Mr. Speaker, before I get started, I wish to offer my deepest sympathies to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the passing of her strength and stay, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, her husband of 73 years. Canada mourns for this tremendous loss in the royal family, and on behalf of my constituents, I wish them strength during this incredibly difficult time.
I am thankful for the opportunity to put words on the record today regarding Bill C-14, the economic statement implementation act, and I will be splitting my time with the member for Lévis—Lotbinière.
The bill, introduced this past fall, would implement a boost to the Canada child benefit, which we know is a popular program for Canadian families that originated under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Our new leader, the MP for Durham, championed this boost when he was running for leadership of our party. I am glad to see the Liberals agreeing with our Conservative party leader on this provision.
The bill would also make changes to the rent subsidy, which the Conservatives have been calling for since it was first introduced last summer. In fact, I personally questioned the former minister of finance on the original program, which was deeply flawed and failed to support thousands of small businesses in need, including many in my riding.
The Conservatives agree that most of the financial supports contained in the bill are needed to continue to support Canadians while lockdowns and restrictions continue to ravage our private sector, drive our small businesses to bankruptcy and leave millions of Canadians unemployed. Unfortunately, Bill C-14 also includes some very worrying provisions. It seeks to increase the maximum borrowing authority from the current $1.1 trillion to $1.8 trillion for the next three years. This is $700 billion of potential spending in the next three years, all of which would be financed through deficit. It includes $100 billion for discretionary stimulus spending, but no one really knows what that means because details have yet to be provided. As a result, the bill has inspired very little confidence in Canadians that the Liberal government has a plan to get us out of this health crisis and recover our damaged economy. Ultimately, this increase is far greater than the government needs for getting through the next fiscal year and would authorize a massive expansion of the national debt without any fiscal anchor or scrutiny of the dangers this new debt would create.
Overall, the COVID deficit that Canadians are inheriting is truly astounding. At over $336 billion in a single year, it will take a Herculean effort, a lot of hard work, to get it under control.
The C.D. Howe Institute, a highly respected non-partisan Canadian think tank, recently put out a strong warning to the Liberal government about the financial perils Canada faces if we cannot get the debt and deficit under control in the near future. In its report, it said the “Canadian governments’ deficits in fiscal 2020/21 will total about 20 percent of Canadian GDP, the highest among all advanced economies and seven percentage points higher than the average for G20 countries”. That is pretty shocking. The report goes on to say, “Year upon year of expenses exceeding revenues and the resulting deterioration of the federal government’s net worth—in other words, an accumulated deficit that keeps rising—signify an ongoing deterioration in Ottawa’s ability to deliver services to Canadians.”
The Conservatives have long sounded the alarm of the perils of unchecked spending. If interest rates go up, which we know they will, the more Canadians have to pay on our debts, which would means less to spend on critical services like health and education transfers to provinces, defence and infrastructure, and the critical social safety net that the federal government provides to Canadians on behalf of taxpayers.
We know the entire world is facing the same issues that Canada is facing as we battle COVID-19. Canada has spent more money per capita than any other country in the world, yet at the same time as other countries like the U.S. and the U.K. have presented plans to reopen their economies safely and permanently based on data, Canada is entering its third wave of lockdowns. Furthermore, despite astronomical spending, we are hovering between 40th and 50th, and sometimes even lower than 50th, in the world for vaccinations. Only 2.1% of our entire population has received both doses of the vaccine to date. More vulnerable and elderly people will die as a result of the poor vaccine procurement strategy of the government. I cannot stress how serious this is. It is a national shame and a strategy that could have been avoided.
The Liberals wasted 100 days on the Chinese company CanSino before signing contracts with other vaccine companies. That is a fact. They put all of our eggs in one basket. They bet the entire future of Canada on the Communist Party of China, and within a week of the Prime Minister announcing to Canadians the vaccine contract with CanSino, the Communist Party of China cancelled it, which left Canada scrambling to sign other contracts in August. This was months after the pandemic started.
By that time, other countries in the world had, long before us, signed contracts with Pfizer, Moderna and others. That is one of the reasons that we are so far behind our G7 allies and countless other countries for vaccination rates. The Liberals wasted 100 days betting on one contract.
Just this week, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention admitted that some Chinese-made vaccines offered low protection against COVID. Those vaccines do not even work. The Prime Minister's decision to waste time pursuing a vaccine partnership with the Communist Party of China will haunt Canada for generations and may cost thousands of vulnerable lives, but the government's horrific mismanagement does not end there.
By and large, Canadians recognize this as a wartime effort. Although the Conservatives would have been much more respectful and considerate of the long-term damage of record deficit spending than the Liberals, we have fully and proudly supported the emergency spending measures for Canadians in their greatest hours of need, which have helped them get through these incredibly difficult times. We recognize how important those critical measures are. The difference, though, lies in how the Conservatives would have prepared Canada before the pandemic hit, as well as what we would be doing now and after the pandemic is over.
The Conservatives would not have shuttered Canada's highly regarded international early warning pandemic system, which the Liberals did in May 2019. They broke their promise to run three modest deficits of $10 billion annually and instead ran up a $100-billion deficit, in a relatively stable economy, during their first term. They broke their promise, ran up the debt and spent the cupboards bare in the good times. They justified this spending by promising it would create incredible economic growth, yet Canadians experienced sluggish economic growth during the Liberals' first term. The bottom line is that the Liberals left Canada vulnerable before the pandemic hit, and that is on them.
The question many people ask is what the Conservatives would do if they were in the driver's seat. I would like to talk a bit about that as I wrap up.
In addition to calling on the federal government to bring forward a data-driven plan to support the provinces in a safe, gradual and permanent reopening, our Conservative leader was the first leader on the national stage to present a recovery plan to Canadians. He was the first and only leader on the national stage to present a plan to get Canada back on track, and he provided a top five list of priorities.
The first is to secure jobs. Our plan is to recover the million jobs that were lost during the pandemic. That would be priority number one for a Conservative government. By unleashing the power of our private sector, and using Conservative ingenuity and a can-do attitude, we will ensure that every region and sector of our economy is firing on all cylinders. That is priority number one.
Second is to secure accountability. After years of corruption, embarrassment and ethical scandals from the Liberal Prime Minister, such as the Aga Khan's billionaire island, SNC-Lavalin and the WE Charity, to name a few, Canadians deserve the strongest anti-corruption laws this country has ever seen, and we will deliver that.
Third is to secure mental health with a mental health action plan. I am particularly proud to see our leader bring this forward, because I have spent countless hours on the phone with constituents who are in very desperate situations. I have had parents call me to tell me their little children do not want to eat because they are depressed. I have had elderly women cry to me on the phone that they do not want to spend their last months or years on this earth locked up in their apartments away from their grandchildren and families. I could go on about how devastating this is. I am very proud to see mental health as the third priority on our top five priority list.
Fourth is to secure our country by creating a strategic stockpile of essential products and building capacity to manufacture vaccines at home. I know that every Canadian wants to see that and never again wants to see our people left vulnerable and dependent on other countries during a pandemic.
Fifth is to secure Canada's economy by balancing the books responsibly over 10 years. I spoke at length today of the perils of Liberal spending. I believe Canadians agree that we need a competent government to handle this and get our economy's finances back on track after recovering from the pandemic.
Ultimately, Canadians know that the Conservative Party is the party best able to manage jobs and the economy. It is what we are known for and have been known for for decades. We will provide steady, reliable and competent leadership in our country's greatest time of need. That is my commitment.