The Liberal omnibus budget implementation bill is quite the tome, coming in at 556 pages. One can only begin to imagine the multitude of changes it would impose on Canadians. For a party that decried omnibus bills, it really did not take long for the Liberals to break another one of their campaign promises.
To put the length of this legislation into perspective, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Handmaid's Tale were all written with fewer pages. While one can only begin to wonder what genre the Liberal budget implementation bill would fall under, I can assure Canadians that its negative implications for the pocketbooks of hard-working families all across the country and its impact on our economy would be very real.
Throughout the proposed legislation, there are numerous measures that would hike taxes and impose new taxes, and it still does not provide any meaningful plan to get spending under control. Only the Liberals could do a spending review and find no savings. I would even argue that it probably cost the taxpayers more money for the government to set up its internal spending review than what it would end up saving.
Now, after three years of the Liberals in power, Canadians have a deep understanding of the consequences of the Liberal decisions. Outside private investment has plummeted. Taxes are higher. There are deficits as far as the eye can see, and the Liberals still do not have a comprehensive plan to justify their spendthrift ways.
At a macro level, spending has grown at a furious pace. The Liberals have increased spending at a rate of roughly 6.5% to 7% per year. That means they have increased spending by 20% in the last three years.
While some of the new spending measures are welcome, we have to question where all the money is going. According to the PBO, the Liberals' infrastructure spending has contributed only 0.1% of GDP growth. We also know that a quarter of their infrastructure funding has lapsed and is not getting out the door. Worst of all, the PBO said that the Liberals do not even have a plan when it comes to infrastructure investments. How they plan on spending billions of dollars with no plan boggles the mind. Perhaps that is indicative of many other underlying problems that the government has created for itself these past few months.
The issue of everlasting deficits really does not bother my hon. Liberal colleagues across the way, and I have yet to hear a single Liberal MP openly question the finance minister as to why he failed to keep the Liberals' promise to return to balanced budgets by 2019. As noted, the deficit has gone from an election promise of $6 billion for this year to the government's broken promise of $18 billion, to be levelled at $22 billion today, according to the PBO. As interest rates rise, and they have for the last three budgetary quarters, this out-of-control spending becomes even more irresponsible.
The real question, though, is about future governments, in this case future Conservative governments, which will have to deal with the fiscal mess that is being passed down to all Canadians, and particularly to our young Canadians. Let us never forget that today's deficits are tomorrow's taxes. Money does not grow on trees. It does not magically appear out of thin air. Budgets, contrary to what the Prime Minister says, do not balance themselves.
As I have said before, the Liberals have provided zero rationale for why they need to rack up the credit—