Discussion · Government Orders
Greg McLean Conservative
“I do not want this budget bill to pass. It creates a new defence corporation that Parliament cannot properly oversee. The government uses these corporations to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars off the books while our national debt and interest costs keep climbing.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today and speak to Bill C-31, which is the government’s second foray into getting the last budget put in front of this House and getting some of the implementations from that budget moving forward, recognizing that that was almost a year ago and we have a new budget coming out tomorrow. I should point out that the budget presented in the House of Commons and voted on over a year ago was the budget for the prior fiscal year. We are going to have a budget in two days, and we are not sure whether it is going to be for the current fiscal year, because we already have one for 2026-27, or for the next fiscal year, because the government talked about budgeting and getting it out in the fall so that we could get a good glimpse of what was going to happen in the future, that is, in the next year. Getting a budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year, which ends on March 31, is a bit of a charade, because, number one, the Liberals have already indicated that they are going to have more than a $66-billion deficit, which looks like it may be fixed a bit. Through the summer, they have obviously thrown a whole bunch more money at the wall, at this, that and the next thing, none of which was in the budget they presented in the House of Commons last year. It is a government without any guidelines whatsoever, any fiscal anchors, any reason. As some people tell me, the thing about a budget is that it is a sacred document because it is what guides what we do. Everything we do in life is about choices, choices about what we spend money on and about what we do and do not do. At this point in time, we do not have a government that says we should not do this, because it wants to be the sole determinant of what happens in the Canadian economy. That is not working for Canada. We can see that in our growth numbers. The Parliamentary Budget Officer came out last week and said that our real gross domestic product growth is only 0.9%, whereas our nominal growth is 5.5%. That means our GDP deflator is 4.7%. That is a proxy for inflation. It is not the same as the CPI, but it is a proxy for what is happening in the economy. The same output is now costing 4.6% more, and we have a 0.9% real increase in the economy. I know those numbers go above most the heads of my colleagues on the other side, but they matter because they show that the amount of money the government is pumping into the economy is having very little effect. I want to get to where we are in Bill C-31, because it has a number of factors in it, one of which I have time to address. I have addressed it before. It is a very important part, but it is the establishment of a special government agency, the Defence Investment Agency. No sooner did the government present another entity coming forward for the government to spend money in than, lo and behold, it decided to change it into a Crown corporation. I will explain this to people at home. There are three types of government operations. Basically, there are government departments, which respond directly to ministers, and those ministers are, in the old context, responsible for what happens in their departments. That means if the government messes up really badly, they have to stand on the floor of the House Commons, answer for what happened and potentially resign their post because they are at the head, the person responsible for that department. That is no longer happening with the government whatsoever. There are no accountability mechanisms. Nobody in the front bench on the other side has been accountable for any of the disastrous outcomes that have impacted the finances of this country for the last 11 years, and it is getting worse. When we look at the ramping up of deficits, nothing is getting better as far as our economic outlook goes. We had the Bank of Canada governor in front of our finance committee this morning, and inasmuch as his job is only about monetary policy, we can take a look at how fiscal policy is impacting monetary policy. It is putting us into a trap, and we are now the most indebted nation in the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Of 38 countries, we are number two. The only country above us, as far as the debt profile goes, is Luxembourg, and that is because of an anomaly about the number of financial corporations that are headquartered in Luxembourg, which have such a large weight. When we talk about the debt profile, we talk about corporations, individuals’ mortgages and consumer debt, and governments. The government’s debts, combined with the provincial governments’ debts, are onerous to this economy. This is a problem. We have to get ahead of it. It is going to be a problem as we go forward, particularly because we will have to refinance a bunch of it going forward. Going back to Bill C-31 and the Defence Investment Agency, there are three forms of government operations, as I said. There are departments and agencies and then there are Crown corporations. Which one is the least accountable to government? It is Crown corporations. No sooner did the government decide that we needed a Defence Investment Agency, which is one step removed from responsible government, than it decided with Bill C-40, which follows this bill, that we needed a Crown corporation called the Canadian corporation for defence investment to invest in defence. However, it would not be at arm’s length, because the legislation says the associate minister could direct the new Crown corporation. That is nowhere else in any other government legislation pertaining to a Crown corporation. It is an aberration. It is the government wanting to have its cake and eat it too. It wants a Crown Corporation that functions like a little piggy bank, and the government would get to decide exactly what happens. I raised this at committee. I do not mind