Madam Speaker, as I said, it is all borrowed. It is like someone putting $250 on their credit card and then thinking they are ahead. That is what the government intends to do.
Canadians are not going to fall for it this time. They are just smarter than that, and after nine years of the NDP-Liberals, everything is broken. They have doubled housing costs, doubled the debt, doubled food bank use and doubled gun crime. Food prices have risen 36% faster in Canada than in the U.S., a gap that opened up after the Prime Minister put a carbon tax on farmers and on the truckers who bring us food.
Two million people are lined up at food banks, and our GDP per capita is actually lower now, after the government's having doubled the national debt to over $1.2 trillion. Our GDP is actually lower per capita than it was in 2015. Now Donald Trump is imposing crippling 25% tariffs on Canadian goods, yet the weak Prime Minister plans to quadruple the carbon tax to 61¢ a litre.
Can members hear the sound? It is the sound of the mass exodus of Canadian jobs fleeing to south of the border. Donald Trump loves our carbon tax. He loves that the Prime Minister recklessly jacked up the capital gains tax too. People are popping the champagne at Trump Tower as we speak, celebrating the economic vandalism of the Prime Minister, who seems hell-bent on exporting good Canadian jobs to the United States.
I know that Donald Trump wants to put America first, and he should. What Canadians do not like and really do not understand is why the Prime Minister wants to put Canada second. We need a Canada first plan for our economy and our security.
The NDP leader made a grand announcement during the Elmwood—Transcona by-election. He was terrified that the New Democrats were going to lose, so he panicked and called a press conference, proudly announcing that he was tearing up the agreement and that he could not support the Liberals anymore. What happened? I recall that even yesterday he made a statement that he was not going to support the bill, and now he has made a statement this morning that he is supporting it. He just does not know what he is doing, and now he has taped the agreement back together, desperately hanging on until February 25, 2025, the day his pension kicks in.
The NDP leader has sold out Canadians yet again to the reckless Liberal tax trick that would push Canada even deeper into debt. The two-month temporary tax trick would be more than offset by the quadrupling of the carbon tax on heat, housing, food and fuel planned for next spring, so here is the trick, the scam: In just a few months, the Liberals will actually raise taxes on all the same things they are claiming that they are giving Canadians a tax break on.
Instead of trying to trick Canadians, our leader, the member for Carleton, is offering a common-sense solution. Conservatives would axe the carbon tax permanently on everything for everyone for good and take the GST off new homes to save people up to $50,000 on a new home purchase and stimulate the building of 30,000 extra homes every single year. Only common-sense Conservatives will bring home powerful paycheques and lower home prices so people can afford food and a home in a safe neighbourhood.
I want to talk about how we got to this point. Members can imagine, if they will, a prime minister's actually saying that the budget will balance itself, saying that they do not think about monetary policy or saying to let the bankers worry about the economy. It seems unimaginable that a prime minister, responsible for the economy of this country, would say such things. However, it is not unimaginable; our Prime Minister actually said these things. It is no wonder we are in so much trouble, but it gets even worse.
Just this week, the Minister of Finance, in her weak defence of our economy, said that she could not understand why Canadians were complaining about the great job she thinks she is doing. Her explanation was that Canadians are in a “vibecession”. Yes, for those watching, the Minister of Finance thinks they just do not get the vibe, and that they should feel great when they lose their job and when they cannot afford groceries in the grocery store, and that they should feel great about not being able to heat their home, gas up their car or pay their rent or their mortgage.
That is what the minister thinks. She thinks people just do not get the vibe. She does not get it. The truth is that Canadians are suffering and the Prime Minister does not believe it or understand it. He is weak. He is out of touch. His own Liberal members want him to resign, and it is time for him to go.
The quadrupling of the carbon tax to 61¢ a litre will stop our trucks from delivering parts to factories, clothing to stores and food to grocery shelves. Just last spring, the Prime Minister actually admitted he does know at least one thing about monetary policy. I will give him that. He acknowledged, when sending out billions of dollars in cheques, that “as soon as you do that, inflation goes up by exactly that amount.” According to his own words, with the planned $4.6 billion spend for $250 cheques, he is committing economic malpractice. It will cause inflation. It will force the Bank of Canada to keep interest rates higher for longer.
The Liberals like to say that most Canadian families get back more than they pay in the carbon tax. They completely ignore the findings of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has said many times that when we take into account the economic knock-on effects of the carbon tax, 100% of middle-class Canadians pay more than they receive in the rebates.
On top of this, the inflationary effects of the tax mean that families will have to spend $700 more on food this year than they did in 2023. Since 2015, when the Prime Minister came to power, by the way, the price of food has increased by 35%. The price of gas is up nearly 50%. Rents are up 33% and mortgage interest is up 73%.
Canadians deserved tax relief before Donald Trump made his “I love tariffs” comment. He was elected three weeks ago, and the Prime Minister did nothing at all to head off the tariff. The killer tariff will devastate our economy when we have a weak Prime Minister who is panicking because he does not know what to do about it.
However, there is a leader who can stand up to Donald Trump and put Canadians first. The member for Carleton cannot become the prime minister soon enough.
Let us talk about small businesses. I mentioned this earlier in my question to the member for Winnipeg North. The CFIB released a statement just today, saying that a majority of small businesses in this country oppose the policy. Only 4% of small businesses believe their sales will improve; 75% say it will be costly and complicated to implement the holiday, and 65% of businesses say there is not enough time to implement the change. This comes from a group that represents small businesses in Canada.
The Liberals have also jacked up the capital gains tax. Economists like Jack Mintz say this will hurt way more people than just the 0.13% of tax filers who are directly affected, and will blow a $90-billion hole in our GDP, costing 400,000 jobs.
Of course, there is the so-called luxury tax. The head of the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada was at the finance committee a couple of weeks ago. He said that it has cost $1.8 billion in sales to the aircraft industry and $90 million in GST revenue. The government has collected only $15 million in luxury tax, while it cost it $19 million to administer the tax. Leave it to the Liberals to create a tax and lose money doing it.
The bottom line is that this country needs a prime minister who understands economic issues. Enough is enough. It is time for a prime minister who, as Wilfrid Laurier said, will put “Canada first, Canada last, and Canada always”.