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View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-06-22 11:10 [p.8945]
Madam Speaker, in my earlier remarks about the budget, I noted that with this budget, the Prime Minister had squandered a historic opportunity to reposition our economy for long-term success. I did, however, acknowledge that the budget contained a number of temporary measures that were critical to sustaining Canadians as we struggled to get past the pandemic. I commended the government for extending the wage and rent subsidy programs and a number of other measures that would continue to support struggling Canadians.
That is what a responsible opposition does. We offer helpful suggestions where possible and we call out failure when it happens. Therefore, I wish I could say that we Conservatives will support this budget, because we should not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. However, the reality is that this budget completely fails to deliver the growth budget that the finance minister had promised. Instead, it represents, as former deputy finance minister Kevin Lynch recently noted, the largest “transfer of debt and risk” that our country has ever seen. The finance minister failed to recognize the enormity of that challenge and in so doing, failed to include in her budget the strong fiscal anchor and debt management plan for which her own mandate letter called.
This budget would see our massive national debt swell to $1.4 trillion in the immediate term, with a hint from the government that it plans to borrow even more. The only anchor the minister could point to was a trajectory that would see Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio move slightly below 50%, far above what it was pre-pandemic, with endless debt and deficits for our children and grandchildren to repay.
The minister has been asked many times if she ever expects the government to return to balance; in other words to live within its means. She has steadfastly refused to answer, clearly a signal that the answer is no. Is this the growth budget the Prime Minister promised? It is absolutely not. While it would dramatically grow deficits, debt and the size of government, there is little that would position our economy for long-term growth and prosperity.
While other G7 countries have invested heavily in things like critical infrastructure, cut taxes, embarked on regulatory reform, harnessed the value of their innovators and reoriented trade away from hostile regimes like China, our Prime Minister has simply sprayed half a trillion dollars at targets intended to secure his re-election.
There is no plan to reorient our industrial policy from a tangibles to an intangibles economy, and there is no plan to capture the value of Canadian education, research and development, and innovation to ensure our start-ups commercialize and create jobs in Canada. There is no plan to reverse the dramatic flight of foreign capital from our country and to get nation-building infrastructure built. We now have the dubious distinction of being known as the country where nothing ever gets built. The demise of northern gateway, Keystone XL and energy east, and the potential demise of Line 5 under the current Liberal government, are evidence of that. What is worse is that this budget throws our oil and gas sector under the bus by expressly excluding it from the CCUS tax credit.
Again, is this a growth budget? It is not at all. In fact, even the Prime Minister's former policy adviser, Robert Asselin, recently confirmed this when he said that the budget doubles “down on programs that do not address our innovation shortcomings and have yielded few results to date.” He said, “it is hard to find a coherent growth plan.”
The finance minister clearly has not been taking the advice of her own Liberal advisers. She has also failed to act on other pressing issues. Her budget fails to properly address the looming threat of inflation and with it, rising interest rates, which could have a profound impact on millions of Canadians with mortgages.
In fact, last week we learned from Stats Canada that the cost of living continues to rise and is the highest it has been in over 10 years, proving that the minister's trillion-dollar debt and endless deficits are actually making life much more expensive for Canadians. One of the reasons for this is that the minister injected massive stimulus into our economy when economists were warning that she risked stoking the fires of inflation, and here we are. Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer commented that the Liberal government may have miscalibrated the necessity to spend on stimulus.
I will not sugar-coat this. The threat that massive borrowing and spending will lead to runaway inflation is real. I know the government does not want to hear that and is hanging on to the belief that inflationary pressures will be transitory. It says there is nothing to see and do not worry and tells us to be happy. However, Germany's Deutsche Bank is not buying it. It recently warned of a ticking inflation time bomb, a warning our minister refuses to heed.
For example, why is the Liberal government spending hundreds of millions of our tax dollars on the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank? It is a bank that makes no investments in Canada and instead supports China's efforts to assert its power and influence across Asia. In fact, why is this government collaborating with the communist regime in China on anything while that regime commits genocide against its own Uighur Muslim population, lays waste to democracy in Hong Kong, engages in harvesting organs from persecuted minorities like the Falun Gong and betrays Canada in the CanSino vaccine debacle? Why are the Liberals partnering with China when the Prime Minister cannot even explain why two Chinese scientists were escorted from a high-security virology lab in Winnipeg and fired? Why is Canadian money being invested in a bank controlled by China's communist regime when our two Michaels continue to languish in Chinese prisons? The minister has refused to answer these questions, as more and more taxpayer money is wasted on the Prime Minister's efforts to appease China.
This budget also failed to deliver a clear plan to safely reopen our common border with our largest trading partner, the U.S. Some two billion dollars' worth of trade crosses our border every single day, yet the budget scarcely mentions border security and trade facilitation, and makes no mention of whether discussions with the Biden administration are under way to safely reopen our border.
We are going to judge the government's budget not on the quantity but on the quality of its spending. Based on that standard, much of this budget remains unsalvageable. We Conservatives are now in a better position to judge the merits of this budget and to determine what it might mean for Canadians in the short, medium and long term. As I said, in the short term there are a number of measures that we can support that will help Canadians through this economic and health crisis, but in the medium and especially the long term, there is very little to get excited about. It is just endless debts and deficits with not even a pretense of the Liberal government ever wanting to return to balance.
As a responsible official opposition, we have no choice but to reject the government's attempt to spend the cupboards bare in order to position the Liberals for re-election, leaving future generations of Canadians to pick up the tab. There is one thing Canadians can be absolutely sure of. A Conservative government will implement a true Canada recovery plan that secures our future by getting Canadians back to work, by helping small businesses recover, by restoring Canada's reputation and competitive advantage and by prudently managing the massive financial burden that the government has left us. The Conservatives have done it before and we will do it again.
View Mark Gerretsen Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I have heard this NDP member refer to the NDP as the “worker bees” on a number of occasions. He is selling himself short, as worker bees are nothing more than mindless drones that fly around and contribute to the hive mind. The NDP actually offers quite a bit more than that in this House, and I would encourage him to consider a different term.
To the member's discussion about fiscal capacity, he seems to suggest that just because we were able to take on this fiscal capacity during a pandemic, we should be able to do it at any time. That is simply untrue. The reason why Canada, a country like ours, can take on this fiscal capacity right now is because our allies, our partners that we interact with and that we trade with regularly throughout the world, are also taking on that capacity. We are going through this together, globally, with other nations. That is why we are able to take on this kind of fiscal burden at this particular time. It is because we are going through it with other like-minded nations.
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
Mr. Speaker, the member has made our point for us, and that is that other countries have put in place wealth taxes because they see that massive gulf between the very wealthy in their countries and most of their population.
That is why when we go to other social democratic countries, we see much stronger protections around health care and ensuring that there is a transition to clean energy economy. We see, in other countries, our international allies are far ahead of Canada in terms of making the investments that count, investments in health care, investments in education, ensuring as well that people have a right to housing, and that we transition to the clean energy economy.
Canada could learn a lot from our international partners. My point is very valid, that the Liberal government is refusing the good examples that would make a difference in the quality of life for Canadians.
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Adam Vaughan Profile
2021-06-18 14:51 [p.8802]
Madam Speaker, I do not want to get in the way of the member opposite's optimism. I think we all believe that this issue is critically important. However, I will note that yesterday, my family buried an uncle who passed away from COVID this week. His wife, who is even more frail that he was and is still in hospital, has not been told she has lost her husband. The contact tracing shows that COVID came through the health care workers in the family, who continue to battle on the front lines even though the vaccination rates are brilliant and we are leading in the G7 and the G20 on the first dose and are closing in on the second dose. All of these circumstances have to be dealt with, and I would really caution the member opposite not to speak as if the crisis is over, because in many, many communities it quite frankly is not over.
Since he spoke to the future and to the budget, I have one question for him. People tell us to invest in the people, invest in our sectors and invest in the economy. It is invest, invest, invest. However, all we hear from the Conservatives is cut, cut, cut. How do we invest and cut at the same time?
View Richard Bragdon Profile
CPC (NB)
View Richard Bragdon Profile
2021-06-18 14:52 [p.8802]
Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his insight and perspective, but being wise, being good stewards, planning ahead and seeing around corners is the essence of leadership and good governance. We cannot just speak to where we are currently; we must speak to where we are heading. I find the current government puts too much emphasis on what is behind, what we have gone through already. We need to have the vision to see where we are going in order to traverse the uncertain waters we are in now. That takes away nothing from the horrific challenges that COVID has presented to the country, and is still having its effect on, but we must speak to the future.
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-06-17 14:51 [p.8675]
Mr. Speaker, I am appealing to the Prime Minister. What does he not understand when I say that everything is more expensive?
This government has lost control of public spending. We are talking about a deficit that has now reached over a trillion dollars. This deficit is a debt that Canada has to pay back, and it is the Canadians of this generation, the one after that, the one after that, the one after that and the one after that who will pay for it.
If nothing is done, Canadians will pay more tax on more products that will cost more. Is the Prime Minister beginning to realize that all Canadians will pay dearly for his fiscal recklessness?
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, we understand and I understand very well the serious threat posed by the Conservatives' tactics. Canada is currently in the process of reopening its economy and building a strong economic recovery. To do so, however, Canadians and Canadian businesses need the support of our budget. It is the Conservatives who are preventing us from supporting Canadians, and they need to stop.
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government continues to spend and spend. There is no doubt that there was a need to spend during the pandemic. There was a need to bridge. However, as the PBO said, we are walking on a very thin tightrope right now. If we were to have a crisis like an economic recession or a climate-related crisis, we would have big financial problems.
If we were to reach a financial crisis, which tax would the member increase? Would she put a tax on principal residences? Would she cut spending? Would she cut civil servants? What is her approach for the crisis that we will almost inevitably face?
View Soraya Martinez Ferrada Profile
Lib. (QC)
View Soraya Martinez Ferrada Profile
2021-06-17 20:57 [p.8726]
Madam Speaker, I thank my opposition colleague for his question.
Once again, it is the classic example of the opposition party. I entered politics and I decided to get involved at the federal level because the previous government had made cuts across the whole cultural and social system.
Our government decided to help Canadians and businesses get through the situation. Now is not the time to take on individual debt. We must take on collective debt. Now is not the time for austerity measures, as my opposition colleague would have us do.
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-05-28 11:17 [p.7553]
Madam Speaker, on Wednesday evening I asked the Minister of Finance if she knew what the inflation rate in Canada was and I got no answer.
I asked her if she knew what the Bank of Canada's target inflation rate was and I got no answer.
By feigning ignorance, she is showing that she has no idea what is going on in Canada right now. Everything costs more, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed yesterday that interest on this government's astronomical debt will cost $3.4 billion more a year.
Why did the minister fail to present a credible economic plan to Canadians?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-28 11:17 [p.7553]
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take this question. The hon. member does not tell us that his solution to the supposed inflation problem is to stop spending on supports that are helping businesses stay open and helping workers keep their jobs and put food on the table.
The reality is that the inflation target of between 1% and 3% is run independently by the Bank of Canada. The Government of Canada is in charge of fiscal policy. We used our fiscal firepower during the greatest economic emergency we have seen to help those families and workers keep their jobs and put food on the table, and I will not apologize for it.
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-05-28 11:18 [p.7553]
Madam Speaker, let us do a little math. More inflation equals a higher cost of living for Canadians. Higher prices equal less money for Canadians. More inflation equals higher interest rates. Higher interest equals higher prices for all Canadians. Higher prices equal less money for all Canadian families.
Why is the minister standing around doing nothing?
The math is simple, and the minister is ignoring the Parliamentary Budget Officer's warnings.
Why has she failed to present a credible plan for Canada's entire economy?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-28 11:19 [p.7553]
Madam Speaker, the hon. member is selective in his choice of sources. A number of credible experts, including former governors of the Bank of Canada, have described the fiscal framework outlined in the recent budget as being sustainable.
If the member is concerned about inflation, I would point him to the fact that we have been able to lock in long-term interest rates. If he looks at the costs of servicing our debt outlined in budget 2021, he will see that in raw dollar terms, despite the fact that we have had to incur debt to support Canadians, the cost of servicing that debt is actually less than what was predicted in the fall economic statement before this pandemic. We will move—
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-05-28 11:19 [p.7554]
Madam Speaker, the cost of everything is rising. That is the reality.
Yesterday, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report that confirms what we have been saying all along about this Liberal budget: There are more risks and more debt for Canadians. Revenues have been overestimated, deficits and debts have been underestimated, and there are no plans for the Liberals to ever balance a budget again after one two years in the making.
Why has the government failed to produce credible plans for the future?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-28 11:20 [p.7554]
Madam Speaker, the hon. member sees the cost of the measures we have put in place, but he does not see the value in them. I would point out to the hon. member that today is actually the day that families with kids under the age of six are going to receive an enhanced Canada child benefit after months of delay by the Conservatives. They pretend to support our measures when they opposed CERB, voted against measures to extend the wage subsidy and held a press conference at the beginning of the pandemic to say they would not support big, fat government programs.
Canadians should know that in their time of need it was our government that was there for them to ensure they could keep their jobs and put food on the table. That was the right approach then and it is the right approach—
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-05-28 11:20 [p.7554]
Madam Speaker, the facts are that inflation is on the rise and with it interest rates will go up sooner than expected. A rise in interest rates will cause debt-servicing costs to also skyrocket.
The PBO confirmed yesterday that interest rate increases will add, on average, $3.4 billion in debt interest costs annually. That is $3 billion less for health care, infrastructure or helping make small businesses more competitive.
Therefore, I ask again: Why has the government failed to put a credible economic plan in place?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-28 11:21 [p.7554]
Madam Speaker, I will take no lessons from a member of a party that had the worst economic record since the Great Depression before this pandemic. If he wants to see a credible fiscal plan, I would direct him to budget 2021. The plan is to continue to support households and businesses through this pandemic. The plan is to defeat COVID-19. The plan is to ensure that all Canadians, not just wealthy Canadians, get to benefit from the growth that is being projected not just by our government but by private sector economists wherever we look.
The reality is our plan maintains an AAA credit rating, it maintains the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7 and it supports Canadian workers. This is—
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-05-28 11:22 [p.7554]
Madam Speaker, it was indeed a big budget, but not for the right reasons. It is the biggest spending, biggest deficit and biggest debt in the history of our country. The PBO even said that inflation and rising interest rates will blunt the effectiveness of the so-called stimulus spending in the massive budget.
With no fiscal anchor, no debt management strategy and a never-ending deficit, why is the government setting up the country for massive failure?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-28 11:22 [p.7554]
Madam Speaker, it is clear that the hon. member has not taken the time to read the budget.
He claims there is no fiscal anchor. The fiscal anchor is actually described in those terms as a declining debt-to-GDP ratio. He says there is no debt management strategy when the phrase “debt management strategy” is actually included in the portion of the budget that seeks to explain how we plan to manage our debt.
The reality is that we have launched spending measures to keep businesses open and to support Canadian families. We have done so in a way that is sustainable, that has preserved the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio of any G7 country, and maintained a AAA credit rating. That is more than could be said for any plan the Conservatives have offered.
View Ted Falk Profile
CPC (MB)
View Ted Falk Profile
2021-05-26 16:45 [p.7391]
Madam Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-30, the Liberal government's budget implementation bill.
It took almost two years for the Liberals to get around to presenting a budget, the longest period in Canadian history without a budget. For decades there had never been a gap of more than two years between budgets, until the current Liberal government. Despite COVID-19, all other G7 countries produced budgets last year, so too did our provinces and territories, yet for two years, Canadians expecting the Liberal government to lay out its priorities in an open and transparent fashion were left waiting.
The fact we are here today debating this bill is positive, but presenting a budget is one of the bare minimums expected of any government. Now that we have this budget, it has been something of a letdown. One would think that after two years with time to prepare the Liberals would knock it out of the park, but that is not what happened.
As I listened to debate on this bill and reviewed the contents in my role on the Standing Committee on Finance, I have been struck more by what is absent from the budget than what is included. I noticed the Liberals are doing the bare minimum of what is expected of them and then expecting accolades in return.
As Canadians continue to face challenges as a result of COVID-19 and the restrictions imposed upon governments in response to COVID-19, Conservatives have been clear that those struggling need support. When the government forces someone to close down their business or prevents customers from shopping at their store, the government has a duty to support them through that situation. When the government forces people to stay home and prevents them from earning an income, the government has a duty to support them through that situation. Everyone in this House gets that and I think they all support it.
Measures to that effect included in Bill C-30 are important, but they are the bare minimum the government can do for Canadians during this time. A serious budget would do something more. It would include a road map to help Canadians move beyond this endless cycle of restrictions and lockdowns. It would include a data-driven plan to safely reopen the economy.
As we have heard time and time again from witnesses at the finance committee, a plan would help many small businesses, many hard-hit industries, looking for some certainty to help them plan for the future. Workers employed in sectors like tourism and hospitality, the aviation industry or our border communities depend on cross-border travel. They deserve to know when their lives will return to normal.
As Canadian families struggle to recover from a tough year, budget 2021 offers little encouragement. Instead, the Liberals are asking Canadians to accept the bare minimum. Besides a safe plan for reopening, this budget was a missed opportunity to address the need to support Canada's economic recovery and growth. After living with COVID-19 in Canada for more than a year, how can the government still be spinning its tires?
