Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak today to this motion and, of course, Bill C-30, which underlies it. This is the spring economic update. There are billions of dollars of spending, there is new taxation and there are significant legislative changes. This programming motion that the Liberals are trying to ram through the House right now in the last week of sitting just demonstrates to me how poorly the government can manage work around here, in Ottawa. It is no surprise that all the disasters and messes are happening in the country, because the current government cannot even manage the House, let alone try to manage the country. Here we are now in this last-minute panic, and we would essentially eliminate debate. The finance committee would get 30 minutes to debate the bill. That is embarrassing. The committee is where questions get asked. The committee is where witnesses come to explain things. Very good things happen there. Sometimes errors are found. Furthermore, there would not be a report stage debate in the House, and there would be a very restricted third reading. Essentially, the normal operations of the House would be severely restricted in a last-minute attempt to do something the government could have been doing for the last couple of months. It is rather embarrassing. We need to make sure that ministers and officials are held accountable. We proposed some good amendments to let the committee do its work and to let MPs do their work, but of course they were rejected. A confident government would defend its work, but a weak government does not want to do that. The Liberals do not want to have questions asked; they want to avoid all that. As they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, it appears that they are evading accountability. That is not a good look, and Canadians can see that. The decisions that would be made in this bill would impact Canadians for decades. In fact, they would impact the grandchildren of members of the House. It is very significant. In the good old days, going back 10 or 15 years, a single-digit deficit was considered a big deal. Fast-forward to where we are now, and the previous prime minister, Justin Trudeau, kind of blew that up. Not only were there single-digit deficits and double-digit deficits, but there were triple-digit deficits. Now, deficits are much bigger, and it is very bad for our country. The last Trudeau deficit was $35 billion. The first deficit of the new Prime Minister, who supposedly has all kinds of economic knowledge, was double the Trudeau deficit. It was up at $78 billion, and now this economic update would reduce that slightly to $68 billion, or $65 billion or something like that. That is kind of like when a piece of furniture that should cost $2,000 is marked up to $5,000, and there is a big sale where it is knocked down to $4,000, and it is as if it were a big deal. However, the buyer is still paying double what they should have before. That is exactly what is happening here. The government cannot stop itself from spending money. Even when there is good news happening, such as when there is extra revenue from high oil prices, which benefits the government bank account, the Liberals still spend it. It is pretty ridiculous. Even by 2030-31, there is still going to be a deficit of over $50 billion, by their own estimate. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is an officer appointed by the government, a person whom the government trusts, tells us it is going to be even worse than the government is saying; the government is actually not telling us the truth, there are going to be deficits of over $70 billion, and it is going to continue like that for the foreseeable future. It is structural, permanent deficit spending. The PBO also said that there is a less than 1% chance that the Liberals will meet any of their fiscal anchors. This is not good for the country, because when governments borrow money, that creates a lot of demand in the system and means that there is less room for tax relief in the future and for additional spending on essential services. The debt charges this year will be just about $60 billion. To put that into perspective, the amount of money the federal government gives to the provinces for health care is $55 billion, so we are actually spending more on interest than what the government gives for health care. It is not hard to imagine that interest rates will go up a bit. It is also, then, not hard to imagine that the $58 billion in debt charges could increase significantly and very rapidly, which would put major stress on the government’s budget and would lead to a circular problem, with more and more deficits and more and more interest. It is kind of like paying one’s credit card bill but making only the minimum payment. That is essentially what the government is doing right now, and this adds inflationary pressures and causes high interest rates. Everybody understands how, when the government borrows money, inflation increases and interest rates stay higher. Of course, that impacts people directly with higher mortgage payments, higher rents and extra costs. Canadians are under severe pressure due to the cost of living. Inflation was up 2.8% in April, and it stays stubbornly high. Food inflation is even higher. It was up 4.4% in March. What that means is that people are eating less meat and fewer fruits and vegetables. Parents are sometimes skipping meals so their children can eat. Seniors may not be getting their prescriptions, and they may be turning off the heat or the air conditioning in the house. Higher interest rates mean that mortgage payments rise, and costs are passed through to customers as well through higher prices because businesses face all of these higher costs as well. Bill C‑30 would make this deficit permanent. There is no future where we can imagine the government eliminating a deficit. I want to talk for a minute about housing because it is a perfect illustration. Governments need to be thinking about cost. We do not need more announcements. The government is so good at making announcements and talking a big game, but actually delivering is not something that it knows how to do. What people need are homes that they can afford. Every delay, duplicated review and unnecessary requirement is ultimately paid by the buyer. One of the aspects where we see that is in the building code. Changes are looked at, but they are not actually costed. Particularly when we look at a multitude of changes happening at once and add them all up, it can be very significant. Would it not be nice if the government had to show its work, had to make looking at things from a cost perspective a core objective and had summaries that would tell Canadians what each cost would be? We could actually then decide if it made sense, if the benefit outweighed the cost. This is something very effective and relatively simple that the government could do. Most of this information is available. It is just not being used. At the same time, we could maintain strong standards of health and safety, and we could advance technology. If we were careful about costs through the building codes, which does not cost the government anything, it would actually help people. It would make housing more affordable, reducing the cost of houses. This would help first-time buyers, renters, small and mid-sized builders, families and new Canadians. It would help everybody. This would not cost the government any money. In fact, there could be less bureaucracy, and it could save money. That is something we could definitely use in our country and would be a simple way for the government to make life more affordable for all Canadians. I also want to talk about something that my leader talked about on the weekend. What if we were to cut the GST on used cars? Dealers charge GST on used cars. A car could be sold multiple times during its life, two, three, four times, and every single time, GST is charged, and the government makes money on that. We think that is unfair. The government should get the GST at the beginning, and that should be the end of it. I want to thank my colleague the member for Elgin—St. Thomas—London South for putting forward the private member’s bill to eliminate the GST on used vehicles. It makes a lot of sense, and it could save about $1,800 on a typical vehicle purchase and would eliminate that double taxation. We have many practical ideas. I just gave two of them. One is the used car GST removal, and the other is on building codes. Of course, the government does not want to hear that, and that is why it is putting forward this motion to end debate. It does not want to hear any of our ideas. It just wants to ram this through and move on. That is the pattern we have seen for the last 11 years from the Liberal government. It likes to call itself a new government, but it has been around for 11 years. It is mostly the same people, doing the same things that got us into the mess that we are in. The Liberals seem to be ashamed and afraid, and that is why they are putting forward this motion today. I would urge the House not to pass this motion.
