Debates of June 21st, 2023

Motions for Papers

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Democratic Institutions; the hon. member for Regina—Wascana, Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Opposition Motion—Balanced Budget

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

moved:

That, given that, (i) Liberal budget 2023 adds more than $60 billion in new spending — that is $4,200 per family, (ii) inflation in Canada increased following the introduction of $60 billion in new Liberal spending, (iii) following the increase in Canada's inflation, interest rates were increased to 4.75%, (iv) the IMF warns that Canada is the country most at risk of a massive mortgage default, (v) average mortgage payments are up 122% since the Liberal Prime Minister took office, (vi) Canadian households have the most debt as a share of GDP of any country in the G7, (vii) the solution is to eliminate the deficits, balance the budgets in order to bring down inflation and interest rates, the House call on the government to table a plan to return to balanced budgets.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Since today is the final allotted day for the supply period ending June 23, the House will go through the usual procedures to consider and dispose of supply bills. In view of recent practices, do hon. members agree that the bills be distributed now?

It is agreed.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Bay of Quinte.

We are living through the same economic and scientific experiment that politicians dust off every 30 years, as soon as the last experiment is forgotten. The experiment I mean is the one where politicians approach the economy like this: if it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it; and if it stops moving, subsidize it.

This is exactly this government's approach. The government has turned Canada into the second-slowest country in the world to grant building permits. Under existing regulations, it takes 25 years to approve a mining project. This country imposes more taxes on small and medium-sized enterprises, which is slowing economic productivity. Then the government turns around and tries to subsidize all these things.

Let us talk about housing, for example. Since taking office, the Prime Minister has been running a country with the fewest houses per capita in the G7, even though Canada has one of the largest land masses. This is because construction projects sometimes take 10 years to be approved. What does the Prime Minister do? He hands out subsidies and big cheques to municipal politicians, who then stand in the way of this construction. That is why Vancouver is the world's third most expensive city, and Toronto is the second most expensive. Canada has a lot of land, however. The average house cost is almost double in Canada what it is in the United States, which has 10 times the people to house on a smaller land mass.

The government blocked the construction of two pipelines but then subsidized a third. This means that it is against pipelines that are built by the private sector with private money, but it is in favour of pipelines that are subsidized by the government. As a result, $30 billion is being spent to subsidize a pipeline in western Canada that could have cost taxpayers nothing. Meanwhile, these kinds of projects are being built for free around the world.

The Prime Minister boasts about subsidies under Canada's critical minerals strategy for materials needed for electrification. At the same time, the government is blocking the development of those same kinds of mines in northern Ontario that could produce those same products. Why is this government blocking something with one hand and subsidizing it with the other? Why not do neither and just allow investors, workers and entrepreneurs to do it on their own?

The answer is that it would take the Prime Minister out of the equation. He may seem inconsistent, but he is actually very consistent, because in all of these cases, he forces people to go through him and through the government to do anything at all. He puts himself at the centre of everything that people can do in the economy. It is Canadians, ordinary folks, the people doing the work, who should be at the centre of our country.

There are real consequences and real costs to that. Over the next 30 years, Canada is expected to have the worst economic growth in the OECD. The cost of housing has also doubled.

Food prices are rising at the fastest pace in 40 years. When the government prevents the market from developing naturally and organically, just so it can subsidize it, that means additional costs for ordinary Canadians who are forced to pay more.

There is another way. We need to remove gatekeepers so hydroelectric dams can be built and materials can be mined for electrification. We need to produce more of our own energy here in Canada, instead of importing it from elsewhere, by cutting red tape and reducing delays. We need to encourage municipalities to cut their own red tape so that we can build affordable housing for average Canadians.

The correct approach is to give Canadians the freedom to create a better quality of life that costs less. It is just common sense. Together, let us bring common sense home to Canada. That is our goal, and that is exactly what we are going to do.

