Debates of April 12th, 2016

The Budget

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on a point that the member made reference to, which is the tax break for our middle class.

We need to realize that a major platform issue for the Liberal Party was to give strength to the middle class. We have seen the tax cut incorporated in the budget and whether one is a firefighter, or teacher, or an industry worker, or whatever profession, part of that middle class is getting a substantial tax break. By doing this, we are giving more disposal income to Canada's middle class. Ultimately, we are allowing for more spending, which helps small businesses, families, and the economy.

Would the member agree that by doing this we are getting a healthier middle class and thereby a healthier Canadian economy? Would he agree that this is a good thing?

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as was mentioned, this budget lowered taxes for nine million people. Nine out of ten Canadians are receiving on average $2,300 more in the Canada child benefit. This is how to grow the middle class, and with growth in the middle class, we are supporting the economy.

Therefore, I absolutely support the comments that were made by my colleague through his question. I believe we are setting Canada back on the right track for growth in the economy, growth in the middle class, and a fair and equitable country.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

It is a new day for Canadian families, Mr. Speaker, and it is a true privilege to rise in the House to speak in favour of the government's budget. This is a budget that finally gives middle-class families and those working hard to join them a long overdue helping hand.

My riding of Scarborough Centre is a community of hard-working middle-class families. We are a diverse community hailing from all corners of the world, all proud Canadians working hard to provide a better life for our children.

We are not afraid of hard work in Scarborough. We know that to put in a honest day's work to provide for our families is a noble thing. It is the responsibility our parents taught us and we are working hard to instill that in our children.

For far too long middle-class families have gone without a raise. They have watched their rent go up and groceries get more expensive, while their paycheques never keep up.

We value hope and hard work, but we also believe that hard-working middle-class families deserve a little help from their government. After a decade in the dark, finally middle-class families have a government that is listening.

The first thing this government did was to lower taxes for nine million middle-class families, and budget 2016 builds on that investment in our middle class by introducing the Canada child benefit.

Unlike the program of the previous government, which sent cheques to millionaires who did not need the help, this government's Canada child benefit is targeted to those families that need help the most. Low and middle-income families will receive more benefits under this program and it will not be clawed back when they file their taxes. The program is simpler with families able to count on a single payment every month and it is more generous with eligible families seeing an average annual increase of $2,300.

Families that earn less than $30,000 will receive the maximum benefit and nine out of ten families will see an increase in benefits. Best of all, thanks to this investment, 300,000 fewer children will be living in poverty by 2016-17 compared to 2014-15.

For the many families in my riding where both parents are working just to keep up with the cost of living, the Canada child benefit provides much needed relief. Combined with this budget's infrastructure investments in early learning and child care, parents can sleep more soundly at night knowing their children's futures are a little more secure.

Invariably though, our children grow up. As a mother, I unfortunately see this myself. It is sometimes hard to accept my two boys are now teenagers getting ready to go to university. Soon after that they will be entering the workforce. I worry about the opportunities that will be there for them and if they will have the chance to succeed to their potential.

My husband and I have been saving for our sons' education and I am lucky to have a job that will make it a little easier to send them off to school. However, not all families have that opportunity. The cost of post-secondary education has been escalating dramatically for years. We are saddling our children with crippling debt just as they try to begin their adult lives.

I believe there is no better investment a government can make than in our young people. The dollars we invest in post-secondary education will come back to the public coffers many times over as today's confident and dynamic students become tomorrow's innovators and job creators.

First, we need to give our youth a fair chance at success. With budget 2016, we are giving Canada's youth that opportunity. The budget increases the size of Canada's student grants to help students from low and middle-income families cope with the rising costs of post-secondary education. With assistance of $1.53 billion over five years, students from low-income families will now be eligible for non-repayable grants of up to $3,000 annually, an increase of 50%.

The government is also expanding eligibility for the Canada student grants program to help even more students receive non-repayable assistance.

Also, to not unfairly burden recent graduates just beginning their careers or looking for that important first job just out of school, the budget would raise the loan repayment threshold under the Canada student loans program repayment assistance plan to ensure that no student would have to begin repaying their Canada student loans until they earned at least $25,000 per year.

Helping with post-secondary education is only part of the process. Canada has a youth unemployment rate that is stubbornly above the national average. Too many young people are graduating from university and having trouble finding that all-important first job, or indeed any job. They are staying in or returning to their parents' homes longer, and delaying beginning their own families as they struggle to begin their professional lives.

