Bill C-48 (Historical)

Oil Tanker Moratorium Act

An Act respecting the regulation of vessels that transport crude oil or persistent oil to or from ports or marine installations located along British Columbia's north coast

This enactment enacts the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, which prohibits oil tankers that are carrying more than 12 500 metric tons of crude oil or persistent oil as cargo from stopping, or unloading crude oil or persistent oil, at ports or marine installations located along British Columbia’s north coast from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska border. The Act prohibits loading if it would result in the oil tanker carrying more than 12 500 metric tons of those oils as cargo.
The Act also prohibits vessels and persons from transporting crude oil or persistent oil between oil tankers and those ports or marine installations for the purpose of aiding the oil tanker to circumvent the prohibitions on oil tankers.
Finally, the Act establishes an administration and enforcement regime that includes requirements to provide information and to follow directions and that provides for penalties of up to a maximum of five million dollars.

Opposition Motion—Canadian Economic Sovereignty

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

moved:

That, in the interest of restoring Canadian economic sovereignty, the House call on the government to immediately introduce a Canada Sovereignty Act that:

(a) re-establishes Canada as a competitive resource-producing nation by repealing federal measures that block or penalize development, including,

(i) the Impact Assessment Act (formerly Bill C-69),

(ii) the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act (formerly Bill C-48),

(iii) the federal industrial carbon tax,

(iv) the oil and gas emissions cap,

(v) the federal electric vehicle sales mandate,

(vi) the federal plastics manufacturing prohibitions,

(vii) federal regulatory restrictions that impede communication and advocacy by Canadian energy companies;

(b) rewards provinces, businesses, and workers who build and invest in Canada by,

(i) introducing a Canada First Reinvestment Tax Cut to spur domestic industrial activity,

(ii) providing free trade bonuses to provincial governments that remove internal trade barriers and fully open their markets to fellow Canadians; and

(c) protects Canadian innovation by requiring the Minister of Industry to present plans to Parliament to keep Canada's inventions, discoveries and innovations from being sold off to other countries.

Mr. Speaker, as a first-generation Albertan and the daughter of a Newfoundlander, a very common story in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, which is a place so near and dear to my fiery heart that glows strong and free like Alberta's wild roses, what an honour it is to split my time with a vibrant, kind, honest and happy woman warrior, the new Conservative MP for Long Range Mountains.

It is fitting that two MPs from two provinces on opposite sides of the country start debate today. Both provinces are relatively new in Confederation compared to most of the others, and we have built each other's homes to the benefit of the whole country for two main reasons: the resilience, tenacity and adventurous risk-taking of our people, and our natural resources.

Today, Canada is at a crossroad that has been visible and closing in for more than a decade. Canadians are vulnerable, struggling, worried about their futures and divided more now than ever before, because today, only press conferences and expansive rhetoric exist. There are no actual results for all the promises the Prime Minister made more than half a year ago about nation-building projects getting built at “speeds not seen in generations”.

What of today? More than 60 major projects with real proponents in every natural resources sector are stuck in front of federal regulators with no end in sight. More investment flows out of Canada into the U.S. than the other way around, which is a historical anomaly that started in 2015. I wonder what happened then.

It has gotten worse every single year since. There is no pipeline being built to anywhere now, because the private sector will not attempt it alone. The Liberals outright vetoed and approved one a decade ago, from Lakeland to the Pacific, for export to Asia to reduce dependence on the U.S. It was supported by the majority of indigenous communities, but the court said that consultation had to be redone, just as the Liberals would have to do on TMX. They did not; they killed it.

My first speech here in 2015 was in support of a west-to-east pipeline for Canadian energy independence and security, to bring Western oil to eastern refineries and for export to Europe. I have to note that the Liberals killed that promise, too, by moving goalposts and death by delay.

Those were the chances to make Canada united, self-reliant, affordable and sovereign, but when a company spent years and $1 billion trying to make it, the Liberals ignored its warning that regulatory uncertainty risked the pipeline, because that is what the Liberals wanted for politics in a province in the middle. After that happened, the company even dropped “Canada” from its name and built pipelines in the U.S.

After that and endless caps, bans, taxes, mandates and regulations, hundreds of thousands of Canadians lost their livelihoods and legacies, and many took their own lives as major private sector plans were shelved: $670 billion in major natural resources projects and $176 billion in 16 major energy projects alone have all gone, while the costs for energy, essential in Canada, have skyrocketed due to bad policies and uncompetitive taxes.

The Prime Minister claims to be different from the one he advised for more than the last half decade, but lots of rhetoric with no actual results is exactly the same.

While the Liberals did all this to Canada, the U.S., under Obama, by the way, and it just ramped up afterward, started crude oil exports outside of North America for the first time in four decades and vetoed KXL from Canada at the same time. American and other money funded campaigns to stop Canadian energy projects. Our biggest trading partner, the world's most important economy and still Canada's biggest customer just said that because of Liberal Atlantic and Pacific pipeline killers, it will soon get up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil to compete directly with its Canadian heavy crude imports and put billions of Canadian dollars and thousands of jobs at risk.

Meanwhile, our Prime Minister is clearly cozy with the regime he said was Canada's “biggest security threat”. That is also the position of the current President of the United States, but the Prime Minister has let them all in our backyard. Talk about letting all the foxes in the henhouse.

The Liberals have the gall to spend millions of tax dollars on ads about Canada being an energy superpower. They hated that when Stephen Harper said it, but the Liberals now want support, help, accolades, co-operation and compliments from the Conservatives. I would say the Liberals should take a bow, if they can do that with their elbows up I guess, but they need only look in the mirror for who is to blame for why Canadians now find themselves vulnerable to bullies everywhere instead of being self-reliant, sovereign, united and thriving, not just surviving like they are, as this country could and should have been today, with all our blessings, our people and our natural resources.

No matter the magical thinking one favours, here is the truth: Despite the Liberal decade of anti-resource and anti-private sector policies and taxes, in 2024, oil and gas still employed half a million Canadians. It is still Canada's largest private sector investor and top export, but almost all of it goes to the U.S. Natural resources are still, by far, the main driver to close the gap between the rich and poor, and the biggest employer of indigenous Canadians in the entire economy from coast to coast to coast, but the Liberals' words differ from their actions, which shows they still want to risk and break it all for their ideology.

It is our duty to oppose the government when necessary and to propose solutions to create private sector jobs and bigger paycheques and cut costs for every Canadian. This is why, today, Conservatives bring forward a Canadian sovereignty act to legalize and turbocharge Canadian energy development and construction everywhere.

The act points out seven anti-development laws that kill projects and jobs in Canada for repeal and reform.

Bill C-69 is the unconstitutional, divisive law that makes it impossible to build and blocks major projects across Canada, which the Liberals admit to with a workaround in Bill C-5. Right now, the Liberals pick politically recommended projects behind closed doors and refuse to define the national interest or fix the actual laws for anyone else.

Bill C-48, the shipping ban, blocks Canadian oil experts from the west coast, while foreign dictators' oil and U.S. oil tankers still pass through every other coast and canal.

The federal industrial carbon tax hikes the cost of everything Canadians buy across the supply chain. The U.S., Canada's biggest competitor, does not have this federally.

The ban on gas and diesel vehicles will hike prices by up to $20,000 for consumers, expose retailers to criminal charges and limit Canadians' freedom of choice. The U.S. does not impose this on itself.

The plastics ban hurts responsibly producing Canadian manufacturers and hikes the costs of groceries everywhere. The U.S. does not have this.

