SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 333 - Jun/17/24

Mr. James Bezan (Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, CPC)

Jun/17/24 8:26:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand today and talk on Bill C-69, the budget implementation act, or as I prefer to call it, “the economic vandalism act”. This is a budget that continues to build upon the inflationary deficits that Canadians are struggling to deal with. The government's spending continues to be out of control. First it was borrowing money, then it was printing money, and now it is going to continue to dip into the pockets of Canadians and raise taxes so it has money to spend on all its crazy ideas and programs. We know the Liberals have gotten no results the entire time they have been in government. For the past nine years, we have witnessed rent double. We have witnessed the cost of a mortgage double and the cost of a down payment double. Our children and grandchildren will not have the opportunity that we did to own a home and to move ahead in life because of the out-of-control spending of the Liberal-NDP government. We have a deficit this year that is going to be over $40 billion. It has been described as the worst budget since 1982. Who said that? The former, Liberal-appointed Bank of Canada Governor, David Dodge. We have witnessed that Canada has the worst living standards in 40 years according to the Fraser Institute. We have also seen, under the Liberal-NDP government, that we have had the worst growth in GDP, or income per person, since the 1930s. Nine in 10 middle-class families are paying more in income tax today than they were nine years ago. We have a situation that is increasing and is hurting everyone. In my riding of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, it is hitting everybody. Our farmers are struggling with increased carbon taxes that have gone up 23% and they now have to deal with the capital gains tax, and that is really starting to take a bite. We can look at how farms have been structured, family farms, over the last number of years. I come from a farm family. My daughter and son-in-law are grain farmers. I have two brothers who are farmers. They put hard work and effort into growing their properties. They want to make sure that there is something to pass on to the next generation, which is the same thing that my father did for his children, and that is at risk. To make things more manageable, people have formed their family farms into limited corporations. Our doctors, our dentists and our chiropractors, especially in rural areas, have set themselves up into limited liability partnerships and corporations. Those limited corporations pay out capital gains. Of course, now these capital gains are all going to get taxed by the Liberal-NDP coalition by up to 67%. This is not a tax on the wealthy. This is a tax on the hard-working people who feed us, take care of us and take care of our health. All of them are going to be attacked and become either less profitable or be forced to relocate to jurisdictions like the United States where it is easier to make a living without having to work as hard. I have had doctors and dentists tell me that they are going to work fewer hours because of the income tax implications with the capital gains tax grab by the Liberals and the Minister of Finance. This is also hitting cottage owners and those who have secondary residences, whether they bought a property for rental income or they bought a home that they hope to pass on to their children. Now, when they go to sell those properties, they are going to get nailed with this capital gains tax that they did not expect. There is a word for this. When somebody takes something away from another that they never deserved, it is called highway robbery. That is the economic vandalism that we are talking about here by the Liberal-NDP coalition. As the shadow minister for national defence, I do want to switch gears and talk about how this budget does not support, in any way, shape or form, the even less ambitious defence policy update. The defence policy update had some ideas, but all the spending, especially in this budget, has been kicked down the road until after the next federal election. We are talking three, four or five years down the road before we see any increase in spending for national defence to support our troops. At the national defence committee today, we actually had one of our witnesses say that the defence policy update is a national “embarrassment” that fails to recognize the threat environment we are in and that, technically, Canada is already “at war”. We are witnessing what is happening in Ukraine. We have had increased escalation in the conflict in the South China Sea between the PRC and the Philippines, plus what we are seeing in Taiwan. This defence policy update fails to recognize those threats. All the money that has supposedly been promised is kicked down the road. As a case in point, we have a retention and recruitment crisis happening in the Canadian Armed Forces. One thing that we identified is the lack of housing. The Minister of National Defence even said that we are short 6,700 residential housing units for our troops. We have troops who are living homeless and actually couch surfing. They are living in campers or in their cars. Worse yet, they are stuck in these tent cities that have sprung up across the country over the last nine years under the Liberal government. Even though the government recognizes that we need more homes for our current serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces, the budget has zero dollars for new housing for our troops. It has zero dollars next year. There is only $8 million in the budget in three years' time, which does not build 6,700 housing units. Eight million dollars will not build, in today's dollars, 24 homes. Again, that is a national embarrassment. We have people who are serving this country but cannot house themselves properly, and the government and the defence minister fail to recognize that we have to support our troops. Therefore, we have a retention and recruitment crisis, and the defence policy update gives no idea of how we are going to increase our troop strength. We are 17,000 troops short today, and it could get worse if this is not rectified soon. We have a housing shortage and, of course, we have no money to put into new houses. As we heard today again at committee, we have an army that the government has no plan to get new kit for so that it can become the expeditionary force we have come to rely on as Canadians. A case in point on how the government does not take our forces seriously and puts them in awkward positions is the news we heard just this weekend that the Canadian Armed Forces, through the Royal Canadian Navy, positioned one of our Arctic offshore patrol vessels in Havana, Cuba, for a celebration of the Communist dictatorship there. It is docked alongside Russian navy destroyers. Why would we want to use the Royal Canadian Navy to liaise with a hostile dictatorship in Cuba and an aggressive country that is invading Ukraine today? We know that Cubans are serving in the Russian armed forces today and fighting in Ukraine. Cuba has actually sent troops to Belarus to train alongside Russian and Belarusian soldiers so that they can invade Ukraine again from the north. This is a national embarrassment and, again, speaks to the fact that the government does not have a plan when it comes to supporting our troops. Instead, it uses them for photo ops with Communist dictatorships rather than supporting our allies in fighting back against the evil that is occurring around the world. We have frigates that cannot be deployed on as frequent a basis. We no longer have destroyers. We no longer have any of our own supply ships. They are slowly coming, and we have the Asterix out there, of course, which we ordered when we were in government. However, we do not have the same reach in the navy that we used to. When we look at Ukraine, our government, again, continues to dither and delay in delivering. It announced 18 months ago that NASAMS was going to be sent to Ukraine, and it is still not there. The Liberals finally announced that we were sending 2,000 CRV7 rockets, but guess what, Mr. Speaker? We asked back in February to send the 83,000 we had, not 2,000. We will continue to put pressure on the government to do the right thing for Ukraine, for the Canadian Armed Forces and for rural Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

