Debates of April 30th, 2024

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise in the House at all times and particularly today to speak to budget 2024. As we are hearing and seeing from our fellow Canadians, budgets are not just numbers. They are commitments to the well-being and prosperity of every Canadian.

I want to begin by talking about the impact of this budget on my riding of Vancouver Granville. We all know that Vancouver stands as a beacon of diversity, innovation and opportunity, and it is heartening to see that reflected in this budget in the commitments that are being made for Vancouver Granville, for Vancouver and for British Columbia.

When I was first elected, I received a phone call from a board member of the Hellenic community centre in my riding. Vancouver has long been home to one of the largest Greek communities in Canada, and the Hellenic centre complex in my riding is an incredible place that has brought together Canadians, not just from the Greek community but from all different communities, as a place of gathering on the west side of the city. It is a community centre, and it is a place of worship. I have been advocating on the community's behalf to see what we can do to improve that centre because it is a place that allows Canadians from all different walks of life and backgrounds to gather.

The board members are interesting. They are not fierce partisans. There are some who are Liberals, and there are some who are Conservatives. Two of the leaders are Tony Papajohn, a Liberal, and Alex Tsakumis, a well-known Conservative. These two individuals care deeply about their community. They came to me, as their member of Parliament, and said they wanted to work together to find a way to work with the government to make sure that their community, and those who come to this place, have access to a fantastic facility.

In March, the Minister of Finance came to visit and she agreed that the community centre is a local institution that must continue to serve the community, and that is exactly what budget 2024 proposes to do. It proposes to give $5 million to ensure that the Hellenic community of Vancouver has the space and the resources it needs to keep thriving.

The two individuals, one Liberal and one Conservative, who are part of that leadership team have been very vocal in their need for this building. They have also been vocal and supportive of governments that stand up for their community. I am so proud to know that those two individuals, and the community they represent, stand behind this budget and these measures to help their community.

It is a shame that the members opposite are choosing to vote against an institution that is not just necessary but a critical part of the fabric of the community of Vancouver Granville. I hope that every single voter in Vancouver Granville remembers that. How we deal with people in their communities when the chips are down is what people will remember.

That is why I am so grateful that, as we think about ensuring that we are lifting up diverse voices, budget 2024 also proposes to be a funding partner for a museum in British Columbia. It will highlight the histories, cultures and contributions of Canadians of diverse South Asian backgrounds.

The South Asian community in British Columbia, and in my riding of Vancouver Granville, is an important part of the fabric of our community. Having those stories told, those voices heard and that history told as a part of the history of this country is critically important to the story our young people and generations thereafter will come to understand about the communities around them and with whom they live.

We are also committing, in this budget, to being a funding partner of the Filipino cultural centre. The Filipino community is a vibrant, thriving part of Vancouver's ecosystem, and for too long, its members have not had a voice at the table. I want to thank the member for Vancouver Kingsway for his advocacy as well, because he has been a big part of this conversation for many years. Our government is stepping up to make sure that the community has a place where it can gather and come together, so it can celebrate and tell its story to the rest of us in a way that lets the story be told in its members' voices as a part of the story of this country.

The arts are a big part of the story of Vancouver Granville and of Vancouver. The Vancouver Fringe Festival is a great part of the story of culture in our city. Earlier this year, I met with the executive director of the Vancouver Fringe Festival and he told me about the challenges that the festival is facing in trying to ensure that its operations can continue. I am so pleased that this budget is going to step up and help that organization and organizations like it to maintain, thrive and advance the critical work they do to bring incredible theatre to our citizens.

Vancouver is also an innovation hub. As somebody who grew up in the tech industry, it is important for me to know that our government continues to invest in that innovation, not just in Vancouver Granville but across the country. Our commitment of $2.4 billion toward research in AI includes building companies in AI, supporting start-ups that are going to be there for the future, maintaining and growing Canada's advantage in AI and ensuring that workers who are affected by AI have support. That is what budget 2024 is going to do.