Our government recognizes this change, and with budget 2016, we are taking concrete action. We are investing an additional $165.4 million in 2016-17 for the youth employment strategy, and another $105 million over five years in youth services to help young Canadians gain valuable work and life experience.

As well, with the support of $73 million over four years for the post-secondary industry partnership and co-operative placement initiative, more young Canadians will have access to co-op placement and work-integrated learning opportunities to help them land that important first career-oriented job even sooner.

We must give our youth the skills to compete in the economy of the future, but we must also ensure that our economy is built on a solid foundation. That means investing in our infrastructure. Businesses will not grow and invest in Canada and hire Canadians if we do not have the infrastructure to ensure their employees can get to work and their goods can get to the market.

When we talk about deficits, and I know we will in this debate, we cannot forget the infrastructure deficit. This is the delayed investment in our crumbling infrastructure, from highways and transit to ports and sewers, that according to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, had reached $123 billion by 2014. We cannot afford to pass this debt on to our future generation. Failing to address it puts our future economic prosperity at risk.

This government is not afraid to act. With budget 2016, our government is tackling this infrastructure deficit with an historic investment of more than $120 billion over 10 years.

The investment includes $3.4 billion to upgrade and improve public transit systems in Canada. My own community of Scarborough is underserved by higher order transit, and this investment will allow my constituents to get to work more quickly and then back home to their families.

With $3.4 billion over five years for social infrastructure, our government is finally moving to address the affordable housing crisis in this county. Too many people in Toronto are seeing most of their pay cheques going to rent, leaving them to make hard choices when it comes to putting food on the table and investing in their children's future. Affordable housing must become a priority in this country.

Lastly, but certainly not least, please allow me to talk about Canada's seniors. These are citizens who have worked hard all their lives. They helped to build Canada into one of the greatest countries in the world. We owe it to them to ensure that they have the opportunity to retire with the dignity and security they have earned and deserve.

However, I know too many seniors in my riding for whom that dream of a secure and dignified retirement is just that, a dream. Too many seniors are finding it more and more difficult to cope with the rising cost of living on a fixed income. More and more seniors are living in poverty. This is a shame that should not be acceptable in a country like Canada.

This budget takes immediate action to help our most vulnerable seniors by increasing the guaranteed income supplement top-up benefit for single seniors to up to $947 annually to help lift low-income single seniors out of poverty. This is an investment of some $670 million that will provide improved financial security to about 900,000 single seniors across Canada.

We will also restore the eligibility age for old age security and guaranteed income supplement benefits to age 65, a move that will put thousands of dollars back in the pockets of Canadians as they become seniors.

As part of our investment in social infrastructure, budget 2016 includes an investment of $200.7 million over two years to support the construction, repair, and adaptation of affordable housing for seniors to help the many seniors facing challenges in accessible affordable housing.

There are many more good things in budget 2016, but by investing in our youth, our seniors, and in middle-class families, this budget presents a blueprint for a better Canada, a Canada where we reward hard work, help those who need a hand, and work to ensure that every Canadian has the opportunity to achieve his or her potential.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the remarks of the member for Scarborough Centre and, as always, I listened very attentively to the question posed by the member for Winnipeg North to the previous speaker. I continue to hear about this middle-income tax cut.

This morning we had finance officials at the finance committee, and we broke down the numbers. The hard numbers are this. For single income earners in that so-called middle class, it is a $330 increase in their pockets annually. For couples, on average it is $540 annually. When we do the math, it comes out to about 90¢ a day.

I am sure that this member has a number of Tim Hortons in her particular riding. I would like to ask the member for Scarborough Centre how many cups of coffee she could buy for 90¢ on a daily basis, because that is what the middle-income tax cut actually works out to be. What will 90¢ a day buy and thereby enhance this consumer spending that these folks keep talking about?

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, after 10 years of weak growth, Canadians have voted for a change. We ran on a commitment to reinvest in Canada's infrastructure and middle-class families, after many years of neglect by the previous government. We are clear that this will mean several years of budgetary deficits, but invest we must. Canadians understand this. We will invest in our middle-class families. Our middle-class tax breaks have already benefited nine million Canadians since January.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, our colleague said that families can now sleep soundly because they will be getting a child benefit. I doubt that the 1.4 million unemployed Canadians are sleeping soundly or that the 900,000 Canadians who are working part-time but not by choice can sleep soundly. Given the sky-high cost of child care, I doubt that families are sleeping soundly.

