Nuts and Bolts of Budget 2021
Plus Growing Opposition to Bill C-10, Taiwan President Wins John McCain Award, Update on Access to Information Requests, and the Continuing Saga at Defence Committee
Nuts and Bolts of Budget 2021
Parliament has been debating the intricacies of the federal budget over the last couple of weeks, and I have been carefully researching the budget, so I can best hold the Liberals to account for their irresponsible debt spending. I wanted to highlight some of the questionable spending line items found in Budget 2021.
Broadly, Budget 2021 authorizes $497.6 billion in total expenditures, with $101.4 billion in new spending over the next fiscal year. The Liberals project the federal deficit for the fiscal year to be $154.7 billion. This means that since 2015, the Ottawa Liberals have added $634 billion to the total debt. To put in a more tangible way, the Liberals are spending $213,674,033.15 per page of their 742-page budget document.
The Liberals are planning to bring in $45.9 billion more in personal income taxes over the next 5 years, and corporate income tax by another $16 billion. These are massive revenue increases, yet the Liberals have no plans to ever balance the budget.
Budget 2021 includes three new taxes: a 3% tax on the revenues of digital giants, a tax on an empty residence owned by non-resident foreigners, and a luxury tax on the purchase of private airplanes and expensive boats and vehicles. The Liberals are also planning to increase taxes on vaping products, in addition to tobacco products. Increasing the tax on vaping products does nothing but inhibit smokers from being able to quit smoking by switching to a vaping product instead.
The Liberal budget contains several absolutely disappointing spending measures. In a year when the government has had to spend more to fight COVID-19, the government should have limited discretionary spending in other places to control the deficit. The Liberal government chose not to take this cautious step.
The budget includes $21 million for immediate operational support for the CBC. While Canadian businesses are closing, and families are losing their livelihoods, the last thing the country needs is additional support to the state-funded broadcaster. In the last annual review of CBC viewership, less than 4% of Canadians reported watching their programming.
Budget 2021 includes $41.4 million for ongoing gun control measures. This is a large amount of money, but there is no explanation of how these funds will be spent. Like most Liberal measures on gun control, you can expect that they will be poorly targeted and will adversely affect legal firearms owners.
The Liberals have allocated $36.2 million to add a “climate lens” to government policy. If you’re like me, you’re probably rightfully concerned that it costs $36.2 million to ask a question at the cabinet table about the effect a particular policy will have on the environment. There is an entire government department that handles this task already, and this is an example of bureaucratic duplication of work.
For me, the spending that takes the cake is the $7.2 million to promote Canada’s book industry at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The Ottawa Liberals are paying $7.2 million to have fewer than 5 Canadian authors present at a virtual book fair. I love books. I’m a bibliophile. I often post my recent reads on my Instagram account. This however is irresponsible spending when virtual conferences have not had reported larger more engaged audiences. The timing is just entirely wrong.
There is some good news in the budget with money being directed towards carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), but it is only $319 million over 7 years. The details are even more disappointing. The CCS projects the federal government will fund will exclude those that result in enhanced oil recovery or EOR. This is a lost opportunity to get more energy workers back to abandoned Alberta fields to sequester carbon while producing more high-value oil.
Another bit of good news is the commitment to fund the Diabetes Canada 360 project that will direct $35 million towards putting in place a definitive plan to address the rising rates of diabetes in Canada. I have been a longtime advocate for better disability programs for diabetics and those with chronic health conditions. This is good news for diabetics in Calgary Shepard.
Unfortunately, a recommendation by the parliamentary finance committee to withdraw Canada’s participation from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) (Recommendation 123) did not make it into the final federal budget document. This is truly a missed opportunity. I have been the leading advocate for our withdrawal for many years. With the People’s Republic of China’s persecution of Uighurs in Xinjiang province and the recognition by Parliament of an ongoing genocide against them, and along with the occupation of the South China Sea in violation of the International Laws of the Sea, and the crackdown of democracy activists in Hong Kong; I truly thought Canada’s government would announce in their newest budget our withdrawal as a show of solidarity with victims of the Beijing government’s crackdowns.
The national debt is expected to double from $630 billion to $1.3 trillion over the lifetime of this Liberal 2021 budget. The untargeted debt spending, lack of focus, and structural deficit leave me no other choice but to vote against the budget.
Growing Opposition to Bill C-10
Since my last update on Bill C-10, Liberal MPs at the heritage parliamentary committee amended the law and removed section 4.1 which granted broad range protections for uploaded user content to social media platforms. The response by experts has been dramatic. While the proposed law was initially sold as an update to the broadcasting regulatory rules in Canada, countless experts have now spoken out against it labeling it as a threat to free expression in Canada. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada’s foremost internet law expert, labeled the amended bill C-10 a “dangerous attack on free speech.” OpenMedia’s Executive Director, Laura Tribe, raised alarm about the immense power that the government would be giving itself to regulate online content should Bill C-10 pass. Peter Menzies, a former vice-chair of the CRTC itself, referred to C-10 as a “national embarrassment” in a recent op-ed published in the Financial Post, and former chair of the CRTC Konrad von Finckenstein subsequently co-authored an editorial with Menzies calling on Minister Guilbeault to redraft the legislation in its entirety. Canadian YouTube personality and journalist J.J. McCullough’s video criticizing the latest amendments to Bill C-10 has garnered over 100,000 views on the subject. Even former Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella has voiced his opposition to C-10, calling it a “constitutional abomination” and the Prime Minister’s decision to pursue such legislation “stupid on steroids". Across all sections of Canadian society from industry experts to media personalities and members of the public, the message to the Prime Minister has been clear: stop Bill C-10.
