Greg McLean
Calgary Centre, Alberta · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, today we honour the life and legacy of Philip Roderick MacAulay, a long-time president of the Royal Canadian Legion Calgary No. 1 Branch, who passed away on June 11.”
“Mr. Speaker, last week, Calgary's Royal Canadian Legion Branch No. 1 hosted and was addressed by the leader of the Conservative Party on the importance of building a strong Alberta within a united Canada. It was exactly the right place for that message.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is great to be here, and I am thankful this debate is allowed to continue. I am surprised that it has to go through this last half hour of questions for the minister , but it is an interesting bill we are debating here today.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask the member if she can just tell us what the $1.7 billion would accomplish, because we have already thrown a lot of money at the situation. We have empty condos now that do not suit the market in Toronto.”
“Mr. Speaker, the minister knows this because I met him when he first got elected here on the floor of the House of Commons, and when he was named the housing minister, I told him that the first thing he had to do was to get rid of the people who have led us into this trap in the first place.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my friend from Quebec a question about government spending, because an additional $1.7 billion is to be spent on housing across the country. Quebec households are paying the cost of interest on both the federal and provincial deficits.”
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“They presented a costed programming of their promises during the election, and $60-billion planned deficits seem to be the norm now. This means that Canadians will be, at minimum, a quarter-trillion dollars more in debt before the next election, and that will mean higher debt payments and taxes that could go to services but will be diverted to international bankers. There is nothing to see here, indeed. It marks the end of any illusion Canadians may have had that the current Prime Minister will be any different from the last, who spent a decade diluting Canada's democratic norms and spending taxpayer dollars as if there were no consequences, no associated inflation, no reduced productivity, no strain on our trade relations and no recognition from our allies that Canada is becoming less reliable, with food costs and housing costs soaring.”
“Let me point out that this is the first time in our lifetimes, except during the pandemic, when Parliament was not sitting, that Canadians have not seen a spring budget. Canadians are not asking for miracles. They are asking for a plan, a real plan, one that restores fiscal discipline, supports job creation and ensures that every dollar spent delivers results. The heart of the question is the need for the government to account for its intentions and to be measured by the outcomes, both financially and by delivery. Spending other people's money seems to be quite easy for the government, but accountability, not so much. It is not as if the government members were new to the numbers. This is a legacy government, in power for a decade now.”
“What is the government's response? It is a record half-trillion dollars in spending, with no clear direction, no measurable outcomes and no accountability. This is not stimulus. It is drift. It is economic mismanagement. Let us be clear. Full-time workers, people who are doing everything right, are now lining up at food banks. Mortgage defaults are rising. Small businesses are closing their doors, yet the government continues to spend as if there were no consequences, as if the money were endless and as if Canadians would not be left to pick up the tab. This is not only about dollars and cents; it is about trust, it is about leadership and it is about the future of our country.”
“Mr. Speaker, last week I asked the Prime Minister in this House whether he would finally show some accountability to the Canadians who are losing their jobs, struggling to pay their mortgages and turning to food banks in record numbers. I asked whether he would do his job and table a budget. What did we get in response? We got more recycled talking points, more deflection and no plan. Canadians deserve better. Oxford Economics has sounded the alarm: Canada is heading into a recession. They project 200,000 more job losses this year alone, with unemployment expected to rise to 7.7%. That is not just a number; it is hundreds of thousands of families facing sleepless nights, wondering how they will make ends meet. It is young people putting their dreams on hold. It is seniors watching their savings evaporate.”
“Mr. Speaker, in this short parliamentary session, we are rushing through legislation to temporarily, partially, perhaps, override the very laws that have defined the Liberal government's decade-long war on development. Let us name them: Bill C-69 , the “no new pipelines” act; Bill C-48 , the tanker ban; the oil and gas production cap; and the industrial carbon tax. These laws have made Canada one of the slowest-growing economies in the developed world. Now, as we host the G7, our allies are still asking why Canada cannot get anything built. The government's latest response is Bill C-5 , which is a patchwork fix for which they hope no one notices the mess underneath. Selectively overriding laws is a fake approach. Here is the real solution: Repeal these anti-energy laws, approve energy projects, create jobs and build again.”