I would like my colleague to explain how parents can sleep soundly when there is no money for child care this year and just $500 million next year.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our plan to strengthen the middle class and grow the economy would lead to a country where people who work hard can look forward to a good standard of living, a secure retirement, and better prospects for their children. Our Canada child benefit will lift 300,000 children out of poverty. That speaks for itself. Nine out of ten families would benefit from the Canada child benefit.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to thank the member for an important contribution to the debate in the House on the budget. I wonder if she can elaborate for the members what sort of benefits she is going to see in her riding for her constituents and how important this budget would be for them.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are investing in Canada's economy. I had one constituent in the summer tell me at the doorstep that when the pipes in the house are leaking we do not rush to pay the mortgage off early; we take out a home improvement loan and we fix the pipes. Well, Canada's pipes are leaking, and we are going to fix them by investing in Canada's economy and lifting 300,000 children out of poverty.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

We have now been exposed to the finance minister's first budget. It contains no surprises. We all knew that the budget would not balance itself. We all knew that the Prime Minister's campaign promise of a $10-billion deficit was, to use parliamentary language, wishful thinking. Now we know the truth. The Liberals are in favour of undisciplined spending, have no plan to balance the books, will fail to boost economic growth, and are raising taxes on families, individuals, and small businesses.

Take, for example, how this budget treats families. Half of all couples with children are at risk of being financially worse off under this new Liberal plan. The new Liberal child benefit plan will support fewer middle-class families than the previous universal child care benefit. Personal income tax is going up, as the government has eliminated income splitting for families. They have cancelled the plan to expand the tax-free savings account, the tax credit for fitness and arts, and tax credits for post-secondary education and textbooks.

This budget does nothing to help small businesses. In fact, it appears designed to hurt them. Keeping the small business tax rate at 10.5% instead of lowering it to the scheduled 9% and ending the hiring credit for small businesses does nothing to support entrepreneurs or the 1.7 million Canadians employed in the manufacturing sector.

By increasing income taxes, the Liberals are making it harder to keep talented workers and innovators in Canada. Raising taxes on businesses will not help the 100,000 Canadians who have recently been laid off in the oil and gas industry. The Liberals are raising taxes on job-creating businesses. The previous Conservative government created a low-tax competitive business environment to drive investment and create hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs.

Let us look at the philosophy behind this budget. Canadians need jobs in these uncertain times to allow for a bit of security. Do the Liberals understand this? Apparently, they do not. Despite the rhetoric about investing in infrastructure and innovation, the budget does little to build infrastructure and invest in innovation. It is really about growing the size of government. Hiring more civil servants is not the best way to grow Canada's economy. When the government spends taxpayers' money, it needs to do so with a purpose. It needs to ensure fiscal responsibility and results. This budget provides for neither.

The Liberals are borrowing four times more money than they promised they would. They are borrowing $30 billion this year alone, and $100 billion over four years combined. The Liberals have no plan to balance the books. They promised that they would balance the budget by 2019. Now they plan to borrow more money every year, with no end in sight. The promise of a small deficit has been replaced by the promise of a colossal deficit, and they hope that the Canadian people will not notice.

Even more disturbing than this huge deficit is the lack of a long-range plan. It is not enough for the government to say it intends to balance the budget at some hypothetical date in the future. Where is the plan to pay back the money that it is borrowing right now, next year, and the year after that to support its reckless spending agenda?

The Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister seem proud to tell us that they will not balance the budget in four years. They hope we will not notice that during that time they will add $150 billion to the national debt, with no plan to pay the money back. That means there will be almost $1 billion more debt in interest alone every year, just to satisfy their urge to spend, spend, spend.

The Prime Minister is very good at saying the Liberals are therefore the middle class, even if he cannot define who is in the middle class. With his budget, his gift to each and every Canadian in the middle class, upper class, or lower class is an additional $818.03 in debt, and that is not counting the interest payments.

With an even larger amount to be added next year, the Liberals are bribing Canadians with their own money and hoping no one will notice when it comes time to pay the bills.

Once again, the government has lost the opportunity to do more than offer political platitudes to unemployed Canadians. It has missed the opportunity to offer support to our energy industry, support that would not cost a dime, by endorsing the energy east pipeline project.

