Pierre Poilievre

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from the NDP is a carpenter. I think he plans to go back into carpentry where he would do some great work, literally building our economy. The truth is he does great work here as well, but he would be even more useful out on a work site as a journeyman with a whole group of apprentices. I just hope he does not teach them anything about politics.

I have a great deal of respect for the career that he had before he came here, as I do for all tradespeople. We ought to send the message. I think my colleague across the way in the NDP would agree with this message, that colleges and polytechnics deserve the same respect as universities, blue collars deserve the same respect as white collars and trades deserve the same respect as professions.

That has been the nature of the Prime Minister's shift in training resources. It used to be that if people wanted to go into a short duration training program and they were low-income students, they could not get a grant because that money was just set aside for university-style education. What about the people who wanted to do short duration technical training? They did not qualify. That left a whole group of low-income students from disadvantaged backgrounds unable to have access to training money. Therefore, the Prime Minister announced three weeks ago that we would reduce the minimum duration required in order to access the Canada student grant to 34 weeks, down from 60 weeks, so 42,000 young people would have a chance to go and get trained, skilled and into the workforce.

However, some of the best training is on-the-job training. That is what we are promoting with the Canada apprenticeship grants and loans, and the Canada job grant.

Let me start with apprentices. As members know, apprentices spend most of their time in on-the-job training, but about 20% of their time in the classroom to study theory, and to learn more from the books and the instructors. During those times, they often find it hard to pay the bills, especially if they come from a family of limited means. The Canada apprenticeship grant has given half a million grants to over a quarter million promising young people so they can get over that financial hurdle and use their training to have high-skilled, high-paying jobs in the high-demand sector.

Our plan for jobs is tax cuts, trade and training. It has helped us create 1.2 million net new jobs for Canadians. We will keep cutting taxes, keep signing trade deals and keep training the next generation that will build our country and take us into the future.

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the chamber on strong leadership; a balanced budget; and a low-tax plan for jobs, growth, and security. I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, a great champion of taxpayers and her constituents.

My job is called “Minister of Employment and Social Development”. I am very blessed with the opportunity to serve in this capacity. Sometimes our terminology in government, though, is too technical when really things can be said much more simply. My role is to focus on jobs, families, and communities. Those will be the three cornerstones of my address today.

I will start with jobs. How can we can create them? The plan of this government is the three ts: trade, tax cuts, and training. Trade, tax cuts, and training have helped us create 1.2 million net new jobs. That is 1.2 million people who got a phone call and someone on the other line said, “Congratulations; you got the job”. We want more people to get phone calls like that. One way to do it is to promote trade.

When our government came to office, there were six free trade agreements in place for Canada. Now there are about 44. We have added almost 40 new free trade agreements. In fact, about 97% of Canada's free trade access was secured by a Conservative government. The 3% remaining was done by Liberals.

Let us make this practical, because trade might seem a bit abstract to some people. We signed a free trade agreement with Europe, for example, which is the largest combined economy in the world in terms of GDP, even bigger than the United States or China. This free trade agreement, according to economists, will create 80,000 net new jobs. Some of them are right here in Ontario, and we are already learning about them. Just three weeks ago, the Prime Minister visited a Honda Canada plant where that company announced that for the first time in its history it will export Canadian-built Honda vehicles directly to Europe. That is 400 net new jobs.

We have also signed a free trade agreement with South Korea, a fast-growing, free-enterprise, democratic economy. Just recently the Prime Minister announced a deal that will allow Canada to export its uranium to India, the second-largest country in the world in terms of population, a country with one of the fastest growing middle-class populations on earth. That uranium will help India power its economy, literally, and it will create jobs for hard-working employees of companies like Cameco and others in Saskatchewan, which has one of the richest reserves of uranium on planet earth. Trade creates jobs.

Tax cuts do too, the second t of our job plan. In our recent budget, our Minister of Finance announced that we would be bringing in the biggest tax cut in 25 years for small business. Ninety per cent of businesses in this country are small, and two-thirds of Canadians who are employed work for them. In other words, small business is the engine of job creation. Whether it is Sonny's gas station on Main Street in Manotick or any other neighbourhood business that all members know, meet with, and can trust, these are the people who lift up our communities and who would benefit from this massive tax reduction. It would mean that they would have more money in their pockets to hire promising employees. When those employees are hired, they would pay lower taxes.

