- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Calgary Rocky Ridge
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,868.27
- Government Page
- Oct/25/23 7:14:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I could not imagine anything riskier than another four years, or any number of years, with the current government. The greatest risk to Canadians is if the government should last much longer. It has the coalition, of course, that is propping it up now, but we need a common-sense government that can get serious about these issues facing Canadians.
After this scattered four-minute mess here, we are left to conclude that the parliamentary secretary is looking for a pat on the back for a job well done. After eight years, there are two kinds of families now in this country: those who owned real estate before and those who never will. That is the affordability legacy of the government, a generation of Canadians who have no hope and have given up on home ownership.
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- Oct/25/23 7:05:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise tonight on adjournment business and talk about a question I put to the government last June. I asked the government about interest rates, and I pointed out the devastating effect that interest rates are having on Canadian homebuyers and homeowners.
I asked when the Prime Minister would take the advice of other Liberals, including former finance minister, John Manley. John Manley asked the Liberals to take their foot off the inflationary gas pedal and stop pouring gas on the inflationary fire, so there would be less pressure on interest rates so we could avoid a crisis among mortgage holders and mortgage payers, and also get some relief to homebuyers amid this affordability crisis.
The response I got was really quite disappointing. The parliamentary secretary at the time did not even make any attempt to answer the question. I am not even sure if he heard the question, because his response was totally unrelated to any of the elements that my question contained. He talked about small business loans.
He actually said something that is false. He should probably be brought to the House and made to withdraw his statement. He falsely claimed that opposition parties voted specifically against the CEBA support program for small businesses during COVID. That is an untrue statement. That is a fact. He should apologize and withdraw the remarks; they were unparliamentary and false.
Be that as it may, it gives me an opportunity tonight to get a little deeper on this issue. The truth is homeowners across Canada are concerned about whether they are going to be able to stay in the house that they already own. Mortgage payments are more than doubling for most mortgage customers when their mortgages renew.
We have people who bought homes in 2018 with five-year fixed mortgages that are maturing this year, and they are beside themselves because they do not know how they are going to make the payments. People are seeing their mortgage payments go from $2,500 to $6,000 a month. They cannot do that; they do not have the income to do that. In some cases, people are going to lose their homes. Depending on what city they are in, depending on what their local market is doing, they may not even be able to sell their home. We saw transactions that could not close.
At the time I asked the question, I had been speaking to some people in the industry. I have over 20 years in the mortgage brokerage business before I was a member of Parliament. I was talking to some of my colleagues and some of the industry people in Calgary. We have people who could not close on new construction deals because of the enormous shift in interest rates that occurred.
The government is absolutely oblivious to this and the role it has played in pouring inflationary gas onto the fire. It has a responsibility to do something, to rein in inflation. It talks about the support payments during a small period of its time in office, but most of the deficits that it has piled on were before and after COVID, or had nothing to do with COVID support payments. We have half a trillion plus in new debt, more than every government in history combined. This has an effect on interest rates and inflation.
When are the Liberals going to rein it in and do something to help quell the inflationary fire?
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- Feb/9/23 2:19:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, inflation is at a 40-year high.
After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, half of Canadians are cutting back on groceries.
After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, 20% of Canadians are skipping meals.
After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, the average rent in Canada’s 10 largest cities has doubled.
After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, half of variable rate mortgage holders say they will have to sell or vacate their homes this year because interest rates are at a 23-year high, and nine out 10 young people think they will never be able to buy a home.
After eight years, a bunch of random Liberals, including Mark Carney, Bill Morneau and John Manley, blame the government’s spending from before, during and after the COVID pandemic for the inflation crisis we are in right now.
After eight years, there is hope. Conservatives are ready to form a new government to clean up this mess.
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- Nov/30/22 2:13:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, cold kills not often by direct exposure but quietly. People who are stuck in cold homes are more likely to die from high blood pressure and cardiac events resulting from their body's struggle to maintain circulation.
Reports say that 150,000 people will likely die from the cold in Europe this winter due to soaring energy costs amid Putin's murderous war on Ukraine. While Germany restarts its coal-powered plants, the Liberal government continues to block LNG projects and pipelines that could supply the world with affordable cleaner energy.
Thousands of Canadians also cannot afford to heat their homes due to inflation, taxes and supply constraints. It is time for the government to cut the carbon tax and get out of the way so that Canada can supply the world with affordable energy. Its failure to do so will likely cause some vulnerable people to lose their lives this winter.
