House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2019, with 57% of the vote.
Finance November 19th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, the question the member should be asking is: where are we now?
We are in a situation where the unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in 40 years. More people are working now than ever before in the history of Canada. That is an excellent situation for Canadian families and middle-class families.
We will continue to invest to grow our economy for the future.
Steel Industry November 6th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, that is an important question. There is a process whereby if there is an investment being made and if there is an opportunity for something to be purchased that cannot be produced in Canada, we consider remission orders. That is exactly what happened in the case of LNG Canada. By the same token, we do want to have a situation where we encourage steelmakers to produce the goods we need in Canada. That will be our continuing goal while considering exceptions where exceptions are warranted.
Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2 November 6th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, we should examine carefully the issue around how Canadians are feeling with respect to taxes because this government has taken measures that have made a real difference in terms of their ability to take home more pay for their families. By lowering middle-class taxes, by increasing the Canada child benefit and by increasing the guaranteed income supplement, we have put people in a position where they actually have a greater amount of take-home pay. That is critically important.
By putting a price on pollution, something we do not want but by giving back a rebate to families so they will have more money, in 2019, middle-class Canadian families will find themselves more than $2,000 better off, especially if they are in the four provinces where the federal pollution pricing backstop will be in place.
We have been able to make the important investments to make our economy grow while we have been reducing taxes on middle-class Canadians to help people have more confidence about the future.
Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2 November 6th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, I would like to respond to that new question by saying that we need to make sure that our economy and our country are resilient to face challenges. We are not going to do what the previous government did and add $150 billion to our debt and have nothing to show for it. Instead, we are going to carefully manage the amount of debt we have as a function of our economy. Happily our economy is growing, unlike it was with the previous government. That is a very important factor in our ability to manage down that debt load. We will continue to do that because we know being responsible is important while we invest in middle-class Canadians.
Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2 November 6th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, that is a really important question.
We need to think about how we make a real difference for Canadians who are trying to make sure they can raise their families in dignity. We started with some measures that deal with the anxiety Canadian families are facing and that was, importantly, a middle-class tax break. For those people earning between $45,000 and $90,000, we reduced the taxes in that category from 22% to 20.5%, a 7% decrease. We then added on the Canada child benefit which helped those families even more, raising hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.
We realized we needed to do more. The increase in the guaranteed income supplement dealt with single seniors who found themselves in poverty. Of course, for Canadians anxious about their long-term future, we negotiated with the provinces to make sure we could actually enhance the Canada pension plan.
These are the sorts of measures that have made a real difference for families today. They make a real difference for families and people who are looking toward the future. We will continue to fight for Canadian families to make sure they have the capacity to raise their children and be confident about the future.
Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2 November 6th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, we have been very clear that it is important to have a fiscal anchor. We have said that investing in the long-term health of our economy is important. Investing in infrastructure is important. The investments we have made in middle-class Canadians with the Canada child benefit are critically important.
These investments have had the desired impact. They have grown our economy. They have also shown that we can do that while reducing the amount of debt as a function of our gross domestic product. That will continue to be important for us. What I can say is that our fiscal health is strong.
Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2 November 6th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, there were three comments in that intervention. What we should do is identify the issues that were brought forward.
First and foremost, we are in a situation where our debt to gross national product ratio is declining over time. That is a responsible way to manage our country's balance sheet and we will continue to do that.
We also know that business investment, which did go down as a result of the change in oil prices, has been going up for the last year and a half. This is not a situation where these facts are debatable. It is just, in fact, the facts.
Finally, we committed that our budget implementation acts would be related to budget measures. That is exactly what we have delivered.
With respect to each one of those comments, we feel that we have moved forward in a way that is appropriate, and importantly, it is having a big impact on Canadians. That is what we are really after.
Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2 November 6th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, we made a commitment to Canadians. We were elected in 2015 with an agenda to make a real measurable difference for middle-class Canadians. We laid out some important things that we wanted to ensure that we achieved over the time period that we are in government, and that is critically important.
We have moved forward in budget 2018 with measures that we told Canadians we would get at. We said that we wanted to get at pay equity to make sure that women and men have similar outcomes for similar work. That too was critically important. We know on an ongoing basis we need to ensure that we have an intellectual property strategy that allows innovation in our country. We know having protections for consumers in the banking sector is critically important.
There are measures in this budget implementation bill that would allow us to move forward in a way that is consistent with what we promised Canadians.
We have done consultations to get to an approach that makes sense. We are looking forward to all members in the House having the opportunity to vote on a bill that would make a real difference for Canadians.
Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2 November 6th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, the good news is that we are making responsible investments that are growing our economy and continuing to put ourselves in a position where we have the resilience to deal with the challenges.
What the member might not know about the issue he was referring to is that the Canadian balance sheet is the strongest among the G7 countries. We have a debt-to-GDP ratio that is less than half the average, in fact the lowest, in the G7 by a big margin. That puts us in a good position for the long term. Importantly, we have taken the right decision to invest in middle-class Canadians so they can have the opportunity to continue to benefit from economic growth in the future.
Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2 November 6th, 2018
Mr. Speaker, I should start by correcting some facts. The previous government actually built up an additional $150 billion worth of debt. As we saw, that government, unfortunately, had among the lowest rates of growth we have seen in a hundred years. It has been an enormous challenge, of course, for us to deal with the challenges left by the previous government, but we took the responsible approach. We said that we would make investments so that we could get ourselves in a better position. The good news—