Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-14. This is a baby budget or the fiscal update. It is not a full budget. We are in unprecedented times in that the country has been without a budget for almost 1,000 days, maybe more now.
The government will tell us that we are in unprecedented times, given COVID, and that is true. Nonetheless, during the Second World War, we still managed to have budgets and we still managed to have this place operate, holding the government to account, to give a reference for where all the money was being spent.
Bill C-14 would raise the debt ceiling. We are now a country with over a trillion dollars of debt, and the government is running out of room to take on more debt. The government has to come to Parliament and ask it to authorize a larger debt.
It is very interesting that there is no projection about where the debt is going. We are over a trillion dollars already. It is anticipated that the deficit will continue, that we are spending way more money than we are taking in as a country. It is anticipated that over the next number of years that deficit will continue.
What is fascinating about the request to raise the debt ceiling is that even given the exorbitantly high, unprecedented debt that we are taking on today, and the deficit that we have this year, and last year, given the trends, one would expect that once we get used to living with COVID and we get our economy opened up again that this deficit would start to go down over time. Three to five years out, we would expect that we would be reducing our deficit, not our debt, but our deficit. The debt cap that the Liberals are asking for is several hundreds of billions of dollars more than what is projected out, say, five years, and that is interesting.
Why do the Liberals need a slush fund? Why are the Liberals asking for much more room in the debt ceiling than they need? That is the big question I have with Bill C-14.
The Liberals always say that they are taking care of Canadians by spending all this money. That is true; they are spending a lot of money. However, the question is this. Are we getting a Rolls Royce for all that money or are we getting a K-car? If they are spending a lot of money and getting nothing in return, then they are wasting money. If they are spending a lot of money but getting more value than that money being spent, good on them. That is what we want to see.
The trouble is that we have spent billions and billions of dollars and we have seen no economy reopening. No vaccines are showing up. Thousands of businesses across the country are going bankrupt. There is no end in sight.
We are seeing the largest debt and deficit in Canadian history, unprecedented debt levels, yet there is no end in sight as to when the COVID pandemic will come to an end.
I read in the newspaper this morning that the United States was vaccinating, per day, more people than Canada had vaccinated in its entirety.
We might hear people saying that they are doing their best. However, we do not even have a budget to compare that to. We do not have a projection. When people buy a new car, they look at the market, they look at what they need in a car, the options they want, the colour they want. Then they look at their bank account to see if they have enough money for that car or they have a little more money to get that screen in the car.
If they then find out that the car they want, say a nice Dodge Challenger, is $87,000 but then they go into the marketplace and find one for $65,000, which is a lot of money for a car, it is still $20,000 less than what they thought they would spend. Therefore, it is a good deal. However, if they spend $100,000 on their new Dodge Challenger and it turns out the car is in writeoff status and cannot be insured, then they have a problem. They have spent more money than they needed to and have a car that does not work.
When it comes to the vaccines, Canada is at the back of the line. Not only are we at the back of the line, we spent all this money, unprecedented levels of debt, and we are not even in the line. We are at the food bank. We spent the money and did not get anything.
I am not sure if members know this, but essentially all manufacturers of the vaccines take a percentage of the vaccines they produce and put it with a not-for-profit organization to help out the rest of the world that is unable to afford these vaccines, much the same way a food bank works. Folks who can will donate food to the food banks and those who cannot purchase food can go to that food bank. This way everybody gets food.
We are at a point in time where we have spent all our money, have received nothing and are now raiding the food bank, not because we do not have enough money but we have spent our money foolishly. Now we have to go to the food bank of vaccines to get vaccines.
Last, on vaccines, the government brags endlessly about the suite of vaccines it has bought. That is like telling everybody how many fire departments we have contracted to come fight a fire in our house. We tell our wives not to worry because we have contracted 75 fire departments, which will take fours hours to show up, when, in reality, only one fire department five minutes away would be helpful. By the time those fire departments show up the house will have burned down.
This is what we are talking about with this suite of vaccines about which the government keeps bragging. It is amazing how we have the largest suite, the largest portfolio of vaccines of any country in the world, which is really great. However, if they cannot be delivered in a timely manner, what is the point? When one's house in on fire, one needs the fire department there a minute ago, not four hours from now. It does not matter how many fire departments have been contracted to come to the rescue, if they are four hours away, the house has burned down before they show up.
We spent a lot of money and the government is asking us to raise the debt ceiling with no real rationale as to why it has to be as high as it is. I could see it if it were to match general projections, but why is it significantly higher than it needs to be? We have seen how we have raided the vaccine food bank when we are a wealthy country and have spent unprecedented amounts of money. We may have a Rolls Royce for all the money we spent, but it is a 1991, not a 2021. While 1991 may be the best year, I was looking for the 2021 edition of the Rolls Royce, not a K-car, not the 1991.
Last, there is no doubt that a large suite of vaccines is great, but a timely delivery of those vaccines is as important as how many vaccines we have and, in some cases, maybe more important.