The Liberal energy censorship law stops Canadian businesses from talking about their environmental track record and innovation unless they match the government's talking points. It sounds a bit like that regime the Prime Minister waffles on about, does it not?

The Liberals also say they intend to make changes, but still have not actually axed the oil and gas cap, which is the only one of its kind in the world. It will kill 54,000 Canadian jobs by 2032 and cut $21 billion from Canada's economy, and they know it. Who can afford this?

Do not take my word for it. Last April, in an extremely unusual Canadian action, 38 energy CEOs told the Prime Minister to simplify regulation and scrap Bill C-69, Bill C-48 and the oil and gas cap to “Build Canada Now”, since the law impedes development, and existing processes are uncertain, as well as “complex, unpredictable, subjective, and excessively long”, as we and every single expert have been telling the Liberals for a decade. In September, 96 energy CEOs sent a follow-up. It is now almost February.

I do not know what the Prime Minister considers generational speed, although the Liberals know a lot about generational theft. Thousands of major projects have been built faster than this in our country, and still nothing is actually being built. Right now, the U.S. Department of Energy's emergency permitting procedures can approve oil, gas, critical mineral and uranium projects on federal lands in as little as 28 days. The weird truth is that the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Defense can build projects faster than any private sector proponent in Canada can dream of. The Liberals want Canadians to believe that a $246-million major projects bureaucracy will solve the problem they created, but it is still being set up and the process is still uncertain, complex and opaque.

Conservatives will give certainty to Canada, as we have always said we will. In addition to fixing the fundamentals, not ragging the puck with workarounds, we will create a Canada-first reinvestment tax cut to eliminate capital gains taxes on reinvestments in Canadian businesses and projects; create a free trade bonus that rewards provinces for removing interprovincial trade barriers; require the industry minister to table a comprehensive plan to prevent Canada's inventions, technologies, intellectual property and strategic assets from being sold to foreign state-owned or -influenced interests; and safeguard Canadian ownership and control of critical technologies to ensure Canadian economic sovereignty.

After all of those promises, nearly a year into the Prime Minister's term and 11 years into the Liberal government, Canadians do not need more grand speeches or photo ops; they need results. Conservatives want big projects built in Canada by the private sector, efficiently, safely and affordably, with the top standards and Canadian materials for Canadians' public interests. If the Liberals are truly serious about making Canada an energy superpower, they have to show it now. The stakes for our country are much too high to dither, debate and delay any more.

Natural Resources

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago I asked the government, while it was waving around its MOU, whether it could actually offer Albertans a guarantee on a pipeline and when it would be built, not just another headline or announcement. I was told that this memorandum would set out a comprehensive economic path forward for Alberta. The only problem is that there is no guarantee with this plan. It is more of just a pinky promise. Anyone can make a plan to do anything. That is not the problem. The problem is following through on that plan.

The Prime Minister has the ability to get several pipelines under way today. In fact, that was something that I was worried about after we passed Bill C-5 through this House. He has the ability to provide investors with certainty, so that communities and families can rely on the energy sector in northern Alberta. If the Prime Minister was serious about turning Canada into an energy superpower, as he said he would, we would have had shovels in the ground back in April. He had the ability back then, but even then he would not. This is because the government is not serious about Canadian oil and gas.

Really, the Prime Minister does not actually need to do anything; he just needs to repeal Bill C-48 and Bill C-69, and Canadians would build Canada. Pipelines would be built here in Canada. These are the “no more pipelines” bills. What is interesting is that Bill C-48 is a bill that is a shipping ban. It is not a tanker ban; it is a shipping ban. It is illegal to take oil off the shore of Canada and put it on a boat. That is what is illegal with Bill C-48. It is not at all about tankers travelling through the inside passage or travelling along the Canadian west coast. It is about preventing Canadian oil and gas from getting on a tanker. That is why we call it a shipping ban.

We recently had a vote on this agreement. The Prime Minister cannot get his anti-energy, “keep it in the ground” caucus to agree to getting pipelines built, but Conservatives actually want to succeed. We want to give Canadian families and investors the chance to have certainty from our government, so just yesterday we put forward a motion calling on the government to vote on its plan and memorandum. We thought that this would be an effective way to make sure that the Prime Minister lived up to his words, so we used the text right out of this comprehensive plan and included amendments proposed by the government itself.

If the government was serious about energy and pipelines, or at least about its own promises, one would think that it would have no problem voting for its own words right here in this place, but that is not what happened. Even members from Alberta who sit in the Liberal caucus were not able to vote for this. I do not know why, but the Prime Minister convinced his entire caucus and would not let even members from Alberta vote for a pipeline right here in Canada.

When the government votes against its own energy agreement, it sends a clear message to Canadians that Canadian energy jobs are secondary to partisan considerations, and the Prime Minister cannot have it both ways. He cannot claim to support Alberta's economy and energy workers and at the same time block the infrastructure needed to make our economy thrive.

The hon. members for Calgary Confederation and Edmonton Centre will certainly have to explain to their constituents why they voted against Albertan jobs, the Alberta economy, Albertan growth and Albertan investment, and why they voted against Albertans.

The point of this is certainty, because when pipelines are delayed or uncertain, investment goes elsewhere. We have seen this over and over again, such as with the Carmon Creek project, which was cancelled in northern Alberta. Weeks later, the same company, Shell, announced a project in Kazakhstan. We have seen this time and time again. We saw the northern gateway pipeline cancelled, and they went out and built a pipeline in the United States.

Why does this government continually vote against Alberta?

Opposition Motion—Pipeline Construction

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first I want to thank my colleague from Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake for sharing her time today.

I rise today, as members know, as a member of Parliament for a coastal riding in British Columbia, as the NDP critic for Fisheries and Oceans, and also as a parliamentarian with a responsibility to uphold indigenous rights. Each of these roles carries a duty to speak plainly about risk to our marine ecosystems and to the coastal and indigenous communities whose livelihoods depend on healthy oceans.

Decisions taken in the House do not exist in the abstract; they carry real and lasting consequences for people who work on the water, harvest from it, steward it and depend on it for their very survival. It is for that reason that the motion before us today, as well as the MOU, is so alarming. It asks that we support a massive bitumen pipeline from Alberta to the north coast of British Columbia, along with the suspension of the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, and it asks that we do so without the consent of indigenous rights and title holders and without the support of the Province of British Columbia or of the coastal communities that would bear the full risk of an oil spill.

We have been here before, of course. First nations on the coast have consistently opposed crude oil tanker proposals for more than 50 years. They participated fully in the National Energy Board's joint review panel for the failed northern gateway project. Their answer was a definitive and principled no. That has not changed. In 2019 the federal government passed the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, Bill C-48, to protect the Great Bear Rainforest and the Great Bear Sea on behalf of all Canadians.

We have also been here before on the B.C. coast in a far more literal way. In January 1989, the Nestucca barge rammed its own tug off Washington state after a cable snapped. The U.S. Coast Guard ordered the leaking barge towed out to sea. There were 5,500 barrels of oil spilled, oil that floated just below the surface and could not be tracked or contained. Days later, to everyone's horror, it washed ashore near Tofino in my riding of Courtenay—Alberni. That spill was devastating, and it was considered small. Just months later, the Exxon Valdez oil spill released 257,000 barrels of oil, nearly 50 times larger, enough to contaminate virtually the entire length of the B.C. coast, and we know the impact it had on the north coast.

