Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to represent the constituents of Durham and to give my reflections today on the Liberal budget.
This is the Liberals' final budget, and many Canadians are saying thank goodness for that. The fiscal promises made by the Prime Minister, when he sought the trust of Canadians in 2015, were broken by the Liberals within several months. Fundamental promises about when the budget would be balanced, their approach to fiscal management and taxation, all of that was a misleading campaign with respect to what they promised. They promised to be somewhat fiscally prudent in government and they have been nothing but.
I am calling this the bribery budget, not because it comes so quickly after the SNC scandal, which, at its heart, relates to foreign influence and bribery, but this is a case where the Liberals are awash in money and are trying to bribe Canadians with their own money. We need to point that out. It is not only reckless, it is misleading.
Let us start with the numbers on the Liberal bribery budget.
The Liberals are running a $20-billion deficit in this next fiscal year. This is the fiscal year, I would remind members and Canadians, when the Prime Minister said the budget would be balanced, 2019. Not only is it not balanced, but he is running a $20-billion deficit in good economic times. That is very imprudent fiscal management, because there are clouds on the horizon if we look at trade uncertainty and a number of things around the world. To be running reckless, out-of-control structural deficits fuelled by tax increases at a time when the economy is looking like it is at a pivot point is very reckless. It puts us at a disadvantage for being responsive in the future.
We can remember that the Prime Minister promised Canadians in 2015 that he would never run a deficit more than $10 billion. He said that he would run three modest deficits before returning to balance in 2019. That was misleading Canadians. He is running a deficit that is more than twice as much as he promised to ever run.
What is particularly shameful about this fiscal train wreck under the Prime Minister and his finance minister is that in this last year alone, the Liberals have had $27 billion of unanticipated revenues. They are bringing in $27 billion more as a result of their tax increases and, I will acknowledge, higher employment rates because of a recovering and booming U.S. economy.
The Conservatives always said, when we were making the difficult decisions to have a balanced budget in the years after a global recession, that our economy was positioned to do well when the U.S. experienced a full recovery. The U.S. economy has been rocketing. Despite some trade disruptions, we have been seeing more employment as a result.
The government is bringing in $27 billion in unexpected revenue, but what is it doing? It is spending it all and then some, because in this bribery budget, there are $23 billion in new spending. Times are good, the economy is doing fairly well and employment has been increasing, as I said, largely due to the U.S. economy where taxes have been lowered, and the Liberal government has been raising taxes.
We are now at a pivotal point where not only does the global economy look like there could be some clouds on the horizon, but our competitiveness has eroded every month the Prime Minister has been in office. We see businesses relocating to the United States.
I met a tax accountant last year in Oakville who said that every client who had consulted him in the previous year had been arranging the creation of a U.S. subsidiary or had been shifting capital to its U.S. subsidiary. There are clouds on the horizon, so the good times may come to an end. When one's spending is out-stripping revenue, even when getting $27 billion more in revenue that one did not budget for and still spending $20 billion more than that, this is a failure of colossal proportion. The finance minister will have to retire to his villa in France, because he will not be able to show his face on Bay Street again.
This has been an out-of-control train wreck: $23 billion in new spending, a $20-billion deficit and in the last few years the Liberals have raised taxes on anything that has moved. They have raised personal income taxes. They have raised taxes on seniors by cutting back tax-free savings accounts. They have raised taxes on small businesses. There was almost a mutiny by small businesses in Canada as a result of changes the Liberals had already signalled they wanted to do with respect to retained earnings and a range of things. This is why small and medium-sized businesses are arranging their affairs elsewhere.
It does not stop there. The national carbon tax is now in place, so suppliers in the auto supply industry in Ontario, small and medium-sized ones that are not exempt by the government, compete against suppliers in Michigan and Pennsylvania, where there is no carbon tax. There are taxes on the Saturday night, the sharing economy, Uber. The Liberals are taxing that now. They have an escalator tax on alcohol. The Liberals are defying parliamentary tradition. They are not even coming to the legislature to ask for approval of future tax increases. They are automatically scheduling them for certain sections of the economy.
Of course, the Liberals have put $2 billion in tariff taxes on Canadian businesses. They are killing the aluminum boats and the families that sell those, like the Junkin family in Port Perry. They are hurting our metal fabricators across the country. On Prince Edward Island, I met with a great employer that was hurting as a result of the Liberals' tariffs.
This is why they are raising $27 billion more. The Liberals have raised taxes on everything that has moved. They have made us non-competitive. They see capital and talent going to the United States, yet there is nothing in this budget for General Motors in my community. In fact, the regional chair of Durham did not even get a courtesy phone call from the Prime Minister until three weeks later. I was proud that my leader was in Oshawa the next day to listen, alongside my colleague from Oshawa.
GM and auto are suffering because of the three Ts: taxes, tariffs and trade uncertainty. That is why GM is relocating to other operations in the U.S. The government was asleep at the switch when tariffs were applied. It has bumbled the NAFTA negotiations. When Mexico completes an agreement with the U.S. before Canada, which had a free trade agreement for almost a decade prior to Mexico's joining the party, it is a failure.
With respect to the Canada training benefit, I want to alert Canadians that it is a made-up element of this budget. I have checked with provinces. Provinces are in charge of training and they have not even been consulted by the Liberals on the so-called Canada training benefit. The Liberals have not consulted provinces, which actually do the education training, whether it is the trades or the colleges. They have not consulted employers.
What is the Canada training benefit? It kind of looks like a tuition tax credit for middle age. That is great if somebody wants to take an interest course when he or she is 40. However, I want training or an assistance program for people transitioning now out of the auto industry because of the Liberals' incompetence. They have not even consulted the Province of Ontario, and the province is in charge of training. There is no matching of what our economy needs with the training to meet that need and the people who need the training.
That is how the Canada jobs benefit, under the Conservative government, operated. There needed to be the employee, the employer and the province at the table. This is a shell game where the Liberals have the Canada training benefit. They have talked to nobody about it. It is a few months before an election. It is a fraud.
There was nothing else in there for productivity and to reduce taxes to keep our competitive edge to ensure manufacturers in Durham could compete for jobs in the United States. With the Liberals' inaction on trade and tariffs and their carbon tax, all of these things are making it hard for us to compete.
With this budget, we see the Liberal bribery budget with all its warts. With $27 billion in new revenue, they are still running a $20 billion deficit and they have committed $22 billion in new spending—with Canadians' money.
This budget will pass through the House. The only way to truly stop the Liberal bribery budget is with a change of government on October 21.