House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2019, with 71% of the vote.
Canada Pension Plan November 4th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, we are voting against a payroll tax. We will always vote against higher taxes. Unfortunately, the Liberals believe that government intervention and raising taxes, spending billions of dollars running this country into debt is the way to get this country's economy back on track. Conservatives will always oppose that.
Questions Passed as Orders for Returns November 4th, 2016
With regard to responses to Questions on the Order Paper tabled thus far in the current Parliament, and if responses were tabled when the Privy Council Office did not have the associated completed “Statement of Completeness” forms from all of the departments providing a response: (a) how many times did this occur; (b) for each question identified in (a), what was the number of the question and the date each response was tabled; (c) for each question identified in (a), which departments did not complete the forms; and (d) were completed forms submitted to the Privy Council Office after the responses were tabled and, if so, (i) for which questions, (ii) by which departments, (iii) on what date was each form received?
Questions Passed as Orders for Returns November 4th, 2016
With regard to Canadian government offices abroad and official residences of diplomats, what is the cost of swimming pool maintenance, gardening, landscaping, or other grounds maintenance since November, 2015, broken down by location and type of expense?
Questions Passed as Orders for Returns November 4th, 2016
With regard to vehicles purchased, broken down by department, agency, crown corporation, or other government entity, since November 4, 2015: (a) how many vehicles have been purchased, broken down by make, including, (i) Porsche, (ii) Lexus, (iii) Mercedes, (iv) Tesla, (v) BMW, (vi) Lamborghini, (vii) Ferrari; (b) what was the date and purchase price of each of the vehicles identified in (a); (c) what was the year and model of each of the vehicles identified in (a); (d) were the vehicles identified in (a) new or used when purchased; (e) were there any vehicles purchased for a price in excess of $50 000, or equivalent, not covered by parts (a)(i) through (a)(vii); and (f) if the response to (e) is affirmative, what is the make, model, purchase price, and date of purchase of each vehicle?
Questions Passed as Orders for Returns November 4th, 2016
With regard to the Official State Dinner held at Casa Loma for the Mexican President on June 27, 2016: (a) what costs were associated with the dinner; (b) what is the breakdown of the costs including but not limited to the amount spent on food, alcohol, venue rental, private security firms, and transportation to and from the venue; (c) how many Members of Parliament were invited to the dinner; (d) how many current Liberal Members of Parliament, including Ministers, were invited to the dinner; (e) how many current Members of Parliament who are not members of the Liberals caucus were invited to the dinner; (f) how many Ontario Members of Provincial Parliament were invited to the dinner; (g) how many Ontario Liberal MPPs were invited to the dinner; (h) how many Ontario Progressive Conservative MPPs or Ontario NDP MPPs were invited to the dinner; (i) which Minister was responsible for deciding the guest list for the dinner; (j) since January 1, 2016 has any Minister or their staff been lobbied by any of the individuals or organizations on the guest list; and (k) if the answer to (j) is affirmative, what are the details of any meetings where lobbying occurred including date of meeting, location, attendees, and topics discussed?
Canada Pension Plan November 4th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, outside of the fact there were a great many factual inaccuracies in my colleague's presentation and question, I will deal with the last part of his question first.
While it is true that many Canadians do not have a Canadian pension plan, the fact of the matter is that they should be in a position where they have made their own retirement plans and own retirement and savings decisions. As I pointed out during my presentation, fewer than 4% of Canadians are living on a low-income, and more and more Canadians are saving more and more of their money on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis.
For the member to suggest for one second that it is a required course of action for the government to raise taxes, for the government to impose its will on Canadians on how they should be saving, is absolutely ludicrous.
Canada Pension Plan November 4th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, it might be helpful, or perhaps even instructive, if I prefaced my remarks by sharing with my colleagues the definition of a tax. A tax is defined as a “compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits, or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions”.
I would suggest that anyone with a reasonable outlook would know that hiking the CPP premiums is a form of taxation. It is in effect a payroll tax.
I would argue that raising taxes in times of a sluggish economy, in times of the weak economy we are experiencing here today in Canada, is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Raising taxes would have negative impacts on the Canadian economy. For example, it would restrict and reduce the ability of businesses to reinvest in their businesses. It would reduce the ability of Canadians to have more take-home pay, and it most certainly would reduce their ability to add to their savings. It would reduce the amount of money they would be able to save.