If the pipeline envisioned in the motion were built, up to 225 supertankers per year, each carrying up to two million barrels of bitumen, would move through narrow coastal channels and off the shore of Vancouver Island and the north coast. The scale of risk would dwarf both Nestucca and Exxon Valdez. A spill hundreds of times larger than Nestucca would be physically impossible to clean up along our remote, rugged coast, especially given the behaviour of bitumen itself.

The moratorium did not appear overnight; tanker restrictions had been voluntarily in place for more than 30 years before Bill C-48 ever became law. Industry, insurers, scientists and governments across Canada and the United States long understood just how sensitive, dangerous and irreplaceable this region truly is. Yes, the people who would be most affected have declared this position with unmistakable clarity for decades.

Today, Coastal First Nations, representing nine first nations along the north coast, the central coast and Haida Gwaii, has reiterated its nations' position as rights and title holders, in a firm and unequivocal statement that they will not consent to crude oil pipeline or oil tanker projects in their coastal waters. They have made it clear to Canada and Alberta that the project identified in the motion and in the MOU is the same pipeline carrying the same product to the same place. That was rejected in 2012 under the Harper Conservatives, and nothing has changed today with the Prime Minister and the Liberals.

At the same time, the B.C. Assembly of First Nations has passed a formal motion opposing the proposal and calling on all levels of government to abandon the project and to instead support sustainable first nations-led solutions that respect indigenous title and ensure the survival of the land and its people. The Assembly of First Nations has echoed that position nationally, stating clearly that economic incentives, co-ownership promises and piecemeal consultation do not replace free, prior and informed consent.

There is something else that has not changed: The science has not changed. It remains a scientific fact that bitumen cannot be cleaned up in marine environments. When it spills, it sinks and mixes with sediments. It coats the seabed, and it smothers salmon habitat, herring spawning grounds, shellfish beds and the foundation of the marine food web. There is no proven technology capable of recovering bitumen once it disperses under water. That is not speculation; that is what spill science tells us.

For Coastal First Nations, for British Columbia and for anyone who cares about fisheries and oceans, that risk is simply unacceptable. A single major bitumen spill on the north coast would wipe out sustainable fisheries, cultural livelihoods and marine-based economies that have been built over thousands of years.

Meanwhile, the coastal economy that first nations have built is not theoretical. It is real, it is growing and it is rooted in stewardship. Coastal First Nations has made it abundantly clear: It not interested in equity stakes in a bitumen pipeline or in financial compensation for catastrophic risk from a bitumen pipeline, and it has built its own sustainable economy that is working.

New figures from Coast Funds show that an initial $60 million in economic development capital has generated over $1 billion in regional economic impact, creating more than 1,400 permanent jobs and supporting over 140 businesses. This is prosperity rooted in conservation, renewable energy, ecotourism, sustainable fisheries and long-term community wealth, not short-term extraction and global speculation.

The Premier of Alberta's rhetoric about oil pipelines and tankers does not strengthen our confederation. The MOU that the Liberal Prime Minister has put forward is the same; it undermines our confederation by threatening the goodwill that first nations bring to major economic projects. Northwest B.C. alone represents roughly 40% of Canada's shovel-ready major nation-leading and nation-building projects, including LNG facilities, critical mineral development, port modernization and clean energy corridors. Coastal First Nations supports projects that respect its rights, protect the environment and share benefits fairly. Crude-oil tankers will never be part of that vision.

The motion before us and the MOU that the Liberals have put forward also claim that indigenous consultation must be respected, but let us be absolutely clear: Consultation is not the standard; consent is the standard. New Democrats unequivocally support free, prior and informed consent. Without the consent of indigenous rights holders, the project does not have legitimacy. Without consent, there is no reconciliation. The indigenous rights and title holders most affected by the proposal have already said no repeatedly, publicly and without ambiguity.

The opposition motion and the Liberal MOU further claim that the proposal involves so-called low-emission bitumen. We should be honest with Canadians: Bitumen remains among the most carbon-intensive forms of oil on the planet. Relabelling it does not change the climate map. Global heavy crude demand is projected to decline in the decades ahead.

The motion would pursue a project with no confirmed proponent, no secured market, no private financing and no consent from those whose territories would be at risk. Instead of inflaming regional division and undermining reconciliation, the federal government should be meeting directly and respectfully with Coastal First Nations and the Province of British Columbia. The Prime Minister promised that no project would be imposed on a province or on indigenous peoples. Both British Columbia and Coastal First Nations have said no. It is time to honour that promise, not weaken it under pressure.

New Democrats oppose the motion, and we will oppose it with a vote. We will vote against it because it ignores science. We will vote against because it ignores economic reality. We will vote against it because it undermines marine protection, climate responsibility and indigenous rights. We will vote against it because it puts ideology ahead of national unity and long-term prosperity.

Canada can and must do better than this. We can build a future rooted in partnership, sustainability and shared prosperity. Our workers deserve better than boom-and-bust politics, our ecosystems deserve protection, and first nations deserve respect, the right to consent and genuine nation-to-nation decision-making. For all those reasons we will be voting against the motion today and are against the MOU that the government put forward.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon South, SK]

Madam Speaker, if we look back into history, how we built this country, I am not sure we can build the country anymore. Billions of dollars have been lost because of Liberal policies, such as Bill C-69 and Bill C-48. In my province, we have uranium mines ready to go, but because of these policies, they are years in the waiting.

Will this pipeline ever get built with the current government in place?

[Aaron Gunn, Conservative, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Madam Speaker, on July 20, 1871, British Columbia became the sixth province to sign on to the audacious vision that was Canada as laid out by the fathers of Confederation, a vision that was as bold as it was courageous, which was to create a new nation, one that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the Rockies, across the Prairies and over the Canadian Shield to unite these small, disparate and insignificant colonies of what was then British North America. It was perhaps the greatest nation-building project the world had ever seen.

Over a century and a half later, we owe much of our prosperity, identity and independence to them and those who followed in their footsteps. They built and defended this country from the ground up. From the national railway through two world wars, their determination and perseverance shaped not only the land around them but also those who called it home. What has happened to that tenacity, that fortitude, that resolve, the ability to get things done? Where are our leaders, our statesmen for a new century, those who could live up to the lions of Canadian history, such as Laurier, Macdonald and W.A.C. Bennett? Where are the leaders who can rediscover the boldness and audacity that built this country and couple it with a vision as befitting a nation as vast and bursting with potential as our own? That vision starts with getting back to the basics, with actually building things.

In the late 1800s, Canada was a small country, divided by language and having a much larger and more powerful neighbour to the south, yet, in that historical context, we completed what many consider to be one of the great political and engineering feats of the time, the Canadian Pacific Railway. Today, the Liberal government cannot even bring itself to openly support a pipeline. It is content instead to sign vague, indeterminate pieces of paper, promising to one day maybe consider building a pipeline to the Pacific. The consequences of this lack of vision and follow-through are very real.

Today, our lack of market access forces us to sell our oil, our number one export, at a massive discount to the United States, a reality that has cost us tens of thousands of jobs and $70 million each day, or $25 billion every single year. At a time of predatory and hostile U.S. trade action, which is a deliberate attempt to destroy our forestry, steel, aluminum and automotive sectors, we are essentially giving our oil to the Americans on the cheap because the Liberal government does not have the political fortitude to get a Canadian pipeline built, a pipeline that would secure our economic sovereignty, energy independence and the leverage that we need over the United States.

