Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We have a situation here that is very concerning. That's why we're bringing forward this motion. I want to speak to the motion itself.
The budget that was presented at the end of March calls for 490 billion dollars' worth of spending—essentially, almost 500 billion dollars' worth of spending—for which we have had only 10 hours of witness testimony.
We can go back and forth as to how we got to this point, but I want to point out to the committee that this budget is approaching, in spending, 25% of the GDP of this country. It is a massive expansion of government into the economy, and I think it is well deserving of more than only 10 hours of witness testimony.
The fact of the matter is that there are many things. The budget document itself is well over 400 pages. It speaks to not just financial matters, which I know Canadians would normally assume.... If you were to ask them what a budget was, they'd say, “Well, it's about spending. It's about revenue.” However, this budget actually amends 51 different acts, many of which actually have nothing to do with budgets.
We saw the government get into trouble over this just a few years ago, when a very simple bill—an omnibus budget implementation bill—was implemented that had a clause buried in it that would give the Minister of Justice and Attorney General the power to provide a deferred prosecution agreement to a single company.
I'm not convinced at this point—because I asked the public service this question—whether any similar clause might exist within this bill that would give a single company the ability to benefit in some way. It is impossible, really, for this committee to review all of these provisions, and that's why I was disappointed to see that the committee did not proceed with at least referring some of these clauses to the relevant committees. I don't think this committee is equipped to review matters of sanctions under the Magnitsky act, for example. Now we're not even doing that.
We can wrangle over how we got here. The fact of the matter is that the finance minister would not agree in advance to tell us that she was coming here for two hours. In fact, the day she showed up at committee, we didn't know how long she was staying, which made it very difficult for us to prepare our questions on such a massive bill, Mr. Chair. She came, and she was not co-operative. I'll put this into context.
We have had the Governor of the Bank of Canada here several times. We've asked the governor a lot of tough questions, a lot of very difficult questions, for example, why the bank is losing money for the first time in its history, and why Canadian taxpayers are now subsidizing the Bank of Canada. We were pretty tough on him, but he, in every instance, professionally and respectfully responded to the inquiries of this committee, no matter how difficult those questions were.
I want to say the same about the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who also received very difficult questions from members of this committee on matters pertaining to the budget. In all aspects and all situations, Mr. Giroux responded respectfully and professionally.
We had, in fact, the Minister of National Revenue here. She too responded without insulting members of the committee and without calling members of the committee bullies. By the way, she also told us exactly, in advance, how long she would be appearing before the committee.
I guess we can go back and forth as to how we got here, but that doesn't mean that the citizens of this country don't deserve a fulsome review of this budget and don't deserve to hear from a broad spectrum of witnesses.
I want to talk about why those witnesses are so important, Mr. Chair. As I said, the budget implementation bill is over 400 pages long and is $500 billion in spending.
For example, I was able to question the executive director of the Ottawa Food Bank last week, who gave us some very stunning testimony. I asked her about what Mr. Hetherington said. He said, “Let me be very clear—we are in a crisis,” and, “The Daily Bread Food Bank and food banks...across the city are at a breaking point”. Ms. Wilson said she absolutely agreed with that statement.
I asked her if there was an increase in first-time users. They are at an all-time high, which is what Mr. Hetherington also said. Ms. Wilson said, “We continue to see people using food banks who haven't had to use them in many years, as well as newcomers to Canada and new people who are accessing food banks.”
I asked her about what Mr. Hetherington said about the fact that before the pandemic, which was in 2019, there were 65,000 food bank users a month in Toronto. Now there are 270,000 users a month. This is absolutely stunning testimony.
Now, I want to put this part in context, Mr. Chair.
The government has spent more in deficit financing since 2015 than all other prime ministers before. From 1867 to 2015, the federal accumulated debt was $625 billion. From 2015 to today, the federal debt has doubled, approaching $1.2 trillion.
I have to say, never before has a government spent so much money to achieve so little in terms of results. The proof is in Mr. Hetherington's testimony. Why, when members of the Liberal Party have described as their government as being such an activist government, are 270,000 people a month using food banks in Toronto alone, let alone in the rest of the country? In my home of Winnipeg, in Vancouver and all across the country, millions of people are using food banks; food bank usage has quadrupled.
What the Liberal government has taught us in the last eight years is that you can't judge success by how much money you've spent. You have to look at the results, and the results are not good. In fact, they are dismal. Tax revenues have ballooned, yet the people of this country are in worse shape than ever before.
We haven't had, for example, people from the real estate industry come in and talk about why housing starts are so low. Where are those witnesses? We haven't had people from the health care profession come and talk about the dire circumstances in Canada's health care system across the country.
So much money has been spent, and there have been such dismal results. It demands special consideration, with more than just 10 hours of witnesses.
Ms. Wilson said that she saw an increase in users of about 30% over last year, but 86% over her 2019 numbers. This is not success when Canadians are going hungry.
By the way, the number of people who are employed and using food banks has spiked dramatically. That's a terrifying statistic. These are people who are working and doing their best to make ends meet, and they cannot afford to put food on their table. Those numbers in Ms. Wilson's food bank have gone up 86% over 2019.
We had the food bank director from Mississauga here. He said 5% of Mississaugans are going to food banks. One in 20 Mississaugans is going to a food bank. It's absolutely appalling, yet the government members will try to defend their record, because they like to say, “Well, we sent out a cheque for this and cheque for that.”
