- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Calgary Rocky Ridge
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,868.27
- Government Page
- Apr/29/24 5:49:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is another year and another broken 2015 election promise. Let no Canadian or anyone on those benches who ran in 2015 forget what the current government promised. In 2015, the Liberals promised that more spending, more taxes, more deficits and more borrowing would lead to a magical utopia where budgets would balance themselves. They promised they would take a balanced budget that they inherited from the Conservative government and turn it into a deficit, but Canadians were not to worry: It would be a small, short-term deficit.
The Liberals ran on a commitment in 2015 that they took door to door to Canadians, telling them they would run deficits to fund unprecedented national infrastructure spending. Within three years the budget would balance itself. Here we are nine years later, and everything in that promise they made and were elected on turned out to be false. They broke that promise in the very first budget they tabled. For nine fiscal years in a row, the government has promised more spending, more borrowing, more taxes, more deficits, more interest payments, more inflation and more debts amid a further deterioration of the national balance sheet and declining living standards that are hollowing out the middle class. The government has broken the main election promise it made to Canadians in 2015. It promised it would not do that. It promised that a limited deficit would be it and that the budget would then balance itself.
However, budget 2016 was almost Orwellian in the way it pretended that the promises the Liberals made in the previous year had never happened. In 2017, they brought in what some called the “Seinfeld” budget, a budget about nothing, just more of the same. In 2018, I called it the “Britney Spears” budget: oops!... I did it again. In 2019, they promised the debt-to-GDP ratio would shrink forever.
In early 2020, the country was on the brink of a recession, the credit rating had been downgraded by Fitch and the debt-to-GDP ratio was rising. This was all before the pandemic. The government had already squandered its fiscal inheritance and abandoned its promises and so-called fiscal anchors and guardrails.
After the pandemic, the Liberals tabled the “pants on fire” budget, which continued to ignore every fiscal promise and projection they have made in successive election campaigns, previous budgets and fall economic statements.
Budget 2024 says, “we can make sure that Canadians at every age can find an affordable home.” However, the 2015 Liberal platform said the same thing: “We will make it easier for Canadians to find an affordable place to call home.”
The government is repeating old, broken promises verbatim, never mind that housing prices have doubled in that time and rents in some cities have nearly tripled in the nine years since it made those identical promises. Just how much credibility does it think it deserves for anything that it claims in its various announcements?
After nine years, we have unaffordable rents, home ownership no longer an attainable middle-class ambition, record food bank use and another budget that promises more of the same pattern of out-of-control spending and new tax increases. Let us call this one the “Hall and Oates” budget, because it is obvious to Canadians that the government is out of touch and Canadians are out of time.
It is not just with respect to fiscal mismanagement; the government has lost control of the institutional machinery of government. It is a government that has presided over a record expansion of the bureaucracy and an exponential expansion of the use of private consultants. Despite this record bloat, access to government services has never been worse.
The immigration decision queue is 2.5 million people long. The CRA call centres continue to give false information to Canadians or are unavailable when they need them. Most distressingly, the Canadian Armed Forces are in a “death spiral” crisis of retention and recruitment. Those are not my words, but the words of the minister himself.
For nine years, the government has pursued an anti-energy, anti-industry, anti-jobs policy that has resulted in Canadians dropping to near the bottom of peer countries in productivity. This is driving down the standard of living for Canadians at a time when they desperately need economic leadership in order to sustain program expenditures and our national security and public safety.
Conservatives do not want to fix the budget simply because we like the look of a nice tidy financial statement. The budgetary madness of the NDP-Liberal government threatens the prosperity of ordinary Canadians, the sustainability of programs that vulnerable Canadians rely on, Canada's national security, and Canada's ability to be a trusted and meaningful ally in global affairs. This then threatens our trade relationships, our diplomacy and our national security.
The budget has the same formula that has seen the gap in the standard of living between Canadians and Americans widen rapidly. That is not my opinion; it is what economists and the government's own reports are saying. Statistics Canada said, “Real GDP per capita has now declined in five of the past six quarters and is currently near levels observed in 2017.” This past January, Jack Mintz said, “real GDP per capita has stalled since 2018, fell in 2023 by 2.4 per cent and will likely fall again this year.”