We are now living through an experiment. It is not an unprecedented experiment; it is tried about every 30 years, as soon as the last experiment is forgotten. It is the idea that if the government sees something that moves, it taxes it. “If it keeps moving, [they] regulate it. And if it stops moving, [they] subsidize it.” That is, of course, a quote I took from a famous American president who took the opposite approach, but it is the approach we are living with right now.

What is the result of a government that interferes in order to block Canadians from building things for themselves and then tries to subsidize that very building after the fact? The result is that the cost of everything is rising. The cost of government is driving up the cost of living. The government has produced half a trillion dollars of new money that bids up the goods we buy and the interest we pay. Now, Canadians face the real threat of a mortgage meltdown when those rates rise further.

We see this approach, though, played out again and again. For example, the government blocked two pipelines but then subsidized a third. It is not that it is against pipelines; it is just that it is only in favour of a pipeline that can be built with 30 billion tax dollars. The government blocked mines. It blocked all the mines in northern Ontario's ring of fire, and now it wants to subsidize those very same mines.

The government taxes small businesses and then claims it is coming up with subsidies to bail out those very same small businesses for the costs the government made them pay. The government claims its carbon tax works like this. It will take the money away and give it back, and somehow it will be worth more than when it left. Of course, we now know that everyday Canadians are paying vastly more in these taxes than they get back in return.

The experiment fails. Every 30 years or so it happens, and it is allowed to happen only because enough time has passed for people to forget its logical outcome. The logical way out of it is to take exactly the opposite approach; instead of taxing and blocking our industry and then subsidizing it, we should do neither. We should have real, sensible streamlined rules that allow us to protect our environment and public safety but allow our entrepreneurs, investors and industrialists to get things done. That is what we will do when I am prime minister.

Let us set some wonderful, ambitious goals. Why do we not set a goal? Instead of being the second slowest in the OECD to grant a building permit, why can we not be the fastest place to grant a building permit anywhere in the OECD? Why can we not approve a mine or a small, modular nuclear reactor in two or three years, rather than in 25 years? What do we learn in years 23, 24 and 25 that we could not have learned in years one, two and three of these projects?

Why do we not incentivize our municipalities to do what some are trying their very best to do? For example, the mayor of Walkerton just streamlined and sped up the approval of housing so he could have three 60-unit apartment blocks finalized in several months. The great Squamish people, right inside the city of Vancouver, do not have to follow Vancouver's bureaucratic rules, because they control their own land. They were able to speed up and approve 6,000 units of housing on 10 acres of land. That is 600 units of housing per acre. People will now have homes because the Squamish know how to do what so many local government bureaucrats do not allow, which is to approve projects and get them built.

That reminds me of the great Aubrey Moodie, who was the reeve of Nepean. Jack May went to see him on a Sunday morning before he got up to go to church, and said he wanted to build a car dealership and he had a piece of land. The next day at the local town hall, the lawyers sat down with the engineers. Within 48 hours, there was approval, and within 72 hours, there was construction. The car dealership is still standing safely there, 70 years later. That is common sense.

That way, we can build homes that people can afford, build businesses that pay higher paycheques, lower the tax burden on the backs of the hard-working people and let them bring home more of their paycheques. That is the purpose of the government; it is to make Canada work for the people who do the work, by bringing home lower costs, by eliminating the carbon tax and the inflationary deficits, by bringing home powerful paycheques with lower taxes that reward hard work, by removing gatekeepers to build homes, to allow first nations to develop their economies and to allow our people to develop their own industry. We need to bring in homes people can afford, by removing gatekeepers, freeing up land and speeding up permits to build and build. We need to bring home safe streets for our people, with consequences for repeat, violent offenders, not by targeting our lawful firearms owners. We need to bring home our freedom again by eliminating the censorship and centralized control the government has attempted to impose on the people.

In other words, when we say, “bring it home”, it means using the House to bring the power, the control and the money back into the hands of the entrepreneur, the worker and the everyday extraordinary people who know better than anyone in this room how to chart their own course and live their own lives. It is common sense. It is the common sense of the common people, united for our common home: your home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Madam Speaker, at least we always know when a Conservative is wrapping up their speech. It is a good cue.

