Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you, the support staff and all the members in here for burning the midnight oil with me. I appreciate it. I will try to keep you informed, if not entertained.
Thanks again to the people of Northumberland—Peterborough South for sending me here. It is an honour every day.
Today, I rise to talk about Bill C-31, which is an act respecting the cost of living relief measures related to dental care and rental housing, otherwise dubbed the so-called affordability bill.
Before I start talking about the substance of the bill, and I will get there, I promise, I think it is important to outline some of the context in which this legislation comes to the House.
We are in an affordability crisis. There can be no doubt about that. I think all 338 members would share my opinion on that. We have inflation that has hit over 7%. We are facing an environment that has been created, and this is where some of my Liberal colleagues may disagree with me, by the Liberals' tax-and-spend agenda. The government's profligate spending has led to more printing of money.
What happens, in broad terms, is that the government spends and spends, but it does not have the money to back that up. It does not have the tax dollars to back up its spending. What it does is print money. The fancy term is quantitative easing, which involves the buying and selling of bonds by the government basically to itself, but the reality is that it is printing money.
What happens when inflation increases is that it hurts Canadians of course because everything becomes increasingly more expensive, which creates increased pain for Canadians. The truth of the matter is that we will certainly hear the members of the NDP talk about the price gouging and the profit-taking. There is one organization that has taken more profits than all corporations combined. That is the federal government. If we want to talk about profiteering, that starts and begins with the federal government. The revenues overfloweth because of the inflation tax. Every week the current government hits new revenue highs and new revenue increases. This is coming off the backs of Canadians.
If we look at people who are making $50,000 a year, those individuals have seen their purchasing power decrease by thousands of dollars. They have seen a pay decrease of thousands of dollars. I can tell members that this story is hundreds of years old, even thousands of years old. Every time the government goes about this, right back to the Roman government, when it starts printing money, or at that point reducing the amount of valuable material in coins, when it starts increasing that, what always happens is that the people get hurt.
With that more spending, the rules of supply and demand kick in. Money is worth less and it is harder for everyone, but who it hurts the most is not the wealthy. The wealthy are doing quite well. They have seen their million-dollar houses become $2-million houses. They have seen their businesses and stock portfolios potentially increase in value. Even that is being hit now with the current Liberal government's poor economic stewardship, but it is the most vulnerable. If people are earning $20,000 or $30,000 a year, with food prices going up by 10%, it is a much bigger deal for them than if they are earning $100,000 and they just have to reduce their Netflix subscription. That is the difference between a single mom being able to feed her family or not.
I will tell members that if they want a true rental and dental bill, it is called eliminating the carbon tax. That will provide Canadians with a lot more tax relief, which will provide a lot more dollars, and to the most vulnerable, than this rental-dental bill ever would.
We have to understand the very basics of this. Food inflation has increased the cost of food by $1,300. The rental bill will provide $500 for rent. The math is simple. The reality is monetary. Continuing to spend money, which is funded by the Bank of Canada, will create a disillusionment.
What happens when the government spends money is that there is an initial excitement and exuberance. When that money hits the bank accounts of Canadians, they are excited, which has happened many times throughout history, but that exuberance quickly turns into a deep sense of disillusionment as they realize that it is just a nasty trick because the cost of everything has increased. Once again, the main beneficiary of this is the government. Its revenues continue to increase while Canadians continue to suffer.
The only true path to addressing this affordability crisis and to really increasing the prosperity of our country is by increasing productivity, because it is voodoo to say that if we print money, we are worth more. That is not how this works. How a country actually increases its value is by producing more goods and services efficiently, because that increases real wages, real prosperity and, dare I say, real profits. We see that impact on Canadian wage earners because Canada's wages are lower, on average, than the United States, Switzerland and Ireland. What else is lower than in those countries? Our productivity is lower. Productivity per hour in Switzerland is $60 and ours is $50. In the U.S. it is $65 and ours is $50. In Ireland, it is $84. It is no surprise because that has a real impact. We need to make Canadians more productive.
Do members know that we are last in the OECD, the very bottom, of capital investments? It is because the private sector is getting pushed out by the Liberal government. The private sector simply does not have the funds to invest and that has very real consequences. Canada is investing 43¢ on every dollar the U.S. is investing in capital investments. That makes every worker less efficient, less effective and makes our country less productive.
Through the private sector, we create opportunities for people. We create great jobs. We allow people to spend their money as they best see fit, and 100 times out of 100 times, I will put more faith in Canadians to make decisions about their own lives than any bureaucrat in Ottawa, because Canadians know how to control their own money. Farmers know how to be stewards of their farms, which is exactly the opposite of what the Prime Minister said, and I can say that my farmers are not happy about that comment.
Let us get back to everyday Canadians. We are coming up on Thanksgiving. Do members want to know what the impact of the Liberals' tax-and-spend agenda is? The cost of a turkey is up 15% to 16% per kilogram. Potatoes are up 22%. Butter has increased 13%. Cranberries are up 12%. Bacon is 12% more expensive. Chicken is up 10%, and corn is up 6%. For a wealthy family, this will not have a significant impact, but for a family just trying to get by, trying to have a nice Thanksgiving after the two years of suffering we have all been through with COVID and trying to put food on the table, this will have a real impact. We have seen that.
There were 20% more Canadians going to food banks from 2019 to 2021, a full 20%. Over 20% of Canadians are changing their diet because they cannot afford to eat the way they used to, and 8% of people are skipping meals. They avoid eating because they cannot afford food in this Liberal economy.
We in the Conservative Party want every child to have dental care and we want every person to be housed, but we believe that comes from the workers and businesses of this country. The higher the inflation, the more it will impoverish Canadians. That is what history says. We have true compassion for people. We want to make sure that businesses are successful, that workers are effective, that families can have a great Thanksgiving and that Canada remains affordable and becomes the freest country in the world.