This budget also announced that in 2017 we would be lowering EI payroll taxes by 21%. That means it would be less expensive to hire and that the employees who are working would pay less of their salary into the EI fund and keep more of it in their own pockets. That too creates jobs.

This follows on the EI hiring credit, which we announced in the fall, that saves small businesses money. It is specifically targeted to small businesses for additional hiring by reducing the EI tax burden that small businesses bear when they employ additional people. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business confirmed that this tax cut would create jobs.

Tax relief and lower taxes allow businesses to have more money to hire, families to have more money to save and consumers to have more money to spend, all of which generate more jobs. Therefore, tax cuts create jobs, as does training, the third T in our job creation plan.

We have made a mistake in our country. For 40 years we told our kids that there was only one way to get a job when they got older, and that was to go to university and get a white collar job wearing dress shoes. Now we are suffering the consequences. Over the next seven years we will need a million skilled workers, most of them in the skilled trades. We will need 300,000 people in construction alone.

[Employment, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, we have a real plan, and it is the low-tax plan for jobs and growth.

While the NDP and the Liberals would raise taxes on job creators, our plan is tax cuts, training, and trade. For example, we announced in this budget that we will be bringing in the biggest tax cut in Canadian history for small businesses that create jobs. That means that promising young people will have more opportunities to work for growing small businesses right across the country.

The Liberal leader admitted that he would reverse this tax reduction on small businesses. He is wrong.

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, who is going to benefit from the higher contribution limit for tax-free savings accounts? People who are already maximizing their contributions. The data show that it is people with incomes of $60,000 or less who maximize their contributions. It is these people, people who earn $60,000 or less, who will benefit from this tax cut.

The Liberals want to raise taxes on those people and the middle class. We will not let them do that.

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, what I have to say is this. The budget will bring in a home renovation tax credit so that our seniors can make the adjustments so that they can stay in their very own homes. That includes wheelchair ramps and elevators that might help someone who is wheelchair-bound stay in the home. It will allow seniors to keep their RRIFs tax free for a longer period of time. When they do pull that money out of their RRIF, they can put it into a larger tax-free savings account. That is a nest egg that will allow them to keep more of their savings. That is money directly in the pockets of middle-class seniors, money the Liberals would take away with their planned tax increases.

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, New Democrats talk about a livable wage and then in the same sentence talk about their plan for a job-killing carbon tax. The reality is that, with their $21 billion carbon tax and with the tax increases proposed by their friends in the Liberal Party, they would not only cut the take-home wages of Canadians, but they would kill the jobs of those very same Canadians.

On this side, we have lowered taxes by the most in 25 years for small businesses, which are the engine of job creation. When they hire those hard-working Canadians, their employees will be able to take more home because taxes are at their lowest level in half a century.

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it is the NDP and the Liberals who are telling Canadian taxpayers they do not matter. If people are one of the 11 million Canadians who contribute to the tax-free savings account, the NDP says they do not matter. If they are one of the millions of Canadians with incomes below $60,000 and have maxed out their tax-free savings account, according to the NDP, they do not matter. If they are one of the four million families who benefit from the Prime Minister's increase in the universal child care benefit, the NDP says they do not matter.

The NDP members want to take that money away from all of those people because they think they matter more than taxpayers.

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP and the Liberals think that anyone with a job, a pension or savings is wealthy. Since doubling the TFSA limit will help people who earn $60,000 per year, the NDP thinks that means those people are too rich.

The NDP and the Liberals want to raise taxes for those people, but we will cut their taxes.

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, our low-tax plan for families gives money to 100% of households that have children. It does this through the family tax cut, which will save up to $2,000 for couples, and through the increased universal child care benefit, which will give $2,000 per child under 6 and $720 for each child age 6 through 17.

The NDP and Liberals would take that money away to spend on endless bureaucracies and wasteful programs that Canadians do not want and do not need.

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, this is from a party whose leader thinks budgets balance themselves. The same leader said that he defines rich people as those who live off their assets. Seniors live off their assets.

Now, the Liberal Party is standing up in the House to say that anybody who earns $60,000 or less is too rich and should pay higher taxes. Sixty per cent of those people who already max out their tax-free savings accounts, and would benefit from the Prime Minister's decision to double those account limits, are earning $60,000 or less. This is a tax cut for the middle class. The Liberals would take it away.