According to the Royal Bank, “The Canadian economy is sharply underperforming global peers.... Since 2019, Canadian gross domestic product per capita has declined 2.8% versus a 7% increase in the U.S.” The bank notes that this is the single largest underperformance of the Canadian economy in comparison to the United States since 1965, almost 60 years ago. We should let that sink in: Per capita GDP is now lower than it was five years ago, while in peer countries, it is higher. We have Canada's worst underperformance in comparison to the U.S. economy in that time.
The OECD expects that Canada will record the worst economic growth among advanced countries for decades to come. The C.D. Howe Institute says:
Comparing investment in Canada to that in the United States and other OECD countries reveals that, before 2015, Canadian businesses had been closing a long-standing gap between investment per available worker in Canada and abroad. Since 2015, however the gap has become a chasm.... Having investment per worker much lower in Canada than [in other countries] tells us that businesses see less opportunity in Canada, and prefigures weaker growth in Canadian earnings and living standards than in other OECD countries.
To put it another way, the government is chasing business investment out of Canada, and the result is a lower standard of living for Canadians. The budget itself reveals that interest on the national debt is now more than the entire Canada health transfer. It is also way more than the entire national defence budget. Taxes from Canadians are increasingly going to pay Canada's creditors instead of paying for health care and defence.
Nine years of budgets that spend, borrow and tax more than they promised in their election platforms are making Canadians poorer, and they know it. Canadians know that they cannot afford rent, home heating, gasoline and mortgage payments. They know that inflation is ruining the purchasing power of their wages and the value of their savings. They know that, as government piles on more debt from more spending, they are going to be the ones who will have to pay for it all. They know it is not going to be the ultrawealthy who will just cheerfully pay a little more because it is only fair. Canadians know it is going to be the workers, seniors, small business owners and especially the young who will end up paying for the intergenerational theft that is contained in this budget.
That is why Canadians are increasingly ready for a government that would axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. That is why I will vote against the budget. I will vote non-confidence in the government. The Liberal government is out of touch. Canadians are out of time. Let us have an election and bring in a Conservative government to clean up this mess.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, more than half of all Canadians are struggling just to cover their mortgage, rent, food, home heating and gasoline. Taxes and the inflation caused by taxes, wasteful spending and deficits are crushing Canada's middle class and those desperately trying to cling to it.
For those Canadians who have even just a little bit left over at the end of the month after paying their bills, and who want to enjoy a basic middle-class indulgence like a night out for dinner and a bottle of wine with a loved one, or a beer with some buddies while watching a game, the NDP-Liberal government is going to raise the taxes on beer, wine and spirits again, for the eighth year in a row, on April 1.
I call on all MPs from all parties to support my private member's bill, Bill C-266, and let Parliament have the final say on taxes instead of letting the government raise them automatically. Let us bring happy hour back for working Canadians.
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- Dec/14/23 6:51:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary still has not answered my question. When are the Liberals going to rein in the spending, rein in their deficits and get inflation under control so that interest rates can come down and Canadians can get on with living their lives and not have to deal with the catastrophic effects of the inflationary and high-interest-rate environment that they have created? People's payments, in some cases, are doubling. It is normal now for a maturing mortgage to add $700, $800 or more a month to people's payments. They cannot afford it. They cannot afford to keep the homes they are in.
I did not hear an answer to my question. I heard him tick off a couple of announcements of funding and openings, but that comes amid the need for millions of new housing construction in the years to come. The answer I got is not going to cut it for the needs of Canadian housing and certainly will give no relief to existing Canadian mortgage holders, which is the substance of the question that I had asked.
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- Oct/27/23 11:58:29 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, Canadians are increasingly convinced that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost.
The government's insatiable appetite for spending has triggered an inflation crisis and interest rate hikes. Millions of Canadians with mortgages are left wondering what they are going to do when their payments go up by over $1,000 a month on their next renewal.
When will the NDP-Liberal government get its inflationary deficits under control so people can afford to stay in their homes?
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- Jun/19/23 2:52:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is cold comfort to families who do not know what they are going to do when their mortgage comes up for renewal. Inflation caused by Liberal deficits means that Canadians cannot afford groceries. Canadians are increasingly buying food on credit and struggling to pay their bills. Equifax Canada reports that Canadians are going deeper into debt, and defaults are rising.
When will the Liberal government get control of its spending so Canadians can take back control of theirs?