I have a question for the Leader of the Opposition. He has been very critical of the government, the government's responses to COVID and the various measures that have been put in place. However, I want to read what one of his predecessors, a previous leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, said. Brian Mulroney said that the Prime Minister and the premiers “conducted themselves as well as anybody else in the world” in dealing with COVID, something Mulroney called “the greatest challenge that any prime minister has dealt with in Canada in 156 years.” The Conservatives are laughing at Mulroney. With respect to NAFTA, Mulroney said he saw first-hand how the Prime Minister made “big decisions at crucial moments” and won “a significant victory for Canada”.

How can the current leader of the Conservative Party differ so much from the leader of his party a few decades ago?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, when we look at the record of the Prime Minister, he has doubled the cost of housing; he has doubled the cost of rent, mortgage payments and necessary down payments. He has massively increased lineups at our local food banks. There are 1.5 million people standing outside food banks every single month. They are lined up all around street corners in cities like Toronto. We now see 100,000 British Columbians who face possible homelessness because of the increases in rent that the government's inflationary policies are helping drive.

These are new problems; eight years ago, we did not have these problems. Housing was affordable. Canadians could afford to eat. There is no excuse for this failure. We have all the natural advantages. We live next to the most lucrative economy in the world. We have the most educated people in the world. We have four coasts. We can do it.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the Conservative leader for his speech and for introducing this motion. The Bloc Québécois is in favour of tabling a plan to return to a balanced budget. I think that the least a government can do is to state its intentions.

I agree that the government or the Liberal Party may be spending too much money, but above all, I think that the money is being spent unwisely. It cannot expect to magically balance the books. To do that, it will need a better way to spend and invest, and the Bloc Québécois has some suggestions to make.

For example, we want to support seniors to stop their purchasing power from eroding. We want to ensure that health transfers are in line with what the provinces are asking for. We want a real plan for social and affordable housing and an EI system that works. Does the Leader of the Opposition support these measures?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to hear that the hon. member wants balanced budgets. I agree with that. I have put forward several ideas for saving money.

For example, $35 billion of taxpayers' money was allocated to the infrastructure bank. However, it has not completed a single project in five years. This is an enormous waste of money. What is more, the amounts awarded to consultants keep increasing, even though we have a larger public service that can do exactly the same work. Buying back hunting rifles is another example of waste.

There is a lot of waste in this government. We will eliminate waste and balance the budget to bring down inflation and interest rates.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, of course, when we talk about what affects the power of Canadians paycheques, it is not just a matter of talking about taxation, because outsized price increases by corporations also affect the power of Canadians' paycheques. We have seen record profits by grocery companies and by oil and gas companies, which are raising their prices far more than the increase in the input costs they have seen. Just today, it was reported that Canada Bread Company pleaded guilty to price fixing with Weston Foods, in a scandal that goes back to even before the pandemic. We know Canadians are very concerned about unjustified price hikes during the pandemic, which some economists have said are responsible for up to 25% of inflation.

Therefore, why does the leader of the Conservative Party never address the question of corporate greed when he talks about inflation?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is the paradise the NDP created. It is part of a coalition government, during which all of these economic outrages the member described have been able to flourish. There is no question that since the socialist policies of the NDP, with the government, have come into place, they have actually helped corporate profits, as they always do, contrary to the false narrative. In reality, when big government controls all the money, those with the political influence do the best, and those who pay the bills do the work.

We want to put the money back in the hands of the hard-working people who earned it, not in the hands of the corporate oligarchs or the big government.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour and privilege to follow and share my time with the future prime minister of Canada.

When I was a little boy, my grandfather used to read—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. parliamentary secretary is rising on a point of order.

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

Madam Speaker, I do not recall hearing the Leader of the Opposition indicate he was sharing his time.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

He did.

The hon. member for Bay of Quinte.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour and privilege to share my time with the future prime minister of Canada.

When I was a little boy, my grandfather used to read to me a great Canadian poet, Robert Service. The poem that he would read to us was The Cremation of Sam McGee, which starts:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

The greatest line from that whole poem was, “Now a promise made is a debt unpaid”.