The Prime Minister apparently thinks this is a good time for government to borrow money. The Liberals are going into debt because they can. With no regard to fiscal prudence, they have no idea how to pay the money back. That will be someone else's problem after this government is gone.

Almost all Canadians can agree that getting into debt is easy. Getting out of it is hard. Sadly, there are at least two who do not understand that: the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister. They are determined to crush the country with debt.

How does the budget help individual Canadians? Personal income taxes would be set to go up by $1.3 billion this year and $2.4 billion next year, due to the elimination of income splitting and higher rates on incomes over $200,000. The new Canada child benefit would come at the expense of existing child benefits. At least 10% of families would be losing such support altogether.

Once again, the Liberal record is one of broken promises, whether it is increased spending on palliative care or the elimination of community mailboxes.

When it comes to spending taxpayers' money, the Liberals just cannot help themselves. This debt would need to be paid back by future generations. The government thinks that is fair. After all, our generation is still paying off the deficit spending of previous Liberal governments, so why should our children not be in debt?

At the end of last year, the Liberals had more than $3 billion in the bank. They have blown through that money and now need to break their election promise and borrow even more. Economists say that the Liberals will rack up more than $150 billion in debt over the next four years. This is not a one-year operation. This is the beginning of years of deficits, a mortgage on our country's future.

At some point the Liberals will reluctantly come to the conclusion that budgets really do not balance themselves. Such statements are either wishful thinking or fiscal ignorance. How would they deal with this deficit? How would they pay for their spending schemes? The Liberals would raise taxes even more for hard-working Canadian families and job-creating businesses.

Job-creating businesses will not invest in Canada if they do not know the cost of doing business. Saddling businesses with higher taxes, changing the rules of the game when they are not looking, and handing borrowed money from one politician to another will not create jobs.

More than 100,000 Canadians from across the country are out of work in the oil and gas industry alone. The budget offers them no hope for their future, no admission that our energy industry is key to our overall economic health. We know the recipe for job creation. It is low taxes, low red tape, open competition, free trade, successful businesses, and responsible spending of taxpayers' money. That is what the government should focus on. Instead, what we have is platitudes and promises. That is not good enough, unless one is a Liberal.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to double-check if the member is really sure he wants to reinstate the lower taxes for the one-tenth of Canadians. It is over a fifth of a million dollars for one-tenth of families, which he said.

That money, $6,400, would go to a single mother with a child. She may have had trouble feeding that child nutritious food. She would be able to clothe that child and send him or her to sports and arts, buy school supplies, and send the child on school trips with other children.

That money goes to the poorest of poor seniors in the country—

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Who cancelled the arts credit? Who cancelled the sports credit?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, that was $150. This person gets $6,400. What is the choice?

I want to double-check if the member is really serious about giving that back to the one-tenth of richest Canadians, over a fifth of a million dollars. They are not complaining actually, because they are generous, as part of Canada. Is he opposed to providing that money for children who have a hard time eating, or being clothed, or going on school trips, or to seniors who have to choose between heat and food?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, basically, the Liberals were very successful with their rhetoric. They put in big words. They talked about small families. They talked about taking away from the rich. They talked about all kinds of things. They are taking away more from Canadian families than they are giving to them. I would urge members opposite to read the budget and go through it carefully. The Liberals are proposing to eliminate income support for families, cancel the TFSA, cancel credits for post-secondary education, and cancel credits for textbooks. All of that is not going to help Canadians. It is going to add more burden and more taxes onto Canadian taxpayers. We will see what will happen. The Liberals are going to increase taxes and they are going to dig deeper into the pockets of Canadian taxpayers.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am also surprised to hear the hon. member refer favourably to the previous government's record on debt. Although Conservatives generally have a reputation for being concerned about debt, I watched closely as the former prime minister took our national debt from $482 billion, the year before he took office, to $612 billion, an increase of $130 billion. That is a substantially large portion of the entire federal debt since Confederation.

While I agree that we want to see a plan to get out of deficit from the current Liberal government, I would advise the hon. member that he is in a pretty glass house, and a lot of people around here have stones.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I hope that is not a threat from an environmental advocate in the House.

