Garnett Genuis

[Committees of the House, November 16th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order. I am sure my friend across the way is well familiar with the rules of the House. He should know Standing Order 18, which says:

No Member may reflect upon any vote of the House, except for the purpose of moving that such vote be rescinded.

Now, he has reflected on the vote of the House, in terms of the adjournment proceedings, and he has done so repeatedly. I would ask that the member be brought to order in terms of his question and subsequent comments.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, November 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, there are going to be many areas of disagreement, obviously, but one area of agreement I think that we have with the NDP is that we believe that social spending needs to be sustainable. We believe that, in the long term, we need to have a plan for getting the revenue for the spending. We cannot just promise things and do so on the basis of massive deficits that are then going to lead to cuts in the future. I think most opposition members understand the importance of having a balanced budget over the long term.

I wonder if the member would comment on that. Really, how many spending promises from the government are not real spending promises? Given how far ahead of actual revenue it is with spending, it knows these are going to lead to cuts; it knows it cannot sustain the promises it has made to people; it knows, in the long term, that these things are not going to be in place for people. Why is the government making commitments that are clearly not costed and not paid for?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, November 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about a number of the proposed spending items in this fiscal update. What he knows, and what many of the member's colleagues would know, is that these are committed spending items which cannot possibly be permanent, given the massive hole in this budget. There is no balance, and no intention to balance the budget. Therefore, one can talk about these short-term spending proposals that are not in any way sustainable.

As my colleague thinks about this budget, I want to ask if in his mind there is any limit. Is there any point at which the member would say to the government that it is too much”? Is his limit $40 billion, or $50 billion, or $60 billion? At what point would the member say that, as much as those are nice things to spend money on, if the government is not able to sustain that level of social spending in the future, maybe it should pause and look at investments in Canadians that are sustainable over the long term rather than make promises of things that are not sustainable? I wonder if the member would tell us how much is too much and when, if ever, he thinks the government should balance the budget.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, November 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with my friend about the importance of credit unions. I would be happy to dig more into the specifics of that provision from a previous budget and hear her perspective on it.

I am certainly not wedded to defending every policy of the previous government, although, in the broad direction when it comes to fiscal policy, we were moving very much in the right direction in terms of the stimulative deficits I talked about, but also moving back toward a balanced budget.

Definitely with respect to the bill in front of us, I have some significant concerns about what it would do to credit unions. However, I am happy to look at the provisions the member mentioned.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, November 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I do not really see any need to go through and defend the policies of every Conservative government or oppose the policies of every Liberal government since Confederation. However, I really wish we had a prime minister and a finance minister who were more willing to align themselves with the Liberal fiscal policies that we have seen in the past. Although I would have many disagreements with some of those past Liberal governments, generally they had a much more sensible approach to fiscal policy than the current one.

What we are debating are the budget documents in front of us, which very clearly show no plan for ever returning to a balanced budget. There is even no acknowledgement that it is necessary.

Specifically to the record of the last Conservative government, one that I am very happy to defend in this respect, there was value in those stimulative deficits during the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression. They were timely, targeted, and temporary stimulative investments. It is clear, and the parliamentary budget officer agrees, that we were back to a balanced budget, which the Liberals inherited before thoroughly destroying it, as quickly as they possibly could, in hopes of pinning their deficit on the previous government. However, we know from the parliamentary budget officer and from what the “Fiscal Monitor” has said that the current government plunged us into deficit after the Conservatives had balanced it.

It is a nuanced argument. There are times when it makes sense to run a deficit, but just because there are times when it makes sense to run a deficit does not mean that it makes sense to run deficits all the time. The Liberals think we should run deficits all the time. The Conservatives support deficits in certain situations for that targeted, stimulative approach, but we need to have a balanced budget over the long term.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, November 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to join this important debate on the government's fiscal update and the fiscal policy of the government in general.

To be frank, there is a lot to sink one's teeth into in terms of objections to the government's direction. I can say, having just come back from constituency week and having spoken with constituents in my riding, that people in Alberta, but I think across the country, are being hit very hard by the policies of the government.

As I think through it and talk to business leaders, I am reminded of the fact that every single tax they pay is going up. Small businesses in my riding face a higher small business tax rate as a result of the fiscal policy of the government. They face a carbon tax, a carbon tax brought in by the provincial government but which the federal government will do everything it can to prevent any subsequent provincial government from repealing.

We have the elimination of the hiring credit for small business. Bill C-26 would raise payroll taxes that individual employees as well as small businesses would pay. There is the undoing of employment insurance reforms, which would, in the long run, force up employment insurance premiums. Of course, small businesses are facing higher business tax rates in general from the provincial government and are grappling with the minimum wage hike and other changes that are happening, and there still has been no serious effort when it comes to market access for our resources.