By the way, with regard to the cheque that just went out for the grocery rebate, both the Mississauga Food Bank and Mr. Hetherington's food bank said that it will not help. They were very clear that it is not the solution. Conservatives have said that the solution is to let people keep more of their paycheques. Let them have more powerful paycheques, so that they can actually afford to pay for groceries. It's not rocket science. It's very clear that Canadians are struggling, and they're struggling because of the nickel-and-diming by this government, tax increase after tax increase, eroding the spending power of their paycheques.
Speaking of eroding the spending power of paycheques, we haven't had witnesses in, other than Mr. Cross, to talk about the cause of inflation in this country. For two years, government members have said that this is an international problem that has come to our shores, and that it's not their fault. Nothing is ever the government's fault, but we need witnesses to come and talk about this. We need witnesses to come and talk about how profligate government spending directly causes inflation.
Mr. Cross said that the issue of inflation is international, but this is two years later. We've had the Governor of the Bank of Canada confirm in testimony—in questioning I, myself, did with him—that if government spending had been less, inflation would have been less. We've had the bank governor say that the GST has caused about 10% of the current 4.5% inflation that we currently have. Now the government puts on a clean fuel standard, a second carbon tax, and it's going to increase the carbon tax again next year. Where does it end? How many more people in this country, Mr. Chair, have to go to food banks?
Ms. Wilson, as I said, said that usage of her food bank spiked 86% over 2019. If that trend were to continue.... Her numbers are 400,000 a year. In three years, if it goes up by another 80%, her food bank will be servicing close to 700,000 people a year. It is simply not sustainable. We need witnesses to come here to explain to the government why its profligate, massive spending habit is making it impossible to buy groceries. Sending people a cheque and standing up in the House to say that it has solved this problem now that it's sent everyone a cheque for groceries.... Do you know what? Canadians don't really want a cheque to buy groceries. Canadians want to feel like they are accomplishing something in their lives. They want to feel good about the work they're doing, and they want to support their families. The last thing they want is for the government to say, “Oh, here are some alms for you to go and buy some groceries. We've solved the problem.” This problem is endemic to the fiscal policy approach of this government.
Another thing is that the Governor of the Bank of Canada, to his credit, is trying to get inflation under control. He's been selling off the bonds, what he calls quantitative tightening. He has increased interest rates to try to wrestle inflation to the ground, and inflation has come down somewhat.
However, experts say—and if members are interested, Mr. Cross has written extensively about this—that fiscal policy and monetary policy need to work together. We need witnesses to come—which is the point of this motion, Mr. Chair—to explain to the government that fiscal policy....
I know the Prime Minister doesn't like to think about monetary policy and is very clear about that, but someone has to. If he won't, I would suggest that members of this committee need to think about it. It's well established that fiscal policy and monetary policy need to work hand in hand, Mr. Chair. They need to co-operate with one another. It doesn't work when the bank is trying to wrestle inflation to the ground and the government pours deficit-spending fuel on the fire, which is what has happened. The government has said that it is going to spend $60 billion in debt through to 2027-28.
I have to say, Mr. Chair, that that's assuming no new measures. I think we can safely assume that there will be new measures. I have been here since 2019, and there are always new measures. In fact, sometimes they come just minutes after these budget documents are adopted.
Last fall, the finance minister introduced the fall economic statement, which said we'd have a $4.5-billion surplus in 2028, but 142 days later she tabled the budget, which shows a $14-billion deficit in that year. That is an $18.5-billion swing in the forecast in just 142 days. I don't know how we can rely on anything this government tables in any budget document. It's very, very concerning, Mr. Chair.
We need witnesses to come to explain to the government why its fiscal policy needs to be in line with the bank's approach in terms of wrestling inflation to the ground. You know, we now have tangible evidence that fiscal policy is actually making things worse. Although inflation had been going down, just this month inflation went up.
It will be very interesting when the Governor of the Bank of Canada comes back, because I know members—Conservative members of this committee, at least—will want to ask him this: Has fiscal policy made his job more difficult? If the government had been more restrained in its spending, would the inflation rate be going down even further instead of going up? Is he concerned at all with the fact that the government plans to go at least another $60 billion into deficit over the next five years? Most importantly, is this uptick in inflation going to cause him to reconsider the pause?
The pause was interesting. It's something I had never heard a bank governor say before, but fair enough, he wanted to be careful, so he raised the bank rate to 4.5% and then said that we were going to have a pause to see how things go. In fact, he said at committee that inflation was going to be 3% by the summer. It went up.
The government's own budget document says that the inflation rate for 2023 will be 3.5%. However, inflation would actually have to fall to 2% or 2.5% by midsummer for the inflation rate for 2023 to average 3.5%. Again, it's another example of.... No matter what the government puts in these budget documents, how could we possibly rely on them? How could Canadians rely on them?
Again, there are the food banks. This testimony is very, very disturbing to me. I wish we could hear from more food banks across the country. However, again, just like the government cut off debate in the House on the budget, just as it cut off witness testimony at this committee, just as the finance minister refused to tell us how long she would come to committee for and then, by the way, showed up and after an hour said she felt like she was being bullied but that Mr. Blaikie had convinced her that she should be kind and should deign to give the committee another 20 minutes.... It was very kind of her to do that, but the fact of the matter is that we are not bullies. We do not work for her. We do not work for the government. We work for our constituents who elected us, and we have very serious questions about the direction this government has taken.
For the finance minister to refuse invitations to this committee over and over again when the bank governor comes and the Parliamentary Budget Officer is happy to come.... The Minister of National Revenue seems happy to come and at least respectfully answer our questions.
To have the finance minister come here and say that we're bullies and to call members of our party political “hacks” in the House of Commons is just not productive.
I think what would be productive is for us to actually—