Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the very comprehensive motion before us, which is focused on taxes. A lot of it is focused on not raising taxes in the short term. However, most importantly, we also do not want to see this continuing growth of our deficit and debt in the long term. Therefore, it is about both the taxes of today and the taxes of tomorrow.
As we know, and as any family knows, a certain amount of income comes in, and there is only a certain amount of debt it can service. The current government seems to have an outrageous problem with spending.
If we go back to the campaign of 2015, the Liberals promised a balanced budget. They would run small deficits for the short term and then get back to a balanced budget. They predicted a recession and that things would be difficult. The former Conservative government left them with not only a balanced budget but things in place to create success in the economy. I would argue that the success of the economy, at least in the first couple of years, had nothing to do with the Liberals' policies but was a result of the appropriate moves the former government made, which left them in a good position.
Not only have the Liberals had deficits, they have had good times. Their argument was that they might have to spend a little money to stimulate the economy. Well, if we have to stimulate the economy in bad times and stimulate the economy in good times, and increase debt as we do it, we will run into a whole bunch of problems, and that is exactly what the government has done.
Quite frankly, I know a lot of people who call themselves Liberals. They were certainly Chrétien-Martin Liberals. They remember the 1990s. They remember the challenges of the massive problem we got ourselves into in terms of debt that was increasing and the very difficult job of getting ourselves back into a reasonable fiscal position. I will give the former Martin-Chrétien group credit for recognizing that there was a serious issue and for making some of those hard choices. Of course, they paid down some of the debt. The Conservative government, in good times, before the global recession, also paid down significant debt.
What we have is a Liberal government that made a specific promise, and quite clearly it has broken it. A recent report by the Macdonald–Laurier Institute says that the Liberals are leaving what will be a really unfair tax burden on our children and grandchildren. When they talk with pride about spending money here and spending money there, what they really mean is that they are leaving debt for our children and grandchildren. Perhaps they should look more closely at that. This report is not from a right-wing think tank. It is a very reasoned report in terms of the current situation. It is saying how unfair it will be to our children and grandchildren if they continue in this way. Quite frankly, we cannot afford another four years of this total disregard for taxpayers' dollars and how they spend it.
What we are talking about is a lot of taxes. The Liberals have a desire to spend money and have a very tough time saying no to anything. They are trying to find ways they can pay for this spending and maybe not have that debt look quite as significant and severe.
Let us talk about some of the things they have tried to do in terms of sneaking in extra taxes to pay for their out-of-control spending. We all remember the changes the Liberals were going to make for small businesses and the uproar from small businesses across the country. The Liberals backed away partially from that move.
We all remember what happened all of a sudden for someone who worked in a McDonald's and maybe got a complimentary Big Mac meal. These people make minimum wage, but they might get a meal. All of a sudden, government wanted to tax that as a taxable benefit. The Liberals quickly heard that that was not going to work. They could not get tax money there, so they backed off from that.
Then the Liberals were going to try to tax health and dental benefits. Again, they quickly heard an uproar and moved back from that idea.
Then, of course, who could forget when the CRA decided to go after diabetics, who have huge challenges in terms of the management of their disease and the number of hours that they have to spend managing their disease? All of a sudden, the Liberals decided that managing a chronic disease such as diabetes was not really that bad and that diabetics really did not deserve to have the disability tax credit.
What we see are broken promises, out-of-control spending, the inability to not say say yes to everything, and now the Liberals are looking for ways to actually pay for what they are spending.
So far the Liberals have backed off from these unpopular decisions, but as I have indicated, if they are in power for another four years, we could see not only those issues coming back to the table but many more that might be up their sleeves.
Let us go a little more into taxes and what is truly happening in the real world for small business operators. I am going to use an example.
I met with a number of people who sell small boats, little fishing boats, and they are scattered across British Columbia, where we have beautiful lakes.
In the summer these businesses were saying that the aluminum tariffs were really going to be a challenge for them, because they had to order right then for their product to arrive for the 2019 season. They were asking if the tariffs were going to be removed and whether they should wait a few weeks or months to do their orders, because it would have a very significant impact on their business if every boat they brought in from an American manufacturer was subject to a significant tariff.
I could not answer that question at the time, and it is a good thing I did not answer it, because had they decided not to order their product, they would still be looking at the same issue many months later. They would not have any product coming in. What many of them had to do was just go ahead, do the order and pay the tariffs, which would be passed along to the consumers.
Not only that, but at the same time, these business owners in British Columbia were being hit with an employee health tax that the provincial government decided to impose. The Canada pension plan premiums are going up. All of a sudden small businesses are facing increases in payroll taxes, employment insurance, Canada pension plan, the new employee health tax and a 15% premium on the products they are bringing on.
What has happened for people like these small boat manufacturers is that they have had to lay off staff, and in some cases their businesses are no longer viable. It has been incredibly crippling. It is just raising the cost of everything, even if they have consumers who can actually afford what could be a 20% or 25% increase in terms of the product.
I have to use British Columbia as an example in briefly mentioning the carbon tax. The Liberals love to talk about how the carbon tax in British Columbia has worked so well and has been there for 10 years and is just great. What they never tell anyone is that with a stroke of a pen, what was a revenue-neutral carbon tax in British Columbia became a tax grab by the NDP government. It was done with the stroke of a pen.
The Liberals can say all they want about how they are going to give a cheque to those four provinces that do not have their own plan and how they are going to take as much out of the right as they are going to put in with their left, which no one believes, because they could never put as much in when they take that much out. No one believes it is going to be the same amount of money. More importantly, as everyone knows, it is not going to take very much—just one slash of a pen—for that to go from revenue neutral to a tax grab to pay for the Liberals' out-of-control spending.
I think we can see small businesses right there.
This is an important motion, and there are very good reasons that we have put it forward.