Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak today to the budget implementation act. It is a budget I would name after the Rick Moranis film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, but I am going to call it “Honey, I Sunk the Kids”. I would have used a different word for “sunk”, but that would have been unparliamentary language.
Why would I call it that? It is because of the massive intergenerational debt that we are passing on with very little thought or oversight of what it is going to do to our children and our grandchildren. How bad is it? It is $500 billion added in just two years and $700 billion of debt added over the next five years.
By the time I am done my 10-minute speech and five-minute question and answer period, $7.3 million will be added to the debt that Canadians will owe. People my age will remember Lee Majors as Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man. That would be just about 13 minutes of today's time with the government's spending to rebuild him better.
In the budget, one of the big problems I have, as someone from Edmonton, Alberta, is that there is almost nothing for Albertans. There are well over 700 pages in the budget, yet next to nothing for the province. It has been described in our province as a slap in the face for Albertans.
Going through the budget, I saw it mentions pipelines several times. Hurray, but it mentions a talent pipeline; a vaccine pipeline, and we see how the government has failed on that; a genomics talent pipeline; an innovation pipeline; and a pipeline of PPE. We are going to see tomorrow in the Auditor General's report on PPE how the government has funnelled taxpayer money to people connected with the Liberal Party and other insiders, but it mentions a pipeline of PPE in the budget. What about a pipeline of oil and gas? Guess what, there is no mention of that.
We have seen what is going on in Michigan right now with Line 5. If Michigan shuts down Line 5, it will cost tens of thousands of jobs in Sarnia, Ontario, and other places, and it will probably double the price of gas, yet there is nothing in the budget to address that issue.
There is also no mention of the fact that Alberta's oil and gas industry is the largest employer for indigenous workers. At the operations committee we did a study on government procurement for the indigenous and every single witness from the indigenous community stated that the only one doing its job was the oil and gas industry. It was not the federal government. It was failing, but the oil and gas industry was providing wealth and prosperity for the indigenous communities. In this budget, we have nothing.
We have heard repeatedly in my riding that small businesses that opened just before or during the pandemic were left out of all the support, including the wage support and the rent support, through no fault of their own. I used to be in the hotel business, and it takes a year, two years, or even longer now with all the regulations, to build a hotel. If people had the misfortune of deciding to invest before COVID started, they were cut out from the support of the government.
We have asked repeatedly, in the House and at committee, for the government to address that. Each time, Liberals stand, hand over heart, and say small businesses are the backbone of the economy, but they are not going to do anything. There is nothing in the budget to address that.
A friend of mine in the riding, Rick Bronson, has a comedy club in West Edmonton Mall called The Comic Strip. He employs almost 100 people. He opened a new one in British Columbia just before COVID happened. It is no fault of his own, but he is shut out from the government program. Again, we have asked repeatedly to help small businesses, but there is nothing for them.
In Alberta, we had two main asks in the budget, one was money for carbon capture research. The premier shot for the moon asking for billions, so I was expecting maybe a billion less. No, we ended up with a plan with carbon capture tax incentives, but only if it is not used for enhanced oil recovery. We have spoken to all the big players and the junior players in oil and gas and they have all said the same thing. There is no economic way forward for carbon capture without it being available for enhanced oil recovery.
On the one hand, the Liberals put out a carrot, and on the next hand, they hit people with a stick. In the budget there is some money for carbon capture research, with $20 million next year to $220 million over the next five years.
Let us think about it. Oil and gas, even at reduced prices, is still our number one export. It absolutely dwarfs the automobile industry, and it dwarfs aerospace, yet we get a pittance toward tech research for it. To put it in perspective, the government has given wealthy Tesla owners $100 million in subsidies to buy Tesla cars, half as much as it has given to the entire oil and gas industry for carbon capture. It shows very clearly the current government does not care about Alberta and that it really does not care, when push comes to shove, for the environment.
The Liberals also did not fix the unfair cap on the fiscal stabilization program that punishes Alberta because resources are included in that. They changed it to benefit Quebec and Ontario, but they continue to discriminate against Alberta by adding a ceiling if oil and gas resource revenue is put in there. Since 2014, Albertans have been net contributors of over $110 billion to the federal purse. What we get back is a slap in the face.
Going back to carbon capture, there is $20 million next year for carbon capture research. Also in this budget is $22 million for a recognition program for atomic workers from the 1950s, during the Korean War era. It is wonderful that we are recognizing the work of people done 70 years ago, but there is as much money for a recognition program for the 1950s as there is for vital carbon capture research. It again shows the priorities of the current government are not working people and certainly not those in Alberta.
Of the 739 pages total in this budget, pipelines are only mentioned five times. The word “supports” shows up 1,000 times, and the word “benefits” shows up 1,300 times. “Productivity”, though, only appears 39 times and “competitiveness” appears just 13 times.
What do we get for $700 billion of added debt over the next five years? The government predicts in its own budget that the growth rate will slow every single year starting in 2022, all the way down to 1.7% growth in 2025. Let us think about that. There is $700 billion in added debt and all we get is a mediocre 1.7% growth.
Robert Asselin, the former policy and budget director to Bill Morneau and a policy adviser to the Prime Minister, stated about this budget, “it is hard to find a coherent growth plan...spending close to $1 trillion, [and] not moving the needle on...growth would be the worst possible legacy of this budget.”
Dave Dodge, former Bank of Canada governor, stated that it does not focus on growth and that it is not a reasonably prudent plan.
The budget's title, though, states it is a recovery plan for growth, but we know what is growing. It is not the economy. Taxes are growing. In this budget, taxes received by the current government are projected to grow 28% from 2019-2020 to the end of 2025.
Also scheduled for growth is the interest that we are paying to Bay Street and Wall Street bankers for this debt the Liberals are piling up. Forty billion dollars of interest is what we are going to be paying per year in five years. Let us think of what we could do with that $40 billion. We could buy off, 40 times, the amount for the WE scandal and keep the Prime Minister's friends in business for a while. More important, think of the health care that we could invest in with that $40 billion. Every single premier asked for an increase in the health care transfers. They got nothing, but we have $40 billion for wealthy bankers.
We could be investing in the aging population and in the military. There is $51 million in this budget for NATO participation. There is the rise of China with its aggression and there is Russia, and we put in $51 million, which is barely double what we are putting into a recognition program for atomic workers from 70 years ago.
It is clear that this budget is not meant for growth of the economy. It is not meant for the people of Edmonton West, and it is certainly not meant for Albertans. It is not meant for our future generations. This budget is a failure, and it is a disgrace. That is why I will not be supporting it.