Mr. Speaker, there is an age-old question in business classes: How much does a bottle of water cost? In a grocery store, it is about 25¢. At a restaurant, it is about $2.50. In an airport, it is $5. If someone was at a salmon festival in Newfoundland, it was 30°C and they ran out of water, they would have to pay $10 for a bottle of water passed through the fence. If someone was in the desert, in the heat, three days without water, I would say they would give their left kidney for a bottle of water.
The point is this: The more scarce something is, the more valuable it is. The reverse of that is true: The more abundant something is, the less valuable it is. It would be nearly impossible to sell a bottle of water next to a cold spring. The bottle of water is effectively worthless.
We do not really buy and sell things in this country; we trade. Those are arbitrary terms for trade. We trade products for currency. We trade one bottle of water for $1. We trade a vehicle for thousands of dollars. It is like the famous game of Catan, in which players have to trade resources to complete tasks. If there is a lot of wheat, players may pay four wheat cards to get one brick, but if the game is reversed, they may use four brick cards to get one wheat. It is supply and demand; it is Economics 101.
What happens when our dollar, our currency, loses its scarcity? It loses value. If we simplify our economy down to five loaves and $5, every loaf is worth $1. However, if we have five loaves and $500, every loaf is now worth the high price of $100. Is the bread really worth more? It is the same loaf, and it tastes the same; it is just that the currency is worth less. The baker cannot take his $100 and buy a new pair of shoes. In this hypothetical inflation, that new $100 can probably buy only a dozen eggs. A dozen eggs is still worth only one loaf of bread.
Members may say that eggs will never go that high. I will tell members this: In 1925, a dozen eggs was just 47¢. Now, it is $4.70. That is a 100% increase. The egg is still the same: same size, same taste, same egg. In fact, if the dollar never lost its value over time, the egg should actually be cheaper. because the farming industry has become more efficient and able to produce more eggs with fewer resources. Why did some eggs increase from 47¢ to $4.70? It is because our dollar is worth less. In 1925, $1 could get someone two dozen eggs. Now, $1 can only get someone about three eggs.
Why did the value of our currency drop? It dropped from overspending. The government does not have money. It spends money collected from taxes, but once it spends what is collected, it borrows or prints the money. This is where the problem comes from.
Throughout most of history, currency was actually gold and silver coins. They were hard to mobilize and easy for others to steal, so banks suggested we give them money, which they would secure. The banks would then give banknotes in lieu, which could be used to trade products. That was called gold-backed currency or, as we call it, the gold standard. That system worked until banks and governments realized that they could loan more money and even print money if they removed the gold standard.
Now our money is backed by a promise, a simple promise, a promise we make as Canadians to each other, a promise that we will accept a piece of paper as a trading token. The only problem we have is that the value of the trading token can simply be changed by increasing the amount in circulation.
What is the harm of printing money and causing inflation? If someone is a business person, perhaps an executive with Brookfield Asset Management or a trust fund baby such as Justin Trudeau, inflation means no more than water on a duck's back. They do not have fixed salaries; they have business incomes, and they are protected by their assets. If someone is an average Joe and gets a 1% raise at work, they are excited, but if inflation was 3%, that means the values of their wage went down by 3%, so they just got robbed. They actually got a 2% pay cut. However, if someone owns their own company with 3% inflation, they can simply put their prices up to match inflation without losing a cent. In fact, they can get on the news and convince the average Joe that they should invest in their companies because they have had record-breaking profits. We see this in the grocery stores.
Inflation is good for rich people in this country who are backed by assets. The average Joe puts money in a savings account. We get excited when we make 2% interest on our savings, but if inflation is 3%, we actually lose 1%. The rich keep their savings not in a bank account but in assets, so when inflation is raised to 3%, it is no big deal. Their real estate portfolio just increases as well.
I have heard our Conservative leader say over and over again that inflation is the cruellest form of taxation. It taxes the poor without them even knowing it. Nobody comes into the House, puts forth a bill and votes on it. They simply go to the boardrooms and make quiet decisions to make our money worth less. It is a slap in the face when governments get up and say that it is giving a 1% tax cut to 22 million Canadians while Canadians are losing 1.7% in inflation. The government just taxed us an extra 0.7% without us even knowing it. Someone making $60,000 in a year just lost 0.7%, or $420 in hidden inflationary taxes. They just lost 1.7% on all their savings. That, my friends, is exactly why the cost of living is going up and why we cannot afford the same things anymore. The Liberals have been borrowing and printing money, circulating billions more. We have seen this a lot in the past 10 years.
Since 2019 alone, the Canadian dollar has lost 16% of its value. Did Canadians at home get a 16% wage increase? It is not likely for many of us. Surprisingly, housing costs have not gone up in Canada compared with the price of gold. The average price of a home today is the same as it was in the early 1980s. If we had used a gold-backed currency that could not be devalued by money printing, houses would still be the same price today.
That is why the Conservative Party does not believe in budgets that balance themselves. We believe in fiscal responsibility. We need budgets that are not filled with generational debt and inflation. I am not looking to hold the Liberals to Conservative promises. I want to hold them accountable to Liberal promises. The Liberals ran a campaign on bringing in a fancy banker who was going to bring fiscal responsibility to the nation and save us by only having a $62-billion deficit.
However, here we are at a $78-billion deficit. The entire country's debt right now is at $1.3 trillion. We spend more money in interest, servicing this debt, than we pay out in health care payments to all the provinces right across this country. We spend more money servicing this debt right across this country than we get in GST revenues. Every time we go to the store and pay GST on something, it is just covering the cost of the interest on this $1.3-trillion debt.
Where did the Liberals decide to cut? They decided to cut $4 billion in the next few years from Veterans Affairs, the department that supports the people who fought for this country. Veterans are the reason we have our freedoms. It is disappointing and disgraceful. Even with those disgraceful cuts, the Liberals plan on adding another $300 billion in the next five years, totalling $1.6 trillion.
I travel across my district, and the wharves are deplorable. In fact, wharves right across Newfoundland and Labrador are deplorable. The Conservatives promised to double infrastructure spending for small craft harbours, but the Liberals decided they had to outdo us, so they promised to triple it. This budget comes nowhere close to doing that.
Then the Liberals promised national building projects right across this country. Almost every province got one except Newfoundland and Labrador. There was only one in Atlantic Canada, in fact. It was for Nova Scotia to build wind turbines. There was nothing for P.E.I., nothing for New Brunswick and nothing for my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador. We have massive opportunities in gold and critical minerals through mining, critical minerals we need for Canadian sovereignty. We have massive oil and gas resources, massive potential in hydroelectricity and multi-billion dollar fabrication sites sitting idle, yet not one project was announced.
I cannot support the Liberal budget because the Liberal budget does not support Newfoundland and Labrador.