I would like to point out that the issue of how much debt we left the country with has been going back and forth for some time. The debt service was $23 million a year from the previous Liberal government, which we had to maintain for nine years. If we left a $150 billion deficit, we had already paid from that previous debt another $50 billion, while managing the economy and being fiscally responsible throughout the nine years that we were governing this great country.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in short, there is always a problem. We just went through this budget. One of the big issues is that we gave the current government a surplus of $3.4 billion. It has blown through that, and now it is projecting a deficit of $30 billion. The Liberals' platform was that we would have a moderate deficit of $10 billion, pay off the balance, and have a balanced budget in three years. By the way, Liberals would take money from rich people and give it to the middle class.

We have to understand that the middle class in Canada under the Conservative Party is the wealthiest it has ever been. Canada is the second most preferable country in which to do business. However, who will benefit most? It is people who make just under $200,000 a year. Now the Liberals are 300% out on their budget. The tax break was neutral, but it would now cost $2 billion per year.

Could the member give us an idea of how Canadians can trust the budget and the Liberals' accountability?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, two things are flying all over the place. First of all is the misunderstanding, or pretense of misunderstanding, of the definition of the middle class by the Liberal government members throughout their campaign; and they still seem to be on the campaign trail. Second, if we have any understanding of economic indices and economic formulas, we see that the Liberals are going to put the country in debt and increase taxes. Liberals are spending Canadians' money out of their pockets and telling them they are doing this for them, but asking them to give them their mortgages, money, and savings. That does not serve Canada or Canadians.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, “You cannot pay a debt with a noble pedigree”; so says a Yiddish proverb. Paying down a debt takes fiscal prudence. A famous name or the performance of past governments is no replacement.

Last month I attended a financial help session aimed at laid-off professionals and skilled trades workers from the energy sector. The highlight was a presentation by the Credit Counselling Society that offered four steps for dealing with reduced incomes, budget drainers, and impulse spending.

After looking at this budget, I see the government needs to sit down and take credit counselling advice from the Calgary Credit Counselling Society. On its behalf, I am going to invite the government caucus to join me as I walk through the four steps to a sunnier tomorrow. The first step is finding sources of income that are available; it is pretty good at that. The second is finding ways to reduce expenses; not so good. Third is managing credit; equally not very good. Fourth is dealing with debts immediately; not very good.

On the first part, namely finding sources of income, the Liberals deserve a gold star. They are masters at squeezing Canadians out of just about $20 billion in tax hikes in this budget and, for business, $2 billion per year in higher taxes by 2019, and reneging on the planned tax cut for the latter and eliminating a series of tax credits for the former.

“Other sources of income” in this case, of course, is new borrowing. The aggregate principal amount of money to be borrowed by the government from financial markets in 2016-17 is projected to be $278 billion, over $100 billion of new debt before the next election.

The result, calculated by Generation Screwed, an advocacy group for Canadian youth, is an annual interest bill of $25.7 billion in this fiscal year alone, or 8.8% of tax dollars spent on interest.

The Credit Counselling Society of Calgary also gave advice on how to temporarily increase income, from temporary work to part-time work to snow removal and bottle collection. I am not recommending that the government put its MPs to work collecting bottles to pay down the national debt, but I am also not saying that it would not help.

On page 211, the government lays out a plan to eliminate poorly targeted and inefficient measures, but if it is anything like what it did to the education and textbook tax credits or income splitting or the small business tax rate reduction or the slashing of the tax free savings account maximum, the Liberals are looking in all the wrong places for this temporary new income.

The second step offered by the Credit Counselling Society toward financial freedom is to find ways to reduce expenses. I am afraid the counselling society would sit the government down and give it heartbreaking news. It is failing and doing it all wrong.

The Liberals have thrown caution to the wind, undoing much of the spending controls put in place by the previous government and ending this past fiscal year $5.4 billion in deficit. The Liberal government has presented us with a proposed $29.4 billion budget deficit for 2016 and $113 billion in new debt over the next four years.

The election pitch put forward by members on that side of the House was to run modest deficits of $10 billion. Now we find out that the numbers are triple that, closer to $30 billion. The money is not going towards infrastructure in the vast quantities it promised. Half of the $120 billion total the government promotes is rehashed spending from the previous government.

A paltry 13.5% of the $29.4 billion in this fiscal year, or less than $4 billion, is actually designated for infrastructure. The Calgary Green Line LRT alone is estimated to cost $1.5 billion, and the construction start date is 2017. The previous Conservative government committed the funding, so will the government commit to it too? We do not know; it does not appear in the budget.

In fact, Calgary gets only one mention, for its ring road project completion. It is nice to see the government living up to the smart spending promises of the previous Conservative government.

