Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix.
I rise in the House today to speak to the Liberal government's proposed budget or, as I like to call it, the government's line of credit plan, which aims to withdraw a whopping $113 billion, using the future of hard-working Canadians as collateral.
Members probably realize that I am no big fan of the budget. I would like to take a few minutes to explain in detail the various problems in budget 2016, which is mislabelled as “Growing the Middle Class”.
For starters, it is clear the budget does not grow the middle class; it only grows the debt of the middle class. Why is that? It is because the budget is the Liberal's plan to run a projected $29.4 billion deficit this year alone. That is right, nearly $30 billion. That is $20 billion more than the Liberal's campaign promise of running, in the wise words of a certain hon. member of the House, “a teeny-tiny little deficit of $10 billion”.
The budget contains undisciplined spending, has no plan to balance the books, will fail to boost economic growth, and will raise taxes on families, individuals, and corporations. The Conservative Party of Canada does not stand for this, and neither do I.
The bottom line is that over the next five years, Canada will borrow $113 billion, with little to show for it except a raging debt hangover. That is $4,300 for every taxpaying Canadian. The only good thing about having so many Liberals on that side of the floor is that they will be on the hook for a larger percentage of this than our side.
The government is quickly becoming known as one that has misled Canadians on many election promises. These are promises that it obviously had no intention of keeping. It is not just the modest $10-billion deficit promise that the Liberal government has broken with the budget. It has broken its promise to return to a balanced budget within a term, and it has broken the promise to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio to below current levels in this term.
The Liberal government is selling the new budget as a plan to boost and grow the economy. Unfortunately, budget 2016 has zero plans to make this sales pitch a reality. I would like to point to the most infamous part of the budget, something that the Prime Minister himself tried to sell during the previous election: infrastructure.
The budget allocates $11.9 billion towards what the government calls infrastructure. Unfortunately, only a small minority, $3.4 billion, over 3 years no less, is allocated to improving transit systems across Canada, the hallmark infrastructure investment that the government promised in the recent election. That is $3.4 billion over three years across the entire country, to build subways, LRT lines, and expand and improve other modes of transportation. What a shame, especially when we consider that much of this funding had already been promised under our previous government. The cost of the proposed 32-kilometre expansion of the Toronto subway system, for example, rings in at $9 billion. Even if the government were to fund only one-third of the cost, not the half that it was promising, it would deplete nearly all of the funds allocated for public transit expansion infrastructure. The rest of the country would see virtually nothing for their transit systems.
Staying on the topic of infrastructure fairness for Canadians, it disappoints me to see the allocation of infrastructure spending across the country in budget 2016. My home province of Alberta is only set to receive $347 million for public transit expansion over the next two years, which is 10% of the amount of funds available. Yet, Alberta holds 12% of Canada's population, leaving Alberta underfunded 13% on a per capita basis. I shudder to think what would happen if we were not fortunate enough to have the Minister of Infrastructure himself in Alberta.
Meanwhile, Ontario is set to receive $1.5 billion for public transit expansion. That is 44% of the total funds available, yet it has 38% of the country's population. Quebec is to receive 27% of the funds, yet it holds just 23% of the population.
This means that Albertans will see significant delays in projects like the Edmonton LRT extension and the Calgary CTrain long-term extension, as federal funding for these projects will fall far short of the needed financing. Clearly, fairness is not of importance to the Liberal government. In fact, I brought up this exact point a couple of weeks ago, right after this very budget was tabled in the House.
The budget claims to extend employment insurance benefits to areas across the country that are facing economic hardship. However, the problem with the EI extension plan is that the Liberal government is omitting certain areas of the country that are being significantly impacted by an economic downturn. Take, for example, my hometown of Edmonton. It is a well known that the entire province of Alberta is currently facing a severe economic downturn, a slowdown made worse by the government's poisoned attitude towards pipelines.
As members know, the energy sector is what drives Alberta's economy and many other industries throughout the province. Construction, mechanics, tourism, housing, and the service industry all rely on the wealth and growth of the energy sector. They are industries that are under stress right now.
Yet, as the energy sector has largely slowed down, leading to thousands of layoffs in Alberta, the city of Edmonton has been excluded from this government's EI extension plan. Why? It is because the government says that the statistical unemployment rate in Edmonton capital region is too low for the government's standards. However, what the government does not seem to understand is that the Edmonton region employment sector is dominated by government employment, and this artificially lowers the region's unemployment number in comparison to other regions. While it is great to see that the unemployment rate in the Edmonton capital region is lower than the rest of Alberta, it does not mean that there are not thousands of laid-off employees in an area that has been hit hard by the collapse in the energy sector.
Our own Edmonton Liberal MPs have been missing in action when it comes to speaking up for unemployed people in Edmonton. Tellingly, the Liberal member for Edmonton Centre himself commented that Edmonton was snubbed because it has not felt the same dramatic jump in unemployment as other parts of Canada.
In April of 2015, unemployment in Edmonton was 5.8%. Today Edmonton's unemployment rate is 6.9%, which is a 19% jump in one year. Yet the Liberal government is waiting for a dramatic increase to happen before assisting laid-off Edmontonians. A 19% increase in unemployment in one year is the cold hard mathematics that the Prime Minister speaks of but does not seem to understand. However, what is not cold hard math is that these are real people who are suffering. They are not mere numbers but real people. I guess the Liberal mantra of “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” does not apply if one is from Edmonton or has the wrong postal code.
I wrote to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour about this issue, voicing the concerns of our constituents. While I hope the minister will take this into consideration, I also hope that the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister will take into consideration the grave consequences of the debt of this budget.
The fact remains that the Liberals are on a spending spree, with absolutely no plan for paying back the tens of billions of borrowed dollars. However, what is clear is that today's debt will have to be paid by tomorrow's taxpayers, which means our children, grandchildren, and their children will have to pay for the spending being proposed in this budget.
I, as a responsible individual, cannot in good conscience support a budget that does this. I cannot agree to indebting our children. It is unjust, unfair, and simply un-Canadian. We ought to be paving the way forward for the next generation, making life better for them, and not indebting them with billions upon billions of dollars of debt.
It is for these reasons that I will not be supporting this budget.