FAST: Budget 2021 -- a plan for post-pandemic failure
FAST: Budget 2021 -- a plan for post-pandemic failure
Author of the article: Ed Fast
Publishing date:
May 03, 2021
Justin Trudeau recently delivered his much-hyped budget, which was two years in the making. After all this time, one would expect the Liberal government to have gotten it right. Instead, the budget was a massive let-down. Instead of “building back better” and focusing on jobs and growth,the budget left us with bigger debt, bigger deficits, an avalanche of unfocused spending, and a much more intrusive role for government to play in our lives.
While Conservatives have repeatedly supported help for Canadians who are struggling during the pandemic, what we can’t support is the Trudeau government’s failure to address the most urgent health and economic issues facing our country.
The virus has inflicted untold damage and put intense pressure on our healthcare systems. Yet Justin Trudeau failed to put forward strategic investments to ramp up vaccinations and assistance for the provinces and territories as they struggle to contain the virus and treat thousands of sick and dying patients. Instead, our Prime Minister said he’d get around to discussing healthcare funding “once the COVID pandemic is over.” The premiers had asked for one thing: a reliable federal partner to help them in the fight against COVID-19. It’s clear they didn’t get one.
The budget failed to live up to the Trudeau government’s own commitment. Finance Minister Freeland had originally signaled that $100 billion of additional spending would be used to stimulate the economy only if absolutely necessary. Instead, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has noted that a good portion of the spending wasn’t stimulus at all. In classic Liberal fashion, much of it was designated for measures clearly intended to re-elect Justin Trudeau.
In the lead-up to the Budget, we had sent both Justin Trudeau and Minister Freeland a letter outlining the measures we believed were critical to fueling our post-pandemic recovery. Unsurprisingly, almost all of our advice was ignored.
Instead of building on existing family support measures that would deliver immediate relief to parents wanting to enter the labour force, the Trudeau Liberals recycled an old promise to create an “Ottawa knows best”, one-size-fits-all regulated daycare program, one that would leave millions of Canadian parents behind. Liberal leaders have made the same promise in almost every election since 1993, and never delivered. Canadians have a right to be skeptical.
Will this Budget help us grow our economy and position us for long term prosperity? Not at all. In fact, high profile Liberals like former Trudeau economic advisor Robert Asselin have acknowledged that Justin Trudeau’s plan is not about long-term growth.
As other countries provide their citizens with faster access to vaccines, they’re also beating us to the punch by giving their economies a “shot in the arm”. The UK has launched an infrastructure revolution. Italy has introduced “the mother of all reforms” to slash red tape. France and Germany are cutting taxes. And Japan is helping its firms reduce their reliance on China with a shift towards more reliable and ethical trading partners.
What did Justin Trudeau’s budget do? Spray billions of dollars around for short term benefit without a clear strategy to position Canada for long term prosperity. There’s no plan to address the unprecedented level of investment fleeing Canada. No plan for regulatory and tax reform to help us win in a fiercely competitive global marketplace. And no innovation strategy to ensure that Canadian tech start-ups successfully navigate the so-called “valley of death” and keep their job-creating investments at home.
The budget is largely silent on support for Canada’s world-leading natural resource sector, one of the most significant contributors to our national prosperity. And Justin Trudeau has again turned his back on our oil- and gas-producing provinces by expressly excluding the sector from the new carbon capture tax credit.
The Liberal government also missed a golden opportunity to substantively address the sky-rocketing cost of housing in Canada. Implementing a 1% tax on foreign owners of vacant housing is, at most, an inconvenience to wealthy foreigners who will simply treat this as the cost of doing business. Meanwhile, millions of Canadians are seeing their dream of home ownership slip through their fingers.
I believe that Canadians are looking for hope that things will soon get better, that they still have a prosperous future to look forward to. They want their jobs back, their small businesses back. They want their lives and communities back. Simply put, they want a return to normal, and to live the Canadian dream.
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Sadly, Trudeau’s budget fails to deliver.
Canadians want to know that their government has a plan to manage the massive financial consequences of this pandemic and the endless deficits this government is projecting.
Without a real growth plan, the Liberals have left themselves no option but to either slash spending or increase taxes, or both. Let’s not kid ourselves. Under a re-elected Trudeau government, increased taxes – income taxes, carbon taxes, GST, a new home equity tax or inheritance tax – will become the new reality.
In short, the biggest-spending budget in our country’s history leaves us with no bang for the buck. Justin Trudeau has set our economy up for post-pandemic failure.
— Abbotsford MP Ed Fast is Conservative Shadow Minister of Finance