When we said things are broken, what is broken the most are the promises to Canadians: promises for a better life and a way to boost the ability and the affordability of the middle class and those who hope to join it, a promise for a better life in Canada with ample affordable rent and housing, a promise for a good paycheque and a promise for law and order.

When we said things were broken, these promises were broken, and what is left are broken promises, empty promises that are leaving Canadians with empty wallets and the debt that is left unpaid.

Canadians deserve better. They deserve the best, and the Liberal government has failed to deliver. It is our duty to effect change and to ensure that our hard work in this House today ushers in a better tomorrow for all.

The Liberals have stood for far too long with years of hopeful policy that has only led to empty promises and empty wallets for Canadians, especially in the middle class. With more than eight million Canadians using food banks, it is plain that more people than ever before are finding themselves out of the middle class. Rising interest rates are hammering homeowners, renters and businesses as every increase takes more out of Canadians' paycheques and wallets and gives it back to the government. As a business owner, I can say it is hard to watch.

Milton Friedman said it best back in 1992, over 30 years ago, when he said that although printing money has some immediate benefits that seem desirable in the short term, it can lead to harmful consequences in the long term, causing deficits that lead to inflation. The good effects come first, and it feels good. The bad effects only come later. There is a strong temptation to overdo it, but when governments stop printing money, it is the opposite: The bad effects come first and the good effects only come later. It is hard to reverse and it is addicting.

After promising teeny-tiny deficit spending before COVID and before the election in 2015, the government spent $100 billion prior to COVID-19 on deficits. The government printed that money. Then, after COVID, it printed $200 billion of non-COVID deficit inflationary spending, and then in this budget, after the finance minister promised to get his house in order, we see that the government is printing $63 billion, saying that it is bringing it down to $43 billion because $2,400 of new taxes per middle-class-income family is going back to those households.

This is the invisible tax that is taking hold further. Inflation rates have driven food prices up more than 10%. This invisible tax steals from Canadian incomes and steals from Canadian wallets.

We know that the solution to inflation is to stop printing money and make more of the things that money buys. Doing this creates powerful paycheques by creating more of the stuff that we need in Canada that we are short of, and powerful paycheques mean more money in people's pockets.

The complacency of the current Liberal government has fostered an environment in which our nation's doers and dreamers are forced into a playing field that is anything but level, and it is harder than ever to create those paycheques. Companies in Canada find it increasingly difficult to operate in Canada because of increasing costs caused by inflation, higher interest rates on their loans and the complete inability to hire talent and workers whom they need to generate income for their companies.

We have red tape. We cannot get LNG out of the ground. Our leader talked about this. We need faster building permits. A mine should take two or three years, not 25.

Furthermore, we have big, bossy institutions that dominate our marketplaces with rules that protect them and not our small business owners, who find it hard to grow their businesses. Although the almost 1.2 million small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada make up 98% of all businesses in Canada and employ 10.5 million people, or 54% of the workforce, monopolies run this country.

In this game of Monopoly, Canadians lose. We pay $200 every time we pass “Go”. Every time we roll the dice in the game of Monopoly, and kids hate this game, we land on Telus or Rogers or Air Canada or VIA Rail or InBev beer or RBC or Bell Canada or Mastercard, and we lose every time. No one wins.

The simplicity of bringing down prices is that it is about something very simplistic. It is about freedom, freedom of choice for consumers in a free market that is not dominated by monopolies. It is about free and honest competition, about fostering our small and medium-sized enterprises and allowing them to grow.

Competition is anything but competitive in the Canadian telecommunications sector, where Canadians pay the highest cellphone rates on the planet, rates that are three times higher than they are in Australia and double those in the U.S. and Europe. Is this competition? I think not. The landscape has been gamed to favour the monopolies, leaving consumers without choice. Without competition, these telcos do not have to earn our confidence and our hard-earned dollar; they just demand it. We pay for it, as some of the highest prices in the world can be found on our bills every single month. Everyone in Canada has a cellphone.

