Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise today to speak to Bill C-15, the budget implementation act.
I have spoken to many of my constituents with respect to the budget, and to say there is some concern among my constituents of Barrie—Innisfil is an understatement.
I spent nine years on city council in Barrie dealing with various budgets. I was a member of the finance committee.
Budgets are typically forward-looking documents. When I look at this document, and when my constituents who I have spoken to about the budget look at the document, there is one underlying theme that comes up regularly: Who is going to pay for this? To use the Liberal narrative, quite frankly the people who are going to pay for this are the middle class and anyone working hard to join the middle class.
One only has to look at the situation here in Ontario, my home province, to see some of the parallels to the mindset of unbridled spending that the current federal Liberal government has embarked on. They are very similar situations. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that they are very similar situations, because the very people who were running the premier's office in Ontario are now involved in the Prime Minister's Office. The mindset of debt and deficit spending is very evident not just in the budget but in some of the policies we have seen come from the Liberal government.
I would remind Canadians that the Ontario government is the largest sub-sovereign borrower on the planet. It is not second, not third, but the largest sub-sovereign borrower on the planet. The payment on the debt currently in Ontario is third only to health and education. It is an example of unbridled spending and debt that can occur. What we are seeing, quite frankly, is a 2.0 version happening federally that has happened in Ontario. The difference really is that there is just a bigger piggy bank for the Liberals to draw from. Add to that the green program, the unmitigated disaster and the costs associated with that. It is really something we are all going to be looking for. As I said earlier, budgets being forward-looking documents, the question for most Canadians is who is going to pay for this.
When we look at some of the promises the Liberal government made, it promised a small $10-billion deficit. We now know that this year that it is going to be $30 billion. We are looking at $150 billion as we move forward. We also heard about, for example, the revenue neutral tax breaks. We now know that those tax breaks are going to cost Canadian taxpayers $1.7 billion this year and $8.9 billion over the next six years. In fact, we are going to see taxes rise to the tune of $1.3 billion this year and $2.4 billion next year.
When the Liberals talk about the middle class and taxes, when they throw out the talking points and talk in platitudes about the middle class and how they are the party of the middle class, I would suggest, as I have before in the House, that what we are actually seeing is effectively middle-class tax fraud. What the Liberals are imposing on the middle class is tax fraud. It is a shell game.
I have said this before, and I will say it again, to make my point. What the Liberals give, the Liberals take back. We only have to look at the budget to figure that out. The fitness tax credit that most Canadians have used, to the tune $1.19 billion since 2006, is gone. The arts and fitness tax credit Canadians have benefited from, to the tune of $118 million or $119 million, is gone. Income splitting for families like mine, a typical middle-class family, is gone. TFSAs are gone as an option for saving. What the Liberals give, the Liberals take away.
On the issue of the OAS, and I think this is critical to discuss at this point, one of the reasons the OAS age limit was reduced from 67 to 65 was a matter of cost and sustainability.
In 2011, almost $38 billion more would have been spent to sustain the OAS. It would be $108 billion by 2020, and by 2030 it would cost almost $266 billion to sustain. In 2012, the Conservative government chose, in keeping with OECD recommendations, to increase eligibility from 65 to 67. It did this because this measure alone would have an estimated annual spending increase of $11 billion. Again, someone has to pay for that. Baby boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, represented the largest age cohort in history. They retired. The cost of the OAS program was scheduled to balloon, as I said, to $38 billion in 2011.
When the OAS system was originally designed and implemented, the average life expectancy was much shorter. Today the average Canadian life expectancy is 85-plus. Seniors starting to receive the benefit at 65 will live 20 years more, greatly increasing the costs for working taxpayers.
According to Statistics Canada, the most recent projections estimate that more than one in four Canadians will be over 65 by 2036. When OAS was introduced in the 1960s, the ratio of active workers to pensioners was 7:1. Today, however, it is 2.5:1. That is not enough to support the massive cost to Canadians.
The finance minister himself wrote a book advocating later retirements. In The Real Retirement, he wrote:
If we were to retire three years later than we now do, any concerns about having adequate retirement income would practically vanish. It would also alleviate any shortages in the workforce due to the aging of the population.
Again, we have a finance minister who on one hand understands this but on the other hand, as finance minister, reverses his position. It begs the question: would the Liberals and the Liberal Party run their households the way they are running the country?
There were also some other issues with respect to the small business tax cut. On the issue of infrastructure, and I spoke about this before, while money sits to be handed out, people sit, as jobs cannot be filled unless projects begin, and projects cannot begin until the funding has been received.
The government can now, today, get this money out in a fair and equitable manner. We have seen members of the Liberal Party out and about in their communities making funding announcements.
One of the things the Liberal Party ran on was fair and equitable infrastructure investment in the country. Granted, it has made significant investments, but there is one way we can get that money out the door quickly, one way we can get the money out that is equitable. In fact, Mayor Nenshi, this past weekend, at FCM, spoke about the issue of the gas tax being a way to get that money out the door.
If the Liberal government wanted to, rather than delay, and already we are starting to see delays in the construction season due to the fact that the money is not going out the door, it could use the gas tax revenue. There is an existing formula in place.
I know that in my city, the city of Barrie, we receive $8 million a year in gas tax funding. The criteria is already set. The accountability system is already set for that gas tax money. In fact two weeks ago when I was in Vancouver, I met with the president of FCM. I met with the president of LUMCO in my role as urban affairs critic. Universally, every single one of them has suggested that the gas tax is the proper source for ensuring that infrastructure money is put out the door in a fair and equitable manner.
This budget, as I said earlier, is a shell game. I have statistics. I can show third party assessments of this budget and how it does not benefit wholly the middle class. I would suggest, finally, that the ones who benefit the most from the Liberal budget are in fact parliamentarians with respect to tax reductions. I think the same thing that holds in Ontario will hold true three and a half years from now. My constituents are looking at this, and I know that others across the country who voted Liberal did not vote for this.