Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise to speak to this most timely motion as this tax-and-spend government sets to increase taxes even more on hard-working middle-class Canadian families.
The Prime Minister talks a lot about the middle class. He talks a good game about the middle class. During the last federal election, the Liberals boasted that they would bring back fairness for middle-class Canadians. They have been in office now for 15 months, and the question arises, what exactly have they delivered for middle-class Canadians? What have they done to restore fairness to middle-class Canadians? It seems that the only thing the government has done for middle-class Canadians is increase taxes on middle-class Canadians.
Let us look at the record over the last 15 months.
Let us start with the children's arts tax credit of $250 per child. It is gone, eliminated, taken out of the pockets of middle-class Canadian families. What about the children's fitness credit of $1,000 per child? It has been rolled back to $500 and is scheduled to be eliminated next year. That is $1,000 gone, eliminated, taken out of the pockets of hard-working middle-class Canadians by the government. There is the universal child care benefit, which has been eliminated by the government, taken out of the pockets of hard-working middle-class Canadians. In many cases it is thousands of dollars which have been taken out of Canadians' pockets.
What about hard-working families who benefited from income splitting? They can forget about it with these Liberals, because that too has been eliminated.
What about the textbook tax credit to help students and parents pay for the cost of post-secondary education? That is done like dinner, just like many other tax reductions which our previous Conservative government brought in, and the Liberal government has rolled back.
Just when we thought it was getting bad, and perhaps when we thought it could not get worse, guess what? It did. Last fall, the Liberal government brought forward two massive tax hikes that disproportionally impact middle-class Canadians, starting with a massive CPP tax grab, taking some $2,200 out of the pockets of the average family.
Not to be outdone by their massive CPP tax hike, the Liberals then introduced the mother of all tax increases, a tax on everything, a massive carbon tax, which is going to take $2,600 a year out of the pockets of the average Canadian family. Let me repeat that: $2,600 a year. It is taking some $38 billion out of the pockets of Canadians each and every year. Premier Brad Wall called the Liberal carbon tax one of the largest tax increases in Canadian history. Premier Wall is exactly right.
The Liberals say, “Don't worry, be happy. Help is on the way.” Help is on the way by way of the Liberal so-called middle-class tax cut. It all sounds pretty good, a middle-class tax cut. Who could be against that?
Like anything, the devil is in the details. When we look at the details, we see there is much wanting in the so-called Liberal middle-class tax cut. Take, for example, someone earning between $62,000 and $78,000 a year. How much would they save under the so-called Liberal middle-class tax cut? The answer is $117. Is that $117 a week or maybe $117 a month? No, it is $117 a year. What a joke. That works out to about $2.25 a week. Let me put that in some perspective.
Every morning I go to Tim Hortons and buy an extra large black coffee. That costs me $2.10. This so-called middle-class tax cut to Canadians earning between $62,000 and $78,000 a year is the equivalent of an extra large cup of coffee at Tim Hortons per week, plus a bonus of 15¢ to pocket or spend on whatever one can buy for 15¢ these days.
What about someone who earns $31,000, someone who earns the equivalent of the median income, someone who is smack dab in the middle of the middle class? How much would that person save under the so-called Liberal middle-class tax cut? The answer is a big fat zero. I have said it before, and I will say again, that the Liberal middle-class tax cut is nothing more than a Liberal middle-class tax cut fraud. That is what it is.
While the Liberal government is increasing taxes on hard-working Canadian families, the government is increasing Canada's deficit and national debt. We know the Liberal government inherited a $1 billion Conservative surplus and, in a year, turned it into a $30 billion deficit. As bad as that is, it gets even worse because there is no end in sight to the red ink.
During the last election campaign, the Liberals said they would run what they characterized as modest deficits in 2016, 2017, and 2018, but by budget 2019-20, the budget would be balanced. We know this promise happens to be like so many other promises from the government: another Liberal promise made and another Liberal promise broken. The budget will not be balanced in 2019. It will not even be balanced in 2029 or 2039, or 2049. According to the Department of Finance, it will not be balanced until 2055.
I would characterize this Liberal fiscal policy as a fiscal policy of generational theft. It is a policy of fiscal vandalism. That is what it is.
It is not surprising that this is coming from a Prime Minister who said, after all, that budgets balanced themselves. As the Liberal government and the Prime Minister wait for the budget to magically balance itself, Canadians are left to ask, as a result of the comprehensive review that the government asked the Department of Finance to take, just how many more taxes will go up. How much more is the government going to take out of the wallets of hard-working Canadians?
The government has a spending problem that has resulted in higher taxes and Canadians cannot take it anymore. They cannot afford the Liberal government anymore.