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- Jun/19/23 2:51:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, massive Liberal deficits cause inflation, which cause interest rate hikes, which lead to mortgage defaults. The IMF warns that Canada is at the greatest risk for mortgage defaults of any country that it tracks. The solution is to stop the deficits, which stops inflation, which stops interest rate hikes, which will stop defaults.
The finance minister knows this, and she said as much last fall, so when will she table her plan to rein in her deficits?
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- Jun/9/23 11:10:52 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government has been running massive deficits ever since it took office. All this debt has predictably triggered an inflation crisis, which has led to massive mortgage rate hikes. Half of all homeowners say their mortgage was already barely affordable, and now they are one renewal away from a shocking new payment that will add $1,400 a month to a typical family with a mortgage.
Rate hikes are also crushing the dreams of new buyers and threatening to collapse transactions that are currently in progress. Young Canadians face housing prices and rents that have doubled, and now the highest interest rates in 25 years.
I beg the government to stop making things worse. It must stop the massive deficits that cause inflation and that are driving up mortgage rates to the point that homeowners cannot pay for the homes they own and young people have given up hope of ever owning one.
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- Jun/8/23 3:01:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the latest interest rate hike is having a devastating effect on Canadian homeowners and homebuyers.
Half of homeowners say that their mortgage is already barely affordable now, and shocking higher payments are only one renewal away. Rate hikes are also crushing the dreams of new homebuyers and threatening to collapse transactions that are currently in progress.
When will the Prime Minister take the advice of former Liberal finance minister John Manley, take his foot off the inflationary gas pedal and rein in his deficits?
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- Jun/8/23 3:00:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, massive deficits cause inflation. Inflation causes rate hikes. Rate hikes make mortgage payments unaffordable. Unaffordable payments lead to mortgage defaults.
However, there is a solution. The Liberal government could stop the deficits, stop inflation, stop rate hikes and prevent defaults. Even the finance minister agreed with this basic advice a few short months ago.
When will the Prime Minister end his inflationary deficit spending?
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- May/12/23 11:49:56 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the cost of government is driving up the cost of living, and now the Liberals plan a 41¢-a-litre tax on gas, groceries and home heating. Liberal deficits are driving up inflation. This means that interest rates are higher, making mortgages more expensive and harder to qualify for. Prices have doubled, down payments have doubled, rents have doubled and new housing construction is falling because of high interest rates and red tape.
When will the government stop increasing taxes, stop its inflationary deficit and let the builders build?
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Madam Speaker, I am glad I was able to catch your eye and participate in the debate today, following my good friend the member for Foothills.
There is a disconnection between everything the government has said about fiscal restraint and the numbers contained in the budget this bill promises to implement. Some might call it the “pants on fire” budget. It puts a lie to everything the Liberals have said from the 2015 election to last year's budget.
Just last year, the minister stated, “We are absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline”. She also said, “This is our fiscal anchor—a line we shall not cross, and that will ensure that our finances remain sustainable so long as it remains unbreached.” The government did not waste any time in breaching that line. This bill would implement a budget with an increased debt-to-GDP ratio. The Liberals blew through that sacred line that quickly. This budget is the culmination of what is now approaching a decade of lies contained in three election campaigns, numerous past budgets and fiscal updates, and statements in the House and communities across Canada.
I will provide members with the solemn commitment that the Liberals made during the 2015 election. It states, “We will run modest short-term deficits of less than $10 billion in each of the next two fiscal years to fund historic investments in infrastructure and our middle class. After the next two fiscal years, the deficit will decline and our investment plan will return Canada to a balanced budget in 2019.” That was not a casual, throw-away line; it was a critical point the Liberals made carefully, to differentiate themselves from both the Conservatives and the NDP.
The Liberals were the only party promising deficit spending, but they knew that there was political consensus at the time that budgets ultimately had to be balanced, and that Canadian voters would not vote for unrestrained, reckless and out-of-control spending without a clear and credible plan for a balanced budget within the mandate they were seeking. They made that pitch to Canadians. Even the NDP knew then that there was cross-partisan support, consensus even, that budgets had to be balanced. That is why the Liberals did that. They had this solemn promise to run modest deficits for a very short period of time in order to fund unprecedented infrastructure construction that would lead to economic growth that would allow the budget to balance itself. Every part of that critical, election-winning promise turned out to be untrue. They did not run a modest $10-billion deficit. They did not build unprecedented new infrastructure. The budget did not balance itself. Every single word in that promise was untrue.
