Debates of April 22nd, 2021

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Madam Speaker, we know that during this pandemic, the rich have become richer and more and more Canadians are struggling. Despite the Liberals' long-time commitment to fight for the middle class and lift Canadians up, the budget does not include a wealth tax, which would be critical in ensuring that the rich pay their fair share of taxes and that everybody can be lifted up.

What do the Liberals have against the rich paying their fair share of taxes?

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Madam Speaker, as I go through the budget, I see it as definitely an equity-seeking one, whether it is through the luxury tax on vehicles or a more robust system for ensuring we catch tax evaders. The difference between the Canadian economy and other economies around the world is that we are not a quid pro quo system where Canadians put in money to get something back for an individual service. The Canadian system and Canadian society are really about all pitching in to ensure that our neighbours are well taken care of and that on a rainy day we are taken care of.

When I look at budget 2021, again, it is one of the most equity-seeking, most equitable budgets that I have seen in a very long time and—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Because there was a technical issue, I want to give the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean an opportunity to ask his question.

The hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, I apologize for the technical difficulty.

I thank my colleague for her speech. She really focused on this budget's feminist approach.

Of course, one sector in which the majority of the workers are female is health care, so I would like to know why the Liberals rejected the amendment to the amendment, which would have increased health transfers.

Why did the Liberals turn this into a confidence vote even though nobody wants an election?

Is this a way for the Liberals to shut down opposition party amendments?

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Madam Speaker, over this past year, we have seen that Canadians expect a team Canada approach. They do not want to see these partisan politics. They do not want to see this pushing, pulling and tugging among parties, saying someone did this or someone did not do that. Ultimately, Canadians want all of us, all parties, each and every one of us as individual members to be there and have their backs. That is really what this budget is about, and that is what we will keep on doing as a government.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the MP for West Nova.

It is almost incomprehensible that it has been more than two years since the last budget and that the Liberals have only seen fit to give Canadians two brief fiscal snapshots during a time of historic economic challenges and unprecedented government spending.

The Prime Minister has added more debt in just seven years than the combined debt of all Canadian prime ministers since 1867. He spent more money per person than any other prime minister in Canadian history. Canadians have a right to ask what all of it has actually achieved and to be worried about the astounding moral failing of passing this burden on to future generations.

In 2019, the projected deficit of $20 billion was already mind-boggling. The Conservatives urged the Liberals to set out a plan to balance the budget, implement fiscal anchors and save money for the future, like Canadians struggle to do every day in their households and businesses. The Liberals' spending was already extraordinary. No government outside of wartimes or major global recessions had ever spent so much but achieved so little.

Now Canadians see the consequences: over $354 billion in deficit, over $154 billion projected for 2021-22 alone in deficits, debt interest payments that will cost Canadians $39 billion through 2026. Every man, woman and child in Canada now owes $33,000 in federal debt.

The numbers show the reality of Liberal mismanagement. The Prime Minister once said, “Canada is back”, but the truth is his plan is making Canada fall back. Now Canada is an outlier globally in all the worst ways.

Global unemployment in 2020 rose to 6.5%; Canada's to 9.5%. Global GDP declined by 4.4%; Canada's by 5.4%. In 2019, the time of the last federal budget, 46% of Canadians were $200 or less away from being unable to pay their bills. Now 53%, more than half, live that unsettling and precarious experience every single day.

The Liberals love rhetoric over substance, announcements over delivery, promises over outcomes, and they seem to make a dozen new ones every day. There is one in a section in the budget that suggests unlocking Canadians' savings is a key to boosting the country's economic recovery. It states, “Over the last year, Canadian households, in particular, have built up significant savings. When the pandemic recedes, the release of pent-up demand could translate into a tangible if temporary boost to economic activity.”

The reality is that rising costs of food, gas, lumber and essentials, to eat, get around and put a roof over one's head and declining productivity, with fewer, good-paying full-time jobs in exchange for precarious lower paying part-time work while unprecedented investment has left Canada, means that for most Canadians their savings are stretched thin and their futures are uncertain, except, of course, for the ultra-rich.