Now the Credit Counselling Society says to use accurate numbers to work with, evaluate habits, and identify where changes can be made.

We learned these past few days that the parliamentary budget office had to publicly force the government to release further documents that were standard in past budgets, with information request IR0217.

The PBO also revised downwards the employment impact numbers, for not one but two fiscal years. In 2016-17, it was down to 26,000 jobs from Finance Canada's 43,000 jobs. For 2017-18, it was down to 60,000 from 100,000 jobs.

Many tools exist to make budget tracking easier. I am going to recommend the smart phone apps Mint or TrackIt from the Alberta Treasury Branches. I am happy to sit down with the Minister of Finance, download it to his phone, and get it working so that he can begin tracking his government's spending habits. We could identify some of those budget drainers the credit counsellors keep warning against.

The budget is littered with half measures with expensive price tags. For example, on page 257 of the budget document, under “Other spending measures”, there is a subheading that also reads “Other measures”, and there is a whopping $620 million this fiscal year and $292 million in the next. Out of the 10 line items in there, it happens to be the biggest one, so the other of the other is actually the most expensive thing that the Liberals are spending on.

Just as Canadians track their expenses, the Liberals too should focus on what is straining their budget by asking themselves where the money is going.

Here is a question a credit counsellor might ask: “Are you helping out someone, such as family or friends, when you cannot afford it?”

I have noticed that on almost every single international visit, the Liberals come bearing gifts. For example, in their first 100 days in power, they made $5.3 billion in spending commitments. There was just $997 million for projects inside Canada, and the rest, $4.3 billion, is to be spent outside the country.

Now, the logic and accounting here are pretty darn simple. Do we want to get into financial trouble? If not, then we either have to start making more money, cut back on expenses, or both. It is a simple principle that credit counsellors apply and one that would not hurt the Liberals to adopt.

This budget is especially troubling for families like the McAllisters in my riding: Maja and Darcy, and their kids Liam and Veronica. Darcy makes his living in the oil and gas industry, like thousands of others in my riding, and they are seeing a government completely undermining the source of their prosperity.

The third part of Calgary's Credit Counselling Society's strategy is to deal with one's debt. The government misses the mark here yet again. We see on page 53 a mention that they will repeal the Federal Balanced Budget Act. There will not be amendments, but a complete and entire repeal, a full elimination of the act. Not only do the Liberals have a spending problem, but they will not admit that they need to be put on a debt diet.

To deal with government, we typically see a series of fiscal anchors—legislative and policy measures—that help guide the government's overall efforts to control spending. However, the Liberals do not have these here. In fact, they have dropped the only anchor straight into an abyss of perpetual debt.

As an Albertan, I look to the former example of Premier Ralph Klein and his deficit- and debt-fighting battle. He won because he created strong legislative anchors. He and his ministers fixed strong policy measures as well. Most of all, he provided fixed, strong leadership on what he needed and wanted to achieve. Ralph Klein, Jim Dinning, Steve West, Stockwell Day, and many others provided leadership provincially and knew when to drop anchor and balance Alberta's budget.

However, the current government offers us annex 3 on page 259, the debt management strategy, which is more concerned with where new debt will be acquired rather than with how it will be paid down. Credit counsellors point out that among the top reasons for financial struggle among Canadians is the excessive use of credit for living expenses. What the Liberals are proposing is the same principle.

Let us not forget that there is an interest cost for borrowing such huge amounts of money, so let us look at what happens when government increases debt. The Ontario Liberal government spent $11.4 billion a year just to make interest payments on its debt. If debt were a government department, it would be the third largest in that province. Let us ask ourselves what future generations could do instead of paying interest on that debt.

However, it does not stop there.

We know that key interest rates have already gone up in the United States and that the Bank of Canada will eventually follow suit at some point in the near future. This will affect not only indebted consumers but also the amount of financial resources directed to debt servicing costs.

What will the Liberals do when interest rates rise or double? Are they saying it will not happen over the next decade or so? They have no plan.

Let us talk about impulse spending. Credit counsellors ask people if they have ever bought something and then regretted it. The acronym is TEMPO: time, environment, mood, place, and occasion. Credit counsellors offer some strategies to deal with this impulse spending, and I want to recommend a few things here.

