Rob Morrison voiced his disappointment with the federal government’s fiscal “snapshot” this week, which estimated a $343.2-billion deficit. The Kootenay-Columbia MP said the government had to spend money but wants accountability, and to “unleash the power of the private sector” in order to help pay off the debt.
On Wednesday, July 8th, the federal government revealed its fiscal “snapshot” in a limited House of Commons. Bill Morneau, Federal Finance Minister said the $343.2-billion deficit stems over $236-billion in supports from the Canada Emergency Relief Benefit and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy programs. The deficit will push Canada’s debt to over $1-trillion.
Morrison said he isn’t upset that the government spent the money to help Canadians, but how they did it.
“We did need to spend money,” Morrison told MyEastKootenayNow.com, adding that accountability was one of his major issues, noting a full Parliament session hasn’t been held since March 15th. “Because we can’t have Parliament, there isn’t any, so we don’t know where all the money is going. We’ve asked the question just to have the government accountable, not to pick on them to say don’t spend any, just to have them accountable for where it’s going.”
The other major issue for Morrison with the fiscal “snapshot” is how Canada will pay off the $1-trillion debt and the significant deficit in years to come.
“Our federal debt increase is 49% of our GDP, so what that means is it means it’s going to take a long time to pay back this bill,” said Morrison. “We knew we were going to have a huge bill to pay back but this amount of spending is going to take a long time.”
Morrison told MyEastKootenayNow.com that his proposed solutions would be to cut red tape, lower taxes, and make Canada an international destination for investment.
“We know that economic recovery is driven by Canadians at work. We’ve got so much innovation and entrepreneurial spirit with small businesses in Canada that’s been neglected, that’s where I believe we have to focus on, and things like implementing a back-to-work bonus to get people back to work.”
“We just need to unleash the power of the private sector,” said Morrison. “We need small government, big business. We need our businesses to be running the country, we don’t need government running the country and I think we’ve got a little bit sidetracked.”
Morrison did say that tax dollars would be needed to pay off the debt, however, believing the best plan of action is to help businesses get back to full operations.
“I think its time that we start jumpstarting our small businesses and supporting the local people to get them back, trying to get them healthy again, and of course we need tax dollars to pay the debt off. We’ve got world-class energy here, let’s get that energy sector up and running so that we can start paying off some bills and looking after our economy.”
The federal government is anticipated to table a full budget and economic update in fall 2020.