“Does the member understand that responsible government means that somebody has to take accountability for the $65 million that was taken from taxpayers?”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech, but I have heard this speech several times today. It seems to be an excuse mechanism on why we do not need to deal with this as forcefully as we should. This was $65 million of taxpayers' money that disappeared to a group, which was previously at the bar of the House of Commons. I remember, at that point in time, the Liberal Party across the way was trying to make excuses for why those people did not have to appear here, because they were under stress and might cry if they had to come before the House of Commons. This was a cover-up of the highest order to make sure there was no accountability, and this accountability has not been borne all the way through. These people have to be held to account. We have to get that $65 million back. We have responsible government in this country.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order. I can assure my colleague that the Conservative Party had no position on that debacle at that point in time. He should retract that comment and make sure that he is actually giving a speech that actually speaks to Canadians and not just to his own followers for a clip.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are delaying tabling a budget as it is expected to show a supersize deficit that will increase inflation even further; the higher the deficit, the higher the inflation. The price Canadians pay for food is dependent upon the government's budget. However, we should not worry; the government's budgets affect only Canadians who eat. Will the government stop driving up costs and bring forward a budget so that Canadians can feed their families without going further into debt?”
“Mr. Speaker, the average Canadian family is going to spend $800 more on food this year because of Liberal inflationary spending. The Calgary Food Bank organizers say that 65% of working Calgarians are now experiencing severe food insecurity. What affects this, of course, is bad government budgeting. Deficits lead to inflation, and the government plans to spend 8% more this coming year. The Liberals want to go on a spending spree and force Canadians to go on a diet. Will the Prime Minister set the table and finally serve up this year's budget?”
“Mr. Speaker, I think you have to give some consideration to all the things that happen in the House. We are still reeling from the comments from the other side, so we are just getting our thoughts together. I hope you will entertain me while we get a little point of order and get some things happening again in the House. I really appreciate your entertaining my interjection here.”
“Mr. Speaker, the answer, of course, is $1,800 per household, so it has gone up significantly. The Parliamentary Budget Officer foresees the interest on Canadian government debt growing by around 10% per year for the foreseeable future. Does the minister see the economy growing by 10% per year?”
“Mr. Speaker, that is a record stuck on skip, but Canadians are now facing the consequences of the Liberal government's economic drift. Oxford Economics says that Canada is heading into a recession with 200,000 more job losses and unemployment reaching 7.7% this year. Full-time workers are turning to food banks in record numbers, and mortgage defaults are rising. Meanwhile, the Liberal government wants to spend a record half a trillion dollars with no plan. Will the Prime Minister show some accountability to the Canadians who are going to be losing their jobs, do his job and table a budget?”
“Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I challenge the member on the other side of the House who raised the point of order. Frankly, I gave a 30-second summation of a petition two days ago, and he stood up and interrupted that one because he did not want to hear it at that point in time either. If he does not want to hear summations of petitions, then let the summation be what—”
“Mr. Speaker, last night, this House delivered a clear verdict: The Liberal government must table a budget. The Prime Minister is asking Canadians to blindly approve over half a trillion dollars in spending with no plan, no transparency and no accountability. The Prime Minister promised to cap spending at 2% and then shattered that promise and jacked it up to 8%. What do Canadians get in return? They get soaring debt, higher inflation and zero economic leadership. Will the government stop the reckless spending, respect the will of this House and table a budget?”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of Canadians who are lamenting the fact that there is no budget going into the summer holiday the government plans to take without presenting to Canadians how it is going to be spending their hard-earned tax dollars. The petitioners talk about this being the first time in Canadian history that a legacy government has not presented a spring budget and is going to put it off until the fall. They talk about the creation of uncertainty and lack of public trust that comes from this. Therefore, the petitioners call on the federal government to immediately table a budget and extend the House sitting so we can get some clarity on what the government is spending money on beyond the $60 billion plus that it presented in its policies during the election campaign.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of Canadians who are lamenting the fact that the government is going to go right into its summer holidays without presenting a budget to Canadians about how Liberals are spending their hard-earned tax dollars. This is the first time this has happened in Canadian history, especially with a legacy government.”
“In this new accounting system his Prime Minister has come up with about putting in a different silo for infrastructure and capital assets and a different silo for operating expenses, how much more or less in debt and how much more or less in debt interest payments will the Government of Canada be paying?”
