Mr. Speaker, never has a government spent so much to achieve so little.
It is unfortunate that I rise today to speak to the recklessness of the Liberal government, the spending, the wasting and the deceit. We are looking to end that today.
Canadians have been waiting for the government to tell us when it will balance the budget. I will echo what my colleagues said in saying that in 42 days, if the Liberals are telling the truth, or were to tell the truth, we will be in a balanced budget in this country.
Canada's Conservatives have been asking very clearly when the budget will be balanced. We have asked that question not just today, but over 400 times throughout the course of successive committees throughout the House of Commons and during question period.
It is not the most difficult question in the world. It is a simple one. For the sake of Canadians, for the sake of seniors, for the sake of young people in this country, when exactly will the budget be balanced? The government for some reason seems to feel that answering these types of questions is like climbing Mount Everest.
We have heard from Finance Canada that it could take up to 2045 to see the budget balanced again and that the debt servicing cost will be $40 billion by 2023. Think about that: $40 billion just in debt servicing costs alone. Who makes that money? Bondholders, debt holders, those people with money who lend money to the government make that money.
This is the scariest aspect of not answering this question: my 14-year-old son will be 40 years old by the time the budget is balanced according to Finance Canada. Imagine the burden that will be placed on him and every other single young person in this country. Twenty-five years of deficits will be on him, his family and his grandchildren. How difficult will that make it for him to buy a family home, to buy a new car, to save for retirement or even put a few dollars away for his child's education? It is alarming.
All we want to know is whether Finance Canada is wrong. Will the budget be balanced by 2045?
I would like to think that the Liberals will stand up and do the right thing and balance the budget but it is hard when the finance minister cannot even say the words "balanced budget". Is it because he does not want to be backed into a corner? Are those words not in his talking points? Or is it because he is riddled with guilt over what he and his government are doing to this country and to my children and tomorrow's Canadians? I would be willing to say that it is very likely all of the above.
We also see billions of Canadians' hard-earned tax dollars being given overseas. A November 8 article in The Globe and Mail said that “aid money [in Afghanistan] has gone to build medical clinics without electricity or water, schools without children and buildings that literally melted away in the rain. Also, corrupt local officials who were in charge of paying workers with some of the funds created what the audits called 'ghost workers,' civilian bureaucrats, police and soldiers who did not exist, then kept or diverted money recorded as being paid to them." Where is the accountability in that? That is hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
Another example of our money setting sail overseas is the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. By bringing Canada into the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Liberals plan to send hundreds of millions of Canadian taxpayers' dollars to foreign billionaires with no control over how that money will be spent or whether Canadian companies will benefit at all.
When will the budget be balanced?
When the previous Conservative government could not ensure that this money would be spent in the right way, or that the bank would follow environmental, social and human rights standards, we joined the U.S. and Japan and said no. The previous government was not willing to gamble the hard-earned money of Canadians in Asia in this way. Maybe the Prime Minister should take Kenny Rogers' advice and that is to know when to hold them and know when to fold them in this case.
We can also look at the proposed Canada infrastructure bank. Who pays when a project goes south? It is not going to be the investors who are taking the risk. Hard-working Canadians are going to act as a backstop to anything that may go south.
I have received many letters from businesses around my riding of Barrie-lnnisfil and one thing was clear: small businesses in my riding are feeling taken by the Liberal government. The government sees small business simply as a tax grab to pay for three years of out-of-control spending.
The government has spoken about all of the programs that it has instituted, structural deficit programs. Over the course of the last week, when I was back in my riding, I spoke to seniors, families and students who are feeling none of the positive impacts that the government says those structurally deficit programs are supposed to do.
These businesses have been hit. Many businesses have been hit and will be hit with the Liberal job-killing carbon tax, increased CPP and EI premiums, increased personal income tax rates for entrepreneurs, and changes to the small business tax rate that will disqualify thousands of local businesses.
Can the House see what I am getting at? For three years, the government has squandered, entered into bad deals and just plain messed up managing Canadians' money. It has failed at every aspect of that. Now, the Liberals have to go after entrepreneurs to make up the lost fiscal ground. How shameful is that?
Most of my hon. colleagues would agree that as parliamentarians, we must be honest. We must be accountable with Canadian taxpayers. With all that the government has done wrong and all of the cover-ups, it should at least do one thing right, not tell us where, what, why or how, we will worry about that later, but when.
When will the budget be balanced? I am sure that the hon. Minister of Finance will be more than happy to answer this question, so that we get off his back about it and he can get back to the work of balancing the budget in just 42 days. I take us back to that time that the Prime Minister, again, during the last campaign, said that the budget would be balanced by 2019.
Now we are hearing that it will not happen until 2045. Why? When will the budget be balanced?
As I stand here today, and I urge all members on all sides to stand with us and the almost 37 million Canadians and demand that the government say when it plans to balance the budget. As many of my hon. colleagues have said, only so much can be charged on a credit card before the limit is hit and it has to be paid back. Let us not hit that limit. Let us stop here, before our grandchildren are hit with the interest and over-limit fees.
For those of us who have lived in Ontario, we have seen the impact and the effect of structural deficits over the course of the last 15 years of the Wynne-McGuinty government. In fact, the third-highest department, if it was to be measured as a department, would be the amount of debt that Ontario residents have to pay in order to serve the debt, the largest sub-sovereign national indebted nation in the world.
Today's debt and deficits equal tomorrow's tax increases or service cuts. We cannot do that to our children. Yes, we can make investments, but those investments have to be measured and they have to be calculated against at the cost to our children and to future generations. That is why, today, we are spending the day asking a simple question, a question that has been asked hundreds of times. When will the budget be balanced?
As we head into Wednesday's economic statement, I do not think it is unfair of Canadians, through their parliamentarians, to be asking the government to ask the finance minister that very simple question. As I will remind everyone, when the Prime Minister campaigned in 2015, he campaigned on small deficits, he admitted that, and he also said that we would return to a balanced budget in 2019.
We are asking the government to tell Canadians, to be honest with them, to be forthright with them. We are asking the finance minister and the Prime Minister: when will the budget be balanced? It is a simple question that we expect an answer to.