Scott Brison

[Finance, April 28th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the Bank of Canada says housing prices are overvalued by up to 30%. The bank cites elevated risks of a housing correction in Alberta, Toronto, and Vancouver and warns that if that happened in these markets simultaneously, “the spillover effects to the rest of the economy could be significant”. These are serious risks facing our economy and housing markets. That is why the government was advised to increase the contingency reserve.

Why did the Conservatives actually ignore that advice and raid the reserve? Was it just to cobble up an illusory surplus on the eve of an election?

[The Budget, April 28th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with wonderment to the remarks of my colleague from the Conservative Party.

First, the budget was delayed by the current government well into the next fiscal year for one reason: the Conservatives had to sell the GM shares and book those revenues for $2.2 billion to achieve an illusory surplus of $1.4 billion, on the eve of an election.

Going forward, the Conservatives' budget projections for the future are based on oil prices increasing by 50%. Nobody saw oil prices dropping by 50%, but the current government is actually basing its fiscal projections on increases in oil prices of 50%.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Bank of Canada are using much lower figures in their projections for oil prices. As a result of that, the PBO is projecting budget deficits in 2017-2018, 2018-2019, and 2019-2020.

Does the hon. member actually believe that rosy projections and wishful thinking are a replacement for sound budget practices? Why is the government making—

[Business of Supply, April 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the member cited several examples of legitimate government advertising, and of course, legitimate government advertising would be approved by an independent authority, which we describe in this mandate. There would be no quarrel with this independent authority about legitimate government advertising that actually provided value to Canadians and informed Canadians of valuable information and data they required and that was not partisan.

He asked about my decision to join the Liberal Party 11 years ago. I assure him that I am very happy to be part of a progressive, enlightened party that bases decisions on evidence and not ideology, that celebrates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that defends minority rights in Canada, and that will form an extraordinary government after the next election that will restore some of these basic values to the Canadian government. Many Canadians are ready for a change, and they are ready to embrace a Liberal government.

[Business of Supply, April 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question.

The Government of Ontario is a good example of a government that created an independent authority for ensuring that all government ads are not partisan and that they offer good value to taxpayers. This is an example of a government whose approach works well. It may be possible to work with the Auditor General on this.

Nonetheless, for today's debate, the priority is to lay out a principle for the government to respect and to create a completely independent authority to ensure that the Conservatives' practices will cease.

[Business of Supply, April 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak today on the Liberal motion on government advertising from my colleague, the member for Ottawa South.

The Conservative government has proven time and time again that it has absolutely no shame in spending tax dollars on wasteful, ineffective and highly partisan advertising. The Conservatives have spent more than $750 million on government advertising. In fact, just today we have learned of new plans by the Conservative government to spend even more tax dollars on wasteful ads.

According to a new media report, not only is Finance Canada spending another $7.5 million on radio and television ads for April and May, but the Canada Revenue Agency has a multimillion dollar advertising campaign of its own right now. I will quote from the report today:

The Canada Revenue Agency is spending $6-million on a concentrated TV bulk buy this month that includes pricey NHL playoff spots in what internal government documents describe as a continuation of an existing campaign that’s been running all winter.

Under the Conservatives, the CRA has seen massive cuts that have caused service standards to plummet and Canadians to be left frustrated. The Conservatives have in fact closed all of the CRA service counters and allowed the backlog of complaints to rise to more than 35,000. Even CRA's internal audit shows that its telephone support lines for small businesses go largely unanswered or are giving out erroneous information. Despite these ongoing problems, the Conservatives have still managed to find millions of dollars to spend on TV ads this month, the very month that Canadians are most likely to need CRA's help and be left wanting more.

As the motion states, a great deal of these ads have been partisan in nature and have served very little in terms of real public interest. This abuse of tax dollars is an affront to Canadians who work hard and expect their government to treat their money with respect.

To clean up this mess, we need greater checks and balances in place. The government should be required to submit its advertising to a third-party review process to ensure that the ads are appropriate, proportional and a sensible use of public funds.

