Finance Committee on May 2nd, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I had MP Viersen next.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I too would like to express concern about the motion we have before us and the lack of clarity around the minister coming to appear before this committee. It would seem to me that the minister would be very interested—

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Could I have the floor for a minute?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

My colleague Phil Lawrence would like the floor, so I will share the floor with him.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Perfect. Hopefully Mr. Fast isn't upset.

I see we're coming across two o'clock. We would have to cancel, I believe, the natural resources committee. I'm more than willing to continue to talk, but I would like to impede as little as possible other committees' business, so I move that we suspend right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We're continuing, MP Lawrence.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I give the floor back to Mr. Viersen, if that's okay, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

That's okay.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you.

I want to thank my colleagues for giving me time to speak at this committee. It's not often that I get to participate at the finance committee, so I would really like to thank them for this opportunity.

As we were saying earlier, I would expect the Minister of Finance to be more than happy to come to this committee and explain the government's budget. This is the finance committee. This is the committee that's responsible for scrutinizing her work and scrutinizing the finance department. I note that we had nearly 50 bureaucrats here today to do just that and explain what the budget was all about, and explain the implementation act that is Bill C-47. We heard about a great many things.

What's interesting is that the bureaucrats are generally empowered to implement the actions of the government, not necessarily to explain why these things have been chosen. Generally, the buck stops with the minister, so it's interesting that the minister is not interested in showing up, or that this motion does not require her to appear for a couple of hours. That seems like it would be the bare minimum of the minister's obligations. I would note that we had several bureaucrats here today who said they were knowledgeable on the technicality of what's being implemented, but as to the logic and the why, that generally falls to the political staff or the politicians, or the finance minister in general.

It's frustrating to hear that we're not able to hear from the finance minister for a couple of hours. I was very interested in—and we had some of the bureaucrats here talking about it—the clean—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I'm sorry to interrupt, MP Viersen. It is question period.

We're going to suspend at this time. We will take up MP Lawrence's proposal and come back at 3:30. We'll see you after QP.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We're back.

MP Lawrence, we're back with you.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Perfect.

Through some negotiations, Mr. Chair, I have put in an offer that I think is pretty fair and reasonable. We'll see where that goes with Mr. Beech, whom I do respect tremendously. He is looking handsome today.

I would like to say something else here. It's for the benefit of the people in the room. I apologize to the hundreds of millions of viewers who are currently tuning in on CPAC to watch this right now. My team was generous enough to go and get “smile cookies”. I suggest that everyone go and buy smile cookies. I am giving out these smile cookies and donuts. As I said to Mr. Beech in my difficult negotiation with him, my only condition was that the staff has to eat first. Other than that, we were good.

Solidarity, Daniel Blaikie, if you're online.

That's just a little levity to start. As I said, I'm hoping that Mr. Beech will have some good news for us. Until then, I'm happy to talk about the budget and budget implementation act.

The BIA is a tremendously complicated and large piece of legislation. Of course, we just concluded a meeting today, one of many meetings, where we had no less than 48 government officials. That's 48 experts in various areas. This was with respect to one part of the BIA. It's absolutely incredible and mind-boggling. I believe it's absolutely critical that we have a lengthy discussion.

The Bloc Québécois spoke very intelligently about the bill, with Mr. Ste‑Marie saying that we could easily spend a hundred or so hours discussing it. I think that's a very smart thing to say.

This budget will have long-ranging impacts. Everything from health transfers to the Transportation Act to even the royal family is included in this bill. This omnibus bill requires in-depth consultation.

In particular, it's of critical importance to today's economy. We are at a tipping point here in the Canadian economy. After eight years, we're dealing with a huge deficit and debt, and perhaps a negative GDP per capita number, which is extremely troubling. The deputy leader and Minister of Finance was somewhat disingenuous in the House when she said that we had a 2.5% GDP growth rate in the first quarter of the year. That part is true, but she left out that the vast majority of that growth was in January. March was actually in decline. We are technically in an economy of decline. It's her own budget that forecasts a recession in the latter half of this year.