The Liberal government campaigned on lower bills and more choices. It said they would be 25% lower. Today, those empty promises come with a significant price. The Canadian telephone monopolies have suffocated start-ups and silenced critics. If they cannot win by offering the prices that they do, they buy their competitors. They have bought more competitors to take them out of the market than anything else.

We must fight for freedom of choice for Canadians. We must create an environment that breeds competition in a fair and open market. We must fight to ensure that our hard-earned dollar is equal to the affordable and reliable service that we all deserve, because the Liberal Party’s empty promises just mean empty wallets.

It is the same in all sectors, and the solution to see Canadian paycheques grow is to have Canadian businesses grow. We need more homes. We need microchips. We need food. We need farms. We need food processing. We need LNG.

It is also about keeping Canadian IP in Canada. Canadians invented peanut butter, the zipper, the Ski-Doo, the Sea-Doo, the pacemaker and the WonderBra. Where are all of these inventions in the past decade?

We dedicated billions in funding to R and D, which gets pilfered by our foes and allies. We have put millions into battery research in the east coast at Dalhousie, but who owns that battery research? It is Tesla. We put millions into the Sidewalk Labs at Google. Who owns that research? It is Google. We are still paying for research from Huawei in our Canadian colleges and universities. Who is paying for that? It is Canadian taxpayers.

Again, we have not been smart at all with where we are putting our investments. When it comes to looking after Canadians’ money, it is all about one thing only: It is about investing in Canadians’ futures, and we have not been doing that.

People with good intentions make promises; only people with good character keep them. There were promises made and a debt unpaid, leaving Canadians with more debt owed than any generation before them.

The moral of this story is this: Do not make promises that you do not intend to keep. Perhaps the real lesson here is that promises made are only as strong as the person who gives them. If we cannot trust what someone is saying, we need to turn to a new voice.

A Conservative government will be that voice, a voice for all Canadians in a time of need. As families struggle to make ends meet and sacrifice daily to put food on the table, the last thing they need is more empty promises.

A Conservative government will rise above the unnecessary layers of bureaucracy that have stalled out in bringing about much-needed change. Action is what we offer, and bringing home paycheques to fill emptying wallets is what Canadians deserve. It is what the future deserves, and this future government will bring it home for Canadians.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Madam Speaker, over the last three decades, there have been 20 Conservative budgets introduced in the House. I am wondering if the member knows how many of those 20 Conservative budgets actually were balanced or ran a surplus.

I ask because when he discovers that the answer is only three, he must know that there is a reason for that.

Why is it that between Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, of the 20 budgets that were introduced in the House, only three ran a surplus or were balanced? Why is that?

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, that is three more than the Liberals have ever delivered to Canadians.

The simple fact is that whenever Conservatives get in, they tend to clean up the mess from the previous government. We saw a pattern here. We talk about it. Every 30 years, we tend to learn those lessons. We saw that pattern after the current Prime Minister's father was in government. We are certainly seeing the pattern now.

The whole premise is that as Conservatives and as Canadians, we believe that the only people we need to be listening to are Canadians, but when it comes to fixing this mess, it is going to be Canadians who also fix it, resulting in powerful paycheques, businesses that get rid of red tape and lower taxes to create new jobs for workers who want a better paycheque and who want to work in those jobs, who want to make this country a better place.

Conservatives are going to do that. We look forward to many balanced budgets in the future.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, there are often peculiar components to the Conservatives' motions. The motion itself is interesting. It reads well. The Conservatives are asking for a plan and the Bloc Québécois agrees with that.

The disappointing part is that the motion is based on premises or whereases that are slightly sensationalist and off-topic. The Conservatives know it too.

Inflation and interest rates result from international forces. We can call out this government all day long—we could help the Conservatives call it out on a lot of things—but these factors are international.

It would have been nice if the content and premises had been based on the reality of the situation.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, there is a perfect correlation in the fact that all governments that ran greater deficits ended up with higher inflation.

