Mr. Speaker, today I am very pleased to be sharing my time with my friend the member for Brantford—Brant.
A couple of weeks ago, the Minister of Finance was trying on his new shoes for the budget, and I can appreciate the need for new shoes, personally speaking. However, the finance minister did it at the Boys and Girls Club in Toronto, which is a place that is very well known for teaching life lessons and giving kids a good foundation. I felt a sense of irony when the minister chose this spot to talk about his plan for the Liberal budget, because it is a plan that actually commits Canadians to long-term structural deficits, and it is the future generations in that room who will be paying for it. While the Liberals struggle with the notion that, if they borrow money, some day they have to pay it back, kids understand very well that when one lends something, there is an expectation that it will be given back one day.
Before the Liberals took office, taxes in this country were at their lowest point in 50 years. By the end of the Conservative mandate, the average family of four in Milton was saving $7,000 per year, our debt-to-GDP ratio was actually lower than when the Conservatives took office, and it has been confirmed by the good people at Finance Canada that we left the government with a balanced budget and a surplus, to the point of $4.3 billion. However, as with all things, times have changed.
One of the first things the Liberal government did since taking office was actually undo the advances the Conservatives had made over the past 10 years. In doing so, it completely abandoned its election promise to cap its deficit at $10 billion. It decided it was no longer important to aim for a balanced budget, and I am sure that when it is pressed, it will also reverse on the debt-to-GDP ratio.
The Liberal budget, as presented, is very disconcerting, and Canadians cannot actually comprehend what the Liberal government is attempting to do in this plan and how it tries to justify it. The finance minister's last economic outlook actually showed that revenues were holding up better than expected. GDP growth in the last quarter of 2015 was also higher than expected. Canada is not in a recession, yet the Liberal government is on track to borrow millions and billions of dollars in order to solve a recession that is not happening.
Plans for this spending spree confirm what Conservatives have long believed: Liberals are more concerned about optics than they are with helping Canadians. The budget sets out spending that is untargeted, and this spending will actually end up hurting Canadians in the long run in the form of tax increases. The budget is nothing more than a betrayal of the middle class, because Conservatives understand that, if the Liberals are not willing to control spending, taxes will eventually go up to pay for the money that has been borrowed.
It is a betrayal of families, because they understand that their household budgets cannot be sustained on credit. As well, it is a betrayal of small businesses, the 1.2 million Canadian men and women who were promised relief by every party in the election campaign, because that relief leads to job creation and solid economic investments. It was the Liberal government that turned on them. In addition, it is a betrayal of Canadians who trusted the Liberals not only to keep the promise to small business, because that is where 98% of the economy is, but to keep their election promises.
I originally come from Cape Breton Island, where unfortunately I learned a thing or two about unemployment, the long-term effects, and what happens when Liberals try to fix our problems. There are more than 100,000 Canadians out of work today in the oil and gas industry alone. In a recent poll, Canadians across the country said very clearly—46% of them, actually—that they are concerned for either their own jobs or the jobs of others in their households. Those 46% of Canadians live with the weight in their minds and hearts of whether they are going to have jobs.
Families need to see a real plan to ensure that we are creating well-paying jobs. However, what they are seeing instead is small business being saddled with an increase in payroll taxes, as well as the provinces being encouraged to introduce a carbon tax. Both of these are job-killing measures that discourage investment in our economy.
In the last two weeks, we have had the ability to speak with folks in our ridings, and some of us have spoken to folks in their ridings as well. The one question I get is this: “What did they buy with $30 billion of our money?” I cannot blame people for being confused. Canadians are seeing money fly out the door with no assurance that they are going to get value. However, here is the best part. The Liberals call it investments, when we know it is spending.
Canadians are not the only ones who are confused, it would appear. Last week, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a scathing response, providing proof that the budget is not only overinflated, not only an overestimation, but it is not transparent. Is that not a far cry from what the Liberals offered on the campaign trail? The PBO pointed to a massive hole in the budget and asked this very pertinent question: How is the government going to fill it? The response, just like now, is silence, because there is no response.
It is mind-boggling to Canadians that the government has planned deficits of $115 billion over the next five years and it has yet to decide what it is going to spend it on. Since the campaign, the Liberals have been forced to admit that their math has been wrong. They miscalculated the price of their own tax plan. They miscalculated the size of their own deficits. As well, as if it is not bad enough that Canadians do not have confidence in their math, the Liberals suggest continually, including today, that we should not trust the math prepared by the officials at Finance Canada that shows we left a surplus.
It is no wonder that Canadians are worried. The Liberals have clearly demonstrated that they have an inability to make the hard choices that governing requires. They have demonstrated an even greater inability to provide measures for Canadians that will actually help them.
The Conservatives found themselves in a tough economic situation, the great recession. That is why we had a plan to return to balance, to live within our means. We achieved that in 2015.
I was opposed to a modest $10-billion budget, and I said that during the election campaign. Had the Liberals actually kept that pledge, we would have ensured that every single cent went to encouraging job creation. However, that number was a dream compared to the nightmare scenario we are looking at today.
Uncontrolled spending will inevitably lead to long-term structural deficits that are simply unsustainable. Some economists go as far as to say that it is $150 billion in new debt over the next four years alone. Now the Liberals say that the only thing that matters is debt-to-GDP ratio, but that is not true. The only thing that can be controlled in debt-to-GDP ratio by the government is the debt. It cannot control growth, and it certainly cannot control interest rates.
Why does the government not focus on the things that it can influence? Those are creating proper incentives to stimulate economic growth, watching the debt, and ensuring we are not increasing departmental sizes to the point where they become unsustainable.
I have one final word with respect to the budget, and it is a word that we have difficulty with on our side of the House. However, it is definitely not a difficulty on the other side of the House, and that comes to taxes. As I pointed out already, we strove to reduce taxes because we know that is what we do to spur economic growth and have companies create jobs. The government has set it up so that the Liberals' tax increases have moved a tax rate in Canada above 50%. In some provinces, as in Ontario, people are paying 53.5% in income tax to the government before they get to keep any of their money. However, that is not all. The Liberals broke their promise to small business, 1.2 million Canadians, on their taxes. The Liberals are also encouraging carbon taxes, and employers are going to be left with no choice but to look at their stock of employees and determine who will lose their jobs.
It is in times like this that it is important for us to be responsible, to live within our means, and to have a plan. However, this budget is unconstrained. It is haphazard spending. It is not economic stimulus. Any long-term benefits will be outweighed by the enormous literal costs, and as such it must be firmly opposed.
