very opaque. Can the member tell us when the government is going to get control of the agenda and actually start moving at a pace that Canadians can understand?

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Context: House Hansard - 313 - May/10/24

Mr. Greg McLean (Calgary Centre, CPC)

May/10/24 12:43:21 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today in the House of Commons and speak to this motion, the fall economic statement. I will note it is May 10 and we are debating the fall economic statement here in the House of Commons. Earlier this week, we debated the budget implementation act. Nothing shows the government's lack of control over an agenda more than debating the fall economic statement on May 10, three weeks after the budget address, which is the main financial statement made by the Government of Canada. There is a problem here. There is a pace that has to happen in the House of Commons for legislation to get through and become law so that Canadians understand what their economics are going to be going forward. Today, once again, we are debating the fall economic statement, which is something that was delivered in the fall that we have not implemented into Canadian legislation. However, the government is acting as if that legislation has passed. Everything we see is the government pretending that there is no debate to be had here, that it has already been instituted into law and it expects this to be had going forward. Likewise, it put the budget on the table three weeks ago, and we debated the budget implementation act for the first time in the House in the last few days. I am going to note for the sake of Canadians that the budget implementation act has very little to do with the budget that was delivered in the House of Commons three weeks ago. A number of measures in the budget implementation act, which was debated earlier this week, are from the fall economic statement. Somebody needs to explain to Canadians how these things do not match going forward. There is a litany of all kinds of virtue on paper but no plans to implement what is going forward here. The problem with understanding the budget implementation act is this: If the government is going to put the fall economic statement into the budget implementation act, people are going to have to understand what their budgets will look like. There is no detail or announcement of any of the government's tax increases in the budget implementation act; there are no details at all, so Canadians are still left guessing about the details it is putting forward here in the budget. Budgets matter to Canadians and to businesses across Canada, but it is my job here in the House of Commons to try to bring some financial discussion about what is in these budgets, so let me talk about some of the issues the government talks about. In Canada, real GDP is down. The government talks about an economy that is going well, but real GDP continues to decline. GDP per capita continues to go down. That means the amount of economic output per person in Canada is continuing to decline at a steady rate. The government uses a ratio here called the debt-to-GDP ratio. I know I have gone on about it previously, but I will go into some detail here because I hope that people will understand it a little better. Canada's debt right now is approximately $1.3 trillion. That is the federal government's accumulated debt. Canada's GDP last year was approximately $2.1 trillion. If we take $2.1 trillion divided by $1.3 trillion, it gives us a debt-to-GDP ratio equal to 62%. That is our debt-to-GDP ratio, yet our government pretends it is in the 40% range, at 42%. Although 40% was the number it said it would not cross several budgets ago, it continues to cross that and let it grow. How did the government get to this number of around 42%? It added back the pension fund assets of Canadians. That includes about $600 billion from the Canada pension plan, which is money that is deducted directly off the paycheques of Canadians. Those contributions by Canadians into the Canadian pension plan fund were raised again this year, so there is about $600 billion sitting in Canada's pension savings to distribute to Canadian pensioners when they retire. The Quebec pension plan, similarly, has about $100 billion of savings in it for Quebeckers alone. In total, it is $700 billion, but this is not a $700 billion pool for the government. The thing about pension accounting is that it is about assets and liabilities, as is all accounting. Although there is a balance on their financial statements, there is also the liability of paying that to the people who paid into it for years. Last year, Canada's chief actuary determined that, all things going well, the Canada pension plan system is sustainable to pay the pensions that Canadians expect for 75 years. What that means is that it is okay; it is balanced. However, the assets and the liabilities are in balance; everything collected in there is going to be paid out to the people that put the money into it. Therefore, if I may say, it is not the government's financial asset. It belongs directly to Canadians, from money that was deducted from their paycheques, and it should not be used in their debt-to-GDP ratio. I am also going to talk about where we are going with this, because pensions are a major part of Canada's sustainability going forward. Pensions matter in many respects. The government is moving in a direction to try to change that pension management system; it wants to oversee the system through its regulatory arm, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. That has to stop. These are organizations that need to manage one thing, and that is the outcome for the people whose money they are saving. That is what they should be doing. Whenever anyone asks a regulator to go in and change what is happening at an organization, such as a pension, they are effectively saying, “Take your eye off the ball about what is supposed to be done here, and put your eye on something else.” Let me tell the House what that leads to. That leads, as in the United States, to bank failures. There were bank failures at smaller banks, where they were not matching their assets and their liabilities. As a result, when interest rates changed, a whole bunch of smaller banks had a run on their capital and could not meet their liabilities. They went under. That is an example of where people in the financial industry are distracted by other regulations being put on their plate by governments and regulators. This takes away from what they should be doing for their client base, which is managing their money effectively. Every pension manager, every money manager in the world has one mandate, which is to make sure that they are not losing money for their clients and are actually making money, hopefully at greater than the rate of inflation. We are not doing that in Canada right now. This is the reason we have falling GDP per capita. We have more Canadians coming into the country, and they are not keeping up in the economy. Now let us look at and tear down what actual gross domestic product is. It includes the contribution of everybody. It also includes the contributions of governments. Government spending goes into GDP. I am going to suggest that, if the government's spending going into the GDP increase was not there, we would actually be in a very negative scenario. Pardon me, Madam Speaker, I should say overspending; again, the planned overspending is $40 billion this year. The problem is that these things have to balance over time. We are a productive economy. We had a good economy before the current government monkeyed around with it and decided that it could replace private sector investment with direct public sector investment. It is wrong. We continue to run deficits. There is a cliff we are going to hit at some point in time here, where we are no longer able to meet our needs going forward, because everything that we put into our savings is going to be whittled away into interest payments on our debt. This coming year, that interest payment is $54 billion. This is the government's number of what that is going to be. I suggest it might be higher, as the debt is going to be higher than it realizes. That is $54 billion from Canadian taxpayers to pay bondholders, and it is going up. Even the government's documents say that ratio has doubled in the last few years. That is a significant increase, a significant weight on the pockets of Canadian taxpayers, who need to make sure that they are sustainable going forward here. It is madness. I am telling the few people that I see actually taking notes on what I am telling them here that we have to get back to balance. This budget, every budget, should be about getting to balance. I request that they go back to the drawing board and look at what they can do here to get our economy back to balance and actually sustain this country going forward.

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