However, this is not really a new issue. Back when Macdonald was first proposing the Canadian Pacific Railway and undertaking, as I mentioned, what many thought could not be done, there were loud voices, mainly in the Liberal Party at the time, that demanded that the east-west railway be built through the much easier terrain of the United States. They argued it would have been politically easier, and undoubtedly more affordable, and on those two points they were right, but it would have come at the expense of Canadian sovereignty and left us a mere dependent, a colony of the Americans. Fortunately, our leaders in that era had the foresight and the passionate devotion to our national interest to see through the railway that we now call the ribbon of steel on an all-Canadian route.

Unfortunately, the Liberal government today has essentially accomplished the exact opposite and is moving us in the opposite direction. Let us think about how ridiculous this is. Canada has the third-largest reserves of oil on the entire planet, yet we are still importing oil from repressive, dictatorial regimes, such as Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, as we have allowed our Canadian oil industry to atrophy, American oil output has grown by more than 50%. What are we doing? We have the oil, the know-how, the skill and the determination of the Canadian people. I can guarantee that. All we are missing are the politicians with the courage and vision to get the job done.

To be clear, and this is an important point, the world needs more energy. It needs it today, and it is going to continue to need it for decades to come. In fact, the International Energy Agency predicts that global energy demand will continue to grow well past 2050, and more than a quarter of that total energy demand will continue to come in the form of oil. The problem is that that increase in demand is concentrated in Asian markets, markets that, without pipelines, Canada has little to no access to.

Today, over 90% of our country's oil exports are sold to one country, the United States. Make no mistake, if we do not get these pipelines built, if Canadian oil stays in the ground, which, by the way, I think is the true objective of at least some members of the Liberal caucus, those investment dollars and jobs will go elsewhere. They will go to brutal, repressive regimes, such as Venezuela and Iran, to fund the priorities of their governments, which are to repress peaceful dissent and export terrorism and hard drugs, instead of supporting the priorities of our government, which are health care, education, roads and the support of our brave men and women in uniform.

Here is the truth: No one does environmental stewardship and safety better than Canada and Canadians. As long as the world needs and demands oil, as much of it as possible should come from right here in Canada. To do that, we need pipelines.

Unfortunately, instead of showing leadership on this file or following in the nation-building footsteps of those who built this country, the Liberal government has done the exact opposite by axing the northern gateway pipeline; killing energy east; and introducing the bill known as the no more pipelines bill, Bill C-69, and the tanker ban, Bill C-48 as well as the industrial carbon tax. It is a suite of policies compiled by design for one purpose, which is to kill Canada's oil and gas industry to leave our most valuable resource, asset and commodity in the ground.

Let us take the tanker ban as one example. Why is it that 24.4 million tonnes of foreign oil are allowed to transit Canada's east coast, including down the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, yet on B.C.'s north coast, this is banned? There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that suggests that tanker traffic in northwestern B.C. presents a greater risk to the environment than anywhere else. In fact, because there is a lack of maritime traffic in general, the exact opposite is true. Here is the kicker: There are already tankers off of B.C.'s coast. Four tankers each day, filled to the brim with American oil, depart Alaska, heading south alongside the very waters where Canadian tanker traffic carrying Canadian oil is currently banned.

It continues a trend of the Liberal government pursuing ideological policies and virtue signalling to one group or another over straightforward, common-sense results. However, there is good news. Canadians are seeing through the spin. In recent polling, 67% of British Columbians believe that new pipelines are important to Canada's economic future, and 54% are confident that pipelines can be built while protecting the environment.

Pipelines are the most environmentally friendly and sensitive way to transport this commodity, yet we have the B.C. Premier saying that the pipeline will “never be built”, and the Prime Minister has been unwilling to assert the nation-building and constitutional roles of the federal government to get this project done.

When it comes to building this pipeline, a majority of British Columbians and Canadians agree, but most importantly, it is in the essential national interests of our country. The truth is that the silver lining to this challenge lies in the solution. We do not need the government to step up in any particular way. We just need the government to get out of the way to give this country back to those who built it and continue to build it, the people.

That is why I urge every member of the House, regardless of their province, party or ideology, to vote with us for Canadian workers, prosperity, economic sovereignty, energy independence and building things, including pipelines, in this country once again.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton Gateway, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the great member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.

Today, the House of Commons will debate and vote on a Conservative motion calling for a new oil pipeline to the Pacific coast, overriding the tanker ban on shipping bitumen to Asia.

Just eight months ago, the Prime Minister told Canadians that his government would build things previously thought impossible at speeds we have not seen in generations, and that he would build Canada into an energy superpower. When announcing his memorandum of understanding with Alberta, he said, “At the core of the agreement, of course, is a priority to have a pipeline to Asia. That is going to make Canada stronger, more independent, more resilient, more sustainable”. The language in today's motion comes directly from the Prime Minister's own MOU with Alberta. It states:

That the House:

(a) take note of the Memorandum of Understanding between Canada and Alberta of November 27, 2025; and

(b) support the construction of one or more pipelines enabling the export of at least one million barrels a day of low-emission Alberta bitumen from a strategic deepwater port on the British Columbia coast to reach Asian markets, including through an appropriate adjustment to the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, while respecting the duty to consult Indigenous peoples.

Canadians cannot afford any more delays. A pipeline to the Pacific coast, shipping a million barrels of oil a day to Asia at world prices, would mean stronger take-home pay for Canadians and a resilient, self-reliant economy. A pipeline is what Canada needs now, not more broken Liberal promises and not more bait-and-switch tactics from the government, yet the government continues to stall and stand in the way of this pipeline.

The government promised one thing to Alberta and another thing to British Columbia. Even its own Liberal caucus is divided. Some Liberal MPs insist that a pipeline must have B.C.'s consent and, specifically, that it must have the consent of the Premier of British Columbia. They say that without it, there will be no pipeline.

The constitutional reality is that British Columbia does not have a veto over an interprovincial pipeline. Only the federal government has that authority. That is a good thing, because the B.C. NDP premier has been clear that he is against a pipeline, saying, “it will never be built”.

Conservatives brought forward this motion today because the Prime Minister's MOU does not promise that a pipeline will be built. Instead, it only commits that seven months from now, a proposal will be referred to a federal office for two more years of study, while the B.C. premier will still effectively have a veto on this pipeline.

Why, then, do the Liberals refuse to assert federal jurisdiction, choosing instead to allow political obstruction to continue while Canadians struggle to pay their bills? Energy workers deserve better. Families deserve better. Canada deserves better. The Liberals need to do just one thing for a pipeline to happen: Get out of the way. That means repealing the industrial carbon tax, granting a permit for a pipeline and unblocking the billions of dollars in private sector energy investment that is ready to build.

For an entire decade, the government has treated Canada's energy workers and energy-producing regions not as a national strength, but as a problem to be solved. It has blocked pipelines, cancelled projects, imposed punishing regulations and created a climate of uncertainty that has driven investment out of this country at record speed.

It is no wonder that Canadians no longer trust the Liberals' promises and announcements, which so rarely result in anything. For 10 years, their policies have not just harmed the energy sector; they have hurt everyday Canadians who rely on affordable fuel, good jobs and a strong economy to support their families. Across the country, people are working harder, paying more and getting less. Groceries, housing and basic essentials keep rising in price, while paycheques stretch thinner and thinner. Monthly food bank visits keep smashing records, and people who once donated to their community food banks are now lining up for help for their families.

When investment flees Canada, workers pay the price. When pipelines are blocked, paycheques shrink. When energy costs rise, the price of groceries, heating and housing rises with them. Good energy jobs that once sustained entire communities are leaving our country, and when that investment leaves, opportunity leaves with it.

