SoVote

Jun/3/24 5:17:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Regina—Lewvan. I would like to get back to the basics on the bill before us, which is on a national pharmacare program. Before we can even consider a program like this, I believe Canadians need to place all of this into context within the fiscal mess that has been created by the Liberal government going forward. As members know, we are facing a fiscal wall. We are leaving behind, for future generations to pay back, a massive national debt. In fact, over the last nine years, this Prime Minister and his Liberal government have amassed more indebtedness than all previous Canadian governments combined since Confederation. That is one piece of the context. What about the ongoing deficits being run by this Liberal government? There is no end to them. In fact, time and time again, the finance minister has been asked to at least give us a timeline when we will return to balance, when Canada will begin again to live within its means and not spend more money than is being brought in by taxes. Each time, the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister has said nothing. She will not respond to that question, because the answer is that there is no plan. How can we, as a nation, justify billion-dollar program after billion-dollar program without having a plan to bring our fiscal mess back into order? The only way to do that is to come back into balanced budgets, which has not happened. There is also the challenge of increasing taxes on Canadians. Carbon taxes, which have been the subject of much debate in the House, keep going up and up. Fuel taxes are going up and up. In fact, it was not long ago when my colleague for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon was at committee, and they were grilling the Minister of Small Business. The minister had asserted that she had reduced taxes on small businesses. The simple question that my colleague asked was which tax the minister had reduced on small business. And the answer was, well, humming and hawing. Finally the minister turned to her officials and said that perhaps her officials could answer that question. The officials looked dumbfounded, because they did not have an answer either. The truth is, taxes have not been reduced on small businesses. Across the board, taxes have been raised on Canadians. Now, within that context, this Liberal government wants to introduce another billion-dollar spending program. The Liberals could have come to us and said, “Listen, the recent budget shows that we will be returning to balance within the next, say, five years, and within that context we'd like to bring forward a program that is going to help those who have no pharmacare coverage.” However, that is not what they did. This government came forward and said that it was going to spend another $40 billion, $50 billion additional, that it would go into deficit by another $40 billion, and that it would throw in this program that would put Canada in the hole for years to come. However, who has to pay all of that back? I heard some heckling over here in the corner because they do not like to hear the truth, but it will be future generations of Canadians, with interest thereon. So that is the context in which this whole pharmacare discussion needs to take place. This is not a pharmacare plan. Like so many others, this is an empty promise that will leave Canadians deeply disappointed and angry. Let us remember it was the current Prime Minister who promised affordable housing back when he was first elected in 2015. Instead, what we have is a doubling of housing prices, rents, down payments, interest rates and mortgage payments, and another broken promise. Oh yes, the carbon tax would not cost Canadians anything and we now know from the PBO that in fact that is not true. The Prime Minister promised taxes would go down. He promised safe streets and instead we have chaos, crime and drugs on our streets and social disorder. With so many broken promises, we could go on and on. We could spend hours talking about broken promises, but the pharmacare plan is destined to be just another one of those broken promises. Now, there is another problem. By its own definition, the pharmacare plan is intended to be a single-payer plan. That means the Government of Canada pays and it is universal, so, of course, the fear is for the 97% of Canadians who already have some kind of coverage, typically through their union plan or company plan, or they may have bought coverage. They would now lose that coverage because the pharmacare plan that is being proposed by the current Liberal government is a very narrow one. It would cover a very small number of medicines when, in fact, most plans across Canada are expansive. Now, it looks like the government wants to insert itself and introduce a plan that would actually cannibalize many of the other plans across Canada. There has been no consultation with the insurance industry and there has been no consultation with the provinces. Let us remember that health care is the purview of the provinces and yet we have the government starting to step into dental care and pharmacare. That is on top of all the billions and billions of dollars in health care transfers every single year. Somehow, the provinces have not been consulted adequately. We know that some provinces are already providing additional pharmacare support and some provincial leaders are saying, “Listen, instead, give us the cash because we are already providing these services.” Others are saying, “Listen, we have a long list of priorities for our health care system and that is not the top priority. We have a number of other priorities.” For example, how about that mental health funding that was supposed to come to the provinces? It has never happened. Oh, what about that palliative care funding that the Prime Minister promised to the provinces years ago? What happened to that? It is gone. Therefore, the lack of consultation with the provinces and repeated stepping into areas that are the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces is, I believe, leading us down this road where, without a fiscal plan that will lead us back to budget balance, we continue to heap more spending onto the taxpayer and that is unsustainable. This pharmacare program is a big program, like so many other programs that the current government tries to introduce and implement. In fact, it was the member for Kingston and the Islands who said that this program is big and complex. Well, if it is big and complex, there is one guarantee: The current Liberal government will not be able to manage it effectively. We think of all the scandals, the spending scandals, GC Strategies, the ArriveCAN scandal and the TMX pipeline that went seven times over budget after the Liberal government purchased that pipeline. This is the question that Canadians have to ask themselves: Do we trust the current Liberal government and the Prime Minister to manage a pharmacare program that is billions of dollars in the coming years? Do we trust them to manage this program efficiently and effectively? I believe the answer from Canadians would be a resounding no.