We have a government that is hitting businesses again and again and again. The reality is that these are the job creators in our economy. These are the people whose investments and ingenuity create jobs and opportunities for our country. I just went through the list, objectively, of things that are happening to businesses in my riding, and I have to say that I find the continuing optimism and the continuing desire of business leaders in my constituency to move forward and build truly inspiring. The government should be there to try to help them succeed, not make their job more difficult when it comes to creating jobs and opportunities.

I will mention one specific thing in this fiscal update, and that is the implementation of certain regulations with respect to credit unions. There are credit unions in my constituency. The application of one-size-fits-all regulations, perhaps designed for the big banks, to every small credit union is a huge red-tape burden. Again, we have a government that is not listening, that is not paying attention to small businesses. This deals with one specific sector of the economy, credit unions, but it is another example of how the government is simply out of touch with the needs of the job creators in our economy.

Moving beyond that, I was to talk about two general points: deficit spending by the government in general and the issue of the employment insurance changes contained in this fiscal update.

The government's approach to deficit spending is, yes, to run deficits, but it is more than that. It is to undertake a policy of constant structural deficits. This is very different from the traditional arguments made for deficits. There are, I think, good arguments for running deficits in certain situations. The basis of that would be the Keynesian economic principle of counter-cyclical government spending, a government doing more spending during times of economic challenge to offset the pullback happening in the economy as a whole and then the government pulling back and running surpluses during times of economic prosperity.

The importance of this is that the government is providing that stimulus for economic activity during relatively difficult times but is still balancing its budget over the long term. It is still in a position, in the long run, to balance its budget. I think we should all accept that we have to balance the budget in the long term. We cannot constantly, over a sort of forever time horizon, spend more than we have. Eventually, the capacity to borrow will run out. There is nothing wrong with running deficits in certain situations, provided that we intend to balance the budget over the long term.

When we talk about stimulating the economy, the important thing is that it needs to be in times that are relatively less good. Of course, even during good times, there will be people who are struggling. There will be people without jobs. There will perhaps be a desire to increase growth. However, if the government always spends more than it has in good times as well as bad times, then eventually, it is going to run out.

The government talks about stimulus, but it is really abusing these arguments, because its position is not that the government can do counter-cyclical spending at certain times to stimulate the economy. Rather, its position, stated by the finance minister, is that we can just run deficits all the time. The finance minister responded to a question I asked earlier during committee of the whole about whether the government would ever balance the budget. He would not say yes to that very simple question.

If we look at what is happening in the economy, the government is constructing arguments that are entirely resistant to the evidence. If things are going well, Liberals will say it is an indication of the fact that they can spend more. When things are going poorly, they say that they need to spend more. Every situation, good or bad, every data point, in their minds, is proof that they need to constantly be spending more money. Of course, there are limits.

Although Canada has a relatively low federal debt-to-GDP ratio, our total government debt-to-GDP ratio, which includes what the Kathleen Wynne Liberals in Ontario are doing and other spending programs of provincial governments, is comparable to countries like the United States and the U.K. It is important that we look at the total debt-to-GDP ratio, because in Canada we have relatively more public services provided at the provincial level than we do federally. For the federal government to say that it has lots of room to run deficits just is not true, because it needs to look at the overall debt-to-GDP ratio.

We see in this fiscal update the government making promises to people, increasing spending, and announcing the indexing of the new child benefit program. The Liberals are just not dealing with real money, because they are making promises into the future that are not costed, and that, in the long run, they should know they will not have the capacity to do. I think it is wrong to promise people that the government is going to spend money on things it knows it does not have the capacity to. When it has this kind of policy, when it undertakes government spending and assumes that it can run deficits forever, what it leads to eventually are significant cuts. The benefit of running surpluses during relatively good times and stimulating deficits during relatively less good times is that the government is able to spend more during challenging times, whereas countries that have consistently spent more than they have find themselves during bad times also in a position where they are forced to cut spending before they go off the fiscal cliff. That is the situation of some countries in Europe. We know that this has happened. We do not want to see Canada go down this road.

Just to complete blowing a hole in this stimulus argument, if we look at government spending, it is not targeted or temporary stimulus spending. Liberals are instituting what they would like to propose as permanent new social spending. They are proposing spending that is not targeted to economic stimulus. It is permanent new promised spending, a promise they know, or should know, simply cannot be kept.

I will conclude with a few comments about employment insurance reforms. In the last government, we brought in some very sensible reforms for employment insurance. Under new rules we brought in, it was expected that individuals would be actively involved in a job search to receive benefits. That is a reasonable requirement. We worked to define suitable employment in a way that said that even if individuals could not find exactly the same job they had before, there should be a broader definition of suitable employment but also that the government should provide more help to people in terms of finding jobs. We instituted a stronger system of providing job information to people who were seeking jobs.