We need to be signalling to our domestic market and to international markets around the world that Canada is open for business and that we are actively seeking and engaging in capital, not just sweetheart deals for Liberal insiders. We're open to all the entrepreneurs and business owners across our great land who want to make investments, who want to grow their businesses, who want to hire people and who want to increase the prosperity of this great country.

Quite frankly, we are not making that well known domestically or internationally. We should be known as the best place to do business in the world, especially given that we have strong institutions and great people here in our country. However, we continue to create roadblocks in our own way, whether it be through overtaxation, over-regulation or the long arm of government reaching into what business owners are attempting to do. We need to be clear, and we need to be forthright with Canadians as well.

As I said, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance took umbrage with my comments describing the GST rebate as “cheap marketing”. Well, I'm sorry, but that's what the name is. In fact, if she wishes to check Hansard, the officials agreed with me that there was no reason to call this GST rebate a grocery rebate other than for a marketing purpose or for advertising so she could go across the country and say, “Yay. We have this great grocery rebate.”

It actually caused some confusion, I might add, in my constituency. I'm sure I'm not the only one who fielded calls about how to use this grocery rebate, how it worked and whether it worked like food stamps in the United States. Not only was it without substance and without reason to call it a grocery rebate and not a GST rebate, but it actually had a negative impact on Canadians, because it confused some Canadians, including people in Northumberland—Peterborough South, the best riding in all the world.

I guess she took umbrage with that. I think clarity in marketing isn't something that should just apply in the private sector; it should apply to the government as well. When the government does something like calling a GST rebate anything but a GST rebate, they in effect create confusion, and it just creates deception in the media. If a private sector actor did that, I would think the government would come after them for being disingenuous and for not being open and transparent.

We've come a long way since this government said they were “open by default”. It's been a struggle and a challenge since then. This government said that it was “sunny ways” and that they would be “open by default”. Now we've gotten to the point where we're calling GST rebates grocery rebates for no other reason than just to sell the Liberal brand, which, granted, has taken some significant hits over the last eight years. We're facing declining GDP, exploding debt and exploding deficit. We've just gone through that and continue to be ravaged by the impacts of high inflation.

I'm thinking that maybe, once again, I'm holding the puck too long for my colleagues. They might want to discuss this, but I guess I'll just carry on for a little longer here, Mr. Chair, if you don't mind.

Maybe my colleague would like to say something.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Lawrence, I had MP Fast next, then MP Morantz.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

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—

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

On a point of order, Chair, I have much respect for the member from Abbotsford.

I have three daughters, and I understand now that he has four daughters. Mine weren't born in succession. We had a COVID blessing.

I think it would be really great to get back to the topic of the budget and how great the budget is for Canadians, especially middle-class Canadians and those working very hard to join the middle class.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Chair, that wasn't actually a point of order, but I would just respond by saying that I am actually deeply disappointed that this respected member of our House and of this committee does not want to debate housing affordability in our country. That is what I was addressing. I was sharing my experience of housing affordability as my wife came home and found these orange laminate countertops and three different carpet colours. One—

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Chair, I have a point of order. The member is not speaking to the motion.

The member is required, according to the Standing Orders if I am not mistaken, to speak to the topic at hand, which is the motion that's being debated. Anything that's not specific to that topic.... He needs to return to the topic; otherwise, he needs to cede his time.

I am just wondering, Chair, if you could remind him to do that.

As far as wanting to speak about housing affordability, that's actually what we want to do. That's why we want to get this motion passed and move forward with those issues that Canadians really care about.

If we could have a vote on this, that would be great, and we could all move to talking about housing affordability and the other things that are in this budget that are going to help Canadians.

If the member wants to continue to speak, I think he needs to speak to the topic at hand.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Baker.

Yes, MP Fast, please stick to the motion.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

That's exactly what I was doing, so I'll quote back the relevant portion of the motion: “That the committee continue its pre-study of”—what?—“Bill C-47”—that is the budget implementation act—“...tabled in Parliament on March 28, by”, and it goes on to talk about a number of things that would be done.