Since winning the election in 2015, not one member of the government or its party's caucus has ever acknowledged having made that promise. It was a promise the Liberals made to differentiate themselves, and they broke it. The government treats its own election promises like things that can just be tossed into an Orwellian memory hole to be forgotten forever, as if they had never been spoken. I was present when the Leader of the Opposition repeatedly asked Bill Morneau in what year the budget would be balanced. He acted as if the Liberals had never made the promise, that it was something that could be ignored. It was the promise they made in order to win the election. Then this became the thing they would do, to talk about the ever-declining debt-to-GDP ratios. In the fall 2017 economic statement, the Liberals stated, “The Government will maintain this downward deficit and debt ratio track—preserving Canada’s low-debt advantage for current and future generations.”
There was nothing about balanced budgets and no apology for the fraudulent way they campaigned in 2018. In 2018, the Liberals used the words, “anchored by a low and consistently declining debt-to-GDP”. The fall 2018 economic statement states, “The Government continues to deliver on its commitment to strengthen and grow the middle class...while at the same time carefully managing deficits.” That is nonsense. Careful management of the deficit would be to not run one during a time of relatively stable and strong international economic expansion. The Liberals might have also thought about better managing Canada's debt and not being addicted to issuing short-term debt, which would protect Canadians from the higher interest rates that are now upon us.
The 2019 fiscal update said the Liberals were “continuing to reduce the federal debt relative to the size of our economy.” By February 2020, weeks before any world jurisdiction had taken economy-slowing COVID measures, Canada was on the brink of recession. Private sector economists had forecast Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio was going to rise for the first time since the 2008-09 banking crisis. This was before COVID, so the Liberals ditched their lines about declining debt-to-GDP for a while.
The opposition warned the government that, during a time of relative global prosperity and growth, it was reckless to run uncontrolled structural deficits resulting from undisciplined spending growth and lowering growth through job-killing tax increases and terrible regulations like Bill C-69. We told the government that it was spending the cupboards bare and that it would leave Canada less capable of coping with a global catastrophe, such as a pandemic or a war in Europe. Of course, the opposition did not predict these things; nobody could have. The point is that unforeseeable events like pandemics, natural disasters, wars, financial crises and global political crises always happen. There has never been a multi-decade period in human history when these events have not happened, yet the Liberals spent their entire pre-COVID tenure pretending times would always be good, and the entire post-COVID period assuming things will just simply always naturally get better.
Look where we are today. Liberals have blown through their sacred promise of continuous decline in our debt-to-GDP ratio. The government has presided over a 53% bloat in the cost of the federal public service and record spending on outside private contractors at a time when service delivery has never been worse and the state of labour relations between workers and management, which means the Liberal cabinet, has never been worse. We are still in the midst of the worst public sector strike in Canadian history. How does one do that? How does one spend more than any government in history and have the worst record on service delivery and the worst strike? It is astonishing.
There are a number of things I want to go through. Liberals are now asking us to approve a bill with $70 billion in new spending and an increase of the deficit to $40.1 billion. Debt service charge is now at $44 billion a year and shortly going to $50 billion a year, with an increasing debt-to-GDP ratio, which is something they said could never happen. There are billions in losses projected at the Bank of Canada, the possibility of which they also dismissed out of hand when the opposition leader and I both raised it at the Standing Committee on Finance in 2020.
This bill has a host of tax increases on everything from air travellers to beer, wine and spirits. Of course, there is the carbon tax, which is a tax on everything and is something the Liberals also promised would never exceed $50 a megaton. They will now triple that amount. They have done all of this with absolutely no tangible path to fiscal reckoning other than just hoping for the best, having blown through their last promise in a long litany of broken promises going back to 2015.
I am not buying it. I oppose this bill, as I have opposed the government since I was elected. I will vote against implementing this budget, and I urge my NDP and Bloc colleagues to join me. They ran in opposition to the government. They were elected in opposition to the government. If they agree with me that the government is deceitful, arrogant, untrustworthy and incompetent, I beg them, in fact I double-dog dare them, to vote down this budget implementation act, bring down the government and let Canadians decide who will support this—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Apr/19/23 4:46:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we usually hear from only two or three members over there when we are debating legislation, so it is nice to have a different voice.
