“The government's debt and deficit keep rising, and it is failing to meet its own budget targets. It makes the debt look smaller by counting public pension money. The government needs to make a real fiscal plan and actually stick to it.”

“Mr. Speaker, this is a theme that we have heard over and over again. Time and time again, we have heard the Liberals say they are going to be investing in the economy and they are going to be investing to grow, but we have seen the deficit climb higher and higher, and our public debt climb higher and higher. It is interesting that, on the debt-to-GDP ratio, we often hear the government cite net debt. Of course, that calculation considers the Canadian pension plan. I am sure Canadians would be alarmed if they understood that the government was considering their pension as potential debt repayment. I do not think people would appreciate that very much. The government has these fiscal anchors. It has these fiscal anchors that it needs to achieve, and it seems as though it is blowing through them. If we want to maintain our credibility, and maintain our credibility in markets, we have to make sure we make a plan and we actually stick to it.”

“Many hard-working people are struggling to get by. I want my colleague to say what the government should focus on instead to help them.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people of Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola. I thank my colleague for his speech. Like me, he is also from a family of Italian background, as are many other members of the House, although I cannot point to who is or is not here in referencing any particular member. One of the things I am so proud of is the hard work I saw from my family. They instilled that work ethic in me. I sense that the member has many hard-working people in his riding who are struggling to get by. Could the member comment on where he might shift priorities to in helping those hard-working people?”

“The government needs to get its debt and deficit under control. We spend 83 billion dollars just on interest payments, which is more than we spend on health care transfers. Canadians pay too much tax and face too many rules. We need tax reform that helps businesses grow and creates jobs.”

“Mr. Speaker, obviously, my family, the member’s family and many families that have come to this country as immigrants share a similar story. They came here, they worked hard and they wanted a better future for their families, for their children and their children’s children. The question now becomes, what exactly should government be focusing on today? There are numerous things. We need to get our debt and deficit under control because, as I said in my speech, we are now at the point where we are spending $83 billion on interest payments alone, which is more than is being spent on health care transfers. We are overtaxed and over-regulated in this country. What Canadians need and what Canadians expect from government is for the government to address these issues. We need some tax reform and income tax reform. We need reforms that will make businesses grow and thrive so there is more employment and more opportunity for our workers.”

“The government should cut taxes and reduce regulations instead of trying to control the economy. That would help businesses grow, bring in investment, and let people keep more of their paycheques.”

“Mr. Speaker, there is a principle we often talk about, which is, what is in the government’s control that it could address today? My colleague would know this quite well from when she was a member on this side of the House. She would have been a strong advocate for supply-side principles. This includes things like tax reform, regulatory reform and things that would create the conditions for businesses to prosper and for individuals to keep more of their paycheques in their pocket. They are the things that would inspire businesses and investment to grow here in this country. We need to see more of that and less centralized government control over the way the economy works.”

