Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_27
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Hon. Michelle Rempel Garner: it is always a deep honour to rise and speak in this place. There is something uniting Canadians right now, and it is not a good thing. It is this emotion, this sense, this pulse that is kind of humming through Canadians. The beat goes like this: spend more, get less; spend more, get less. It is at the heart of family disagreements. It is at the heart of people feeling hopelessness. It is spend more, get less; spend more, get less. I have to tell members that when I read through the bill we are debating tonight, it reads, "spend more, get less; spend more, get less". I know so many families in my riding that feel this day in and day out. They are living what is in this bill. They are living that increased thump of anxiety with their expenses climbing, as they are spending more and getting less day in and day out. It is this black feeling of despair. They are looking to us in this place to end the cycle, and it has to start here with this bill. This bill spends more and gets less, and we have to stop it. I know there are so many people of all political stripes in this place who care deeply about the issues that affect Canadians, but we also have to look at the track record. If anybody came to us and said, "I want a bunch of money, and I am going to spend more, but you are going to get less," we would say, "No, you cannot do that. You need a better plan. You cannot spend more and get less." However, that is what the government has done for so many years. We have given it so many chances, but it has spent more and we have gotten less. On housing, the government has spent so much money, and we have gotten so much less. Canadians are spending double on rent and double on their mortgage, and there is no big increase in affordable housing stock. We cannot afford to keep spending more and getting less housing when housing is at the core of so many of the social crises facing our country. Without affordable housing, people fall into crime, they fall into addiction and they fall into that thump of anxiety: Where am I going to live? How am I going to pay the bills? It is spend more, get less. On firearms violence, we are spending a lot more. We are buying back a bunch of firearms. I do not see violence going down. I see gang violence going up. We are spending more; we are getting less. We are spending a lot more money on the media and not getting more journalists investigating the things we need to see in this place. We are getting fewer journalists, less freedom and less transparency. On so many things, in every area, it is spend more, get less; spend more, get less. Then what happens? We get more inflation. Our debt goes up and we have to pay the cost on that debt. Then what happens to Canadians as we in this place keep trusting managers who have failed to get more while spending less? When we spend more and get less here with managers who have not figured this out, we get fewer government services, fewer new Canadians' applications being processed, less service on the phone with the CRA, fewer passports and the biggest government strike in two generations. We are spending more and getting less. Then what happens? What Canadians see, because of that inflationary pressure and because of that debt, is higher taxes and more anxiety when people are trying to figure out if they will be able to pay to fill up their car. We all care about climate change. We all, in this country, want to do our part. However, if we keep spending more on things that are not lowering our greenhouse gas emissions and are not even measuring them, we are spending more and getting less climate action. I do not have an LRT in my riding. There are 50,000 people in my riding who would love to take the train and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but they are spending more and getting less, over and over. For so many things, like car payments, we are spending more and getting less. On education, young Canadians are spending more and getting less. We are spending more on debt and getting less. On labour, I went out for dinner last week to a pub in my riding, and while I was waiting for a tow truck, the server, the only one in the entire restaurant, said she issued 40 T4s last year because she could not get labour. She is spending more, getting less; spending more, getting less. We have to stop it. I know there are partisan differences in this place. I know there are. I know we all want to solve problems differently in different ways. I know in our hearts that we understand our role, and there are times when the government needs to step in and deliver services. However, we cannot keep spending more and getting less, because we are mortgaging Canadians' futures when Canadians have to spend more and get less today. Let us think about a young Canadian doing that. How are they going to care for their parents 20 years from now, who have never been able to save for their retirement? I am having that conversation with my kids right now. I am having a conversation with my parents. When we are spending more and getting less, we are spending more and getting less not just now but for the future. That is what we are doing in this country, in this place. We have not stopped and said the management here is not working. The other thing that concerns me is that the government is doing a lot of things to try to distract from the fact that it has not gotten its team together to crack down on spending more and getting less. It is distracting Canadians. I was reading some of the coverage on the labour strike happening right now. A couple of the ministers walked out and told Canadians not to expect to get their passports because of the labour strike. The buck stops with them. They spent more and are getting less labour. They spent more and we are getting fewer services. However, they pointed the fault not at themselves but at their employees, who are also spending more and getting less. That is why they are striking. We need to be standing up for every worker in Canada in the private sector and public sector, every Canadian. When we keep spending more and getting less, we are not doing our jobs here. We are not holding the government to account and saying that we can do better. We cannot let it keep dividing us with these sorts of tactics. They are not productive. Again, everybody in this place has a responsibility to do that. There are some people who are spending less and getting more, and that is a big problem when everyone else is spending more and getting less. That is why it is so important for us to hold the Prime Minister to account when he has big ethics breaches. He has had some pretty big ones that show a big lack of judgment. When everyone else is spending more and getting less, he should not be spending more of our tax dollars and getting more for himself personally. I have a big problem with that, and so do many other people in my community, because it says that the government is not serious, from the top down, on fixing the structural problems causing us to spend more and get less. We can feel the anxiety from Canadians. For that reason, I implore my colleagues here not to support this bill. We need to make the government go back to the drawing board. The NDP cannot allow the government, a failed management team, to keep spending more and getting less.