“Mr. Speaker, let me welcome my new colleague to the House of Commons. It is always great to have one's first speech the first time one is in the House of Commons. I apologize; I did not recognize the member. I thought it was the twin brother of the member who held that seat before him, who said exactly the opposite things in the previous Parliament, which ran this country up to a $1.3-trillion debt, with $56 billion per year in interest payments on debt alone. One would think that something changed overnight in the thinking of those in the bench on the other side. My question for the member is very pointed.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is one of the most fundamentally imperative jobs of the House of Commons to hold the government to account for the spending it is going to undertake. Right now the government thinks it is going to have a blank cheque for the next year, so it has to put its election promise on the table. However, now it is not actually being accountable at all, as 150 days from the time the government actually got elected to the time it is going to pay is far too long for Canadians to know what to expect in their finances going forward.”
“Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Quebec on his return to the House of Commons. What a great achievement. I believe this is his second term in the House of Commons. Immigration is a federal government program that coexists alongside provincial government programs. I know that Quebec has a more elaborate program than some of the other provinces, but all the provinces still have to work with the federal government on immigration because we are one country, after all. There is no border between Quebec and the rest of Canada. People who arrive in Quebec become citizens of Canada. That is why it is important for the federal government to uphold its commitments on this issue.”
“The government is a very different government directionally with respect to making choices and not throwing out the baby with the bathwater for the future, so future Canadians can actually spend on the programs they are going to need rather than spending on the programs that were delivered by their parents and their grandparents.”
“Mr. Speaker, every government has to make choices. The continuation of blowing Canadians' money is putting a burden on future generations of Canadians. It is putting a burden on inflation. It is creating a monetary mess in this country. We are going to have to address it. We do have to make choices, and yes, as the member will probably know, even my party during this election projected deficits for the next four years and, balancing that, going down to a much smaller number than the government has put forward, for the next five years.”
“The last time we did not have a spring budget, because the Government of Canada operates from April 1 to March 31, was over 25 years ago. The government has to start respecting the rules of Parliament, the rules of running this country, the accountability it owes Canadian people and the transparency that is required. I do challenge the government to do better. There is much in the throne speech, but there is much that could be much better.”
“I actually spoke to the housing minister and said that the Liberals need a restart. Continuing to spend is not solving anything. They need to get back to a solution where house prices can actually come down, and that starts with their own house. That starts with balancing the budget. One thing we have not seen here in the lead-up to this Parliament is the commitment to a budget. That is one of the most fundamental democratic instruments we have here in Parliament to hold the government to account for what it is going to spend, and we have seen none of that at this point in time. When is the last time this happened? The last time it was more than 150 days before there was a budget was when Ralph Goodale was the Liberal finance minister, in 2005.”
“The proof is in the pudding again here, and let me challenge the other side of the aisle, because over the past eight years, from 2016 to 2024, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's budget went from $2 billion a year to $5 billion a year, all while building about 40,000 more homes per year in that period. That is 40,000 homes for an extra $3 billion per year. Do the math: That is $75,000 per home. The result was that it drove up the price of housing by $200,000, which is 45%. That is great success on that side of the bench: driving up the price of housing and making Canadians more indebted. Therefore, regarding “build Canada homes”, the Liberals are blowing the budget every time, and their results are not there. They need to figure out something else.”
“Now I am going to get to something I am really critical of in the speech, and I will quote the government again: Critically, the Government will undertake a series of measures to help double the rate of home building while creating an entirely new housing industry—using Canadian technology, Canadian skilled workers, and Canadian lumber. The Government will introduce measures to deliver affordable homes by creating Build Canada Homes.... The Government will drive supply up to bring housing costs down. This is in contradiction to what the housing minister himself said about not bringing down the price of housing.”
“I could have written some of that myself, but I am going to ask this: If they are limiting the growth to 2% as far as the operating budget goes, and inflation is at 4%, how do they continue to fund the provinces, which have to fund health care, if they are penalizing them as far as the money they are transferring to them goes? Inflation is going to be a factor. It has been a factor and will grow to be a factor as they continue with large budget deficits. This is a problem that is going to have to be addressed sooner rather than later. Hiding the numbers in an operating budget or an investing budget is not solving the problem at all. The government has a spending problem, and it has to address the spending problem.”
