Madam Speaker, for eight years, Conservatives warned that the cost of this NDP-Liberal government would fuel inflation, hike interest rates and drive up the cost of living for all Canadians. The Liberals are spending more than ever before, while everyday Canadians are struggling more than ever before. That is the consequence of the costly coalition’s agenda to tax and spend recklessly.
Budget 2023’s $70 billion in new spending will have to be covered by $4,300 from every Canadian family in the taxes they pay. Since 2019 alone, the Liberals have increased spending by $120 billion, and most of it was not related to COVID. The Liberal deficit is now over $40 billion a year, and the debt will hit $1.3 trillion in only five years from now.
This Prime Minister has added more debt than every other prime minister before combined. His own finance minister confirms that debt interest has increased 80% in the last three years. That is $43.9 billion a year, or 10% of all government spending. These are shocking numbers that are hard to conceive of. In reality, they mean that, if a Canadian paid taxes this year, they paid $1,400 dollars just to service the Liberals’ debt, not even to pay it down. So much for the Prime Minister’s 2015 promise of three years of $10-billion annual deficits.
What the Liberals have done is exactly what Conservatives warned about. This budget will up the debt, up how much Canadians pay for it and up the cost of everything in daily life. This is all while Liberals drive away private sector investment, businesses and jobs in key sectors, such as natural resources, which make outsized investments and pay outsized taxes compared to all other sectors for the public services and programs that Canadians' value.
Liberal meddling makes life more expensive for people in Lakeland and across Canada. The January 2023 Liberal tax hikes already cost Canadians over $300 more this year, when half of Canadians are already $200 away from bankruptcy.
The Liberal carbon tax will cost Canadians in Lakeland nearly $3,000 dollars a year only seven years from now, and it will immediately take another $700, which they do not have, from them this year alone. While the Liberals may claim otherwise, the independent PBO is clear that their carbon tax increases the cost of literally everything, which is why Canadians pay more than they will ever get back from these Liberals.
Across all provinces where the Liberals have imposed their carbon tax, four in five Canadians will pay more than they get back, which is the truth, while nearly half of Canadians are forced to borrow for basics and have no emergency savings. More than ever before, 1.5 million Canadians have to go to food banks to make ends meet, and 69% of seniors have to work longer than planned now because NDP-Liberal spending-driven inflation has killed the purchasing power of their retirement savings.
What is the Liberals’ response? It is to increase taxes and increase spending to wipe out any savings Canadians have been able to keep, and then have the gall to ask struggling Canadians to be grateful when the few who meet complicated criteria get a one-off cheque for a couple hundred dollars in the mail, which does not come close to covering the costs most Canadians face because of these Liberals. They are so out of touch, and Canadians are out of money.
The truth is that lower taxes and attractive business conditions always result in more revenue for governments. The Liberals do this backwards. Under the former Conservative government, foreign investment averaged $55.6 billion annually in Canada while major projects flourished. Under these Liberals, there has been a big drop to $39 billion a year.
There are big problems with the Liberals’ plans for natural resources in budget 2023. The Liberals should not aim to match the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act’s $394 billion in subsidies, which is more than Canada’s total annual revenue. The Liberals did try, with billions in badly targeted subsidies, but the tax credit incentives will not actually incentivize and expand energy transformation in Canada as well as they could, and I will explain why.
The U.S. IRA has technology-neutral production tax credits for low-emissions electricity or parts manufacturing, which means established and multipronged, profitable energy companies can keep investing in these technologies. However, in Canada, the Liberals cut out every oil and gas company from eligibility for the clean technology investment tax credit, the very companies who currently fund 75% of Canadian clean tech investment in this country overall. The Liberals' tax credit encourages them to put those investments in the U.S. and other countries, where it would be welcomed and rewarded.
Meanwhile, labour conditions on the Liberals’ tax credits, which will infringe on negotiated agreements, are likely to harm exclusive solar and wind companies’ ability to access the credits since their workers are often unskilled labourers and the companies just cannot meet the Liberals' targets. The Liberals obviously make bad investments with tax dollars, with a third of the budget, $35 billion, now being sent to the Canada growth fund. Canadians probably remember the very expensive $35-billion Canada Infrastructure Bank, which has not actually built a single thing after eight years. It is so bad that Parliament’s transport committee even says it should be abolished.
Now the Liberals are putting billions into the Canada growth fund, run by the board which, as alleged by Hong Kong Watch late last year, invested Canadians’ pension funds in companies helping the Communist Party’s Uyghur labour camps. Liberals pick a couple of winners and make lots of losers when they put Canadian tax dollars into big government slush funds, where they seem to disappear and do not actually benefit Canadians.
Conservatives have a better idea. It is to cut taxes and scrap the anti-energy, anti-private sector agenda that drives money and businesses away, so Canada can be a world leader in energy and environment technology development and exports without a single taxpayer dime, instead of pumping billions into broken programs and ineffective, poorly targeted tax incentives.
Under Conservatives, the private sector built three pipelines and reversed a fourth for western oil to feed eastern Canadian refineries, as well as attracted proposals for export pipelines in both directions. In contrast, after eight years, the Liberals have killed five pipelines that would have increased Canadian export capacity, and then they even bought TMX because they refused to give the legal and political certainty for the proponent to get it built after approval. In the least surprising, and most brutal, news ever, its cost has ballooned over 350%, from $6.8 billion in the private sector to $30.9 billion today. It should have been in service four years ago, and it is not even built.
The whole NDP-Liberal agenda is designed to hinder Canadian oil and gas, the leading export and private sector investor in the economy, but they are just fine with oil imported from the U.S. and from regimes with lower environmental and human rights standards, while landlocking Canadian resources and innovation, and gatekeeping our ability to help lower emissions globally. Instead of attracting foreign investment to Canada, Liberals choose to pay tens of billions of tax dollars to major foreign companies just to get them to do business here.
Canada used to have competitive advantages to attract investment, but instead, in a recent announcement, the Liberals are paying $4.3 million tax dollars per job to get a company to expand. That is because they have added layers of new red tape and taxes that drive away the private sector investment and tax revenue that comes from these projects, while they made government less efficient. Maybe the worst part is that their anti-energy policies do not even do what they claim. Their record on emissions reduction is that, after eight years, every year emissions have increased, except for one year, which was 2020, when governments locked Canadians down.
They also promised to plant two billion trees, but the Auditor General says they will not even get 4% of that done by the 2030 deadline. They cannot even claim to know their policies work because the Auditor General also said, “Environment and Climate Change Canada did not measure or report on the contributions of each selected greenhouse gas regulation”, but the Liberals are doubling down with their fuel regulations, a second carbon tax that will cost Canadians another $1,300 dollars more a year and a 13¢-a-litre increase to gas. Their own research shows it would “increase energy prices” and “disproportionately affect lower- and middle-income households”, as we have always warned.
The Liberals plan more mandates, more standards and more regulations to come, which will hike costs for everyday Canadians and businesses. On top of imposing these extra costs, which producers in competing countries do not face, their permitting system for natural resource development is broken. Canada is second last in OECD countries and 64th in the world for building permits.
The Liberals are talking a big game about critical minerals around the world, but it takes 30 years, and they have made no changes. They talk about sending out LNG, but they have allowed 18 proposals under their watch to be abandoned, and they leave Canada behind. It is a travesty. Conservatives would cut taxes, cut red tape, reward people who are hard working and unleash Canadian private sector investment and innovation to help lower global emissions and get our economy back on track while protecting taxpayers.
