Pierre Poilievre

[Ethics, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, when the Prime Minister woke up this morning and saw that blazing headline on the front page of The Globe and Mail saying there are four other ministers hiding stocks in numbered companies, he would have been so concerned that he would have called a meeting in that room on the third floor, around that big oval table, and he would have said, “Ministers who have stocks hidden within numbered companies raise your hands.” Which ones did?

[Ethics, October 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the minister was caught holding an offshore company without referring it to the Ethics Commissioner. Then he was caught by Canadians as continuing to own shares in his family business. Now after being caught, he has put that money in a blind trust, but he is asking us to blindly trust him about the roughly half-dozen other numbered companies he continues to own.

Why does he not just tell us what is inside those companies?

[Ethics, October 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, if the minister had not owned those stocks over the last two years while ministers are banned from owning stocks, then he would not have had those profits in the first place. Can he confirm now if he will donate the resulting tax savings that he will enjoy from the charitable tax credit to help pay off his deficit?

[Ethics, October 26th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, ministers are banned from owning stocks. That is because we do not want them to use their power to help the companies they own or inside information to unduly profit. The minister used a loophole to get around that ban by just putting the stocks in a numbered company in Alberta.

I have a simple question: Has the minister owned other stocks in his numbered companies?

[Ethics, October 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister wants us to accept that the finance minister filed a secret report to the Ethics Commissioner in which he supposedly revealed what exists inside his vast network of numbered companies and trust funds.

We already know that he hid from the Ethics Commissioner his offshore company in France. He hid from Canadians his $20 million share in Morneau Shepell. The only way for us to find out if he is hiding anything else and if he is profiting privately from his public powers is for him to reveal what is inside those companies. Why will he not?

[Ethics, October 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, when someone controls $330 billion of other people's money, that someone's financial business is everyone's business.

The new infrastructure bank will allow the finance minister to give out billions of dollars in loans and loan guarantees to companies that he may well own within his numbered companies and trust funds. However, the Prime Minister is not insisting that he be transparent with the taxpayers who will have to pay for those very loans and loan guarantees.

Therefore, once again, will the Prime Minister require that his finance minister reveal to all Canadians what he holds in his numbered companies?

[Ethics, October 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, we are not looking for some intimate detail of the finance minister's personal life. We do not care what he had for breakfast or what kind of socks he wears, but we do care about the fact that he controls $330 billion of other people's money.

He hid his offshore company in France, he hid his $20 million share in his family business. What else is he hiding in his vast network of numbered companies and trust funds?

[Ethics, October 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister forked over $400 million to Bombardier. Now we know that Alabama got the jobs, Europe gets the planes, the billionaire Bombardier Beaudoin family gets the money, and taxpayers get the bill.

Who benefited from this?

We now know that the company Morneau Shepell has Bombardier as a client. What else is the finance minister hiding in his vast network of numbered companies and trust funds?

[Fall Economic Statement, October 24th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, moments ago the finance minister had the audacity to say that families like his are not getting any benefit cheques in Canada. This is from the finance minister who, we learned only days ago, has been taking $65,000 dividend cheques from a company he regulates, and those are on a monthly basis, not to be confused.

This is from a finance minister who says that a “privileged few” should pay more, yet nothing in today's proposal would see the family fortunes of the finance minister or the Prime Minister touched by any taxes at all. Once again, they have sheltered themselves.

Now I'll go on to the bigger picture.

The Prime Minister promised a small $10 billion deficit. Do members remember that? Today we learn that the deficit is double that. He promised the budget would be balanced by 2019. Now we learn that the deficit will be almost $17 billion in that year and there are no balanced budgets projected by the government, ever. There is literally not a single year into the distant future when the Liberal government projects ever eliminating the deficit, apparently believing that the government can borrow its way out of debt into prosperity.

The pattern here is a government that does exactly the opposite of what it says. The Liberals said they would raise taxes on the rich, and now, according to the finance minister's own department, the rich are paying $1 billion less in taxes.

