Madam Speaker, I am happy to speak today to Bill C-74. Once again, as with many speeches I have given in this place, I rise with a bit of a sense of irony.
Budget implementation bills are often complex because they implement the budget and execute measures in a number of areas of law and regulatory action, so they tend to number in the hundreds of pages. My friends in the Liberal Party used to decry the use of omnibus legislation, but here we are with Bill C-74, once again an omnibus bill subject to time allocation. These are “assaults on democracy” in the words of my Liberal friends when they were in opposition, and now they are statecraft for getting things done in the chamber. They are becoming very adept at it, setting records in the use of time allocation per day.
Nonetheless, at this report stage debate I am going to reiterate some of the concerns I have with the budget. They are fundamental economic concerns that all Canadians should share.
I am going to highlight one quote from the Minister of Finance, taken from near the end of his budget speech, which we all listened to here. In many ways it typifies the problems with the Liberal Party and its approach to governing and its reckless abuse of the public purse. Near the end of his speech the finance minister said, “With this budget, we are doubling down on our plan to invest in the middle class and in people working hard to join it.”
Most Canadians, even those who do not follow politics that much, have heard that trope many times, that platitude that “we're here for the middle class and those working hard to join it”. Today in debate the Minister of Environment almost accidentally kept spouting that phrase. It is something rote in their learning.
The Fraser Institute has confirmed that most Canadians have seen less under the Liberal government. They have seen tax increases despite some of the changes made to the child care benefit. If we look at the total tax burden on Canadians, the elimination of tax credits for young people in sports and music, the elimination of the transit tax credit, higher income taxes, changes to the tax treatment of dividends, the carbon tax, EI and payroll taxes, we see that the Liberals have raised taxes dozens of times indirectly or directly. We even joke that they tax our Saturday night, because there is now an automatic tax on wine, spirits, and beer, and they are taxing Uber rides home. The Liberals are running out of things to tax. That is why most Canadians are actually not better off under the Liberals. They are far worse off.
What is troubling about the minister's quote is his use of the word “invest”. That is his euphemism for spending. The word “invest” appeared 456 times in the minister's budget speech and document. Why should that concern Canadians? It should because it means there are 456 areas within the scope of government where the Liberals are increasing spending.
The rate of increased government spending is absolutely reckless, a 20% increase in spending in just over two years, accounting for $58 billion in new money. As the Auditor General has shown through his reports and from reports by Finance Canada, very little of that actually went to infrastructure. Are Canadians 20% better off?
When the government is running huge deficits in the midst of a recession, do we see logic to any of this increased spending? That number does not even reflect this week. This week we bought a pipeline. That is another $4.5 billion.
We are approaching a level where the Liberal government, which is just past half of its mandate, has put a more than 20% increase in spending by the public purse.
In my last speech I turned around the minister's phrase, “We're going to double down on investing.” Double down on spending is what he was saying. I joked about the Liberal double-double. Most Canadians love their double-double, cream and sugar, but the Liberal double-double is doubling the tax burden and doubling deficits.
We remember the Prime Minister assuring Canadians that he was going to run a deficit as prime minister, but never more than $10 billion. It was a Liberal double-double: two years of $20-billion deficits while raising taxes. Therefore, Liberals are bringing in more revenue by taking more from Canadians, small businesses, entrepreneurs, households, and seniors, and yet they are even outstripping what they are bringing in. It is truly astounding.
Now we can factor in their decisions with respect to the resource economy and being forced to buy an asset because they cannot find private sector buyers. Confidence in the Canadian economy and the ability to get projects done here is shrinking, so the government now feels that it should replace the private sector. That has put another $4.5-billion burden on taxpayers.
What was not in the budget, despite all the purported investments—remember I said that he used the term “invest” more than 400 times—was investment, or spending, or provision made for NAFTA or U.S. trade changes. There was zero money allocated for that. Most Canadians, when they look at budgets, forecasting, or spending, have a rainy-day fund in case something goes bad or there is an unexpected problem. The government knew there were risks related to NAFTA, it knew there were risks related to steel and aluminum tariffs, and yet it allocated zero for that risk.
We have already seen the impact of the Prime Minister's inability to get a deal on softwood and the tariffs applied there now. Tonight, in a few hours, we are going to see tariffs applied on steel and aluminum. It does not have to be that way. NAFTA and provision for the NAFTA negotiations were mentioned on a couple of pages in the budget document, but there is no actual plan for a contingency. For a government that spends the money of Canadians so cavalierly, to have allocated zero to risks associated with trade is troubling. We are seeing that play out today.
The Conservatives have tried to work very closely with the government on NAFTA. In 10 months or so, I have asked maybe six or seven questions on the most fundamental economic agreement for Canada. In fact, I have praised the minister, particularly his efforts in January with respect to auto parts, but the Team Canada approach means that the Liberals have to listen to the team that actually negotiated the NAFTA trade agreement and was able to secure deals that respected supply managed farms and small businesses that kept us competitive. The very team that wants to help is being ignored, particularly when it comes to linking trade and security, which both Democrats and Republicans want to do. In this budget, there is zero provided for a response to the tariffs that will be setting in on our steel and aluminum industries. It was terrible that the Prime Minister went to these communities and insinuated that he had dealt with it. He went on a victory tour, and here we are with no deal.
I also raise the fact that Liberals are rushing through this budget implementation bill when the very things they are doing in it are not complete yet. Of course, the bill is full of tax increases, and one of the special ones the Prime Minister is looking at is in part 3 of this bill, the excise tax provisions for cannabis. That really seems to be the only legislative agenda the Liberals want to keep on track: the legalization of marijuana. In this bill, they are already planning the excise tax regime. The only problem is that marijuana is not yet legal. In fact, the Senate has been proposing changes with respect to home-grown cannabis. In this omnibus bill that the Liberals are rushing through with time allocation, there are provisions on other related legislation that has not even passed yet.
Why the rush, particularly when the Senate is dealing with it and we have heard concerns from chiefs of police and pediatricians with the Canadian Medical Association? With the current government, it is a matter of damn the torpedoes: use time allocation and omnibus bills to get it done. The key thing is that when they say they are going to invest, Canadians had better get a hold of their wallets.