For years now, business after business has concluded that Canada is no longer a place where major projects can get approved, built or completed. Even the Prime Minister has admitted that Liberal laws make it impossible to get anything built. From Bill C-69, the “no new pipelines” law, and Bill C-48, the west coast shipping ban, to the oil and gas emissions cap and the punitive industrial carbon tax, these Liberal policies have sent thousands of Canadian jobs straight to the United States.

Canada should be a country of big dreams and big projects. We should be attracting investment, not driving it away, but under the Liberal anti-investment agenda, over $500 billion in private sector investment has vanished. That is not an abstract number. That means thousands of paycheques that never went out, mortgages that became unaffordable and careers that were cut short. Instead of supporting workers and the industries that sustain them, the Liberals have spent a decade blocking major infrastructure, stalling resource projects and creating uncertainty that chases investment to other countries.

Instead of supporting Canada's world-class energy industry, the Liberals have undermined it at every turn. Just this year alone, from May to September, nearly $54 billion of investment left Canada. This is in addition to more than $500 billion lost under Liberal governments. That is money that could have gone to jobs, wages and opportunities for Canadian families.

The energy sector is a major employer, with nearly a million workers, and it contributes to $1 billion in revenue for the government. This is money that should have been building pipelines, supporting workers, strengthening communities and lowering costs for Canadians, not building prosperity in other countries and lining the pockets of dictators around the world.

Liberal policies and energy production caps are projected to reduce oil and gas production by nearly 5%, cut GDP by $20 billion annually and eliminate over 54,000 full-time jobs by 2032, yet the Liberals are still committed to the same anti-growth policies that drove investment away.

Today, the House of Commons has an opportunity to turn things around and give our country a brighter future. Members will vote on our Conservative motion to build a new pipeline to the Pacific coast and ship a million barrels a day to Asia at world prices, not the discount prices we see today. This motion today is about putting more money in the pockets of Canadian workers and raising paycheques across the country. This pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast would mean stronger take-home pay, lower long-term energy costs, billions of dollars of private investment and a more self-reliant, secure Canadian economy.

The path forward is straightforward. If the Liberals truly want to build this pipeline, they must do just one thing: Get out of the way. Canada does not need more announcements or studies; Canada needs action, Canada needs jobs and Canada needs lower costs for struggling families. Conservatives will fight for stronger paycheques. We will fight to make energy, food and housing affordable and we will fight to rebuild a self-reliant, secure, sovereign Canadian economy.

It is time to build that pipeline, it is time to restore Canada's economic strength and it is time to bring home Canadian prosperity.

Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 1

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to hear my hon. colleague's question. When we think of stumbling blocks in Canada, we think of bills like Bill C-48, which stops production in Canada. We have the government passing a new bill to get around their own bills that are not working and are hampering investment in Canada. The Liberals have a lot of work to do to restore Canadians' faith in the system.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with a lot of what the member had to say about the need to diversify our export markets and increase non-U.S. exports. For many years, Conservatives have been saying that the northern gateway pipeline project would be a welcomed way to increase our non-U.S. exports. In order for that project to move forward, the Liberals would have to repeal Bill C-48, the west coast tanker ban.

Can the hon. member share her thoughts and views with the House on repealing Bill C-48 so that the northern gateway pipeline project can move forward?

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege to rise on behalf of the residents of Vaughan—Woodbridge. I rise today to speak to budget 2025 and the choice it represents for our country: whether we return to fiscal sanity and economic hope or we keep layering new debt and new bureaucracy on top of the old problems we refuse to fix.

Canadians remember how we got here. I want to take everyone back to just one year ago to the 2024 fall economic statement, which triggered a full-blown political crisis within the Liberal government. The deficit in that document was so alarming that the former finance minister walked away and resigned from cabinet and the government fell into chaos. The former finance minister found this deficit so preposterous and so outrageous that it ultimately led to the resignation of Prime Minister Trudeau.

Canadians were then told that a new prime minister, the current Prime Minister, a former central banker, would restore stability. They were promised a steady hand, fiscal responsibility and a break from the decade of recklessness.

Budget 2025 proves the opposite. The deficit that helped topple the last Liberal government has now been doubled. The Parliamentary Budget Officer projects deficits averaging over $64 billion a year for the next five years. Public debt has blown past $1.3 trillion. This budget alone adds more than $320 billion in new debt over the next five years, more than twice what the previous Liberal government was on track to adding over that same period.

Let me break down the outrageous debt level so that people watching at home can get a proper scope of how disastrous the government is. It is roughly $10 million in new debt every hour of every day. That is not renewal. This is indeed acceleration of the worst instincts of a Liberal government that has been in power for far too long. It is a government with no actual plan to get this country back on track. The budget implementation act, which we are debating today, would lock this path in.

Canadians were told there would be fiscal anchors. The Prime Minister promised to balance the operating budget within three years to ensure a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio and a declining debt-to-GDP ratio. However, the Parliamentary Budget Officer now says there is only about a 7.5% chance of meeting even the first of those anchors. He has testified that there is a low probability the government will respect any of its own targets. This means the anchors were not actually anchors after all.

Instead of fixing the problem, the government has tried to redefine it. In order to make the claim the Liberals will be balancing the operating budget, they have quietly rewritten what counts as capital spending. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has been very clear. This new definition of capital investment is “overly expansive”, and it goes far beyond what is used in our own public accounts and beyond international practice, including the system of national accounts, an internationally agreed upon standard for compiling measures of economic activity that is used in countries like the United Kingdom.

By shifting tax expenditures, investment tax credits and operating subsidies over to the capital column, the government makes day-to-day spending look smaller on paper. According to the PBO, if we were to use the widely accepted definition, so-called capital investment would actually be $94 billion lower and operating expenses would be higher over the next five years than what the government claims. Under that more honest definition, the operating budget never actually balances at all.

Regardless of the fact the Liberals are trying to mislead Canadians to make it seem like they are competent stewards of the public treasury, debt is debt, and no matter how they cook the books, they are still adding an insane amount of money to the public debt. Creditors do not care which column the government hides it in. Every dollar the government borrows must be paid back with interest. Under this budget, interest costs alone will reach more than $55 billion this year and grow toward $76 billion by the end of the decade. That will be more than we send to provinces for health care and more than we collect in GST.

Fitch Ratings has already warned that the budget's massive spending increases and debt burden weaken Canada's credit profile and underscore what it calls “the erosion of the federal government’s finances.” It notes that because fiscal rules are non-binding, “federal finances run a high risk of further deterioration.” Tax expert Kim Moody described this as “a horrible budget that will cripple our future generations.” As he put it, “The good parts are minor cameos, the bad dominates the middle, and the ugly rides off with our future saddled in debt.”

Canadians did not vote for this. Just six months ago, they were promised something completely different from the government. They were promised a $62-billion deficit, which is already high enough, not a $78-billion one. They were promised a declining debt-to-GDP ratio, but it is rising, and less spending, not $90 billion more. They were promised fiscal anchors that would not be discarded in a matter of months. What people voted for and what they got are not the same thing, but is anyone surprised? They have been living this nightmare for the last decade.

I would like to move into the direct impact of this budget, because the damage caused by this recklessness is not just abstract.

In my community of Vaughan—Woodbridge and across the GTA, the housing crisis is the sharpest edge of these failed policies. Before the election, the government promised to build half a million homes a year. Today, we are not even close.

Home starts have cratered. From January to October, we have barely seen 200,000 starts nationwide. In the GTA, new home sales have collapsed. Compared with the recent 10-year average, single-family home sales are down by more than half. Condo sales are down by far more. Developers are laying off workers, projects are being shelved and young families are stuck. Plumbers, electricians, contractors and tradespeople are all feeling the pressure.

