Madam Speaker, if people are tired of working hard and getting nowhere, while watching others who contribute next to nothing get fabulously wealthy, then they should stop whatever they are doing. I am about to tell them five easy tricks that will allow them to get fabulously rich in today's Liberal economy, while contributing less than everyone else.

I know people are skeptical. In today's modern, progressive, altruistic, state-controlled era there is no such thing as greed and profit anymore. Let me quote Liberal luminary Mark Carney, who recently said:

The state embodies collective ideals such as equality of opportunity, liberty, fairness, solidarity and sustainability.

In this collective state, of course, there is no greed and, of course, no one wants to get rich and no one can, except for using these five tricks, so tune in and listen carefully.

Quick trick number one: Apply for a grant claiming it will be used to pay workers, when in fact it will be used to fund CEO bonuses, dividends and share buybacks. Air Canada, for example, used this trick to pay $10 million to its executives.

I can quote The Globe and Mail about the wage subsidy. Remember how the wage subsidy was supposed to be for companies that were so poor they could not pay their workers' wages? Here is what The Globe and Mail said about that:

In some cases, companies have yet to lay off workers, increase shareholder dividends and distribute bonuses despite collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in government money. In the wealth management industry, The Globe found that at least 80 asset managers, including some of the top performing hedge funds of 2020, received the grant.

The rich are always very good at getting money. In fact, remember all of those cash payments that were supposed to be for families in need? The top fifth of households got, on average, $6,700. The poorest households got $4,000, so the rich got almost two-thirds more than the poor, even though the poor are the ones who lost their jobs. People should be rich and apply for government money, then use their connections, consultants and accountants to maximize their take. That is trick number one.

Trick number two: Offer the Prime Minister's cabinet and family fees, expenses and luxurious trips. For example, the Kielburger brothers gave vacations, expenses and fees to the Prime Minister's team worth about half a million dollars. For that they got a half-a-billion-dollar grant. Then the Aga Khan gave the Prime Minister a quarter-of-a-million-dollar vacation, and he got a $15-million grant. These kinds of returns on investment would make Warren Buffett blush. A pro tip: People must have connections in the RCMP because, of course, much of this is illegal and even criminal, and they might get charged without having friends in law enforcement.

Get-rich-quick trick number three: When central banks are throwing money out the window, stand next to the window. That is what the financial institutions have been doing. The Bank of Canada has created $3 billion and has used it to buy government debt. This is debt that the government sells to the banks on a Monday, and the Bank of Canada buys it back on a Tuesday, only at a higher price and at a profit to the financial institution. The trick here is also to own a mansion, gold, land, stocks or bonds, all of which will be inflated in value, increasing people's net worth. This trick worked for Canada's 20 wealthiest Canadians who, in the first six months of this money-printing scheme saw their net worth rise by a staggering 32%, while our waitresses, airline stewardesses and small businesses got clobbered and $100 billion vanished from our economy. Somehow, the very rich with all of their assets managed to get richer still. The lesson is the next time the government is printing money, start off by being rich, because then people can be richer still. When the Bank of Canada is printing money and throwing it out the window, stand next to the window.

Get-rich-quick trick number four: Get into one of the fastest-growing industries in Canada. Yes, the economy is collapsing, but there are two industries that are on fire. The first is to become a consultant for the government. Since this Prime Minister took office, the federal government consulting budget has grown from $8 billion to $16 billion. For those Liberals over there who are missing their calculators, that is a 100% increase. People can get in on some of that cash.

These are the kinds of jobs people can do these days, working from their living room, in their pyjamas, on Zoom: consulting; writing, for example, presentations that nobody ever sees; making up buzzwords that nobody even understands; doing PowerPoint presentations that no one will ever look at. It is 100% growth, and they can get in on some of that $16 billion too.

Get-rich-quick trick number five is the fastest-growing industry in Canada, in fact, faster than the consultants. This industry is lobbying. Under the previous Harper government, there were 9,300 lobbying interactions in 2015. Last year, there were 28,000, a 200% increase in paid lobbying interactions.

What is a lobbyist? People have heard of stockbrokers, real estate brokers and insurance brokers. A lobbyist is a power broker. For the most part, it is someone whom people can hire. They can pay them and turn their money into power and that power into even more money. If people want a loan, a grant, a handout, a regulatory protection or some other political favour to get rich, they hire a lobbyist.

This industry is on fire for a very specific reason. Why? Because it is a product of government. The bigger a government gets, the more lobbyists it needs. Therefore, as government has almost doubled in size over the last five years, so too has the lobbying industry grown. Why? Because businesses want a return on investment. If there is money in software, they invest in technology; money in copper, they invest in mining; money in government, they invest in lobbying. The correlation between lobbying and government spending is almost a perfect match, not just here but also in the United States. As the government in Washington grosses a share of the GDP, so too does the amount corporations spend on lobbying that government.

They go where the money is, and you should too, Madam Speaker. That is why I am letting you in on these five secret tricks. I am not asking for anything in return, except from time to time you might let me speak a bit more than otherwise would be allowed. That is a small price to pay for the kind of big money you are going to be making with these five easy tricks that I am sharing here and now.

How does any of this make sense? We were told by Mark Carney that greed would be gone. We just needed to replace that nasty free market economy, which is motivated only by self-interest, with the altruistic power of the state. What, in fact, is the state? The state is just legalized force. It is the only entity that can apply force. Would they not think that someone who is greedy and self-interested would be less greedy and self-interested if they were acting through a creature that operates by power and force? It means that socialists have been trying to teach us for all these years that if we expand the power of the state, all of a sudden we will bring out altruism, that the weak and the poor will be advantaged. In what relationship of force have the weak and poor ever been advantaged? Of course, the weak and poor are disadvantaged and the powerful and strong get ahead when force is applied.

We know that the same base instincts will exist when the state gets big. As Macaulay wrote:

Where'er ye shed the honey, the buzzing flies will crowd;
Where'er ye fling the carrion, the raven's croak is loud;
Where'er down Tiber garbage floats, the greedy pike ye see;
And wheresoe'er such lord is found, such client still will be.

I notice how he used flies and honey, not bees and honey. Why? Because flies do not make honey. They consume it without producing it. They are the same parasitical creatures that those who get rich off the state are. They do not produce anything. They do not contribute anything. They take without making. If they were bees, they would be contributing. A free market economy is sort of like bees. They cross-pollinate, an aspect of trade and exchange that we see between a customer and a small business, between a worker and an employer, between an investor and an entrepreneur.

That voluntary exchange is coming back, and that is why my five tricks are a limited-time offer. Soon, this state-run economy will be eliminated and replaced with a free enterprise system where everyone will go back to getting ahead by helping others and by improving their country by engaging the voluntary exchange of work for wages, product for payment and investment for interest, a system that makes everybody better off; a system where people have to be truly empathetic because, as entrepreneurs, they cannot improve their own lot unless they sell something to somebody that they want to buy, in other words, unless they make someone else's life better off.

That is the way people will get rich in the future, but for the time being, they have my five quick tricks for getting rich.

Pierre Poilievre

$204,067.00