using this word, because we have to make sure that we are building structures in Canada that are not open to corruption. I am not saying that any members on that side are going to be corrupt. However, they are setting up structures that are unaccountable to Parliament. Picture this. The president of the defence Crown corporation that would emerge from this bill would have no oversight from the Treasury Board Secretariat about who he pays and how he pays them in order to get the job done, so it would be completely blind as far as the contracts he has to oversee go. Similar to what the government has been doing, a vast number of people could effectively be appointed to help the president of the defence Crown corporation more or less make all these decisions. It would be beyond oversight as far as how those people would have to be paid goes, as if they were public servants. They are public servants. Doug Guzman is that man’s name. The compensation for the officials should be overseen by Parliament, if it is something being funded by the House. Think about those numbers going off the table. The other problem with Crown corporations is the financial reporting mechanisms. As the Parliamentary Budget Officer clearly illustrated just last week, the government’s deficits over the next five years, counting the current one, are going to add an additional $333 billion to this country’s debt, but the government is going to increase this country’s borrowing by $730 billion. What is the difference? The difference is that the government is parking money in Crown corporations without oversight, and it is being opaquely illustrated as if it is not debt, yet it is very much borrowing that Canadian taxpayers are paying tax on. That debt interest charge, as we call it, has gone from $24 billion four years ago to over $59 billion today and is projected to be $83 billion in four years. That is a ridiculous amount of interest coming out of taxpayers’ pockets, and it is something the government has to get ahead of. It is enough with the obfuscation. I can go through the data as far as what we are talking about goes. The Defence Investment Agency is turning into the Canadian corporation for defence investment. The current government has already created another couple of Crown corporations, which are the Canada strong fund and the financial crimes agency, but since 2019, the Liberals have created nine new Crown corporations and agencies. These are organizations that exist almost beyond the purview of the House. Ninety-two exist now. We have to get ahead of this and look at all the ways the Liberals are hiding money and creating new second-guess organizations. Having Crown corporations versus independent agencies is just obfuscating the whole reporting mechanism, both for personnel and for the Canadian taxpayer dollars that are going off the table. There are a number of issues here. I can only expound on so much in the 10 minutes I have on the floor of the House of Commons, but this is not the way to run a country. We are going broke. We are actually the most indebted country in the world, all things considered. We have to make sure we get ahead of this and stop the obfuscation.”
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A repeated line
“We are the most indebted country in the G7.”
Said 3 times by 2 members since June 2.
Every time it was said
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today and speak to Bill C-31, which is the government’s second foray into getting the last budget put in front of this House and getting some of the implementations from that budget moving forward, recognizing that that was almost a year ago and we have a new budget coming out tomorrow. I should point out that the budget presented in the House of Commons and voted on over a year ago was the budget for the prior fiscal year. We are going to have a budget in two days, and we are not sure whether it is going to be for the current fiscal year, because we already have one for 2026-27, or for the next fiscal year, because the government talked about budgeting and getting it out in the fall so that we could get a good glimpse of what was going to happen in the future, that is, in the next year. Getting a budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year, which ends on March 31, is a bit of a charade, because, number one, the Liberals have already indicated that they are going to have more than a $66-billion deficit, which looks like it may be fixed a bit. Through the summer, they have obviously thrown a whole bunch more money at the wall, at this, that and the next thing, none of which was in the budget they presented in the House of Commons last year. It is a government without any guidelines whatsoever, any fiscal anchors, any reason. As some people tell me, the thing about a budget is that it is a sacred document because it is what guides what we do. Everything we do in life is about choices, choices about what we spend money on and about what we do and do not do. At this point in time, we do not have a government that says we should not do this, because it wants to be the sole determinant of what happens in the Canadian economy. That is not working for Canada. We can see that in our growth numbers. The Parliamentary Budget Officer came out last week and said that our real gross domestic product growth is only 0.9%, whereas our nominal growth is 5.5%. That means our GDP deflator is 4.7%. That is a proxy for inflation. It is not the same as the CPI, but it is a proxy for what is happening in the economy. The same output is now costing 4.6% more, and we have a 0.9% real increase in the economy. I know those numbers go above most the heads of my colleagues on the other side, but they matter because they show that the amount of money the government is pumping into the economy is having very little effect. I want to get to where we are in Bill C-31, because it has a number of factors in it, one of which I have time to address. I have addressed it before. It is a very important part, but it is the establishment of a special government agency, the Defence Investment Agency. No sooner did the government present another entity coming forward for the government