Something that we do not hear bandied around any more, although we used to in the beginning, is the modern monetary theory, this whole new proposition that we can spend our way out of a pandemic, out of a major problem, and that budgets would balance themselves. There was new thinking, although money has been around for thousands of years, that we could just keep spending and there would be no consequences. Well, the consequences are here and they are very real, and Canadians see them every single day.

This motion that we have is perfect, because it talks about going back to the table to return to balanced budgets. We have identified so clearly that Canadians know—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

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

Madam Speaker, it is always really interesting to see what kind of freedom Conservatives are willing to defend and whose freedom they will not defend.

Today the Conservatives shouted down a motion to protect kids. A nine-year-old girl was threatened and attacked for having a pixie haircut, yet they will not stand up in protection. The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan invited an MP from Uganda here who voted for the death penalty for LGBTQ people. He voted for the death penalty to kill people for their sexual orientation.

Also, in the desperation to hold back Maxime Bernier, the member in Stornoway was sending out pamphlets attacking the rights of gay people.

I would like to ask the hon. member why the opposition continues to undermine the rights of queer people, LGBTQ people and trans people and denies them freedom and the right to live their lives in dignity.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Madam Speaker, we stand up for all of those people.

I think the simple premise, though, is that this party over here is supporting a government that is failing Canadians in every single aspect of their lives right now, with the homes that they cannot afford and the rents that they cannot afford. We see it every time a single mother tries to fill up her car, pay her rent or get groceries. This party is propping up the government right now and not solving any of those problems. We are the only party in the House right now standing up for Canadians, standing up for their rights and their future, and we will continue to do so.

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Kingston and the Islands.

It is a pleasure to rise to discuss Canada's current fiscal position, our independent monetary policy, the current economic context and the 2023 budget, as well as to highlight a number of measures that are making life more affordable for Canadians while building a sustainable economy that works well for all Canadians.

This week, the International Monetary Fund reaffirmed not only that Canada enjoys the lowest deficit in the G7, but that this advantage continues for each and every year through its projected horizon. It said, “Canada is a strong fiscal performer”, with an enviable job market and a strong labour participation rate, which have been bolstered by the government’s investments in a Canada-wide early learning and child care system.

The IMF went on to note the resilience of Canada’s financial system in the face of recent global financial challenges, pointing specifically to Canada’s robust regulatory framework and contingency tools to safeguard federally regulated financial institutions, as well as insurance deposits. The IMF praised Canada’s progress in strengthening our anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing frameworks. It also noted our government’s efforts to increase housing supply and to address housing affordability challenges, including with the housing accelerator fund, which provides incentives for municipalities to bolster the housing supply even further.

At the end of March, our government released budget 2023, our made-in-Canada plan for a strong middle class, an affordable economy and a healthy future. It comes at an important moment for our economy.

As we have seen, Canada’s economy has made a remarkable recovery from the COVID recession. There are 890,000 more Canadians working today than when COVID first began. In the first four months of 2023 alone, the Canadian economy has added nearly a quarter of a million jobs. We have now recovered 128% of jobs lost during the first months of the pandemic, while the United States has only recovered 117%. Also, universal child care has increased the labour participation rate for Canadian women to a record high of 85.7%, showing the success of that policy, and our unemployment rate remains close to all-time historic lows.

Global inflation, while still too high, has fallen in Canada from its peak of 8.1% last June to 4.4% last month, and the Bank of Canada predicts it will be 3% by this summer and 2% by the end of 2024. Canada’s inflation rate also remains below that of our economic peers. Inflation in the U.K. is almost double, at 8.7%; the OECD average is at 7.4%; the EU is at 6.1%; and the G7 is at 5.4%. We can see that at 4.4% we are way below those.

Since February, the average wage for Canadians has grown by more than 5%, meaning that paycheques are now outpacing inflation. That means more money in the pockets of Canadians after a hard day’s work.

Canada had the strongest economic growth in the G7 over the course of 2022, and that is projected to continue through to 2024. Also, in April, S&P reiterated our AAA credit rating, and we have the lowest deficit-to-GDP ratio and the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, lower than other major AAA-rated economies, such as the Netherlands and Australia.

