Phil McColeman

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2016]

Mr. Chair, was the $400 million for Syrian refugees accrued in the budget 2015-16?

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2016]

Mr. Chair, it is the 2015-16 budget.

Was, as it shows on page 7, $400 million accrued to the expenses for the middle-class tax cut?

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2016]

Mr. Chair, I would like to refer the finance minister to page 7 of that February update, outlining at least $2 billion in Liberal-initiated spending, spent primarily on their platform commitments.

I want to ask a very few quick yes or no questions about the items listed on that page. Was the $400 million middle-class tax cut in budget 2015?

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2016]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I think that was a far greater period of time than my question.

[Business of Supply, May 31st, 2016]

Madam Chair, I want to go back to the questioning that I was leading into previously about revenues that have been projected and recorded and amounts that have been spent.

If we take the revenues reported in the 12 issues of the Fiscal Monitor for 2015 and 2016, to the year end, they add up to $289.6 billion. Could the minister confirm that this is only $700 million short of what was projected in budget 2015?

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, there is another area where the finance minister has failed to be transparent, and it is when it comes to the state of the country's finances that he inherited from the past government.

We have heard the finance minister repeat many times in the House and across Canada that he inherited an unanticipated deficit for fiscal 2015-16, left by the previous government. It is difficult to evaluate the minister's spending plans and decisions when he has been so misleading about his fiscal numbers. However, the evidence shows that the Liberals were left with a surplus and it was their taxing and spending decisions that set it off track. I will ask some specific questions.

Make no mistake, the Liberals took a fiscal framework that was on the road to surplus and veered off of it to a deficit ditch.

First, let us not forget that there was a surplus of $1.9 billion in 2014-15. In April last year, our budget forecast a surplus of $1.4 billion for 2015-16, which the minister said is not true. However, let us look at the facts.

According to his own independent department officials who publish the monthly “Fiscal Monitor” on the state of Canada's budgetary balance, at the end of October when we left office, the books were $600 million in surplus for the year. By the end of February, they were $7.5 billion in surplus for the year. Keep in mind that the Liberals had been in power for four months at that point.

Last Friday, the Liberals announced that the books deteriorated by $9.4 billion in March, turning what was a surplus of $2 billion into a deficit all in one month.

Such a turnaround in federal finances in such a short period of time has not happened since 2005. I am told they call it March madness, but the minister likes to tell us we should not pay attention to the “Fiscal Monitor”, it is just a month-to-month update. So let us look at the big picture, the full year.

If the minister is right that the economy, and not his spending, is responsible for plunging us into deficit, we should see a decline in tax revenues compared to what we projected in budget 2015. However, that is just not true. The minister's budget shows he expects annual revenues to be higher than they were projected last April. So did the PBO's latest independent projections.

Economist Stephen Gordon put it well when he said on Twitter last Friday, “If you're looking for an explanation of why Joe Oliver's projected surplus didn't happen, the answer looks to be in spending, not revenues.

Let us make an important point here. It is the Liberals' spending, spending that was outlined in their election platform: middle-class tax cuts, Syrian refugees, reinstating sick leave, new transfers to provinces, new spending in foreign aid, and I can go on. This points to a more serious concern than just whether the budget balances. He is trying to slip as much Liberal platform spending as possible into the 2015-16 fiscal year so he can hide from Canadians the true extent of his massive spending spree. For purely political motives, he has spent away the 2015-16 surplus left by the previous government. That is fine; he is the elected government. However, he needs to own up to it. He needs to take responsibility, not to blame others. I hope he will be able to answer some questions here about how he instructed his department officials to mislead Canadians about the federal government's finances.

The finance minister told the Toronto Region Board of Trade in December 2015 the following, “I know you won’t be surprised when I tell you that when an economy is not performing as expected, the government will face a shortfall in revenues...”. Fortunately, the hard facts tell the opposite story. Does he stand by his misleading claims that lower revenues were the primary driver of this Liberal deficit?

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, I think the answer is obvious. He did not meet with Mr. Dan Kelly, and he can refute that in further answers to questions if that is the case. It is the single largest business organization in the country, representing businesses of all different sizes in that small business category. By the way, these are the companies that create over 80% of the jobs in the country. He did not care to consult with those people.

I will ask this question. Does the minister agree with the Prime Minister's statement that a large share of small businesses are actually just a way for wealthy Canadians to avoid paying taxes?

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, similar to answers given previously today, I did not get an answer to the question, which was pretty specific. A yes or no would do. I will pose it in a little different way.

In the outreach to connect with small businesses, the one organization in this country that represents the majority of small businesses is the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Did the minister, or did he not, meet with its president to discuss how it felt about the budget process going forward?

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, in listening tonight to the explanations given by the parliamentary secretary that this budget works for all Canadians, the one category that he missed, that it does not work for, is small business owners.

I appreciated the finance minister coming to committee this afternoon and explaining why the promise to small business for the tax reduction to the 9% level that they campaigned on was broken.

As the finance minister knows, businesses need certainty. They need certainty to invest. He talked earlier tonight about the prospects of small business being an economic driver in innovation, in hiring. However, through this budget and the process of going forward with the measures, small businesses are left hanging, expecting their tax rate to go down and looking for that opportunity for investment. As well, the tax holiday on hiring first-year employees was also taken away.

I would like to point that out from the outset. The parliamentary secretary also talked about trips across the country, listening to people, and taking in information. There is one organization that represents small businesses in large numbers right across this country, and that is the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

I would like to ask the finance minister if he met with and consulted with the president of the CFIB, Mr. Dan Kelly, through his consultation process.

[Finance, May 30th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the issue here is transparency. The finance minister is cooking the books to suit his reckless political spending and agenda. He was left with a Conservative surplus. He did turn that into a Liberal deficit. The finance minister needs to come clean and show some transparency.

Will he tell Canadians exactly how he spent $10 billion on the reckless Liberal schemes in March?