Madam Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to add a little more to this debate.
I just wanted to begin by sharing with the parliamentary secretary that what we as parliamentarians are doing in the House in debating and reviewing Bill C-14 is scrutiny and oversight, which is the role of the official opposition, and we are unapologetic about doing that. I want to start off by saying that we fully support parts 1 through 6 of Bill C-14, which would continue to provide Canadians with the critical support they need as they try to make it through this pandemic. The challenge is that, as Liberals are wont to do, they have also added the most massive borrowing increase in Canada's history to that bill. The parliamentary secretary suggested that these social program modifications are fairly modest and really should not prevent us from debating this, but this is the largest, most historic increase in Canada's debt ceiling and borrowing capacity ever, so that should provide Canadians with the context in which to judge this bill.
What is it that Canadians are looking for from the government, now that we are slowly moving through the vaccination stage? Canadians are looking forward and asking when the end is going to come. I would suggest that Canadians are looking for hope and confidence for their future and the future of their children and their grandchildren, of which I have 11 and another one on the way, and even their great-grandchildren down the road. Do they have a prosperous future to look forward to? That is the question I believe Canadians need answered.
By the way, they are not asking for the Prime Minister to reimagine the economy. They are not asking for the Prime Minister to build back better. Every single Canadian I have spoken to simply wants a return to some level of normalcy. They want their lives, their jobs, their small businesses, their communities and their places of worship back. They are not looking for the Prime Minister to foist a massive new social and economic experiment on them. Again, they want life to return to normal. That is it.
Would Bill C-14 do that? Would it give Canadians that hope? So far, I have sadly concluded that it does not. Bill C-14 would implement the government's fall economic statement. That statement does include additional supports for Canadians who need help to make it through the pandemic. By the way, we support those benefits, as we have every single other COVID-related benefit program the government has brought forward. We have stood shoulder to shoulder with the government in saying that Canadians need and deserve that support.
The problem is that the government has paid absolutely no attention to the long-term plan for our economy. What does our long-term future look like as a country? We know that the government failed to deliver a budget for over two years. In fact, Canada was the only G7 country not to deliver a budget over the last two years. The provinces and territories delivered budgets, yet the government's excuse was that we are in the middle of a COVID pandemic, so delivering a budget has no value. Actually, it is in the middle of a pandemic and the greatest economic crisis this country has faced since at least the Great Depression that is exactly when we should have had a budget and a plan for our economy, and sadly the Prime Minister did not deliver on that responsibility.
In the meantime, Canadians have been in the dark about what the future holds. They are asking for a plan to reopen our economy and to get Canadians back to work, and to support small businesses as they struggle to get back on their feet.
Members should know that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has made it very clear that there are some 240,000 small businesses that could very well be permanently shut down by the end of this COVID pandemic. We know that the million-plus small businesses in our country are the great job creators. Effectively, if 20% to 25% of those businesses are eliminated, it will dramatically undermine job creation going forward.
Let me talk very briefly about the seven parts of this bill. Quite frankly, Conservatives are in support of the first six parts. For example, part 1 would implement increases to the Canada child benefit, which I am sure families would welcome. It also addresses serious design flaws in the rent subsidy program to finally allow commercial and industrial tenants to receive some relief before they pay their rent. The irony was that, in the middle of this pandemic when tenants did not have the cash to pay their rent up front, they were being told they would not get support until after they paid their rent. This legislation would address that serious design flaw. There are other things in the bill as well that Conservatives support, such as eliminating interest on Canada student loans and Canada apprentice loans for one year and authorizing the Governor in Council to make regulations to seek additional information from companies about food, drugs and medical devices.
In short, the six parts of the Bill C-14 fall economic statement effectively introduce, modify and improve programs that the government brought forward and that we as the official opposition are fully supportive of. Of course, like all things Liberal, there is always a catch. In this case it is part 7 of the bill. As my colleague from Winnipeg has just mentioned, the Prime Minister is asking Parliament to approve a historic, massive increase in the debt ceiling, in other words, the line of credit that the government has available to it. The government wants to increase that by $663 billion, almost one-quarter of a trillion dollars. That is massive.