It is simply the wrong approach to take. This payroll tax is regressive. It harms employers and employees alike. Most particularly, it is harmful to small businesses.
Let me share a small story from just a few weeks ago. I happened to be in Thunder Bay on some business. Since I had never been to Thunder Bay before, I went out for dinner to a restaurant that night with a colleague. I had a lovely dinner. Following dinner, the business owner and I engaged in a conversation. Once he found out I was a member of Parliament, he wanted to talk about the proposed hike in CPP premiums. He told me his profit margin was so skinny that any increase to the CPP premiums would result in only two things. One, he would be looking at a negative profit for the year, which might result in his closing his doors; or two, he would be forced to lay off employees. Neither of those two options was particularly attractive to this young employer. He said he had a business partner in another restaurant in Edmonton who was facing exactly the same situation.
I know it does not matter whether one is a small business owner in Surrey, British Columbia; Edmonton, Alberta; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Thunder Bay, Ontario; or Corner Brook, Newfoundland, because this is a problem for all small business owners.
The frustrating thing about this is there is no need to increase CPP premiums. The government's stated objective is to allow Canadians in their retirement years to retire more comfortably. However, the statistics do not indicate there is a problem today. Statistics indicate that fewer than 4% of seniors are living on a lower income, or below the poverty line. That is a great change from many decades ago. In fact, in 1970, 29% of seniors were living below the poverty line, so we have made great strides in the decades since 1970.
Additionally, statistics indicate that Canadians are saving more money today. In 1990, Canadians saved slightly more than 7.5% of their income. Today, it is almost twice that. Canadians are saving over 14% of their take-home pay, or at least their gross income, and putting it into savings vehicles like RRSPs, TFSAs, and the like.
We are making progress on that, so for the government to say it is doing this out of necessity is, frankly, disingenuous at the very least.
The government appears to be trying to create a solution for a problem that does not exist. The irony of all of this is that because of the government's reckless, out of control spending, the reality is that the government is creating a problem for which there is no solution, because of the billions of dollars of debt it is incurring and throwing upon the backs of taxpayers. It has no solution for getting out of debt. There is no plan to get back to balance.
It appears that the government's economic plan, if we want to call it that, is following very closely the path of the previous Ontario governments of McGuinty and, currently, Premier Wynne. That disastrous economic plan has resulted in the Province of Ontario, on a per capita basis, being more indebted than any jurisdiction in the world. What is even more frightening is the fact that two of the main architects of the disastrous economic policy of Ontario were Gerald Butts and Katie Telford, who are now two of the main economic advisers to the Prime Minister. I would hate to see these two do to Canada what they have done to Ontario, but that is certainly what appears to be happening.
However, I think there are alternatives to what the government is planning and proposing with Bill C-26. I have always thought it is instructive and helpful if opposition members, rather than just criticizing the government, offer alternatives or things the government could at least consider to replace flawed legislation—and Bill C-26 truly is flawed. My suggestions to the government would not cost the taxpayer a nickel.
The first suggestion I would make is this. Why does the government not work with its provincial and territorial counterparts and encourage them to add financial literacy to the K-to-12 educational curriculum? I think it would be extremely helpful for young people to learn why they need to save for retirement. It would helpful for them to learn how to save for retirement, to learn about the investment and savings vehicles that are available in Canada today, so that when they finally enter the workforce, they have a plan, or at least have charted out a course of action, to be able to work their lives and then retire with dignity. That no-cost item would, I believe, be extremely helpful.
The second thing is again a very simple concept. Of course, I believe it is totally alien to the government's thinking, but it would not cost the taxpayers a nickel, and it is simply to lower taxes. Do not raise taxes, but lower taxes. Allow Canadians to take more money home with them. Put more money in their jeans. Put more money into savings vehicles. At the same time, lowering taxes would stimulate the economy.
Our previous government had a low-tax, high-productivity agenda. It resulted in having the lowest tax regime in 50 years. What was the result? Well, we created 1.3 million net new jobs from the height of the recession until the day we left office. Why? It is because lowering taxes increases productivity. That is a concept the current government is totally unaware of. Bill C-26 is totally opposed to lowering taxes, because this bill would raise taxes.
