Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak on the motion from the member for Carleton today with respect to the Liberal government's failure to balance the budget, which asks that it commit to balancing the budget and to not raising new taxes.
I want to look at the promise made by the Prime Minister in 2015. He said that the budget would balance itself. Members probably think that is hilarious. People laughed about it. However, I think he was being serious. Why? It is because this is a Prime Minister who has never had to balance a household budget himself, so of course budgets just balance themselves.
If only the rest of us could take advantage of such logic. When I go home this Friday and my wife tells me to make sure I go out and shovel the walk, I could just sit and say that the walk will shovel itself. If I ask my kids to clean up their room, they could look back and say that the room will clean itself. Unfortunately, in reality, the budget does not balance itself.
What are the consequences of the unbalanced budget and the massive runaway deficits? I want to quote from Kevin Page, the former Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is now with the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy. He stated, “As a result, the current federal deficits are entirely structural in nature.”
They're not needed to address the economy and they haven't been used for infrastructure or for the Liberals' fake housing initiative.
An entirely structural nature means there was no business cycle justification for running these deficits. This points to higher inflation and higher interest rates that would not have happened otherwise.
Higher interest rates are going to punish Canadians. Finance Canada itself said that younger middle-class Canadians will be hurt most by the rising interest rates.
Again and again the current government states it is for the middle class, yet its actions show the exact opposite. The government needs to commit to balancing the budget and not raising taxes.