Madam Speaker, I am pleased to see you in the chair today, giving me this opportunity, I guess, to speak until the end of the programming motion that has been forced upon us because the government and the House leadership on its side seem to really want to do their homework at the very last minute. As a constant procrastinator in my youth, I appreciate that, but with old age we get wiser. I have come around to not doing that in my personal life and making sure that I am on top of my work before the clock strikes the eleventh hour.
What I am going to talk about today with regard to this piece of legislation, the budget bill, the first BIA, is what Albertans and constituents in my riding have cared about for the last 20 years, which is equalization, equalization and equalization. That is some of the biggest unfairness in our Confederation, and I think every Albertan would say so.
Typically in the BIA, the budget implementation act, we would see modifications made to the formula that governs equalization. I remember being on the finance committee when this was indeed the case. I actually missed it at the time, but the government simply rolled over the same formula and then accused the Conservatives at the time of having supported this formula back in 2014. The Liberals said it was not a big deal because it was the same thing.
Here is the deal. Over the last two years, the provincial government in Alberta has run a $24-billion deficit, if COVID spending is excluded. Once COVID spending is included, it will approach a $40-billion deficit over two fiscal years in the province of Alberta, my home province, the province I call home, the place that adopted me. It is patently unfair that Albertans are continuing to see major contributions to federal coffers because, after all, it is not a cheque cut from Edmonton to Ottawa; it is the totality of federal income taxes levied on workers in Alberta, and then the redistribution is based on a formula and the fiscal capacity of the average of the 10 provinces combined together. Now, there are a lot of different revenues included. There are different calculations being made.
At the Fraser Institute, Ben Eisen and another analyst made a calculation that demonstrated that in Canada, equalization and the fiscal capacity of the provinces are actually converging. Over the last five and a half years, my province has gotten poorer because of Liberal policies out of Ottawa. My province is now so poor that Albertans are only 20% above the median income of the people in Ontario, whereas before we were in the range of 80% to 90% above. That is a significant decrease in the common prosperity of the people of my province. It is directly related to policies that the Liberal government has introduced. It has stymied the growth of the oil and gas sector. I have not seen a single major oil and gas project be proposed and built since the Liberals took power. Actually, every single project that was completed had been started under the previous Conservative government.
Equalization by 2025-26 fiscal year is expected to be $25 billion. That is according to the government's own figures. The total number is actually growing over time. It is not shrinking over time, and it should be shrinking because our fiscal capacity is actually converging. The provinces are actually becoming much closer together to the average. One would think that over time there would be less money to redistribute because the provinces are more even, but that is not what is going on.
I want to recognize a member of the New Democratic Party, the member for St. John's East, who has stated several times how unfair equalization is to his home province of Newfoundland and Labrador. I had the distinct privilege of being able to travel with different parliamentary committees to the province as well, and I have read the Greene report. Lady Greene provided a report on the state of the finances in Newfoundland and Labrador. It is an eye-opening read. It is not just unfair for Alberta. It is not just unfair for Saskatchewan and other “have” provinces contributing to our shared prosperity in this country; it is also unfair to Newfoundland and Labrador, which is seeing an immense drop in its provincial revenues and barely any finances being made up in the fiscal stabilization program, the FSP, the so-called equalization rebate.
Let it not be said that we Conservatives and I have not done something about it. I have tabled Bill C-263, the equalization and transfers fairness act, which would have eliminated that cap, but in this budget, in the BIA, all the Liberal government is committing to do is simply increase the cap to another random number.
The Liberals have tripled the cap now to a number that I do not think is defensible. If the cap had been eliminated entirely, my home province of Alberta would have been eligible for a $3-billion refund because of the significant loss in revenues. It is not as if the federal government does not have increasing revenues. I was just looking at the numbers. The income taxes that the federal government is forecasted to raise will go up by $46 billion over five years. That is $46 billion of additional revenue coming in, and it still cannot balance the budget within a five-year timetable.
To conclude, I want to be clear that if Albertans want to know more, if members across the country want to know more, I encourage them to follow Fairness Alberta and Dr. Bill Bewick's work, which gives an eye-opening account by the numbers, not rhetoric, just by the numbers, of the hardship my province is being asked to bear in order to pay for the finances of the federal government, and we cannot afford it. We cannot afford this government. We cannot afford another five years of nothing being done on equalization. The formula needs to be changed, and there needs to be greater fairness for the people of Alberta.
I will finish with a Yiddish proverb, because I know members know how much I appreciate them: “Let your mouth not speak what the eyes do not see.” Albertans have been seeing deep unfairness over the last five and a half years. We have suffered one of the greatest—