Thanks, Chair.
I just want to address some of the comments that were made.
It is clearly written in here that we want these witnesses' testimonies as part of the study we have on the impact of inflation and interest rates, because none of these people, I believe, have testified or been a witness for that study yet.
To address the comments about what academics are saying, I think it's time to stop listening to academics and start listening to Canadians. You can talk to any Canadian today, and they're feeling more pain than they've ever felt before.
We all know that 40% of the pandemic spending had nothing to do with COVID at all. We know this government tried to reward some of its friends—Liberal-connected insiders and consultants. The WE Charity scandal happened during the pandemic. There were all of these things.
This government continues to not fight to have inflation come down, but to fight what the Governor of the Bank of Canada is trying to do by increasing interest rates and lowering inflation. This is something the governor said. This government's fiscal policy is working in the exact opposite direction of what he's trying to do to get inflation down.
The Liberals seem to think that Canadians have never had it so good. There are two million Canadians at a food bank in a single month. It's not a good sign for this country. I would argue that there are more and more people leaving Canada. More than 400,000 people have left this country because of the cost of living. That's the number one issue for why most newcomers are thinking about leaving.
Given that all of this is happening, this government still wants to hike the carbon tax by 23%. It still wants to do that. Common-sense Conservatives will continue to tell this government to axe the tax and spike the hike it wants, which will raise the cost of gas, groceries and home heating.
Once again, 70% of Canadians know that it's not working. That's why they reject this carbon tax scam. Canadians don't get more back in these phony rebates than what they have to pay into it. We know that. Emissions have not come down. This is more pain, and there's no environmental gain in it.
We know that 70% of premiers are against the carbon tax. Even a Liberal premier spoke up and said to spike the hike on April 1.
This is all contributing to the pain, and interest rates are staying higher for longer because the government continues to spend. We already know they're probably going to miss the deficit targets again—this is according to Desjardins—which means more debt, and inflation and interest rates will stay higher. More and more Canadians will be at risk not just of being delinquent on their credit card payments and their mortgages, but of losing their homes, because Canadians are the most at risk in the G7 for a mortgage default crisis.
I think this is a very important study. This is all new information that needs to be included in the study on inflation and interest rates.
Thank you, Chair.