Development charges and the hidden taxes on new housing, coupled with GST and HST, can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of a home in the GTA. The cost of government now makes up roughly 30% to 40% of the price of a new home in the GTA.

During their election campaign in the spring, the Liberals promised to cut these charges in half. In the budget, that promise simply disappeared. There is no concrete plan to cut these costs, just frameworks, negotiations and more processes.

On housing, the government's answer is yet another bureaucracy: Build Canada Homes. It is as if the government wants our children to be renters forever. Do the Liberals want us to forget about the Canadian ideal of actually owning a home? It sure seems that way.

Instead of billions on housing measures that will not work, why do they not listen to industry? Why did they not listen to the municipalities and help support the reduction of fees and taxes that are preventing builders from building and keeping the price of homes out of reach? Why did they not steal our plan to remove the GST off all home purchases under $1.3 million, not just for the first-time homebuyer?

This same instinct shows up in productivity. The Bank of Canada has warned that Canada is stuck in what it calls a “vicious circle of weak productivity”, a systemic problem that makes it harder to meet today's challenges and seize tomorrow's opportunities. The deputy governor has pointed out that regulatory burden and lack of competition are key drags on growth and has urged thoughtful, systematic efforts to reduce those barriers, yet this budget responds to productivity and regulatory issues by creating even more bureaucracy.

We get the new Major Projects Office, layered on top of existing departments and regulations, instead of a real fix for the broken impact assessment rules of Bill C-69 and Bill C-48. We get the new Defence Investment Agency, another organization headquartered in the capital, instead of procurement reform that would let Canadian firms deliver ships, planes and equipment on time and on budget.

My greatest concern is not just what this budget does to today's economy, but what it does to tomorrow's Canadians. Future generations have no vote on this budget, but they will live with its consequences. They will inherit a country where more and more of every tax dollar goes to bureaucracy instead of hospitals, instead of homes, instead of innovation and instead of jobs.

Conservatives believe in a different path, a path where government lives within its means so that Canadians can live within theirs. I voted against this budget and will keep pressing for a direction that restores discipline, creates room for investments and gives young Canadians a reason to believe that the country's best days are ahead of it, not behind.

Natural Resources

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the Northern Gateway pipeline was going to diversify Canada's export markets by selling Canadian oil and gas to the world, but the Liberals killed that project with Bill C-48, the west coast tanker ban, which keeps Canadian oil and gas landlocked. Worse still, the Liberals' tanker ban applies to Canadian ships only, not American ones.

If American ships can export American oil through Canadian waters, then why can Canadian ships not do the same with Canadian oil?

Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 1

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I think everyone here is old enough to remember the year 2015. That was the year the Harper government brought the budget back into balance after successfully steering Canada through the great recession and when the New York Times congratulated Canada for having the world's most prosperous middle class. This was a few years after the Liberals tried to topple the government because Harper's government refused to run larger deficits than were necessary to steer Canada through the 2008-09 financial crash. He had run a disciplined government, one focused on core government services and responsibilities.

That same year, the Liberals alone campaigned on a promise to run what they called modest deficits for three years that would fund unprecedented generational investments that would boost productivity and allow the budget to balance itself. That was the year the Liberals destroyed the consensus that successive Liberal and Conservative governments shared: that deficits matter, that debt matters, that fiscal discipline matters, that productivity matters and that all of these things directly impact everyday Canadians and their struggles to make ends meet.

Here we are, 10 years later, and no historic transformational public investments occurred. During that time, the budget was never balanced and the national debt doubled. The amount spent on Liberal consultants ballooned out of control despite the federal public service increasing by 100,000 employees, while service levels for Canadians declined. The armed forces still have rusting ships, 40-year-old fighter jets, only a few dozen operational tanks and crumbling barracks and housing. The CRA still cannot answer the phone or give accurate information to Canadians.

Now, 10 years after the Liberals promised transformational, generational public expenditure to boost productivity but delivered the lowest per capita growth in the G7 and the OECD, they have tabled a budget promising the same broken promises recycled from 2015.

Let there be no misunderstanding. This is a credit card budget. The Liberals have tabled a budget, the first in nearly two years, that sets a new non-pandemic record of $78 billion in deficit expenditure. That is double the size of the deficit that triggered the resignation of the member for University—Rosedale when she was the finance minister. Do members remember that? Do members remember chaos this time last year and the consternation and hand-wringing over Trudeau's $42-billion deficit?

I will point out that I intend to split my time with the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

Let us remember the 2025 election, when the Prime Minister promised Canadians that he was the guy who was going to rein in public spending. The deficit in this budget is the equivalent of adding $5,300 of new debt to every Canadian family. What do Canadians get for this staggering new debt that every Canadian knows they have to pay off with interest? Is there any new money in this budget to pay for the so-called generational investments that the government keeps talking about? The answer is no.

This act we are debating does not contain money for transformational new productivity-improving spending. It simply grows the size of government. The Liberals keep saying that they are going to reduce spending on the operations of government in order to spend more on capital projects. This budget says these words, but this act does not do these things.

The main way the government plans to fulfill its unbelievable claims about its investments is through accounting trickery. Some might ask what is wrong with that if it helps Canadians differentiate between the administration of government and capital costs. What is wrong is that the Liberals' definition is grossly misleading. The PBO says it is “overly expansive”.

What is wrong with it is they are deliberately trying to trick Canadians into thinking the government is building infrastructure when it is actually hiring bureaucrats or connected insiders with consulting contracts or is dispensing corporate welfare and calling it capital investment. What is wrong is that the Liberals are not following internationally recognized definitions. What is wrong is that the government, which has done so much over the last 10 years to compromise its fiscal credibility, is now resorting to accounting trickery to try to fool Canadians and the finance community.

Ten years ago the budget was balanced, homes were relatively affordable in Canada, outside of Vancouver at least, and Canada's middle class was doing all right, much better than in its peer countries. Over the last 10 years, though, Canada alone among G7 countries and alone among members of the OECD, with the exception of Luxembourg, has had no increase in per capita GDP, none. That means that in Canada, we have been left behind by our peer countries.

The value of everything produced in Canada divided by all the people in Canada is now the same as it was 10 years ago, but during that time, the cost of food has gone up, the cost of housing has doubled and the cost of rent has doubled. The cost of living has shot up while Canadians' productivity has not, and as the Bank of Canada told the finance committee earlier this month, the productivity crisis and the cost of living crisis are the same thing. Canadians increasingly cannot afford to live because the government keeps growing, choking out consumers and absorbing more taxes while creating laws that chase investment out of Canada, leaving workers less productive than in the rest of the developed world.

The government spent 10 years passing anti-business laws that have left Canadians with fewer and fewer jobs in Canada's most productive industries. One full year ago, before the tariff war, the senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada called this a break glass emergency. She talked about how excessive regulation drives out investment from Canada's number one industry, which is the energy industry. Energy is by far Canada's biggest and most valuable export, and the government spent 10 years trying to regulate it into the ground.

There is nothing in this bill that would deal with the root cause of Canada's productivity emergency. There is a lot of talk about major projects, but when the Liberals talk about major projects, the government acts like it is having an out-of-body experience and has no idea who has been in charge of the government for the last 10 years and who introduced Bill C-69, Bill C-48, the carbon tax, the emission cap and a host of other major and minor acts that have chased $606 billion out of Canada to the United States, even before Trump was inaugurated.

