Mr. Speaker, I would like to note that I am going to be sharing my time with the member for St. Albert—Edmonton.
Certainly the debate we are having today is absolutely critical. The role of the government is to ensure its own fiscal health, deliver important programs and services, while being very cognizant of the burden on families, communities, and taxpayers. There is a growing concern that the government is failing miserably at that very important balance.
I would like to note what Michael Smyth said today in The Province. He noted the problem for our Prime Minister is that, while he promised to eventually balance the budget, he is spending like a drunken sailor and racking up deficits instead.
The reason we have this issue before us today is that my office had an onslaught of emails and phones calls from people who are horribly concerned about the thought that there might be a tax on their dental benefits or health benefits. We did hear very vague responses from the finance minister for a long time, and it was not until yesterday that there was perhaps a slight bit of reassurance that it is not going to happen. However I am thinking that the reassurance only came as Liberals realized the absolute outrage that Canadians had when they thought that someone who made $45,000 a year would be looking at an extra thousand dollars in their tax bill.
It is important to really understand the concerns that are expressed in the motion. We need to reflect on the current fiscal situation, which is really driving the Liberals zest for their tax grab. Most Canadians are not economists, myself included, but most Canadians understand the basic principles of a household budget. It is not really all that different for government. A federal budget adds a whole lot of zeros and has a lot more line items, but the idea of a balanced budget is something that we all have to deal with from households, to municipalities, to provinces. Actually municipalities are limited, at least in British Columbia, in how much they can actually borrow, because they realize that they cannot keep borrowing. Therefore the legislation for municipalities places limits.
We all know that sometimes Canadians borrow for a car or a house, but the proper way to do that is to know they are able to cover the payments as they go. If people live on credit cards for groceries, gas, or electricity—increasingly in places like Ontario—they know they are heading down a path that is absolutely unsustainable. The government has that same kind of responsibility. At times, borrowing for infrastructure is appropriate, but that is infrastructure. That is not borrowing to pay for the gas or food.
I cannot see citizens going to their employers and saying they need more money because they need to spend more money and would really like a raise. I think we could understand what most employers would say to anyone who came to them with that kind of request. However, the government is in a unique position. Liberals are saying they are spending more money, so they are going to take more money from Canadians. They really have a position that they have to treasure and be so careful about what they are doing, and again that very important budget.
Sixteen months ago the Liberal government took office, and it has been confirmed by the parliamentary budget officer that they were left with a surplus. In spite of their trying to indicate otherwise, that is very clear and it has been documented.
The election commitment Liberals made was a very tiny $10 billion and they would get back to balanced budgets. That was the commitment they made to Canadians. We know now that it is wrong. They made some very obvious big mistakes. They talked very proudly about middle-class tax cuts, but we know they mis-estimated that by billions of dollars. They talked about the child benefit—and for some families the universal child care benefit was very important—but they did not budget it properly, so it was another one. They changed eligibility for the OAS. Every time they travel they seem to be announcing money for new programs and services, in other countries.
We have been really concerned, at least I have been very concerned as I have been watching what has been happening. The finance department, on December 23, really confirmed what were my worst suspicions. We could sense it. We heard about different things the government was spending money on and thought that we were heading down a bad path.
We were on a trend to actually start paying down the debt, but what we know now, and we have heard many times today, is we are not going to get back to a balanced budget until 2055. We will have an accumulated debt of $1.5 trillion by 2050. That is very frightening to me.
Perhaps the Liberals do not want to listen to what the Conservatives have to say about this, because the Liberals have this idea that they have a better way to deal with things. However, maybe they should listen to a former Liberal finance minister, John Manley. In a written letter to the current finance minister, he warned that the government's acceptance of long-term deficits will hurt the Canadian economy by weakening business and consumer confidence. That is from a former Liberal finance minister. He also described Finance Canada's latest projections as ominous. Again, if the Liberals are not going to listen to us today, they should take heed of their former finance minister.
Clearly, the Liberals have a really big spending problem, and they are desperately looking for revenue sources instead of looking to revenue sources in terms of creating an environment where businesses can grow and thrive.
One of the Liberals' broken promises was actually raising business tax for small businesses. They are saying that they gave them a little money with the middle-class tax cuts, but it was really bizarre because the people who benefited the most were those in the over $150,000 range. The Liberals said they gave them a little money, but they are trying to find a way to pluck it out. If we look at the people who are in that $45,000 to $100,000 range, they are the ones who are going to be suffering the most.
The Liberals, under the guise of tax fairness, have this medical and dental piece. We know that they are out there looking at all these different ways to get money, under the guise of tax fairness.
Going back to the household analogy, this is not the way to do things. The government has to look at what it is doing and create the environment for success for revenue, and not keep picking the taxpayers' pockets.
I also want to note some very scathing comments. They are more general, but they do sort of reflect what the government is doing. This is from Andrew Coyne's article today:
But that is because you are still, even at this late date, investing some literal meaning in the prime minister’s words, as if what he said and what he intended bore any relationship to each other. But if there is anything that you should have learned by now, after the two deficits of $10 billion that turned into 40 years of deficits as high as $30 billion — and the non-combat mission against ISIS that turned into troops on the ground firing and being fired upon; and the open competition to replace the F-35 that turned into another sole source contract; and the Saudi arms deal and the “revenue neutral” tax cut and all the rest — it is that you have no business believing a word that comes out of this prime minister’s mouth....
That is a horrific thing to hear, that the most solemn promises, however unequivocal and however often repeated, are to him and other people around him, mere bait for the gullible. That is an absolutely horrific thing to hear.
I had an email today from a constituent who said that he does not agree with deficit spending right now as our country is not in a recession and only has pockets of economic issues. He has no problem paying taxes, as long as they are not wasted.
Most Canadians feel that when the government wants more money, it just invents another tax. I think that is what we might be seeing here. To summarize, the government needs to get its spending under control as opposed to increasing its revenue through tax grabs from hard-working Canadians.