It was important for me, and I think a lot of Canadians, to hear the former leader of the opposition, Erin O'Toole, stand up and talk about how this measure is a critically important part of maintaining and growing Canada's lead in the field of AI. These are the things that members opposite intend to vote against.

So far, members opposite are voting against communities, against diverse communities, against technology, against growth in leadership of Canadian technology sectors and against the interests of Canadians.

I say that because one of the most important issues facing Vancouver and many cities across this country is housing affordability. Housing affordability is not just a matter of shelter. It is a foundation for stability, well-being and dignity for individuals and families, and current and future generations need to have that stability. The government's work on housing has been working and it continues to work. Since I was elected, I have seen 5,500 units of housing funded in Vancouver Granville alone.

Let us think about that: It is 5,000-plus units of housing in Vancouver Granville alone. Let us contrast that to the six units of housing that the current Leader of the Opposition built when he was the minister of housing during his time. That is 5,000-plus versus six, and that is in just one riding.

We want all of our kids to have a level playing field. However, the investments we are making in housing, in working with non-profits and with other community organizations to ensure that affordable housing is built not just in Vancouver Granville but across this country, are what members opposite intend to vote against. I do not know how they look their constituents in the eye and say that they are going to vote against things that actually support the well-being and the health of their citizens and the security of their citizens to have a home. By investing in housing affordability, we are not just addressing immediate needs. We are setting a foundation for a more equitable and prosperous future for generations to come.

I want to talk about the issue of hate as well. Over the course of the last number of weeks and months, we have seen an alarming rise in hate in this country. We see leaders, like the Leader of the Opposition, cavorting with individuals who support Diagolon and who support white supremacist movements. Therefore, it is no wonder that the Conservatives want to stand against the funding that we are putting forward, such as $7.3 million for the special envoy in the fight against anti-Semitism and $7.3 million for the envoy in the fight against Islamophobia. The Conservatives want to vote against $5 million for a Holocaust museum in Montreal. They want to vote against $5 million for Holocaust remembrance. The Conservatives have already voted against funding for the Jewish community centre in my riding, and they have already voted against funding for the Holocaust education centre in my riding.

As for this idea that they care about communities, they care about themselves. If the Conservatives cared about fighting hate and if they cared about the rise in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Asian hate in this country, they would not be voting against the almost quarter-billion dollars of provisions we have in this budget to fight hate. In this country, we need to stand up for each other. We need to stand up for those whose voices are being diminished. We need to work together to do that.

It makes me really nervous when the Leader of the Opposition talks about his laws, the laws he would pass, and that he would be the judge of what is constitutional and what is not. This is a country that depends on the rule of law, trusts in our Constitution and trusts in our institutions. Canadians from across this country, from coast to coast to coast, value and care about our institutions. They care about public safety. They care about making sure that communities feel safe.

We have budget provisions that are there to make this country safe around the fight against hate, around supporting our military and around funding to ensure that we are strong players within NATO in the fight against Russia and in support of Ukraine. When we are standing up for those types of measures at the same time as we are putting money in the pockets of average Canadians, funding school lunch programs and working on building more homes, I do not understand how Conservatives can stand up and vote against a budget that really is about fairness for all.

I would encourage all members of the House to really take a look at whether they are voting in the interests of Canadians or voting to support a leader who cares nothing about Canadians. Instead, I would encourage members across all parties to look at the budget we have put forward and vote for a budget that is about fairness for all Canadians.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, how does my colleague across the way feel about the GST being now dubbed the DST and that, every time a Canadian goes to the till to buy anything, every cent of the GST that goes to the government would pay for debt servicing?

