Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in this debate as well as to make some comments about the general economic circumstances that frame our discussion of the bill. It is fair to acknowledge that the government's response to this pandemic has been a bit chaotic. We have seen constantly shifting programmatic responses as well as advice from the government. There has been a general lack of consistency on many fronts, but at least there has always been firm certitude that the approach of the day is the right approach, until it changes.
It has been well established that if we had had border measures in place, if we had the right advice on masking earlier on, if we had quickly adopted rapid testing tools that had actually been in place for a long time in other countries, if we had learned from Czech Republic, South Korea or Taiwan and other places, and if we had tracing technology ready to go, then there would not have been that economic shutdown. There would not have been a need for an economic shutdown if a public health plan had been in place. This was all evidently quite avoidable if we see what other countries were able to do to respond more rapidly and avoid the same kind of economic disruption.
The economic devastation that we have experienced is the result of the failure of our health minister to respond early to this public health crisis. We still do not have the rapid testing that we need to ensure early warning and rapid response. We saw how, in the early days, the Minister of Health was saying the risk was low, closing the borders would be counterproductive and so forth. That is why we are here: because of the failure of the government to plan and respond effectively in the early days when it would have made the biggest difference.
Now we are teetering on a second wave. We are into a second wave in some parts of the country while we are desperately trying to avoid a second wave in others, and we still do not really have the public health tools in place. In my province, in Quebec and other provinces, we are not allowed to enter a diagnosis in the government's much celebrated, according to the Liberals, tracing app.
Because of a failure to plan for and respond to the public health challenges we face, we face an economic shutdown. Therefore Canadians legitimately expected financial support to be available to them during a time when they were not able to leave their homes to go to work. That is why some new benefit programs were legitimately created.
Having to stay at home, not working, and therefore receiving benefits was clearly not the first choice of Canadians. Canadians are not at all excited about seeing the government using freshly printed money to pay them to sit at home. The Canadians I know believe the supports should be available if they are not able to work, but people would much prefer to go back to work and in general would prefer for things to get back to normal as soon as possible.
Regardless of the nature of the programs that are in place, people cannot have anything near an acceptable standard of living unless most of the population is engaged in productive work. The health of our economy is dependent on the extent to which we are producing useful things. No economy was ever built by printing and distributing paper money. That much should be fairly obvious.
Fiscal control is not an end in and of itself, but it is a necessary means to the material and social flourishing of society. If we run massive deficits endlessly by constantly printing new paper money, the money gradually becomes less valuable. Money is not intrinsically valuable. It is simply a proxy measure of the value of goods and services that are produced in the economy. If we reduce the level of production, we cannot simply make up for it by printing more money.
The leader of the NDP is so proud of the extra $400 a month that he negotiated as part of the benefit package, but strikingly he seems unconcerned with how out of control spending risks reducing the effective value of that money over time.
Our economy can survive some level of deficit spending as well as supports that are timely, targeted and temporary. Even in those cases, the money has to be paid back. A timely, measured, targeted and temporary response is one thing, but the government's deficit is approaching $400 billion, which is larger than the entire federal budget was when the Liberals took office. The deficit is well over half the size of the entire debt run up in the preceding 150 years of Canadian history. We went through two world wars, the Great Depression, financial crises and even the tenure of the last Prime Minister Trudeau and the first four years of this government, and we are running up more than half as much debt in a single year as we did in the entire preceding period.
In the lexicon of this brave new world, anyone who thinks we should spend even a dime less is accused of peddling austerity, but for these Liberals, austerity is a word that has entirely lost its meaning.
There are many people who understand what austerity truly is. There are people around the world who are starving as a direct result of the humanitarian crisis caused by COVID-19. There are people around the world who have lived through the experience of a national debt crisis in which their money became worthless and their government could not bail them out. There are people in this country who are struggling to pay their heating bill because of the government's carbon tax. There are people who worry that jobs in their sector will never come back, whether that is in oil and gas, manufacturing or other primary and secondary industries that are no longer in vogue across the way. These people understand and are starting to worry about what true austerity would look like in their lives.
Yet, the government pressed ahead with pay raises for elected officials, because to do otherwise would be austerity. It will not rein in profligate spending at the CBC or pull back on corporate welfare handouts to wealthy, connected corporations, because to do so would be austerity. Any review, any efficiency, any constraint whatsoever is considered austerity. Any time people have to pay more to the government, no problem. Any time we suggest that government members should spend less on themselves or their friends, that is called austerity. This is a farce. This is a redefinition of words to mean the opposite of what they actually mean.
I submit that the Liberals generally have no concept of real austerity, because the Prime Minister has not known anything but exorbitant, inherited wealth, and he has tried to transfer as much of the benefits of government to his friends, having three times been caught breaking key ethical rules. What the Prime Minister needs to understand is that austerity for people is when one has to choose between buying food and paying one's heating bill, not when one has to choose between a WE vacation, a French villa and a private island.
If we do not get a handle on public spending soon, we will face real austerity. These deficit levels are completely unsustainable. As it is, they will lead to higher taxes, lower social spending or both in the future, regardless of who is in power, if the situation continues to get worse. We need to sound the alarm on this out-of-control spending, because if we continue at this rate for much longer, we will not be able to afford these types of benefits whether we like it or not. Spending money we do not have, debasing our currency and rendering the government incapable of supporting people in the long run is neither prudent nor compassionate.
Needless to say, the Conservatives are unimpressed by the circumstances that bring us to this debate. The government shut down Parliament for six weeks and is now trying to limit debate on this bill to a mere day. What we see across the board is that the federal government is creating problems and then claiming to be uniquely qualified to offer solutions.
By proroguing Parliament, the Liberals created a problem, the problem being that benefits were going to run out if legislation was not passed at an unprecedented pace. Their programming motion is presented as a solution to a problem that they themselves created. However, it is bigger than that. The need for these benefits is a problem that was created by the government through a failure to have a plan in place to manage the pandemic, a failure to close the border in time, a failure to implement rapid testing and a failure to learn the lessons of other countries.
When we challenge government members on their spending, they come back to us and ask, “How would you solve the problem? What would you cut? What would you spend less on?” The Conservative answer to this is quite simple: We would not have created the problem in the first place. Even at this late stage, we would ensure rapid approval of rapid testing technology, build benefit programs that provide the greatest possible incentive for people to return to work and quickly approve new development and resource projects, providing a public-dollar-free, private sector stimulus to help workers in our natural resource sectors get back to work. Natural resource workers are not looking for a “just transition” out of their jobs into unemployment. What they want is their jobs back.
Benefit programs can be very generous for people who are out of work as long as we are taking all the necessary steps to ensure that there are as few people out of work as possible. That is why Conservatives have led in putting forward constructive alternatives, in advancing the idea of a back-to-work bonus, in pushing the government to have a private sector stimulus of our natural resource economy and encouraging it to take up the public health measures that will allow people to work in safety.
I am pleased to report that hope is on the horizon. The member for Durham will soon be ready to emerge from isolation. He understands that there is an alternative to the profligate spending that we are seeing from the government and that this alternative does not mean cutting off people in need. We can reduce government spending by reducing people's need for government; by supporting economic growth, a stronger public health response and measures that allow people to return to work in all sectors, including our natural resource sectors; and by creating the wealth that allows all of us to prosper together.