Inflation rose 2.2% in March. Eggs cost Canadians 11.4% more, gasoline prices have jumped 35.3% and natural gas costs have risen 14.1% when compared to March 2020. There is no spending limit, no fiscal anchor, and to top it all off, Canada is now entering the uncertain world of quantitative easing, literally printing money to pay our debts.

I guess at least the finance minister seems to have given everyone a heads-up. She already wanted to dip into the private savings of Canadians months ago, saying, “If people have ideas on how the government can act to help unlock that 'pre-loaded stimulus', I'm very interested.” It is the spending of the government that knows no bounds, not the savings of everyday Canadians.

In this budget, Canadians needed a plan for reopening, a plan to secure the future, assurances for their small businesses. Over 200,000 are at risk of closing forever. That is one in six small businesses, potentially affecting 2.4 million Canadian jobs. This budget needed to include a concrete plan for the private sector and for entrepreneurs to take risks and create new jobs by reducing government-imposed barriers and layers of red tape and costs that stifle innovation and new economic opportunities.

Instead, Canadians received the rude wake-up call that the government would be saddling their grandchildren with more deficits and more debt. Meanwhile, in the most elite and privileged positions, the Prime Minister and finance minister call COVID a so-called opportunity to pursue an ideological great reset of the economy and busy themselves with reimagining, all a bunch of new ways of how to spend Canadians' money.

Speaking of imaginary money, and as the shadow minister for public safety, I did not see any mention of the estimated $3 billion to $5 billion for the Liberal, wrong-headed confiscation program. It is an ever-expanding list of firearms that they will ultimately take or prohibit the use of by millions of law-abiding Canadian sport shooters, hunters, collectors and firearms owners. At least this budget does increase funding for the Canadian Border Services Agency, $312 million over five years, to fight gun smuggling and trafficking, as Conservatives have urged consistently for years.

The Liberals failed again to address a significant issue in the RCMP, which is increasing funding for training new RCMP recruits and replacing its unsafe 25-year-old service pistols. The past year created a backlog in training new recruits. According to the National Police Federation, this “will impact recruiting and training for years to come, jeopardizing public and Member safety.”

With Liberal bills currently being debated that would reduce penalties for serious violent crimes such as gun trafficking, sexual assault and assault with a weapon, while allowing for community service for sexual assault, kidnapping, arson and human trafficking, RCMP recruits will be sorely needed in the coming years.

This budget also relies on a magical boost from American investment, but the Liberals are actively destroying Canada's trading relationship. They are driving jobs, contracts and businesses south of the border with the ongoing mess the public safety minister has either actively created or passively perpetuated. It has gotten so bad that the U.S. just advised not to travel to Canada. Workers who travel to the U.S. for essential work, but do not travel daily or weekly, are constantly subject to inconsistencies and contradictions.

The Liberals should mitigate this major problem by adjusting the order in council's wording to allow essential workers to travel to fulfill contract and business obligations not based on calendar days. I personally believe that all workers and all businesses, every single one, are essential to the Canadian economy, but the least the Liberals can do is fix their own policy so those they have declared to be essential could actually do their jobs.

Another announcement that is far behind is rural broadband. After first announcing it in their 2015 election platform, the Liberals then committed to 100% of houses being connected to broadband by 2030, in both 2019 and 2020. In the government's own strategy in 2017, it said 37% of rural households had access to 50 megabytes per second download speed.

Now, four years later, CRTC's 2020 communications monitoring report shows it has only grown to 45.6%. At that rate, 75% of rural homes will not have access to broadband for another decade. The Liberals have already spent $6.2 billion since 2015, but many rural people in Lakeland and Canadians in rural and remote communities all over the country are still wondering when it will make a difference for them.

Of course, Albertans are very familiar with the Liberals roller coaster of benign neglect and outright hostility. While there is a tax measure for carbon capture and storage, there is still no hint the Liberals will reverse their anti-energy, anti-resource, anti-business policies after failing to deliver timely and accessible sector-specific support, which they promised to Canada's energy industry as it reeled from a confluence of domestic government-inflicted, and external, challenges. I have to confess a sense of bitter irony that their main energy-related budget measure deals with keeping something in the ground, despite my support of the policy and the objective.

