Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here today to speak to the opposition motion. I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Edmonton Manning.
Today I will be talking about the taxes that the Liberals have increased, their adverse effects, and the future.
To start, let us talk about the taxes that the Liberals have raised.
Since they came into power in 2015, the Liberals have made continual attempts to raise taxes on Canadians and on small businesses. Overall, middle-class Canadians are paying over $800 more in taxes. How did we get there?
First of all, a lot of the tax credits that were in place under the previous government were removed. We need only to look at how much that cost. Let us think of the fitness tax credit, which was $1,200 per child. A family with two or three children could have received $3,600 right there. The education and tuition tax credits were also removed. I remember having two children in university, and the amount received then was $5,000 per child. We are talking about thousands of dollars in taxes there. When the credit is removed, it essentially means that taxes are being increased.
There were many Canadians who were taking advantage of income splitting, and depending on their income, that could be as much as $12,000 or $13,000.
If we add up the number of things that were taken away, it could be as much as $20,000.
For all the Liberals' talk about adding back a child benefit and how a family with young children would get $5,400 each, a family with no young children but with kids in university would be much worse off. We see that in the data that shows that 46% of Canadians are within $200 of insolvency every month. That is the result of the Liberal government continually squeezing them.
The Liberals have tried to squeeze Canadians in other ways, such as trying to raise taxes on health and dental benefits. We sounded the alarm and were able to get them to walk back on that. They tried to put some taxes in place on small businesses that would have caused undue circumstances. They tried to tax the passive income in corporations at 73%, which clearly resulted in outrage and an outcry from Canadians. We were able to get the Liberals to walk that back.
This is important because it follows the principle that we talked about in science about boiling the frog. If we gradually raise the temperature one degree at a time, the frog will eventually die because it does not realize that it is getting into really hot water. That essentially is what has happened under the Liberals: They have increased taxes so many times that now the whole country is in hot water. Canadians are really struggling to afford to live, and that is even before we count in the carbon tax and the impact it will have.
We do not know exactly how much impact the carbon tax will have, because the open and transparent Liberal government has not disclosed that information to Canadians. The Liberals have said they will give Canadians $300 back at the end of the year and have asked Canadians to trust them that this is the amount it is going to cost. Depending on where we live in this country, if we think about an increase of 11¢ a litre on gasoline for the current carbon pricing and we think about the increase to the cost of home heating and the cost of groceries, we recognize that it is going to be more than $300. The government is really getting more money than it is going to give back, which is in essence a tax increase as well.
We know it is not going to stop there. We know that after the next election, the government is going to continue to increase this carbon tax because it is a cash grab. Documents show that this tax will increase by a factor of six. It could cost Canadians $3,000 to $5,000 a year. Let us think of what that would do to families that are already precariously on the brink.
There have been many negative impacts. I talked about the impact on Canadians, but the impact on small and medium-sized businesses is something that we are seeing in my riding, where businesses are either closing up or moving to the United States because of the tax advantages there versus operating in Canada.
What did we really get for all of the cash that the government is taking out of the pockets of Canadians? A lot of that money has not been of benefit to Canadians. Let us think about the $15 billion that the Liberals took from the municipalities that was supposed to be for their roads and bridges but was put into an infrastructure bank that has benefited nobody. What about the $1 billion the government is spending on allowing illegal immigrants to come into the country, paying to put them up in hotels for the four years needed to process them because of the backlog?
We have seen the government's many trips around the world. There was the disastrous India trip, the China trip, the Davos trip. People were flying all over the place, with 183 people going to COP 21, where the government is spending billions of Canadians' dollars with no real benefit to Canadians.
Of course, there were millions of dollars spent on the Canada food guide so we could all know that we should drink water and enjoy our food, which was a huge revelation to many, I am sure.
It seems that tax increases keep coming, and the government is not being open with Canadians about what they can expect after the next election, should we be unfortunate enough to have the Liberals remain in power.
We know that more taxes are coming. We know the Liberals tried to put in place a tax on health and dental benefits, and they will try to put it in place again. They will again increase the carbon tax. They will again reach into the pockets of small businesses, because the government has a spending problem. They are spending way more than they promised. They promised small deficits of $10 billion for three years and a return to a balanced budget this year. Here we are in 2019, and the budget is not balanced.
We cannot believe the promises made by the current government. It has a track record, depending on whether we go to the TrudeauMeter or a promise tracker, of keeping 25% of their promises, so Canadians should definitely keep that in mind as we look to the election and see what might be coming down the road.
Let us talk about the future. We know that tough times are ahead. Economists are predicting that we are approaching recession conditions, and growth has certainly slowed. After glowing accolades and the Prime Minister singing about the victories of his government, all of a sudden we see that growth is grinding to a halt and that there are concerns of a recession. Here we are with more debt than anyone could manage, and there is no end in sight. That will certainly cause us to pay more interest on the deficit and keep us from doing other things.
Let us think about the $40 billion that was transferred to the provinces for health care. We know we have an aging population and a rise in chronic disease, so we definitely need more money in the health care system, but that $40 billion that we could be putting on top of our existing transfer payments is going toward paying interest to wealthy bankers and investors. I do not think that was the intent.
Clearly, the government has been wasting taxpayers' dollars. It has been raising taxes on taxpayers and it will keep doing that as we move toward the election and it is not going to be open and transparent about it. Liberals clearly do not intend to tell Canadians the real story, and that is why Conservatives moved this motion today: to make sure Canadians are informed about what has already taken place and what they can expect in the future.