Mr. Speaker, I will be addressing some of the points my colleagues have made.
I will start off with the fact that TD Economics recently announced that the deficit would be $34 billion this year. I will put that into some sort of perspective.
Although 30 does not sound like a large number, when we say 30 billion, we often do not even put all of the zeros behind it. Rather, we write “30” and the word “billion” behind it. To some degree it sometimes falls into the abstract. We know it is a large number, but we do not really have a definite reference point as to how much money it actually is.
This morning, I Googled the new Chrysler Pacifica minivan that came out six or eight months ago. It ranges in price from $42,000 to $55,000. I used a rough middle-of-the-road $50,000 for a new Chrysler minivan to make for easy math. Thirty billion dollars would buy us 600,000 new Chrysler minivans. I took the measurement of the new minivan and if we were to line them up bumper to bumper, we would have a line-up of brand new Chrysler minivans from Edmonton all the way to Toronto. That kind of puts into perspective what $30 billion would look like in hard, fall on our toes, ouch that hurt, kind of stuff.
Thirty billion dollars is a huge amount of money that the government is borrowing today to pay for projects that our children will have to pay for in the future. If these projects were happening and we could all see this burst in infrastructure spending around us, then we could say we were making a good investment. However, history has taught us that when we deal with the Liberals, they spend a lot of money, and typically it goes to pay their friends and donors.
They have said that they will spend all of this money to create jobs. That was their main point. They have pointed to the many years of stagnant growth in the economy, and have said that they need to invest all of this money now, in times of low interest rates, to ensure growth in the economy, and to create some jobs.
What has this done for the number of jobs? We have been here for a year and have seen this historic investment, as the Liberals like to call it. What are the job numbers? They have remained stagnant. We are still at 7% unemployment. If we were to narrow it down from across the entire country and look at places like Alberta, it has seen a spike in the jobless numbers and the unemployment rate since these historic investments have come into play. Clearly, if the Liberals have a plan, it is not working.
The Liberals claim to have created many jobs through this amazing summer jobs program. Frankly, if we think the summer jobs program is creating jobs, we fail to understand basic economics, and what value and production are. If these summer jobs are being paid for through the public purse, there is no incentive for production or to understand the concept of value. People are hired at an hourly wage to do whatever is required. This is great in that it gives young people a chance to get some job experience doing different things, but it does not necessarily instill in these young people the concepts of value and production that typically come with the free market interactions between labour and production.
I am an automotive mechanic by trade. We typically were paid about one-third of whatever the door rate was at the mechanic at which shop I worked. If the door rate was $100 an hour, the mechanic was paid about $33 an hour. This was based on the fact that we were busy. If people needed their vehicles fixed, they would come to our dealership. There was a sign on the door that said that we charged $100 an hour to fix vehicles. Although people realized that it might cost them several thousand dollars to have their vehicle fixed, they would make the calculation and pay me that $33 an hour to fix it because they needed it to go to work.
There is a series of calculations that goes into that in the private sector where people get paid, and that is set up by rational people making decisions for their own lives essentially.
However, for the summer jobs program, none of those calculations come into the equation. One applies for a position, sends in an application to the government to hire someone to do something for X amount of hours, and asks the government to fund it. The whole concept of value and production are thrown out the window in that case. Although it creates experiences, it is not necessarily typical of what a job should be and is.
Another thing I would like address on the new Liberal budget is that the Liberals seem to be starting in bumps and stops. They fail to realize that our entire economy is a delicately balanced system to some degree. When we push one spot in, another spot comes out essentially. However, it seems that the unintended consequences are not taken into account, and I will give an example of this from my riding.
There is significant oil and gas activity in my riding. One of the things that happens, especially in oil production, is that when we take the oil out of the ground, a lot of times we get natural gas or sour gas that comes along with it. Typically, there is a pipeline for the oil, but there is no pipeline to put the natural gas in. Therefore, they light a fire and burn the natural gas off right there. It turns from natural gas into water and CO2 and everybody goes on their way.
However, starting about 10 years ago, the Alberta government worked very hard to get a system in place where people could use the natural gas they were burning off in a flare stack to produce electricity. They set up the market so rather than sticking the natural gas in a flare stack, they could buy a gas generator, run the natural gas in the generator, and create electricity. They could either sell the electricity to the grid or use it on site.
That whole system was set up to be revenue neutral. The oil company operating there was doing all of this for the environment. There was no cost benefit for the company. It cost it a bunch of money, but it was recouped over time. The company did not make money on it, but it did not lose money either. Therefore, for the sake of the environment, we would do this.
However, in comes the carbon tax from the provincial government, which now makes that cost benefit analysis so the cost is more than the benefits. It was at the break-even point, but now it costs more than the benefit. Suddenly, rather than buying the generator, putting it on site, hooking it all up, connecting it to the grid or a battery, or whatever the company was doing, it now costs too much and so it will have to just flare it once again.
This is one example where, if we do not take into consideration all the aspects of the economy, if we push in one spot, something else will pop out. This is a clear example of where the carbon tax, with its intended good to protect the environment, does the exact opposite.
I would like to think the government is unaware of these kinds of scenarios, but something tells me it is quite familiar with what is going on. The Liberals are betting against the Canadian economy when it comes to mortgage rules. They are saying that we are going to have a lack of growth going forward, market instability, and all of these kinds of things happening. Therefore, they have to ensure we do not have massive mortgage defaults. Therefore, the Liberals are saying that they are going to change the rules so we do not have massive mortgage defaults. They seem to be signalling that they know their plan is not going to work.
I know I am completely out of time. I probably have 10 more things to go over, but I will cede the floor and hopefully will get to some of them in questions.