Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to follow my esteemed colleague from Milton and draw everyone's attention to how simple this motion is and to how important it is. It goes to the heart of trust, confidence, and fulfilling promises, as the finance critic has articulated.
There is one thing many of us in business have done over the years, and I am sure the finance minister brings an esteemed business background to the House, and that is deal with the numbers presented by experts in the background of the business environment, namely the accountants and comptrollers. They are the people who actually produce the numbers for accurate decision-making.
What we have witnessed since the start of this Parliament is that the finance minister has had a choice. The Conservatives left a surplus. That is what his department has said to him, and that is what the “Fiscal Monitor” and the PBO have said. In fact, they have said that it is a larger number than what the finance minister said. However, the point is that there was a surplus.
Of course, politics are an odd space in this bubble here in Ottawa that sometimes distorts what the actual facts are. My comments today are centred on cutting through the rhetoric justifying doing something by blaming someone else and pointing a finger at the previous government.
These were the fundamental choices, I believe, the finance minister had to make upon arriving in Ottawa, because the facts are the facts.
The Liberal government came to power with a promise to Canadians to use evidence-based facts and science, words that were repeated over and over again to Canadians. They said they would be different, because they would use facts. They would use the expert evidence given to them. Liberals were given that evidence by their own officials in their own department. They were also told that they needed to go into more of a deficit than was promised, which was a $10 billion deficit, just a small deficit. That is what the Prime Minister said during the election campaign. It was just a tiny deficit they wanted approval for. Of course, what has happened since then is that they were provided with fact-based evidence.
Take, for example, the middle-class tax cut. This middle-class tax cut that will return $6.43 a week to the average Canadian, less than $1 a day, on average, was predicated on a promise that it would be revenue neutral because the government would tax the 1% who make so much more and would redistribute that to provide the middle-class tax cut.
What has happened since that time? The facts have been put on the table, which is that this was a miscalculation. We first found out that it could approach being a $1-billion miscalculation. The government would fall short by $1 billion, which would mean a $1-billion structural deficit going into place. Then we were told after the fact by some experts, again accountants, people who know how the economy works and what the numbers actually are, that it would be more like $1.4 billion. In fact, the C.D. Howe Institute, which the finance minister used to chair, predicts that it will be somewhere around a $2-billion shortfall.
This new way of taking on the responsibilities of government has fallen short. It has fallen short there, and it continues to fall short when the finance minister and his parliamentary secretary continue to contend that somehow they were left with a deficit, which their own finance department has said is a surplus.
It is sometimes shocking to hear the denial of the people who are providing the evidence-based facts in the matter.
I grew up under a pretty simple tenet: “If you're going to talk the talk, you need to walk the walk.” What we are hearing is the talk but not the walk. We are hearing that we can exaggerate, we can make it look like we can point the finger at the previous government. This is part of the political playbook that has been played over and over again.
The government presented itself to Canadians as a government ready to do business a new way, yet the finance minister comes to the table, gets the evidence, and decides, no, it is going to go down that road of the playbook for political advantage to try to point the finger and say, “Now that we're here, things are way too different.” He was wrong doing that because his own department came out with the numbers to say they were left with a surplus.
This is a growing trend. It takes away the confidence, not only of the business community and those who wish to make investments, but everyday Canadians who have yet to find out exactly how they should be managing their money based upon what is coming down the line. We know that a lot of pundits and people who are looking to this action going forward are predicting a $30-billion deficit, but we have no idea, at this point, because we have not been given any of the facts on this matter.
I believe the Liberals should just admit that their numbers are not bad. We have asked over and over again where they got the numbers. They have not been forthcoming with any kind of background as to who the experts were who gave them the numbers to say there was a deficit.
In the real world, in a competitive global economy, numbers matter. Investors and businesses here in Canada, and around the world, need to have confidence that the finance minister is basing his projections upon a set of numbers that are facts based upon accurate evidence. I believe that it is better not to broadcast misleading numbers to Canadians and the international community to support his party's political rhetoric. At a time of such economic uncertainty, businesses and investors need to have confidence in the finance minister and the department working behind him.
Today, we have a motion that is based upon independent analysis, hard numbers, and facts, to cut through the political rhetoric.
First, we had the PBO reporting that Canada is on track to post a $1.2 billion surplus for the 2016 fiscal year. Now, the report from the “Fiscal Monitor”, produced by Finance Canada, is telling us that Canada posted a surplus of $1 billion from April to November 2015.
I will wrap up by saying this proves conclusively that the Liberals inherited a surplus from our Conservative government. If the finance minister and the Liberal Party do not trust their own officials, how can they expect them to prepare a budget or manage our finances during these troubling times?