Naturally, true to form, this budget plays provincial favourites. Alberta's finance minister sums up Alberta's frustrations that the budget “is light on increasing investment and productivity, increasing market access opportunities...and growing the economy.”

He also said, “We are gravely disappointed that the federal government once again missed an opportunity to fix the fiscal unfairness of the federation by acting on the unanimous request of provinces to retroactively lift the cap on the fiscal stabilization program.”

This means that Albertans, who have paid way more than their fair share, $600 billion more than they have received in return, continue to be penalized during economic crisis and the global pandemic.

Alberta has been a leader in job creation, clean tech, responsible resource development and fiscal contributions to Canada for decades. The province's regulatory expertise and technological achievements is world renowned, but the Liberals cannot get past their ideological objections and partisan calculations to recognize that reality.

This budget does not help the constituents I represent in Lakeland. It inevitably means higher taxes, higher costs, fewer jobs and future generations left to pay the bills.

My constituents understand the concepts of setting a budget, putting needs before wants, not throwing good money after bad and spending within one's means. People there just want to know that if they work hard they can do better, and for government to remember that it does not have its own money. It all comes out of Canadians' pockets.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have heard the Conservatives directly misquote what the finance minister said. This member did it as well, and the Leader of the Opposition has done it repeatedly through tweets and various forums, where they imply that he said, “I really believe COVID-19 has created a window of political opportunity.” That is where they stop.

Of course, they will never give the rest of the quote. However, let me read the entire quote. It says, “I really believe that COVID-19 has created a window of political opportunity...on the importance of early learning and child care.”

Does the member not feel a bit embarrassed to completely misquote somebody in that manner?

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am not really sure what the member is talking about, because I did talk about the finance minister saying that COVID-19 is a political opportunity.

If the member does not like what the finance minister had to say, then I am sure he would acknowledge what the Prime Minister said, which is that he believes the global pandemic is an opportunity to reimagine the economy and to participate in what he called a great reset.

Make no mistake, this budget is absolutely a targeted, pre-election budget that is actually full of the Liberal left ideological agenda to increase the ever-expanding scope of government. It is just mind-boggling that the Liberals are willing to preside over such irresponsible and reckless decision-making, which will burden future generations of Canadians.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her presentation.

She believes that we are not doing enough to exploit our energy resources, but this budget maintains direct and indirect financing for fossil fuels.

In her opinion, how is it possible to square money for fossil fuels with the government's supposed environmental goals?

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Madam Speaker, as a Conservative and as an advocate for an oil and gas riding in northeast rural Alberta, I am extremely proud to represent communities and people who have made outsized contributions to the finances of the province, and to every province and community right across this country.

I will explain what I meant. The Liberals, over the last six years, with the support of anti-energy activists in the other parties, have introduced a series of damaging policies and damaging legislation designed to shut down the fossil fuel industry and stop market access for Canadian oil and gas, which is the most responsible, and environmentally and socially responsible oil and gas on the planet.

I know this might come as a shock, but oil and gas workers and oil and gas companies do not actually want government money. They want to continue to do their work, which they do with the highest standards and the highest outcomes of any oil and gas producing jurisdiction on earth. That industry is fundamental for the Canadian economy and our standard of living.

The Liberals need to reverse course on all their bad legislation and policies, so the private sector could go ahead and continue to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the Canadian economy and create the hundreds of thousands of jobs that come with that.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, during the pandemic, during the crisis, many, many families and small business employees suffered, but other people raked in huge profits. Canada's richest people increased their wealth by $78 billion in the past year.

Does my colleague think the wealthiest people and big corporations such as Amazon and Netflix should pay for the recovery, so that workers and their families do not have to?