Canadians are angry, and rightly so. They have a government that is asking everyone to tighten their belts, while the government spends hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on self-promotion ads.

I would like to give just a few examples of wasteful Conservative advertising.

In May 2013, the Conservative government ran an ad during the Stanley Cup playoffs advertising the Canada jobs grants. The Advertising Standards Council of Canada declared that the ad was misleading and was a breach of the Canadian code of advertising standards because it omitted relevant information. It also neglected to mention that the program did not even exist. In fact, the government had not engaged the provinces on an area of shared jurisdiction.

The Conservative government has already spent nearly $12 million on ads to promote Canada's 150th birthday, an event that will not take place for another two years. The Conservatives also spent tens of millions of dollars promoting the Canada economic action plan three years after the program actually ended.

The Conservatives have also frequently purchased really expensive ads during the NHL playoffs, the Super Bowl and the Oscars, and when asked to explain, they refuse to reveal any details to Canadians about the cost. Canadians are right to wonder about the priorities of the Prime Minister and his Conservatives.

It comes down to priorities. The Conservatives have lost touch with what really matters to Canadian families. While the Conservatives spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars on partisan advertising, they are also shortchanging our veterans. They shut down nine veteran service centres across Canada. They have spent as much advertising veteran services, which the Auditor General says are not actually meeting the needs of the veteran community, as it costs to maintain these nine offices, which actually were serving veterans.

The Conservatives have also chosen economic action plan ads over measures that would actually create jobs. There are still almost 160,000 fewer jobs for young Canadians compared to 2008, before the downturn.

Students across Canada are struggling to find summer jobs that can help pay for their school. Instead of helping students out, the Conservative government has cut the number of jobs created by the Canada summer jobs program by more than half.

However, a single ad during the NHL playoffs could actually pay for more than 30 student jobs in the Canada summer jobs program. Instead of creating summer jobs for students who need the work to pay for their schooling, the government is instead wasting that money on partisan ads in the NHL playoffs.

It is an issue of priorities. The Conservatives are out of touch with the priorities of middle-class families. Taxpayers are in fact disgusted by the flagrant abuse of their tax dollars on these ads. The Conservatives must end this wasteful spending of tax dollars immediately. For a plan, they need look no further than to my Liberal colleague, the member for Ottawa South and his private member's Bill C-544. His legislation would end wasteful government advertising by requiring the ads be vetted by an independent, non-partisan body before they can be released. It is the right thing to do.

If the Conservatives fail to act, then Canadians will have to wait until a Liberal government, after the next election, brings in these measures that would take partisan politics out of government advertising, and put an end to this wasteful spending and abuse of tax dollars.

The Conservatives like to preach that government has a responsibility to communicate with Canadians, but they fail to mention that they also have a duty to taxpayers to ensure that the way in which we communicate to Canadians is ethical, economical and responsible. In this respect, the Conservatives have failed miserably.

A Liberal government, led by the member for Papineau, would clean up this mess, would put in place good governance to ensure that tax dollars are not wasted, and would ensure that the government is able to communicate with Canadians and provide valuable services to Canadians, while at the same time respecting tax dollars and ensuring the power of government is not abused for partisan purposes.

[Employment, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, when oil prices fell and middle-class workers lost their jobs, the Minister of Finance froze and went into hiding. Now we have seen his budget, and there is still no plan for jobs. Today we learned that EI claims in Alberta went up by 30% in February, and that is the second month in a row that EI claims in Alberta have grown by more than 20%.

People across Canada are losing their jobs. Why will the Conservatives not take action? Why are they failing to give Canadians a real plan for jobs and growth?

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite amazing that a member of the Conservative caucus would actually accuse someone else of not having a plan when they cannot even present a budget on time. Of course, they say the reason is falling oil prices. If that were the real reason, then how did Alberta or Saskatchewan, both of which are more dependent upon oil prices for their fiscal framework, actually come up with a budget?

