Perfect.
Through some negotiations, Mr. Chair, I have put in an offer that I think is pretty fair and reasonable. We'll see where that goes with Mr. Beech, whom I do respect tremendously. He is looking handsome today.
I would like to say something else here. It's for the benefit of the people in the room. I apologize to the hundreds of millions of viewers who are currently tuning in on CPAC to watch this right now. My team was generous enough to go and get “smile cookies”. I suggest that everyone go and buy smile cookies. I am giving out these smile cookies and donuts. As I said to Mr. Beech in my difficult negotiation with him, my only condition was that the staff has to eat first. Other than that, we were good.
Solidarity, Daniel Blaikie, if you're online.
That's just a little levity to start. As I said, I'm hoping that Mr. Beech will have some good news for us. Until then, I'm happy to talk about the budget and budget implementation act.
The BIA is a tremendously complicated and large piece of legislation. Of course, we just concluded a meeting today, one of many meetings, where we had no less than 48 government officials. That's 48 experts in various areas. This was with respect to one part of the BIA. It's absolutely incredible and mind-boggling. I believe it's absolutely critical that we have a lengthy discussion.
The Bloc Québécois spoke very intelligently about the bill, with Mr. Ste‑Marie saying that we could easily spend a hundred or so hours discussing it. I think that's a very smart thing to say.
This budget will have long-ranging impacts. Everything from health transfers to the Transportation Act to even the royal family is included in this bill. This omnibus bill requires in-depth consultation.
In particular, it's of critical importance to today's economy. We are at a tipping point here in the Canadian economy. After eight years, we're dealing with a huge deficit and debt, and perhaps a negative GDP per capita number, which is extremely troubling. The deputy leader and Minister of Finance was somewhat disingenuous in the House when she said that we had a 2.5% GDP growth rate in the first quarter of the year. That part is true, but she left out that the vast majority of that growth was in January. March was actually in decline. We are technically in an economy of decline. It's her own budget that forecasts a recession in the latter half of this year.
We need to be signalling to our domestic market and to international markets around the world that Canada is open for business and that we are actively seeking and engaging in capital, not just sweetheart deals for Liberal insiders. We're open to all the entrepreneurs and business owners across our great land who want to make investments, who want to grow their businesses, who want to hire people and who want to increase the prosperity of this great country.
Quite frankly, we are not making that well known domestically or internationally. We should be known as the best place to do business in the world, especially given that we have strong institutions and great people here in our country. However, we continue to create roadblocks in our own way, whether it be through overtaxation, over-regulation or the long arm of government reaching into what business owners are attempting to do. We need to be clear, and we need to be forthright with Canadians as well.
As I said, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance took umbrage with my comments describing the GST rebate as “cheap marketing”. Well, I'm sorry, but that's what the name is. In fact, if she wishes to check Hansard, the officials agreed with me that there was no reason to call this GST rebate a grocery rebate other than for a marketing purpose or for advertising so she could go across the country and say, “Yay. We have this great grocery rebate.”
It actually caused some confusion, I might add, in my constituency. I'm sure I'm not the only one who fielded calls about how to use this grocery rebate, how it worked and whether it worked like food stamps in the United States. Not only was it without substance and without reason to call it a grocery rebate and not a GST rebate, but it actually had a negative impact on Canadians, because it confused some Canadians, including people in Northumberland—Peterborough South, the best riding in all the world.
I guess she took umbrage with that. I think clarity in marketing isn't something that should just apply in the private sector; it should apply to the government as well. When the government does something like calling a GST rebate anything but a GST rebate, they in effect create confusion, and it just creates deception in the media. If a private sector actor did that, I would think the government would come after them for being disingenuous and for not being open and transparent.
We've come a long way since this government said they were “open by default”. It's been a struggle and a challenge since then. This government said that it was “sunny ways” and that they would be “open by default”. Now we've gotten to the point where we're calling GST rebates grocery rebates for no other reason than just to sell the Liberal brand, which, granted, has taken some significant hits over the last eight years. We're facing declining GDP, exploding debt and exploding deficit. We've just gone through that and continue to be ravaged by the impacts of high inflation.
I'm thinking that maybe, once again, I'm holding the puck too long for my colleagues. They might want to discuss this, but I guess I'll just carry on for a little longer here, Mr. Chair, if you don't mind.
Maybe my colleague would like to say something.