Upon reviewing this budget, many economists have lamented the troubling reality that this budget is more about short-term benefit than positioning our economy for long-term success. I know the Liberals like to look good, but I would argue that doing good, not just looking good, is what Canadians want and expect from their government.
For example, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said, “What we're seeing in some other jurisdictions is that the focus is more squarely on the growth.” Another former Bank of Canada governor, David Dodge, noted “a lack of growth-focused initiatives in the budget.”
Robert Asselin, a former top economic adviser to the Liberal government described the new spending as “unfocused and unimaginative.” He also wrote, “it was clear for some time that the government’s decision to spend more than $100 billion in so-called short-term stimulus was a political solution in search of an economic problem.”
Former clerk of the Privy Council, Kevin Lynch, said the budget “misses an urgent opportunity to rebuild our longer-term growth post-pandemic.” He also said, “Despite the extraordinary emphasis on stimulus, there is little focus and few measures to rebuild Canada's longer-term growth.”
These comments, taken together, point to a real problem. If one's house is on fire, one wants and expects the fire department to come to one's aid. When it is the only house on fire, the resources are best directed toward that home. However, if the fire department showed up and sprayed a little water on that home then moved on to spray some water on the neighbour's place then turned around and sprayed the houses across the street, one would seriously question their approach.
It matters where the flow of water is directed, yet this seems to be the approach taken with this budget. There is no focus, no intentionality in terms of directing resources where they are actually required so Canada can move beyond the economic harms inflicted throughout COVID and thrive once again. Without doing the hard work of determining where federal tax dollars can be most impactful, the Liberals are asking Canadians to accept their bare minimum effort.
As Canada continues to grapple with COVID-19, one of the most important tasks of the government was to provide increased sustainable funding to the provinces for the provision of health care. This request was made by the provinces and supported by organizations like the Canadian Medical Association.
The CMA stated:
As provinces and territories continue to struggle with the ever-increasing cost of providing care, the federal government must follow through on its own promise to work with premiers on revisiting the Canada Health Transfer. Without this collaboration, our healthcare system, which has been put through the ultimate stress test, will struggle to recover.
Perhaps now more than ever Canadians recognize the importance of ensuring our health care system is sustainable. Unfortunately the Liberal budget does not. It touches on mental health and long-term care, but does not take the biggest and strongest step in the right direction by responding to the requests made by the province. Again, it does the bare minimum.
Another big concern is that the Liberals continue an avoidance of implementing a meaningful fiscal anchor to guide levels of public spending. In their budget document, there is only one reference, which states:
The government is committed to unwinding COVID-related deficits and reducing the federal debt as a share of the economy over the medium-term.
This is extremely vague. This is not a fiscal anchor; it is aspirational. At best, it is a wish list. There is not a hard stop to be found in the budget and no specific benchmarks that have been clearly established as fiscal anchors. At best, we could call them perhaps a guardrail.
Economist Jack Mintz wrote:
This is a pretty weak fiscal anchor. It perpetuates deficit financing forever. It is also easily violated every time the economy slips into a recession, such as our recent one. As debt ratchets up as a share of the economy, the rule permits bigger and bigger federal deficits over time.
I like the definition of a fiscal anchor offered by the Business Council of Canada. It notes, “notional ceilings or caps to the levels of public spending, deficits, and debt that governments are prepared to reach in their fiscal policy.” Its definition identifies the purpose of a fiscal anchor as well as:
1 Retaining the confidence of lenders and global markets...
2 Establishing a positive investment climate for businesses;
3 Providing a measure of fiscal discipline inside government...and
4 Ensuring that the government has the ability to respond to future economic shocks and unforeseen crises.
These are the types of fiscal anchors the Liberals should have been striving for, yet, once again, they are offering Canadians the bare minimum in an attempt to be transparent and accountable but without actually committing to a real metric.
To try and showcase the budget as something more than a bare minimum budget, the Liberals announced big plans for child care. The government could have taken the time to better understand the unique needs of parents and families, but instead of doing the hard work, it is pushing a one-size-fits-all Ottawa-knows-best approach to child care in Canada.
The Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario has highlighted the consequences of this proposal: uncertainty for families, limited access, job losses at existing day cares and the closure of many women-owned small businesses.
Andrea Hannen told the finance committee, “We shouldn't have systems that require families to mold themselves to the system. The system should evolve to allow families to be in the driver's seat.”
The committee also heard from Andrea Mrozek, a mother and child care researcher. When I asked her about the Liberal child care plan, she said, “It's not an equitable way...of helping families who address their child care need in many diverse ways.”
By pursuing a plan that perhaps is good for press for the Liberal government, it leaves many Canadians behind. The Liberals yet again having shown that this budget is only about doing the bare minimum. Canadian families need more than the bare minimum. They need a budget that helps those struggling through COVID-19 today and sets them up to succeed tomorrow. They need a budget that does not just spend for the sake of spending, but rather makes targeted investments that will generate tangible results for all Canadians. They need a budget that sets real goals for ensuring Canada's long-term fiscal sustainability, a budget that supports families in making best choices for themselves. Sadly, this bare minimum budget does not cut it.
View Garnett Genuis Profile
CPC (AB)
Madam Speaker, we have before us the government's budget implementation act, a disastrous piece of legislation that runs counter to the Canadian spirit and threatens our way of life now and in the future.
Canada, as I see it, is a great frontier nation, a nation characterized also by a great frontier spirit. To be Canadian is to set out into the unknown in pursuit of a better life.
Indigenous peoples who survived in these vast and beautiful but harsh lands since time immemorial were living and surviving on a frontier. The first European settlers who came here for resources, space and greater freedom pursued opportunity on a new frontier where the outcomes were highly uncertain. Loyalists who left their communities came north because of a commitment to ideals that had been betrayed by the American revolution. Former slaves also came north, risking brutal reprisals to find freedom in the land they had never seen. Pioneers risked starvation by moving west for more land. Successive generations of immigrants still today come to this new frontier to discover new things and new opportunities, leaving the familiar behind.
This is the Canadian story, one of sacrifice and boldly setting out for adventure, opportunity, security and justice.
Today, when the comforts of indoors are available to most of us, many still pride themselves on keeping this frontier spirit alive by encountering nature in all its elements at all times of the year: skiing, hiking up mountains, sleeping in tents when we do not have to, going for long walks in the middle of the woods through rough terrain even when no one is chasing us and ignoring the stove and microwave to cook food outside. We have braved the elements to get here and survive here, and now we venture out into the cold, the rain and bear country purely for the fun of it. Consciously or not, this is because we are proud of an identity and heritage that connects us with the grubby struggle of the outdoors. We are still a frontier people.
In the first instance, when people chose to leave the ease and comfort of a country or region of origin and when they chose to set out into a place that seemed inhospitable, they were clearly not just acting for themselves. For so many, the sacrifices of the present are consciously made to give something better to the next generation. Those who first venture onto a frontier are laying the groundwork for their children and grandchildren who will grow up on the frontier with the benefit of a new wealth in land and resources, and with the benefit of the security created by the hard work of their forebears.
This, too, is essential to the Canadian story. These national virtues are of hard work, courage and sacrifice in service of the next generation in the hope we can always say to our children that they will have joys, comforts and opportunities that we did not see.
Part of living on a frontier and living a frontier spirit is recognizing that we have to work for everything we have and we will be able to keep the things we built. With a bounty of natural resources in front of us, we can combine our labour with those things and so establish a future for ourselves and our families through dogged and relentless effort. The character of indigenous peoples and of those who immigrated here as well as the circumstances of the country itself made this possible and created communities of relative equality where opportunity was available to all.
This was very different from many old-world countries where resources were often more scarce and where domestic or foreign aristocracies often lived in idleness, benefiting through exploitation. These kinds of societies, where opportunities were not available to most people, have been understandably ripe for political doctrines emphasizing violent redistribution. It is an interesting feature of the history of European colonialism in general that less naturally hospitable areas like Canada ultimately have done better economically than many parts of the world where it is easier to survive.
History shows that early colonizers of warmer regions were more likely to be privileged people seeking wealth through the exploitation of indigenous peoples and slaves and the expropriation of existing wealth. Our country, on the other hand, was colonized by a greater proportion of less privileged European migrants who were prepared to work hard to survive instead of import slave labour. The circumstances of harsher environments such as Canada's also compelled a greater degree of initial co-operation between newcomers and indigenous peoples.
The history of European colonization is therefore one of richer regions becoming poorer and poorer regions becoming richer. This contrast shows the uniqueness of our national experience and the particular impact of the frontier spirit that relatively poorer newcomers to Canada brought with them.
Of course, inequality and exploitation have been and are in certain respects present in Canada today, and they are present any time governments seek to impose unmanageable burdens on workers and on families. However, those who fight back against exploitation do so from a commitment to cultivating and maintaining our national frontier spirit, where anyone can build and where those who choose to build new things can benefit from them. To maintain abundant opportunity and the benefits of this frontier spirit, we must continue to be willing to use our natural resources and to make them available to those who work on and develop them.
The opportunities of the new frontier are not gone. Still today, the option has always been available to go west or north and earn a living through hard work. This is why socialism has never taken root here, because for most of our history, we have been able to provide opportunity and access to resources for those who are willing to move to the frontier and pursue them.
In addition to providing opportunity for all who seek it, our frontiers have supplied the rest of the nation with wealth and resources unimaginable in other countries. We do not have to live on a frontier to benefit from living in a frontier nation.
However, sadly, there are those in our politics who do not believe in this frontier spirit, who have been suspicious of our resource development sectors past and present, who have preferred the comfortable status quo to the challenge of growth and who have tempted us to put the comforts of the present ahead of the opportunities of the future. The extent to which the government represents such an attack on the frontier spirit of our nation has been an unfolding reality.
The government initially promised small deficits for the short term and a balanced approach to spending in resource development. However, now it has bet big on something more radical. This budget unveils a plan to run massive, historic deficits in perpetuity, financed by borrowing and outstripping the borrowing of any previous national crisis. This is a budget that seeks a decisive break with our history. While there are claims about growth coming from undefined jobs in the future and dreams of greater workforce participation facilitated by state-run day care, the only actual articulated policy in this budget is more spending financed by the printing of money and the continuing, unprecedented assault on those resource and manufacturing sectors of our economy that have driven our frontier spirit and have been the mainstay of our prosperity.
Simultaneously, the government is proposing less production and more spending. The national resource sector is being undermined at every turn, including even projects with net-zero equipment built in, even projects that will demonstrably lead to reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by displacing dirtier foreign sources. It should be obvious that increasing the availability of child care is only going to increase workforce participation if there are actually jobs available to work in.
Any student of history can figure out where this is all leading. This is the path of hyperinflation and a national debt crisis. This, in turn, will create radical inequality between everyday people and well-connected insiders. This is how we undermine trust in public institutions and exacerbate social divisions. This is how we impoverish a once great nation.
There are those who say that this cannot happen in Canada, that our nation is immune to these things, that our national success has been the product of particular characteristics, choices and circumstances. In particular, it has been our frontier spirit, the fact that we are the kind of people who look at a naturally occurring pile of asphalt and say, “How can I squeeze the oil out of that?” We are the kind of people who understand that prosperity comes from hard work, not from printing money. This is Canada. However, if our leaders continue to seek a different course, then there is no reason to believe that our historic success will continue.
Canada's current government is the most left wing of any government in this nation's history. Other governments have sought to develop our resources and redistribute the surplus, but the current government is blocking growth and development at every turn, while actively seeking to redistribute that which has not been created. It will tell us “Don't worry, your efforts are not required because we are going to take care of things. We are going to take care of you whatever it takes.” However, whatever it takes it not going to work if we are not putting anything in the tank. We can only run on empty for so long.
The government will say that its spending will create growth, but its approach to growth emphasizes central planning and the alleged wisdom of bureaucratic predictions about industries of the future. Central planning of economic development has never worked in the past and has always increased inequality and social resentment. Nations that have relied on government planning instead of on the spontaneous genuis of people have never prospered except temporarily and by imitation and expropriation.
It is time that Canada's leaders turn their attention to the need to secure our future. Securing our future requires an all-hands-on-deck approach to the economy, one that leverages the hard work, ingenuity and sacrifice of all people from all backgrounds, in all sectors and in all regions of our national economy. Securing the future means innovating in the way that we deliver public services instead of re-promising the unkept promises of the 1960s. Securing our future means restoring our commitment to paying for the things we buy today rather than passing the bill on to the next generation.
The source of our prosperity is not the printing of currency, central planning or the distribution of government largesse. It is the ingenuity and courage of the Canadian people. Securing our future is about celebrating our frontier spirit as survivors, as immigrants, as builders and as innovators. I am proud to be opposing this budget.
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-05-13 11:40 [p.7163]
Madam Speaker, it is my turn to speak and I think it is important to rise today to support this motion, which states:
(b) in the opinion of the House, holding an election during a pandemic would be irresponsible, and that it is the responsibility of the government to make every effort to ensure that voters are not called to the polls as long as this pandemic continues.
I have not met anyone in my riding who wants an election in the middle of the pandemic. On the contrary, I truly think that people will be upset and very disappointed in this government if it remains determined to trigger an election in the middle of the pandemic.
Canadians do not need to be reminded that the vaccine rollout got off to a slow start and suffered many delays because of the government's mismanagement. The government was late signing agreements with vaccine manufacturers, did not act quickly enough to ensure domestic production capacity, and did not manage to protect Canadians by getting them at least one dose. The slogan “a one-dose summer” does not really appeal to Canadians.
The absence of border controls allowed variants of concern to take hold in our communities. Since last week, 90% of all coronavirus cases in Canada have been the British variant. Three dozen cases of a variant discovered for the first time in India have also been identified.
In short, it is clear that the Liberal government did not manage to prevent the pandemic from entering the country or to get Canadians out of this crisis. In other countries, things are going far better than in Canada. The responsibility for this public health crisis therefore lies squarely on the government's shoulders, and the last thing Canadians need is an election during the third wave.
I would like to point out that more than 1.3 million Canadians have been infected by the virus, including 360,000 in Quebec alone, that there are still 78,000 active cases, and that 25,000 people have died. That is a good indication of the severity of the pandemic. Given the restrictions placed on Canadians since March 2020 and those still in effect, it is astonishing to see that the Liberal government has only one objective, and it is certainly not to have all Canadians vaccinated by the summer.
The Prime Minister is going full steam ahead toward a general election. The efforts made by the government to distract from its disastrous pandemic response are appalling. Rather than getting Canadians to the polls at all costs, this minority government should be doing everything it can to ensure Canadians' safety during the pandemic.
Of course, we understand and we know why the Liberals want an election. First, from the very start, the government failed miserably in its management of the pandemic, particularly in terms of the economy. Canada has suffered major economic damage from coast to coast since the virus arrived within our borders.
The numbers do not lie when it comes to jobs. Before the pandemic, the unemployment rate in Canada was 4.5%. By the end of April 2020, the number had quadrupled. The rate of job losses in Canada was unprecedented. Statistics Canada had never recorded such a high number of job losses in its history.
In 2020, job opportunities in the restaurant sector decreased by 40% in Quebec, and there was a 13% decrease in the retail sector. Losses in these sectors have been shown to disproportionately affect younger and more vulnerable workers, including women, who lack job security or high wages.
Now, 14 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the national unemployment rate is 8.1% and this Liberal government's mismanagement has led to the reintroduction of lockdown measures in many parts of the country.
Right now, we are stuck in what has been called the Prime Minister's third wave because of the government's inability to ensure the vaccine supply and its slowness in using rapid testing technology and closing the borders. It is because of this government's incompetence and lack of leadership that COVID-19 continues to devastate the Canadian economy.
Doug Porter, the chief economist of BMO Capital Markets, noted that this current episode of unemployment hit Canada a little harder as more full-time employment and private sector employment fell. In other sectors, the people we meet in our regions in the hotel, restaurant and entertainment sectors have suffered as a result of the reinstatement of lockdown measures caused by the Liberals' third wave.
Numbers do not lie. Leah Nord, senior director at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, suggested that labour force scarring is starting to show in Canada, as long-term unemployment has increased 4.6%, to 480,000 Canadians. She said that the job prospects for displaced workers grow slimmer with every month in lockdown as more businesses throw in the towel.
It is not hard to guess why the Liberals might want to turn the page by calling an election: They are trying to distract from their failures. The Liberals are the ones responsible for the unacceptable situation in which Canadian workers find themselves. Because of the Liberals' inability to plot a coherent course to get out of the pandemic, Canadians ended up facing a variety of lockdowns and closures.
The Liberals can try to distract from the impact their failed pandemic response has had on Canadians, but the fact is that an election will not make people forget, not when the damage is this bad and when the hurt caused by their failure is still being felt across the country. From a general standpoint, 2020 will go down in history as the worst year ever recorded for Canada's economy. What is the government's solution to all of these problems?
Rather than working hard to solve the real problems facing Canadians, and despite the pretty words the Prime Minister spouts everywhere he goes, notably in the House of Commons and in the media, saying that he does not want an election, the Liberals have done everything they need to do to hold an election in the middle of a pandemic. I agree with my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill, who said that the Prime Minister is disconnected from reality.