They claimed they would lower taxes on the middle class. The Fraser Institute confirmed that 87% of middle-class taxpayers are paying more income tax today than they were when the Prime Minister took office—on average $800 more. Middle-class people like farmers, plumbers, and electricians pay $800 more in tax while millionaires like the Prime Minister and the finance minister are actually paying lower tax.

The Liberals claimed that they would close loopholes; meanwhile the Prime Minister puts his money away in trust funds that avoid paying any new tax under his proposals. The same Prime Minister puts funds in numbered companies so that he can avoid paying tax.

The finance minister stuffs away his $20 million investment in Morneau Shepell in a numbered company in Alberta. He lives on Bay Street, yet his companies are in Alberta, Barbados, and France, all of which allow him to pay lower taxes than everyone else pays. He is the very definition of the privileged few, the aristocratic, old money elite, who have taken generational wealth handed down from those who came before them, like the Prime Minister, who took his wealth from the petroleum empire of his grandfather and yet now wants to protect his own benefits from additional taxation while he forces others to pay more.

Such is the system of government that the Liberal Party creates.

The government gave nearly $400 million in handouts to Bombardier—a company, by the way, that has hired the finance minister's family business. Now, that company is selling its intellectual property and its next generation aircraft to a European company, effectively a subsidy from the federal government to protect the wealthy and the well connected—in particular, this time, the billionaire Bombardier Beaudoin family. It is the old feudal economy, where the rich get richer and the working class pay the bills.

This is the new trickle-down government, where it takes money from the working class, puts it in the hands of politicians who give it to the wealthiest corporations, and expects us to believe that a few drops will trickle down to the people who earned it in the first place. The ultimate concentration of wealth is the government. The bigger the government gets, the more business invests in lobbying for a larger share of that money.

Various definitive research shows that, if government gets bigger, then businesses spend more on lobbying. They understand that the way to get rich in a government-run economy is by having the best lobbyist, and the way to get ahead in a free market economy is by having the best product or service.

On this side of the House of Commons, we believe in a free enterprise economy where one can only get better off if one sells a product or service that is worth more than the people have to pay for it. It is where one cannot force people to buy a product through a government edict or subsidy or taxation, and where one has to convince people that the thing at offer is actually worth more to them than the dollar they part with to buy it.

The government wants to leave behind that free enterprise tradition that has created all of the prosperity that Canadians enjoy. We believe in an economy based on meritocracy. The Liberals believe in an economy based on old money and privilege. It is no surprise, because that is the experience. It is what they have known. It is what they have always understood.

On this side of the aisle we will continue to champion the underdog, the striver, the upstart, and the challenger, while the Liberals look for new ways to put up obstacles in the way of those who try to get ahead, in order to protect the privilege of those who already have lots of money. We will knock down those barriers so people can keep building, growing, and getting ahead, where they will be judged not by their connections or their family pedigree but by what they have to contribute, and where we see the dignity of work inside every single Canadian and the potential for them to play out that dignity with their own merit and their own contributions. That is the free enterprise, merit-driven vision we have for the economy.

While the Liberals continue to expropriate billions of dollars from entrepreneurs and workers in order to spend on complicated schemes such as superclusters and Bombardier bailouts, we will leave that money in the hands of the people who earned it, because they are always better at spending it than those politicians who tax it.

That is the approach the Conservatives have always taken. It is the reason why, under then prime minister Harper, we had the biggest drop and the lowest levels of poverty in recorded Canadian history. Poverty fell from highs in the mid-teens under the first Trudeau government to 8.8% in the last full year that then prime minister Harper served. He did it by raising the personal exemption, to free a million low-income Canadians from taxation. He brought in the working income tax benefit, to give a pay increase to low-income working people trying to escape from social assistance. He eliminated red tape, so small upstart businesses that could not afford accountants and crafty consultants could start their businesses without the shackles of government holding them back.

We opened up the economy so that people could strive hard, work hard, and get ahead on their own merit. That is the opportunity economy that we will create, that is the vision we will present, and that is the vision Canadians will choose in 2019.

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the minister keeps blaming the Ethics Commissioner for his own actions but, wait, the minister committed to that same commissioner, in writing, to abstain from matters related to Morneau Shepell.

Again, did the finance minister get written permission to introduce Bill C-27, a bill that profited him and his family business?