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I remind the hon. member that, when the Conservatives were in power, they chose to reduce the GST as a popular measure rather than think about the financial consequences. While the Conservatives will say that was many years ago, the thing that I would remind the hon. member across is that decisions that were made then to gut housing, to gut health care and to gut all of the things that Canadians care about, when Conservatives were in power, are what we have had to reverse over the course of the last number of years. Therefore, the investments that we make are in Canadians, not in preserving and lining the pockets of the richest 1%. That is what members across want to do. We are going to stand up for all Canadians.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, just yesterday Canada hosted the fourth round of the INC discussions on plastic pollution to try to get traction. We know that Conservatives put forward a bill to bring back the plastic straw, because they said it is good for the environment and it is healthy for us. I cannot make this stuff up. I did not read it on The Beaverton. It is actually a bill here in Parliament.

We know two garbage trucks of plastic are getting deposited into our oceans every day. We are choking on plastic, yet in the budget, the Liberals would get rid of the ghost and derelict fishing gear fund, a $10-million fund that was actually getting traction on our coast, especially in British Columbia. It was supporting the restoration economy and employing indigenous people from coast to coast to coast. It was a world-class program.

Maybe my friend from British Columbia can explain why the government would cut this really important program, which was also critical to protecting the blue economy.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his tireless work as a member of Parliament for British Columbia and for his advocacy on many of the issues we have worked on together.

The budgets that this government has put forward over the last number of years, including this one, make tremendous provisions to take care of our oceans and to take care of our environment. I do not know about others, but I am perfectly fine using a paper straw or drinking without a straw, which seems to be the most important thing that members opposite are preoccupied with.

However, to my friend's question about the importance of protecting our oceans, absolutely we all need to be doing more. We would do that through provisions in this budget in a variety of different ways. We have put forward, through B.C. SRIF, provisions to help protect our waterways as well. That work is going to continue. I am looking forward to working with the member opposite and others to ensure that we keep working hard to protect our oceans, not just across the coast of British Columbia but from coast to coast to coast.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has covered many important points that are in the budget. I would like to ask him to comment on the things that this budget would do to spur the economic growth of Canada and how this budget would provide investments in advanced manufacturing and advanced technologies, like artificial intelligence, so that Canada continues to be ready for the new knowledge-based economy that is happening in the world today.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there are two things I want to touch on. The first is the important funding that we have put forward for research. Universities across this country need funding for research. They need to keep innovating, and the funding that we would be providing would ensure that our institutions of higher learning are able to do the advanced cutting-edge research that they need to do to make sure that young Canadians can look forward to a future where our institutions are providing the thought leadership in science, math, technology and social sciences that allows Canada to continue to be a thought leader.

When it comes to AI, as I mentioned, $2.4 billion is on the table for start-ups, for innovation, for retooling companies and for growth, as well as for workers who are going to be affected by the arrival of AI in this country and in the workplace. These investments are not trivial. These investments are serious. They are thoughtful. They work with the private sector to enhance Canada's current role as a leader in AI. This ensures that Canada will continue to be a global leader in AI and the positive use of AI, not just for economic growth but for social development as well.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour and pleasure to bring the voices of Chatham-Kent—Leamington to this chamber. Today I am rising to address budget 2024.

A common definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. This budget is, again, a “tax more and spend even more” budget. It is this government's ninth budget, or more correctly, eighth budget, since it did not bother coming to this chamber during the pandemic. It just kept spending.

I do not personally claim to be a financial expert, but I have run and have been part of businesses. I have borrowed funds, and I have been expected to pay them back. I have also had the privilege to be involved with and chair several organizations, so I have had the experience of being accountable to others for their money and for stewarding organizations to their collective goals. Responsible stewardship of one's own funds and, even more importantly, of others' funds, leads to growth and prosperity of one's business, one's organization, or, as we are discussing today, one's country.

Please do not take my word for it on this budget that it is evidence of insanity. Let us look at what others have to say.