The Liberals want an election so badly that they passed their pandemic election bill at second reading under a gag order and with the tacit abetment of the NDP. When it comes to changing election regulations, the least a minority government can do is to try to reach a consensus, not form a self-serving alliance. What the Liberals are doing is not helping Canadians' view of politicians.
Earlier, my Liberal colleague spoke of hypocrisy. I heard him say the word about 15 times in his speech. However, the Liberals are primarily responsible for the fact that Canadians’ trust in politicians is at at an all-time low and that government ministers rank 73rd in the 76 occupations assessed by the Institut de la confiance dans les organisations. The ultimate irony is that the Liberals are in such a hurry to pass a bill to change the election rules in the midst of a pandemic, when they are all saying one after the other today that there is no way that they will hold an election in the midst of a pandemic.
They keep saying that they are not talking about an election, that it is the opposition parties that are talking about it, but it is not the official opposition that tabled a bill to hold an election in the midst of a pandemic. The Prime Minister has said on many occasions that the opposition parties voted against confidence motions, such as those on the budget and the economic statement. They are talking about 15 or so votes, as if our vote had anything at all to do with holding an election.
If the government had wanted the support of the opposition parties for its budget, it would have tried to reach a consensus. It would have tried to focus on an economic recovery plan and assistance for Canadians, rather than on its ideological values and election platform, but that is not the case. The Prime Minister is so obsessed with power and so upset at being the leader of a minority government that he made his budget an ideological platform, spared no expense and showed no desire to present an economic recovery plan. The budget is all over the place. Many analysts have said so. The word “billion” will soon become a common word in the House. We are talking about a trillion-dollar deficit in Canada.
Now that he sees that Canadians are not stupid and that they did not fall for his ploy, the Prime Minister wants to call an election as soon as possible, even if that means refusing to listen to Parliament and refusing to try to reach a consensus. His claims are ridiculous. However, the role of the opposition is to defend Canadians, who need defending during a pandemic. We do not want an election. The leader of the opposition does not want an election, the leader of the Bloc Québécois does not want an election and the leader of the NDP does not want an election. If the three leaders of the opposition do not want an election, the only one who can call an election unilaterally is the Prime Minister himself.
I invite my Liberal colleagues, whose constituents are experiencing the same problems as mine, to stand up and vote in favour of this motion, which only makes sense.
View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-05-13 14:30 [p.7188]
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised a growth budget. Instead, all he gave us was bigger government, bigger debt and bigger deficits. More and more experts are piling on. Kevin Lynch, the former deputy finance minister, said that the budget missed “an urgent opportunity to rebuild our longer-term growth post-pandemic”. He said that this intergenerational transfer of debt and risk was unprecedented. By any measure, the biggest spending budget in our history was a bust.
Why did the Prime Minister miss this opportunity to secure our economic future?
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I am so glad to get this question because it gives me an opportunity to talk about how well the Canadian economy is doing. Let me talk about some verdicts that really matter. Standard & Poor's, the international ratings agency, reaffirmed our AAA rating one week after the budget and said the outlook for Canada is stable. It does not get better than that and that should assure all Canadians.
View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-05-13 14:31 [p.7189]
Mr. Speaker, last month, Canada lost 200,000 jobs. The recent budget was not about economic growth. It was about an avalanche of spending to re-elect the Prime Minister. Now we read troubling reports about officials who were asked to come up with excuses for millions of dollars of spending after that spending had already been announced. It turns out this budget was not about growth. It was about a “ready, fire, aim” approach to policy-making that is not about serving Canadians. It is about serving the Prime Minister.
Who is left holding the bag? Canadians are, of course. The Prime Minister has failed us. Why?
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives may have their own partisan reasons for talking down the Canadian economy, but I am so proud of how resilient and innovative Canadians are. That resilience is showing in the numbers. In the fourth quarter, our economy grew by 10%. In the first quarter of this year, it grew by 6.5%. In the first quarter, the U.S. grew by only 6.3%. The Bank of Canada has upgraded its forecast for this year to 6.5% growth.
View Ziad Aboultaif Profile
CPC (AB)
View Ziad Aboultaif Profile
2021-05-11 16:02 [p.7072]
Mr. Speaker, I want to start my speech with a single line: Mr. Speaker, I told you so.
I mean no disrespect, but about a month ago, in mid-April, I said that I would not be surprised if Bill C-14 would not go through the other place by the time we got our hands on this 2021-22 budget. Obviously, I was right. To make it even better, Bill C-14 has not been returned to us and it has been a month since I made that prediction. However, I am not here to speak to Bill C-14.
I am here to speak to another bill. It would spend a lot of money. It would massively increase our national debt and it would not do a whole lot to help Canadians. I am going to be speaking to Bill C-30 because, like I said, this budget would spend a lot of money: $154.7 billion. Even if Bill Gates were to liquidate his entire net worth, that still would not be enough to cover the bill for this. I want to talk about all of this money.
If my colleagues here would think back to last year, when this finance minister started her current portfolio, she was very eager to bring Canada's fiscal firepower to bear if September's throne speech is to be believed. However, there is a bit of a problem with that. This is not Hollywood. We can run out of ammo. Our barrels can overheat. We need some way to not burn through all this firepower too fast or, in other terms, we need some sort of fiscal anchor.
Why do we need a fiscal anchor? Fiscal anchors serve as notional ceilings or caps to the levels of public spending, deficits and debt that governments are prepared to reach in their fiscal policy. They serve many purposes: one, retaining the confidence of lenders and global markets, like credit access and favourable rates; two, establishing a positive investment climate for businesses; and, three, providing a measure of fiscal discipline inside government. If the finance minister does not have one, it becomes very difficult for her to put any sort of constraints on her colleagues in cabinet and caucus, and ensure that the government has the ability to respond to future economic shocks and unforeseen crises.
Before COVID-19, the current government's fiscal anchor was to decrease the debt-to-GDP ratio. That anchor has disappeared. Now the budget has one, a vague, pretty useless one. Great, they are committed to reducing the debt, but the fiscal anchor is supposed to be a prudent, specific debt target, not “we will lower it over the medium term”. Fiscal anchors need to be a target that people can use to hold the government to account with no vague statements.
It is clear that this budget does not have a fiscal anchor. It is clear that this is just written in there to hide the Liberals' lack of future planning. What kinds of fiscal anchors could the government have used? I am not talking about that vague, literally, one line that is in the budget.
The first one is the debt-to-GDP ratio. This is what the Liberals would clearly claim they have got right now, but, again, they need targets and accountability, not vague statements and no accountability. A good example would be keeping the debt-to-GDP ratio under 30%. Any of my colleagues here may remember that as Bill Morneau's favourite target. The so-called anchor in the budget says it wants to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, but it does not provide a goal or a target. Therefore, when debt to GDP is at nearly 50%, a reduction is pretty easy to do, but whether the reduction is effective is another matter.
Another anchor the government could be using is something like the deficit-to-GDP ratio. Again, they have a one-off section about this one, simply saying that the government will reduce COVID spending. Great, but what about other spending? This budget introduces a lot of spending, permanent spending, including stuff like made-in-Ottawa child care programs and made-in-Ottawa pharmacare. This is a lot of new permanent program spending, and these are just small drops in the bucket.
The PBO found that the purported growth spending in the budget would only produce a fraction of the government growth that the government said it would. Therefore, the PBO found that with 1% growth on 74,000 jobs, $100 billion would result in over $1 million per job.
If keeping the deficit-to-GDP ratio down is one of this budget’s fiscal anchors, why would the government spend so much money frivolously? In all honesty, had I asked that in question period, I would have received the government's famous non-answer, which is disappointing.
Since we both know that it will not answer, I will tell the House what the real reason is that the federal government wants to spend this avalanche of cash. It is an election budget. That is why there is a lot of growth funding that would not cause growth. There are no productivity measures, and there is nothing to address Canada’s uncompetitive regulatory regime. It is just a lot of money for programs that look good in a nice, red-covered election platform with a big L on the front of it.
What really, deeply worries me is that the government does not seem to care about what all of this purposeless spending will cause. It is not just from this budget, but all of the previous ones too. The government has spent more than all previous prime ministers in the history of Canada combined. At this point, the government is spending so much that our grandkids, if not our great-grandkids, will still be paying it off. It is like taking out a credit card in their names, maxing it out, and leaving it for them to deal with.
As with actual credit cards, the interest rate is critical to this. I know that the minister would say, “Oh, it’s fine, the interest rate is low so we can borrow easily,” a quote from the minister, but again, our national debt is like a credit card. If there is even a one-percentage-point jump in the interest rate, that is another $10 billion per year in debt-servicing costs. Just like with credit cards, the interest can go up if we do not pay down our debts.
What if another massive crisis comes up, and we end up spending another few hundred billion dollars? Our creditors might start wanting us to pay the money back, and it will be tougher for that future government if it needs to borrow money during that crisis.
We also have to consider inflation. What if inflation goes up in the future? Right now, the Bank of Canada has the inflation rate at 2.2%. I know they like it around 2%, but what if the inflation rate keeps increasing? If we keep injecting all this money into the economy, it could cause inflation to spike.
Consider if inflation rose to 5%. Everything would cost more, which is a normal practice, and the value of our currency would drop by 5% year after year. That might not sound like much, but it would add up if it went on like that for a decade.
I am sure all of us who are old enough to remember the 80s and 90s will remember that it was not pretty stuff. Most of us are only a decade or so out from retirement and we will all get good pensions, but not all Canadians will.
My kids are in their early twenties, and I know a lot of our colleagues have kids who are younger than that. Do we really want to leave this fiscal mess in their laps, or in our grandchildren's laps? I know that I do not.
Our legacy should be having rebuilt Canada with a strong, competitive economy that will be there for decades to come, not spending our money for no purpose other than to help the government win an election. We need to spend within our means, not outside of our means, our kids' means and our grandkids' means.
View Dan Mazier Profile
CPC (MB)
Mr. Speaker, after a record two years, Canadians were finally provided with the federal budget. Unfortunately, it was the longest wait in our nation's history in some of the most troubling times in a generation.
Before I begin addressing the budget and the impact it will have on the people I represent, I want to congratulate the Minister of Finance on making history. Last month, she became the first woman to deliver a federal budget in Canadian history, and for that I applaud her. This is a historic step forward in inspiring women across our country.
Unfortunately, the current Liberal government has a problem, a spending problem. It has said that increasing the national debt to an unimaginable $1.4 trillion is to stimulate the economy, but we all know the only thing the government is focused on is stimulating voters. It is obvious the Prime Minister is more focused on keeping his job than on doing his job. By next year, he will have accumulated more national debt than all previous prime ministers combined.
One of the world's most respected investors, Warren Buffett, famously said, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” The current government does not understand the difference between the two. It is more focused on how large the price tag is instead of how much value it will bring to Canadians.
The foundation to any good economic policy is to measure the output or the results. The federal government has tried to justify that its record-breaking deficit is a strategic investment so our economy can come roaring back, but that is not the case. This budget fails to provide a real plan for job creation and long-term economic growth. As a matter of fact, the Prime Minister's former adviser questioned this budget. He admitted the Liberals are, “doubling down on programs that do not address our innovation shortcomings and have yielded few results to date.” Where is the plan for coherent growth? Where is the plan to be competitive on the world stage? Where is the plan to foster an economic environment that allows the agriculture, forestry and tourism industries to thrive? There is no plan because the government is fixated on price instead of value.
My constituents know what happens when governments spend money without a plan. They understand because they have experienced it before. It was the Prime Minister's father who famously took the same approach in the 1980s, with record deficits, reckless spending, no fiscal guardrails and no plan. As a result, Canadians suffered a debt crisis. My constituents can remember the all-time high interest rates, the extreme inflation, the record unemployment rates and the massive increase in poverty. My constituents are concerned about spending without a plan because they have lived through the damage before.
I think of Diane in Minitonas, who reached out to me and expressed her concerns regarding the budget. She is concerned this budget is unaffordable for Canadians. As a mother of four, she is worried about the future of her children, who will have to pay for the record spending. I share her concerns. My constituents are seeking a plan in this budget that would outline the future of our recovery from this pandemic, but they did not get one. I represent thousands of locally owned and operated businesses throughout rural Manitoba. Agriculture, forestry, tourism and hospitality are the foundations of the communities and families of our region. Whether it be the businesses surrounding and within Riding Mountain National Park that rely on tourism or the restaurants and coffee shops that rely on regular local visitors, the small businesses that I represent want certainty for a secure economic future. What they are not seeking is a reimagined economy.
The finance minister sees things differently from my constituents. She has stated that the COVID-19 pandemic “has created a window of political opportunity”. Thousands of Canadians have died, jobs have been lost and businesses have been shuttered, but the government sees the tragedy as a political opportunity.
I recently heard from an outfitter in my riding who relies on business from American clientele. She is frustrated that the government refuses to discuss what the future will look like with our American neighbours post-pandemic. Unfortunately, because the federal government has failed to provide our country with enough vaccines, it cannot have these important conversations.
While other developed nations reopen for travel and business, Canada is experiencing a third wave because of this Prime Minister's own incompetence. Premiers across Canada have called on the federal government to increase health care funding. However, this budget has no new money for health care transfers to provinces such as Manitoba. In a time when the federal government should be stepping up to support the provincial health care system, the Liberals turned a blind eye in their budget.
The seniors in this country were also disappointed to read this Liberal budget. Once again, the current government has failed our seniors by not providing them the support they need. Seniors across my constituency are telling me that they can no longer afford to live with dignity on a fixed income, due to the rising cost of living.
I will admit that there are some things that sound good in this budget. For example, I welcome the proposed investments for connectivity. Access to high-quality Internet and cellular service is essential for all Canadians, and investments into rural Canada are key to closing the connectivity divide. However, I am skeptical of this promise because, as of today, no money from the existing universal broadband fund has been announced for Manitoba. Proposals such as the Parkland multi-community broadband project have yet to receive any funding. I would strongly caution Canadians on the promises in this budget. The Liberals are notorious for over-promising and under-delivering, and my constituents know that.
The best way to predict the future is to look into the past. Let us examine the record on a few of the previous promises. The Liberals promised to plant two billion trees. They promised to end the boil water advisories. They promised not to raise the Liberal carbon tax. They promised to be accountable. They promised to balance the budget. Guess what? They failed to deliver all of these promises.
I should remind the House that it was only last year when the government mentioned the importance of the fiscal anchor and fiscal guardrails. Well, Canadians will be shocked to learn that the car has driven off the cliff. The government does not believe in fiscal sustainability. In nearly 750 pages, there is no clear mention of a fiscal anchor.
Canadians of today may not experience the full impact of government debt, but I can assure this House that Canadians of tomorrow will experience not only today's debt but the interest as well. Each Canadian is now responsible for $33,000 in federal debt, and that number is growing. By 2026, interest payments on the federal debt could reach $40 billion a year. By next year, this Prime Minister will be responsible for more debt himself than all of the previous prime ministers combined.
Unfortunately, this budget does not tell Canadians how the government is going to pay for this record amount of debt. I suspect that the explanation of how the Liberals will pay for the new debt will not be shared until after the next election. I am confident that if the current government is re-elected, taxes will go up and promises will be broken as soon as the campaign is over, because history is bound to repeat itself. Canadians will not be tricked. They understand that higher spending today means higher taxes tomorrow; and, when inflation decreases the value of hard-earned savings accounts and higher interest rates prevent home ownership, the last thing Canadians want are higher taxes.
I will conclude with the words of former American president Herbert Hoover, who said, “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt”. I can assure Canadians that a Conservative government would unleash the economic potential of our nation, stand up for rural Canada, and secure the future for all Canadians.
View James Bezan Profile
CPC (MB)
Madam Speaker, I am glad to speak to the budget implementation act, and I want to congratulate my friend from Carleton for an excellent speech.
It is very clear that the Liberals' so-called stimulus fund in this budget is really all about spending on Liberal pet projects and partisan priorities, not creating jobs and growing our economy. We continue to see no plan to get back to a balanced budget. We know spending in certain areas is completely out of control. This budget has been panned by the parliamentary budget officer and a number of financial experts. Editorials in major newspapers have not given it a passing grade.
It has been said many times through this debate that the Prime Minister of Canada, the Liberal Prime Minister, has racked up more national debt in the past six years than all previous prime ministers and governments of all political stripes in the 150-year history of Canada.
My granddaughter's birthday is today, and Sarah turns one, and I wish her a happy birthday. When she was born last year, she was already on the hook for over $31,700 of her share of the national debt. Today, she is now on the hook for almost $40,000. That is how much it has gone up because of the Liberal government.
There is no doubt we are dealing with a pandemic and there is no doubt a lot of emergency spending had to happen. However, we also know that a lot of money has been wasted and has gone into Liberal priorities, not the priorities of Canadians. As has been said many times, we are getting very concerned about the cost of this borrowing and how all this new printed money that is being pumped into the economy is going to impact inflation.
Whether we are looking at new home prices or when trying to buy lumber at a local lumber store to rebuild a fence or put a new deck in the backward, all these prices are skyrocketing because of this injection of cheap money printed by the Government of Canada.