For those reasons, and some of the others I articulated in the few moments I had for my address, my colleagues and I in Her Majesty’s loyal opposition will be vociferously opposing Bill C-26.
China September 22nd, 2016
Mr. Speaker, last month the Prime Minister went to China to attend a G20 meeting. We all know that China is one of the PM's favourite places. We can all recall his saying in the past, “I actually have a certain level of admiration for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime”.
It is alarming for a prime minister to say he admires dictatorships. It is even more alarming for a prime minister to turn a blind eye to the brutality of some dictatorships. We know in the China that the human rights record is abysmal. Yet the Prime Minister tried to appease the Chinese by saying that Canada's human rights record was not so perfect anyway.
It is one thing to be a prime minister in our country. It is another thing to represent our country internationally, but that did not stop the Prime Minister from posing for pictures. As we all know, that is what he is good at.
Income Tax Act September 19th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back, good to see you back in the chair, and good to see all of my colleagues here as well. I have limited time before we have to adjourn this debate so I will make my comments as brief as possible.
However, I have to at the outset correct the record again for my colleague, my friend from Cape Breton—Canso, who tried to imply that during the time of the previous government we recklessly ran up deficits and added to the national debt indiscriminately. Of course that is not true. We did so for one very good reason. We did it grudgingly but it was necessary to spend money, particularly on infrastructure projects, during the time of the worldwide global recession.
Every country in the G20 agreed to that plan. We did so grudgingly, as I mentioned, but the one thing that stays with me, and my colleague and my friend who was opposite at the time would have to agree to this, is this. As we were preparing our budgets and as we were preparing to spend $50 billion or $60 billion on infrastructure projects to try to stimulate the economy, the complaints the member opposite and his colleagues in the Liberal benches had were that we were not spending enough. They and their colleagues in the NDP were on record day after day saying that we had to spend more. Now, the Liberals have the audacity to stand in their place and complain about the debt. This is typical Liberal hypocrisy. It is doublespeak. The Liberals have always in their terms of office spent first and tried to correct the record later. That is simply not the way we have done things when we were in government.
What is even more troubling to me is the fact that the Liberal government, beyond trying to be a revisionist history party, is reversing many of the initiatives we brought forward that are so incredibly popular and beneficial to Canadians.
I take for an example the TFSA. The tax-free savings account is the most important tax-saving initiative that we have seen in the country since the advent of the RRSP. It allowed Canadians to put after-tax money into an account where that money could accumulate tax free and then to withdraw the money tax free. It was unbelievably popular with Canadians. We had at the outset $5,000 as a limit that Canadians could contribute to this account. We later increased that to $10,000 and then to $10,500. However, when the Liberals came to power, they said they would roll back the contribution limits to $5,000. Their rationale was that the ordinary Canadian could not afford to put $10,000 a year into an account so they ratcheted it back.
I just have one question. When has it become a bad thing to allow Canadians to save more money tax free? When has that become a bad thing? Apparently it has because the government says it is. Tens of millions of Canadians have maxed out on their TFSA contributions each and every year. Tens of millions more were looking forward to putting more money into a TFSA so they could withdraw the money when they wanted, to spend it on what they wished.
However, the government of course knows better than Canadians. The Liberals said sorry, that people could not put that money into a tax-free savings account because they wanted it to spend it. That is the tax-and-spend philosophy of the Liberals and it is something that most Canadians eventually, and hopefully sooner rather than later, will come to understand and realize once again that there is only one party in this place that truly protects the interests of the taxpayers, and that is the Conservative Party of Canada.
Ministerial Expenses June 17th, 2016
Madam Speaker, one of the things we hear advertised every summer is McDonald's dollar drink days, where any drink on the menu is just $1.
Nonetheless, I was very surprised to hear that a member of the Minister of International Development's staff charged Canadian taxpayers $17.77 for juice while in New York last March.
We all know that New York is a very expensive city, but can the minister explain how her staffer managed to spend that much money on juice, or is this just another example of Liberals entitled to their entitlements?