I don't know if you heard me congratulating MP Chatel for all the work that goes into preparing for a half marathon or a marathon, so congratulations on making it this far. Good luck on the weekend. I know the Ottawa marathon is a big event.
To refresh those who perhaps are not aware of what we're doing, I moved a motion on this issue of the amount of time the finance committee should spend on hearing from witnesses. It's really just a follow-up motion to the original one, which I think passed unanimously but was negotiated in good faith by all parties, that the committee spend 20 hours hearing from witnesses. That work was begun by the committee, but it has been cut short partially because the committee didn't schedule all the time this week, even though it had an end date of the coming Monday to have this completed. As a result of the movements, in my view, of the government members to limit it, the government now wants to limit this legislation—Bill C-47, the budget implementation act—to only the 10 hours of witnesses who have been heard so far.
My motion is built on the earlier motion that MP Beech put forward and that was passed by the committee, which called for 20 hours. I suggested, as a compromise, 19 hours, so that's only nine more hours of witnesses, which I think could easily still be done today, tomorrow and Sunday before clause-by-clause recommences on the deadline on Monday. There is no reason for government members not to want to hear from the witnesses. Specifically, that motion reads as follows:
That the committee reiterate its desire to hear a total of 20 hours of testimony in relation to Bill C-47, Budget Implementation Act No.1, as agreed to on May 16, 2023, and notwithstanding that motion, the committee maintain its goal of receiving 20 hours of witness testimony but not proceed with clause-by-clause consideration of the bill until the committee hears a minimum of 19 hours of witness testimony.
That's what we're here discussing. In my discussion, before we took this break, I had offered, on several occasions, to have the government members say, “Hey, I think that's a reasonable alternative given this is a constituency break week. There was no reason why we didn't schedule 20 hours of witness meetings. You make a compelling point.” MP Beech, as the parliamentary secretary, could easily say to the committee and say right here that we'll continue that now and have those witnesses. I've offered the opportunity, but I have been met with silence from the government members. I'll offer it again.
Silence again. I'll keep going then, and I'll discuss why that's important.
I had left off discussing a number of the witnesses who had been put forward and whom we should hear from in the committee, who would add to the expert testimony that's been received already. Most of the 10 hours of witness testimony did not put the government's budget in a good light, particularly that from the food banks, which have seen a massive increase in their customer base, unfortunately. The massive increase was not only in the donations required to supply that need but also in the donations of financial resources required to help them meet that need even though they operate, for the most part, across the country as volunteer organizations.
We are here in this dilemma of trying to argue and to use the tools that the opposition has to try to compel the government to live up to its agreement to hold 20 hours of hearings. We don't think that's a big commitment and didn't at the time. That's why we all agreed to it a week or so ago. For those watching, we are on a constituency break, which means parliamentary committees, for the most part, aren't meeting. Therefore, the resources of the House of Commons are there to support this committee in achieving its goal to hold hearings for 20 hours this week. However, the government chose not to do that.
As a reminder, this is dealing with hearings on this budget bill, which amends 51 acts of Parliament and sets the cumulative spending for the next five years at $3.1 trillion, a record number. Again, it's been said in the past.... I will utilize what others have mentioned. If these numbers are to be believed, they would add another $130 billion to Canada's national debt. The reason why I say, “to be believed”—we'd like to hear more witness testimony on this issue—is that, only six months ago, the government, in the fall economic statement, had a window for the first time.... I shouldn't say “the first time”. For the second time in their eight years in power, they projected a window for a balanced budget within five years of the fiscal framework.
The last time the government did that was when they were freshly, newly elected in 2015. They said they'd run these tiny deficits as a stimulus, and then, in 2019, at the end of four years, they would be back to a balanced budget. As we know, that promise was broken. They ran larger budgets and deficits than they projected. They added $110 billion to our national debt pre-COVID and, in 2019—the year it was supposed to be balanced—they actually ran a deficit budget. After re-election, they said, “Now we'll do it. What's really important is the accumulated debt, and the debt-to-GDP ratio is our anchor. We won't let it go. We want to see that continue to decline.” Of course, as we entered COVID and afterwards, all pretense of having any kind of fiscal anchor declined.