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Madam Speaker, the rich get richer, and the most connected, elite, big companies, the ones with the big lobby firms and the big connections, and the people behind them, are always the ones that do best when government brings out big government spending and big government programs and tries to help.

That is why I think Canadians should have expected the budget to have a recovery plan that would allow for a path to get back to balancing the budget, so future generations of governments would have the ability to make decisions that reflect their priorities, and actually enable the private sector and entrepreneurs to create jobs and invest in the economy.

I guess, just like how not one of 2 billion trees promised managed to plant itself, neither does the budget balance itself.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to join the House from beautiful southwest Nova Scotia, where it is a little rainy. We do not have a whole lot of COVID-19 floating around, but it seems that here in Nova Scotia we are having a resurgence of variants. Due to a lack of vaccines, we are going to see a bit of the third wave the rest of Canada has seen over the last number of weeks and months.

Because it has been a year and a half since many of us were elected, and we have not had the opportunity to speak to a budget, I would like to start my first response to it as a new MP with something a little more Nova Scotian. I will talk about something that is a bit more positive in the budget, which is important to my area and extremely important to me and my family. It is the national framework for diabetes. This is something in the budget that I support.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin here in Canada, something Banting and Best were able to do at the University of Toronto. We as Canadians continue to celebrate being a part of this historic change in the lives of people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The budget provides $25 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, to Health Canada for additional investments into research in diabetes, including juvenile diabetes, and surveillance and prevention, to work toward the development of that national framework.

That is extremely important to me and my family because I am the dad of a type 1 diabetic. My son just recently, for lack of a better description, celebrated his fifth anniversary of being a diabetic. I can see from what he has had to go through, and what other diabetics across this country have had to go through, that there is no real standard of care for those individuals.

It is good to see Canadians get together. We need to work with our provinces to make sure that is going to happen. These are very positive developments for JDRF and Diabetes Canada. I hope this continues and that more emphasis will be put on some of the chronic diseases that Canadians continue to suffer from.

I wish the rest of the budget were as positive, but unfortunately, it is not. On the health care side of things, this budget is very lax in how it is going to help with COVID-19 and respond to the needs of the provinces for extra help, especially when it comes to the deferred health care that has happened over the last number of months.

I am a member of the health committee, and a couple of weeks ago we had radiologists in to present before the committee. They estimated that 380,000 Canadians have had their tests delayed, whether it was a test for cancer, a colonoscopy, or the like. If we start to delay health care, greater issues might happen. For people who are diagnosed with cancer, it might be a different level of cancer. They could be at stage three or four, which is much more difficult to treat.

The provinces have been asking for a top-up in their health transfers over the last number of years. That does not show up in this budget, yet we saw the Prime Minister go out the next day and say the government was going to do that after the pandemic is done.

The way things are going right now, the pandemic is going to be with us for quite some time. I wonder when that extra investment is going to be in the Canada health transfers. I believe they are asking for about $4 billion. In the scope of the $100 billion of extra, I would call, election funding the government has put forward, the $4 billion they are asking for seems like quite a bargain.

Let us move on from health care and talk about something that is important for the coastal communities here in southwest Nova Scotia. Quite honestly, this area is based on the fishery and access to that fishery. I want to talk about small craft harbours. Small craft harbours might not be important to many people across Canada. However, those of us who use them, and people who have their families in the fishing industry, want to see investments in wharves. They are part of our highway system. They are part of our business park, so to speak.

We see an investment of $300 million over two years in small craft harbours. That is a drop in the bucket of what is required to improve the safety of our ports and wharves and to adjust to the changes in vessel sizes and vessel safety over the last number of years. There is not enough room in a lot of these ports.

I was on beautiful Brier Island the other day meeting with the port authority of Westport. They have a fabled wharf in the Bay of Fundy that sees some of the highest tides in the world, but they have not had an expansion or an adjustment to their port in well over 50 years. They have had little projects along the way. There has been a bit of a breakwater and maybe a change to one of the wharves, but nothing has actually happened for them in that amount of time. The $300 million is going to be very difficult to sell, because we could spend way more than that just on the 27 wharves that require it here in West Nova. A number of wharves on our list are condemned. Fishers are still using them, but they have been condemned by small craft harbours because they do not have the dollars to do the work.