It is this remarkably strong economic foundation that underpinned the investments we made in our 2023 budget. Unlike the Conservatives, we believe our commitment to invest $196 billion to improve Canada’s health care system over the next 10 years is a prudent investment to make, especially in a context where we are exiting the greatest global health emergency we have faced in more than 100 years. We also think it is prudent to invest in fighting climate change and to develop the net-zero technologies that our world will demand as we continue to confront the increasing costs of previous inaction on reducing emissions.

If investments in health care and the clean economy are the first two pillars of the budget, the third is our government’s focus on affordability. Let us not forget that our government reduced our debt-to-GDP ratio every single year before the pandemic. This allowed us to support Canadians and Canadian businesses through the pandemic, and it is what allows us to invest in making life more affordable for Canadians today.

While inflation is coming down, I think we can all agree that it is still too high and is making it difficult for many Canadians to make ends meet and put nutritious food on the table. That is why budget 2023 introduced a grocery benefit that will help support 11 million Canadian families, including more than 50% of seniors. It will be delivered by cheque or direct deposit on July 5, so Canadians should watch for that over the next two weeks. We also secured a deal to reduce interchange fees for credit card-accepting businesses. This will save small businesses more than $1 billion over the next five years.

At the same time, we are looking to reduce additional fees and charges for Canadians. This includes fees on their cellphone bills, event and concert fees, excessive baggage fees and unjustified shipping and freight costs. We are also cracking down on predatory lending. We are reducing the criminal interest rate from 47% to 35% and imposing a cap on payday loans.

We are also supporting low-income Canadians by introducing automatic tax filing so that individuals can get access to the benefits they are entitled to. For some families, this will mean tens of thousands of dollars that they might not otherwise receive.

Students are receiving better access to student loans with increased student grants. The average student is likely to save $3,000 as a result of our government's eliminating interest on student loans. This will help young workers and apprentices get the start they need when they are looking to first enter the workforce. I have not even mentioned dental care, which will benefit nine million Canadians, as well as our investment in creating high-paying sustainable jobs that will benefit generations to come.

These investments build on significant investments that our government has made to support Canadians since first being elected in 2015. Child care costs, for example, have been reduced by 50%, with $10-a-day child care on track to being fully implemented by 2026. Child care on its own used to be the same amount as a mortgage payment. A family with two children is now saving over $20,000 a year in many cases.

We have increased old age security and have worked with premiers to increase the average value of pension payments going forward. We have reduced taxes for the middle class while increasing them on the top 1%. We have also increased the amount everyone can earn before paying any federal income tax at all and have reduced taxes for small businesses not once but twice.

Of course, let us not forget the Canada child benefit. This benefit, like many of the programs I have already referred to, is indexed to inflation and supports more than 3.5 million families. This means that as the cost of living rises, so will the benefit that Canadian families receive. On its own, the Canada child benefit has helped to lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty, and combined, these measures have lifted more than 2.7 million Canadians out of poverty, demonstrating that Canada’s first poverty reduction strategy is having a significant impact.

Finally, our enhanced workers benefit is supporting 4.2 million Canadian workers with higher paycheques. We have ensured, for the first time, that our investment incentives include measures to support workers with fair wages and benefits.

All of this together is happening because we believe that confident countries like Canada do well when they invest in themselves and when we invest in our people.

These are challenging times, but Canada is in an enviable position to be able to support Canadians who need it the most in a responsible and targeted way while ensuring that global inflation continues to decline in Canada. At the same time, we are securing health care and retirement security for the next generation while creating high-paying sustainable jobs for this generation.

There is obviously more work to do, more work to do on housing, more work to do on climate change and more work to do on affordability. Canadians are up to this challenge, and we are well positioned as a country to address those things. I hope that all members of this House will work together to bring forward the best Canadian ideas from right across the country, and that we will work to implement those ideas and positive solutions through the fall and through to budget 2024.