It's perhaps the easiest job of any finance minister in history. Generally, finance ministers have to say no quite a bit. Am I right? There are a lot of good, worthy things other ministers have put forward. In every government in the past, the fiscal framework does not allow for those things. It requires choices and saying, “That actually is more important than this thing over here that we're already spending money on, so we'll stop doing that in order to do this more important thing.” If your answer is that there is no end to the amount of debt we can accumulate and no end to the burden we can put on future generations, the finance minister's job is quite easy. It's basically to say yes. That's why we ended up in this situation. The only thing she has not said yes to, of course, is accepting invitations from this committee. She has ignored most of those invitations, including the one we had a discussion on for this budget.
The national debt, under this plan, will rise to $1.3 trillion. We have a debt ceiling in this country. It's $1.8 trillion. This is going on in the U.S. right now—the discussion on whether the federal government will be able to default and not pay its employees or programs, because they've reached their debt ceiling. If we continue in this manner of unlimited deficits and spending, the way this government does, we're going to face the same issue in the not-too-distant future. This is why we need to hear from witnesses. I don't think another nine hours of hearing witnesses is too much to ask for.
One thing, of course, is that debt builds up interest. We've been spoiled by the interest payments the government has been paying, because we've been at these historically low rates prior to the last six months. Now we have a situation. As that debt rolls over, which it will, because of the bonds that have been bought on the market.... They're short-term and long-term bonds. When those short-term bonds roll over, they're going to roll over at higher interest rates, and those higher interest rates are going to be crippling. They're already significant in the amount we have to pay. We are actually paying as much, essentially, in interest on the accumulated debt as we transfer to provinces for health care.
With the growing exposure of the government to higher interest rates, it's not too hard to see that we could be in the position that the governments were in during the 1980s and early 1990s where 38¢ out of every tax dollar that came in from taxpayers went to pay interest on the debt. Back then, we paid more on the debt than we paid on health care and national defence just on interest. We made no progress on paying the debt down. We barely were treading water in paying interest.
The more that happens, and the likelihood that interest rates will rise.... We know we have projections from RBC and others that we're going to be in a recession this year, because the economy can't handle the level of debt, which is causing the inflation, which is causing the interest rate rises, which is causing the affordability crisis, from housing to food to fuel to everything this government is doing.
As part of that, of course, we have carbon tax one, which everybody knows about. Now carbon tax two is coming in the clean fuel standards. Built into this fiscal framework we're going to raise the carbon taxes one and two, plus the HST on top of that—because the government likes to tax its own tax—and that will rise to 61¢ in additional payment per litre of gas for people in this country. These are people who are already suffering and having trouble meeting the 10% annual food inflation that we're dealing with.
This is a serious issue, which requires more witnesses in order to have a serious consideration of such a massive spending bill.
There's $84 billion in new tax credits for businesses in this budget and fiscal framework and this budget implementation bill. That's $84 billion. It's not that long ago that this was almost the whole size of the federal government's spending.
A colleague of mine mentioned earlier the interest rate projection here, which we need to have more witnesses in to talk about. It would be good to have the ability to talk to Jack Mintz about this question, or the Business Council on national issues, both of whom are on the list to appear but aren't able to because the Liberals are cutting off the discussion with witnesses on their bill. That's because, of course, they're right and everybody else is wrong.
That attitude that they're right and everybody else is wrong is really hard to believe, as they've never met a fiscal target they've set. They broke the one they set only six months ago about having a balanced budget. They'll never have one in your lifetime or my lifetime.
In this budget, just this year alone—we know we're dealing with inflation—the budget projects that inflation is going to be 3.5%. That's 3.5%. It's been tracking at 6%, 5%, 4% for most of this year, so for that to be achieved, inflation, in July, is going to have to be at 2%. There's absolutely no way and no sign that this is going to happen, particularly if we go into recession.
I don't understand why the government is shutting down its own witness motion of 20 hours of witnesses back to 10 hours for any other reason than they don't want to hear from witnesses telling them that this is the absolute wrong thing to do. I know they're afraid, beyond afraid, of former minister of finance Bill Morneau, the random Liberal finance minister who is on the list and we'd like to see appear. He's been quite public that this is a government out of control on its spending. That's why we need to hear from him as a witness.
However, maybe that's the primary reason we're being shut down. It's perhaps bad enough that they hear from me, from my colleagues, from some of the witnesses over here or from other leading economists and business groups in this country about how bad this is for the economy, but to hear it from their own is perhaps cutting right to the heart of the Liberal belief that this is the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to continue on the path of causing 1.5 million people to have to go to food banks—a new record.
