Mr. Speaker, across the country, Canadians are struggling. They are struggling with 40-year highs in inflation. They are struggling with the highest interest rates in the G7. They are struggling with the highest housing prices on record. Gas, groceries and home heating are not luxuries. They never have been, but they are getting further and further out of reach for Canadians, and that is an indictment of a government that stands in this place every day, claiming to understand the pain of Canadians while simultaneously raising taxes on them.
Over and over again in this House we have called for the government to cancel all planned tax increases, including the payroll tax hikes planned for January 1 and the tax hikes on gas, groceries and home heating planned for April 1. Today we do it again, as I stand in this House on behalf of those in Thornhill and Canadians across the country to support the motion that would commit to no new taxes on gas, groceries, home heating and paycheques.
I hope this is a wake-up call to a government that continues to tell Canadians that they have never had it better and that this is an entirely global problem. Imagine that in 2008, during the last financial crisis, anyone in the House had risen in their seats and told Canadians that there was no problem here and that the whole world was facing the issue, so we should not be all that concerned. They would then give some platitudes and say something arbitrary. Imagine the backlash. The good news back then was that we were better positioned to be able to bring forward an economic action plan that had Canada last into the recession and first out, and that is not going to be the case.
Talking more about statistics on debt-to-GDP ratio and credit ratings, which we have heard as a justification for these tax increases, is simply out of touch. Credit ratings do not buy gas. Credit ratings do not buy winter jackets. Credit ratings do not buy workboots. Credit ratings do not buy the things Canadians need, and now Liberals want to add to that struggle. They want to take more of Canadians’ hard-earned money. They want to ignore the well-being of everyday people who desperately need relief.
I hear it. I am sure they do too. The Liberals want to divide people and call them names, and perhaps the Liberals might understand that those actions have consequences, but given today's debate I am not sure they do. I do not know how to classify the Liberal tax plan as anything other than a tax plan, although I think we have heard countless references to words like contributions, funds or taxes by another name.
Like almost all members in this House, I hear from constituents every day whose kids cannot afford a home, who cannot afford to get to work and who cannot afford to feed their families nutritious diets. We need to ask ourselves whether more taxes are the real solution to this affordability crisis. Is doubling down on the same approach that got us into this mess the way to get us out?
The Liberals and the NDP say yes. The Conservatives say no. Canadians pay a vast amount of their income taxes to the government, and only the Liberals, and the NDP as their dance partners, would think that this number needs to go higher rather than lower. If the government was at all in touch with the economic reality, it would know we cannot tax our way to balanced budgets, we cannot tax our way to prosperity, and more spending is not going to get inflation under control.
If the debate in the House is about what is or is not a tax, I thought I would share a few ways the government is actually taxing Canadians, making life harder, because that seems unclear to the other side today.
On paycheques, the finance minister admitted that she wants to raise EI premiums by $2.5 billion and not even fund EI. CPP premiums are on the rise, and payroll taxes on the average Canadian worker are about $700 higher than they were when Conservatives left office.
In the energy sector, Liberals imposed a carbon tax. It started at $30 a tonne. Then it was $40. Now it is $50. They promised Canadians before the election that it would never go higher, but we should have known better, because the environment minister’s plan is to triple the carbon tax to $170 a tonne. The Liberals are tripling the carbon tax. That is times three. We will pay three times more than we do now. The Liberals want to add an extra 40¢ a litre to gas to go with the 40-year high in inflation. They tell Canadians they get more than they pay, and that is not true. The Parliamentary Budget Officer agrees.
Worse, emissions in this country have risen every single year, except for the year the country was shut down. Tripling the price without even making a dent in emissions and presenting that they are returning that money to Canadians does not make a whole lot of sense.
On tax credits, the Liberals promised a rebate for all consumers forced to pay their punitive carbon tax. However, this year the average household in Ontario, where I am from, pays $360 more in carbon taxes than it gets back. There really is no justification. It does not work. They pay more than they get back, and it is going up by three times.
On food, the Prime Minister has increased the taxes farmers pay and decreased the output they produce. Let us not forget it comes at a time when the world is hurting for crops and agricultural products, and now struggling families across Canada are paying record prices for staples like bread, meat and vegetables. Tripling that carbon tax makes everything that needs to be transported even more expensive.
Let us not forget about the inflation tax, the invisible tax eating away at Canadians' paycheques that was brought on by seven years of inflationary deficits and reckless spending. The government knew this would happen. It is not like there was not a warning. We knew that creating cash and running deficits causes inflation. The Leader of the Opposition, the member for Carleton, has been saying so since 2020. The Liberals told us that interest rates would stay low. They told us that the carbon tax would not go up. They told us that the problem was deflation, not inflation.
Do we not have record inflation? Do we not have a plan to triple the carbon tax? Are we not experiencing some of the highest interest rate hikes since the 1990s? This has confirmed what we knew all along, that we cannot rely on the government to manage the nation's economy, and we cannot trust it with workers' paycheques.
Canadians need relief, but it is clear that the government, once again, is going to keep us on the wrong path, and that it has no plan to take us off it to put us on the right one. I have actually been a part of federal budgets before, at a time when they were balanced, the last one that was balanced actually.
What the Liberals proposed last spring was a book of words. It did not have a plan. It did not even have a vision for the future of our nation. Then they voted down our plan to scrap the carbon tax. They nixed the motion to scrap the GST on gas and diesel to help struggling Canadians, and they refused to act to bring down the price to buy a home, or frankly commit to any meaningful housing stock to build more. To this day, Liberals refuse to rein in the inflationary federal spending, driving that number up and not down.
Like I said at the beginning of my speech, Canadians are struggling, and judging by the debate in this place, it seems like Conservatives are the only ones listening. I am sure Liberal members are having the same conversations in their ridings as I am in mine. Our job is to turn that struggle into hope. Whether it is about travel restrictions, punitive vaccine mandates, taxes, the economy or anything else, we are the ones proposing solutions, unlike what the government accused this side of the House of not doing, and we are fighting for Canadians.
Our motion on the table addresses inflation at its core by putting a stop to the out-of-control tax hikes and reckless spending. It is not just me asking for this motion to pass, but also Canadians from coast to coast. Seven out of 10 people say that money is a major issue for them, and 53% of people say they are within $1,000 of insolvency. Canadians are using food banks, 51% of them, and students are living in homeless shelters while they study. Those are facts.
To bring back optimism, to again make Canada the economic engine it could be in the world, Canadians can be assured that we will be here every day to ask the hard questions about why this is happening in this country, to put our ideas forward and to advocate for the millions left behind. We are laser focused on the economy and taxes, because it is too important to the country not to be.
It is time for the Liberals to put people back into their plans when they think about tripling the carbon tax or when they think about raising taxes on Canadians. It is time to let Canadians finally keep their hard-earned money. It is time for the Liberals to answer the millions of Canadians calling for relief, and supporting this motion would give Canadians the relief they are asking for. I hope members of this House agree.