The government should stop international trips, because those seem to be quite expensive. The Liberals should pay attention to details. They call it “stress fog” when someone buys on impulse. It would have helped the Liberals avoid the embarrassment of ending income splitting for couples with children and saying that it would be offset by raising taxes on the 1%, because the parliamentary budget officer said that no, that is actually not the case.

Is it possible that question period is stressing out the ministers responsible for the finances of our country? They would be less stressed if they brought real answers to the questions from this side of the House, and the truth is a great stress reliever.

The government needs to focus on prudence. The 1970s fiscal and economic policy led by another famous prime minister is of no help here. A famous name cannot save them here.

With this budget, the Liberals have thrown caution to the wind, betrayed the middle class, and placed Canada on a path of structural deficit. They have irresponsibly endangered our financial stability, meaning that in the next recession, with record spending and record low interest rates, there will be no space for a future government to respond.

However, I bring good news: it is not too late to stop. I would be happy to share the presentation from the Credit Counselling Society, its contact information, and its flagship website, www.nomoredebts.org. Its advice is confidential. Good news: no-cost credit and budget counselling from the consumer experts is only a call away.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague mentioned that the budget is producing tax increases. Perhaps the hon. member has not actually seen the budget or reviewed it. There are actually $3.4 billion in tax reductions for nine million Canadians in the budget.

The Conservative Party does not support our reduction of the TFSA limits. There were only approximately two million Canadians who actually maximized those contributions, yet that program would cost over $210 million, and those who maximized their TFSAs were actually the highest-earning income earners in this country.

Is that prudent governance? Is it prudent governance to provide a costly program to a comparatively small number of Canadians, a program that actually does not help the majority of Canadians, the middle class, specifically?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, actually I have read the budget intently. It is highlighted, and I have Post-it Notes in it.

Let us talk about the numbers in the budget on pages 234 and 235 of Annex 1. Let us talk about the personal income tax numbers the Liberals have here, because what I see in this document is that over the next five years, they expect almost a 24% increase in personal income taxes. In fact, between the fiscal years 2016-17 and 2017-18, they expect to get $10 billion more in personal income taxes from the taxpayers of this country.

When we talk about numbers, it is right here in black and white. Their expectations are completely offside and they really do not know what they are doing.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that contribution from the member for Calgary Shepard. Frankly, he is being quite generous with his unsolicited credit counselling services.

I have a quick question for him. Where were these services in 2007? Where were these services in 2008? Where were these services in 2009? Where were these services in 2010? Where were these services in 2011? Where were these services in 2012? Where were these services in 2013? Where were these services in 2014?

I wonder why he was not willing to avail the former government of his wonderful credit counselling services during that decade of darkness.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for the question and for the passionate way he delivered it as well.

As he knows, I am a rookie member of this House and I have just joined the floor here, but I have been an attentive spectator. As I remember it, it was that party when it was in opposition that demanded more spending. It wanted more spending. Actually, the Liberals aligned themselves with the New Democrats and the separatists in order to create a coalition government, demanding even more spending.

The Credit Counselling Society in Calgary has been there for decades. Any time they would like to call them, I am more than happy to provide the PowerPoint presentation. I will even provide the phone number. They can come to my riding and we can sit down together and have a great meeting over this document.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Calgary Shepard for his presentation. I very much enjoyed the allegory and the way he colourfully expressed the shortcomings of budget 2016. It was an excellent presentation.

At the very end of his presentation, he mentioned the difficulties around the challenges when we get into structural deficit. Perhaps the credit counsellors might say that capital deficit is one thing, but that when we get into structural deficit, the financing of day-to-day expenses through borrowing, it is a treadmill that is very difficult to get off and is extremely destructive as public policy.

Would he comment on the difference and on how the government is leading us directly down the road to structural deficit?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member and I are both from Calgary. He is a great champion for the taxpayer.

What I would say on that is that on page 53 of the budget, we see that the government intends to repeal the Federal Balanced Budget Act, thereby getting rid of the last fiscal anchor that would have prevented structural deficits.

Also, 13.5% of the Liberals' spending plan is with respect to infrastructure, which means the rest of it is simply program spending. That is how structural deficits are created over time. It is by having no fiscal anchors.

Unfortunately, Alberta has gone through this before. Alberta is an example of legislative and policy measures being eliminated over time, causing future deficits to be created that became the structural deficits that governments have struggled to deal with.

The current government can learn a lot by not repeating the mistakes of the past. There are a lot of examples out there, and it can do better.