We went through this once before under Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. I took out my first mortgage to buy some farm land back in 1984. Because inflation was out of control and the Bank of Canada was trying to control it, interest rates were pegged at over 21% for mortgage borrowing. If we have that type of escalation in the cost of borrowing, there is no way people will be able to afford the homes they bought. They will be more than mortgage poor; they will be into foreclosures. The Government of Canada's borrowing will grow exponentially and it will have to take money from other programs just to pay down the interest on this huge debt, totalling over $1.4 trillion.
In this budget, we have another $101 billion in new spending over the next three years. We have a deficit left over from last year of $354 billion. This is not sustainable and we need to ensure we do not bring forward programs that will be structural and cause structural deficits. We have to ensure the assistance is there, but that it is short-lived and is removed as soon as we start to recover. The PBO has already said that we need to continue to balance our spending so we can adjust as people come of the recession caused by COVID.
We have to remember that today's deficits are tomorrow's taxes, and 74% of Canadians, according to a Nanos poll, have already said that they are incredibly concerned about the deficits the government is racking up under the Liberals.
One of the things missing in this budget is that there is nothing to increase productivity and competitiveness. When we were in government under Stephen Harper, we provided dollars to businesses to accelerate their capital gains losses against any equipment they were buying to increase productivity. They could buy new machinery or tools for their shops.
By increasing productivity and increasing competitiveness so they would be able to compete on the world market, they were creating more jobs. By creating more jobs, Canadians are back at work. They are stimulating the economy, because they are spending more, and they are paying taxes.
The budget we have in front of us right now is not a growth budget, and it fails to have any way to get Canada into a position of prosperity down the road. As I said, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that a significant amount of the spending in this budget by the Liberals will not stimulate the jobs or create any economic growth, and that is going to hurt the long-term outlook on this budget, which is that they are expecting to see growth exponentially to fund that debt down the road.
I am really concerned about how this is affecting local businesses, especially in my riding of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman. So many businesses are slipping through the cracks, especially seasonal operations. Here we are, going into a second summer under COVID with lockdowns and no ability for so many different businesses to operate.
I am thinking about caterers. I had a conversation with Danny's Whole Hog recently. All the weddings that were booked for this summer have now been cancelled. The company went last summer with almost no events to do and no catering available, and its barbecue business right now is pretty much dead. Instead of running 20-plus teams around the province, doing barbecues every weekend, it is down to only several staff. The owner is glad that he has had access to the wage subsidy program, but there is no guarantee that it is going to be extended down the road, especially as these seasonal businesses do not have revenues once they get through the summer and fall, and by then it is going to be too late for many of these companies.
There are summer camps in my riding, along beautiful Lake Manitoba, Lake Winnipeg and over in the Whiteshell: Camp Arnes, Camp Massad, Gimli Bible Camp and Camp Cedarwood. They did not have any campers last summer and again camp has already been cancelled for this summer, so they are looking for help.
One of my constituents, Jennifer Mills, has just been so tenacious in dealing with the loss of revenues to her company. She is in the carnival business. I have a neat industry in my riding where we have three main carnivals that go and set up at the midways, local fairs, rodeos and festivals: Canuck Amusements, Select Shows and Wonder Shows. Again, they are going into the second summer, over 20 months now without any revenue, and there have been no programs to support them. Jennifer has emailed the Liberal government over 200 times over the last 20 months, and still nobody has bothered to respond to her, whether the Minister of Small Business, the Minister of Finance or anyone.
That does not even deal with hairdressers, restaurants, libraries, outfitters and museums. They are all suffering, yet there is no help coming from the government for most of those businesses.
Agriculture is key to this economy. It is key to my riding. It is in my blood, as I am a farmer myself. I look at my family and immediate family and I am worried about young farmers and how they are going to be bearing the cost of these programs. I am glad to see that after we asked the Minister of Agriculture for a year to exclude the carbon tax on propane and natural gas that is used for drying crops, the Liberals are finally doing that and refunding it. It is a start.
This budget is proposing funding for more efficient grain dryers and farm equipment not powered by diesel fuel. There are no alternatives out there, and young farmers depend upon having to use used equipment. They buy used equipment, which is going to be based on older technology, so diesel fuel is the lifeblood of agriculture. If we want to eat, diesel fuel is going to be part of that for a very long time to come. There is no reference here to how the government is going to reward farmers for bringing in better crop rotation, low-till practices, zero-till practices and carbon sequestration. It is a public good, but there is nothing there.
Farming depends upon trade, and there is no funding in this budget to help our farmers trade more, especially as places like Communist China become more unpredictable on whether we will be able to access it.
I have more to say, and I will deal with that in the questions and answers afterwards, but I am glad to be able to get on the record talking about the gaps and the failures of the Liberal budget.
View Robert Kitchen Profile
CPC (SK)
Mr. Speaker, I am thankful to have the opportunity to speak to the budget implementation act and the impact, or lack thereof, that it will have on my constituents in Souris—Moose Mountain.
After two long years without a federal budget, the longest period without a budget in Canadian history, the Liberals have put forward this massive 700-page document that does very little to benefit those living in rural Saskatchewan. To say that I was appalled at the amount of unnecessary spending contained in the budget would be a gross understatement.
Under the government, Canada's deficit in 2020-21 has reached an astounding $354 billion, and just this week, the parliamentary budget officer announced that his analysis actually showed a deficit of $370.8 billion. Furthermore, the budget proposes over $101 billion in new spending over the next three years, over and above the usual amount needed to run the country. This is being done under the guise of helping Canada recover from the pandemic, yet the fact that there is no plan to pay this money back and return to balance shows just how short-sighted this budget truly is.
Another huge area of concern is the fact that both the Prime Minister in his most recent mandate letter to the Minister of Finance as well a report from the parliamentary budget officer indicated last fall that they expected the minister to come up with a new fiscal anchor. This was not done, and there is nothing in the budget indicating that such an anchor has been established. This sets Canada up for further long-term debt.
When it comes to our national debt, the situation is just as bleak. In two years, the Prime Minister will have added half a trillion dollars to our national debt. In six years, he will have almost doubled the $612 billion debt that was in place when he came into power. In fact, by next year, the Prime Minister will have added more to Canada's debt than all previous prime ministers combined. I wish I were exaggerating, but unfortunately the numbers do not lie.
The question that I and many other Canadians have is, who will be paying this back? In her budget speech, the Minister of Finance often spoke about families and their need for support in the short term, but what about the long term? At this rate, my great grandchildren will be paying the price for the government's financial mismanagement, and yet the Liberals continue to spend, spend, spend with no regard for future generations. Not my generation, not my problem seems to be the government's mantra when it comes to fiscal planning.
Speaking of rates, what happens when the interest rates go up? Let us think about that. What the government has presented is an election budget, yet other countries around the world have focused their pandemic budgets on job creation. The United Kingdom has tailored its budget toward funding for infrastructure as well as a super-investor tax credit which creates good jobs and actually gets some boots on the ground. France and Germany are both cutting taxes. These are G7 nations that have lower unemployment rates than we do, yet they create real jobs while we spend money on empty promises.
When I look at this budget through a local lens, it becomes obvious that this election budget was not intended to benefit southeast Saskatchewan. I do recognize that with the pandemic, we need to help those who have been affected by these new challenges, and there are some ways the budget does that. Measures like the suite of emergency financial support programs are essential since the downturn of the oil and gas market over the past seven years coupled with the pandemic has resulted in thousands of lost jobs in the energy industry and to small businesses. However, the non-existent support from the government for our natural resources industry further compounds our challenges.
One area that I was expecting greater support for was the agriculture industry and our Canadian farmers and ranchers. These hard-working people work tirelessly to provide Canada and the world with some of the highest quality produce available. Farmers are essential to our food security, yet the Liberal government has continued to make their lives more difficult and more expensive, especially through the measures like the carbon tax. As of April 1, it was increased to $40 per tonne and will go up to $170 per tonne by 2030.
In the budget, support for our farmers is as usual too little too late. One promise is that the government will provide $50 million for the purchase of more efficient grain dryers. Many will know that a large part of the issue with the Liberal carbon tax is that farmers are being charged huge sums just to dry their grain to get it ready for market. This is a necessary part for farming, and wet weather conditions are not something within a farmer's control. This is not a new issue. As soon as the carbon tax came into effect, and certainly following the harvest from hell, farmers were vocal about their need for greater government support. It has taken two years for anything to be done on this.
At any point during this time, the Liberals could have rectified this issue behind closed doors, but they let farmers suffer while waiting for a long overdue budget to make a flashy announcement in advance of an election. In fact, the Prime Minister 's cabinet appointed Prairies representative, the member for Winnipeg South Centre, recently stated that the added energy costs for farmers, notably for grain drying, had been a serious irritant in the farming community for a number of years. If he knew this, why has it taken so long and not fixed?
It is obvious that the Liberals are simply trying to placate Canadian farmers in advance of an election, but as I said, it is too little, too late.
When I ask Canadians where their food comes from, they unfortunately say the grocery store. I would like people to understand and appreciate the great land stewardship of the farmers who are actually producing that food. Prairie grain farmers adopted zero-till farming techniques decades ago and do not get any recognition for the great work they do in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. According to data released by the Western Canadian Wheat Growers, grain farmers in Canada are already a net-zero industry.
I have heard from many of my farmers who are seeding right now, and we look forward to seeing the crop in the ground, and also during past harvests about the big challenges they have using their energy efficient, carbon-reducing technology and equipment because they do not have proper access to broadband Internet.
Following the presentation of the budget, Ms. Jolly-Nagel, the Saskatchewan director and past president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers stated: “I have trouble downloading software for my equipment now and cannot wait for Earth observation satellites to be designed and sent into space. The federal government has stated it wants a 30% reduction in GHG by limiting nitrogen fertilizer use but has never consulted industry or farmers if this is even achievable.” If the government wants farmers to do more to reduce GHGs, they need to listen to them and understand what rural Canada and rural Saskatchewan really means.
Another area that is important to my riding and to me personally is the use of carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS, to reduce emissions in Canada. Since I became an MP, I have spent much time championing the incredible work that has been done in my riding at the Boundary Dam Power Station, the world’s first large-scale CCUS project. While I am pleased that there is some recognition of CCUS in the budget, the devil is always in the details, or in this case, a lack of detail.
The budget announces $319 million to support research, development and demonstrations that would improve the commercial viability of CCUS technology, but this is already being done. The Shand CCS feasibility study by the International CCS Knowledge Centre indicated that retrofitting their facility with CCUS could be done at 60% of the cost of Boundary Dam Unit 3 CCS and would make the Shand energy source carbon neutral, and some people say carbon negative with the fly ash that they ship to cement companies. Once again, the Liberals prefer to waste time and money on studies that have already been done rather than getting boots on the ground.
There is no indication as to when this money will be available, how it will be available and who will be eligible to receive it. We have seen this with Liberal programs before, such as the clean coal transition initiative, where communities are still struggling today to secure funds under ever-changing rules years after its inception.
The other measure regarding CCUS is an investment tax credit. This is another case of the devil being in the details, as further reading shows that this tax credit will not apply to enhanced oil recovery. By excluding EOR from this tax credit, the Liberal government is creating hurdles for new projects that might have otherwise qualified. The American version of this tax credit, the 45Q, includes enhanced oil recovery, and because of this, Canada will now be at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to incentivizing private corporate investment in the energy sector.
In closing, I think that most Canadians can see that this budget is an election budget that is big on idealistic spending without any promise of follow through. It spends taxpayer dollars at an alarming rate while using the pandemic as an excuse to do so. This indiscriminate spending needs to end so that we can work to create a secure Canada for future generations.
The finance minister listed in a number of her “sunny ways” things that were coming. Here is what is not coming: a balanced budget is not coming; lower interest rates are not coming; a reasonable debt and deficit are not coming. What is coming is a future where our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are paying off the debt.
View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-05-06 14:27 [p.6797]
Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Parliamentary Budget Officer debunked the Liberal myth that the recent budget was about growth. In his report, Yves Giroux said the minister had overstated how much her avalanche of spending would boost economic growth. The minister claimed that her budget would create over 300,000 jobs, yet Mr. Giroux confirmed that only one-quarter of that number would materialize. This budget had nothing to do with growth, and everything to do with fighting the next election. Why did the minister mislead Canadians?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-06 14:28 [p.6798]
Mr. Speaker, it is that member who is misleading the House with his very question. The PBO report that he refers to examined only a portion of Canada's pandemic recovery strategy, and left out over $30 billion in emergency supports to ensure households and businesses would be bridged through this pandemic so they can contribute to the recovery on the back end. Canadians can rest assured that, unlike the Conservatives, our government is going to be there for households and businesses in our communities, as long as it takes and no matter what it takes.
View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-05-06 14:29 [p.6798]
Mr. Speaker, the member completely missed my point.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer reported that this so-called growth budget would not grow the economy as promised. He said the minister had overstated revenues, understated deficits, and that much of her spending had nothing to do with stimulating the economy. Clearly, the minister exaggerated how much growth the budget would produce. What is clear is that this is not a growth budget, it is a budget that misled Canadians. In fact, the government used the pandemic to recklessly spend on its own political survival. Why?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-06 14:29 [p.6798]
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is wrong as a matter of fact and as a matter of principle.
On the facts, his partisan argument contradicts the evidence of the IMF, private-sector forecasts outlined in the budget, and major credit-rating agencies that have reaffirmed Canada's AAA rating.
As a matter of principle, his solution to the false problem that he depicts is to yank supports for households and businesses at a time when they need it most. Our strategy from the beginning has to been to extend a life raft to those households and businesses to prevent economic scarring, because we know that the economic recovery depends on everyone's participation when COVID-19 is a thing of the past.
View Richard Martel Profile
CPC (QC)
View Richard Martel Profile
2021-05-06 14:30 [p.6798]
Mr. Speaker, not only did the government take far too long to put out a budget, but it is also overestimating how much this budget will stimulate our economy. Its growth projections were twice as high as those independently calculated by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Some of its employment projections were even eight times higher.
As usual, the Liberals are posturing. What are they hiding from Canadians? Why are they artificially boosting their numbers?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-06 14:31 [p.6798]
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member ought to appreciate that the economic growth projections included in the budget are the result of the private sector forecasts, on average, by the major economists at Canadian banks. This is not something that the government has done for partisan reasons; it is designed to ensure objectivity.
One of those particular banks, Scotiabank, actually pointed to the growth agenda outlined in this budget, when it stated that, “Overall, measures seem well targeted to raise potential output by focusing on economic inclusion, the green transition and measures to encourage business investment.” We know that to bust out of this recession, we need to invest in measures that will include growth, and that is precisely what budget 2021 is doing.
View Glen Motz Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, recently I asked the government how much debt interest costs when rates rise by 2%, which is the same stress test that new homebuyers are faced with. The Bank of Canada has announced that interest rates will be rising, so with $40 billion a year being spent on interest, the government has already put critical infrastructure systems at risk.
Why does the minister not have a credible plan to manage debt and ensure that things like infrastructure, security and safety, clean drinking water and our health care systems are sustainable for the long term?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-06 15:01 [p.6804]
Mr. Speaker, I direct the hon. member to annex 3 of the budget, which lays out in specific detail the debt management strategy of the government. I point in particular to the fact that by fiscal year 2022-23, we anticipate that the raw debt servicing charges for Canada will be $1.6 billion less than was projected in the fall economic statement of 2019, before the pandemic. The reality is that our AAA credit rating has recently been reaffirmed, specifically because of the measures we put in place to support households and businesses and prevent economic scarring.
The outlook for Canada is positive according to any economist with credibility in this conversation. I would invite further conversations with the member if he would like to dig into greater detail.
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-06 15:08 [p.6805]
Mr. Speaker, in my response to the member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, I had a small slip-up. I referred to our debt management strategy being in annex 3 of the budget. It is in fact in annex 2 where the member will find the government's debt management strategy, including the reaffirmation of our AAA credit rating and the fact that Canada currently has the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7.
View Michael Chong Profile
CPC (ON)
Madam Speaker, this is the longest budget in Canadian history. As Andrew Coyne pointed out in The Globe and Mail, this budget comes in at 739 pages and 232,903 words. Paul Martin's landmark budget of 1995 was fewer than 200 pages. Michael Wilson's budgets of the late1980s, which put Canada back on fiscal track and had operational surpluses, averaged less than 120 pages.
The longest budget in Canadian history is the biggest disappointment. Never has a budget proposed so little with so many words. There is no plan to tackle the immediate problem Canadians are facing, which is the lack of vaccines. There can be no economic recovery without vaccines.
In Halton region, for example, where part of my riding is, only half the people who could have been vaccinated have been. This is because the federal government has failed to secure vaccines. Last month, in places such as Burlington, Oakville, Milton, Georgetown and Acton, Halton region was only able to vaccinate 90,000 residents. It could have vaccinated 216,000 residents, or 7,200 residents a day, more than double the number of people it actually vaccinated. The reason only half the number of people were vaccinated was because of a lack of vaccines.
I will quote Halton region directly, which stated, “While we have the capacity to book approximately 7,200 appointments per day through our clinics, the availability of consistent vaccine supply continues to constrain the Vaccination Program rollout.”