The reality is the only reason they delayed the budget is they needed to book the sale of GM shares, a one-time asset sale, this year so that they could create this illusory surplus on the eve of an election, so they could cobble it up and tell Canadians the books are balanced. Canadians will not be fooled by that.

I was proud to be part of a government, Paul Martin's government, that negotiated with the provinces and territories and actually sat down and met with premiers, that invested and put in place a 10-year health care plan, that increased investments in health care from the federal government by 6% per year. That was before the current government unilaterally imposed a cut to those transfers by half, in fact. Now, it has only grown by 3% per year. We will take no lessons on fiscal responsibility working with the provinces from the current government.

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, just wait, because we are going to present a solid plan for the economy, job creation and economic growth. It is a solid and positive plan for the middle class, for making investments in infrastructure and for helping young people find jobs.

The hon. member will have to wait a little while longer, but I am sure that she will very much like our plan for Canada's economy. I hope she will support our Liberal plan for Canadians because we worked very hard on developing it. I hope she will agree with our ideas for stimulating economic growth in order to benefit Canadians.

[The Budget, April 23rd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I will be speaking on the federal budget today. I will be splitting my time with the member for Etobicoke North.

This budget has no real plan for jobs or growth. It gives the most to people who need it the least, and it keeps Canada in a deficit situation.

The Prime Minister's claim of a balanced budget is about as credible as George W. Bush's claim, in 2003, when he declared “mission accomplished” on the Iraq war. History proved the president wrong; the U.S. remained in Iraq for another seven years.

I think history will prove that this Prime Minister is wrong to declare victory on deficits. It is a cautionary tale about premature declarations of victory. This lesson is lost on the Conservative government. Instead of learning from history, the Conservatives are using this budget to declare mission accomplished in a fiscal year that will not even end until March 31, 2016.

The budget shows that after seven consecutive deficits, the federal Conservatives have yet to balance the budget. Canada has not been in a recession since May 2009. In fact, the Conservatives have been breaking the principle of their proposed balanced budget legislation since then.

Now the Conservatives have fabricated an illusory surplus on the eve of an election. How did they do that? First, they cut the contingency reserve. That is right. In the past, they kept intact the contingency reserve put in place by finance minister Paul Martin. If the Conservatives had actually done that this year, the budget would have shown that the Conservatives would be in deficit until at least 2017.

Slashing the rainy day reserve is just plain reckless. Last year, then-finance minister Jim Flaherty agreed. He said it would be “imprudent” to cut the contingency reserve. Earlier this year, the then-employment minister, now the defence minister, promised that the government would not touch the contingency fund. He said, “We won't be using a contingency fund”, to balance the budget. “A contingency fund is there for unforeseen circumstances, like natural disasters”.

This finance minister and the Prime Minister did not listen to either. Instead, he has recklessly cut the contingency reserve, leaving the government with no room for any unforeseen events.

The finance minister's reckless streak does not end there. His budget also depends on a 50% increase in oil prices. The Bank of Canada knows better than to build its forecasts around the hope that oil prices are going to go up in the mid-term. The Conservatives should be similarly cautious. It is reckless to build a budget around rosy assumptions.

The cut to the contingency reserve, in fact, is not the only item in this budget that is larger than the illusory surplus. There is also the one-time asset sale of GM shares, a $2.2 billion sale of GM shares that is actually bigger than this illusory surplus.

That confirms the reason the finance minister sat on his hands and delayed the budget until April, after the fiscal year had already begun.

Since 2010, job growth in Canada has been stagnant, and with the fall of oil prices, Canadians have been losing their jobs. The Bank of Canada has called the economy in 2015 “atrocious”. The Governor of the Bank of Canada actually took action in January. He stepped in with a historic interest rate cut to strengthen the economy. Meanwhile, the finance minister was nowhere to be found. He went into hiding, avoiding questions in Parliament for months. Now we know the real reason he did this. The finance minister was putting politics ahead of the economy and the Conservatives' political fortunes ahead of the Canadian priority of having a real plan, in a timely manner, to create jobs and growth for Canadians who need them.