It is important that individuals be actively involved in a job search when they are on employment insurance, that employment insurance be a meaningful insurance system, and that it be designed to help people get back to work, not something that can be constantly relied on year after year. I think that is a sensible way of structuring the program. The government, in undoing those employment insurance reforms, is creating additional costs for small businesses as well as for individuals, because everyone has to pay into that EI fund.

Therefore, if we take away those reforms to encourage job search on the payout side of it, then we have to increase the burden on those paying into it. This has a real cost for the creation of jobs and for people who work in our country. I prefer a policy that makes it easier for people to get jobs, not one that cuts back on jobs.

This is the wrong direction for our country, and I will be voting against this.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, November 14th, 2016]

With regard to services provided to the Prime Minister, including nanny and childcare services: are they considered to be a taxable benefit?

[Foreign Affairs, October 27th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, China has just passed a new law aimed at shutting down Christian house churches where over 70 million Chinese people worship. In the same week, Muslim parents in the PRC were told that they would be reported to police if they encouraged their children to participate in religious activities.

I ask the minister to take this opportunity right now to specifically condemn these outrageous abuses of human rights. Will the government speak out clearly and specifically against the latest crackdown on religious liberty in China?

[Foreign Affairs, October 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I really wish that were true. I really wish we were seeing principled engagement by the government.

Anybody can look at the media stories on this. They can look at, during our important discussions about extradition, the refusal to criticize the Chinese justice system. Canadians can look at how our foreign affairs minister stood by while a Chinese foreign minister attacked a journalist for asking legitimate questions on human rights.

They can look at the fact that the government is negotiating an extradition treaty with a country that executes more people than any other country in the world. It is not just about getting exceptions to the death penalty when it comes to extradition. It is also about having a credible system of justice. We have the case of Mr. Celil, a Canadian citizen who has been in prison for over 10 years without consular access. This is the kind of regime we are dealing with.

The government needs to step it up and actually do something in terms of principled engagement. It needs to follow its words with actions.

[Foreign Affairs, October 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite timely that I have the opportunity to again raise the issue of human rights in China and to talk about the Canadian response to it.

Certainly I have heard the government's talking points on this issue before, so I want to say very clearly at the outset that I think all of us in the House support constructive engagement with China. There is no debate about that fundamental principle. Indeed, the previous government engaged China, and at the same time, trade increased, but it also talked very tough when it came to fundamental issues of human rights.

When the Conservatives first took office, we raised the profile of abuses of human rights by the Chinese government. We were aggressive in our advocacy in consular cases and with respect to the rights of Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Uighurs, Christians, and all Chinese people who are just as deserving of the full rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as anyone else is.

While talking tough on human rights, Conservatives increased Canadian exports to China by nearly 22% in 2007 and by another 10% in 2008. In fact, exports grew the most during the period of the toughest talk on human rights. This data should clearly demonstrate that we do not have to choose between being true to our values and pursuing our economic interests. Indeed, we can do both.

We can also engage China in concert with our allies, supporting like-minded countries in the region as they stand up for a properly multilateral process for resolving issues in the South China Sea and a rule-of-law and human-rights-based approach to trade. It is not a choice between engaging China and engaging our allies. It is simply to say that we will be stronger in our engagement with China if we do so on the basis of collaboration with our allies.

The government has talked about standing up for our values, but unfortunately, it has missed every opportunity to actually do so. There are many examples I could give: the ongoing negotiations, it seems, of an extradition treaty; the fact that a Canadian journalist was berated by a Chinese minister while our foreign minister stood by; and the fact that even a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office declined to criticize China's co-called justice system.

The realities of human rights abuses in China are clear and well known to all members. Experts say that China executes more people than any other country in the world, often for non-violent crimes, often for things that are not crimes at all. Despite denials by the Chinese premier when he was in Canada, we know that there is widespread use of torture.

I will read a quote from Alex Neve, of Amnesty International: “We stand by our assessment that there are a vast array of very serious human-rights concerns. Torture is widespread and rampant throughout the country and backed up by near total impunity”.

We know that Chinese human rights abuses affect all Chinese citizens, but especially members of certain key communities, communities like Falun Gong practitioners, who are the victims of execution as well as of organ harvesting. There are significant concerns about the abuses the Falun Gong community faces.

I had the honour of being the vice-chair of the Canada-Tibet parliamentary friendship group. There are ongoing severe abuses of the Tibetan community, and there has been an issue of Canadian officials being unable to get access to the Tibet region when they have requested it.

There is the persecution facing the Uighur Muslim community in eastern China. In many cases, people within that community are not even being allowed to fast during Ramadan.

There are ongoing abuses of the Christian community. In general, we see efforts by the Chinese government to infiltrate different religious communities to try to control every aspect of their practices, not necessarily to outlaw them outright but to try to micromanage their practices and dictate things that would be against their values.

We need engagement that reflects Canadian interests and values. I am calling on the government to engage with China in that way.