Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to opine on the merits of budget 2023.
I will start off by saying that I am deeply troubled by this fiscal document. After eight long years of a Liberal government, we have a document that is disingenuous and that, in fact, reflects an untruthful spirit on the side of the government. Canadians, I believe, have the right to ask who they can trust with the finances of their country. At the end of the day, Canada's prosperity hinges on whether budgetary documents actually put in place a fiscal environment within which not only government but Canadians themselves can flourish.
A budget document should outline not only what the government's spending priorities are, but also what the government's growth objectives are and how it intends to actually achieve those economic growth objectives. I'll get to that further down in my comments.
As to the question of who you trust when it comes to budget 2023 and, more broadly speaking, who you trust to manage the finances of our nation, we can begin by going straight to our finance minister and her statements. I am going to quote her statement here at this table. It's been quoted before in the House of Commons. It's probably been quoted here at this table.
Here's what the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, our finance minister, said a year ago when the 2022 budget was tabled. I believe she was already scrambling at that time to try to make sense of Canada's finances. I don't think she actually got a grip on those finances, but she made this bold statement:
...let me be very clear: We are absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline. Our deficits must continue to be reduced. The pandemic debt we incurred to keep Canadians safe and solvent must—and will—be paid down.
This is our fiscal anchor. This is a line we shall not cross.
That was our finance minister almost exactly a year ago. “This is a line we shall not cross” is something she said. We were going to have a declining debt-to-GDP ratio to ensure that after this massive spending that took place during COVID, our country would finally pivot back to living within its means, to having a defensible, sustainable, fiscal policy going forward.
Then, in the recent fall economic statement, less than six months ago, the minister doubled down. She was still predicting balanced budgets. Now it was going to take five years to get to balanced budgets, but at least she had a commitment, or we thought she had a commitment, to balance budgets at some point in time in the future. Then budget 2023 came around and we dug, dug and dug. We couldn't find this restatement of a commitment to a balanced budget because the reality is there was no such commitment anymore. It's gone, disappeared into the ether.
Of course, what this means is that we will be adding to our national debt, year after year after year, into the future, without any plan of living within our means, the way most Canadian families have to do when they're managing their family finances. A family can't continue to spend, spend, spend on luxury items if they can't pay for those items. They can't keep drawing down on their lines of credit, on their credit cards, without at some point in time finding a way of repaying back those borrowed funds with interest. By the way, interest rates are increasing in Canada.
I get back to the question I asked earlier: Who can you trust? Who should Canadians trust when it comes to managing our country's finances? I think Canadians are slowly but surely concluding it is not the Liberal government.
Let me go back to the notice of motion that we are debating at the table. I am going to quote from it. It asks that the committee continue its pre-study of Bill C-47, which is of course the budget implementation act, by:
(a) Inviting witnesses to appear on the contents of Bill C-47 during meetings scheduled the weeks of May 1, May 8, and May 15 2023, and that;
Members of the committee submit their prioritized witness lists for the study of Bill C-47 to the clerk of the committee by no later than Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023, at 12 p.m., and that these lists be distributed to members of the committee as soon as possible;
(b) Moving to clause-by-clause review of Bill C-47 no later than Thursday, May 25 2023 at 11:00 a.m., provided that the bill is referred to the committee on or before Thursday, May 18, 2023, and that;
i. amendments be submitted to the clerk of the committee in both official languages no later than 4:00 p.m. on Friday, May 19, 2023;
ii. the clerk of the committee write immediately to each member who is not a member of a caucus represented on the committee and any independent members to inform them of the study of Bill C-47 by the committee and to invite them to prepare and submit any proposed amendments to Bill C-47 which they would suggest that the committee consider during the clause-by-clause study of the Bill....
I'll stop there, Mr. Chair, just to highlight the fact that the amount of time that's been reserved to review and amend this huge bill, which is a culmination somewhere in the order of half a trillion dollars' worth of spending on behalf of this Liberal government over the last eight years.... The amount of time that's been allocated to study this budget is not sufficient. In fact, it's a travesty for Canadians to have to witness their Parliament and their parliamentarians having so few days to review a document that reflects a reckless approach to the fiscal situation of this country, the finances of this country.
The motion goes on to say:
(c) If Bill C-47 is referred to the committee by the House during the subject matter study of the Bill, all witness testimony, evidence and documentation received in public in relation to its subject matter study of Bill C-47 be deemed received by the committee in the context of its legislative study of Bill C-47....
