Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be rising during adjournment proceedings to follow up on a question I asked the Minister of Finance on February 4, specifically on his plan to raise taxes and raise additional revenue to pay for the exorbitant spending that the Government of Canada had embarked on for the last three and a half, almost four years. I have been told many times it is better to ask 10 times than to go astray once, which is a Yiddish proverb, and members know I am a great fan of Yiddish proverbs. Therefore, I will go back to the same well and ask the same question of the parliamentary secretary, which has to do with the series of spending mistakes we have seen by the government.
Originally, Canadians were promised in 2015 there would be a $1 billion surplus come 2019. We are on the cusp of a new federal budget being tabled tomorrow, although it might be delayed a little. Canadians, especially in my communities, want to know whether the budget will be balanced sometime in the near future. They have long realized that any promises made by a Liberal government are not promises it intends to keep, and a repetition is happening here. A series of policy mistakes has happened and has cost the government dearly. Because it costs the government dearly, it is costing Canadian taxpayers dearly.
One of the ones I want to highlight right now is the stress test introduced on first-time home buyers, introduced on new Canadians, introduced on anyone obtaining a mortgage as of 2018. We know that mortgage origination is down 20% by young people. It is a policy mistake introduced by the Government of Canada, imposed on young people and on first-time home buyers. We know that 50,000 Canadians were unable to purchase a home last year, and 50,000 Canadians were forced to refinance with their lender. They could not move to a new lender because of the decisions made by the Government of Canada.
These types of policy mistakes accumulate, policy mistakes like enforcing and forcing a carbon tax on provinces that do not want one. We have an Alberta provincial election coming very soon where we fully expect the current government to be replaced by a common-sense government, a government looking to reduce the cost of living on Canadians, Albertans specifically, and it knows that just getting by is not enough. We want Canadians, and Albertans especially in my case, from my home province, to get ahead.
I am going to ask the parliamentary secretary again. What taxes is the government expecting to raise tomorrow in the new federal budget, when will the budget balance itself and how much more debt can we expect the government to burden future generations of Canadians with?