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Context: House Hansard - 333 - Jun/17/24

Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

Jun/17/24 9:40:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I like the member, but, gosh, talk about inventing alternative facts. I lived through the Harper regime. We lived through the terrible financial mismanagement of the Harper regime. We saw $116 billion given to Canada's big banks in liquidity supports because the Harper government just wanted to splurge on the banking sector. That resulted in dividend payments and corporate bonuses. However, the worst part of the Harper financial mismanagement was the infamous Harper tax haven treaties, which the PBO tells us cost us over $30 billion each and every year. That is why the Harper government was always in deficit, It was massive financial mismanagement. In fact, Conservative financial management is an oxymoron. When the Conservatives have such a lamentable financial management record, how could they possibly give lessons to anybody else?

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Context: House Hansard - 333 - Jun/17/24

Mr. Jamie Schmale

Jun/17/24 9:41:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, likewise, I do respect the member, but he also forgets we were in a global economic crisis, and countries all around the world agreed that they would deficit spend on infrastructure. It was agreed that the taps would open but eventually would close, and that is where the Liberals forget that the story continues. One has to turn off the taps in order to maintain financial strength. The NDP was the party asking for more spending. By the time 2015 came along, the budget was balanced, the economy was back on track and we were growing as a country economically and politically across the world.

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Context: House Hansard - 333 - Jun/17/24

Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill, CPC)

