Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the House today about the Liberal government's economic update.
Halfway through their term in office, the Liberals seem to be celebrating, but we think their economic update is cause for concern. What worries us the most is that this Liberal government seems to be hurting the very people it says it wants to help. Are the measures it announced mere smokescreens? That is a perfectly legitimate question and one we should be asking. That is what scandals like the paradise papers seem to suggest.
The government is making the middle class, job creators, farmers, and even our most vulnerable citizens, such as diabetics, pay for the deficit. Meanwhile, it is turning a blind eye to Liberal friends who avoid paying taxes in Canada.
Before telling everyone else how to do things, maybe the Liberal government should get its own house in order. A Fraser Institute report showed that 81% of middle-class families have been paying more tax during the Liberals' two years in office than they were paying under the former Conservative government at the end of its term in office. On average, each family is paying $840 more per year.
The Liberals answer by telling us not to worry, because the economy is growing. We know that the economy is growing right now despite the Liberals, not because of them. The measures being taken by the Liberal government now will not really have an effect until a few years from now, and the positive growth we are seeing is a direct result of our Conservative measures taken by the previous Canadian government.
The Minister of Finance also confirmed that the Liberals will borrow $20 billion this year to pay for their spending spree. This is on top of the $25 billion they borrowed in the first year of this government's mandate. They answer by telling us again not to worry and that the budget will magically balance itself, but no one knows when. The truth is that by announcing a $20 billion deficit again this year, the Liberals are breaking another election promise they had made, which was to not exceed a $10 billion deficit in the first two years, and that is already a huge amount, all things considered. Now it is going to be double that for each year.
That is not all. The government broke a second promise because the Prime Minister promised to balance the budget by 2019. Now, we have learned that he has no plan to ever balance the budget. If I understand the Liberals' message correctly, that means that the Minister of Finance is racking up debt twice as quickly as planned and that the deficit will continue to steadily grow for several more years. There is no escaping it. Someone will have to pay the bill at one point or another. That someone will be our children and grandchildren and all middle-class Canadians.
By way of evidence, first, the Liberals eliminated the universal child care benefit. Then, they did away with the children's fitness tax credit and the children's arts tax credit. They also eliminated the post-secondary education and textbook tax credit, not to mention the fact that they did away with income splitting as soon as they took office. That is not all. Next, they cancelled plans to reduce the small business tax rate and employment insurance contributions, while increasing payroll taxes and creating a new carbon tax.
That is still not all. We must not forget that the Liberals eliminated income splitting; halved the TFSA contribution limit; scrapped the public transit tax credit, even though they claim to be a green government; introduced an Uber tax; and raised taxes on beer, wine, and spirits. Finally they tried to impose a tax on health and dental benefits and even on employee discounts for retail and restaurant workers, who need a bite to eat and are trying to save a few dollars on each meal at the end of their shift. Now that is really meanspirited.
The Liberal government's strategy involves trying to smother the flames of its out-of-control spending by asking the middle class to come to the rescue.
The problem with this Liberal government is that it seems to be completely out of touch with Canadians. It seems to belong to a different class, the small percentage of wealthy people. This leads it to make decisions that make no sense to most Canadians who are living from paycheque to paycheque. When these Canadians found out that the Prime Minister and his family spent their vacation on a private island at the enormous cost of $215,000 and that taxpayers would have to foot the bill, no one could understand it. How can the Prime Minister believe that he acted responsibly? How could he have made that decision without seeing that it was problematic, contradictory, and hypocritical? How can he be concerned about the growing tax burden on Canadian families when the measures that have been put in place do not affect his family fortune?
Maybe the Liberal government needs to be reminded that the interest on the debt exceeds $15 billion per year. I am not talking about the deficit; I am talking about the interest on the debt. Those billions are gone and will never be invested. Increasing the deficit by $50 billion will not help us deal with the debt, which has grown that much in just two years. The $15 billion annual interest on the debt could pay for three tunnels between Quebec City and Lévis, three Champlain bridges, or 187,500 kilometres of repaired roads, which is the equivalent of 12 trips across Canada and back from coast to coast. It could pay for 40 huge multi-purpose arenas, four major hydroelectric dams, 500,000 daycare spaces, 11,500 affordable housing units, 2,500 MRI machines in hospitals, 75 F-18 fighter jets, 1,625 water treatment plants on reserves, or 300 rail bypasses for places like Lac-Mégantic. As an aside, we are still waiting for the results of that study.
The Liberals will reply that they created the Canada child benefit, but that benefit, which gives families a maximum of $560, is a smoke screen. Indeed, for every $560 a family receives, it will have to write off its share of the deficit. It will simply be added back into the line of credit. This year alone, after each family receives its Canada child benefit, it will still have to pay another $3,547.90 sooner or later to cover the cost of the deficit. What the Liberal government gives with one hand, it takes back with the other. All they are doing is leaving this debt to future generations.
These reminders and new perspectives might give the Liberals some idea of the repercussions of their out-of-control spending on Canadians. What we need, and what the Conservative government would deliver, is sound management of public finances, lower taxes, greater justice for victims, and a more affordable lifestyle for all Canadians. This must begin with a crackdown on tax avoidance and tax evasion, which does not appear to be one of this Liberal government's priorities, as we learned this week, based on how it is protecting the Liberal Party bagman. This close friend of the Prime Minister is suspected of hiding money in tax havens, as shown by investigations by several internationally recognized media venues.
Unfortunately, we are now dangerously on the wrong track with this other update and this other budget tabled in 2017.