While I am on the topic of the fishery, I want to talk about the safety of our fishers and a couple of experiences we have had in the last few months. The Chief William Saulis, a scallop dragger out of Digby, basically out of Yarmouth, was lost and seven men were lost with it. It took a lot of time to find. There was not enough money in the budget for the Coast Guard to go out to recover the bodies of the men who were lost. We need to do more to make sure that our vessels are safe and that we have the systems to go out and actually help them.

In another example, the scallop dragger Atlantic Destiny went down off of Georges Bank and 32 souls were saved, but we learned a number of things that I do not see in this budget. The fuel for search and rescue is not available at the airport that is closest to the port. The great people at CFB Greenwood need to change a few of their processes to adjust to these kinds of situations, sending helicopters 100 kilometres offshore. The nearest airport needs to have the capability to do it.

I will present a quick personal issue from southwest Nova Scotia. A young gentleman who is a fisher just had a terrible accident: 24-year-old Andrew Saulnier was caught up in the engine room. He lost one leg and could possibly lose the other. He is a young guy with a few children. I am going to share this on my Facebook page, not that we should be presenting Facebook page issues here in the House of Commons, but if people want to help out families, a family like Andrew Saulnier's is one that we all should be supporting, and this budget does not.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for sharing his thoughts on the diabetes strategy. He shared a very personal story of how that would impact a family member of his, and I am wondering if he sees the need to continue to work together rather than to immediately throw the budget aside and say, “We cannot support it.”

Does he see the need, based on his comments, to bring this to committee to see if some of the other issues that he wants to see addressed can be amended? Perhaps the budget could have even more in it that he would like to see.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, if that was the way the budget was structured then, yes, we should find things that we could work on together. However, what we find is a document that has not been presented in two years, so the pent-up demand from government departments created a 700-page tome of information with a whole bunch of things in it that are, in our case, unsupportable.

We supported the bill for a diabetes framework as it came down, and I am happy to be one of the co-chairs of the interparliamentary group on JDRF. There are other ways for us to support it rather than supporting an unsupportable budget.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to come back to what my hon. colleague said.

This budget proposes standards and agencies, as well as a $3-billion investment without providing any services to the public, which means more bureaucracy and consultation but without any additional services, at the end of the day. Could the member comment on that?

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, what we are seeing is nearly $100 billion being spent on programs that have more to do with a future election.

The government is doing its best to offer Canadians as much as it possibly can, in the hope that they will vote for the Liberals. I think Canadians can see through the game the government is playing with these investments to help Canadians and Quebeckers.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, Elk Lake is a tough and scrappy town founded by Jack Monroe. He was a vaudeville superstar who also fought Jack Johnson and was a war hero. Descendants in Elk Lake are as tough as Jack Monroe, so I am very pleased that Eacom put $8.9 million into the Elk Lake sawmill to keep it sustainable.

I am glad to see some federal money going into supporting forestry, but my concern is that people are being gouged and totally ripped off on the price of lumber right now. When I go home to people in Elk Lake and my surrounding communities, they cannot even build a woodshed because of the price.

I would ask my colleague this: What does he think we need to do at the federal level? A two-by-four has gone from costing two bucks to eight bucks. It is completely affecting people's ability to build and do renovations at a time when we need to kick-start the economy.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, not only are we seeing the same thing here, but we do not have access to those kinds of products.

Another issue here in southwest Nova Scotia is that the housing market has gone up as a lot of people have decided to move here. A young couple trying to buy their first home and get into the workforce cannot afford to, because of mismanagement and how this pandemic continues to go on. Everybody has moved here. It is positive for the people selling their homes, and positive for the real estate agents, but where are people, who have modest means and want to move here, ever going to be able to get into a house or build their own because of the access to those kinds of products?

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Hochelaga.