I'm speaking directly to the budget and to housing affordability, which has become an appalling failure on the part of this Liberal government, so I'm going to continue to talk about housing, Mr. Chair. I note that other members of this committee have also addressed the issue of the budget and have been given much leeway to actually address the broad scope of this fiscally irresponsible and reckless fiscal document.

Mr. Chair, I'll go back. This house that I purchased—with the green carpets, the orange carpets and the crimson carpets that my wife was shocked to see when she came—became our first home, and it was affordable. I was on a very low salary at the time, and even on that salary—my wife wasn't working anymore because we had our first child at home—even on that single salary, I could buy a home with a down payment and afford the mortgage payments when the interest rate was 10% per annum. Today, no matter what the interest rate is, housing is no longer affordable in Canada. It is a major failure on the part of this government.

It's not only housing, Mr. Chair: Taxes are going up on everything, whether it's CPP, EI premiums or payroll taxes, and whether it's excise taxes that go up in this budget and carbon taxes that go up in this budget. This is what the Liberal government is doing to Canadians. Not only did it create the problem; it's making things worse.

Here's another problem, Mr. Chair. We have stagnating wages. Inflation is eroding what the dollar buys, and wages are not keeping up. Sadly, those with assets are growing richer, and those who rely on a paycheque are getting poorer day by day, because of the eroding value of those paycheques.

Did you know that one in five Canadians today is skipping a meal each day? One in five people across our country, one in five individuals in our neighbourhoods, is skipping a meal every day just to get by, because they can't afford that extra meal.

It's a perverse situation, Mr. Chair, when the working poor and the indigent are approaching food banks and asking for medically assisted death: actual proven cases of people approaching our food banks and saying, “I want to die rather than live in poverty and live hungry.” Is that the perverse situation Canada now finds itself in? Is that how we want to live as a country?

Yet there's very little in this budget that addresses that problem. Today, I viewed a video online about a food bank in Toronto called “Fort York”, with a line blocks long.... That's going viral now, of course, because it symbolizes what this Liberal government has done to our country.

Now I want to go to the issue of uncontrolled spending, Mr. Chair. I mentioned earlier that uncontrolled spending actually contributes to the inflationary pressures that we face today in our country.

Uncontrolled spending undermines the value of the paycheques that Canadians receive. Uncontrolled spending undermines the work that Canadians do. We're pumping so many dollars—so much liquidity—into the economy that there are way more dollars chasing the same number of goods and services. Any economist will tell you that if we cannot improve our productivity in our country—in other words, what every single Canadian produces—we have some serious problems on our hands. One of those problems is inflation.

The deficit in this budget is $43 billion. Remember, it was the finance minister who said that they were going to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio and that they were on track for balanced budgets. That was the finance minister, only months ago, in the fall economic update. Today, she's saying, “Sorry, folks,” and that she was just kidding.

It's actually gone. The balanced budget commitment is gone. You know that line that she drew in the sand a year ago and said she'd never step across? Well, she just did. Nyah, nyah, that's tough on you.

Mr. Chair, this country has moved from having a $2-billion surplus under Stephen Harper some eight years ago to having a massive structural deficit. I mean that word “structural”, because it implies that these deficits are going to be a way of life for Canadians for the foreseeable future. These are interminable deficits that we are running.

Who pays for that, Mr. Chair? It's future generations of Canadians, so I want to speak to those future generations of Canadians. They are our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren and new immigrants who are looking to Canada as a great country to come to and live in. Their future is a future of debt, deficits and rising interest rates, where they'll be paying back the money we're spending today.

In other words, we're spending our children's and our grandchildren's inheritance as this government blows the wad year after year. In fact, it will shock Canadians to know that over the last eight years, this government has racked up as much debt as every single Canadian government before it—combined.

It should come as a shocking statistic to Canadians to understand that this Liberal government has paid no regard to its obligation to future generations of Canadians, but continues to spend recklessly, knowing full well it will be left to a Conservative government to clean up the mess in the future, as it always is. It's always Conservative governments cleaning up the mess of previous Liberal governments. That's where we find ourselves.

