Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time today.
Centuries ago, when a community was facing a terrible plague, a man showed up wearing a coat of many colours. He claimed to be able get rid of the rats that were responsible for the plague. The town folks decided to take him up on his offer. Just as the plague was ending, the pied piper, having changed outfits, I guess he was a big fan of costumes, was now sporting a bright red hat. He lured the children out of the town, and they were never seen or heard from again.
It is a tragic story, but there are some parallels to what is going on in our country. I am quite concerned about this budget and what it means for the futures of the children out there.
I was born in the seventies and went to school at the University of Saskatchewan, starting in 1996. Some of the lessons from my university days and living in Saskatchewan are telling, and some are lessons we learned in the eighties and nineties about problems with governments living beyond their means and what comes next.
I believe what comes next is going to be a repeat of the nineties. We know interest rates are going to go up, and what that will do is pressure federal governments to make changes. In the nineties, the Liberals slashed transfer payments to the provinces, and the provinces downloaded those cuts onto institutions such as the University of Saskatchewan, where I was going to school in the late nineties.
I felt what those cuts did to the facilities. There were cuts to my education and cuts to health care in our province, and it was all because of governments living beyond their means when interest rates were low. As soon as they started moving and the crunch happened, the credit card bill came due.
That Liberal government cut transfer payments. The provincial government in my province of Saskatchewan made cuts to the University of Saskatchewan, where I was going to school. One example that really sticks in my mind concerning the cuts to transfers is that the facilities at the university I was attending were falling down. In the frugal nature of Saskatchewan, we made due with what we could to provide.
I vividly remember writing a final in the gym. It was not really a gym, it was actually a World War II hangar that was moved on to campus. However, it was not just one War World II hangar. The university took another one and stacked the two on top of each other. That is where I was writing a final one morning, and later that day, the building was condemned. It was ready to fall down. It was because of the cuts the federal government made. The credit card bill was due.
Unfortunately, the Liberals have not learned from these tough lessons. More and more Canadians are waking up to the fact that, once interest rates start moving up, we know what will happen because of the fiscal reality of our country and also becasue what the Liberals have done with printing money.
There are numerous countries and societies that thought it would be a good idea to print money to pay bills, but unfortunately we know how that ends for governments, and it is probably worst off for citizens. It is going to cause inflation. Inflation is going to be at a runaway pace with the current plan of the Liberals, which will result in interest rate changes. Interest will go up, which will unfortunately force future governments to make the decision, similar to the nineties and the Liberals, to cut transfers to the provinces, cut services and raise taxes.
That is why I cannot support this budget. This budget contains a lot of new spending and a lot of structural spending, which is going to force us into a worse structural deficit. I am the shadow minister of families, children and social development, and the government day care program falls within my duties. I am very concerned about the direction it will take us fiscally.
Different projections show that by 2026 we are going to be spending $8.3 billion on child care, if this fantasy the Liberals are once again telling comes together. They have been telling this story for the last 30 years.
In 2026, even with interest rates as they are currently, we are going to be paying $39 billion to service the debt. What kind of future are we giving children who apparently are going to be paying for this government's day care program? The problem with what the Liberals are proposing I think is worse because it limits a family's choice. We should be trusting families to make the choices that are right for them. We should be empowering parents and sending them supports to make those decisions, be it for regulated day care, a relative who helps out or someone else who helps with their children. I am very concerned that this program will never get off the ground.
The problem with this budget is there is not a thin nickel going to the provinces in transfers directly for health care. Provinces right now are on their knees. Not one province is in surplus. If a province was going to spend an extra dollar to take care of its responsibilities, as this is a provincial responsibility, it would not spend on child care right now. Because we are in the middle of a pandemic, it would go to health care, and rightfully so. No province is going to be willing to forgo providing the health care we need in order to start a national program with the federal Liberals. I find it very difficult to believe, and this is why it has not gotten off the ground in the 30-some years that the Liberals have been promising this fantasy.
On a positive note, I would like to highlight the spending on the VIDO centre in Saskatoon. It took me 12 months of lobbying to get these dollars finally flowing. This facility was the first to isolate COVID-19 in the world. It has world-leading scientists working on these problems. It had to wait for the budget consultation and 12 months to get its funding, which is wrong.
There are a lot of things wrong with this budget. There are supports that Conservatives supported to make sure we get through the pandemic. We should be there for people who are not able to provide for their families because of government restrictions on their ability to work. We have supported those short-term relief programs. However, the structural deficit this creates, which we were already in before the pandemic, is going to result in a future for our children that is a lot darker than ours. I have issues with spending future generations' wealth today and what that results in. We talk about fiscal pressures that are going to exist with inflation. What is the Liberal government going to cut when the structural deficit credit card bill comes due? This is not a way to operate a country, and I hope that more Canadians are waking up to this pied piper dream. It will result in a darker future for our country and our future generations.
I wish this budget was based more in reality. The fact is that the fiscal capacity for our country is going to be shaken, just as in the 1990s, and I am fearful of what is going to be cut when the credit card bill comes due. Canadians are counting on us. We should be there during the pandemic for relief programs in the short term, but we have to get back to balance.
Circling back once more to the children's story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, at the tail end of the play, he wanted to take the town's gold or its children. It is important not to see too many parallels with today. For one thing, we should remember that the pied piper actually did a good job of ending the pandemic and, for that matter, what he really wanted was to steal either the town's gold or its children's future, but not both at the same time.