Mr. Speaker, you will forgive me if I cross the line. I have been away for a little while, in case you have not heard. However, I am back and I am a little frustrated.
It is an honour to stand in the House. It is always an honour, and I have a greater appreciation for the work done on all sides of the House. However, it has been frustrating for me to sit at home recuperating, and to watch and listen to the debate. Our colleagues across the way, the Liberals, stand up with their hand on their hearts and tell Canadians time and time again how they are seized with the issues of the day and they are the most important issues for them. Then they table budget 2018.
As always, I bring it back to my riding of Cariboo—Prince George and what this budget would mean to my riding. I will go back to July 31 when the Prime Minister and some of his cabinet ministers stood in my riding, in Williams Lake, before the cameras and said, “We will be there for the rebuild. We will be there for the challenges to come in the months to come, and this is a time for us to stand together and for the federal government to once again say we will there for Canadians in times of difficulty.”
Well, it is months past that date. As I toured my team through our riding last week, we met with family after family, business owner after business owner, logger, forester, farmer, tour operator, municipal councillors, and they are still waiting for that support.
Over the last year, we have seen flooding that happened just kilometres away from here and the unbelievable wildfires that happened in British Columbia. We are seeing some unprecedented natural disasters. However, when our leaders of the day stand up and say they will be there for us, I do not know about other members, but I take them at their word that they are going to do it.
The government has failed Canadians. It has failed rural Canadians. This budget 2018 does nothing for rural communities such as those in my riding of Cariboo—Prince George.
We have some trying times ahead of us with the increasing protectionist agenda of our closest trading partner to the south that we do most of our trade with. It is getting harder and harder for Canadian producers and businesses to plan ahead. It is getting harder for companies to invest in Canada, because we are sending the wrong messages. We are sending mixed signals. As a matter of fact, a CEO of Suncor recently said that things are too uncertain within Canada for them to further invest.
The government's job is not to necessarily weigh into our private lives, to tell us how we are going to do this or that, how the government can do it better for us, or what we should be doing better. Its job is to create an environment where all can be successful, where industry wants to invest in our country, where other countries look to us in high regard because of the way we set policy for our countrymen.
I have stood before this House time and again and said that it seems when the cameras are on, the Prime Minister and his ministers stand there with their hand on their hearts and pledge all the support in the world, that this is what they are going to do, that they are with us, and maybe even a little tear comes out. However, when the cameras are off, they are nowhere to be seen.
Forgive me, as this has nothing to do with budget 2018. However, while I was gone, I was tagged in a social media post. It has been two years since the Prime Minister stood in this House and pledged to the chief of Attawapiskat, Bruce Shisheesh, that he would be there for them, with them, and would visit that community when they were having a terrible suicide epidemic. Guess what? As soon as the media left, did the Prime Minister go there or attend? Has he gone there to this point? No, he has not. If it does not garner a lot of attention, why should he be there?
That is like budget 2018. There is a lot of fluff in there, not a lot of meat. As a matter of fact, the Prime Minister is spending today like we are in a crisis. There is no thought about what happens “if”. When the Liberals were campaigning, they said they would post a deficit of about $10 billion. When they tabled budget 2018 a couple of weeks ago, it was $18 billion, with no plan to get us back to a balanced budget. I do not even know how many times we have asked. Our critics on this side, shadow ministers in the opposition, have asked time and time again, and there is no plan.
For somebody who campaigned and said they were ready to lead, all we see is pointing fingers and assigning blame to everyone else. Do not get me started on the international faux pas we have seen on the international stage. I promised myself I would not bring that up. It has been hard, as one can imagine. It has been hard sitting at home and yelling at the TV. As I told my physician, if I can yell at the TV, I can yell across the way. However, it has been difficult.
I visited the riding last week, and there was a lot of despair. Whether it is that there is no softwood lumber agreement or the new tariffs that have come in, there is a lot of concern. We have lost much of our fibre in terms of our annual allowable cut and the harvestable fibre in our neck of the woods. Our farmers are having a difficult time. We hear our colleagues talk about there being no rail cars to move grain to market. Well, there are no cars available for our forestry producers to get their product to market.
In this budget 2018, if the Liberals wanted to do something transformative, why did they not invest in something like our rail system? Why do they not make investments that can have meaningful change and set Canada up to realize some huge potential, whether it is policy or investments? It is disappointing, but, again, this is what we have seen as par for the course. It is disappointing.
There are some great people on the other side, some really good people. I am looking, and I can see a few of them there today. However, I have said this before, and I think the Prime Minister is not only failing Canadians as a whole but failing the back four rows of this House on that side. They have to go back to their ridings and explain the things that this person in the front bench is doing. It is disappointing, it really is.
Mr. Speaker, I know my time is getting short, but I want to end with this. It truly is an honour to stand before you in this House. Once again, and I will probably say this time and time again, I want to thank you and all our colleagues for the support along the way. However, our Prime Minister is failing Canadians, and it is disappointing and unacceptable.