The generational debt that I talk of is of epic proportions. Today, $81,000 is owed by every single household in this country. It's going up in leaps and bounds as this government continues to spend.

Let me talk a little, Mr. Chair, about the staggering cost of government.

Now, one would have thought that a government that's going to spend so much money at the very least would understand that it's important to exercise restraint in how much it spends on the government itself, and that it would exercise restraint and spend cautiously when it comes to growing the civil service. However, over the last eight years of this Liberal government, the government has added 80,000 new positions, federal government positions, each of which has to be paid with benefits, with pension....

I ask Canadians, has your service level gone up since the government added 80,000 federal government jobs? Are your passports coming quicker, the renewals that you need...? Are your visas coming more quickly? How about your tax refund? Is it coming more quickly?

It goes on and on. The service level we get has decreased, Mr. Chair, yet the cost of government has gone up dramatically. In fact, it's a 30% increase in the cost of government, with a lower level of service and interminable deficits. That is the staggering cost of government today under a Liberal government.

Well, what about our economic performance, Mr. Chair? I had hoped that at the very least there would be a plan in this budget for economic growth. This has been promised every year since Prime Minister Trudeau got elected, and every year economists point out that his budgets do not have a growth component to them.

Canada suffers from a major weakness. It is our Achilles heel, and it is what I mentioned earlier: our productivity, our declining productivity. In other words, it's what Canadians produce. Each Canadian is producing less and less as time goes on, which undermines our economic competitiveness vis-à-vis the very competitive countries around the world that want to eat our lunch when it comes to our economy, to manufacturing and to trade. When productivity lags behind, it undermines our long-term prosperity as a country.

Did you know, Mr. Chair, that Canada is at the bottom of the list of OECD countries when it comes to foreign investment or, in other words, attracting investment from abroad? When we attract dollars from abroad, when foreign investors say that Canada is a great place to invest in, that's good for our economy. Now, there are some investments from abroad that we have to review very carefully, of course, to determine whether they are to Canada's net benefit, but overwhelmingly, the money that comes from abroad, from the United States, from the European Union and elsewhere, is used to create jobs in Canada, to grow our prosperity as a country. Sadly, we are falling further and further behind when it comes to foreign direct investment in our economy.

Why is that? One of the reasons is regulatory strangulation. In other words, we have so many laws and so many regulations spread across our country, especially at the federal government level, that businesses are no longer free to thrive in an open marketplace. Bit by bit, we're shutting down the marketplace by imposing level upon level of government regulation, so that many businesses simply give up. They say, “We just can't grow,” or they say, “We're going to have to shut down.” When we have a government, a Liberal government, that calls those small businesses that are growing our economy—or that are supposed to be growing our economy—tax cheats, that's a great way of incentivizing and encouraging our small businesses to grow—to call them tax cheats, the way this Liberal government has done.

Another area where we're declining is domestic investment. Fewer and fewer Canadian companies and entrepreneurs are willing to reinvest their profits in our economy. Do you know what they're doing? They're looking elsewhere. Colleagues, you know this. Domestic investment is disappearing. It's going to markets around the world that actually appreciate their investment and welcome their investment.

Our taxation in Canada requires, I believe, significant reform. There hasn't been tax reform in our country for many years. We're paying a huge price for that. We need to review how our tax system operates to ensure that Canadian businesses and foreign businesses that want to invest here can do so in a thriving economic environment. Right now, that doesn't exist.

Here's just a note. It's a little factoid, Mr. Chair. Did you know that Canada's per capita GDP.... There are a number of standards and organizations that assess per capita GDP around the world. I've just taken one of them and plucked these figures. The per capita GDP in Canada is $59,000.

Do you know what it is in the United States? It's $78,000. That's almost $20,000 more. Do you know what it is in Australia? It's $9,000 more than in Canada. We are falling further and further behind when it comes to our economic performance as a country. We're falling further behind in terms of our competitiveness when it comes to attracting investment from other countries. Mr. Chair, we are failing when it comes to economic growth.