Before any parliamentarian should ever provide their support to that kind of an increase, they should be asking what this borrowing capacity is going to be used for. We have to consider this in the context of the fact that the Liberal government has been chastised by the Parliamentary Budget Officer for not being transparent in its spending endeavours. Every time it brings forward a spending bill, it refuses to explain to Canadians exactly how that money will be deployed. Parliamentarians do not have the ability to exercise proper scrutiny and oversight. The PBO identified that and said that the government is not transparent.
Why should we trust the government when it now says it wants another $663 billion? I was at committee when we were asking questions of the Minister of Finance. We expressly asked her to please tell us what this additional $663 billion is needed for and where it will be deployed. All she did was refer Canadians to one chart in the fall economic statement. She said to go and look at that, all Canadians have that available. Most Canadians are not going to go looking for the fall economic statement to find the one chart that actually did not show where she was spending the money. It simply showed how much money she was asking to borrow. We deserve better as a country.
Another thing is signalled in this fall economic statement and that is a $100-billion stimulus fund that the Minister of Finance has suggested might be required for Canada to get through the pandemic. Again, at committee, we asked very expressly if she could tell us what this stimulus fund is all about. She talks about $100 billion, asks us to trust her and so far she had been unwilling to provide any transparency on where that money might be deployed. Now she had an opportunity. She would not tell us. Would that money go into productivity-enhancing investments like hard infrastructure? Was it going to go into soft infrastructure? She would not say. She made vague references to guardrails, supposed rules that she was going to put in place to ensure that there were triggers that would allow it to slowly ease this money into our economy. The problem is that the economists have all pointed out that she has been so vague about what those guardrails are all about that it is impossible for anyone to exercise any kind of oversight over this $100 billion of additional spending. Those same economists have also sounded a precautionary note.
The government's $100 billion stimulus must take into account inflationary pressures. When we pump $100 billion into the economy in a short period of time, it means there are more dollars chasing the same number of goods, and that could lead to inflationary pressures. When the central bank, the Bank of Canada, senses that there are inflationary pressures, it increases interest rates.
If Canadians across the country knew right now that there was a significant risk of interest rate increases, a lot of them would be panicking, because they got into this incredibly expensive housing market upon the condition that interest rates would stay low. However, if we pump more and more stimulus into the economy, that will stoke the fires of inflation, and it gets worse.
Economists have also warned the government and the finance minister that the government needs to take note of the massive stimulus that the American government is pumping into its economy. It is a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan into the American economy. Layered on top of that is a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, which adds even more stimulus to the economy. When that economy starts being stimulated, that sloshes over the border into Canada. It impacts economic growth, but it can overheat economic growth and again stoke inflationary pressures.
Layered on top of all that is something that is counterintuitive. Even though we have come through the worst pandemic in our lifetime, the worst economic crisis in my lifetime, we have a situation where we have record amounts of savings on both the household side and the corporate side in Canada, savings that are eventually going to be pumped back into our economy, injected as stimulus. Therefore, when we add all this stimulus together, the government has to be very wary of adding another $100 billion to that.
This is an unprecedented crisis, but Canadians want hope and they want confidence for the future. They want to know that the Prime Minister and the finance minister have a plan to safely reopen our economy. That includes safely reopening our common border with the United States, because we have somewhere in the order of $2 billion in trade crossing our border every single day. The U.S. is by far our largest trade partner. Therefore, I encourage the government, as it is moving toward tabling a budget, its first budget in over two years, to ensure that the budget includes a clear plan going forward to safely reopen our economy, and that will require Canadians to be properly vaccinated.
What is the plan? The current plan has been a bit of a boondoggle. I think Canadians are understanding that. We need a plan to safely reopen our economy to get Canadians back to work, to help small businesses get back up on their feet and to manage this massive new debt that the government has incurred on Canadians' behalf. There has to be a management plan, which includes strong fiscal anchors, rules and guidelines by which the government will be guided as we emerge from the pandemic and struggle to get a grip on this massive financial obligation with which we will burden future generations of Canadians.
We are fully supportive of parts 1 through 6 of the bill. It is part 7, the massive increase in borrowing, we cannot support, especially when the minister has been unable or unwilling to explain how that additional borrowing capacity, some $663 billion, will be deployed going forward.
Canadians are fair, reasonable, generous people. All they are looking for is ethical and competent leadership, transparent leadership, to help them emerge from this crisis. So far, they have not been getting it, and they deserve better.