He delayed the budget so that the sale of GM shares would count toward this fiscal year instead of last. That is not a plan. That is a gimmick. It is not just unsustainable, it is pathetic. It is playing politics with the livelihoods of Canadians.

The Canadian economy desperately needs a plan for jobs and growth. Instead, the Conservatives remain committed to their fiscally irresponsible plan for income splitting and the doubling of the TFSA contribution limit. They spent the surplus even before it arrived, and they are spending it on those who need the help the least.

Neither income splitting nor the increase to the TFSA limit would do anything for job creation. Neither of these measures would create the jobs and growth Canadians need or help young Canadians find work. Both of these measures would skew benefits toward the rich, doing little for the middle class and those Canadians working hard to join the middle class.

Doubling the TFSA limit would be particularly reckless, because the cost of the measure would ramp up dramatically over time and would gut the capacity of future governments by tens of billions of dollars every year. According to the PBO, a third of that cost would be borne by provincial governments, and because TFSAs would not count toward income-tested benefits, it would also result, perversely, in billions of dollars each year in additional old age security payments for wealthier seniors.

At some level, the Minister of Finance seems to understand that doubling the TFSA would create a problem for the next generation. When asked about that problem, he acknowledged that there would be a problem and said “why don't we leave that to [the Prime Minister's] granddaughter to solve”.

Canadian parents believe in building a better country for our kids and our grandkids. We do not believe in burdening the next generation with today's tax breaks for the rich. We do not believe in gutting our social safety net to pay for those tax breaks.

The Conservatives do not get this. They have grown out of touch with the challenges faced by middle-class Canadian families. Instead of building for the future, the Conservatives have engineered, effectively, a reverse mortgage on Canada's fiscal house to help them pay for giveaways to the rich. Doubling the TFSA limit would dramatically reduce the government's capacity in the future to invest in what matters.

All of this is bad enough, but it was only three years ago, just shortly after the last election, that these same Conservatives falsely claimed that they had to raise the age of OAS from 65 to 67 because of financial pressures. They falsely claimed that the OAS program was not financially sustainable. They passed these measures in Bill C-38, the spring 2012 omnibus budget bill, which resulted in cutting OAS and GIS to Canada's most vulnerable seniors for two years.

When fully implemented, Bill C-38's cuts to OAS and GIS will take $32,000 away from each of Canada's poorest and most vulnerable seniors. The Conservatives will be taking that money from low-income seniors at precisely the time when doubling the TFSA limit will start to get really expensive for the government and when the extra OAS payments for wealthier Canadians kick in.

The Conservatives are playing anti-Robin Hood. There is an adage that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Under this Conservative budget, it is now official government policy.

Raising the age of OAS and doubling the TFSA limit would take money away from the poorest, most vulnerable seniors and would give it to the rich. It would give that money to the select few who have an extra $10,000 burning a hole in their pockets every year. We need to keep in mind that some families are wealthy enough that there would in fact be two adults who could each contribute, so that is $20,000. I do not know a lot of families like that in Kings—Hants. People are working hard. They are struggling. Middle-class families are barely getting by.

The Conservative decision to take from the poor and give to the rich is unfair and un-Canadian. It is another example of how out of touch with the priorities of Canadians and the challenges of middle-class families the Conservatives have become.

The budget has no plan for jobs and growth. It would do next to nothing to help Canada's struggling middle class. It would do the most for the people who need it the least, the rich, and it would keep Canada in deficit.

A Liberal government will have a real plan for jobs and growth and support for Canada's middle class, and we will balance the books.

[The Budget, April 22nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Liberal leader, the member for Papineau, for offering some hope to Canadian parents who are looking for a real plan for jobs and growth for today's youth. Today's parents are the first generation of Canadian parents who believe their kids will be worse off than them.

The doubling of the tax-free savings account limit will make things worse by gutting the future capacity of governments. Is the leader of the Liberal Party concerned about the intergenerational equity component of the tax-free savings account in terms of giving a tax break to the rich but potentially making middle-class Canadians pay higher taxes in the future and receive fewer services from government?