Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to once again rise in this House to represent the good people of Sturgeon River—Parkland.
The past six months have been a time of tremendous trial for my constituents and all Canadians. Loved ones have been lost, families have been separated, businesses have shut down permanently and our government has failed to provide a clear plan for a way forward for this country.
Alberta and the other western provinces were hurting before this pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, including in my constituency. The Liberals have refused to sign off on new resource projects, costing thousands of jobs and billions in investments. Their infrastructure bank and infrastructure minister have failed to deliver billions of dollars in investments, costing our communities and many more thousands of jobs. Just the other day, Alberta was hurt again with the announcement that Suncor will be laying off thousands of workers, along with TC Energy.
Canadians pulled together to get us through the first wave of COVID-19. We endured lockdowns in the spring that cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and closed tens of thousands of businesses. Yes, we saved lives, but what did the Liberal government do with the sacrifice of Canadians? It dithered.
While our government could have spent the summer procuring rapid testing or planning for an economic recovery, it focused all its energy on shutting down an investigation into its own ethical failures. We have yet to receive the full details of the WE Charity scandal created by the Liberal Prime Minister, and if the Liberals had it their way, Canadians would never know the full truth. That is why we are here today, not even a year since the last Speech from the Throne: Instead of governing the nation through this crisis, the Liberals chose to play political games, prorogue Parliament and shut down any committee investigations into their wrongdoing.
Our Conservative team will not relent. We will hold the Liberal government accountable for its ethical failures. I know that on this side of the House, we are looking forward to sunny ways and sunny days indeed. While many Canadians may be dealing with a COVID pandemic, the government is dealing with an ethical sickness. The Prime Minister has been fond of telling the opposition that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and we have heard him loud and clear. We will be taking his advice and prescribing a full dosage.
There is a pandemic, and everyone out west is talking about it, but it is not COVID-19; it is the joblessness pandemic. It is a disease that has been with us for years before COVID-19 hit us. Unfortunately, rather than working tirelessly to save our struggling energy industry and the western economies, the Liberals looked eager to dance on our graves and declare our economy bust.
Why else would nearly every decision since their election in 2015 appear to be targeted toward undermining our jobs and energy industry, whether it be the pipeline-killing Bill C-69, their carbon tax or now their mega carbon tax that is masquerading as a clean fuel standard? Why is it that whenever western MPs stand up for their constituents, they are accused of only playing to regional interests? Whenever our auto sector or aerospace sector is threatened, all Canadian MPs are called together to stand up to save jobs, yet we hear nothing when our energy sector is suffering.
Alberta was proud to support fellow Canadians in the 2008 financial crisis. We carried this country's economy when the federal government had to bail out an American auto company. We were proud to support our brothers and sisters in Newfoundland and Labrador when their offshore industry was suffering. When the Atlantic economy was struggling, it was the cheques sent home by Atlantic workers working in the Alberta oil patch that kept families going.
Today, Albertans are struggling and Saskatchewan is struggling. The west is struggling. The engine of Canada's economy is facing record unemployment. Where is our federal government to lend us a hand? We have shovel-ready projects that will create tens of thousands of jobs. We do not even need a bailout from taxpayers; we just need the Liberal government to get out of the way.
The Nova Gas Transmission line, which has been waiting for nearly a year for federal approval, would create 5,500 jobs. It is the next generation of polypropylene production in the Alberta industrial heartland. At least 2,500 jobs are on the line, yet the Liberals are pushing forward with their antiplastic manufacturing agenda. With the Liberal mega carbon tax at an estimated $350 a tonne, major players that produce fertilizer to feed our farms and produce fuel to heat our homes are at risk of packing up and moving south of the border. Western Canadians do not need a minister of the middle class and those working hard to join it; we need a minister of the middle class and those working hard just to survive and stay middle class.
The Liberals are promising Canadians a lot of goodies in the throne speech, but nothing that has been promised has not been promised before by the Liberal government. The Liberals will say that this time is different, that they are working with the NDP, which holds the balance of power. We have heard this story before. I have a word of caution to my colleagues in the NDP. They can learn a lot from the B.C. Green Party or the Liberal Democrats in the U.K.: Things never really work out for the junior partner.
The throne speech should be praised for its commitment to recycling. By that I mean recycling old Liberal talking points. The Liberals have promised universal pharmacare and a universal day care system. They have promised universal broadband as well. Yet, they have been in power for five years and have failed to deliver for rural communities.
All of this is happening while the Liberals continue to plow forward with the greatest expansion of government spending and debt financing in modern Canadian history. This is over $400 billion in federal deficit, not counting the hundreds of billions taken out by arm's-length Crown corporations such as the Bank of Canada, BDC, EDC and the CMHC. This is hundreds of billions off the government's books, but hundreds of billions that Canadian taxpayers will still have to pay for if things go bust.
How exactly are the Liberals going to finance this new pandemic debt, while also launching the most radical expansion of the Canadian welfare state in a generation? It is with low interest rates, cries the Prime Minister. We can afford everything, as if we can sustain low interest rates for decades on end without the consequences of massive inflation: inflation that will erode the savings of our vulnerable seniors, inflation that will risk the opportunity for millennials and those in generation Z to buy their first home and inflation that will devalue the hard-earned wages of the working class for the benefit of big business and debt holders.
If the government chooses not to go down that disastrous path, we are left with two alternatives: They will increase taxes to finance this new spending or they will cut spending in other areas to reallocate to these new promises.
Will the Liberals be cutting the child care benefit and child care expenses tax deduction for families so they can pay for their new national day care system? Will families be denied the choice of whether to stay home with their young children or send them to day care? When the Liberals remove the Canada child benefit and tax deductions, that is exactly what they are doing. They are removing choice from parents who want to raise their children at home.
How will the government pay for this new universal pharmacare system? Will they cut health transfers like the Liberals did back in the 1990s? Will they refuse to allow new life-saving drugs like Trikafta, which miraculously saved the lives of those with cystic fibrosis.
If they do not cut spending, they will have to raise taxes. The throne speech talks a bit about this. It talks about raising taxes on digital giants and closing stock loopholes. This is not necessarily something I disagree with, but will these new taxes generate the tens of billions in new dollars that will finance universal day care and universal pharmacare? The fact is that they will not.
We are left with few alternatives. Will the Liberals raise the GST that the Conservatives lowered from 7% to 5%? Will they raise personal income taxes or capital gains taxes? Are they going to raise corporation taxes and risk capital and investment being taken to our neighbour to the south, a low-tax jurisdiction?
It is time for the Liberals to be honest with Canadians about their fiscal plan. Canadians deserve that honesty. Will the Liberals allow mass inflation to destroy the middle class? Will they raise taxes on Canadian families? Will they cut spending and benefits? Will it be a combination of all three? Canadians deserve a real answer.