Madam Speaker, it has been my practice to consider my response to the Speech from the Throne to be my maiden remarks in every Parliament, and I want to begin by thanking the good people of Carleton for electing me a seventh time to this chamber. They have vested their trust in me and I am deeply humbled by it.
I want to thank my wife Anaida, my daughter Valentina and our new son baby Cruz. Cruz was born eight days before the election. He was born premature. He rushed to get here and then they told him he had to wait 18 more years to vote. It is another example of the red tape and rules that are holding people back. The poor little guy could not even vote for his dad. We hope to fix that when we are in government. The other thing he found out is that he owes something like $60,000 of federal government debt.
Those were two pieces of bad news, but all else has been good news for him. He has a wonderful and loving mother, and he is fortunate to look more like her than his father, which all members will agree is a good thing. As members can see, I was not elected for my good looks, but I am very thankful to have the support of my family.
I also want to thank my father Don, my mother Marlene and my brother Patrick, as well as the countless volunteers, workers and other supporters who have stood by me through thick and thin. I am very pleased to be back here on the floor of the House of Commons to work with everyone here in the service of the common people.
Today, I would like to speak about the question everyone is asking.
Why does everything cost so much? No matter where we go, prices have gone up. Young people who are still living in their parents' basements are wondering why housing prices have risen so much. The single mother doing her grocery shopping is wondering why it costs so much to buy food for her children. The worker trying to fill up his truck is wondering why he can only afford to buy a quarter of a tank of gas.
The answer is clear: inflation. There is too much money chasing too few goods and services. How did that happen? The Liberals are trying to blame COVID-19 and the resulting disruptions.
It is strange because the Minister of Finance and the current and former governors of the Bank of Canada said that COVID-19 would cause deflation. However, this week, we heard Stephen Poloz claim that COVID-19 is causing inflation, when he is the one who said that the problem we would have would be deflation. The same people who said that COVID-19 would cause deflation are now blaming COVID-19 for inflation.
COVID‑19 is obviously not the main cause. We know this because many other countries have also had COVID‑19, but they have a much lower inflation rate than here in Canada because they have printed less money than here. I am thinking of countries like Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Australia, Singapore, South Korea, India, China, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France and the United Kingdom. For its part, the Canadian government has decided to follow the disastrous policy of the United States and print money to finance a deficit.
In the United States, we have seen the result of this policy: the rich have become much richer. Their assets have increased. However, the wages of the poor and the working class are losing value. Their dollar buys less because of the supply of that currency. Of course, in the United States, the two main parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, agree on one thing and one thing only. Both parties like to print money. The Republicans like to fund Wall Street, and the Democrats like to fund Washington. One party likes big business, and the other likes big government. To finance both, they are printing a lot of money, and this has caused very negative effects for the poor. It has increased the gap between the rich and the poor.
Here in Canada, we have not followed this approach. During the Harper years, there was almost no inflation. After the great recession of 2008-09, we had the best economic recovery and we eliminated the deficit in five years. We were able to do that because we did not print money. We spent real dollars to help Canadians during the crisis, and we returned to a balanced budget soon after.
Suddenly, in 2020, during the COVID‑19 crisis, the government decided to start copying what the U.S. Federal Reserve has done, which is to print money to pay the bills, because Canada's deficits were the highest in the G20 and the government was unable to get the financing it needed from the traditional bond market. What this means is that the government increased the amount of money in circulation by $400 billion, which is about a 25% increase.
Since then, inflation has been astronomical. For example, the price of a house has increased by 30%, which is strange, because one would have expected prices to go down in the midst of the COVID‑19 crisis. There was no immigration, which reduces demand. Wages went down, which limits the amount of money people have to buy homes. People were scared, which would normally make people think twice about purchases.
Prices did not just go up, however. Property prices increased at an unprecedented rate in Canada's modern history. International supply chains cannot be to blame since land does not have a supply chain. The land has been here for thousands or maybe millions of years. Land does not appear or disappear, so when the gross value of land increases by 20% in a single year, it has nothing to do with the virus or with the delivery of goods. Once again, land does not get loaded onto a ship to be sent to Canada. It is a question of demand. What caused this demand?
When the government printed the $400 billion, it did not throw that cash out of a plane. That may have been fairer than what it actually did with the money. The government is giving that money to the banks and these banks are loaning it to homebuyers, which is causing the price of real estate to go up.
Clearly, the government is behind the whole situation, and this creates a great deal of unfairness. We need to stop printing money, pay down the deficits and let builders build homes. That is how Canadians will be able to live a dignified and respectable life.