Madam Speaker, I thought it was my children calling, worried about the debt they are going to have to pay off in a few years as a result of the profligate spending of the current government.
As I was saying, Conservatives emphasize the importance of moving toward a balanced budget. I do not agree with them, but I give the New Democrats credit for saying we should be spending more and increasing taxes. That is not an approach that is going to lead to long-term prosperity, but at least they sort of have understood at certain times that if they are going to spend more they have to pay for it somehow.
The Liberal government, uniquely in this place, takes the position that we could consistently spend more than we have: that, during good years, we can run what were historically considered large deficits of $30 billion; and then, during challenging circumstances, we can run astronomical deficits of 10 times that. Notably, this one Prime Minister has accumulated more debt during his time in office than all of the previous prime ministers had up until 2015. This is the great debt Prime Minister. That is his legacy to our children.
It is understandable that people in my riding are coming to me, asking, “What is the plan here, where is all this money coming from, and how are we ever going to get out from under this?” I tell them the reality is that the money we spend today, we are going to have to pay off. It is going to lead to higher taxes, lower social spending or both, in the future, or maybe the government's way of getting out of it is simply printing more money and leaving it to inflation. That too is a form of taxation. It is a form of the government reaching into people's pockets and, through inflation, reducing the value of the money they have. Therefore, yes, we should be very concerned about debt.
The way we can move forward as an economy is going to also require strong job growth and a reoriented, rational economic policy that gets our debt under control. However, also part of balancing the budget is promoting growth. We need to have support for what have always been the engines of economic development in this country, and those are the natural resources and manufacturing sectors.
Conservatives have said very clearly that we want to support economic growth in all sectors of the economy. We want to support in all sectors and in all regions. For energy workers in Alberta, for forestry workers in B.C., for forestry workers and manufacturing workers in Quebec, for people working on the assembly line in Ontario, from coast to coast, Conservatives are supportive of those vital sectors. That is where we differ from the government. The government is disdainful of our energy and manufacturing sectors. The government is imposing additional burdens on those sectors. The Liberals have this notion that the sectors that have driven our success for all of our history could somehow be shut out of economic recovery and, instead, government could pick winners and losers and be subsidizing what it thinks are going to be the technology and the jobs of the future.
If we are going to put the focus on jobs and opportunity for Canadians, then we need to come back to those tried-and-true sectors that have delivered prosperity in the past. That means removing barriers from our oil and gas sector. That means supporting private-sector-driven stimulus, the development of pipelines, energy projects that employ so many Canadians, not just in my riding, not just in Alberta but people from other parts of the country who invest in or come to Alberta or who create component products that are then used in energy-related manufacturing as well as extraction.
We have this opportunity, going forward. We have an opportunity to secure our future; that is, to get our debt under control, to work toward a balanced budget over time, and to do so by controlling spending but also by supporting growth.
On the other hand, we have a government across the way who says we can shut down our traditional sectors and at the same time we could spend more money than we have. The Liberals are cutting the knees out of our revenue sources and they are continuing to insist on spending more and more. It is not going to work to undermine the sources of job growth and opportunity growth and government revenue and, on the other hand, to just keep insisting on spending more and more money. That is a recipe for economic disaster. The government is just bullishly moving forward in this direction that will be disastrous for our long-term economic well-being. We need a change. We need a government that is committed to securing our future.