Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose a new tax on Netflix imposed by the Liberals and supported by the Bloc Québécois. I am rising today to oppose the Liberal Netflix tax increase. We, as Conservatives, want this to be a country bursting with opportunity and promise, a country where young people can again afford homes and start families, where parents can give their kids the best food and the best start to life, and where seniors can retire in peace and tranquility, knowing that they can afford to live out their days, which they worked so hard to prepare for. However, after 10 years of the Liberal government, we have witnessed the biggest decline in the standard of living of any generation since the Great Depression, the first generation of youth who could not afford homes. We have the largest number of Canadians relying on food banks, up over 100% in just seven years, and we have had the worst economic growth in the G7 for over a decade. The Liberals have given us the worst household debt and the worst food price inflation, and instead of changing course, as the Liberal Prime Minister promised in the last election, it turned out that that was all an illusion. It has been more costs, more taxes, more debt and more of the same. He is just another Liberal. How did we get to a point where Canadians cannot afford to live? The answer is governments that block production with taxes and red tape and then print money to fund the resulting shortfall. The easy money is introduced into the economy as debt. Spending more borrowed money faster means higher prices, especially when we are buying fewer produced goods. That has only given Canadians the highest household debt in the G7, a third higher than the second-closest country. Canada’s household debt is now nearing record highs, and that debt is colliding with moderately higher interest rates. This, according to Equifax this week, has led to a point where “insolvency volumes have increased to levels not seen since 2009, up 18.8% year-over-year,” the “delinquency rate climbed 32 per cent year-over-year” and “Q1 saw insolvency rates hit a 17-year high, partly due to escalating financial strain on mortgage holders.” Three million Canadian households will see their mortgages roll over into higher rates over the next two years. The Prime Minister’s inflationary deficits and taxes have forced Canadians to borrow for the essentials. One reason we spend more than we produce is because we do not have enough investment to produce and increase the production of our economy. According to RBC, in a report released about a month ago: Over the past decade, Canada’s net outflow of investment exceeded $1 trillion, the most significant capital exodus in...Canadian history. For every dollar invested in Canada from abroad, two dollars exited. Canada accounted for nearly 10% of global outward foreign direct investment over the past decade, having exported more capital than any country on Earth save [except for] the U.S. and China. These are two economies that are nearly 10 times our size. The Liberal Prime Minister ran away from this economic record, even though he was the adviser who convinced Justin Trudeau to implement it. This Liberal Prime Minister promised that, if he were elected, he would do the opposite of everything he had written about and said, everything his party had done in the preceding decade. We know now that that too was an illusion. It has been more debt, more taxes, more slow growth, more fleeing investment and more of the same. Today, the Liberal Prime Minister was off to New York to expand his favourite export, speeches. Once again, his speech was filled with more of his seemingly sophisticated but highly contradictory buzzwords. On the one hand, he says that we are in the middle of a rupture with the United States, while on the other, he says he wants to, in his words, “make America great again”. His elbows were again flapping up and down in the rhetorical chicken dance, as he cannot seem to decide if integration with the U.S. is a strength or a weakness. He has argued passionately for both positions in the last three months alone. Beyond the illusions, contradictions and the repetitive MBA-isms he states in these buzzword-laden speeches, he is ultimately on exactly the same track. All that matters is the results, not the illusions. Let me go on with the present tense about investment in Canada, according to the RBC report, which says, “Canada now ranks last among G7 nations in investment in both machinery and equipment and intellectual property.” According to Statistics Canada, from the end of the first quarter of 2025 to the last quarter of that same year, overall real business investment dropped by 0.4%, but investment in productive capital fell much more, with industrial machinery and equipment investment down a shocking 15%. The Prime Minister likes to brag about foreign direct investment, claiming that we have taken the most in the world, but Statistics Canada revealed what that was. It was foreign takeovers. These are paper transactions and not investment in new machines or hiring new workers. They are foreign corporations taking control over Canadian companies that are now trading cheap because of our weak dollar and our undervalued business environment. This is not to expand business, but simply to take control out of Canadian hands and put it mostly in American hands. I guess this is what the Prime Minister meant when he said that the Americans wanted to break us to own us. He is ensuring, through his policies, that is happening more and more. According to Statistics Canada, more than half of the total foreign direct investment inflows into Canada were simple paper transactions, mergers and acquisitions. Meanwhile, in the first four quarters of the Prime Minister’s time in office, $109 billion of Canadian investment fled and more than $20 billion more left Canada than came back. That is Canadian dollars building mines, pipelines, businesses and technology abroad, paying foreign workers’ salaries. If the Prime Minister really believes that he had made Canada such an attractive place to invest, then he should look in the mirror and ask why he has invested 90% of his personal assets outside of Canada, most of it in the United States. The answer, of course, is that he does not want his personal net worth to depend on the same weak economy, high taxes and red tape he imposes on the rest of our country. Weirdly, today in his speech, he even encouraged American investors to seek more of our pension fund money. Why on earth would we want the Prime Minister to go to the United States and encourage American investors to pillage our pension funds for investment we desperately need at home? According to Statistics Canada, a majority of Canadian pension fund money is now invested outside of Canada. Another question is: Why, despite the illusions, announcements, grand speeches in fancy foreign settings does investment continue to flee our country and why does it find more attractive welcome around the world? It is because the Liberal Prime Minister has carried on the same policies that he advised Justin Trudeau. Every single antidevelopment law Trudeau brought in remains in place today. The higher taxes on energy, investment and income remain in place. In fact, there are 500 economic projects now awaiting approval by the federal government, and the Prime Minister just announced that he is going to increase the industrial carbon tax sixfold on steel, aluminum, concrete, fertilizer and more. Government greed is again on display with the Liberal-appointed CRTC, using powers under the Liberal Online Streaming Act to triple the Netflix tax to 15%. For Canadians already paying high Liberal inflation on the goods they buy, high Liberal taxes on their paycheques, high Liberal taxes on their gas to get to and from work, and then higher Liberal taxes on the beer they drink to take the edge off when they get home, when they sit down and turn on their favourite program on Netflix, Crave or Disney+, they will again pay higher Liberal taxes to pay for it. The Liberals tax labour, energy, investment, beer, and now, cultural products. We Conservatives want to cut all taxes to make life more affordable for everyone. Today, we rise, as Conservatives, consistent with our overall approach of having a smaller government with bigger citizens, an affordable government for an affordable life. We want to cut taxes, obviously, on work, investment, energy and homebuilding, but we also want to fight this latest Liberal tax hike to give Canadians a break. Let them choose freely what they like to watch when they are at home recreating with their families. Let us get rid of the Netflix tax. Let us make this a country that is based on production and not borrowing, on paycheques and not debt, and on affordability and not exorbitant government inflation. We want to give Canadians back control of their lives with a promising future filled with opportunity. Let us get it done.