Jun/17/24 10:09:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to speak this evening about the concept of the government's assertion about tax fairness in this budget. I would like to read into the record some facts that push back on the government's assertion that a fairly significant tax increase it has included in this budget is only going to affect a very small number of Canadians. I am reading from an article in the National Post. When I was putting my notes together for this speech, I thought that it actually summarized it very well, so why reinvent the wheel? This is an article written by Matthew Lau last week, which reads: In its latest announcement on the capital gains tax increase, the Liberal government presents as a “quick fact” that it’s “increasing capital gains taxes on 0.13 per cent of Canadians, in any given year.” There are three problems with the 0.13 per cent figure. First, it is misleading; second, it is incomplete; and third, it ignores tax incidence, which is the concept that the economic burden of a tax falls on different people—in fact, on very many more people—than simply those who face a higher tax bill. That concept of tax incidence is something that I encourage colleagues to understand, prior to continuing to vote in favour of this budget, because it will detrimentally impact the Canadian economy. The article goes on: Let’s take the three problems in order. First, the 0.13 per cent figure is misleading because of the phrase that follows: “in any given year.” The taxpayers who are part of this 0.13 per cent in one year are different than the taxpayers captured in this group in another year. For many Canadians, reporting an annual capital gain in excess of $250,000 is a once-in-a-lifetime event—or an immediately-after-lifetime event if the capital gain threshold is triggered when a deceased person’s assets are liquidated. What this is saying is that this affects families. It continues: This means that even if only 0.13 per cent of Canadians pay this higher tax rate every year, a much greater percentage of Canadians will be hit with this tax hike over the course of their lives. [An] Economist...concluded that, “As a share of Canada’s tax filer population, those impacted by the new capital gains proposal on a lifetime basis is 1.26 million or 4.3 per cent of tax filers compared to the budget estimate of 0.13 per cent.” Second, the 0.13 per cent figure is incomplete because it excludes corporations. As the Liberals estimated in budget 2024, approximately 307,000 corporations (again, in a given year) will be subject to the tax. About 6,000 of these are likely to be publicly traded...so many Canadians will effectively be subject to the higher capital gains tax through their investments, [and through their] pension...assets. The government does not talk about how this tax increase is going to affect people's investments and particularly their pensions. The government has not adequately costed that or talked about it in its presentation of this tax to Parliament and to the general public. Then there’s the approximately 301,000 private corporations, many of which have multiple owners, such as partners or family members, so even excluding exposure to publicly traded corporations, many Canadians will be hit by the capital gains tax...through their investments. “Overall,” [an economist] estimates, “4.74 million...investors in Canadian companies will be affected, representing 15.8 per cent of all filers.” Or more than 100 times the Liberals’ stated figure of 0.13 per cent. Again, I want to emphasize what I said in the earlier part of that statement, which is that a lot of these are family members. These are family-owned corporations of tradespeople. That is why the Leader of the Opposition asked the Liberals to provide an amendment saying that if it is only going to affect 0.13%, then accept an amendment to keep it to that, but we know that they cannot. That is why they will not accept this amendment, because they know these facts, and they are just not telling the Canadian public. They are not being honest. That is not fair. The article states: This brings us, thirdly, to the concept of tax incidence, of which students will learn in a good economics class but which the Liberal government would like us all to ignore. A well-known example: on paper, corporate income taxes are paid by shareholders, but in reality the economic burden of the tax falls largely on workers in the form of lower wages. Corporate income taxes discourage investment, thus reducing labour productivity and the number of businesses bidding for labour. The article continues: No differently, the Liberal government’s capital gains tax discourages business investment and will have negative effects on workers...beyond those who earn high amounts of capital gains in [any] given year. Business investment has already fallen in alarming fashion since the Liberals took office: from 2015-Q3 to 2024-Q1, real per capita investment is down 13.9 per cent. A capital gains tax hike that distorts investors’ decisions to favour present-day consumption over long-term investment will make this trend even worse. The incidence of the Liberals’ capital gains tax hike will fall on all of us, not just the 15.8 per cent...who are directly affected, or the “0.13 per cent of Canadians, in any given year” that the Liberals claim. For ordinary Canadians, learning about tax incidence for two hours could be a profitable and amusing activity; being whacked by a capital gains tax that the Liberals say will only affect the super-rich [but affects all of us], not so much. The other point that has been made by economists and by any business person is that the brisk implementation of the hike guarantees that it will enforce Canadian investors to shed assets in a hurry to take advantage of the existing lower rate, but revenue will decline over time. While we know the Liberals are facing potential credit downgrades because of the incredible amount of debt they have incurred on the Canadian people and because of the incredible deficit they once again racked up this year, they are looking for a way to prevent that credit downgrade. They are looking for an easy cash grab. One never wants to be in a position as a person where one is looking for a quick way to make money. That is where poor decisions are made. There are all sorts of crass examples I could give of that. Why would I not do that? This is like the equivalent of selling feet pictures for the Liberals. That is what the capital gains tax is. It is a quick cash grab to try to prevent Canada from having its credit downgraded. This would all be bad enough if it was not for the finance minister, who I honestly do not know how she has her job. I am sure she is liked in the caucus. I do not have anything personally against her, but she is clearly incompetent. How the Liberal backbench allowed her to present a budget that was this unbalanced, with this in it, and to keep her job is beyond me. This is so irresponsible. What the finance minister said in announcing this should give all colleagues in this place pause for thought. Her comments were described in a major Canadian newspaper as, “[the finance minister's] remarks seem like naked class warfare in a miserably thin guise of technical fairness.” The government has spent billions and billions of dollars. Are we in trillions now? It has spent so much money, and I do not think there is a single Canadian who can look at their life in terms of being able to buy groceries, to afford rent, to look at buying a house, to take a vacation or to look that long-term prosperity, and certainly not young Canadians, and who can say that they are better off now than they were nine years ago. We have spent all of this money, essentially in peacetime, and the last few years are not pandemic time. There is no reason for this deficit this year. If the government has spent all this money in this short period of time and Canadians have nothing to show for it, then why are we still allowing the government to use spending as a metric? Government members say that they are creating tax fairness, but they are just increasing taxes to make life more unaffordable and to create less investment for our country. As parliamentarians, we cannot allow them to do this. We have to hold them to account on this. I understand that there are different schools of political thought in this place about what the government should spend on and what it should not, but none of us, regardless of political stripe, should allow a government to spend without outcome, which is exactly what the government has done. When we think about all of the waste, we have only scratched the tip of the iceberg on the scandal of the government's waste. We should never be listening to the government about trying to take more of Canadians' hard-earned money to let it go into the abyss. We have to stop it. I implore colleagues of all political stripes to vote against this budget. It is bad. The government needs to go back to the drawing board. Certainly, this measure it has put in there is not tax fairness; it is decimation for the Canadian people.

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