to spend money in than, lo and behold, it decided to change it into a Crown corporation. I will explain this to people at home. There are three types of government operations. Basically, there are government departments, which respond directly to ministers, and those ministers are, in the old context, responsible for what happens in their departments. That means if the government messes up really badly, they have to stand on the floor of the House Commons, answer for what happened and potentially resign their post because they are at the head, the person responsible for that department. That is no longer happening with the government whatsoever. There are no accountability mechanisms. Nobody in the front bench on the other side has been accountable for any of the disastrous outcomes that have impacted the finances of this country for the last 11 years, and it is getting worse. When we look at the ramping up of deficits, nothing is getting better as far as our economic outlook goes. We had the Bank of Canada governor in front of our finance committee this morning, and inasmuch as his job is only about monetary policy, we can take a look at how fiscal policy is impacting monetary policy. It is putting us into a trap, and we are now the most indebted nation in the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Of 38 countries, we are number two. The only country above us, as far as the debt profile goes, is Luxembourg, and that is because of an anomaly about the number of financial corporations that are headquartered in Luxembourg, which have such a large weight. When we talk about the debt profile, we talk about corporations, individuals’ mortgages and consumer debt, and governments. The government’s debts, combined with the provincial governments’ debts, are onerous to this economy. This is a problem. We have to get ahead of it. It is going to be a problem as we go forward, particularly because we will have to refinance a bunch of it going forward. Going back to Bill C-31 and the Defence Investment Agency, there are three forms of government operations, as I said. There are departments and agencies and then there are Crown corporations. Which one is the least accountable to government? It is Crown corporations. No sooner did the government decide that we needed a Defence Investment Agency, which is one step removed from responsible government, than it decided with Bill C-40, which follows this bill, that we needed a Crown corporation called the Canadian corporation for defence investment to invest in defence. However, it would not be at arm’s length, because the legislation says the associate minister could direct the new Crown corporation. That is nowhere else in any other government legislation pertaining to a Crown corporation. It is an aberration. It is the government wanting to have its cake and eat it too. It wants a Crown Corporation that functions like a little piggy bank, and the government would get to decide exactly what happens. I raised this at committee. I do not mind using this word, because we have to make sure that we are building structures in Canada that are not open to corruption. I am not saying that any members on that side are going to be corrupt. However, they are setting up structures that are unaccountable to Parliament. Picture this. The president of the defence Crown corporation that would emerge from this bill would have no oversight from the Treasury Board Secretariat about who he pays and how he pays them in order to get the job done, so it would be completely blind as far as the contracts he has to oversee go. Similar to what the government has been doing, a vast number of people could effectively be appointed to help the president of the defence Crown corporation more or less make all these decisions. It would be beyond oversight as far as how those people would have to be paid goes, as if they were public servants. They are public servants. Doug Guzman is that man’s name. The compensation for the officials should be overseen by Parliament, if it is something being funded by the House. Think about those numbers going off the table. The other problem with Crown corporations is the financial reporting mechanisms. As the Parliamentary Budget Officer clearly illustrated just last week, the government’s deficits over the next five years, counting the current one, are going to add an additional $333 billion to this country’s debt, but the government is going to increase this country’s borrowing by $730 billion. What is the difference? The difference is that the government is parking money in Crown corporations without oversight, and it is being opaquely illustrated as if it is not debt, yet it is very much borrowing that Canadian taxpayers are paying tax on. That debt interest charge, as we call it, has gone from $24 billion four years ago to over $59 billion today and is projected to be $83 billion in four years. That is a ridiculous amount of interest coming out of taxpayers’ pockets, and it is something the government has to get ahead of. It is enough with the obfuscation. I can go through the data as far as what we are talking about goes. The Defence Investment Agency is turning into the Canadian corporation for defence investment. The current government has already created another couple of Crown corporations, which are the Canada strong fund and the financial crimes agency, but since 2019, the Liberals have created nine new Crown corporations and agencies. These are organizations that exist almost beyond the purview of the House. Ninety-two exist now. We have to get ahead of this and look at all the ways the Liberals are hiding money and creating new second-guess organizations. Having Crown corporations versus independent agencies is just obfuscating the whole reporting mechanism, both for personnel and for the Canadian taxpayer dollars that are going off the table. There are a number of issues here. I can only expound on so much in the 10 minutes I have on the floor of the House of Commons, but this is not the way to run a country. We are going broke. We are actually the most indebted country in the world, all things considered. We have to make sure we get ahead of this and stop the obfuscation.