For a moment, let us set aside the government's mismanagement of the Canadian economy, the fiscal deterioration of the national balance sheet that it is presiding over and the cost of living crisis that has been triggered by the government's overspending, and let us talk about fiscal anchors.

On a boat, an anchor is used to hold the boat in place. If we cut the line that connects the boat to the anchor, the boat drifts aimlessly until it runs aground somewhere. If the government were a sailor, it would be the kind of sailor who brings a new anchor on board the boat, a shiny new piece of equipment that it shows off to everybody, and then throws the anchor overboard without attaching it to a line that connects it to the boat. That is exactly what the government does, and it wonders why it is adrift. Fiscal anchors mean nothing if they are not attached to anything.

The government was literally only a few weeks old in 2015 when it broke its promise of a limited deficit. The Liberals pretended that it never made any such promise and replaced their 2015 election promise with their first so-called fiscal anchor at the time, which was that Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio would never go down. They said it hundreds of times in this chamber.

At the end of 2019, they cut that anchor, brought in a new one and said that their new anchor was our AAA credit rating. Then Fitch Ratings downgraded Canada to AA+, and in the COVID recovery, the Liberals came up with a guardrail, which was a maximum deficit. They blew through that and then went back to claiming that a declining debt-to-GDP ratio was their fiscal anchor.

This budget would cut loose all of the Liberals' past fiscal anchors and bring in two new ones: balancing operating spending with revenue by 2028-29, and maintaining a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio. How much credibility does the government deserve with its history of cutting the line on its anchors? Based on history alone, I say none, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer did give the government a 7.5% chance of maintaining the anchor of a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio. That is getting close to 20:1, if the PBO is giving betting odds on the government's keeping this anchor. These anchors mean nothing when the government's operating budget relies on accounting trickery as well.

This budget would add $80 billion to the national debt at a time when interest is choking out all other expenses. That is unsustainable and unsupportable and the government is unbelievable.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the benefits to society from our natural resource sector far outweigh the costs. I would like to point out that the Government of Saskatchewan's annual budget gets 10% to 15% of its revenues every year from natural resource royalties. If my hon. colleague is suggesting the federal Liberal government should have less to do with oil and gas companies and should get out of the way, I would be 100% in agreement with that.

I would love to see the Liberals repeal Bill C-69, the “no more pipelines” bill. I would love to see them repeal Bill C-48, the west coast tanker ban. That way we could extract all of the resources that are literally underneath our feet and export them around the world. It is unfortunate that the Liberals always seem to get in the way.

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Aaron Gunn, Conservative, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to the Liberal budget, a budget put forward by the government that I believe to be fiscally reckless, utterly immoral and lacking any kind of grand unifying vision that Canada, at this moment in its history, so desperately needs.

I speak first and foremost, as always, on behalf of my constituents of North Island—Powell River. However, I also feel duty-bound to speak today on behalf of another group of Canadians, a group without voice and without champion, a group of Canadians who are all too often overlooked, whose interests are marginalized and whose concerns are ignored. I speak of course of future generations, of people still in cradles, strollers and schools, and of those yet to be born.

Over the last 10 years of Liberal government, the debt being left to these future generations to pay for has doubled. Put another way, the Liberals have borrowed more money since 2015 than every other government in the history of this country combined, borrowing even more money than it took to build the national railway and to win the Second World War, and that is accounting for inflation.

Before the unveiling of this budget, I think many Canadians, including those of us here in opposition, were hoping for something bold and something special, a budget that was transformative, that was daring, that marked a clear departure from the decade of Justin Trudeau and that set Canada on a new fiscally sustainable path that a majority of Canadians could support with pride.

Instead, we got more than $300 billion in new debt and the largest deficit in Canadian history outside COVID. In other words, it was nothing remotely transformative at all but rather a simple continuation of the same old Liberal policies of spending money that we do not have and leaving the bill to the next generation to pay. If the same policies are enacted, we should not expect a different result.

For starters, we can expect the taxpayer money wasted paying interest on our debt to rise even further, with the government's own projections forecasting a 37% increase, to more than $76.1 billion a year. That is more than 11¢ of every dollar that Canadians pay in taxes squandered, taxpayer money that cannot be spent on roads, health care or Canada's national defence. It is money that is wasted paying interest to big banks on Bay Street.

Because governments rarely if ever pay back the principal on their debt, Canadians have to pay the interest over and over again, year after year. In fact Canada's federal debt today stands at around $1.2 trillion, yet since 1980, Canadians have paid over $1.4 trillion just in interest on that debt. I have not met a single Canadian who thinks that has been a good return on investment for them.

With the Liberals' announcing plans to spend and borrow even more, the problem will only be getting worse. Just to be clear, this is not an issue with taxes being too low, or some sort of government revenue problem. In 2015, when the budget was balanced, the government took in $282 billion in taxes and other government revenues. For the current fiscal year, today the government projects that number to be $507 billion, an increase of more than 80%.

The issue, instead, is reckless, totally unrestrained government spending that has increased during that same time period by 109%, to $586 billion this fiscal year. Now the Liberals have announced, in this budget, that they want to spend $90 billion more. What is their justification for all the spending and all the debt? It is the same tired refrain as it has always been, that Canadians need their government to step up to do and spend more.

However, if we look back on the last 10 years of faltering economic growth and ballooning national debt, we see the exact opposite. Canada's economic stagnation is not due to government not stepping up in any particular way. Canada's economic stagnation is the direct result of government, and the Liberal government in particular, getting in the way, whether by blocking pipelines like northern gateway and energy east, by scaring away investment with bills like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48 and the industrial carbon tax, or by overseeing a dramatic increase in federal spending and a doubling of Canada's national debt, with almost no discernible benefits to everyday Canadians.

What is more is that all of this reckless spending and borrowing has another cost: high inflation.

My grandfather, who will be turning 95 years old next month, first came to Canada in 1956, fleeing persecution and communism in eastern Europe. He instilled in me a very basic lesson early in life: There is no such thing as a free lunch, that everything has a cost and that eventually all bills come due.

That is also true about government spending and borrowing massive amounts of money. If the government injects billions of dollars into the economy without producing more of what that money buys, it will not make Canadians any richer or any better off; it will simply devalue the Canadian dollar and by extension make the same goods more expensive than they were before. That is why, over the last decade of the Liberal government, we have experienced the highest levels of inflation in 30 years, at a time when the majority of Canadians identify the cost of living as the single most pressing concern in the country.

At a time when Canadians identify the rising price of goods and homes as their most important issue, the government has introduced a massive budget deficit that will make that exact problem even worse. Because assets like homes and stocks tend to experience a corresponding increase in value along with inflation, inflating the money supply always ends up hurting most the people with less, especially younger Canadians. It is truly a regressive economic and social policy that prioritizes political short-sightedness over long-term economic strength and generational equity.

Of course, our Prime Minister claims that he is not spending more money and that nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead, he is investing; he is building Canada strong. The truth is that a deficit is a deficit, and government debt is government debt. All the money that is borrowed in tax goes into one giant pot and then is spent on a variety of government priorities. Creditors do not care if we borrowed the money in order to build a road, to pay teachers or to buy new submarines. It all costs interest. It all erodes our fiscal capacity as a country, and it is all being passed on to the next generation to pay for.

Here is the kicker. The new Prime Minister, the fiscal hawk, the central banker, is planning to borrow more than double what Justin Trudeau was planning: $321 billion over the next five years.