Across the country, many people are sounding the alarm bells over the budget. Aaron Wudrick and Jon Hartley from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute state that the growth expectations and projections for Canada are “an anemic 1.2%” for Canada versus 2.7% for the U.S., largely driven by declines in the level of business investment. The OECD supports this severe prognosis as it projects that Canada will have the lowest real per capita GDP growth among advanced economies between now and 2060.

Our very own Parliamentary Budget Officer has projected that economic growth will remain “sluggish through 2024” due to restrictive monetary policy resulting from rising budgetary deficits. Furthermore, Yves Giroux, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, states that the math simply does not add up on the expectation that the federal public service will shrink due to natural attrition by 5,000 FTEs over four years. He says that the Liberals have made too many promises, pledged too many things and made too many announcements for that to even have a shred of credibility. He says that we can expect the public service to grow, not shrink.

Here is another perspective: The former Liberal Bank of Canada governor David Dodge has warned that he believes that this budget will be the worst since 1982, and I will not say who was in this chamber then.

Canada will not reach par growth with other developed countries until 2060. Why is that? It is because this government's out-of-control spending has created an economic black hole that we will not be able to dig out of for 36 years, according to others' words. Again, members need not take my word for it.

Let us move to a more recent Bank of Canada representative's statement. Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, noted, in a recent speech in Halifax, “You know those signs that say 'In an emergency, break the glass?' Well, it's time to break the glass.” She cited the lagging Canadian productivity rates as one of the contributing factors. She went on to say that one of Canada's main issues dragging down our productivity rates is the lack of business investment.

While business investment has declined in Canada since 2014, in other countries, including the U.S., it has continued to grow. As a result, Canada's GDP per hour worked, the key measure of productivity growth, is among the lowest in the OECD. This budget will only continue this trend, as it does not incent business investment.

Another Bank of Canada guy, Tiff Macklem, our present governor, agrees and states that this budget has not significantly changed the government's fiscal path and it is unlikely to affect the government's macroeconomic trajectory in the near term. Why is there all of this discussion about economic growth? Why is it important? Should we not just focus on helping people?

Economic growth is what allows a government to responsibly and sustainably deliver social programming. Irresponsible fiscal management is exactly what jeopardizes a government's ability to maintain a strong social safety net and create the fiscal conditions for Canadians to thrive, in mainly low, predictable inflation and lower interest rates.

Even the often touted future Liberal leader, Mark Carney, stated that there is not enough focus on the net economic growth in this budget. Former Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau, in his book related to the Prime Minister, would routinely announce bigger numbers for more spending because bigger numbers sound good. I agree that bigger numbers sound good within one's own bank account, but not so much when they add to the public debt.

Former Liberal Finance Minister John Manley said that, while the Bank of Canada was trying to press on the brakes of inflation with higher interest rates, the Prime Minister was pressing on the inflationary gas pedal with his spending, which had ballooned interest rates in the first place.

The Prime Minister seems hell-bent on destroying the economic fabric of this nation for his own political gain, with no regard for the future generations he is fiscally handcuffing. He refuses to listen to reason, and here is the main point of my speech, he refuses to even listen to his fellow Liberals. He has added more debt than all previous prime ministers combined. It now stands at $1.255 trillion, and there is no plan to bring that in balance or to control inflationary deficits.

Doug Porter, a chief economist with the Bank of Montreal, put it best when, in describing the value of growth, he cautioned that higher government spending is perhaps not where we want to see that growth. However, what does budget 2024 do? It includes $40 billion in new spending, which will continue to drive up the cost of goods we buy and the interest rates we pay.

This year, the Prime Minister and his Liberal government are forcing Canadians to spend $54 billion just to service his debt. That is the same amount that the GST brings in in government revenues. Sometimes, when we talk about millions and billions, and debt and deficits, it is hard for us to comprehend what that means in our everyday lives. Let us think about it this way: The GST has now become the DST. Instead of the GST raising funds for social programming, every single cent of it now goes to service the Prime Minister's debt. The goods and services tax has become the debt servicing tax. It is these very deficits and debts that have contributed to higher inflation and the resulting higher interest rates necessary to try to tap down inflation.