Let's just put that in perspective in terms of the spending this government is doing compared to what they inherited.
We know they like to blame the previous government for not passing legislation that prevents them from doing the things they've been doing. It is the Harper government's fault that we didn't pass legislation that prevented them from breaching the ethics act or dealing directly with Chinese interference in our elections. Somehow, over the last eight years, they've had no responsibility as a government. I know that's a big issue for them. In the last year of the Harper government, government spending was $280 billion. It handed over a nice, fat $1.9-billion surplus to this government, which, as I already said, proceeded to run deficit after deficit every single year since they've been in power, contrary to what they promised Canadians.
This budgets projects, I believe, $456 billion in spending this year. That's up $176 billion since 2015, a 63% increase in spending since the Liberals have been in power. The fiscal framework that Bill C-47 outlines, which we need to hear more witnesses on, says the projected government spending in five years.... The government publicly puts out five-year projections when they do budgets, every year. Five years from now, government spending will be an incredible $543 billion. That's only if there are no new spending programs announced. We know that, every time there is an occasional appearance by the Minister of Finance in the House and she makes a statement about finance—whether it's a fall economic statement or a budget—she spends more. There hasn't been one where this government has not used the opportunity, every six months, to update and spend more money.
It's not to be believed that, in the next five years, there won't be any additional spending and that government spending, five years from now, will only be $543 billion. I think, at the rate this government is going, it will probably be—if they see out the mandate of the supply agreement or costly coalition with the NDP, which will probably see us into a 2025 budget by this government—a projected $700 billion in spending, maybe even closer to a trillion dollars, because there is no limit. We're skeptical on that and want to hear from witnesses about what that kind of spending plan will do to drive our economy into further productivity.
All you have to do is look at the OECD. I know the Minister of Finance likes to quote the IMF and other international things to say that we're this, that or the other thing in terms of our economic performance, but the OECD actually says we rank last in the OECD in per capita GDP growth—last. Six, seven or eight years ago, in 2015, when this government took over, we were one of the top in the OECD in per capita performance relative to the United States. We were so for decades, including into 2015. We were essentially parallel. We were just as productive as the economy in the United States. Today, the OECD's numbers project that we are 40% less productive based on that measure of GDP per capita growth. We are 40% less productive than the United States.
What's happened since 2015? What's happened is this: a record of this government spending with abandon and focusing, now, on their industrial strategy of branch plant economy and not actually on producing invention, creation or commercialization of Canadian technology. They just want to build things for other countries. Volkswagen believes there is no Canadian technology being used in that $14-billion, massive and largest-ever government subsidy to one company. You reap what you sow.
As the Minister of Finance said only a month before that, matching the Inflation Reduction Act was a “race to the bottom”. Apparently, that's something she's now proud of. We're going to be doing that, since what happened with Volkswagen inevitably led to what's happening with Stellantis now and the demand by every other....
The Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry brags that everybody wants to come here. Of course they want to come here when we have an unending subsidy barrel to subsidize companies that have more revenue every year than the Government of Canada. This government says that's a great strategy. The great strategy is that they wouldn't come here if we didn't subsidize them, so let's subsidize everything they want to do. There's no end.
At the end of all of that, you end up with this situation they have with Stellantis, where Stellantis says, “They're treating us differently from our competitors, so we'll go to the U.S. We'll go somewhere else.” You end up in these blackmail situations like that in the race to the bottom.
The Minister of Finance and the Minister of Industry go around saying it's Ontario's fault. It's not the federal government's fault that it's subsidizing Volkswagen for $14 billion a year. It's the Ontario government's fault now. The Ontario government needs to do what they're doing. It needs to come out and print money and run deficits beyond comprehension in order to do it. Everybody should pour gasoline on the fire and adopt this strategy.
I am probably the only person at this meeting today who has actually read those contracts. I could share a lot with them. I'd be open to any questions from the government as to what's in those contracts. They are shockingly bad contracts, but there will be more to come on that. I can hardly wait to see the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report on that, because he has access to it too, and I suspect it will be scathing.
Getting back to that, $543 billion is not a believable number, because no number this government has put out in the budget plan is believable, and we need to have witnesses on the economic side of the ledger come and talk about those issues in the committee. If that $543 billion were believable, it is $263 billion more than the government spent in 2015. That's a 94% increase—