The budget does nothing to fix this lack of vaccines. As a result, we are experiencing a third wave, unlike countries who were able to secure an adequate supply of vaccines like the United States and the United Kingdom.
This budget has no plan to build back better. It has no plan to create jobs and growth. Instead, it leaves us with a bigger debt, bigger deficits and an avalanche of unfocused spending.
The budget has no plan for regulatory and tax reform to help us in a fiercely competitive global economy. It has no plan to address Canada's chronically low levels of productivity, the only long-term determinant of prosperity. It has no plan for Canada's natural resources sector, which is so important to the race for critical minerals as the energy transition heats up.
There is no plan to address the overheated housing market, which has put the dream of affordable home ownership out of the reach of millions of Canadian families and saddled them with sky-high levels of indebtedness. There is no plan to achieve budget balance and rein in the skyrocketing debt and deficits that are threatening our children's future.
Members do not need to take it from me. They can take it from the experts. This is what David Dodge, the deputy minister of finance during the Chrétien government of the 1990s and former governor of the Bank of Canada, had to say about the budget in The Globe and Mail. He stated, “My policy criticism of the budget is that it really does not focus on growth”.
Referring to growth and the finance minister, he continues, “over the longer haul, we face a very real challenge. And I don’t think she tried to seriously address that in the budget”.
He went on to say that the vast majority of the extra $100 billion in spending is consumption not investment. He also said the budget does not have a prudent fiscal plan. He stated, “To me, it wouldn’t accord with something that is a reasonably prudent fiscal plan, let me put it that way”.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Canada has incurred the largest deficit among major economies in the last year at 20% of our GDP, yet the IMF estimates that, compared to our economic peers, Canada's economy has contracted more and will recover more slowly. Despite this, the budget does nothing to create jobs and growth.
There is no plan in the budget to balance public finances. The budget itself indicates that in the next five years alone, interest charges on the national debt will double, increasing from about 20 billion dollars a year to about 40 billion dollars a year.
Other experts have also been critical of the budget, as my colleague just said in his most recent remarks in the House. Here is what the finance minister's former policy and budget director, Robert Asselin, had to say about the budget in The Hub.
He said, “The federal budget has no answers on the question of growth”. He went on to say, “it was clear for some time that the government’s decision to spend more than $100 billion in so-called short-term stimulus was a political solution in search of an economic problem.” He concluded by saying, “After doubling our federal debt in only six years, and spending close to a trillion dollars, not moving the needle on long-term growth would be the worst possible legacy of this budget.”
This budget has no plan for growth, no plan to make Canada more competitive on the global stage and no plan to deal with Canada's aging labour force and chronically low levels of business investment. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has noted that a significant amount of the spending in the budget would neither stimulate jobs nor create economic growth. Like many others, he has concluded that a good portion of the spending is not stimulus at all.
Much of the spending in the budget is designed to help get Liberals re-elected. It is clearly a pre-election budget with a shotgun approach to spending. For example, the budget promises a national child care program. They do not mind the fact that it is provincial jurisdiction and some provinces have already set up universal child care programs. They do not mind the fact that the social union framework agreement, which was negotiated in 1999 by a previous Liberal government, requires the government to get the support of the majority of provincial governments to proceed. They do not mind the fact that provinces are rightfully skeptical about a federal government setting up new shared-cost programs in provincial areas of jurisdiction, only to have the federal government reduce funding at a later date, leaving the provinces on the hook to make up the deficit.
This promise of a national child care program is one Canadians have every right to be skeptical about. The Liberals first made this promise in the infamous red book of 1993, some 28 years ago. Over the last 28 years, they have continued to trot it out, and they keep failing to deliver. The government had two years to prepare for this budget. The fact that after two years all they could come out with is a budget soaring in rhetoric, but lacking in substance, is not surprising.
This is a government with an unprecedented gap between its rhetoric and reality. It is a government that said it was about gender equality, yet forced out of its cabinet and caucus the first indigenous female minister of justice and forced out of its caucus Jane Philpott, someone whose medical expertise we could have desperately used as minister of health during the last year of this pandemic. It is a government that said it was feminist, yet ignored the specific allegation of sexual harassment against the head of the armed forces
It is a government that said it would introduce electoral reform. It is a government headed by a Prime Minister who arrogantly proclaimed to the world in 2015 that Canada was back, and who made it a centrepiece of his foreign policy to secure a seat for Canada on the UN Security Council. However, Canada lost the vote for the Security Council seat with six fewer votes than it received a decade earlier. It is a government that came to office promising to do more for the world's poor, but that has spent 10% less on official development assistance than the previous government. It is a government that came to office promising to do better on climate change, but emissions have risen each and every year it has been in office.
In 2016, the first full year the current government was in office, emissions were 708 megatonnes. Just last month, the government announced emissions for the latest year, 2019, at 730 megatonnes. This is a 22-megatonne increase from its first full year in office, when it stood at 708 megatonnes, and so, too, it is with this budget.
This is a government that says it is focused on the middle class. It says it is focused on jobs and growth and focused on fiscal prudence, yet it presents a budget that is focused on anything but. For all those reasons, I cannot support this budget.
View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-05-05 17:15 [p.6699]
Madam Speaker, I want to thank the minister for reaching out to me last week after the budget had been tabled. We had a good conversation. However, had she reached out a little earlier, we could have helped her craft a budget that was truly a growth budget.
I noticed that her speech was almost exclusively about how much she had spent. There are certainly elements within the budget that we support, but as she is the finance minister, I would have expected her to talk about debts, talk about deficits and talk about the impact inflation and interest rates could have on the sustainability of our economy and our national finances. She mentioned none of that.
The minister's mandate letter from the Prime Minister directed her to come up with a “new fiscal anchor”. However, the fiscal anchor she came up with was the old one based on the debt-to-GDP ratio, except it did not have any targets attached to it this time.
Why has the minister not directed her mind to the financial sustainability of the country? Why did she not—
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
Madam Speaker, earlier on, the parliamentary secretary spoke about his personal high regard for the member for Abbotsford and, I believe, his fondness for him. I must confess to the same weakness. I was glad to speak with him last week, and indeed to speak with him while we were putting the budget together. Notwithstanding that high regard, I disagree with some of the hon. member's contentions.
When it comes to the fiscal sustainability of our budget, let me point to something that is important for Canadians to know. I am holding it up now. A week after we delivered the budget, S&P Global, the ratings agency whose job it is to determine which sovereign borrower has a good plan and which does not, reaffirmed Canada's AAA rating. S&P said that it expects the Canadian economy will post a strong recovery in—
View Rachael Harder Profile
CPC (AB)
View Rachael Harder Profile
2021-04-26 13:51 [p.6150]
Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating my colleague on being the first female Canadian finance minister to introduce a budget in the House of Commons. Though we are on opposite sides of the House, it is phenomenal. I do want to acknowledge that.
Although I am glad the government finally decided to introduce a budget after more than two years, it must be pointed out that we are the only country in the G7 that went this long without one. Despite the unprecedented amount of government spending that has taken place, it is only now that we are being presented with a spending plan. This, I believe, is absolutely unacceptable.
It certainly does not speak of a government that is striving for openness, transparency and accountability, as it often advertises. I recognize there has been a pandemic, but nearly every other government in the country, whether provincial and municipal, has put forward a budget during this time. If they were able to do so, then surely the Liberal government was also able to do the same.
Before the budget was tabled, constituents shared with me that they were hoping to see a real plan for economic recovery and for reopening society as we know it. They were hoping for a restoration of hope and confidence in our future. Those who are unemployed shared with me that they were hoping to see a plan to create new jobs and economic opportunities for their families.
Those in the oil and gas sector shared with me that they were hoping to see some support for this world-class industry. Those who own local businesses and create jobs were hoping they would no longer have to be on the verge of permanently closing their doors. They were hoping that proper supports would be offered to them and that we would go back to normal.
Sadly, what the Liberal government delivered was a 700-page budget that will increase Canada's debt load by $1.3 trillion by 2022 and includes very little for those who call Alberta home. This is not stimulus spending focused on creating jobs, but rather spending on Liberal partisan priorities. Although there are some necessary support measures contained in this budget for Canadians who are still getting through the economic challenges due to the pandemic, it goes well beyond what is necessary. This is like the government going to Gucci when it really should be going to Walmart. It is not going with its own credit card. It is going with ours, the Canadian people. This is the deal: The government racks up the debt, and Canadians foot the bill.
A strategic budget would have targeted revenue-generating industries in our country so that one dollar would turn into three dollars. Instead, we see massive amounts of cash being flushed through the country in a manner that benefits the current government's partisan interests, rather than the well-being of Canadians as a whole. The budget will extend the pandemic economic recession longer than necessary due to its exorbitant spending.
Canada is in a rough situation right now. People are hurting emotionally, psychologically, economically and physically. That must be acknowledged. Canadians are looking for a way out, a change, not more of the same. Sadly, that is what this budget is.
It is a perpetuation of our current fiscal state where unemployment rates are high, government handouts are a primary source of income and the human spirit is severely damaged. It is a superficial solution that does not fix the real problem of a struggling economy and a struggling people. This was an opportunity for the government to chart a course toward a return to pre-COVID times. Of course, I would propose 2014 to take that opportunity, but that said, I would take 2019 at this point.
Instead, we see a Liberal government that is extending the pandemic economic recovery efforts with this budget. This will put us at a serious competitive disadvantage globally, especially when we see other countries returning to normal. Their economic engines are running again and ours is being flooded with no hope of a jump start. It is hard not to be envious of countries such as the United States, where concerts are taking place on Fridays, sports stadiums are full on Saturdays and churches are bustling with life on Sundays. In Taiwan, life is basically back to normal and has been for a long time due to its rapid response to the virus. It had a total of 1,100 cases and only 12 deaths. That is amazing.
The current government seems to wear federal debt as a badge of honour. It is bizarre and troubling. More borrowing and spending does not equate to good governance. Under the Prime Minister, Canada has incurred the largest per capita deficit and hit the highest unemployment rate in the G7, which means Canada has spent the most to achieve the least. Money spent is not a measuring stick for success as much as the government would like to use it as such. Lowering the unemployment rate or growing our national GDP are things that are worth celebrating and using as measures of success.
Just a few weeks before the Liberal budget was tabled, the Deputy Prime Minister said, “I really believe COVID has created a window of political opportunity”. This mentality is truly shocking and troublesome, but it also explains how the Liberals view this pandemic. They see it as an opportunity to re-engineer society according to their value set. It is exploitive and wrong.
The Prime Minister's “reimagined economy” is a risky Ottawa-knows-best approach that picks winners and losers by design. He is dictating which jobs, sectors and regions of our country will stay afloat and prosper and which will be left to perish. Never before has there been such a divisive prime minister in this nation.
Canadians know the government has no money of its own. Anything the government spends comes from taxes and borrowing. What the government borrows, Canadians pay back through taxation. There is no such thing as a free lunch, regardless of how the government tries to package it. The thing about government spending is that it always comes back to the people at a significant cost. It is common knowledge that when taxes go up, an unfriendly or even hostile environment is created for business. High taxes result in businesses leaving the country for other jurisdictions where they are not taxed to fill government coffers. The problem with businesses leaving the country is that they take jobs with them. When they take jobs with them, they also take the revenue that the government relies on for the social safety net that Canadians enjoy so much. This results in higher unemployment and more Canadians being dependent on the government for support, as opposed to being independent and self-sufficient because they have jobs. This pattern is extremely detrimental to the Canadian people, but highly beneficial for a political party that only maintains power when Canadians are dependent on government.
Instead of working to get Canadians out of the dole line, it seems as though the Liberals are doing everything in their power to prolong the current situation and to capitalize on an obliged and increasingly indebted electorate. So much federal money has been spent on COVID-19 benefit programs that, on average, Canadians now have more personal income than they did pre-COVID, even though the average employment income has fallen dramatically.
Let us talk about big government. This is not a budget that a responsible government would put forward: It is a budget that sets up an opportunistic Prime Minister for success in the event of an election. Notably, despite the massive debt incurred, this budget failed in a few key areas. There is no plan to fight the pandemic. This is interesting, because the Prime Minister touted this budget as his pandemic response. There is no new money for health care transfers, no fiscal anchor or debt-management strategy. That is atrocious for a national budget.
Canada needs a prime minister who sees the solution to our country's current challenges and where they truly lie. It is not the government—
View Colin Carrie Profile
CPC (ON)
View Colin Carrie Profile
2021-04-26 15:50 [p.6183]
Madam Speaker, I am getting calls from constituents in Oshawa who remember Pierre Elliott Trudeau and what happened when he left office. I remember it was Jean Chrétien who said, “We left the cupboard bare”. My concern is that we seem to have maxed out our credit card, our kids' credit card and now it seems to be the grandkids' credit card.
When does the government plan to return to a balanced budget?
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
Lib. (MB)
View Kevin Lamoureux Profile
2021-04-26 15:50 [p.6183]
Madam Speaker, this is what I mean about the Conservatives being like a rudderless ship. There is no leadership coming from their party. One day they are talking about deficit, deficit, deficit and asking why we are spending all this money, and on other days they are saying how good it is and they support legislation that spends the money that we need to borrow money for.
I gave a list of programs that were absolutely critical to support, not to mention things such as $19 billion for a provincial restart and $2 billion toward schools. There is so much money there that was absolutely needed in order to support Canadians. Some days the Conservatives support it, other days—
View Marty Morantz Profile
CPC (MB)
Madam Speaker, in my short time as an MP, so much has changed in our country and in our world. I could not help but be reminded of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, when Brutus says, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.... On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”
As legislators, it is time to recognize that we are in the throes of history. What we decide today will either lead us to future success or down a dangerous path. I am saddened to say that the path this budget presents is one that could really lead our country into peril. Even before the pandemic, the government’s vacuous promise to balance the budget by 2019 had long been abandoned and broken. Canada’s debt had risen, and a view of the horizon displayed a sea of deficits and red ink for years to come. The cupboard had already been spent bare.
By June 2020, Fitch had already downgraded our national credit rating. Standard & Poor's was warning at the same time that it could also downgrade us at some point over the next couple of years “should the deterioration in the government's fiscal position become more severe and prolonged than we currently expect.” I think we can safely say that Canada's fiscal position is more severe and prolonged. Credit rating agencies do not react well to vast, irresponsible spending with absolutely no plan to return to balance. Based on what I see in this budget, the government could not care less what the credit rating agencies think. There are real consequences to being downgraded. It means more difficulty borrowing and higher interest rates.
The government has at best treated any fiscal anchors with disdain, and they are in fact absent from this budget. From breaking promises to balance the budget by 2019 to maintaining a decreasing debt-to-GDP ratio, these measures were simply ignored. The lack of fiscal responsibility has been absolutely staggering, and all Canadians should be very worried about what is coming next.
I want to be clear, because the government will say that surely I am not saying I would not have protected Canadians during the pandemic. I am not saying that; I am saying that things could have been done far better. I believe the Conservatives would have avoided many of the errors in the emergency programs that we have seen. There were so many obvious errors that led to gaps in the commercial rent subsidy, the wage subsidy and the CEBA, leaving so many Canadians out in the cold. Some of these errors border on negligence at worst and incompetence at best. It took our continued efforts to point out these errors time and again before the government made necessary changes.
My caution today has to do with interest rates. I really want to talk about interest rates because the rationale used by the Minister of Finance for this massive past and future spending has been that interest rates are historically low. On Monday, she said, “In today’s low interest rate environment, not only can we afford these investments, it would be short-sighted of us not to make them.” She was basically telling us that it would be irresponsible not to borrow.
All this new debt presents huge risks in reality that vulnerable Canadians just cannot take in this precarious time we are in now. This abandonment of prudent financial management without sound fiscal anchors should worry future generations. The Liberals are literally rolling the dice, playing with real lives and gambling that interest rates will not rise.
What my colleagues across the way fail to mention is that the government does not entirely control these rates. Market forces also establish interest rates. Just ask former prime minister Paul Martin, who, as the finance minister in 1995, brought in the most draconian budget in Canadian history, actually cutting health transfers to provinces. It took Martin’s 1995 budget, with its $25 billion in cuts, to address the problem head-on. Canada was so substantially downgraded by the credit rating agencies in the mid-1990s that in June 1995 The Wall Street Journal called Canada “an honorary member of the Third World”. That year, the federal budget included cuts of over 10% in total spending. It slashed national defence, customs and immigration spending. It reduced the size of the civil service. Health care transfers were slashed, and other things as well. This, I might add, was all under a Liberal government.
In 1995, the bank rate was 7.31% and Canada was in a full-blown debt crisis. In justifying these massive cuts, Mr. Martin said:
There are times in the progress of a people when fundamental challenges must be faced, when fundamental choices made, and new course charted. For Canada, this is one of those times. Our resolve, our values, our very way of life as Canadians are being tested. The choice is clear.
Those are prophetic words. I fear that with the magnitude of new spending in the budget, the government will likely lead us down a path into a new debt crisis. For my colleagues across the way, if they really think this cannot happen again, they have their heads in the sand.
Governments around the world, including Canada, have engaged in trillions in quantitative easing. This printing of money has diluted the money supply across the globe.
Historically, as economies recover from crises like these, inflation takes hold and interest rates rise. With a debt approaching $1.2 trillion, an interest rate of 7.31% today would cost roughly $80 billion a year. That amount represents nearly two full years of health care transfers to every single province.
The budget is a let down for Canadians. It represents misguided and risky spending from a government that does not seem to understand we cannot keep running the printing press and ratcheting up the credit card bill.
Since 2015, I have heard countless concerns about the government's blatant disregard for fiscal prudence, and this budget is just more evidence of it. When I talk to small business owners in my community, they do not just go and borrow money without having an eye on the future. They take into account the impact of what an increase in interest rates would actually mean.
The government likes to say that it took on debt so Canadians did not have to. That is a good one, but it is simply not true. In reality, this debt has to be paid for by Canadian taxpayers and the future ones to come.
What the government has really done is use the credit card of future generations to put them deeper into debt, which can only be repaid at the end of the day by higher taxes or program cuts, as the example Mr. Martin put forward clearly substantiates.
Every man, woman and child in Canada each now owes over $33,000 in debt. There are 82,574 people in my riding. Thanks to the government’s cavalier spending, my community now owes $2,724,942,000 in federal debt. Workers in my community who are struggling to get back to work needed a real plan to get them back on their feet, and I have already heard from many who are deeply disappointed. Stripped of their wages and their hours slashed, they were absolutely desperate to see a plan and leadership to help them find their way back.
For example, I cannot help but think of aviation workers at the Winnipeg airport who have been pleading for support and are continually let down.
Our party’s leader has put forward a bold plan, Canada’s recovery plan. This plan is what real leadership looks like. It will create financial security and certainty, secure our future and deliver a Canada where those who have been hurt financially by this pandemic can get back to work.
This is all about securing good jobs for Canadians, securing the manufacturing industry in Canada, securing our economy and leading people out of the darkness and back into the light. Highly respected Canadian economist Jack Mintz said,
“[The] Minister of Finance...argues higher debt loads will be easily manageable over the next five years. But they put Canada at risk. Large primary deficits in the next several years and rising interest rates will destroy the fiscal firepower we would need should another recession come our way.”
I ask the Minister of Finance to heed these warnings and learn from our history so it does not repeat itself. However, mostly I ask, for the sake of all Canadians, that she take the tide that leads on to fortune.
View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-04-20 10:22 [p.5828]
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House again to continue to respond to the 2021 budget that was tabled by the federal government yesterday.
As so many parliamentarians, members of the media, stakeholders and even some ordinary Canadians have done, I too have spent hours poring over the contents and the backgrounders, the annexes and other finer details of this budget. Since this is the first budget we have seen in over two years, to be true, a dubious record for Canada, and given the unprecedented health and economic circumstances we are in, I was very eager to receive and review the budget to determine what it would mean for Canadians in the short, medium and long term.
Before I get into the details, let me once again congratulate my colleague the Minister of Finance for making history yesterday as the first female finance minister to table a budget in this House. As I said yesterday, this consequential achievement is long overdue. My four daughters will undoubtedly take inspiration from her.
That said, they certainly will not take inspiration from the budget that the minister has laid before us. This is by far the biggest-spending budget in the history of our nation. It has delivered an avalanche of spending the likes of which our country has never seen before, and yet for many this budget will be a major letdown.
With well over two years since the last budget, the government has had ample time to get this right. For way too long, Canadians have been left without a comprehensive plan for our economy to guide us through what has now become the stormiest season of our lifetime. One would have expected that, with so much time to prepare, the government would have offered Canadians renewed hope and confidence that a secure future would still be theirs. One would have expected a revised and hopefully more effective plan to get Canadians vaccinated in short order. One would have expected a clear plan to safely reopen our economy and get Canadians back to work again. One would have also expected a bold strategy to help struggling small businesses back on their feet again. Finally, one would have expected a responsible government to come forward with a credible plan to manage the massive financial consequences of this COVID pandemic, consequences that future generations of Canadians will be saddled with and have to pay for.
Those who were hoping to see these things in the budget will surely be disappointed. This not a budget that has been developed to fight the pandemic; this budget was developed to help Liberals fight an election. Of that, there can be no doubt.
To be sure, there are a number of positive measures in this budget, some of which we will undoubtedly support and promote, especially those that continue to help Canadians through this very difficult time and also those investments that secure our long-term prosperity. They should expect our support for those.
For example, we are pleased to see that the government listened to us and to the many business organizations across Canada and extended the Canada emergency wage and rent subsidies. We are supportive of a number of important small business measures, such as the new hiring incentive program, the promise of lower credit card processing fees, and supports to help businesses move online in a digital economy.
Sadly, what is completely missing from this budget is emergency support for new businesses, which have somehow fallen through the cracks because in early 2020 they did not yet have the established revenues to qualify for the government's emergency support measures. They are still falling through the cracks.
We also support the introduction of a policy that would allow companies to expense the full value of qualified capital investments in the same fiscal year in order to encourage companies to reinject their corporate savings back into our economy on an expedited basis. We welcome the extension of the student loan interest waiver and the making of additional investments in broadband to improve connectivity within Canada.
Similarly, we welcome additional steps to eliminate the interprovincial trade barriers that measurably undermine our economic growth. We also support the decision to extend sick leave for seriously ill Canadians to 26 weeks. This is precisely the type of spending we are inclined to endorse.
We Conservatives have consistently supported the government in its efforts to help Canadians through the health and economic crisis of our lifetime, and members can be sure we will continue to do so, but there is more to a federal budget than just borrowing and spending. Budgets are about promoting economic growth, including the setting of priorities. They are about exercising fiscal prudence and probity and delivering to future generations a bright and economically sustainable future, and that is what is missing in this budget.
In the lead-up to budget day, we provided both the Prime Minister and his finance minister with a list of must-haves for this budget for the government to win our support. These were measures that we believed were absolutely essential to safely reopen our economy, get Canadians back to work again and provide future generations with the hope and confidence that they can still live out their Canadian dream. As I mentioned, a number of these measures have made their way into the budget. It is amazing what happens when the official opposition does its job by prodding and poking the government from time to time, so I commend the minister for acting upon at least some of our asks.
However, instead of creating a sustainable road map for economic recovery, and I emphasize the word “sustainable”, this budget appears to represent a wasted opportunity to do right by future generations of Canadians. It does not deliver a comprehensive plan to position our economy for long-term success. Spending a loan is not an economic plan. The budget fails to sufficiently address the most important structural weaknesses in our economy, including our declining productivity. Nowhere does it meaningfully address the dramatic flight of foreign capital from our country, nor does it commit to comprehensive regulatory and tax reform.
This budget is notable for its marked pivot away from our natural resource sector, another vote of non-confidence in a sector whose contributions to our national prosperity have been immense over the years. There is no mention of our world-leading and ethical oil and gas sector. There is no critical minerals strategy, just half-hearted measures about consultations, research and a centre of excellence. The government's failure to meaningfully address the skyrocketing cost of housing means that millions of Canadians will see their dream of owning a home slip through their fingers. This is another failure.
Some two billion dollars' worth of trade crosses our common border with the U.S. every day, yet the budget scarcely touches on border security and trade facilitation, and it makes no mention whatsoever of what steps are being taken to plan for an eventual safe reopening of our border. The budget also fails to measurably address the state of Canada's health care and, most importantly, the mental health wall that our country faces. Fortunately, our Conservative leader has identified this significant vulnerability and has committed to addressing this challenge in a future Conservative government.
We had called for the current Liberal government to stop supporting and investing taxpayers' money in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is an institution that delivers no meaningful or measurable benefit to Canadians. With Canada's current bilateral relationship with China in utter disrepair, giving taxpayers' money to this China-led organization is completely futile, indefensible and unacceptable. Did the minister respond to our request? No. For the Liberal government, it is business as usual with the communist regime in Beijing.
We are judging the government's budget not on the quantity but on the quality of its spending. Based on that standard, we have found this budget to be wanting. Notwithstanding the additional benefits that the budget would deliver for Canadians who continue to struggle through this pandemic, measures which we support, it is enormously expensive, as members know, and it would dramatically expand the role of government in the lives of Canadians.
Last year's deficit will be a staggering $354 billion, and the government has no plan whatsoever to eliminate its deficits. Our national debt is expected to reach $1.4 trillion this year, with the government signalling that this debt is likely to hit an eye-popping $1.8 trillion by 2025. That is why the Liberals asked for an increase in the debt ceiling to $1.83 trillion.
Presumably with this in mind, the Prime Minister gave the finance minister a revised mandate letter in which he laid out three clear directives to safeguard our national finances. Those directives were: first, avoid creating new permanent spending; second, review Canada's debt management strategy; and third, present a new fiscal anchor. That is the standard the Prime Minister himself has set, and Canadians should be able to take him at his word. Therefore, we are going to measure this budget against that standard.
How did the Prime Minister and his finance minister do?
Let us look for a moment at permanent spending. Remember that the finance minister was instructed to have no new permanent spending. Instead of complying with the Prime Minister's instructions and mitigating against the immense financial challenge facing our country, the finance minister and her government have triggered a plethora of new permanent spending commitments that will likely hobble the prosperity of generations for years to come and mean massive new taxes under the Liberal government.
Similarly, the minister's half-hearted attempt to present a debt management strategy falls far short of the rigour expected of an accountable and responsive government. Indeed, the budget failed to justify why the minister felt that further economic stimulus in the amount of $100 billion was needed when GDP growth has strongly rebounded. She should be happy about that. Preloaded stimulus is the form of savings is primed for release. American stimulus and infrastructure investments well north of $4 trillion are ready to wash over into our economy.
Then we found out in the budget and from exceedingly frank finance officials that much of the stimulus was not stimulus at all. It was emergency support funding, much of which we support, and it was programming that bore absolutely no relation whatsoever to stimulating the economy. Imagine our surprise when a departmental official opined “Oh well, all government spending is stimulus.” No, it is not. All the minister had to do was be transparent about her $100 billion, as we would likely support a number of the initiatives that this fund would support. However, we know that there is an election around corner, and it is now very clear that this funding of $100 billion is simply intended to stimulate the re-election of the government.
Then there is the Prime Minister's directive to present a new fiscal anchor. It was very clear to the finance minister that she present a new fiscal anchor.
The minister referenced that anchor on page 53 of her budget. That is another fail. The closest this anchor comes to being a true anchor is its vague commitment to “reducing the federal debt as a share of the economy over the medium-term.” That is it. That is not a new anchor. That was the government's own anchor, the debt-to-GDP ratio, except that this one, the so-called new one, does not even have a target and will tempt the government to run up further debt in the years to come.
As the Prime Minister blithely stumbles into the fiscal unknown, Canadians should take little comfort in the government's promises to manage our debt and get our deficit situation under control.
Based on the Prime Minister's own mandate instructions to his minister, this budget must be considered a fail.
I began my speech by saying that I was very eager to review the budget to determine what it would mean for Canadians in the short, medium and long term. In the short term, yes, there are a number of investments and programs that will help Canadians make it through this economic and health crisis. We are supportive of many of those measures. However, in the medium and especially the long term, there is very little to get excited about, just endless debt and deficits with not even a pretense of the Liberal government ever wanting to return to a balanced state, even in the long term.
As a responsible official opposition, we are still carefully reviewing and analyzing the budget and we will discuss it with our caucus tomorrow before casting final judgment on it. Suffice it to say that, so far, I am not encouraged.
One thing Canadians can be confident of, absolutely confident of, is that a Conservative government, led by the member for Durham, will implement a true Canada recovery plan that secures our future by getting Canadians back to work, by helping small businesses recover, by restoring Canada's reputation and competitive advantage and by prudently managing the massive financial burden with which the pandemic has left us. The Conservatives have done this before; they will do it again.
I therefore move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word 'That' and substituting the following:
“given that the budget:
(a) adds over half a trillion dollars in new debt that can only be paid through higher job-killing taxes;
(b) contains over $100 billion for a re-election fund while doing nothing to secure the long-term prosperity of Canadian; and
(c) fails to rule out the introduction of capital gains taxes on the principal residences of Canadians, currently being studied by Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, as a way to pay for the government's spending;
the House demand that the Liberal government's budget be revised in order to focus on accelerating the vaccination plan to end the dangerous third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and policies that will create jobs and stimulate economic growth
View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-04-20 14:41 [p.5868]
Mr. Speaker, three months ago the Prime Minister gave the finance minister a mandate letter, instructing her to do three things: first, avoid creating new permanent spending; second, review Canada's debt management strategy; and, third, present a new fiscal anchor.
That is the standard the Prime Minister set himself, and yet the minister followed none of them. Her budget contains massive permanent spending, the debt is out of control, and our only fiscal anchor is a floating one.
Why did the minister ignore these directives, and is she going to ignore future ones as well?
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, our budget sets out a prudent and sustainable fiscal path. We set out a clear fiscal anchor.
We commit to a declining debt-to-GDP ratio, and to unwinding the COVID deficits. By 2025-26, the debt-to-GDP ratio will be 49.2%, and the deficit will be 1.1%.
Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio continues to be the lowest in the G7.
View Luc Berthold Profile
CPC (QC)
View Luc Berthold Profile
2021-04-20 15:54 [p.5878]
Madam Speaker, the election budget that the Minister of Finance presented yesterday is missing three things that were in the minister's mandate letter: avoid creating new permanent spending, review the debt management strategy and present a new fiscal anchor.
Could my colleague tell me what is meant by the term “fiscal guardrails” in the budget presented yesterday? Is this term meant to be the same thing as the new fiscal anchor mentioned in the Minister of Finance's mandate letter?
View Arif Virani Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Arif Virani Profile
2021-04-20 15:55 [p.5878]
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I will do my best to answer in French.
With respect to the Minister of Finance's mandate letter, all I can do is repeat what the minister herself said today during question period.
We will reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio so that it reaches below 50%. Also, what we have targeted is a deficit that will hit just over 1% of GDP by 2025. What is important is that while some of the program spending is meant to be long-term, the large majority of it is for a three-year period, which is exactly what we committed to in the fall economic statement, and we are staying true to those words by targeting the bulk of the spending for the next three years only.
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
2021-04-20 16:15 [p.5881]
Madam Speaker, today is an occasion for us to pay a visit to the newly renewed popular idea called “modern” monetary theory. We put “modern” in quotation marks because it is a very old idea. It is thousands of years old, if the truth be told, but once again it is being presented as new.
Modern monetary theory is the idea that governments can spend as much as they want, and to pay for it they simply print the cash. They create the money because, of course, the bank, which it owns, in our case the Bank of Canada, has a monopoly on the creation of that currency. Why not just create more money in order to spend it?
The only limit on the amount that can be spent is when said money creation leads to inflation, at which point modern monetary theorists say the solution is to simply raise taxes to reduce the demand that was driving up the inflation in the first place. Once too much of that printed money starts chasing too few goods, the government taxes the money back and slows down the inflation. Effectively, it is a roundabout way to massively expand government up front while claiming there is no cost, and then, when prices spiral out of control, to try to tax them back into submission.
The government and the finance minister claim they do not believe in modern monetary theory, but we have to suspect that the minister believes in some version of it because she has imposed literally no limit whatsoever on her spending in the form of a fiscal anchor. There is only one difference between her version of modern monetary theory and its original theorists. The original proponents said that banks should simply give the money to the government to spend, whereas under the current model the government has set up, the bank sells the debt to the marketplace and then buys it right back at a higher price only weeks later, to the great profit of the investors with whom it carried out that transaction.
All of this sounds magical, as we are creating something from nothing, but as it has been said, there is nothing new except what is forgotten. To quote Reinhart and Rogoff, two Harvard professors who have studied 800 years of debt crises, “Early on across the world, as already noted, the main device for defaulting on government obligations was that of debasing the content of the coinage. Modern currency presses are just a technologically advanced and more efficient approach to achieving the same end.”
Perhaps the most creative of all of the modern monetary theorists was an emperor named Dionysius, from 2,500 years ago. He thought it was a modern idea then too. He was the dictator of the city state of Syracuse, and of course because of all of his sumptuous living and his ridiculous war fighting, he needed cash. He took the drachmas from his people, and on every one-drachma coin he stamped the number two. Then all of a sudden he had twice as much money.
View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-04-19 14:45 [p.5807]
Mr. Speaker, I see there is no debt management strategy.
The Prime Minister also told his minister to present “a new fiscal anchor”.
The Liberals have tried to manage this pandemic and its massive financial consequences without a clear set of rules. We have spent more per capita but achieved less than any other major developed country. Meanwhile, future generations of Canadians fear they will be left to pick up the tab.
I ask the minister this: Will her budget include a meaningful fiscal anchor, or does her Prime Minister still believe that budgets balance themselves?
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-04-19 14:45 [p.5808]
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's world view is patently ridiculous when he outlines it in that question. The reality is, he sees the cost of our response but not the value and the measures we have advanced to support Canadian households and businesses. He ignores the fact that inaction in the face of this once-in-a-century public health and economic emergency would have had a cost that was far greater than supporting Canadian households and businesses.