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- Nov/18/22 11:31:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, that answer is cold comfort to the millions of Canadian families that are going to struggle to heat their homes this winter.
The Liberals said that inflation was transitory and that interest rates would never go up. Now interest rates and mortgage payments are through the roof, and millions of Canadians are going to struggle to make their payments. The Liberals are also going to raise the payroll tax. Canadians cannot pay higher mortgage payments and a higher carbon tax with a smaller paycheque.
When will the Liberals cancel these tax increases and the inflationary spending?
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- Nov/18/22 11:30:13 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberal government offers Canadians more debt, more taxes, more spending, more inflation and higher interest rates.
Its out-of-control spending added $100 billion in debt before COVID, plus $205 billion in non-COVID debt that triggered an inflation crisis, which leaves Canadians unable to afford basic necessities.
When will the Liberals end their inflationary spending and cancel their plan to triple the tax on gas, groceries and home heating?
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to add my voice to the debate on the fall economic statement.
The bill is a disappointing but unsurprising continuation of the high-tax, high-inflation policy that we have come to expect from the Liberal government. The bill offers Canadians more debt, more taxes, more spending and the prospect of more inflation and higher interest rates in the months and years ahead. I say that Canadians have come to expect this kind of bill because this is consistent with what these Liberals have delivered for the last seven years.
Back in 2015, these Liberals promised three years of what they called “modest deficits” that would be incurred entirely for the purpose of a transformational infrastructure construction program, which would lead to the budget balancing itself by 2019. It was obvious right from the start that this solemn election promise was a lie told to Canadian voters. They immediately started piling on new spending without any fiscal restraint and drove Canada straight into deficit, and they have never talked about a balanced budget since.
It was as if no Liberal MP had ever heard the promise they made to millions of Canadians on doorsteps that, if Liberals were elected, they would get short, modest deficits offset by gleaming new productivity-improving infrastructure. Instead, we have structural deficits and industries struggling under the weight of ever-increasing regulation. I would remind members of the House, and Canadians watching or reading this, that this government's track record is how its credibility should be measured.
After ignoring their promise by pretending they never made it, Bill Morneau assured Canadians that what really mattered was not deficits but that the debt-to-GDP ratio would constantly shrink. Then, when his own departments' projections looked like this so-called fiscal anchor was in jeopardy, he suddenly said that, no, what really mattered was Canada's AAA credit rating. Then, at the moment when one agency downgraded Canada's credit rating, when Canada was paralyzed by rail blockades, when Canada's lack of pipeline capacity was helping drive Canadian energy prices below zero, when the economy was teetering on the brink of recession, and when this government was about to table a massive deficit budget, COVID struck. It is critical for Canadians to remember this important point. This government squandered four years of a booming world economy by creating new taxes and regulations that decimated Canadian industries and racked up $100 billion in new debt before the pandemic. All of this happened before the pandemic.
Conservatives warned this government throughout the first four years that it was grossly irresponsible to run large deficits and fail to build promised infrastructure while times were relatively good. Conservatives repeatedly warned the government that it was leaving Canadians vulnerable by leaving the cupboard bare during good times. The Conservative leader certainly did not predict the COVID pandemic, but he did warn the government that it had a responsibility to act prudently to maximize Canada's capability to manage an economic downturn.
Now, nearly three years later, according to the fall economic statement, Canada's debt is nearly $1.2 trillion, more than half of which was piled on by this government alone, and the majority of the new debt this government has added had nothing to do with COVID response measures, as $100 billion of it came before COVID, and $205 billion was added to the debt after the pandemic for spending that had nothing to do with the pandemic.
While the current and previous finance ministers were running these huge deficits, they assured Canadians that this was all okay. They said that interest rates were low and would remain low for the foreseeable future. They even said that rates were so low that they could run a deficit while lowering the debt-to-GDP ratio.
While the finance ministers were racking up the debt, the Bank of Canada was cranking up the printing press. The Department of Finance issued new debt, and the Bank of Canada bought it with cash created out of thin air. Current and previous governors of the Bank of Canada assured Canadians that this was fine, that there was nothing to be concerned about.
In fact, I asked the Governor of the Bank of Canada if buying up all this debt with newly conjured money would eventually trigger inflation, and he said no. He dismissed the concerns that I raised two and half years ago about inflation. He said that there would be no inflation, and even if there was, they had plenty of tools to deal with that. Our Conservative leader also raised these concerns consistently over the past two and a half years.