Many people probably know me from my last five or six years of making political documentaries or other short films, but before that I worked with a group called the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. My role at the CTF was to organize and tour its giant debt clock, which showed how much debt governments in Canada had racked up and how fast that number was ticking up, to university campuses right across this country, to wake up the next generation whose future was being mortgaged by a cabal of politicians either too blind or too self-serving to recognize and admit a truth that only numbers can truly tell: that this country was and is on the path to insolvency and that we are leaving young Canadians with the bill.

It is for this reason more than any other that, as a Conservative, I will be opposing this budget, a budget that spends and borrows on the backs of those who in the last election did not have a vote and did not have a say.

This brings to mind a very Canadian thing that used to happen, and I suppose still sometimes happens, at Tim Hortons drive-throughs right across this country, where people would pay it forward. Someone would drive up to the window, only to find out that an anonymous stranger in the car in front of them had paid for their coffee and their doughnut. It was always a pleasant surprise.

For future generations, the government's budget is the exact opposite. It is like someone's driving up to the window with $5 in hand to cover their double-double and Boston cream, only to find out that the guy in front of them had not paid his bill and that now they are on the hook for not only their own meal but for his as well. That is government debt. It is unethical, it is unfair, and it is something I hope all parliamentarians will join me in fighting and voting against.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, to start, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Kitchener South—Hespeler.

I am pleased to rise, once again, to speak to the budget. It is nice to actually see the budget finally here after a 19-month delay. That is almost unprecedented, but of course we saw the Liberals refuse to actually table a budget one year during COVID, so I guess they are just keeping to their habits. Has the 19-month wait been worth it? The answer is clearly no.

First of all, I have to note just how crass and cynical the government is to actually name the budget after the Liberal campaign platform “Canada Strong”. I think the government wants to be non-partisan. It should maybe find its own slogan.

In my view, the government always manages to set low expectations, and it always manages to achieve them. On September 17, the Prime Minister, in the House, stated, “We are going to have a declining level of debt.” Those were his exact words.

What did the budget deliver? On the top line is a deficit of $78.3 billion for this year, which is $40 billion more than delivered last year. Public accounts just came out showing a deficit last year of $36.3 billion. What is remarkable is that it is actually lower than what was forecast under the Trudeau government. Under the current government, not so much. The famed banker is delivering worse results than the drama teacher. Let that sink in.

There is $322 billion of new debt on the short time horizon of this budget, out to 2030, with $160 billion more than projected in the fall economic statement under the previous government. This is the same government that the former finance minister quit due to the costly spending and the need, as she said, to keep the powder dry. She quit over a lower deficit and debt numbers to keep the powder dry, but this government came through and steamrolled over that with $168 billion on top.

We have to ask, how much worse does it have to be to end up with deficit numbers that are 200% worse than those of the famed Trudeau government? It was famous, of course, for its profligate spending patterns. That happened despite an increase in tax revenue of over 97% over the time span of the current government.

Tax revenues are doubling, yet somehow the government is still managing to spend every penny of that and almost a third of $1 trillion more. There will be $329 billion of interest on this Liberal debt over the next five years. That is almost a third of $1 trillion gone to interest. That is 10% more that we are going to spend on interest than on health care transfers to the province, despite record lineups and record wait-lists for care at hospitals. People cannot find a doctor, but under the government, we are spending 10% more on interest than we are on health care transfers. That is 100% more than we are actually spending on the child benefit.

The government is placing a higher priority on spending and on paying interest to Bay Street bankers than on providing money to families, 100% more. It is more than we are going to spend on new subs, the over-budget frigate program, which is about $80 billion over budget, and F-35s. We are still going to spend more on interest than all those needed items on defence.

To put it further into perspective, the GST is forecasted in 2029 to be $62.7 billion, which is from what is collected each time someone goes out to buy a bag of chips, as I like to do because I am addicted to chips, or go to a restaurant, buy beer or buy a new car. There will be $62.7 billion to be collected in GST, but the interest in 2029-30, at the end of this budget, is projected to be $76.1 billion. The GST would have to increase by 20% just to pay the interest, not to pay for any health care, border security, RCMP or defence. That is just to cover the interest on the Liberal debt. In 2029-30, that will mean that 13%, or almost $1 out of every $7, of what is collected by the government, as taxpayers will be paying not only the GST but also income tax and corporate tax, will be for just the interest.

I think about how, if we were running a business like that, before we even opened the doors, 13% of the income would just be wiped out before we would provide any services. That is the Liberal record, and that is what this budget is calling for.

What would Canadians get for all this spending? What would they get for $76 billion of interest payments? What would they get with a third of $1 trillion more in spending? They would get an average growth over the next five years of 1.26% GDP growth. It would be a third of $1 trillion in added debt just for 1.26% growth. The OECD predicts Canada will have the lowest per person growth for its economy from 2020 to 2030 and then from 2030 to 2060, so basically out to 2060.

I mention the 2020 to 2030 part as well because 2020 is about the time the current Prime Minister started advising the Liberal government as a financial adviser. It would be billions and billions of added debt sinking the next generation with interest payments and debt for 1.26% growth and the slowest growth of economy per capita in the OECD.

What else has all this spending gotten us? We have the highest consumer debt per person in the G7. It is 80% higher per person than in the U.S. There are two million Canadians every month at a food bank. That is a result of the Liberal government. With all this spending, it has achieved two million people a month at food banks. We have a rise in urban violent crime in 19 out of 20 of our largest cities, the most unaffordable housing-to-income index in the G7 and a bloated bureaucracy that failed to achieve 47% of its goals last year.

Hidden on the same day the budget came out were the departmental results, where the Treasury Board puts out what the government projected for its plans and goals and what it achieved. The government failed on 47% of its goals. There are tens of thousands more employees in the bureaucracy, and over $70 billion spent, and it failed on 47% of its goals.

We have youth unemployment of 14.1%, and I want to quote from the budget. This is from the Liberals' own budget: “The unemployment rate is projected to remain elevated over the forecast horizon”. The forecast horizon in the budget goes out five years. The government is saying that, despite all its rhetoric, unemployment is going to remain elevated for the next five years. We have record spending and record debt, and in return we get little growth, little help for unemployment and little help for housing.

What would help would be to approve a pipeline. It is a 400-page budget, and the word “pipeline” is mentioned once, hidden in a bit about carbon capture. The best way this country can improve revenues, improve wealth and improve our productivity is to approve a pipeline.

The omnibus budget has about 75 legislative items it needs to change. There is nothing in there about repealing Bill C-48, the Canadian tanker ban off the B.C. coast. We allow American tankers, but not Alberta oil. There is no repeal of Bill C-69. There is no repeal of the production cap. There is no growth. Instead, we get another bureaucracy for major projects.

To finish, I just want to quote from Trevor Tombe, the famous economist. He says that this budget has a big gap between rhetoric and reality. He says, “Canada would benefit from a credible and sustainable fiscal strategy. Unfortunately, this platform takes us further from that goal.”

This budget would be bad for Canada, and that is why I will not be supporting it.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, my neighbour from Edmonton Northwest or, as I call it, West Edmonton Mall northwest, had an excellent speech and brought up a lot of points.

This budget is an omnibus budget, just like other Liberal budgets, despite Liberal promises to not have omnibus legislation. It contains probably dozens of required legislative changes, but none of those will cover the important things for Alberta, such as repealing Bill C-48, the tanker ban, or Bill C-69, the no new pipelines bill. In fact, it does not commit to repealing the emissions and production cap either.

I wonder if my colleague could opine on what this means for Alberta, that the government still insists on keeping Bill C-48, Bill C-69 and the emissions cap.