I would direct the member not to my own words but to the recent report of the IMF, which indicated that if our government had not taken such quick and decisive action at the outset of this pandemic, our debt would remain the same size but there would be economic scarring that we would pay for—
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
moved:
That this House approve in general the budgetary policy of the government.
She said: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 83(1), I would like to table, in both official languages, the budget documents for 2021, including the notices of ways and means motions.
The details of the measures are included in these documents.
Pursuant to Standing Order 83(2), I am requesting that an order of the day be designated for consideration of these motions.
I would like to begin by taking a moment to mourn the tragedy in Nova Scotia a year ago yesterday. We grieve with the families and friends of the 22 people who were killed, and all Nova Scotians.
This is also a day when people across Canada are fighting the most virulent wave of the virus we have experienced so far. Health care workers in many provinces are struggling to keep ICUs from overflowing and millions of Canadians are facing stringent new restrictions.
We are all tired, frustrated and even afraid, but we will get through this. We will do it together.
This budget is about finishing the fight against COVID. It is about healing the economic wounds left by the COVID recession. And it is about creating more jobs and prosperity for Canadians in the days—and decades—to come.
It is about meeting the urgent needs of today and about building for the long term. It is a budget focused on middle-class Canadians and on pulling more Canadians up into the middle class. It is a plan that embraces this moment of global transformation to a green, clean economy.
This budget addresses three fundamental challenges.
First, we need to conquer COVID. That means buying vaccines and supporting provincial and territorial health care systems. It means enforcing our quarantine rules at the border and within the country. It means providing Canadians and Canadian businesses with the support they need to get through these tough third wave lockdowns and to come roaring back when the economy fully reopens.
Second, we must punch our way out of the COVID recession. That means ensuring lost jobs are recovered as swiftly as possible and hard-hit businesses rebound quickly. It means providing support where COVID has struck the hardest to women, to young people, to low-wage workers and to small and medium-sized businesses, especially in tourism and hospitality.
The final challenge is to build a more resilient Canada: better, more fair, more prosperous and more innovative. That means investing in Canada's green transition and the green jobs that go with it, in Canada's digital transformation and Canadian innovation, and in building infrastructure for a dynamic growing country. It means providing Canadians with social infrastructure from early learning and child care to student grants and income top-ups, so that the middle class can flourish and more Canadians can join it.
Our elders have been this virus's principal victims. The pandemic has preyed on them mercilessly, ending thousands of lives and forcing all seniors into fearful isolation. We have failed so many of those living in long-term care facilities. To them, and to their families, let me say this: I am so sorry. We owe you so much better than this.
That is why we propose a $3-billion investment to help ensure that provinces and territories provide a high standard of care in their long-term care facilities.
And we are delivering today on our promise to increase old age security for Canadians 75 and older.
Our government has been urgently procuring vaccines since last spring and providing them at no cost to Canadians. Nearly 10 million Canadians have received at least one dose of vaccine. By the end of September, Canada will have received 100 million doses, enough to fully vaccinate every adult Canadian.
We need to be ready for new variants of COVID, and we must have the booster shots that will allow us to keep them in check. That is why we are rebuilding our national biomanufacturing capacity so that we can make these vaccines here in Canada. Canada has brilliant scientists and entrepreneurs. We will support them with an investment of $2.2 billion in biomanufacturing and life sciences.
When COVID first hit, it pushed our country into its deepest recession since the Great Depression. But this is an economic shock of a very particular kind. We are not suffering because of endogenous flaws or imbalances within our economy. Rather, the COVID recession is driven by an entirely external event—like the economic devastation of a flood, blizzard, wildfire or other natural disaster. That is why an essential part of Canada's fight against COVID has been unprecedented federal support for Canadians and Canadian businesses.
We knew Canadians needed a lifeline to get through the COVID storm. And our approach has worked. Canada's GDP grew by almost 10% in the fourth quarter of last year. We will continue to do whatever it takes. Our government is prepared to extend support measures, as long as the fight against this virus requires.
As Canada pivots to recovery, our economic plan will, too.
We promised last year to spend up to $100 billion over three years to get Canada back to work and to ensure the lives and prospects of Canadians were not permanently stunted by this pandemic recession. This budget keeps that promise. All together, we will create nearly 500,000 new training and work experience opportunities for Canadians. We will fulfill our throne speech commitment to create one million jobs by the end of this year.
Some people will say that our sense of urgency is misplaced. Some will say that we are spending too much. I ask them this. Did they lose their jobs during a COVID lockdown? Were they reluctantly let go by their small business employers that were like a family to them but simply could not afford their salary any longer? Are they worried that they will be laid off in this third wave? Are they mothers who were forced to quit the dream job they fought to get because there was no way to keep working while caring for their young children? Did they graduate last spring and are still struggling to find work? Is their family business, launched perhaps by their parents, which they hope to pass on to their children, now struggling under a sudden burden of debt and fending off bankruptcy through sheer grit and determination every day?
If COVID has taught us anything, it is that we are all in this together. Our country cannot prosper if we leave hundreds of thousands of Canadians behind.
The world has learned the lesson of 2009, the cost of allowing economic hardship to fester. In some countries, democracy itself has been threatened by that mistake. We will not let that happen in Canada.
About 300,000 Canadians who had a job before the pandemic are still out of work. More Canadians may lose their jobs in this month's lockdowns. To support Canadian workers as we fight the third wave, and to provide an economic bridge to a fully recovered economy, we will build on the enhancements we have made during the pandemic.
We will maintain flexible access to EI benefits for another year, until the fall of 2022. The Canada recovery benefit, which we created to support Canadians not covered by EI, will remain in place through September 25 and extend an additional 12 weeks of benefits to Canadians. As our economy fully reopens over the summer, the benefit amount will go to $300 a week, after July 17.
Low-wage workers in Canada work harder than anyone else in this country, for less pay. In the past year they have faced both significant infection risks and layoffs. And many live below the poverty line, even though they work full-time. We cannot ignore their contribution and their hardship—and we will not. We propose to expand the Canada workers benefit, to invest $8.9 billion over six years in additional support for low-wage workers—extending income top-ups to about a million more Canadians and lifting nearly 100,000 people out of poverty. And this budget will introduce a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage.
COVID has exposed the dangerous inadequacy of sickness benefits in Canada. We will do our part and fulfill our campaign commitment by extending the EI sickness benefit from 15 to 26 weeks.
We know the pandemic has exacerbated systemic barriers faced by racialized Canadians, so budget 2021 provides additional funding for the Black entrepreneurship program as well as an investment in a Black-led philanthropic endowment fund to help fight anti-Black racism and improve social and economic outcomes in Black communities.
One of the most striking aspects of the pandemic has been the historic sacrifice young Canadians have made to protect their parents and grandparents. Our youth have paid a high price to keep the rest of us safe. We cannot, and will not, allow young Canadians to become a lost generation. They need our support to launch their adult lives and careers in post-COVID Canada, and they will get it. We will invest $5.7 billion over five years in Canada's youth; we will make college and university more accessible and affordable; we will create job openings in skilled trades and high-tech industries; and we will double the Canada student grant for two more years while extending the waiver of interest on federal student loans through March 2030. More than 350,000 low-income student borrowers will also have access to more generous repayment assistance.
COVID has brutally exposed something women have long known. Without child care, parents, usually mothers, cannot work. The closing of our schools and day cares drove women's participation in the labour force down to its lowest level in more than two decades. Early learning and child care has long been a feminist issue. COVID has shown us that it is an urgent economic issue too.
I was two years old when the Royal Commission on the Status of Women urged Canada to establish a universal system of early learning and child care. My mother was one of Canada's redoubtable second wave of feminists who fought and, outside Quebec, failed to make that recommendation a reality. A generation after that, Paul Martin and Ken Dryden tried again.
This half-century of struggle is a testament to the difficulty and complexity of the task, but this time we are going to do it. This budget is the map and the trailhead. There is agreement across the political spectrum that early learning and child care is the national economic policy we need now. This is social infrastructure that will drive jobs and growth. This is feminist economic policy. This is smart economic policy. That is why this budget commits up to $30 billion over five years, reaching $9.2 billion every year permanently, to build a high quality, affordable and accessible early learning and child care system across Canada.
This is not an effort that will deliver instant gratification. We are building something that, of necessity, must be constructed collaboratively and for the long term, but I have confidence in us. I have confidence that we are a country that believes in investing in our future, in our children and in our young parents.
Here is our goal: five years from now, parents across the country should have access to high quality early learning and child care for an average of $10 a day. I make this promise to Canadians today, speaking as their finance minister and as a working mother. We will get it done.
In making this historic commitment, I want to thank the visionary leaders of Quebec, particularly Quebec's feminists, who have shown the rest of Canada the way forward. This plan will, of course, also provide additional resources to Quebec, which might well use them to further support an early learning and child care system that is already the envy of the rest of Canada and, indeed, much of the world.
Small businesses are the vital heart of our economy and they have been the hardest hit by the lockdowns. Healing the wounds of COVID requires a rescue plan for them.
Budget 2021 proposes to extend the wage subsidy, rent subsidy and lockdown support for businesses and other employers until September 25, 2021, for an estimated total of $12.1 billion in additional support. To help the hardest-hit businesses pivot back to growth, we propose a new Canada recovery hiring program, which will run from June to November and will provide $595 million to make it easier for businesses to hire back laid-off workers or to bring on new ones.
However, our government will do much more than execute a rescue. With this budget, we will make unprecedented investments in Canada's small businesses, helping them to invest in new technologies and innovation. We will invest up to $4 billion to help up to 160,000 small and medium-sized businesses buy and adopt the new technologies they need to grow.
The Canada digital adoption program will provide businesses with the advice and help they need to get the most out of these new technologies by training 28,000 young Canadians, a Canadian technology corps, and sending them out to work with our small and medium-sized businesses. This groundbreaking program will help Canadian small businesses go digital and become more competitive and efficient.
Increased funding for the venture capital catalyst initiative will help provide financing to innovative Canadian businesses, so they can grow.
We will also encourage businesses to invest in themselves. We will allow immediate expensing of up to $1.5 million of eligible investments by Canadian-controlled private corporations in each of the next three years. These larger deductions will support 325,000 businesses in making critical investments and will represent $2.2 billion in total savings to them over the next five years.
Building for the future means investing in innovation and entrepreneurs, so we propose to invest in the next phase of the pan-Canadian artificial intelligence strategy and to launch similar strategies in genomics and quantum science, areas where Canada is a global leader.
In 2021, job growth means green growth. This budget sets out a plan to help achieve GHG emissions reductions of 36% from 2005 levels by 2030 and puts us on a path to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It puts in place the funding to achieve our 25% land and marine conservation targets by 2025.
By making targeted investments in transformational technologies, we can ensure that Canada benefits from the next wave of global investment and growth.
The resource and manufacturing sectors that are Canada's traditional economic pillars—energy, mining, agriculture, forestry, steel, aluminum, autos, aerospace—will be the foundation of our new, resilient and sustainable economy. Canada will become more productive and competitive by supplying the green exports the world wants and needs.
That is why we propose a historic investment of a further $5 billion over seven years, starting in 2021-22, in the net zero accelerator. With this added support, on top of the $3 billion we committed in December, the net zero accelerator will help even more companies invest to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, while growing their businesses.
We will propel a green transition through new tax measures, including for zero-emissions technology, carbon capture and storage, and green hydrogen. We are at a pivotal moment in the green transformation. We can lead or we can be left behind. Our government knows that the only choice for Canada is to be in the vanguard.
Our growing population is one of our great economic strengths and a growing country needs to build. We need to build housing. We need to build public transit. We need to build broadband. We need to build infrastructure. We will. We will invest $2.5 billion, and reallocate $1.3 billion in existing funding, to help build, repair and support 35,000 housing units. We will support the conversion to housing of the empty office space that has appeared in our downtown areas by reallocating $300 million from the rental construction financing initiative.
Houses should not be passive investment vehicles for offshore money. They should be homes for Canadian families. Therefore, on January 1, 2022, our government will introduce Canada's first national tax on vacant property owned by non-resident non-Canadians.
Strong, sustained growth also depends on modern transit. That is why, in February, we announced $14.9 billion over eight years to build new public transit, electrify existing transit systems, and help to connect rural, remote and indigenous communities.
Therefore we are committing an additional $1 billion over six years for the universal broadband fund, to accelerate access to high-speed internet in rural and remote communities.
We intend to draw even more talented, highly skilled people to Canada, including international students. Investments in this budget will support an immigration system that is easier to navigate, more efficient and more efficient in welcoming the dynamic new Canadians who add to Canada's strength.
Our government has made progress in righting the historic wrongs in Canada's relationship with indigenous peoples, but we still have a lot of work ahead. It is important to note that indigenous peoples have led the way in battling COVID. Their success is a credit to indigenous leadership and self-governance.
We will invest more than $18 billion to further narrow gaps between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, to support healthy, safe and prosperous indigenous communities and to advance reconciliation with first nations, Inuit and the Métis nation. We will invest more than $6 billion for infrastructure in indigenous communities and $2.2 billion to help end the national tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
This has been a year when we have learned that each of us truly is our brother's and our sister's keeper. Solidarity is getting us through this pandemic, and solidarity depends on each of us bearing our fair share of the collective burden. That is why, now more than ever, fairness in our tax system is essential.
To ensure our system is fair, this budget will invest in the fight against tax evasion, shine a light on beneficial ownership arrangements, and ensure that multinational corporations pay their fair share of tax in Canada.
Our government is committed to working with our partners at the OECD to find multilateral solutions to the dangerous race to the bottom in corporate taxation. That includes work to conclude a deal on taxing large digital services companies.
We are optimistic that such a deal can be reached this summer. Meanwhile, this budget reaffirms our government's commitment to impose such a tax unilaterally, until an acceptable multilateral approach comes into effect.
It is also fair to ask those who have prospered in this bleak year to do a little more to help those who still need help. That is why we are introducing a luxury tax on new cars and private aircraft worth more than $100,000 and pleasure boats worth more than $250,000.
This budget lives up to our promise to do whatever it takes to support Canadians in the fight against COVID, and it makes significant investments in our future. All of this costs a lot of money, so it is entirely appropriate to ask, “Can we afford it?” We can, and here is why.
First is because this is a budget that invests in growth. The best way to pay our debts is to grow our economy. The investments this budget makes in early learning and child care, in small businesses, in students, in innovation, in public transit, in housing, in broadband and in the green transition are all investments in jobs and growth. We are building Canada's social infrastructure and our physical infrastructure. We are building our human capital and our physical capital. Canada is a young, vast country with a tremendous capacity for growth. This budget would fuel that. These are investments in our future and they will yield great dividends. In fact, in today's low-interest rate environment, not only can we afford these investments, it would be shortsighted of us not to make them.
Second is because our decision last year to support Canadians is already paying off. Decisive action prevented economic scarring in our businesses and our households, allowing the Canadian economy to begin strongly rebounding from the COVID recession even before we finished our fight against the virus.
Third is because our government has a plan and we keep our promises. We said in the fall economic statement that we would invest up to $100 billion over three years to support Canada's economic recovery, and that is what we are outlining here today. We predicted a deficit for 2020-2021 of $381.6 billion. We have spent less than we provisioned for. Our deficit for 2020-2021 is $354.2 billion, below our forecast.
Finally, and crucially, we can afford this ambitious budget because the investments we propose today are responsible and sustainable.
We understand there are limits to our capacity to borrow and that the world will not write Canada any blank cheques. We do not expect any. This budget shows a declining debt-to-GDP ratio and a declining deficit, with the debt-to-GDP ratio falling to 49.2% by 2025-26 and the deficit falling to 1.1% of GDP.
These are important markers. They show that the extraordinary spending we have undertaken to support Canadians through this crisis and to stimulate a rapid recovery in jobs is temporary and finite. They also show that our proposed long-term investments will permanently boost Canada's economic capacity.
In 2015, this federal government was elected on a promise to help middle-class Canadians and people working hard to join the middle class. We promised to invest in workers and their prosperity, in long-term growth for all of us. And we did. Today, we meet a new challenge, the greatest our country has faced in a generation, with a renewed promise.
Opportunity is coming. Growth is coming. Jobs are coming. After a long, grim year, Canadians are ready to recover and rebuild. We will finish the fight against COVID. We will all get back to work, and we will come roaring back.
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View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-04-19 16:44 [p.5823]
Mr. Speaker, let me be the first to formally congratulate my colleague on becoming the first female finance minister to table a federal budget in this House. I will add that it is a remarkable accomplishment. It is long overdue, and I believe it defines a new role model for Canadian women across our country to aspire to. I send my congratulations to the minister.
I note the Prime Minister's mandate letter to the minister, dated January 15, called for her to present a “new fiscal anchor” to guide her work. The budget fails to do that. Instead, it contains vague references to a declining debt-to-GDP ratio starting two years from now. It turns out that was the Liberal government's old fiscal anchor, so there is nothing new about this one. In fact, her anchor does not even include measurable targets that would give Canadians the comfort of knowing their government understands the importance of proper debt management. All we have are references to the trajectory of the debt-to-GDP anchor.
My question is this: Why did the minister not deliver a new fiscal anchor the way the Prime Minister had directed her to do?
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I will start by thanking the member opposite for those generous congratulations.