The finance minister dismissed these Conservative concerns about inflation and said that any inflation was simply transitory and nothing to worry about. Now here we are. We are in a full-blown cost of living crisis. Canadians are increasingly unable to afford basic necessities of life such as food, groceries, gasoline, housing and home heating.
Inflation has been called the cruellest tax of all. It destroys the life savings of seniors. It destroys the purchasing power of workers whose wages do not keep up with the cost of the goods they need to live. Canada now has the highest inflation in 40 years, yet there is absolutely nothing in the fall economic statement that would meaningfully address this crisis.
Milton Friedman said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”
As the Conservative leader has put it, there is too much money chasing too few goods. The cost of government is driving up the cost of living. We must stop printing cash and start producing more of the things that cash buys, such as food, houses and affordable energy. Now that inflation is out of control and wreaking havoc on Canadians' ability to feed, house, and transport themselves, and heat their homes, the Bank of Canada is raising interest rates faster than at any point in decades.
This has two important consequences for Canadians. First, it means that thousands, perhaps even millions, of Canadians are going to see their monthly mortgage payments shoot up drastically in the months and years to come. Second, it means that the interest on Canada's debts will soon approach $50 billion per year, according to the fall economic statement. The Canadian government will soon spend more on interest than it does on health transfers or national defence.
On top of all that, this bill offers no meaningful tax relief for Canadians. The government is proceeding to triple the carbon tax on home heating, gasoline and groceries, again breaking a previous Liberal election promise to not raise the carbon tax above $50 per megatonne. This is in addition to the payroll tax, which is set to increase in just a few weeks. Canadians cannot pay a higher carbon tax with a smaller paycheque. They cannot afford higher food prices, higher home heating costs or higher gasoline and transportation costs. As the interest rates rise and house prices remain out of reach, Canadians despair that an entire generation has given up on the dream of home ownership.
However, the problems with the government go way beyond this terrible bill and deeply flawed and disappointing fall economic statement. It is a government that has failed Canadians so thoroughly that it is almost incomprehensible. The government is so hopelessly incompetent that Canadians cannot get a passport. The government cannot ensure access to basic children's medication. There are nearly two and a half million people waiting for an immigration decision, and 10,000 people who were ordered into quarantine and threatened by a useless and dubiously acquired phone application.
The government's payroll systems cannot pay, and its procurement systems cannot procure. Our Arctic is inadequately defended. Public officials have denied and defied democratic orders of Parliament. Emergency powers have been declared under false pretense. Cabinet ministers interfere with police investigations. Basic information is routinely denied to members of the public and to journalists. Our energy resources remain in the ground while Europe freezes and Putin laughs. Canadians cannot afford food. They cannot heat their homes. The finance minister continues to jeopardize Canada's future with reckless spending and punishing taxes, while mocking desperate, suffering Canadians by having them believe that she shares their hardships and can relate to them because she cancelled her Disney+ subscription.
I have no confidence in the government. I oppose this bill, and I oppose the government. It is time for a Conservative government and hope for Canadians.
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- Nov/3/22 2:53:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians have never paid more taxes than they do now under the Prime Minister. The inflation rate is the highest in 40 years, which means that Canadians pay more for gasoline, groceries and home heating.
Some say that it is just inflation, but inflation means higher prices for Canadians and more money in the Liberal government's pocket. It is the inflation tax. It is the cruellest tax of all.
When will the Prime Minister stop the inflation tax and stop his inflationary spending?
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- May/20/22 11:57:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, deficits, monetary expansion and consumer taxes, like the carbon tax, all drive up inflation, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Canada's housing market, where the price of housing went through the roof at a time of massive job loss and shrinking GDP during the pandemic. The government's response has been to pat itself on the back while a generation of Canadians give up on home ownership.
When will the government get serious about reducing inflation, especially in housing?
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- Mar/28/22 5:38:35 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and add my voice to the report stage debate on Bill C-8. Here we are on March 28 debating the so-called fall economic statement, which was tabled just before Christmas, three full months after the summer election. That election was supposedly called to establish a mandate for an urgent, transformational, once-in-a-lifetime moment. I do not agree with the rationale that was offered for last summer's snap election, that it was a transformational moment, but what has been transformational is what has happened since this bill was tabled and during the more than three months during which this bill has been debated and studied.
