Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise with my colleagues in the Conservative caucus today to point out the hypocrisy of the government when it comes to the changes it is making to how small businesses in Canada are taxed.
Our opposition motion is calling for the consultations to be extended, because of the outrage we are hearing from farmers, small businesses, tech start-ups, and entrepreneurs and their employees across the country. We have been talking about some of the farming families and small business owners affected by these changes, who are outraged, but there are hundreds of thousands of employees who are also caught by these changes as well.
The consultations need to be extended because of the subterfuge by the government on the issue. Announcing the most comprehensive changes to how our CCPCs, small private corporations, are taxed in a generation in the dead of summer when the consultation period would end only a few weeks into the House of Commons' sitting is shameful. For a government that came in on a platform of open and transparent governance, to do this in the midst of the summer was outrageous. That is certainly why we are hearing the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, chambers of commerce, and Liberal members of Parliament agreeing that it is outrageous.
At a bare minimum, I would like to see the hon. member from Toronto, the finance minister, extend the consultation period to at least allow those people who are very fearful of these changes to be heard. He started a call list a few weeks ago, and called one or two farmers. However, now that other people have been calling him, the finance minister has been leaving them hanging.
We have seen the staged consultation round tables, where the finance minister repeats his talking points in the midst of rooms where people are emotional, because they feel they are under attack by a government that is claiming, or setting up this debate to suggest, that they are not paying their fair share.
This finance minister and Prime Minister owe it to Canadians to at least hear them out. I think this is a modest request by the opposition today, and I hope that some members of the government caucus will see the extension of consultations as such.
We remember the big walk up to Rideau Hall, but in the two years since then, what has the government, with all its openness and transparency, done in that time?
It has raised taxes more than any government in the history of our country: an income tax increase; a small business tax increase with the end of the phased-in reduction for small business to 9%, which it had promised to maintain, as the MP for Carleton raised in the House of Commons today; a CPP payroll tax increase that taxes employers; changes to tax-free savings accounts, which many Canadians have relied on in their own tax planning for their future; and beer and wine taxes, so that if people have to drown their sorrows in the age of Liberal tax increases, the government is taxing them too; and a tax on ride sharing via an Uber tax; and now the CCPC small business tax changes.
That is seven substantial tax increases in less than two years. In the Canada of this Prime Minister, if something moves, it gets taxed. In fact, the rate of tax increases and the creation of new taxes is truly astounding. It is the centrepiece of the government. While it is breaking dozens of promises from electoral reform to support for our military, the one thing the government has not stopped is raising taxes.
What concerns me, as someone who worked in the private sector and with entrepreneurs, the engine of growth in our economy, is the way the government is framing this debate. I have never seen such a divisive approach to taxation and relations within our country when it comes to the government's suggestion that small business owners and farmers are somehow tax evaders. I was writing an essay a few weeks ago on this and the most common two-word phrase the Prime Minister uses is “wealthiest 1%”. When I researched this some time ago, he had used that phrase 65 times as Prime Minister, a phrase that is only surpassed by his most common expression, “the middle class and those working hard to join it”. I know, Madam Speaker, you probably join us in groaning when we hear the use of that term in the House, but why is he juxtaposing those things with each other and now bringing farmers and small businesses into it?
The Prime Minister is suggesting to Canadians that there are people who are not contributing. He is suggesting that the small business owner, the entrepreneur, the tech start-up, or the sixth generation farming family are somehow making things harder for middle-class Canadians. That is shameful. We have a progressive tax system in Canada that has long ensured that people making more will pay more and that those consuming more will pay more because of the GST. The Harper government cut the GST because it impacted lower-income people the most, so it was reduced.
I neglected to mention that I will be splitting my time with the member for Perth—Wellington. I got so passionate that I left that out at the beginning of my speech.
One can see that the Prime Minister is juxtaposing the people who he is claiming are causing the middle class to be held back, when in reality a lot of middle-class Canadians are employed by these same people, such as the manufacturers in my riding of Durham, the tech start-ups that I visited in Waterloo, and the farming families and processing businesses related to it. This is whom he is attacking. I have never seen such an approach in Canada, and it is shameful the way the government is framing it and limiting debate when proposing to make the the most substantive changes to the small business tax rate in a generation.
The issue is that there is no revenue problem in Canada. We should not be raising taxes at all. The government and the Prime Minister have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. In fact, in 2015-16, there was almost $300 billion in revenue. When the Harper government had to run a deficit in the midst of the biggest global recession since the 1930s, revenues were $233 billion. If it had had the revenues the government now has, there would have been no deficit. That is a difference of over $60 billion, but the problem is that the Prime Minister is spending more than the government is bringing in. It is bringing in more, but it keeps spending more.
When the Liberals asked Canadians for their trust in 2015 and promised that they would never run a deficit of more than $10 billion, they broke that promise in a few months. They cannot even get a deficit under $20 billion, and most of the money has not gone to infrastructure, as they like to suggest it has to Canadians. It is just over-spending. Why do they think they can get away with that? It is because, as I said, they have raised taxes seven times in under two years, and now they are targeting entrepreneurs and businesses, our employers.
What the finance minister does not tell the middle class and those working hard to join it is that entrepreneurs do not have EI, do not have maternity leave, do not have pensions, and do not have paid holidays. They are employing people in our communities and saving for their future. Female physicians are making sure they have enough to provide for their families while they take care of their own maternity leave. I am glad that a doctor in B.C. informed the Prime Minister of this, who is making tax changes while admitting that he does not even understand how they will impact the people he serves.
The Conservatives have a modest proposal: let us extend the consultations. This opposition day motion is not asking to shut down the whole thing like thousands of Canadians are asking. The Liberals should at least have the dignity to hear Canadians out.