Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place on behalf of my constituents who sent me here to add my voice to the debate.
I would like to take us back to the election in 2015 and review the Liberals' proposition that they put to Canadians.
The Liberals campaigned on a very specific promise. They ran on a promise to run modest deficits for a maximum of three years and then return to a surplus within the fourth year of the mandate. That was a key promise. It was a point of differentiation between not only themselves and the Conservatives, but also between themselves and the New Democratic Party. Therefore, this was an important piece of the Liberal campaign and was part of the basis upon which they were elected. They have ignored the question of balanced budgets in this bill and continually in this Parliament.
I want to draw the attention of Canadians to the Liberal campaign document. It says, “Real Change: A New Plan for a Strong Middle Class”. There is a nice picture on page 11, with the Prime Minister pretending to operate a crane. On the next page, page 12, it says:
We will run modest short-term deficits of less than $10 billion in each of the next two fiscal years to fund historic investments in infrastructure and our middle class.
After the next two fiscal years, the deficit will decline and our investment plan will return Canada to a balanced budget in 2019.
The government took that message to the doors across Canada. It was part of a platform that every one of the Liberal members of Parliament signed on for and took to their constituents. We know they were successful with that message. They put it to Canadians that a small, modest, short-term deficit was necessary in order to fund infrastructure and that it would not be a structural deficit, or how they would fund ongoing program expenditure and general government bloat. They promised to build infrastructure with that deficit money and that the budget would then just balance itself.
Canadians were taken in by that Liberal promise, as well as many others that have been subsequently broken, like their promises on electoral reform, on military procurement, on access to information reform, on strengthening privacy protection, to never use time allocation, which they have done on this bill, and to never introduce omnibus legislation, which this bill is. I could go on.
However, the promise to not return Canada to the bad old days of structural deficits was a promise Canadians must have believed when they voted for the Liberals. I hope Canadians believed the Liberals. I hope Canadians have not become so cynical that they actually assumed the Liberals were lying when they promised a balanced budget. I presume Canadians took them at their word and believed they were planning to run modest deficits the first three years, with a return to balance in 2019.
Setting aside the question of credibility and cynicism in politics, why does this even matter?
The previous speaker told us at length why, suggesting that the Liberals could not balance the budge, that it was not all that important, that all these other things were much more important. However, it matters, because today's deficits will be paid for in the future by service cuts, or the expenditures they are proudly talking about undertaking in years to come will be paid by tax increases, or both. Structural deficits really are an exercise in taking away from the future in order to pay for today. It is intergenerational theft and Canadians do not support it.
Interest on the federal debt is expected to grow quickly to $37 billion per year, which is almost the amount the federal government transfers to the provinces for health care. Canadians would rather have health care than interest on debt. These deficits are extremely important to programs on which Canadians rely.
The finance minister might not be too concerned about deficits. The Prime Minister, as has been said by others before, is not concerned. He has never had to worry about money and so he does not worry about the money of Canadians.
Now that we are in the fourth year of this government, we still do not have a budget that has balanced itself, and the government has had all the good luck it possibly could have. It inherited a fiscal legacy that was the strongest in the G7, a legacy that was a product of the previous government's economic stewardship, which led Canada through the global economic crisis and its aftermath. It had that hard-won legacy that, admittedly, even previous Liberal governments had contributed to under successive finance ministers. However, it was especially Conservative finance minister Jim Flaherty who handed this finance minister a legacy that he has squandered. That is a fact. It is not a question for debate. The Liberals were left a balanced budget. The PBO confirmed that the government inherited a surplus that was quickly squandered through the immediate undertaking of additional expenses, pushing Canada into deficit.
The Liberals inherited much more than the sound fiscal management of the previous government, and to be fair, even the government before that. What they also inherited were rising commodity prices. Global commodities were at rock bottom when the government was sworn in, the price of oil, in particular, having collapsed during the last year of the previous government. Prices were at rock bottom and have been rising steadily since. They inherited a global economy that was on the brink of recession when they were elected and has been humming along strongly since. They inherited a booming American economy. They inherited low interest rates. They inherited a housing boom in Canada's two largest housing markets. None of these things were things they should have counted on, yet even with all these advantages, they have not been able to keep their own promise. Take away any one of these advantages, and their fiscal situation will deteriorate very quickly.
Rising interest rates will have a negative impact on Canadians who are already deeply in debt, and they will affect the government's budget as well. Government borrowing competes with private borrowing, driving up consumer interest rates and inflation. The government is not prepared for a shift to historically normal interest rates. Significant portions of the national debt will mature in the next few years, and the minister has not given sufficient answers as to how that would affect Canada's finances.
The end of the real estate boom may hurt economic activity in Toronto and Vancouver. That is going to be a factor in Canada's budget balance. A global recession, another collapse in commodity prices, protectionism or a future worldwide financial collapse, any of these things could happen at any time, and the government has squandered its fiscal capacity to deal with these things through its structural deficit, which it broke a promise to create.
There is nothing in the budget implementation act to address the deficit. There is also nothing in it to get the Trans Mountain expansion built. There is nothing in it to address the flight of capital from Canada. There is nothing in the bill that would give comfort to the thousands of auto workers in Oshawa who have just lost their jobs or the tens of thousands more who are likely worrying that they are next.
There is nothing in the bill to give relief to Canadians concerned about whether they would be able to afford basic necessities that would be made more expensive by the government's carbon tax, even as chosen industrial emitters would be exempted and others would merely be chased out of the country.
The budget implementation act would do nothing to help strengthen the middle class. In fact, it would do quite the opposite. It telegraphs a future of deficits, debt and capital flight, which would lead to further job losses.
The other thing is that the budget implementation act would not get any energy products to market, as others on this side have suggested. The Liberals promised that TMX would be under construction by this past summer. The summer has come and gone. The money has gone to Texas. There is no pipeline, and that will continue to exacerbate the price discount on Alberta oil, which is threatening to expand and make it more difficult for this government, or a future government, to balance the budget.
With that, I am very disappointed with the act, and I will not be supporting the bill.