“I do not support this budget bill. It wastes time setting up new offices that another bill already replaces. The government has doubled Canada's debt, and paying the interest now costs about $6,000 per family. Instead of creating more rules and offices, the government should cut debt, lift the west coast tanker ban, and let Alberta sell energy to our allies.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am going to take a page out of the book of my colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola and say it is a pleasure to rise today on behalf of the good, honest and hard-working people of Ponoka—Didsbury. Ponoka—Didsbury is in central rural Alberta, just about 45 minutes north of Calgary and 45 minutes south of Edmonton. This is the heart of Alberta, and it is truly a pleasure and an honour for me to rise to speak on their behalf. As an Albertan, it also gives me pleasure to stand here in the House of Commons to talk about the great things Alberta contributes to this great nation of Canada. I am going to take this opportunity to just mention to everybody listening in the House that, this year, every single man, woman and child in Alberta will contribute $4,000 more to the Government of Canada than it gets back in services. For the constituents of Ponoka—Didsbury, that is about a half a billion dollars, just under $500 million. I know nobody in this place is rushing forward to give thanks, and in 21 years, I have yet to hear many people say it, but just in case they are thinking it, I am going to say that they are welcome, on behalf of my constituents in Alberta, who simply want the government to get out of their way to let them do what they do best. We know from our industrious spirit and our can-do attitude, particularly in rural Alberta, that we can grow the food, get the resources like oil and natural gas out of the ground and harvest our timber. Like I said, we can grow our food. We can do the industrial and commercial development we need to create prosperity. There are mod yards in the constituency of Ponoka—Didsbury that build massive pieces of infrastructure, which are shipped up the road to places like Fort McMurray, either by truck or by train. We know that the workers we have in rural and central Alberta, and even in our larger urban centres, have all of the capacity, technological capability, experience, engineering, knowledge and know-how to build out even more of our resource extraction, resource processing and resource shipping machinery. I know a lot of that happens right in my constituency, in Ponoka, Blackfalds and other places, in the industrial yards that we have there. I am looking forward to, someday, those yards being as busy as they used to be about 11 years ago. The reason I am standing here today is to talk about the government’s budget implementation act from the previous budget. Here we are, at just the report stage. We are not even at third reading yet. We are just at report stage on the budget implementation legislation, which is largely housekeeping legislation, on a budgetary policy that was passed last year, and we are two days before the next budget, which is going to be presented this coming Thursday. It is a really interesting piece of legislation. Let me tell the House how Liberal logic works. It works the same way on a lot of different things, yet here we are. We are talking about division 16 of part 4 of Bill C-31. I am just going to talk about this a bit for the folks back home. Division 16 deals with the creation of the Defence Investment Agency, which was, in the last budget, the government’s newfound bureaucracy that was going to somehow do procurement for our men and women in our armed forces. Let me be absolutely clear that the people of Ponoka—Didsbury 100% stand behind the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces. Many of the people in my constituency, like it is for anybody else in the House, have served in the Canadian Armed Forces. We are very, very proud of the men and women who stand on guard for us each and every day, but we have a procurement problem in Canada. We cannot get things done on time. We have lots of red tape and lots of bureaucracy. This budget implementation act is just at report stage. It is not even at third reading two days before the next budget is to be tabled. Division 16 in Bill C-31 would establish the Defence Investment Agency as a body with its own minister, which is, by the way, yet to be named. This piece of legislation would actually to be replaced by another bureaucracy in Bill C-40, which is also currently before the House. We have a bill to create a bureaucracy that is so late coming to this place that the new bureaucracy to replace this bureaucracy is being stood up in another piece of legislation currently before the House. We cannot even make this stuff up. If there was a gold star for building government, every grade 5 teacher in Canada would be asked to surrender their gold stars to the Liberal government in Ottawa for all of the gold stars it would get for creating more bureaucracy. We have never had more government than we do right now. The Liberals are so busy making government here that they do not even have time to ratify legislation that creates one bureaucracy before they get around to ratifying another piece of legislation to replace that bureaucracy. That is how fast they are growing government here. Our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces need the tools, technology and equipment to defend us, but really, all we are doing right here in Parliament is creating one bureaucracy after another bureaucracy. Like I said, they get gold stars for creating bureaucracy, but that is not the bigger point I want to make in my comments today. I think Canadians would be shocked to find out just how in debt Canada actually is. I am not just talking about our federal debt, which is massive. It is more than double what it was in 2015. I think we are at $1.5 trillion in national debt, which is up from just over $620 billion. Every government and every prime minister in Canada, up until 2015, in 150-some years of the existence of our country, managed to amass a grand total of about $620 billion in debt. Since Justin Trudeau and this new Liberal Prime Minister have been to office, that has more than doubled, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer has projected that, in the next five years, it is going to go up another $700 billion to well over $2 trillion. That is just the federal debt, and the interest on that debt is now becoming one of the highest budget line items we have, to the point where we are getting up to $6,000 for every family. All the taxes they pay to the Government of Canada are just going to pay the interest, not the principal. It is like just paying the interest on the credit card without ever paying down the principal or the amount that is owing. Right now, we are at $6,000 per family before any service is paid, before any doctors are paid, before any teachers are paid, before any schools are built, before anything is done, before any police officer is paid, before any Crown prosecutor is paid, before anybody at our corrections services or anybody at our border trying to protect our country is paid, and before our men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces are paid. Before any of that gets paid, we are dealing with $6,000 just in interest. We also have all the sub-sovereign debt from all of our provinces and then all of the business debt. I am not even talking about what our financial institutions are on the hook for when it comes to lending. I am just talking about business debt, such as businesses that take out a line of credit, a farm that has a loan with Farm Credit Canada, or something like that. This debt is now added on to the personal debt of every Canadian, and we are looking at 385% debt-to-GDP. I am not even talking about the money financial institutions have lent out that they owe. I am just talking about personal debt, credit card debt, business and commercial debt and government debt. The entirety of our economy has to service all of that debt, and we are not getting the economic questions in this country right. We have a Prime Minister who gets up every time he speaks and has a doomsday scenario for Canada, yet one simple little request we had was to remove the tanker ban off the west coast. If we are on a war footing economically, we could be shipping another 250,000 barrels a day by rail to Prince Rupert to give to our friends and allies. I just got back from a trip to Japan with several Liberal colleagues, not the ones who are smirking at me on the other side right now, and Japan would take every drop of oil, natural gas and propane we have, but we will not get out of the way. We will not remove a tanker ban to allow a simple little thing to grow our economy so that, hopefully, we could pay some of this debt. I shudder to think why this is. It makes no sense.”

“The previous Conservative government approved major pipeline projects with private funding. The Prime Minister chased that money away and forced taxpayers to pay $40 billion for Trans Mountain. The Liberals have stopped our economy with too many rules, and they give public money to their friends instead of fixing our roads and hospitals.”

“Mr. Speaker, do members know how many oil pipelines to tidewater the Harper government inherited from the Chrétien and Martin governments? It inherited zero. We had four and a half years of a majority government to change the legislation in the country in order to create a streamlined application process. Some hon. members: Oh, oh! Blaine Calkins: Mr. Speaker, they are laughing on the other side of the House. They think it is funny, but I was here. I lived through all of it. How many LNG projects did we inherit? We inherited four. They were import terminals. The Liberals of the day wanted to import liquefied natural gas into Canada, not actually export it. When Justin Trudeau became the prime minister, he inherited northern gateway, the Trans Mountain expansion, energy east and Keystone XL. He chased away all the private sector financing available for that and put on a $40-billion price tag on it for the taxpayers of Canada to pay. The Liberals are now going to do the same thing again. They have regulated our economy to a standstill, and the only people who get to do anything are their buddies, to whom they give a bunch of taxpayer money, rather than fixing our roads and paying for hospitals that everybody gets to enjoy.”

“I share the frustration with our airlines. The government wants to privatize some airports. Canadians pay very high landing fees and taxes to travel and ship goods across our large country. We need to cut costs and rules so airlines can operate in a true free market.”

“Mr. Speaker, as somebody who spends an inordinate amount of time in airports and dealing with our Canadian airlines, I can understand and appreciate the frustration. I am sure all my colleagues of the House generally have those same levels of frustration. The government has announced that it is going to be privatizing some of our airports. That is an interesting concept and an interesting idea. I do not know where this is going to go. I have some ideas about whether or not it is a good idea. The reality is that Transport Canada has huge bills. Canadians have some of the highest rates of landing fees and taxes to pay in order to move goods and services around this country. We have one of the largest geopolitical land masses. We need to reduce costs and red tape wherever possible and make it so that airlines can operate in a true free market environment and give the best solutions possible to the—”

“Government rules, red tape, and bad choices have stopped pipeline projects. The government should not pick winners and losers or spend tax dollars on them. Instead, it should make Canada a safe place for people to invest their own money.”

“Mr. Speaker, my good friend from Calgary Centre knows this issue inside and out. Anybody who is involved in the industry and in the business, right from the suits down to the boots on the ground, understands that it is just regulations and red tape that have held everything up, and it is the decisions that the government has made, picking the winners and losers, and getting involved and actually spending taxpayers’ dollars on this. I cannot stress enough how important it is to create an environment where people feel safe to invest in this country. They do not need millions and millions of taxpayer dollars. When I collect tax dollars on behalf—”

“This bill is too big and has serious problems that need closer study. It helps build rental apartments instead of homes people can own. It gives the transport minister too much control over consumer complaints. It also ignores our fast-growing debt interest costs, while the government uses misleading numbers to make the debt look smaller.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the chamber on behalf of constituents of Simcoe North. I understand that we are running late on debate, so my comments will be brief this evening in order to provide opportunity for other colleagues to make an intervention. I would just like to point out that Bill C-31 is 338 pages long. It was first introduced in the chamber in May. We are not even at third reading. This is report stage. Nothing screams that we are at war like a bill’s taking multiple months to get through the chamber on something that is supposed to be as important to the government as its financial plan. When a government creates a bill this big, it makes it quite difficult for parliamentarians to get answers to very specific questions, and there are some things in the bill that I think deserve some further scrutiny. For example, division 7, part 4, says that the government would increase the total borrowing capacity of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the CMHC, that is, in effect, to increase the liabilities the taxpayer has to backstop or to support the activities of the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation. Of course, we are in a housing crisis in this country. However, I would say the government has preferenced its support of the sector that suggests it would further subsidize rental units as opposed to single family dwellings or other different forms of ownership of homes that are not apartments but actual owned homes. The construction of owned homes, owned units, is way down, but the construction of apartments is way up. I happen to be an all-of-the-above conservative, and I think the government should be making sure it is creating equity in the housing market by not preferencing one style of housing over others. There is also an overbuild of apartments right now because rents are falling across the country. That is a good thing. More supply means lower rents, but what about the other forms of home ownership, such as of single-family dwellings, townhouses or condominiums, in which the owner occupies the residence? I also would like to point out that in the bill, there would be a further consolidation of power from the bureaucracy into an individual minister. I am referring to the power of the minister to get more involved and take power from the Canadian Transportation Agency into the minister’s office with respect to consumer complaints. If we like the current Minister of Transport, as many people do, and I have nothing bad to say about him, there is no problem if he gets more power, I suppose. However, what would happen when the minister is a dud? We would have just given them more power. This is yet another example of how, time after time, the government has further consolidated power within its own ministerial offices, giving it more discretion and more power, and taking it away from unelected individuals who may exercise that power in a more judicious manner. That is a risk I would like to highlight. I think my previous colleague hit the nail on the head very well when he talked about challenges with debt service costs. It is the fastest-growing line item in the budget. It is unclear to me whether the government even cares about this. It will retort that we should be thankful and appreciative that it has the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7. However, Canadians would be surprised to learn that the calculation includes the assets of the CPP and not any of the liabilities, which I do not think is the impression the government is trying to give. I do not think it is saying that it could take money from the CPP to pay the government debts, but we could be forgiven for making that mistake, given the number of times the government refers to that stat in the House. Frankly, given the recent announcement by the government to invest in a private AI corporation called Cohere, I would like to highlight the risk of the government’s turning the Prime Minister’s Office and the government into an investment bank, not into an appropriate policy shop, such that the only things that get done in this country are those that get a permission slip from the Prime Minister’s Office and are those that require significant sums of taxpayer money to be contributed.”