I think it would be appropriate for me today to think about Kim Campbell, the first woman prime minister of Canada, who was, of course, a Conservative woman prime minister. One thing we should agree on in this House is that all of us believe it is important to advance the cause of women in Canada.
When it comes to a fiscal anchor, I very much agree with the member opposite that it is important for our spending to be reasonable, sustainable and prudent. That is why it was important for us in this budget to hit some key fiscal markers.
First of all, we were clear in the fall economic statement that we would spend up to $100 billion in stimulus over three years. We have kept that promise. Perhaps more crucially, we have been clear in this budget, both in our commitment and also in our demonstrated actions that, following the extraordinary spending of this year, Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio will decline, and we show in our fiscal tables a clear declining trajectory ending in 2025-26 at a 49.2% debt-to-GDP ratio.
Further, as we point out in the budget document, we commit to unwinding the COVID-related deficits, and our budget and our fiscal projections show precisely that. In 2025-26, we come to a deficit of just 1.1%.
I would say to hon. members and my colleague opposite that those are our anchors: a declining debt-to-GDP ratio and unwinding the COVID-related deficits.
View Garnett Genuis Profile
CPC (AB)
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise and speak to Bill C-14, a government bill that would implement various fiscal measures, including raising the debt limit. We are doing so, relatively on the eve of the next federal budget coming on Monday, April 19, the first federal budget in two years. As a result of the delays, we have had to endure waiting for what used to be annual event and is now highly anticipated.
With Bill C-14 as well as the upcoming budget in mind, I want to talk about our fiscal situation and make some proposals. Before that, I want to talk about this broad concept of resilience.
Resilience is the ability to recover from difficulties. A core responsibility of government is to try to build up resilience within our government, within our institutions and within our national capacity.
Resilience means thinking about the things that could go wrong and preparing for them, even if nobody is talking about them.
Resilience is a critical job of government because it is something that could otherwise be undervalued. It can be undervalued by the private market. People do not always think about the various things that could go wrong and prepare for them. It is also something that can be undervalued particularly by government because it can be undervalued by the political market. That is, there is a risk maybe that governments' decisions to prepare for, or failure to prepare for, certain things that could go wrong are not top of mind for voters.
In the last election, I do not recall being asked by any voter if I thought the government was prepared for a global pandemic. I do not recall being asked by any voter if I thought the government was prepared for the possibility of a foreign invasion. I do not recall being asked by any voter if I thought the government was prepared for a cataclysmic natural disaster. That is natural.
Generally, as individuals, as consumers, as voters, we are not thinking about the possibility of grand disaster. We are more inclined to think about our immediate needs and our immediate challenges, but these are things that can happen as we have seen with COVID-19. It should bring home for all of us the fact that major, disastrous, global-scale events are things that can happen and the degree to which we think about them or prepare for them before they happen really matters in terms of our ability to engage those situations when they come up.
This should remind us of the importance of thinking about resilience and about whether we are ready to overcome major challenges that could come along. Therefore, it is easy and natural, coming out of a global pandemic, to think about being resilient in the face of another pandemic: What are the things we learned about dealing with public health pandemics so we are ready in case of another pandemic?
The broader lesson should be what can we do to prepare ourselves to respond to large-scale disasters. The next big challenge that comes at our country, unexpectedly, might not be a pandemic. It might be some other kind of challenge: a cataclysmic economic event, a cataclysmic natural disaster, something in terms of national security, etc. Thinking about resilience and developing a resilience mentality should be about, as governments and as parliamentarians, asking questions about our preparedness for disasters, those that are maybe undervalued in our typical day-to-day political discussions and by the private market. Developing a resilience mentality requires us not just to think about how we should have been ready for this crisis, but how we should prepare for future crises.
We know clearly that the job of government of preparing for disaster even if it is not on the public mind is something the government really failed to deliver on in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic. We did not have the required protective equipment. We did not have the manufacturing capacity required to respond to the immediate needs that came up. We did not have an early warning system that was operational. We had destroyed stockpiles. We were not prepared with the kind of social structures and systems that would have allowed us to react quickly. Right at the beginning, we should have had the PPE required, given people the right advice out of the gate on masking, put in place strong effective measures at the border right away and had a plan for tracing systems. All of these were thought of and enacted in other countries.
However, we did not have the structures and systems, or the necessary equipment, in place at the beginning. We had not built our systems to be resilient, in terms of health.
Recently, in the official opposition, we have talked a lot about being resilient in the face of possible security threats. We have a government that still has not made a decision with respect to Huawei. It said it would make a decision before the last election, and here we are, on the eve of what the government seems to want to be the next election. We will see. In any event, it has been years since the government's original self-imposed deadline for making a decision about Huawei.
We hear repeatedly, including from the member for Ottawa South, who chairs the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and who is a member of the government, about concerns of foreign state-backed interference in Canada. We have heard from that important committee that we are not responding effectively. We are not prepared for it.
What about our fiscal resilience, in the context of the budget or in the context of Bill C-14? Are we ready for the kinds of problems that could be being created by the government's fiscal policy?
In the last year, we have spent more money than we ever have before. That goes without saying. However, we have actually borrowed more money, in real terms, in the last year than Canada did during World War II. In real terms, Canada borrowed less during all of World War II than we did in the last year. Of course, the COVID pandemic and the needs associated with it are very significant, but so were the Second World War and the needs associated with it for Canada, as well.
We have run up more debt in the last year. It is more than half of the total debt run up in all of Canada's history until this point. However, at the Liberal convention, were they debating how to get our public finances under control? Actually, they were talking about more spending. They were talking about putting in place a new universal basic income program, which is effectively more government spending, and expanding deficits on a permanent basis.
In the face of those conversations happening within the government, I think we have to ask how long this is going to last, and are we resilient? Are we prepared for the possibility of a serious fiscal problem? From time to time, countries that cannot control their spending experience runaway inflation. They experience various kinds of fiscal collapse.
The consequences of that for Canadians would be significant. We would put ourselves in a position where we could not get out of those problems, and could not just spend more money to address the challenges that people would face in that kind of situation.
Alas, what we have seen from the government is a “live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself” mentality on health, security and spending. It is thinking about today, not thinking about preparing ourselves for what might happen in the future.
As Conservatives, we have always believed in making the hard argument of thinking about the next generation, preparing for threats and challenges that we might not be able to see, taking a precautionary approach and ensuring that we are able to pass the goods of civilization on to the next generation. This is rather than undermining our position of public health, security and fiscal well-being, and leaving the next generation with a possible disaster.
We need to be thinking about resilience across a broad spectrum of issues, preparing for challenges and being ready to respond to those challenges.
I worry that sometimes in Canada, we have been victims of our success, in that we have gotten used to things going well. We have not always prepared for serious disasters because we do not have the same experiences of them here as maybe have happened in other parts of the world.
However, we have not achieved a level of prosperity, security or fiscal well-being by accident, and it will be not maintained without hard work. The path the government is putting us on right now is not one of resilience. It is one that puts our institutions and our national well-being in great danger. This is why we need to refocus our attention on the values of resilience and preparedness for the future.
View John Brassard Profile
CPC (ON)
View John Brassard Profile
2021-04-13 17:26 [p.5539]
The hammer drops once again, Madam Speaker.
In the time that I have left, and there is not much of it, I want to talk about what the bill proposes. We can support many aspects of it. In fact, we did support it through committee and several suggestions were made at committee. However, it is disturbing that the debt ceiling is going to be raised over $600 billion. When we think of where we were a year and a half ago, the overall debt in the country was $600 billion. We are now looking at $1.83 trillion in debt, and that is concerning.
I know it is awfully difficult for people to understand the magnitude of what we are going to be facing with respect to deficits. We know right now that we are at $343 billion roughly. Hopefully, we will find out on Monday with the budget exactly where we are. That combined with the actual debt, which today stands at $1.2 trillion, is quite concerning.
Again, I am not discounting the fact that Canadians have needed the help, but we have been focused a lot over the last year on the expense side of the ledger. Many of the measures that have been implemented have been there to support Canadians, but there is a reason we continue to be in what is seemingly a never-ending pandemic scenario, and that is because of the failure of the government to procure vaccines and to ensure there is enough vaccine distribution for Canadians.
This amount of deficit, the increased spending, is going to continue, but at some point we really have to start turning our minds to the revenue side of the ledger and how we are going to pay for this. Make no mistake that, yes, government has supported Canadians and has taken on a hefty burden of that debt, but at some point it will have to be paid back.
Two things happen: Taxes go up and services go down. That is just a fact of life, and I think most Canadians would understand that, but we have to focus on what an economic recovery looks like.
Economic recovery has to include every part, every sector, every region and every individual of the country. It is not some reimagined or imaginary economy. Canada will have to rely on the power of our businesses. We will have to rely on the people who are employed in those businesses, the products they produce and ensure we are competitive both domestically and internationally. We need to create an air of investor confidence both here, domestically, and for foreign investment as well. When I talk about every sector of our economy having to fire on all cylinders to pay for the debt and deficit situation we are in, that includes ever sector of our economy, including our natural resource sector. These are the important things we are going to have to eventually turn our minds to.
When I talk to people, I ask them how much is too much when it comes to that. I think of my former life as a firefighter and the salary that a firefighter, a nurse and all those occupations make. If they pay 40% income tax right now, how much is too much to pay for this unless we get our economy going again? Is 50%, 60% or so on too much? Is raising the GST 5%, 6% or so on too much? What about home equity taxes? Is taking the capital gains and paying the equity that people have built into their home going to be too much at that point? We know that the government has looked at it. We know that CMHC has proposed a study on this through the University of British Columbia.
A former finance minister stood up in the House and guaranteed Canadians something. I asked him many times whether he would implement a home equity tax. He said no. He is no longer here. Maybe the Prime Minister has found the path of least resistance, because we know that is a low-hanging fruit opportunity for them as well.
These are the types of things that should be on the minds of Canadians when it comes to the government proposal, through legislation, to raise debt ceilings, incurring more and more debt and deficits. Eventually, somebody will have to pay for this. Canadians are not naive. They know that money does not grow with fairy dust or grow on trees. They know that eventually somebody will have to pay for this.
Of course, to create this booming economy coming out of this recession where nobody is left behind, it is in terms of those sectors and regions around the country to create the tax revenue, both from a corporate tax standpoint where the businesses are making money to pay those taxes, and from the individuals who are gainfully employed paying those taxes, which is going to become critical to the success of our economic recovery.
I Just wanted to make those points, and that Parliament reigns supreme still. We have the oversight of government spending, and that has to be maintained. Fortunately, for all Canadians, we have been in a minority situation where we have been able to highlight some of the inefficiencies of this government in the past. I fear that if a majority situation were to happen, Canadians would be worse off. So, we are going to provide an alternative to Canadians. We are going to talk about the economy. We are going to secure our future. We are going to make sure that every Canadian succeeds coming out of this pandemic.
View Ed Fast Profile
CPC (BC)
View Ed Fast Profile
2021-02-19 10:18 [p.4297]
Mr. Speaker, our country faces an immense crisis. It is a health crisis and a financial crisis, the likes of which we have never seen before. Therefore, my remarks are for the millions of Canadians who worry about their future and worry about the country their children and grandchildren will inherit.
Yes, I am a grandfather, and I thank the CBC for recognizing that. In fact, I am an opa 11 times over. I love my grandkids and it is their future I am worried about. They are the ones stuck with the $1-trillion bill created by this pandemic. It is our response to this crisis that will determine whether we leave them with a bright future or leave them shackled to crippling taxes, languishing economic growth and declining socio-economic outcomes.
The government faces an enormous challenge, that is clear, but our job as members of the opposition is twofold. We perform a challenge function. We hold the government to account for its actions and policies and provide parliamentary oversight. I know this is something the finance minister does not really welcome. She has demanded that we abandon those functions and simply rubber stamp hundreds of billions of dollars of borrowing and spending. That is downright reckless and we will not do it.
We have also proposed constructive solutions, like fixing the CERB and the wage subsidy programs, so I would like to propose a few more.
The government's fall economic statement, Bill C-14, should give us pause to consider whether the federal government has a robust plan for the future. I have concluded that it does not. It is true that the statement delivers badly needed additional support to Canadians in their time of need, such as a top-up to the Canada child benefit and interest relief on student loans. We support all those benefits. In fact, we called for them. However, thousands of Canadians still feel abandoned because of poorly designed and confusing programs and the Prime Minister's unwillingness to recognize the scope of the crisis in certain regions of the country.
Bill C-14 would do something else. It would dramatically increase the amount that the government can borrow by $700 billion and would set aside $100 billion of discretionary spending. With hundreds of billions of dollars at his disposal, one would expect that the Prime Minister would present Canadians with a cogent and defensible plan that both supports Canadians in their time of need and tackles the immense fiscal challenges ahead. He has not done so.
The Prime Minister boldly stated, “...Canadians are in for a hard winter. But we know that spring will surely follow. That is because we have a plan... plentiful vaccines are around the corner.” He even audaciously claimed that things were in good shape. My message for the Prime Minister is this: Things are not in good shape. I have not met one constituent who believes that things are in good shape in our country.
In December, 53,000 Canadians became unemployed. Last month, over 200,000 more lost their jobs.
The government is heading in the wrong direction and the mounting deficits and debt are staggering. The Prime Minister is spending billions, yet millions of Canadians are being left behind.
The fall economic statement fails to put forward a serious plan for the future. There is no successful plan to roll out vaccines. There is no plan for job creation or for small businesses. There is no plan to secure our long-term future and no road map to manage the massive financial liability our country is incurring to support Canadians in their time of need right now.
The Prime Minister's number one responsibility is to give Canadians hope. They want their lives back, they want their jobs back, they want their small businesses back. They want their health, their schools, their places of worship and their communities back. However, the Prime Minister has provided no confidence that things might soon return to normal. All we have is a trail of broken promises on things like vaccines and rapid testing on containing the virus. The reality is that there is no plan, and a vague promise to spend billions more is not leadership.
What would Conservatives do differently and why do we believe we could do better? Let me answer both questions by providing, as I promised, some constructive advice to the government.
First, no recovery is possible until the majority of Canadians have been vaccinated. To date, the Prime Minister has failed to deliver vaccines as and when he promised. He should do what was promised: deliver the six million doses by the end of March and then keep his word and make vaccines available to all Canadians by the end of September. More than 52 countries around the world are now doing it better than the Prime Minister. While he is at it, he should remove the shroud of secrecy around the vaccines. Let Canadians see exactly what has been negotiated with Moderna, Pfizer and others.
Second, he should address the declining competitiveness of our economy. In recent years, Canada has lost a historic amount of domestic and foreign investment due to a loss of investor confidence. We lag far behind our fiercest competitors. The government must address the lack of access to capital and talent and the significant regulatory, commercialization and interprovincial barriers that discourage investors from creating economic growth here at home.
Third, there should be no more taxes. Canadians are already taxed to the max. The financial burden on Canadian families has only worsened, with carbon taxes, new taxes on Airbnb rentals and cross-border digital commerce, increased CPP contributions and a clean fuel standard. Stop. People are exhausted. There is nothing left to give.
Fourth, with close to a million Canadians out of work, the reality is that many of these jobs will not come back. Therefore, does the government have an effective plan for retraining unemployed Canadians for the jobs of tomorrow? I have not seen it.
Fifth, economists point out that our aging population is putting a tremendous squeeze on our labour force, undermining our competitiveness when we can least afford it. How do we replace the baby boomers as they retire and exit the economy? Where is the strategy to find talent and train the best and brightest to rebuild our country?
Sixth, small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and employ over eight million people. Without targeted support, some 240,000 of these businesses will have to be shuttered forever. It is a tragedy in the making. Therefore, what is the government doing about it? Here is a suggestion: Small businesses, unlike the big corporations, need enhanced liquidity as they close up shop and wonder what is next. They need immediate emergency support and longer term financial tools to reorganize, reopen safely and adapt to a transformed business landscape. Will the government make improved support available?
Seventh, I note the Prime Minister has promoted ambitious investments in critical infrastructure, but most are still stuck in Ottawa. This is not the time for him to treat billions of dollars as his personal piggy bank to win the next election. I call for him to champion nation-building investments that make our economy more competitive. That should include things like gateway infrastructure, ports, railways, bridges and it should include energy infrastructure. I ask him to please get these investments out the door. So far it has been all talk and no action.
Last, and perhaps most important, our country faces a massive fiscal challenge. I am asking the government to exercise discipline and put in place the fiscal anchors, targets and rules that will stabilize our nation's finances so our children and grandchildren can actually see some light at the end of the tunnel. What is the government's debt target? How will it be achieved? What budgetary constraints is the government considering? Where did billions in spending go? Are taxes going up? Are we still committed to a declining debt-to-GDP ratio? Canadians have a right to know.
Canadians also have a right to ask us, the opposition, what makes us think we could do any better? I refer them to the great global recession of 2008-2009 when the country, like so many others, took a hit. It was a Conservative government that skilfully managed spending and investment so Canada was the last G7 country to enter that recession and the very first to emerge. Then we carefully set the fiscal anchors, stabilizing our nation's finances and securing our country's future. Can we do it again? I believe we can, because our kids and grandkids are counting on us.
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