It might not be reasonable to have expected the government to have taken an invasion of Ukraine into account when it tabled Bill C-8, but Vladimir Putin has long threatened Russia's neighbours, including Canadian friends, such as Ukraine. Putin's Russia has also long been a threat to Canada's Arctic lands, Canada's territorial waters and Canadian airspace. There is nothing in this statement that will address the now critically urgent need to prepare for our own self-defence and to increase our capacity to provide all forms of aid to our friends and allies. Financial aid, humanitarian aid, logistical aid and, yes, lethal military aid are all urgently needed by Ukraine.
Since this bill was tabled, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that the government's military capital spending, including its 2017 strong, secure, engaged funding announcement, is hopelessly behind schedule. In other words, even the spending that has been approved and authorized by Parliament is not being spent. The PBO went on to point out that more money will probably still be needed in addition to what has been approved to meet the goals of existing capital procurement. This is a critical failure of government at a time when Canada's ability to defend itself and support its allies is at the most urgent point that it has been in decades. I am pleased that the government has reversed its earlier positions and finally announced that it will buy the F-35s. That is good. Now it should buy ships.
Canada was a founding member of NATO. It is our principal alliance and it has secured our peace since 1949. We have an obligation to it to increase military spending to 2% of GDP, yet we cannot even get our act together to spend the money that Parliament has already authorized. Russia is not going to wait for us. China is not going to wait for us. The time to act is now, and there is nothing in this bill that will fix systemic failures in Canada's long-broken defence procurement system.
Also, since this bill was tabled, the true structural nature of Canada's inflation crisis is becoming increasingly clear. When I spoke on this bill at second reading, the most recent report said that the average Canadian house price was $717,000. That is about 14 times the annual earnings of an average Canadian worker and absolutely unaffordable for a typical Canadian household, but now, just within the last couple of months, new reports show that the average price is now $100,000 higher than it was when this bill was debated at second reading. Just moving from one stage of debate on this bill, the price of a home in Canada has gone up $100,000.
It is certainly not just housing that has gone up. Groceries continue to go up and, of course, the price of energy has also gone up. The war has enormous effects on the price of energy, but the government must take responsibility for its role in the inflation crisis. The government is charging ahead with its annual carbon tax increase set to take place this Friday. Gasoline is already over $2 a litre in some parts of Canada, and the government will push gasoline prices higher, along with the cost of home heating.
Since this bill was tabled, the Bank of Canada has published research confirming that the carbon tax alone is responsible for 0.4% inflation. While the bank's target rate is 2%, the actual rate is now just under 6% and the carbon tax, one single piece of government-engineered inflation, contributes 0.4% of that inflation. The government should be fighting against inflation, not explicitly contributing to it with punitive and increasing taxes.
The real shame of the global crisis of affordable and reliable energy, given the situation with the degree to which many parts of the world rely on Russian imports, is that the current government has done everything it can to prevent Canadian energy from reaching foreign or even domestic markets. Canada could be doing its part to keep the price of energy under control by replacing Russia's exports, but this bill is a continuation of the government's anti-energy, anti-Alberta agenda. We now find ourselves in an inflation crisis exacerbated by both high energy prices and a punitive domestic carbon tax.
It is not just the carbon tax going up this Friday. This Friday is also the day that the tax on beer, wine and sprits will automatically go up and further fuel inflation. We will not see this tax increase in this bill, because the excise escalator is an April Fool's gift that the government announced in budget 2017 that keeps on giving every year, which raises taxes without a vote in Parliament. There is no bill and no vote, but a tax increase nevertheless.
Another thing that is not in this bill is any demonstration of short-, medium- or long-term fiscal discipline. The endless deficits, enabled by monetary expansion and increasing taxes, mean that inflation will make life increasingly unaffordable for Canadian families. Again, I will refer to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose recent report confirms that the conditions for the withdrawal of stimulus spending in budget 2021 have been met, yet the spending continues. The Liberals laid out criteria to withdraw the stimulus, and then they got rid of the criteria and just kept the spending in this fall statement.
The bill contains $70 billion in inflationary new spending on top of $176 billion in extra non-COVID spending that the government has run up. It would bring Canada's debt total to over $1.2 trillion.
I remind the House that the government was teetering on the brink of a recession with a horrifically blown deficit projection, even before Covid struck. The government blew all of its fiscal credibility long before COVID. It has ignored every single fiscal anchor, guardrail or election promise it has made on deficits. Now, against this fiscal backdrop, the Liberals invited the NDP to abandon its opposition role and join the government in a de facto coalition.