According to Scotiabank, the Bank of Canada would have only had to raise interest rates to 3% if government spending had not stoked inflation, meaning that rates are a full 2% higher than they need to be. Why is this important? The Liberal government's mismanagement has directly affected the lives of Canadians. Housing costs have doubled, as have mortgages and rents.

The Financial Post reports that 3.4 million Canadians will renew their mortgages by 2025, and a total of $900 billion in mortgages will need to be renewed in the next three years. More Canadians are going to have to sacrifice the basic necessities, such as food or clothing, to afford their rent or mortgage payments.

In 2015, the Liberals were elected on the promise of small and temporary deficits, less than $10 billion per year. They were elected on the promise of stable inflation and low interest rates forever. They were elected on the promise of sunny ways. Do members remember? After nine long years, it is clear the Prime Minister is definitely not worth the cost, and the budget does nothing to solve the problems that Canadians face.

Despite all the negativity that I have referenced in this speech, largely voiced by Liberals and independent officials, I do have hope. I have hope in Canadians because we have come back from disasters like this before, and we can do it again. After World War II, many families had suffered personal loss, and many soldiers either did not come home or came home wounded, but many came home after rescuing democracy and set to rescuing our economy, which was heavily indebted after the war effort. Record government surpluses that followed the war addressed the debt and a long period of economic prosperity followed.

Today, there is also hope on the horizon. A Conservative government would axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234 in its original form. We would build the homes, not more bureaucracy. We would also cap spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation. Under a Conservative government, my children and grandchildren would know that, if they worked hard, home ownership would be a reality. It is their home, our home, my home. Let us bring it home.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member opposite talked a lot about the importance of making wise financial decisions, which I would agree with. As a former business person, I know that is something that we should all care about, so the question I would ask is the following.

In this budget we have set aside $2.4 billion for innovation around AI, something the Conservatives' former leader said was an important investment to make in ensuring Canada's leadership in AI.

This budget also sets in course a reversal of the damage they had done to our NATO commitment when it dropped to below 1% of GDP with the $73 billion that we are putting on the table to ensure our military has what it needs. Those are two critical components of this budget. Can the member simply tell me if he supports those provisions in this budget, yes or no?

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government has a long track record of announcements of budgets, etc. Often that leads to more spending, but it does not lead to the good outcomes. Every family and every business knows that they have to make priorities and have to sacrifice some things, even though they might be good measures, for long-term health and to bring about balance. This is what the government has not done. It has been phenomenal at photo ops and announcing good intentions.

I am a numbers guy. I come from business. What do the numbers say? The numbers tell me we are spending $54 billion now on servicing a debt built on good intentions and poor outcomes. We have ballooned the public service. There are so many places where priority decisions need to have been made, and the government has not done that. It is the very people the government purports to help who are being hurt the most.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Since 2019 the Bloc Québécois has voted against every Liberal budget, including every Liberal budget update.

Once again, the Bloc Québécois will vote against the Liberal budget. One of the reasons is that despite the oil industry’s record profits, the government continues to subsidize it with taxpayer dollars. Does my colleague not find it indecent that the government continues to use taxpayer money to subsidize oil companies that are making record profits?

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am a Conservative. I believe the market mechanism is the most efficient way of transferring the values of goods and services, but markets only work when there is a balance of power. I come from the agriculture sector, but that accounts for a whole host of sectors. The best way to have proper levels of profit, which drive further innovation, is having a functioning market system that incents competition. Sometimes we do not have that in this country, given our size. We have oligopolies, oligopsonies and monopolies, and I will not get into all the rest of it. However, there are structures needed to keep a functioning market going. We need to do more work in some areas on that in the country, particularly in the sector I come from, which is agriculture and food.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member is, of course, challenged by the fact that he is carrying the party's record from the dismal Harper decade, where we saw record deficits every single year, including $116 billion given to the banks and $30 billion every year that were given to overseas tax havens through the infamous Harper tax haven treaties. The reality is that Conservatives cannot give fiscal lessons to anybody. Their record is absolutely deplorable.

