Madam Speaker, this budget is another failure by the Liberal Prime Minister and his finance minister: more taxes, more debt, and more spending that does not offer solutions for hard-working Canadians. Instead, it saddles us, our children, our grandchildren, and even our great-grandchildren with billions of dollars' worth of debt at a time when interest rates are rising.
Budget 2018 was a huge opportunity for the Prime Minister. The world economy is roaring, but the Liberal government is failing to turn this favourable climate into results for Canadians. Instead, the Prime Minister is raising taxes on over 90% of Canadian middle-class families, and this budget announces new tax hikes on local businesses.
The Liberals are also borrowing an additional $18 billion, which actually has now risen to $22 billion since this morning, which is adding another $22 billion in deficit to the budget. However, despite all the spending, middle-class Canadians are no further ahead and Canada's GDP growth will slow to 2% by the end of the year.
After the budget was presented, I spoke with the chairs of the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce and the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce. Their words speak volumes about the measures in this failed budget.
Greg Durocher, the president and CEO of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, said, “This seems to be a typical budget from a government that has seen better days in the battlefield. As a result of the massive campaign led by the chamber movement across the country, there was some moderate tweaking of the passive income tax calculation for small business owners. The real problem with this legislation is that it is not going to achieve the objectives they intended it to. You cannot get to the wealthiest 1% by targeting middle-class entrepreneurs, it is simply wrong and will still cost small business owners $1 billion taken out of our economy. There is nothing to make Canadian business more competitive given the massive tax reductions in the United States, our biggest competitor, and possible derailing of NAFTA talks which would cause a travesty in Canada for the business community. Supporting female entrepreneurs is a good thing, but frankly it is a shame we have to do this, and gender equality should be a foregone conclusion.”
He went on to say, “We are still very much concerned with a government who simply believes that a spending spree will be good for Canadians, and more importantly, good for our future leaders. We cannot continue to spend more than we take in. The time was right during the recession of 2008-09. Now, when the government itself says our economy is good, is the time to eliminate deficits, pay down debt and provide relief for businesses and individuals who are still struggling to grow and get into the prosperity of the economy this government keeps talking about.”
I am not sure I could have said it much better myself.
I also heard from Art Sinclair, the vice-president of the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce who had this to say:
Small businesses across Waterloo Region and Canada need a tax system that is fair and straight-forward in its application. Our chamber has been consistently informed by our membership that new rules are making the system more complex and time consuming for companies who should be focused on growth and job creation.
This budget fails Canadians in many areas, but let me focus on three for the next few minutes.
First is infrastructure. This government campaigned on increasing spending on infrastructure, a promise that was popular across Canada. However, what we have seen is that even though this government is spending at record levels, very little is going into infrastructure. Meanwhile, the government is squandering $35 billion on a new Asian infrastructure bank that helps wealthy investors and ignores Canadians who want shorter commute times. In fact, this budget indicated the Liberal government is planning on cutting funding for infrastructure over the next few years.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer wrote in the report entitled “Budget 2018: Issues for Parliamentarians”:
Budget 2018 provides an incomplete account of the changes to the Government’s $186.7 billion infrastructure spending plan. PBO requested the new plan but it does not exist. Roughly one-quarter of the funding allocated for infrastructure from 2016-17 to 2018-19 will lapse. Both legacy and new infrastructure programs are prone to large lapses.
It is another broken promise by the Liberals.
Second, I will talk about the carbon tax. Over 200 pages of the budget bill create a complicated and costly new carbon tax in all provinces that do not already have their own.
That tax would raise the cost of heat, gas, groceries, and everything else that Canadians need. A carbon tax would not work. Carbon taxes do not decrease emissions. They hurt the national economy by increasing the cost of living, all the while making the country less competitive globally. In fact, just today, as I mentioned, the Parliamentary Budget Officer announced that a carbon tax would take $10 billion from our Canadian economy.
Knowing all of this, the Liberal government is moving ahead with this bad decision. Unfortunately, that is not even half the problem. The Liberal government knows full well how much the carbon tax would cost the average family, but it refuses to let Canadians know. Officials from the Department of Finance have let us know that we can expect to see an 11¢ increase per litre on gasoline, and an extra $264 for natural gas home heating per year, with oil heating costs being even more. Trevor Tombe at the University of Calgary estimated that the carbon tax would mean $1,100 in additional costs per family. Other estimates are as high as $2,500 per family, just from the carbon tax implementation. That might not sound like a lot of money to the members opposite, but I have spent 12 years in this House making sure that my constituents in Kitchener—Conestoga get to keep more of their hard-earned money in their own pockets, not less, and I will keep fighting that fight.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer wrote the following in the most recent economic and fiscal outlook:
Implementation of the federal government's carbon pricing levy will generate a headwind for the Canadian economy over the medium term as the levy rises from $10 per tonne of [carbon dioxide] equivalent in 2018 to $50 per tonne in 2022.
Based on analysis conducted by the Ecofiscal Commission, we project that real GDP will be 0.5 per cent lower in 2022 than it would otherwise be. This amounts to $10 billion in 2022.
Therefore, not only would families be paying more, but our economy would be guaranteed to suffer as well as a result. The government also knows whether its carbon tax would decrease emissions, but again we get no answers. My colleague, the hon. member for Carleton, has asked time and time again, and I will ask it now: What exactly does the Liberal government have to hide?
Third is the national debt and out-of-control spending. Canada started the new fiscal year on April 1, 2018 with a trillion dollars worth of market debt. This is the total debt upon which the Government of Canada pays interest. The net debt is $669 billion. We all remember during the 2015 election campaign when the Prime Minister, then the leader of the third party, promised that, if elected, a Liberal government would run a small deficit and return to balance by 2019. Instead, the deficits have been twice what he promised. Finance Canada now projects deficits for another 25 years, totalling almost half a trillion dollars.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer, in his review of budget 2018, had this to say in regard to the growing deficit and debt:
Despite commitments made in the Minister of Finance's mandate letter and in Budget 2016, the Government has not explicitly mentioned its fiscal anchors of balancing the budget and continuing to reduce the federal debt-to-GDP ratio in subsequent Fall Economic Statements or budgets, including Budget 2018.
The Liberal deficits today will require massive new tax increases soon after the election. Canadians will pay more tax to fund interest payments to wealthy lenders. That is money that is not being spent on our veterans, health care, national defence, or on real tax relief for the middle class.
We, as Conservatives, have a positive vision for our country. We on this side of the House have introduced legislation that supports young families, new parents, and persons with disabilities. We introduced legislation that provides more transparency about how taxpayer money is spent, and we will always support policies that create jobs and grow our economy. We will remove red tape and remove obstacles that are in the way of young entrepreneurs who are trying to start and to grow their business. I know that our leader, the Leader of the Opposition, has his private member's bill up for debate soon. I hope that members across the way will support this common sense legislation that would actually help new families, not saddle them with higher taxes.
This budget has been described by some as an election budget. While the Liberals are focused on trying to get re-elected, I will keep focusing on the hard-working people in Kitchener, Wellesley, Woolwich, and Wilmot. The people in my riding know how to work hard and contribute to the improvement of our community. I want to see them rewarded for their efforts, not saddled with mountains of debt.