I'm going to close my remarks and pass it on to my colleagues here.

I want to say this as well, that there was one last thing that I wanted to see in this budget. I think you can guess what that might have been. Beyond its being just a growth budget—which it isn't—and beyond its being just a low-tax budget—which it isn't—I wanted to see if this budget actually had a substantive amount allocated to address the curse and the threat of foreign interference in our country.

As you know, colleagues, our country faces a very significant threat from hostile actors around the world who want to interfere in our elections, steal our intellectual property, steal our research, and conspire to undermine our long-term prosperity as a country and our long-term national security. It's right for us to ask if there is a sufficient amount in this budget that would address the threat of foreign interference.

This week we learned that one of our colleagues, Mr. Chong, had his family threatened because he voted in favour of human rights in the House of Commons. Mr. Chong is a champion of human rights at home and abroad. Because of his firm stand on human rights, his family elsewhere around the world has been threatened by the Communist regime in Beijing.

It's right for us to ask if there's enough in this budget to address that very specific threat to our democracy. The sad answer is no. There's virtually nothing in this budget to address that threat.

When we raised the issue and asked in the House of Commons, Mr. Chair, that the Speaker allow us an emergency debate on the issue of foreign interference—specifically on the intimidation of Canadian MPs and their families when it comes to standing up for human rights—the response was, I'm sorry, we're not going to grant this emergency debate. It seems that foreign interference isn't important enough.

Mr. Chair, you will sense my profound disappointment in this budget, and you will understand why we, as Conservatives, had no option but to vote against the budget earlier today in the House of Commons. We will do so again at third reading.

Whenever called on to do so, we will vote against this budget, unless there are substantive amendments made that allow us to confirm that the investments that are required to be made in things like addressing foreign interference, are, in fact, made. We don't see that there now. There are many other failings in this budget.

I now yield the floor to my colleague, Mr. Morantz.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Fast.

Go ahead, MP Morantz.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Wow, that's how it's done, Mr. Chair.

To my great colleague here, Mr. Fast, you are going to be a tough act to follow. I agree with everything you said, and I wish I could say it as well. It was so well done. In fact, I'll yield the floor back to you so you can do it all over again.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Now, I just want to make a few points. I don't think I'll hold the floor too long, because I know that other colleagues are anxious to get at it as well.

The biggest concern that Conservatives have about this motion is not particularly what's in it; it's what's not in it. The glaring omission is that it does not contain an invitation for the Minister of Finance to appear at this committee to defend her own budget. Yielding on that, I will quote somebody who has used this line in the past. This is a line we will not cross.

[A voice]

Who was that?

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

When Conservatives say it, we mean it.

Now, all this stuff got me to thinking. I recall an article I read by Philip Cross earlier in April. In this article, he talks about former finance minister Bill Morneau's book, Where To From Here. He said that Mr. Morneau “described how the absence of a fiscal target and constant meddling from the Prime Minister's Office 'shattered any pretense of fiscal restraint.'”

It just so happens that I read Mr. Morneau's book when it came out. It reminded me of something I thought was very interesting. There's a passage in this book called Where To From Here, where Mr. Morneau describes his experience dealing with the Prime Minister's Office. In one passage, he talks about the CERB. He was asked to go back to his officials, do a calculation and come up with a recommendation as to how much the CERB ought to be. It seems like a reasonable question for a prime minister to ask of his finance minister, to do that analysis.

He talks about his experience. He says:

After looking at all the options and variables, we submitted a range of weekly incomes justified by our carefully considered calculations, only to be overruled by the prime minister and PMO, who rejected our recommendations in favour of distributing $2,000 per month or $500 a week because the numbers “sounded good”.

It's hard to believe that's how fiscal policy is done in Canada.

I'm going somewhere with this. Don't worry, Mr. Chair. I know you're very anxious to hear where I'm going with this argument. Trust me, I am. I have a landing spot.