Madam Speaker, as the federal member of Parliament for the Ottawa Valley riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I welcome this opportunity to inform Canadians about the deteriorating state of the nation's finances, as demonstrated by the legislation before Parliament today.
I begin my comments by reiterating clearly that Conservatives believe in clean air, low taxes and a healthy economy. A clean environment and well-paying jobs are only possible when taxpayers are treated with respect. Bill C-86 is 850 pages of failure to treat taxpayers with respect. It is time to stop the policy of the Liberal government to spend this country into bankruptcy.
While claiming to affect climate change in Africa with billions of Canadian taxpayer dollars may assuage the Prime Minister's vanity and his project to buy a seat on the UN Security Council, his new carbon tax or pollution tax or whatever new name he dreams up for his massive tax scheme this week, next week or next month does not change the fact that a tax is a tax is a tax. Excessive deficit budgets year after year with no credible plan to balance spending with revenue are behind the carbon tax policy.
The Gerald Butts talking points failed with Dalton McGuinty and the thoroughly disgraced Kathleen Wynne, and at the end of the day, will fail the Prime Minister. Kevin Libin, in the Financial Post, accurately summed up the carbon tax grab as a “wealth redistribution scheme”. He wrote:
It certainly will take money from consumers, businesses and high-income families and reallocate it to others using tax rebates (minus, of course, the cost of administration, which is never zero). But it’s so much more irrational than that. More accurately, it’s a plan to raise business costs and give imports an advantage at the very moment that our economy is already burdened by a tax regime judged far less attractive than those of our economic competitors, using levies that economists agree are too low to seriously affect emissions but are enough to harm the economy.
Using the concern Canadians have for the environment as cover for the Liberals' wacky left-wing wealth redistribution scheme failed Ontario. Phony concern for the environment will be exposed this time also. Canadians are smart. They know a tax grab when they see one. Contrary to claims being made about the new carbon tax being revenue neutral, Canadians are not fooled by that nose stretcher.
The federal carbon-taxing system sets out two mechanisms for taxing carbon: one, a charge on fossil fuels for fuel producers, distributors and importers, and two, an output-based pricing system for industrial facilities. Fuel charges specific to each type of fuel, including gasoline, aviation fuel, natural gas, coal and combustible waste, among others, are meant to reflect a carbon pollution price of $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2019, rising by $10 per tonne every year to reach a total of $50 per tonne in 2022. For example, a carbon price of 4.42¢ per litre would apply to gasoline as of April 2019, and would rise to 11.05¢ per litre by April 2022. Taxes on fuel for home heating and for transportation are examples of direct taxes.
While the government has indicated that 80% or 90% of the direct carbon taxes collected may trickle back to the households as a re-election bribe with the other 10% or 20% handed out as exemptions to others hard hit by the new carbon tax, what is not accounted for are the indirect carbon taxes. The HST that would be added to the carbon tax is an example of an indirect tax. These indirect carbon taxes, which represent about 70% of the new carbon tax revenue that would be collected, would increase the cost of other consumables by about $522 per household. Therefore, while the election bribe may return an amount of what has been paid by families directly, Canadians would get nailed by the hidden taxes, which are more difficult to calculate.
For taxpayers in Ontario, they have seen this story before with electricity prices. First, Ontario ratepayers were told that huge increases in the price of electricity were necessary to pay the owners of industrial wind turbines, who just happen to have close political ties to the Liberal Party. These taxpayers were told it was necessary to stop man-made global warming, or I mean climate change, or is it pollution, or whatever other label the Liberal Party thinks will fool people. Then the carbon tax that was added onto Ontario ratepayers' electricity bills was given a misleading title of “global adjustment” to fool some gullible consumers that somehow this amount was not just another tax. With this, the Liberal Party proceeded to increase the carbon tax on electricity, ending up in a new term being coined in Ontario of “energy poverty”.
Ontario is now burdened by some of the highest power rates of any jurisdiction in North America, throwing households into energy poverty and forcing industries to close shop or move to the United States. Ontario taxpayers have been suffering with carbon taxes for years.
This week, in my riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Sandvik Materials Technology in Arnprior announced it will be closing its doors and moving production south to the United States by the end of 2019. Sandvik, which makes steel pipes and tubes, currently employs 160 people at the Arnprior facility. It opened in 1975 and now, after 43 years in business in Canada, those jobs will be lost, thanks to Liberal policies. With high electricity prices, the tariff on steel, which the government has failed to resolve even after selling out Canadians with the failed NAFTA negotiations, rising interest rates, and the massive hike in taxes that is coming with the new carbon tax, the line-up at the border is only going to get longer.
Bill C-86 should have been a plan to control government spending. The fiscal policy of the government, which has been essentially to keep spending levels and deficits elevated until at least after next year's federal election and beyond, is not sustainable. The Liberal Party has been taking on debt for little gain.
Thanks to the spillover effect of a booming American economy, our economy is running at capacity, but rather than directing the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates to slow our economy, a faster drawdown on deficits would ease pressure for rate hikes. This would help the country's most indebted households, who are disproportionately young urban families with huge mortgages in places like Toronto. An Environics Analytics study has already calculated that rising interest rates will squeeze out of households an extra $2,516 each year. Add higher mortgage payments to the new Liberal carbon tax that is set to escalate every year and all the other tax increases and the future looks bleak for average middle-class Canadian families.
According to Craig Wright, the chief economist at the Royal Bank of Canada, “At this point of the cycle you want to see surpluses and paying down debt.” The recent billions in extra revenue the government collected from Canadians should have been used to pay down debt, not given to other countries as a bribe for a UN Security Council seat.
Canada's deficits are out of control. Canada spent the financial reserve it needed to fight the inevitable next recession.
The Liberals cannot even get the basics right when it comes to the day-to-day operation of government. At 850 pages, Bill C-86 is sparse when it comes to detailing how the federal government intends to correct the poor service Canadians are getting.
This legislation talks about “ensuring that social assistance payments under certain programs do not preclude individuals from receiving the Canada child benefit”. This issue should be addressed separately, not buried in 850 pages of an omnibus budget bill. The government broke its promise to never present omnibus legislation to Parliament, just like it broke its promise for modest deficits. Today's deficits are tomorrow's taxes.
Christopher is an average single parent in my riding. He works at a grocery store. Unlike the one-percenter finance minister, the member for Toronto Centre, he does not vacation at a villa he owns in the south of France. Christopher submitted an application to receive the Canada child benefit for his teenage daughter on October 15. On October 30, he was informed that his application was sent for processing and that it would be at least mid-January 2019 or later before it would be looked at. This is something new.
Under the Conservative government of former prime minister Stephen Harper, this process took 21 days. Now it takes three to four months, if one is lucky, with the same workforce. The Liberal government has added a new level of stupidity that is slowing everything down.
Heaven forbid if Christopher had not contacted his member of Parliament to help with the application rather than trying to apply for the benefit on his own. First sit on the phone for hours, leave a message and maybe get contacted a week later. Staff on the phone lines are the newest employees who do not know the programs—