The issue of pharmacare and the supports that would go to people with diabetes in his region, 17,000 in his riding, is that Canadians who suffer from diabetes are paying up to $1,000 a month for diabetes medication. They are struggling to make ends meet. If they cannot pay for the medication, they have a four times greater risk of a heart attack or stroke. Conservatives are blocking this important life-saving medication, which the NDP has pushed the government to put into place.

My simple question to my colleague, who I respect a lot, is this: Why are Conservatives blocking this important life-saving medication, which could make such a difference in the lives of 17,000 of his constituents?

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was at breakfast this morning with members of the insurance industry, who outlined exactly their view of this pharmacare program. They said that the monies committed just in this budget alone would provide the full formulary for all the drugs missing by those not covered under other drug plans. They then outlined all of the risks of people dropping their other plans and switching to a public plan. The dollars are going to go into the public purse as opposed to actually helping the people who do not have coverage. If the definition of deplorable is handing the government a balanced budget when it took power, I will take deplorable every day.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the people of Edmonton Manning have been very clear in the emails I have received in the past two weeks.

Franks says, “Stop spending our money like a drunken sailor, we cannot afford the debt.” Trevor tells me, “It is absolutely ridiculous as to how much tax Canada is being charged, where does it stop?” David asked me to “Please put pressure on the P.M. to start cutting Canada's debt and balancing the budget.” Mariette says, “This budget puts our kids further into debt.” Michael writes of his “utter disgust with the latest Federal Budget.”

The feelings are unanimous: This budget is a disaster. I can only conclude that no one in the government actually considered the contents. Maybe they were too busy watching television to think about managing the country.

I must confess that I do not watch much television. When I do, I watch documentaries or live sports events. Two of the things that I avoid completely are reality television and game shows. To me, there is very little reality involved, and the games do not seem to be all that real to me.

As a result, I have to admit that I have never watched the show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, which aired more than 15 years ago. It was a short-lived program with only five episodes made. The idea was to have a panel ask questions from elementary school textbooks to see if the contestants were smarter than a fifth grader. The top prize was a million dollars, tax-free. The idea probably offends the Liberal members opposite. They do not believe that anything should be tax-free, ever.

Contestants on the show have to answer questions about Canadian history, Canadian geography and Canadian culture. However, history, geography and culture were not the only categories covered on the show. There was also mathematics, which may be the reason no Liberal MP ever appeared on the program. When it comes to math, budget 2024 shows very clearly that the Liberals are nowhere near as smart as a fifth grader.

When children are in fifth grade, math is pretty simple: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It is not rocket science. Fifth graders know that if they receive a weekly allowance from their parents, they must spend that money wisely. Common sense tells them that they cannot spend more than they have. There is no such thing as deficit spending to a ten year old.

If they spend all their money, Mom and Dad will tell them that they have to wait until next week to get any more. They are not made of money. They have to live within their means and they expect their children to learn how to do that also, especially as they feel financially stressed by all the extra taxes the government has piled on them.

If children want some shiny toy that costs more than their weekly allowance, then they have to learn to save until they can afford to buy it. Stores are reluctant to extend credit to a ten year old, especially one who has not learned the value of saving.

As I look at this budget, I wish the Minister of Finance could go back in time and become a fifth grader once again. It is apparent that she and the Liberal Party failed to learn some important lessons in childhood, and now it is all Canadians who are paying for their inability to understand basic math.

A fifth grader could tell us that money does not magically appear. It does not grow on trees. We cannot just pick up loose bills on the sidewalk. A fifth grader could tell us that spending more money to pay the interest on the national debt than we have for health care is a recipe for disaster. Adding more debt does not fix the problem.

