Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to inform you that I am splitting my time with my good friend from Saskatoon West, who brought me to his riding. I remember it was -40°C. He promised me he would show me an ice rink. I did not know he was talking about the roads in Saskatoon, not an actual ice rink. The Liberals should call this motion we currently have in front of us “the guillotine”, because they are taking the guillotine to transparency and accountability. They are trying to end all debate at the finance committee because the numbers are catching up to them. After 10 years of reckless spending, deficits and higher taxes for Canadians, all of those numbers are adding up. In fact, the Prime Minister, who said he would be more responsible, has doubled Justin Trudeau’s deficit. It is rising to $72 billion. The Liberals are adding another $68 billion in new spending. The PBO came out with a scathing report just two weeks ago, saying the Liberal government has a “less than 1 per cent” chance of meeting one of its own fiscal anchors, and debunking the other fiscal anchors the government had put in place. What are all of these numbers going to do? The PBO might say there is a less than 1% chance of the Liberals meeting their fiscal anchor. I would argue there is also a less than 1% chance of a Liberal answering a question in this place and a less than 1% chance that we will get answers at the finance committee on this very expensive spring economic statement. Of course, whenever the numbers are bad, the Liberal government does what it always does, which is shut down debate and shut down accountability. The opposition’s job, which Canadians sent us to this place to do, is to expose the endless, reckless spending by the Prime Minister and the Liberal government. It is not just us saying things are bad right now. In fact, the Bank of Canada said “the economy is soft”, the PBO said growth will “remain subdued”, TD said the economy is operating “well below capacity” and BMO said there is “no sense sugar-coating this sour result”. Everyone feels it. The fact is that the Prime Minister, who said we would have the fastest‑growing economy in the G7, ended up delivering the fastest‑shrinking economy in the entire G20. This plays out in the real world for Canadians. This reckless spending and the money that goes to Liberal insiders all adds up. In fact, Canadians are poorer now than they have ever been. We see two million Canadians going to a food bank every single month. We have one in five Canadians who are food insecure. A third of the people who are going to food banks now are children. Members would think I am talking about some third‑world statistic, but this is what Liberal Canada looks like today because of the reckless spending, taxes and overburdening our industries. All of these have driven out so much of our investment that Canadians now have to suffer the results. We have fewer options and less competition. Costs are going up because of Liberal taxes. At the end of the day, that is why our food inflation is one of the fastest‑growing in the entire G7. We have the highest household debt, the highest housing costs in the G7 and the second‑highest unemployment in the entire G7. This is not to mention that ours is the only country in the entire G20 to be in a recession. The Conservatives are wholeheartedly against shutting down this motion. I sit on the finance committee. The Liberals cannot stand that we are asking the questions that Canadians are telling us to ask about this incompetent bill they put forward, which would not do anything but make the lives of Canadians more expensive, whether it be through taxes or the inflation the Liberal government is so well known for creating for Canadians. In fact, we put forward amendment after amendment to make this bill better. That is our role as His Majesty’s loyal opposition. For example, the pause on the excise tax the government is bringing forward is a third of the tax for a third of the year. I put an amendment forward to extend it to the rest of the year. The Liberals are ideologically obsessed with the carbon tax. There’s the clean fuel standard. We do not want to include the GST on top of that, which would have saved Canadians 25¢ per litre, or $1,200 for a family. I tried putting a common-sense amendment forward at committee that would have extended the pause on the excise tax until the end of the year. That would have made more savings for Canadians. Once again, the Liberals filibustered that until they decided to vote it down, as they always do. It was a very common-sense solution. This was just one of many amendments and subamendments we were putting forward. There were officials there, but unfortunately the Liberals are so unorganized on this committee that they did not have the right officials there, and sometimes they were not answering the questions properly. We are putting forward the questions that Canadians deserve answers to, but once again the Liberals, with this motion specifically, are trying to end debate, transparency and any type of accountability for which we are trying to get answers. This is just another tactic for them to delay, which is what we are always against as Conservatives. Speaking of the inevitable, we are the only G20 country in a recession. The statistics are not looking good for Canada. No matter who is forecasting them, things are not going well right now. In fact, if we look at business investment, we see that in the last five consecutive quarters, business investment has gone down. That is the track record of the government. In fact, it has driven out $1 trillion of good Canadian investment, to the Americans. Those are our jobs and factories or growth that could have happened here, but high Liberal taxes and regulation have driven them away. The Liberal Prime Minister has driven out, as a net loss, $20 billion of investment outside Canada. He is the guy who said he would fix everything. He is the guy who would deal with President Donald Trump. He still cannot get a deal, and he is driving more investment away and spending more of Canadians’ money. He is jet-setting around the world on the taxpayer dime. While he is pushing more Canadians into food bank lines, at the same time, he is making them pay for his extravagant meals on flights. In fact, over the last year, he spent $1 million on inflight catering. On three flights, he spent more on salmon than what a family will spend on groceries for the entire year. In fact, after rising grocery prices, now Canadian families will pay $1,000 more for groceries just this year. That is the track record of the government. Instead of helping Canadians, it will push them into food bank lines, make them food-insecure and, at the same time, make them pay for lofty meals on the Prime Minister’s flights that end up with fake handshakes wherever the Liberals go, fake MOUs and contracts they sign. They cheer themselves on with announcements that never end up materializing to the benefit of Canadians. That is why our economy is as bad and as weak as it is right now. There was a scathing report by the PBO, but there was also a scathing report by United Way. These are stats that, again, make it seem as though we are in a third world country. Of the Canadians who responded, 38% reported experiencing at least one form of food insecurity in the past six months, and 27% were worried their food would run out before they had money to buy more. There is a solution to all this. Conservatives are just asking for the Liberal government to get out of the way. Let us bring affordability and safety back to Canada, which the Liberals have driven out since they took over. We can get rid of the industrial carbon tax to bring down the cost of food and fuel for Canadians. Let us put more money back into their pockets. Let us extend the pause on the excise tax to the end of the year and also include the GST and the clean fuel standard. Let us save families $1,200 this year. Let us bring back investment by removing barriers such as the “no new pipelines” bill, Bill C-69, and Bill C-48, the tanker ban. By doing that, we could signal to the world that we are open for business once again. Let us have more pipelines, mines and dams. Let us get everything going. Let us have more infrastructure built so we can have more jobs and get our economy back on track. We can do these things only once the Liberals get out of the way.