“I am going to quote the Speech from the Throne, which was written by the Prime Minister and his staff: “Day-to-day government spending—the government’s operating budget—has been growing by nine percent every year.” Surprise. It goes on: “The Government will introduce measures to bring it below two percent.” Transfers to provinces, territories, or individuals will be maintained. The Government will balance its operating budget over the next three years by cutting waste, capping the public service, ending duplication, and deploying technology to improve public sector productivity.”
“If we look at the Liberal program during the election, we see that it increased the budget deficit this coming year and for the foreseeable future to over $60 billion per year. That is not the actual deficit; that is the planned deficit. Events always come forth here that actually push that higher. I guarantee, and I will tell this to my colleagues on this side of the bench, that there is going to be nothing that actually reduces that number. Financial subterfuge and fooling Canadians about what the government is spending by putting it in a different category is nonsense. Get real. Let me say that to the Prime Minister . These are economic measures that we measure ourselves by in Canada to make sure we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater as far as the economic future of Canadians goes.”
“Therefore I am congratulating the government on the excellent parts of the speech, including, by the way, the indigenous loan guarantee program, which again was promulgated by this side of the House as an idea to advance indigenous reconciliation, economic reconciliation, across this country. Nonetheless, the government fails at a few things in the Speech from the Throne. Number one is that it is not particularly ambitious, although I realize it is high-level. At the same time, it has to address a number of issues. The Prime Minister , in his Speech from the Throne, talked about spending less and investing more. This is where I am critical of financial subterfuge, because it is subterfuge. (1035) The current government and its predecessor government have run advancing deficits for years and years.”
“It is the instruments that the previous Liberal government put on the table that have hindered economic development in this country. With respect to a safer, more secure Canada, there is border investment, and we thank the government. On military investment, we thank the government. On taking crime seriously, we thank the government. It is almost as if I were talking to my own colleagues here on this side of the House, with all the great things that were in the Speech from the Throne. I appreciate that the other side of the House has actually come to the realization that this is something that Canadians are experiencing.”
“The first thing I will say is that there were some excellent issues and concerns raised in the Speech from the Throne. One is tax cuts. Who has been campaigning on tax cuts the entire time we have been in Parliament? The Conservative Party has. We thank the government for picking up that Canadians need tax cuts, not more inflation, not more taxes all the way through and not an extra capital gains tax increase, but tax cuts and the GST cuts to housing. That would be a great position to have during an election, and I thank the Liberals for finally coming to the table and emulating the Conservative position on tax cuts for housing. Reducing internal trade barriers is a great idea. We have had that idea for Lord knows how long now, to actually get things such as one major project office done in Canada again.”
“I have heard Liberal talking lines again and again, so I am looking forward to some actual economic debate that does not just float things by but actually addresses what I think are some of the key issues Canada faces going forward. Real economic questions require real economic answers. Our country's economic future has been at risk for some time now, 10 years. As we know, we have had the second-worst-performing economy of the OECD's 36 countries around the world over the last decade. That is a choice the previous government made, including the majority of the front bench that allowed this to happen and allowed the economy to go down as far as it did. I do have to respond to the Speech from the Throne, because there are many things in that speech.”
“Also, I thank the energy community in Calgary and the finance community across this country, which are looking for better results from governments they elect to run Canada. I know we have a new Prime Minister. [ Translation ] I welcome the new Prime Minister to the House. He is new here, but I am confident that he will learn about the workings of the House of Commons and democracy in Canada. I am sure this is all new to him, but there are customs here that the new Prime Minister did not have to practise in his life prior to politics. It is obviously different. [ English ] I am looking forward to debating with the Prime Minister , because I have been here five and a half years and have had little debate with the other side of the House as far as economic matters go.”
“Mr. Speaker, welcome to the Speaker's chair. Today I will be splitting my time with the member for Long Range Mountains . It will be her premier speech in the House. For many of us, it is our first time rising in this House of Parliament. I want to welcome everybody to the 45th Parliament. I thank the voters of Calgary Centre for sending me here for a third mandate, in the 45th Parliament. I have many people to thank: my colleagues, people around Calgary Centre, all the hundreds of volunteers who came out and knocked on doors with us, and, of course, my wife and my family, who were so supportive throughout the whole process and have been very supportive of the role I play here in the House of Commons.”