“The government is backing too many loans for rental apartments instead of helping people buy homes. Too many apartments are being built right now. If these projects fail, taxpayers will have to pay for them.”

“Mr. Speaker, the challenge I have is that most, if not the vast majority, of the increase of the liabilities of CPP that the government is now backstopping are related solely to the apartment sector. I think it is clear where the government’s priorities are. It is preferencing apartment building rentals, in terms of increasing supply, at the expense of other forms of home ownership, and that is the risk I would like to highlight. Frankly, when the sector is being overbuilt, as it is now, this actually increases the risk to taxpayers, who may be on the hook if some of these projects cannot be completed.”

“I agree with my colleague that we need to focus on home ownership. Owning a home helps young people build wealth and start families. I want him to talk more about why home ownership is so important for housing affordability.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am happy that my friend and colleague mentioned the Conservatives’ approach to housing and solving the housing crisis in this country, and the Liberals’ approach. He talked about home ownership, and I very much share that perspective. I wonder if he would also like to expand on how home ownership can really help a young person build their assets, build their equity and really have a start on their life as they are having a family and building wealth around them. Why is it so important that we keep this at the forefront of our conversations around housing affordability?”

“Young people need to believe they can own a home. Owning a home builds equity and gives people security when they retire, instead of paying someone else's mortgage.”

“Mr. Speaker, my colleague has made valuable contributions in a very short time in the chamber. We need to give young people hope in this country. They need to think that home ownership is attainable. It should not be the case that young Canadians wake up every day thinking that this dream is out of reach for them. The biggest number of young people possible should believe it is possible to own their own home. It provides retirement security. It builds equity. Unlike as a renter, it means they are not paying someone else’s mortgage but paying themselves first.”

“The previous Conservative government balanced the books. The Liberals mislead the public about the debt, like using pension money to make their numbers look better. I want my colleague to speak on how the Liberals change these numbers.”

“Mr. Speaker, my colleague has been doing yeoman’s service on this file for quite some time, including working in the previous Conservative government for finance minister Jim Flaherty, a great finance minister who was able to bring Canada through the economic downturn and balance the books along with Stephen Harper, whose book Here for Canada is on sale today, by the way. It is a great story that I am sure all of us are going to enjoy. When we listen to Liberals on the other side and they talk about how great Crown corporations are and about how wonderful the debt-to-GDP ratio is, we know that, just as with national defence, they love to cook the books and play a shell game. They are doing it this time around by using the Canada pension plan money as a way to show a better position of government debt to GDP. I was wondering if my colleague wanted to comment on how the Liberals always cook the books.”

“The government is misleading the public when it reports Canada's debt. It counts public pension funds as government assets to make the debt look smaller, but that pension money does not belong to the government.”

“Mr. Speaker, the government is setting up the CPPIB, the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, which is viewed around the world as the gold standard for governance, primarily for the reason that it is free from political interference. Every time the government uses the net debt-to-GDP ratio, it confuses the public by suggesting that the assets of the CPP, in effect, may be available to the government to use because the government is using those assets to reduce the amount of money that it shows it owes the rest of the world.”