I can already hear the howls of protest. I can hear the desperate explanations. I imagine New Democrats saying, and we have heard it before, that just because they have entered an agreement to support the government on all confidence and supply votes until October 2025, that the government has agreed to brief them on any such potential motion before it is made public and that they have promised to snitch if they get wind of opposition procedural tactics that might slow down the government's agenda at a committee, it does not mean it is a coalition. They will say that none of them is in cabinet, so it is not a coalition. They will ask whether I passed political science 201, and say it is not really a coalition.
We will let Canadians be the judges of what is really going on here. They can call it whatever they want, but the really sad part about what we have seen here is that an opposition party is now supporting the government rather than opposing it. This comes at a time when the current government increasingly fails to govern competently and transparently, which takes us right back to the beginning and the circumstances around which this bill was tabled.
This bill was tabled just before Christmas, and in the briefing on the fall economic statement the PBO told us:
This year both the Annual Financial Report and Public Accounts were published on December 14, 2021, the latest publication since 1993-94. Comparatively, Canada was among the last of the G7 countries to publish their [reports]....
Canada falls short of the standard for advanced practice in the [IMF] financial reporting guidelines, which recommends that governments publish their annual statements within six months.
...the delay in the Government's release of its audited financial statement undermined [Parliament's] ability to meaningfully scrutinize proposed Government spending.
This matters because it is symptomatic of declining basic government competency. We have a government that needs to be challenged by a loyal but vigorous opposition, which will challenge the government to better serve Canadians. Instead, it is emboldened by the defection of the members of the NDP caucus to the government in support of this tired and—
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- Feb/9/22 5:24:39 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member completely, and I am sure that in his riding most people rely on personal vehicles for transportation to get to work and back. There is no subway system in the member's riding, so the inflation impact, particularly on transportation, is a real problem for working people in Canada, and the PBO's concerns were well noted on the out-of-control spending.
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- Feb/9/22 5:21:06 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, there is a lot there, and I will do the best I can with the time I have.
To start with the last point, yes, indeed there is inflation in other parts of the world, but in no other advanced economy is it like it is in Canada. This is a Canadian phenomenon compared with our peer countries.
On housing, yes, indeed supply is an issue. We have seen nothing from this government to meaningfully address supply. It is quite the opposite. We have a continuation of regulation, and that goes to other levels of government as well, but certainly there are supply issues here. However, what the government has done is inflate the entire asset class with its deficits that were facilitated through the creation of new money, which I addressed.
With respect to programs, yes, indeed we supported all of the support measures that were necessary to combat COVID. However, as the member might have noted in my speech, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has pointed out that the criteria for the stimulus portions, and the government's own rationale for them, have disappeared, yet the expenditures remain.
Finally, I would like to thank the member for participating in the debate. It is nice to see somebody besides the member for Winnipeg North and the member for Kingston and the Islands actually doing their job and speaking in the House of Commons.
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- Feb/9/22 5:11:15 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-8, an act to implement certain measures included in the fall economic and fiscal update.
This debate comes amid a real crisis of leadership in Canada. We know the Prime Minister called a summer election that Canadians did not want, and by cleverly sowing enough division and fear in just the right places, he managed to squeak out another minority government with the same willing partners in the Bloc and the NDP. He claimed that the 2021 election was necessary because we were at the most transformational moment since 1945, and that he would need a new mandate to implement a bold new agenda befitting a grand historical moment. Once elected, with the same partners who were already giving his government a free hand to do anything he wanted, what did the Prime Minister do that was so transformational that it required an election and a fresh mandate? He did absolutely nothing. He waited weeks before making a few tweaks to his cabinet. Then he waited a few more weeks before finally reconvening Parliament, delivered a bland, recycled Speech from the Throne, and eventually, the week before Christmas, tabled what he was still referring to as the fall economic statement.
What was in this much-delayed update? What worthy, once-in-a-lifetime transformational programs required a new mandate from an election to implement? We saw absolutely nothing. The statement was a continuation of the same trajectory the government has been on both since and before the COVID crisis began. The fall economic statement shows that the government is continuing down the path that it has long walked of out-of-control spending, higher taxes and continuing inflation that threatens to trigger a spiral of higher prices for consumers, higher interest rates, higher mortgage payments for consumers and higher debt service costs for governments, which will eventually mean higher taxes and service program cuts. This is the trajectory we are now on and it began long before COVID.