I have been vocal in my opposition to the latest amendments to C-10. Handing over control as to what can be seen online and who should have access to certain types of internet content to a governmental regulatory body such as the CRTC poses a clear threat to the future of free expression in Canada. The crux of the problem is the legislation confuses professionally made programming like Kim’s Convenience with the cat video uploaded by a teenager to a catchy tune.
On Thursday, May 6 in a rollercoaster meeting of the heritage parliamentary committee, the Liberals proposed amendments to Bill C-10 that would allow the CRTC to issue orders of discoverability which would give the CRTC the ability to force social media platforms to show a certain amount of Canadian content. University of Ottawa law professor, Michael Geist said of these amendments, “This speaks to the CRTC imposing conditions on what gets prioritized or promoted in user feeds. I believe that clearly involves speech regulation.” Geist continues by explaining that while the Liberals have slightly narrowed the scope of the legislation, the amendment does not come close to the Heritage Minister’s promise to ensure Bill C-10 doesn’t affect free speech.
As before, if you disagree with Bill C-10 in its current form, I encourage you to send the Heritage Minister an email at steven.guilbeault@parl.gc.ca.
Taiwan President wins John McCain Award
After some deliberations, the Halifax International Security Forum made a decision to award Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen with the John McCain Prize for Leadership in Public Service, citing her “courage and fortitude” in standing up against the Chinese Communist Party’s increasing aggression. This comes after news reports that the Liberal government had threatened to pull its support and funding for the conference if the award was presented to President Ing-wen. The Forum is one of the world’s premier defence groups, and instead of supporting a leader that has long been a champion of democracy, the Prime Minister’s judgment to intervene in the awarding of such an honour is open to criticism. Canada’s Conservatives will continue to press the Liberal government to stand up for our values, especially at home when Canadians choose to honour international dignitaries for their pro-democracy stances. I applaud the forum for its decision and congratulate President Ing-wen for the well-deserved award.
Update on My Access to Information Requests
As an elected Parliamentarian and a member of the Official Opposition, it is my duty to study legislation and hold the Liberals to account for government expenditures and policy positions. I do so in several ways, one of them through filing access to information requests. In the past year, my office has filed over 300 Access to Information requests and several order paper questions with the federal government and have received responses on issues that impact everyday Canadians. Here are just some of the things I uncovered: the PMPRB have internal documents noting that the majority of consulted organizations disagree with their planned reforms, but they are choosing to continue to the detriment of Canadian patients; past ISED Minister Bains did not receive any briefing notes, reports or other documents concerning the protection of Canadian intellectual property from foreign actors, including the People's Republic of China, since the 2019 election; the CMHC spent years researching a way to rebrand themselves and hid the costs from a Parliamentary committee; government departments and crown corporations spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on employee work-from-home expenses over the course of 2020, including the purchase of chairs, desks, and other related items; the CMHC’s First Time Home Buyers Incentive has only received 9,108 applications, significantly underperforming the projections of helping 100,000 Canadians; and former Finance Minister Bill Morneau charged taxpayers over $80,000 for pre-pandemic travel to Saudi Arabia. I have many more requests that are to be returned to my office shortly, covering important issues such as the Clean Fuel Standard, Canada's diplomatic relationship with Taiwan, the CMHC's research into a home equity tax amongst others, and I will continue working on behalf of constituents to hold the government to account.
Trudeau, Telford, and the Defence Committee Saga
Last Friday, Conservatives put forward a motion at the Defence Committee calling Katie Telford to appear before the committee to discuss her knowledge of the sexual misconduct allegations in the Canadian Armed Forces. The Liberals filibustered this meeting and there was no opportunity to vote on the motion. On Monday, committee chair Karen McCrimmon decided to cancel the defense committee’s meetings altogether without notice and with no date for return. Although the Prime Minister continues to assert he knew nothing of the “#MeToo” nature of the allegations brought forward to his staff, one of his former staffers, Elder Marques, told the defense committee on April 23rd that Katie Telford and the PMO were in fact aware of the allegations of sexual harassment and did not act on them.
This past Monday, the conservative opposition forced a formal parliamentary vote for the prime minister to dismiss his chief of staff for failing to notify him about a serious sexual harassment allegation at the highest ranks of the Canadian Armed Forces and for being complicit in hiding the truth from Canadians. While the vote failed to obtain a majority, a couple of independents and one Liberal MP voted with the Conservative MPs.
Later in the week, the prime minister’s office indicated that his chief of staff would testify after all on May 7th. At the meeting, Telford repeated the same Liberal talking points and dodged the Conservative questions. She refused to answer why she didn’t tell the Prime Minister about the allegations against General Vance.
Conservatives will continue to press for answers on the Liberal cover-up to ensure the safety of the brave men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces.