Mr. Chair, there is another area where the finance minister has failed to be transparent, and it is when it comes to the state of the country's finances that he inherited from the past government.
We have heard the finance minister repeat many times in the House and across Canada that he inherited an unanticipated deficit for fiscal 2015-16, left by the previous government. It is difficult to evaluate the minister's spending plans and decisions when he has been so misleading about his fiscal numbers. However, the evidence shows that the Liberals were left with a surplus and it was their taxing and spending decisions that set it off track. I will ask some specific questions.
Make no mistake, the Liberals took a fiscal framework that was on the road to surplus and veered off of it to a deficit ditch.
First, let us not forget that there was a surplus of $1.9 billion in 2014-15. In April last year, our budget forecast a surplus of $1.4 billion for 2015-16, which the minister said is not true. However, let us look at the facts.
According to his own independent department officials who publish the monthly “Fiscal Monitor” on the state of Canada's budgetary balance, at the end of October when we left office, the books were $600 million in surplus for the year. By the end of February, they were $7.5 billion in surplus for the year. Keep in mind that the Liberals had been in power for four months at that point.
Last Friday, the Liberals announced that the books deteriorated by $9.4 billion in March, turning what was a surplus of $2 billion into a deficit all in one month.
Such a turnaround in federal finances in such a short period of time has not happened since 2005. I am told they call it March madness, but the minister likes to tell us we should not pay attention to the “Fiscal Monitor”, it is just a month-to-month update. So let us look at the big picture, the full year.
If the minister is right that the economy, and not his spending, is responsible for plunging us into deficit, we should see a decline in tax revenues compared to what we projected in budget 2015. However, that is just not true. The minister's budget shows he expects annual revenues to be higher than they were projected last April. So did the PBO's latest independent projections.
Economist Stephen Gordon put it well when he said on Twitter last Friday, “If you're looking for an explanation of why Joe Oliver's projected surplus didn't happen, the answer looks to be in spending, not revenues.
Let us make an important point here. It is the Liberals' spending, spending that was outlined in their election platform: middle-class tax cuts, Syrian refugees, reinstating sick leave, new transfers to provinces, new spending in foreign aid, and I can go on. This points to a more serious concern than just whether the budget balances. He is trying to slip as much Liberal platform spending as possible into the 2015-16 fiscal year so he can hide from Canadians the true extent of his massive spending spree. For purely political motives, he has spent away the 2015-16 surplus left by the previous government. That is fine; he is the elected government. However, he needs to own up to it. He needs to take responsibility, not to blame others. I hope he will be able to answer some questions here about how he instructed his department officials to mislead Canadians about the federal government's finances.
The finance minister told the Toronto Region Board of Trade in December 2015 the following, “I know you won’t be surprised when I tell you that when an economy is not performing as expected, the government will face a shortfall in revenues...”. Fortunately, the hard facts tell the opposite story. Does he stand by his misleading claims that lower revenues were the primary driver of this Liberal deficit?