Canadians are facing an affordability crisis. Inflation is now the highest it has been in decades. Families can expect their grocery costs to increase by $1,000 this year. For millions of Canadians, this means hard choices about what they will do without. The vast majority of Canadians do not have an extra $1,000 a year to spend on groceries. Before the pandemic, nearly half of Canadians were virtually broke after paying all of their monthly obligations, and they simply cannot absorb higher food costs.
There is the cost home heating. This is an absolute life necessity in Canada. Nobody in Canada, not even on the west coast, can simply tough it out in the winter and just put on a sweater when it gets cold. When it does get cold, and it gets bitterly cold in every part of Canada, Canadians need reliable and affordable energy to heat their homes, and the government slapped an ever-increasing carbon tax on home heating costs for millions of Canadians.
Transportation is also more expensive; gasoline is more expensive. This is also due in part to the carbon tax. This cost affects everyone, whether they own a car or not, whether they drive or take the bus. It makes driving to work more expensive, it makes bus passes more expensive and it puts pressure on municipalities, which have increasing costs to operate police, fire, ambulance, waste collection and transit vehicles. These higher costs have resulted in higher property taxes or cuts in services, and this will continue.
Nowhere is the increased cost of living and inflation crisis more obvious than in Canada's housing market. A true crisis in affordable rent and home ownership has deeply taken root in Canada under the current government. It became much worse during the COVID crisis, and this bill does not give hope to would-be homebuyers or renters. In fact, it is a continuation of the very policies that have pushed home ownership out of reach for young families.
COVID has had a devastating effect on the Canadian economy, resulting in a significant drop in GDP and massive job losses, yet the price of residential real estate has gone up, and not just by a little. The Canadian real estate market saw the most spectacular run-up in home prices ever seen. The average price of a Canadian home went up 30% in the middle of an economic contraction with massive job losses. How could that possibly happen? Was there a massive collapse in other asset classes to offset a rush of money into residential real estate? No. Stock markets also enjoyed a spectacular run during COVID, so where did the money come from?
Can there now be no doubt that massive deficits, facilitated and enabled by central banks that massively expand the money supply by buying the government's debt with newly created money, inflate the value of assets without actually creating any real wealth? It is Justinflation.
This bill, with its deficits and the absence of credible fiscal anchors or an acknowledgement of the inflation crisis, is a doubling down on the previous fall economic statement and last year's budget. There is nothing to give Canadians hope for a future where there will be affordable homes, manageable costs for basic necessities, relief from taxes or the better public services they want and need.
There is nothing in this statement to give Canadians confidence that their leaders are prudent managers of the nation's finances. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has pointed out that the government's own stated rationale for the billions in additional spending contained in the update no longer exist. The PBO has also pointed out that since the pandemic began, billions of dollars have gone into non-COVID new spending programs.
Furthermore, beyond the dollars and cents, the PBO has pointed out that the government is struggling with basic fiscal transparency. The PBO stated:
This year both the Annual Financial Report and Public Accounts were published on December 14, 2021, the latest publication since 1993-94. Comparatively, Canada was among the last of the G7 countries to publish their financial accounts for the 2020-21 fiscal year.
The PBO goes on to point out that the federal public accounts are published later than most provincial and territorial public accounts and that “Canada falls short of the standard for advanced practice in the International Monetary Fund’s [fiscal] reporting guidelines”.
In some respects, these quotes from the PBO about basic competence and transparency might be the most disturbing part of all. For six years, the government has been increasingly paralyzing the country with incompetence.
We watched a government just shrug off payment systems that do not pay, procurement systems that do not procure and create regulatory systems designed to kill projects. It dithered for years with a non-decision on Huawei, jeopardizing national cybersecurity. It defied parliamentary orders. It has presided over the resignation of eight generals, one clerk of the privy council and a governor general.
Now we are adding the inability to file timely fiscal reports to the incredible litany of muddled and incompetent government. Today, as we debate the implementation legislation for the fall economic statement, Canada is as divided as it has ever been. The government has long pitted east versus west, urban versus rural, and now the vaccinated against the unvaccinated. The government operates under an “us versus them” mentality that has finally and courageously been called out by one of their own this week.
To conclude, I will not support this bill. It is a matter of confidence in the government, and I have none.
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- Dec/8/21 10:16:29 p.m.
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Madam Chair, how high will the Bank of Canada have to increase interest rates in order to return to its inflation target?
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- Dec/8/21 10:15:59 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am sharing my time with the member for Calgary Midnapore.
For the Associate Minister of Finance, how high must the Bank of Canada increase interest rates in 2022 to return inflation to its target rate?
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