Madam Speaker, $1.1 trillion is a lot of money. That is what the national debt will be at the end of this fiscal year in accordance with this fall economic statement that we are debating today. It becomes very intimidating when we measure that national debt against gross domestic product, the GDP, in analysis of how well the economy can manage the debt. Just a few years ago it stood at 30%, but by the end of this fiscal year, March 31, 2021, in accordance with this fall economic plan it will stand at 55%, uncomfortably close to its 67% level during Canada's debt crisis in the mid-1990s.
We have heard many times from the Liberal side of the House that we can afford it, we have the fiscal room and we have the muscle power to manage this debt. That is true because, when we managed to get that 1995 debt crisis under control, we had a series of good, fiscally responsible governments that managed the economy, including through the Harper years.
Today, the big debt, $1.1 trillion, is going to be affordable only because interest rates are as low as they are. The federal government can borrow money at less than 1%. Money is almost free. Why would the Liberals not borrow as much as they can? However, any economist will tell us that interest rates will not stay low forever. Central banks will respond to inflationary pressures. It has happened throughout human history and that is not going to change.
In a debate in the House a couple of months ago, the member for Carleton, who is the Conservative Party's shadow minister for finance, asked what a 1% hike in interest rates would cost the Canadian treasury. It was a rhetorical question because obviously the math is very simple. One trillion dollars is a one followed by 12 zeroes. If we multiple it by 1%, it is now a one with 10 zeroes, which is $10 billion. That is $10 billion every year if interest rates go up only 1%. That is $10 billion that is not available for the federal government to spend on other important programs, including health transfers and giving Canadians the help that they need. That money is now going to be taken away from Canadians who need help and who have come to rely on these programs. That money is now going to go to international bankers and pension funds and make them richer.
I know that the middle of a worldwide pandemic is not the time to talk about cutting costs. The Conservative Party recognizes that the federal government has a big role to play in a time of crisis: to keep liquidity in the marketplace and confidence in the minds of the public, and to keep the economy going so that people can keep on working, earning paycheques, taking care of their kids, paying for university, and paying the mortgage or rent. We recognize that this is important. The Conservative Party has stood right along with the Liberal government to support these programs that Canadians need so badly to get through this economic crisis.
Where do we go from here? We are happily seeing a light at the end of the COVID tunnel. We are not there yet, but we are optimistic that there is a post-COVID world that we need to plan for. Canadians want to get back to work and they want to see their government get its fiscal house back in order. We need to see a plan that will move us away from a credit-card economy to a paycheque economy. The problem with the current Liberal government is that it does not have a good record of managing the economy.
Many people remember that leading up to the 2015 election the Liberal Party campaigned on a promise of a few small to medium-sized deficits, somewhere around $10 billion to $15 billion per year for three years, but that in the fourth year of the Liberals' mandate they were going to balance the budget. They did not even come close to that. The deficit was multiple times higher than what the Liberals had promised, and by the 2019 election campaign they had given up all pretense of ever wanting to manage to balance the budget. Therefore, Canadians are rightly concerned about the current government's record of poor fiscal management and its ability to manage a post-COVID relaunch of our economy.
There is another aspect of the government's response to the COVID-19 crisis I want to highlight that has frustrated many Canadians. Even though our COVID relief spending is the highest among all our trading partners on a per capita basis, we also have the highest unemployment rate. How could that be? We are spending almost $400 billion more this year than we are taking in, in government revenues, yet millions of Canadians are being left behind.
I have a couple of examples from my riding. I was talking to a husband and wife who are family business operators. They run a dance studio. Business was pretty good until the provincial public health officer shut them down. They were happy the federal government came out with an emergency rent subsidy program, and it looked like they would qualify. Certainly, if one looked at their bank account and balance sheet, they qualified. However, when they filled out the application, they realized because of their corporate structure, and because they could not answer that they were operating at arm's length, they were disqualified. Like tens of thousands of family-owned businesses across the country, they have a dual corporate model, where one company owns the land and the building and the other owns the company that operates within the building. It is required by many bankers to mitigate risk and manage commercial operations. I can hardly imagine the government had intended for that to happen.
The operators of a hotel chain here in British Columbia are another example. They qualified for the rent subsidy, but had to share the subsidy across a whole group of properties. They complained to me, saying that if each of them were an individually owned hotel property they each would have individually qualified. Because they had to share the rent subsidy across the whole family, the rent subsidy became almost meaningless. They said to me that it looked like the Liberal government was taking the “M” out of SME, small and medium-sized enterprises. Medium-sized enterprises like theirs do not qualify.
As my colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo said, the government is a day late and a dollar short, and a lot of Canadians are suffering on account of that.
Bill C-14 has seven parts. My party is going to support most of it, but we have trouble with part 7, which is about future spending. We wonder why the federal government feels it needs to have a total debt ceiling of $1.8 trillion, when all it really needs is $1.1 trillion to get through this fiscal year. Does it not trust Parliament to do the right thing at the right time? The government should come back when it needs more money and we will respond, as we have in the past and throughout this crisis. We will look at the legislation and question it and the proposed programs, because we are the opposition and that is what we do.
I submit that the emergency programs Canadians are now relying on are very much better because of the work we and other opposition parties have done. Canadians want transparency. They want to know bills are being debated in Parliament and that the government does not have unfettered power to do as it wishes. When it needs more money, it should come back and ask for it, and prove to us that its spending plans will actually help the Canadians who need it most.