That sounds fairly straightforward. Witnesses will be coming to this committee, and of course the pre-eminent witness we would call to this committee is who? It is the finance minister of our country. We have asked, time and time again, for the minister to free herself up to come to committee to defend her budget, to explain why we have spent so much money as a country and find ourselves in the middle of an incomprehensible inflationary crisis where the cost of living has skyrocketed.
Today we're debating a motion in the House of Commons brought forward by our Conservative MPs in which we lament the fact that, despite having spent close to half a trillion dollars' worth of taxpayers resources—borrowed, I might add—this government has been unable to provide an affordable housing plan. In fact, we're in a situation where Canada's housing prices have virtually doubled over the last eight years. When we look at the price of housing in the markets of Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and all the communities in between, we see that housing prices have virtually doubled. We've seen rents double.
We have seen deposits or down payments that prospective purchasers have to make increase dramatically. We have seen the payments that mortgage holders or mortgagees have to make go up almost overnight by an incredible amount.
Why? It's because we now have rising interest rates driven by the fact that we have, yes, inflation in our country.
Yes, inflation is in part driven by supply chains that were compromised during the COVID pandemic. Yes, inflation was driven in part by the fact that we had to shut down our economy during the COVID pandemic.
However, one of the major contributors to inflation in our country—and it has been confirmed by economist after economist—was the fact that this government spent so much money during the COVID pandemic. It was far beyond what was required to support Canadians with benefits. This Liberal government spent so much money and pumped so much liquidity into the marketplace that we are now grappling with an inflationary crisis that has become existential for many Canadians.
Many Canadians are on the verge of insolvency, personal bankruptcy or foreclosure, because they cannot afford life in Canada anymore. Exacerbating that problem, of course, is the fact that interest rates have gone up dramatically over the last half year or so.
Why? It's because the Bank of Canada had to intervene in order to fight inflation by raising those interest rates.
The fault lies with this government, which created the problem in the first place and is now asking the Bank of Canada to resolve it by increasing interest rates.
The question goes back to who we trust as a country to manage the country's finances. Is it a government that is directly responsible for creating inflation in our country? Are we going to trust a government like that?
As we entered the budget process, Mr. Chair, you will remember that we, as Conservatives, had three requests. That's all we had.
The first was, Mr. Prime Minister, end the war on work and lower taxes on Canadian workers. They are suffering from inflation. They need a break. That was the first request.
The second was, Mr. Prime Minister, please end your reckless spending and end the endless inflationary deficits that are driving up the cost of everything that Canadians buy, whether it's groceries or gas at the pump, and whether it's going into the hardware store or, yes, buying a house. Stop these inflationary deficits. That's the number two ask we had.
The third was remove those gatekeepers, those folks in elected and non-elected positions who are increasing the cost of homes and reducing the number of homes that are actually being built. Get the gatekeepers out of the way so that average Canadians can buy a home. Now we have enough homes coming on stream that will mitigate against some of the rising housing prices that we have seen across our country.
Sadly, nine out of 10 Canadians today believe that their dream of home ownership has evaporated. Nine out of 10 Canadians no longer believe in the dream of home ownership. That is appalling, Mr. Chair. I cannot believe that we, as a country, have got to this place in time when our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren no longer have the hope of home ownership.
When I first got into the home ownership market, Mr. Chair, I was a recently graduated law student. I was articling, receiving a pittance in terms of a salary. Do you remember those days?
That was me, slaving away in a law firm, making $1,500 a month, yet back then, in the middle of the year that I was articling, in July, my wife was out of town and I found a bargain. I bought a home. At that time, interest rates were 18% to 20%.
That should shock you, Mr. Chair, that 18% to 20% was the interest rate at the time I bought my first home. The vendor of the house I purchased was agreeable to taking back a 10% mortgage. I thought I had hit the jackpot. I phoned my wife and I said, “I bought a house with a 10% mortgage; I got a real deal,” because I did get a good deal on that house.
I was able to make the mortgage payments on the house, and over the years we were able to pay off that house and buy a new one and upgrade to maybe a slightly larger home, because we quickly had four daughters in succession.
When I got home after buying that house, and my wife got back from a two-week trip abroad, she saw the countertops and they were orange laminate. The carpets were—