I will not delve deeply into economic theory here. However, the Prime Minister has asked Canadians to forgive him for not thinking about monetary policy, and it would probably be wrong of me to expect his caucus to have any more interest in such matters.

I must say, though, that there have been some changes over the past eight years in the way the government approaches its responsibility to manage the nation's finances. No longer does the government think it is possible to pluck numbers out of thin air, put them in a spreadsheet and magically produce a budget that balances itself.

Fifth graders could tell us that a deficit is not just a line on a piece of paper. It is a debt, borrowed money that has to be repaid at some point. They would also tell us that until that debt is paid interest will be charged.

In simple terms that even a Liberal could understand, running a budgetary deficit costs money. If interest has to be paid on a debt, then there is less money for the things that government is supposed to do for Canadians, things like health care.

Where does the government find money to pay its debts? It raises taxes. In other words, it charges Canadians for something they did not ask for and for some reason expects them to be happy to pay.

Parents who explain to their fifth graders how important it is for individuals and families to live within their means are being undermined by a government that spends and spends, while expecting someone else to pay its bills.

This budget would increase government spending and taxes and would bring us no closer to a balanced budget than we have been at any time in almost nine years of Liberal fiscal mismanagement. Apparently the Liberals' coalition partners in the NDP approve of this highway of economic ruin. This budget would bring in $40 billion of costly new spending that Canadians cannot afford.

In 2022, the finance minister said that the budget would be balanced by the year 2027. In 2023, the date was revised to 2028. Why do the Liberals not just admit that they have no idea how to balance the budget, since magic is not working?

Before the Liberals were elected in 2015, their leader suggested that perhaps his government would run modest deficits, about $10 billion annually before returning to the balanced books that he inherited from the previous Conservative government. We all know what happened. Record deficits followed record deficits to create a national debt never seen before in the history of Canada. With this latest budget, the Liberal-NDP government is farther than ever from doing so.

What we have now is a government that will spend more money next year servicing the debt than on health care. There is no sense in that, except perhaps to the members opposite.

Canada's per capita GDP is now lower than it was six years ago. While other countries have grown their economies, Canadians are poorer. The government's solution is inflationary spending and more taxes. It needs to go back to the fifth grade.

There is a glimmer of hope. Soon we will have a Conservative government with members who are indeed smarter than a fifth grader. Conservatives will balance the books, making the spendthrift finance minister and her fiscally unaware boss a bad memory.

The common-sense Conservative plan will axe the carbon tax, balance the budget and build homes, not bureaucracy, to bring lower prices to Canadians. Even a fifth grader knows that the Liberal government is not worth the cost.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and to the Minister of Sport and Physical Activity]

Mr. Speaker, like most members of Parliament, when I am home for the week, I usually get out and do a couple of school visits. Last week, I was lucky enough to go to Martin Street Public School, and I heard from some really smart fifth graders. To hear the member opposite suggest that fifth graders are not intelligent or do not have any business, suggesting that we should engage with them, I strongly disagree—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Conservatives seem to have taken offence to that and are now heckling the member on his assertion that fifth graders do understand a lot and can contribute. Perhaps you could ask the Conservatives to keep the heckling down so the member can properly ask his question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

That is getting into debate.

The hon. member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the point made by my colleague was that the fifth graders were smarter with financial decisions than the government. That was the point.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

We are descending into debate.

The hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni is rising on the same point of order.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is so hard to speak at this end of the House without getting heckled by Conservatives. It is next to impossible to even hear someone next to us. This really needs to be addressed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I appreciate that, but I am also hearing a lot of heckling from all corners in the chamber. I will remind everyone who happens to be in the chamber, including Conservatives, the NDP, the Liberals, the Greens and the Bloc Québécois, on occasion—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

If we want to talk about heckling in the House, I will remind people that they should not be heckling the Speaker. I would also remind people to be judicious in their discussions and, of course, to keep the chatter down in the chamber.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.