I wonder what the member's constituents have to say about a promise the government made when the Liberals won in 2015. They distinguished themselves from both the Conservatives and the NDP by promising to run deficits. There is a general consensus against running deficits and to not return to the days when Canada nearly had to be bailed out by the IMF as a result of the Prime Minister's father's time in office.
The member promised that the Liberals would run modest, $10-billion deficits to build unprecedented infrastructure, and then run balanced budgets. Every part of that promise was a lie and was broken. The promise that the party made was untrue, and I wonder how he squares up with his own constituents over the broken promises that got the government elected.
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday’s budget tried to fool Canadians into thinking the Liberals had capped the tax on beer, wine and spirits, but they did no such thing. If it was actually capped, the tax would not be going up on Saturday. Canada already has one of the highest excise duty rates in the world, and the tax is still going up on Saturday, and it will still go up automatically next year.
New spending in the budget will cost $4,300 per Canadian family. The budget promises Canadians more taxes and more deficits, which means more inflation. Taxes and inflation are crushing Canadians to the point that having a beer with friends or enjoying a bottle of wine with a loved one are becoming unaffordable luxuries for the middle class and those desperately trying to cling to it.
I call on MPs to support my private member's bill to repeal the automatic escalator tax and bring back happy hour for Canadians.
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Mr. Speaker, any tax increase on Canadians during a cost of living crisis is just plain wrong. I have opposed the increase happening on April 1 to the carbon tax. I opposed the payroll tax increases that took effect earlier this year, and for years I have spoken against the automatic alcohol escalator. With the budget coming up next week, these are tax increases that were imposed on Canadians, and are going to be imposed on Canadians, unless the government decides to reverse its course. Those are key recommendations I would have as we debate the concurrence of the recommendations made to the government.
Canadians cannot afford to pay higher prices with smaller paycheques. They cannot do it. That is the type of relief for Canadians that I am looking for in the budget. The automatic excise escalator on alcohol is an especially insidious tax. It is a tax that automatically takes effect, in this case next weekend, without a confidence vote in the chamber, without compelling government to come to the chamber to allow elected members to have their say on it. That is why last March, I tabled Bill C-266, an act to abolish the excise duty escalator on alcohol.
Last night I had hoped to have an opportunity to get some remarks on the record about that, but there were some extraordinary events for those of us who were here. I will not get into what happened, but it resulted in my inability to get into that debate, so I want to add some remarks today as we debate the concurrence motion. That is a recommendation I would have hoped to see in this report, and it is what I would hope the government would do in its budget next week because the right thing to do is to repeal the escalator.
I know what the Liberals are going to say. They are going to say that the excise escalator makes the excise tax just like other kinds of sales taxes that go up each year as prices rise. They will say that all kinds of things, including benefits paid to Canadians, are tied to inflation, so why not tie the excise tax on alcohol to inflation. They are going to say this increase is so small that nobody will even notice. They are going to say that.
It is false when they claim that the tax increase is less than a penny on a can of beer because they are deliberately and purposely ignoring the effect the increase of the excise tax has on a chain of other taxes that are applied after. There are the provincial markups, there is the provincial excise tax, there are the sales taxes by both federal and provincial governments, fortunately not in Alberta, but everywhere else in Canada. Therefore, these taxes are taxes on taxes and there is markup on that tax, so it is more than what they have falsely claimed to be less than a penny per can of beer.
I meant to say at the outset that I will be splitting my time with the member for Kelowna—Lake Country. I look forward to her remarks. She is from a region that produces wine and the escalator is dear to her as well.
A couple of weeks ago I was in my own neighbourhood and dropped in to Al's Pizza. I think most members in this chamber would probably recognize a place like Al's Pizza. It is a good solid family restaurant that serves the neighbourhood. He has been in business for 35 years, and everybody knows Al's Pizza in the neighbourhood. It is good pizza. It makes a great carbonara. He is a good guy.
I asked him if his customers could afford higher prices. He said absolutely not. He knows that his customers are strapped. His customers are feeling the bite of inflation. His customers are feeling the bite of the carbon tax. Their paycheques have shrunk with payroll tax increases. They cannot afford to the pay higher prices he has to pass on when his costs go up. He is aware that he cannot pass on higher prices. He is a small business person, so he cannot afford to just absorb a new tax.
