Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand in this place to speak today to Bill C-63, the Liberal government's budget implementation act.
The genesis of the today's debate is the move by the opposition yesterday to close down debate on the bill because the finance minister refused to answer questions during question period. Twenty-one questions were asked about his stocks to make certain that he was above reproach. He smugly refused to answer the questions, which is regrettable.
There are a number of times when Canadians, as well as members in this place, understand the direction a government takes. We understand that when the government gives us its throne speech, it is laying out what it wants to accomplish over its tenure. We know it is the same when it comes to a fiscal update or a budget.
Regrettably, Bill C-63 continues to attack our future prospects and amass more debt for future taxpayers to pay off. After the bill passes, and it will pass because the government is pushing it through, Canadians will see what the Liberals have actually done.
In the past election campaign, the Liberals told Canadians one thing and did something completely different when it came to their throne speech and their first budget. The Liberals promised there would be a small deficit of up to $10 billion a year, and we now know that was simply not true. I very much question whether they had any intention of ever living up to that promise. Not only that, but the 2017 budget, which we are debating, also has no answer to the question of when Canadians can expect the government to balance its budget. The Liberals continue to refuse to tell Canadians when their big spending will stop and when debt reduction will begin.
In the last election, Canadians did vote for the Liberal Party and for small deficits. They believed that some investment by government to that degree was all right. However, Canadians in my constituency and across this country are concerned when they see a spend, spend, spend government that gives absolutely no indication as to when it will stop. The debt is continuing to grow.
Families, small businesses, the middle class and those struggling to join it cannot perpetually operate their households in the red. They cannot perpetually, year after year, continue to spend more than they have.
Millionaires and billionaires spend. They have no problem sometimes accumulating debt if they see that it will pay off in the end. They typically borrow money and know they will have to pay off that debt. We have a millionaire Prime Minister and finance minister who are having more fun now because they are borrowing money that the future generation will have to pay off.
Families cannot operate this way. When annual economic growth is moderate or high, families know they have to save for a rainy day, but not the Liberals. The Liberals borrow money during prosperous times, and why not? It is not their money. They are borrowing money that other people will have to pay back, including my grandchildren.
Families scrimp and save because they know that things can happen that cost money. If the furnace breaks down, given the climate in this country, a new one must be purchased. That is when a family tries to find savings to pay off that furnace. Families do not borrow money to buy a new furnace with no intention of ever paying that money back, and yet the Liberal government has no plan to pay back the debt, no plan to get out of debt, no plan to stop overspending, no plan to balance the books, no plan to start paying down the accumulated national debt. The Liberal government continues to pay interest on the massive amount of money it has borrowed.
I was speaking to a Liberal member the other day who asked, why worry about the debt when interest rates are low? Interest rates are low. However, fiscal responsibility is what we expect from a government. If our mindset is “interest rates are low then why worry about it”, what happens when the rates start to turn around? Is there a panic all of a sudden? The government does not panic because it will not have to pay for it.
The Liberals came up with the so-called “new tax bracket” to tax the top 1% of income earners. We know now that it did not work. In fact, less money came in than the revenues flowing before.
After the Liberals hiked the taxes on the rich, we found out that the rich or the top 1% of the income earners, many of whom are also job creators, are actually paying a billion dollars less in taxes per year than they had been. The middle class did not receive any of the revenues from the top 1% of income earners, because there were not enough revenues raised by hiking those taxes to pay for the programs and the services that the Prime Minister said that he was going to implement.
Since 2015, the Liberals have cancelled tax credits, raised CPP, and raised EI premiums. At the same time, the price of everything else for the average Canadian continues to rise, such as transportation, fuel, groceries, and rent. Very soon, all Canadians will be suffering under a new carbon tax. We have seen that in the throne speech. We have seen that in budgets. That carbon tax will not be used to reduce carbon emissions. Rather, it will be spent by the Liberals in Ottawa on their friends and pet projects.
What about jobs? The former government understood that we needed trade agreements and lower taxes. When we lower taxes, jobs are created.
The Liberals talk about their job creation achievements. To look at their record, 11 out of 12 jobs that are created are not in the private sector. They are in the public sector. More people work for both the federal and provincial government. It is unsustainable.
In Alberta, a lot of the new jobs came up in the public sector. Revenues from the private sector pay for jobs in the public sector. Revenues from public sector jobs do not create more jobs.
Still the Liberals say that there has been a two-third reduction this year in unemployment numbers. It is shameful. They do not talk about the fact that fewer people out there are looking for work. Statistics show that two-thirds of the unemployed in Canada have given up looking for a new job.
The Liberals are putting Canada second in the long-term goals of what our country should look at and investing in the wrong places. A good example of this is the decision by the Liberal government to invest in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. This system makes sure that taxpayers and their money take all of the risk when it comes to building infrastructure in Canada. The millionaire owner of a construction firm building an infrastructure will escape losing money if a bridge fails to generate revenues, because it is the taxpayer who will be on that hook.
What is worse is that the Liberal plan includes creating well-paying, middle-class jobs in foreign countries. That is the shameful part. It is not money invested here in Canada for jobs, but money invested in China and Pakistan and other nations in this infrastructure bank. That is where the jobs will be found and that is where the benefits will be created. The goal of this bank is not to create jobs here in Canada for middle-class Canadians.
It is easy to sign a cheque. The prime minister loves the signing. The government members may believe in an “A” for announcement, but if job creation is one of their goals, they get a “D“ for delivery. Although they make the announcement, jobs are not happening in the country. This is where it will come back to bite us.
In Alberta, the Liberals have managed to complete 20-some out of 174 announced infrastructure projects. This is from a government that campaigned on infrastructure. That is shameful.
I see that I am out of time. I would have encouraged the government to say that we need more trade, we need lower taxes, we need to create jobs, we need to make certain that we live within our means, and that has not happened with the Liberal government.