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Context: House Hansard - 323 - Jun/3/24

Mr. Philip Lawrence (Northumberland—Peterborough South, CPC)

Jun/3/24 6:24:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am aware that there will be about three minutes for my speech. I am not sure if the time carries forward or whether we are done debate, but if it does I will be splitting my time with the member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake. It is my pleasure to rise in this House. I want to put a little context around the pharmacare situation and, really, the economy in general. The future Liberal leader Mark Carney said that it is impossible to redistribute what one does not have. That is the very scenario that we find ourselves in. Over the last nine years, we have experienced incredible fiscal and monetary, I might add, mismanagement of our economy. When the Liberals took the reins of power nine years ago, we had a balanced budget and we had a low GDP-to-debt ratio. Now, some nine years later, we have one of the worst debt-to-GDP ratios. We are looking at about 43%, in terms of debt-to-GDP ratio, which is shocking because the finance minister clearly said in 2022 that the government has a “fiscal anchor”, a line it shall not cross, and that the debt-to-GDP ratio would not increase. Then what did it do? It went up. According to the PBO, who we heard from today, it is actually going to go up the next two years. Speaking of the PBO, I am not sure if anyone caught this because it was only audio, unfortunately, but members will not believe what the Parliamentary Budget Officer said. He was getting challenged by Liberals for the error he made with respect to the calculation of the carbon tax, and what he said is that he actually knows his numbers are right because he has the numbers in front of him, the same numbers that the Liberals would not release to the public. It is incredible. The PBO came out and said that he has their analysis, but he just cannot share it because the Liberals will not share it. They have a carbon tax analysis that shows six out of 10 Canadians pay more in carbon tax than they get back in rebate. That being said, I will just sum up my three minutes with this comment from the great Margaret Thatcher. She said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.” We have hit that point. We are now paying more in interest than we are in health care transfers. Let us have a little common sense, the government cannot redistribute what it does not have. An obsession with redistribution to the extent that it is no longer focusing on growth will hurt everyone, most notably the most vulnerable.

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Context: House Hansard - 323 - Jun/3/24

Mr. Brad Vis (Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, CPC)

Jun/3/24 9:14:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on May 9, I rose in this chamber to ask the Minister of Finance when the Liberal government would stop sitting on the $2.5 billion in promised carbon tax rebates while business insolvencies skyrocket and small businesses suffer under higher taxes and inflation. Indeed, this promise was originally made in 2019. In the budget, I will admit, the government did announce that carbon tax rebates would be forthcoming. However, it did take five years and this is a tax that 80% of small businesses want eliminated. This spring, however, the Liberals announced that they will reduce the amount of financial relief businesses will receive from carbon tax revenue in 2024 from 9% to 5%. Small businesses, as a result of the government's economic failure and incompetence, are drowning in debt and are struggling to stay afloat. Skyrocketing commercial rent, payroll and carbon tax increases, and Liberal red tape have created an impossible economic situation for many businesses across Canada. The latest report from the superintendent of bankruptcy revealed a 58.6% increase, year-over-year, in business insolvencies across Canada for the period ending April 30, 2024. Statistics Canada reported that in February, more businesses closed their doors than opened. The largest declines were seen in transportation and warehousing, construction, so we think of home building, accommodation and food services. The labour force survey each month continues to highlight the massive gap in public sector job growth and private sector job growth. The growth in size of the public service is greatly outpacing private sector job growth. Quality of life is also continuing to decline in our country and our economy is underperforming the American economy by the widest margin since 1965. Among our G7 peers, only Italy has seen a greater decline in labour productivity compared to the United States. In 1984, Canada produced 88% of the value generated by the U.S. economy per hour. By 2022, that figure had fallen to 71%. Again, only Italy performed worse over the same period. If the government truly had the back of small businesses, as I have heard in this House during QP, the situation would, in fact, look very different. Rather than taxing Canadians into oblivion and offering a woefully insufficient rebate, far less than was originally promised, the government could start controlling its spending and stop driving up inflation and create a competitive economy for our small businesses to thrive. Indeed, the statistics I outlined do not lie. If this government truly “urgently” wants to return the proceeds from the carbon tax, then I will ask: why did it take five years for this government to make an announcement? On what day will small businesses start receiving this rebate? Secondly, why did the government reduce the amount given to small businesses from 9% to 5%?

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