Mr. Speaker, before I begin my speech, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my excellent colleague from Souris—Moose Mountain. It is interesting that his riding name contains both French and English. I think that this is a very important debate. As a member of the Association parlementaire de la Francophonie, the French fact is very important to me and to the Conservatives.
Today's opposition motion is very simple. There is nothing complicated about it. We simply want to know what is really going on. We want to know where we are going. I think that any self-respecting government needs to know where it is going. The motion is simple, but I want to make sure that it is clear for all parliamentarians, so I am going to read it. It says, and I quote:
That the House call on the government to tell Canadians in what year the budget will be balanced, and to do so in this week’s Fall Economic Statement.
I have been told that the government will likely present its fall economic statement on Wednesday of this week. I hope that the Minister of Finance is ready. I hope that he has worked hard to answer this question, which is vital for a good manager. I hope that he was professional when he was in the private sector and that he will continue to be professional in his role as finance minister.
The Prime Minister inherited a balanced budget. Say what you want, but that is not fake news. It is a reality. Every expert confirms it. It is not partisanship. It is a fact. In 2015, there was an election and when the Conservative Party left the government, it left some money on the books. The U.S. economy and the global economy were growing and the real estate market was booming. Those are facts. I said so at the time: the real estate market was booming in Toronto and Vancouver and interest rates were very low, a record low. Last year, there was a $20-billion deficit. In 2017-18 alone, the government ran a $20-billion deficit. We do not get the impression that the current government has any fiscal restraint. It has decisions to make, plans to make, programs to implement, inputs and outputs to manage, revenues and expenditures to manage, but we get no sense that the government has any fiscal restraint. The Liberals have no plan.
There was an extraordinary increase in revenues due to the economic situation: we had a surplus of $20 billion last year. Instead of paying down the debt, the Liberals spent that money, but we do not know on what. The Liberals prefer to waste money. As the member for Papineau has never had to worry about money, he is not really concerned about Canadians' money. I would like to inform the government and its leader, the Prime Minister, that Canadian workers' money does not belong to them. They have a responsibility.
Before he was elected in 2015, the member for Papineau, who is our Prime Minister today, said that budgets balance themselves. Wow. That really says a lot about what the future holds for the manager of public funds. In the 2015 campaign, he promised a slight deficit, which happens from time to time. It has happened in the past. In certain circumstances, there may be temporary deficits. The Prime Minister and the Liberals campaigned across Canada in 2015 and said that they would run small deficits and then balance the budget by 2019. The reason for today's motion is that there is every indication that this will happen after 2035. Some even say that it will not happen until 2045. That is really reassuring. Is that responsible? I think not.
As I mentioned, Canada has a deficit of nearly $20 billion this year, three times what the Prime Minister had promised during the campaign. The debt has increased by $60 billion in three years. We will not engage in partisan politics. The Department of Finance Canada is not Conservative, Liberal or affiliated with any party of the House. I hope we can trust our public servants.
The Department of Finance Canada is predicting another 25 years of deficits if the Liberal Party of Canada, the party that currently forms government, is left in charge.
If we, as a good father, good mother or a family's financial manager, acted that way, it would not take 25 years to have to declare bankruptcy.
It is important to be responsible, which is why we, the Conservatives, are asking when Canada will return to a balanced budget.
Under the Liberals, the future will bring a higher cost of living and tax increases for all Canadians. It is simple math. If the government continues to spend and spend, it will eventually have to meet with specialists and have a recovery plan. In a recovery process, either drastic cuts or increased revenues are needed.
How does the government increase revenues? Quite simply, it raises taxes and income tax. It is not complicated. I am not inventing anything and I make no claims of being any kind of tax expert. This is just common sense.
My personal and family budgets are balanced, and there have been surpluses for many years. For over 30 years, I have been waking up every morning to go to work. I am very proud of that, and I am trying to instill that work ethic in my children. I think that we need to lead by example. I am not sure that the Prime Minister is currently leading by example. At any rate, the example he is setting is not a very good. Normalizing the use of marijuana is not setting a good example either, but that is another issue.
The Liberals are going to spend more paying down interest on the debt than we are currently spending on health transfers. Is that reasonable? The answer is no.
According to the Department of Finance, the budget will not be balanced until 2045. The debt has gone up by $450 billion. More debt today means more taxes tomorrow. That is how it works. Last year, Canada's debt hit a record high. This government will go down in history for racking up the highest debt in Canada at $670 billion. That is the equivalent of $47,612 per family.
I do not have much time, but this is the first time that I have had so much material for a speech. I have a giant pile of material. I will try to cover as much of it as I can.
I would like to get back to the government's broken promises. It promised $25 million for Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board. It promised to run a short-term deficit of $10 billion, balance the budget in 2019, and provide costing analysis for every bill. It said that cutting taxes for the middle class and creating a new 33% tax bracket in 2016 would have no fiscal impact. It promised to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio to 31% in 2015-16, 30% in 2016-17 and 29% in 2017-18. Other things it promised to do right away were to invest $3 billion over four years to improve home care, eliminate the $1,000 labour market impact assessment fee to make it easier and more affordable to hire live-in caregivers, and set a cap on how much can be claimed through the stock option deduction on annual stock option gains higher than $100,000. I hope that is clear.
It promised a 12-month break on EI premiums to encourage businesses to hire young people by waiving employer EI premiums for all those between the ages of 18 and 24 who were hired into permanent positions in 2016, 2017 and 2018. It promised to invest an additional $100 million each year in the industrial research assistance program and an additional $6 billion in infrastructure, as well as an additional $775 million per year in worker training.
It promised to remove the GST on new capital investments in affordable rental housing, invest $300 million more in the youth employment strategy in order to create 40,000 jobs, including 5,000 green jobs, each year for three years, and invest $40 million each year to help employers create new opportunities.
It promised to phase out subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, re-evaluate the expansion of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline project—it did not say it would invest $4.5 billion—review the previous government's repeal of the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and require all parliamentarians to disclose their expenses in a common manner each quarter.
I am out of time, so I would be happy to answer any questions my colleagues may have.