Bill Morneau

[The Economy, February 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it will be March 22; that is how long.

In the last election, Canadians made a choice. They made a choice between a party that said it wanted to make a plan to invest in growth, and another couple of parties that said they wanted to cut at all costs for a balanced budget. Canadians made the right choice.

I would like us to consider the alternative right now. If one of the other parties were in power, we would have deep, massive cuts of tens of billions of dollars leading to higher unemployment while Canadians are troubled, and most likely in a recession.

Canadians made the right choice.

[Intergovernmental Relations, February 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would again like to say that we are working hard to improve our economy for all Canadians.

We are working hard to improve the economy for middle-class Canadians who are challenged. We are working especially hard to work with those provinces that have been particularly hard hit through the change in commodity prices.

That will be a continuing endeavour of this government. We will see initiatives in our budget that will make a real difference. We will focus on making that difference in the weeks and months to come.

[Intergovernmental Relations, February 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by confirming again that the territories in the north were dealing with a statistical change through Statistics Canada.

We are talking about how we can help people who are facing real challenges across this country, middle-class families across the country, people in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

We are putting forth a program that will actually help them, including tax cuts for nine million Canadians, and the Canada child benefit for those most vulnerable. We are going to make investments in infrastructure that will help the middle class, that will help those most vulnerable, and that will improve our economy.

[Intergovernmental Relations, February 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, again, I would like to say that we will continue to work collaboratively with the territories in the north.

We recognize that provinces and territories across this country have challenges when we deal with difficult economic times, especially times when commodity prices change. We believe that in the instance of the territorial financing formula, we came up with a solution that helped those territories to understand their future situation.

We will continue to work together, dealing with the challenges that people across this country face.

[Intergovernmental Relations, February 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer this question.

We found that Statistics Canada made a change in the way it calculated the territorial financing formula, a change that impacted the northern territories. We worked collaboratively with the northern territories. I would like to thank the members on this side of the House who helped me as well.

We came up with a solution that gives them stable and predictable funding over time. It brought them back, very close to where they were before. We dealt with it appropriately.

[Finance, February 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians elected us on October 19 because they had confidence that we were ready and willing to put forward ideas that could make a real difference in their lives.

We are facing the past 10 years of low growth. We now realize that the economy is more challenging even than we expected when we were elected. We are moving forward with a plan that will be prudent, that will remain focused on reducing our net-debt-to-GDP ratio over time, and that will aim to get us to a balanced budget over the term, recognizing how challenging that will be in our economic environment.

[Finance, February 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians expect us to take actions to make their lives better. We recognize that middle-class Canadians have not had a fair increase in income for many years. The most vulnerable really need to be helped in our society.

We have put forward ideas that we know we can put into our budget in 2016 that will make a real difference for Canadians. We know that we can deal with an economy that is more challenging than we expected, and that is what governing is all about.

[Finance, February 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, we have put forward a plan for Canadians. It is a plan that will be laid out in more detail during the course of our upcoming budget. What we have told Canadians, especially those middle-class Canadians who want to do better, is that we have a plan that will make a real difference in growth. We will do it by being fiscally prudent along the way. We will do it by making sure that our level of debt to GDP over time reduces. Yes, we aim to get to a balanced budget over time, recognizing that our economy makes that more challenging. That remains a very important goal for this government.

[Finance, February 18th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the hon. member that we were elected on October 19 by Canadians who elected us on a plan to grow the economy. We made it very clear what we were going to do.

We said that we were going to reduce taxes for middle-class Canadians, who needed tax reduction. We have already moved forward on that. We said that we are going to move forward with a Canada child benefit that would help nine out of ten families and hundreds of thousands of children. Then we are going to move forward on infrastructure investments that are going to help us grow this economy, all the while by being very prudent with our expenses along the way.

[Pensions, February 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, during the course of our campaign, we talked about the importance of helping people to retire in dignity. We talked about the importance of helping those people who have already retired.

We are looking toward making significant progress on helping Canadians to retire in dignity over the course of this year through a CPP enhancement. We are also looking toward measures in budget 2016 that will help those Canadians who are currently retired and facing a difficult situation.