Ironically, I had occasion to repair my deck. Normally I would ask somebody else to do it, but these are strange times so I thought I would apply my formidable carpentry skills to the repairs. To no one's great surprise, it is clear that I should try to keep my day job.

While my lack of carpentry skills should not be a shock, the price of lumber certainly was, as was raised in a previous exchange. It cost 51 bucks for a 16-foot cedar deck board, which is three times last year's price. I considered myself lucky to get any after phoning four lumber yards, two of which had nothing at all. Now my simple job was going to cost me 75 bucks for a four-by-two square in materials alone. If I was intending to replace the entire structure, I probably would have had to put a mortgage on the house. Mortgage money is really cheap these days, which underlines the real estate frenzy that the previous exchange outlined.

Cheap money is also the underlying assumption of this budget. The related assumption is that the Bank of Canada can keep its commitment to an inflation target of below 2%. The government and the Bank of Canada are backed up by the best economists in Canada. They provide consensus opinions to the Minister of Finance and the governor of the Bank of Canada upon which all projections are based: GDP projections, nominal GDP projections, inflation projections, interest rates, etc.

Everything starts and ends with consensus numbers. Those allow the government to know what its revenue will be and, in turn, its deficit projections. However, what if the experts are wrong and have been measuring the wrong things? The basket used to calculate inflation is made up of quite a number of goods and services, some of which are questionable in a pandemic economy.

For instance, no one is travelling these days, so travel is actually deflationary, along with all of the related services and goods that go with travel. My deck board, on the other hand, or a trip to the grocery store is exactly the opposite: It is quite inflationary. In normal times this all balances out. However, these are not normal times and we need to be more than a little skeptical about these predictions.

In a November article in The Globe and Mail's Report on Business, the writer took on the post-March pandemic predictions of the leading economists and this is what he found.

Canada's best economists predicted, first, that there would be a significant weakening of the Canadian dollar. The reality is that a brief hit was followed by a full recovery. The second prediction was that equity markets would take years to recover. The reality is that markets took months to recover and they have been on a tear ever since, with what some might even call “irrational exuberance”.

Third, the GDP would plunge. In reality it did plunge, but it recovered quickly and with not much ground to make up to pre-pandemic levels. In fact, colleagues may have caught reports by the Bank of Canada that are revising GDP growth up to 6.5%, which is higher than the government's predictions as of Monday, so things are changing rather quickly. Fourth, housing starts would plummet. The reality is that housing starts are thriving and the real estate market, some say, is insane.

I appreciate that these are challenging times, but apparently being an economist means never having to say they are sorry. Colleagues might say that I am just ranting about economists, and that might be a little bit true, even if economists are some of the nicest and smartest people I know. The fact remains that at this time last year, some of the nicest and smartest people I know got it far more wrong than right. That puts the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in a dodgy position. Spending demands far exceed the ability of the economy to support them. It is one thing to provide emergency support, but it is quite another to provide that support over the short or medium term. It is simply not sustainable.

I do not know what a 1% interest rate jump would do to the budget, but I do know that 2% would probably be quite devastating.

Many decades ago, I was doing mortgages for my legal clients in the 17% to 18% range for five-year fixed rates. I wish I had had the foresight to load up on long-term Canada savings bonds at 13%, however I did not. I do not claim any unique insight, but to those who claim it could not happen again, I say “think again”. I remember the inflation wars of the seventies and eighties, or “stagflation” as I suppose it was called at the time. I remember wage and price controls. I remember Canada being an honorary member of the third world. I remember the draconian financial disciplines of the nineties and early 2000s. I remember the banking crisis of 2008-09, where financial institutions were severely overleveraged and CEOs were buying fancy financial instruments that they did not even seem to understand. I also remember the wise words of Ed Clark, former CEO of the TD Bank, who said he would not buy anything for his bank that he did not understand. That is good investment advice.

We are in a time when no one really knows what is going on or will go on. I did not read the last year's predictions to embarrass some people; I read them to remind everyone that we are in perilous times, and as long as the pandemic remains in our midst, economic prognostications, even consensus ones, cannot necessarily be relied upon. The question has become, “has the Government of Canada taken us too far to a step to the abyss?”

