Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to share my thoughts on budget 2023, which is at report stage.
This government, under this Prime Minister, who has turned out to be the biggest spender in history, has delivered a reckless, irresponsible and free-spending budget. It has upset the fiscal balance that Stephen Harper's Conservative government had managed to restore. Let us remember that in 2015, the Prime Minister, who was driving a backhoe, promised three small deficits before returning to a balanced budget in 2019. What happened? For eight years, this government has posted deficit after deficit, the biggest deficits ever seen in Canada.
In her fall economic statement in November, the Minister of Finance gave us a glimmer of hope. She said a small budget surplus would be recorded in 2027-28. I remind members that it is 2023. Just a few months later, in the budget we are now discussing, where is the return to a balanced budget? Poof. It has evaporated, it has flown away. It has disappeared into thin air. It has gone up in smoke.
I will give my colleagues some staggering figures that illustrate just how irresponsible this budget is and how spendthrift this government is. Since 2015, the national debt has risen from $650 billion to $1.3 trillion. It boggles the mind. Sadly, the Liberals have managed to double the debt in just eight years. If this Prime Minister were to be awarded a prize, it would be for the prime minister who has increased the debt by more than all the other Canadian prime ministers combined in 155 years.
We know that the Liberals will point out that there was a pandemic. We know that. However, our expectation was that this government would return to more sensible spending after the pandemic. It is incapable of that. The minister told us that hers was a prudent budget. On the contrary, this budget is written in very dark red ink, and we see no end to the deficits.
In 2008-09, the Harper government was forced to invest $60 billion to kickstart the economy after the 2008 crisis. We then managed to recover very quickly. Canada was the first of the G20 countries to recover from the economic downturn, which some compared to the 1930 crisis.
The minister told us that her budget was prudent; however, it is anything but. I am certain the government members will say we are too partisan. That is what they always say. However, I have a few quotes here from independent economic experts and commentators that confirm the opposite.
Gérald Fillion, from Radio-Canada, said the following:
So, where is the prudence and discipline that the Minister of Finance was talking about before publishing her budget? Even back in November, we knew that economic growth was going to be weak in 2023 and that interest rates had risen rapidly. Why add so much to deficits, debt and, consequently, public debt charges?
Public debt charges have doubled. They went from $24 billion to $48 billion. Imagine what we could do with $24 billion. My colleague mentioned health transfers earlier. This is money that was requested by all the Canadian provinces, but they were given virtually nothing.
Derek Holt, an economist with the Bank of Nova Scotia, said this:
Big spending, big deficits, big debt, high taxes, high inflation and bond market challenges are not the path to prosperity. [The Minister is] wrong to describe the budget as prudent, with overall program spending set to balloon to 51% above pre-pandemic levels by 2028.
Michel Girard, a leading economist with the Journal de Montréal, wrote an article with the headline “Ottawa is taking $102 billion more out of your pocket”. I will quote from the article:
$46.1 billion more in personal income tax
$35.4 billion more in corporate income tax
$14 billion more in GST
$2.8 billion more in other excise taxes and duties
With such a deluge of money into the federal coffers, one might have expected the Trudeau government to finally announce a return to balanced budgets.
The fact is, Canadian families are currently being heavily taxed by the government. This is to say nothing of the carbon tax and the second carbon tax that is right around the corner.
Michel Girard continues with the following:
Well, no. According to finance minister Chrystia Freeland's latest budget, the federal government will remain in the hole for the next five fiscal years.
This completely contradicts what the Minister of Finance had said a few months earlier. It is completely backwards.
Have the Prime Minister and his Minister of Finance read or heard these words? I do not believe they have. They continue to spend lavishly and to propose inflationary policies.
This is very unfortunate because the biggest losers in all this are Canadians who work hard and are seeing the fruits of their labour slip away more and more each day.
I have a company with 30 employees and we had to make a major salary adjustment in the past few months because of the rising inflation and interest rates. I have employees whose mortgage payments have gone up by $700 a month. Wages have not kept pace with inflation.
Inflation is at his highest level in 40 years, and the impact on food prices is dramatic. Here are a few examples: The price of butter is more than $8; a loaf of bread costs $5.50, compared to $1.50 four years ago; a pound of bacon costs $10.
A family of four, meaning two parents and two children, will spend $1,065 more on groceries this year alone. That is a lot. It is way too much. It also does not help when we add to that the price of gas, which is hovering around $1.80. Obviously, there is transportation. The Liberals are always telling us that the carbon tax does not affect Quebec, which is completely false. The food that is sent to us from across the country travels between the provinces. Obviously, there is trade happening. All of the items that need to be transported are subject to all of these taxes, which are inevitably inflationary.
Some parents have to skip meals so they can feed their children. The use of food banks has skyrocketed. In Canada, 1.5 million people are using food banks every month. That is a source of daily stress for families, and yet nothing stops this government's out-of-control spending, which is driving up the cost of everything.
That is not even to mention the cost of housing. Since this Prime Minister took office, the cost of housing has doubled. Just last year, the price of houses increased by 21% in the Quebec City area. That is unbelievable. Successive interest rate hikes have doubled the average mortgage payment, which is up to almost $3,000 a month. It is the same thing for rental units. It is not unusual to see ads for one-bedroom apartments that are renting for $2,000 a month.
As a result, young families are abandoning their dream of owning a home. I have been an MP for eight and a half years and, for the first time, young people are coming up to me and saying exactly what we have been saying for months. They are asking me how they can one day become homeowners. No one had ever talked to me about that before, but now that is their reality.
The list of negative effects and wrongs caused by this government's policies is too long to fit into a 10-minute speech. I am not even talking about the other problems caused by this government, such as violence, which is constantly on the rise, or the inadequate services to citizens.
Just think about last year's passport crisis. I have never seen anything like it in my life. The number of federal employees has increased by nearly 70,000 over the last eight years and we have never had such bad service. This is truly poor organization from this government.
I am not going to touch on the other problems. I am not going to talk about foreign interference, about everything that is going on at the moment or about our colleagues who have been spied on, and even threatened in some cases, by Beijing.
Canadians deserve a lot more and a lot better. They deserve a government that puts them first, that thinks about their paycheques, their homes, their families and, most importantly, their future. They deserve a government that recognizes the hard work they put in every day and that is not always trying to squeeze more out of their paycheques. They need a government that will bring back some common sense. They need a Conservative government.
I really look forward to the day when we are back in government. We will simply stop spending, and we will still have plenty of money to deliver all the programs people need.