However, it is not just Al, who is one restaurateur I happened to speak with. Restaurants Canada has also made this clear to Parliament when it testified before the finance committee. These people are in a competitive tight-margin business. It is a high-cost, low-margin business that cannot afford additional prices. They cannot afford to just absorb this new tax.
There are questions parliamentarians should be asking, and should have been asking before they voted last night on the opposition motion. If my bill, Bill C-266, should come to this Parliament, they need to ask themselves whether Canadians can afford higher prices. Well, we know they cannot. The cost of housing has doubled, interest rates are through the roof and the costs of transportation and groceries have gone up under the government as a result of the government's disastrous policies of running irresponsible deficits before COVID and running irresponsible deficits after COVID. A consistent policy of fiscal mismanagement has fuelled inflation. Therefore, no, consumers cannot afford to pay higher taxes.
Can the industry afford higher taxes? No, it cannot. With labour shortages, the high cost of energy imposed by the carbon tax, ever-increasing business taxes at municipal levels and the high cost of commercial rent, there is no room for a tax like the increase on alcohol. It cannot be absorbed.
The question that should then be asked is this: Can industry support this? What about the manufacturers? Well, the manufacturers cannot afford anything else either. The excise escalator makes Canadian products non-competitive with other producers, so no, our world-renowned vintners, world-renowned wineries and world-renowned breweries and distillers cannot absorb it.
We cannot let this country become a place where a simple pleasure like enjoying a bottle of wine with a loved one becomes an unaffordable luxury beyond the means of working people. We cannot let this country become a place where enjoying a beer with colleagues after work on a Friday becomes a luxury that people cannot afford. It cannot become a place where a family celebration cannot include a toast because nobody can afford any kind of libation. This cannot be a country where the hard-working men and women at Canada's wineries, distilleries and breweries are thrown out of work and rendered unemployed as businesses collapse because of an inability to compete in world markets.
It also cannot become a country where governments no longer have to face a confidence motion in the House and go to electors when they want to increase a tax to fund their spending. This is a basic principle of Parliament going back to the time of King John. When the king or his government, in this case the Prime Minister and his cabinet, wanted to spend more money and tax people, the principle was that they put it to a vote in Parliament and not put tax increases on autopilot. That is why I tabled Bill C-266.
I encourage all members to support the repeal of the automatic excise escalator. It is good policy. It is good for consumers, it is good for workers and it is good for the principles of parliamentary government.
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Madam Speaker, I followed the debate and I did think extraordinary the amount of patting on the back the Liberals wish to do over this economic statement. I know the member touched briefly on the debt service charges for this year, but in the years to come, according to the statement, by 2029 there will be up to $50 billion a year in interest charges with rising interest rates and endless deficits. Fifty billion dollars is way more than the current health transfer of only $36 billion. That is double the current national defence budget.
Could the member comment on how debt service charges threaten all the programs of the federal government that Canadians rely on?
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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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- Oct/6/22 6:54:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, tonight we see a continued doubling down on the same points we have heard from the government. I did not hear much about housing in that response, even though that is really what the question we are debating tonight was centred on.
We see the same old splitting of hairs over whether or not Canada's inflation crisis is really the worst among peer countries. Other countries that engaged in destructive financial practices, which ran enormous deficits on printed money, are also suffering the same effects that we are having here in Canada.
Tonight, yet again, we have a defence of the carbon tax and the claim debunked by the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the majority of people are somehow better off with this tax.
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- Jun/10/22 11:42:32 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when questioned about inflation, the government just shrugs its shoulders and says it is part of a global phenomenon. It is true that some other countries that have been running huge deficits are experiencing inflation, but Canada is the only one deliberately making things worse by increasing taxes on consumers.
Dropping the carbon tax and GST on fuel would immediately reduce consumer prices, just as prices dropped in Alberta when the provincial government cut its fuel tax. Why will the government not drop these taxes?
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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/23/22 2:49:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government is presiding over Canada's highest inflation rate in a generation, which has been fuelled by structural deficits that were baked in before COVID, out-of-control spending, monetary expansion, and an ever-increasing carbon tax.
The Bank of Canada recently confirmed that the carbon tax alone is responsible for driving up inflation by nearly half a per cent. Will the NDP–Liberal government commit today to cancelling this year's carbon tax increase and give consumers a break?
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