A little history might provide some comfort, however. In 1946, immediately post-World War II, the net debt-to-GDP ratio was 110%. Some eight years later, by 1954-55, it was down to 38%. It was largely reduced by tight spending and a prosperous and expanding economy. By the 1975-76 fiscal year, it was down to 14%. Then it took off to the point, in 1996-97, where the debt-to-GDP ratio was 67%, and it was considered by all, particularly the economists, to be unsustainable. We remember the New York Times article about Canada being an honorary member of the third world. With fiscal and monetary discipline and an expanding economy, the government of the day was not only able to bring down the debt-to-GDP ratio to below 30%, but the government actually paid of $100 billion in actual real debt. I would note that fiscal targets were set and a contingency fund was created, so that everyone knew the plan. The 30% debt-to-GDP ratio has hovered there ever since 2006 to 2018. While history may teach us something, it does not teach us everything. We may be in the immediate post-World War economy, or we may be in something else.

I think I have said enough about what I think about economists' predictions. The other unknown is how the virus will behave. It has demonstrated a devastating resiliency, attacking populations that were once thought to be safe, so it is hard to know whether we have reached an armistice with the enemy or there will still be a full-on war or just a few battles left to mop up.

The finance minister is making a series of what I would argue are reasonable bets. One is that the economy will grow its way out. She has some evidence to support her position. As I indicated earlier, the Bank of Canada yesterday revised its expectations for the growth of the economy upwards quite dramatically, even higher than what the projection was set out last Monday by the finance minister. The second bet is that inflation is still within the band. I am a touch more skeptical, for reasons outlined above, but it is not an unreasonable assumption, and one of the monetary tools left by the Governor of the Bank of Canada to keep the expansion of the economy going. The third bet is that short-term interest rates will remain low. How long is short term? I am not quite sure, but I am, again, a little skeptical about that.

The fourth is that the fall deficit projection of $382 billion came down to $354 billion, which is quite true, and did show some evidence that the government's plan was working. The fifth is that the government—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Unfortunate, the hon. member's time for debate has expired, but he will be able to add during questions and comments.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague has been here for a while and has some very valuable historical insight on things that happen over time.

When I saw this budget of 700-plus pages with extraordinary debt spending and decisions around support for many different items, I worried about, as the saying goes, when we will have to pay the piper. Part of the Conservative amendment suggests that we are concerned that the government, in an election budget, has given things away, but is not talking about the hard choices it is going to make. Does the member guarantee that there will never be capital gains on private homes?

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, one is not the business of issuing guarantees on anything that one cannot control.

The member is justifiably worried about whether we can pay the debt. The real question is whether the finance minister's assumptions are realistic under the circumstances. The other assumption I would add as I have a chance to is that President Biden is proposing $2.3 trillion in stimulus spending and Canada will be well positioned to pick up on that uptake, in spite of the buy American provisions.

The budget is 700 pages and I agree that we are in perilous times. The test is whether the Minister of Finance has made some reasonable assumptions. I believe at this stage she has and, in fact, they are probably the only assumptions she can make.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his comments, especially around economists. I once heard a respected conservative economist say that economists exist to make astrologers look good.

I want to ask the member about taxing the ultrawealthy to help pay back this pandemic debt. It is low-income Canadians who have been really impacted by this. People have lost their jobs and some people have lost their lives. Why has the government not brought in a wealth tax? Eighty per cent of Canadians want a wealth tax on the ultrawealthy. Instead, we get a luxury tax of 10% on people's latest Ferrari or yacht. Why has the government not taken the bold step to bring in a wealth tax so that the wealthy are paying this debt down?

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will tell the hon. member that I do not own a yacht or a fancy car, unless one calls a Subaru a fancy car.

The short answer is that wealth taxes do not work. When they have been tried, they have been abandoned. The most effective wealth tax we have is the capital gains tax. I expect that, given the irrational exuberance of the some of the real estate sales, there will be quite a significant windfall for the government on the sales of assets.