Madam Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure today to stand up to talk about the Conservatives' motion for an axe-the-tax summer vacation road trip. I had a very happy childhood, spending many hours in the great outdoors in Edmonton, Alberta, all seasons of the year, even in the winter when everything was frozen solid, but the highlight of our family's year was always planning the summer road trip.
We started the planning as the snow started melting, usually around this time of the year, in late May. I know with global warming it is happening a couple of weeks earlier, but that was something that always bound our family together. We were always very excited about it. It was usually a three-day trip as we made our way from Edmonton in Alberta to the west coast of British Columbia. We took our time, camping along the way. The first night was often in Jasper, maybe in Banff, and the second night somewhere in the Okanagan Valley. We never took the shortest route because there was so much to explore and so much to see in this great land of ours.
By the third day we arrived at beautiful Cultus Lake in Chilliwack, where we camped for usually two or three weeks. Along the way, we always camped. There were no motels for us and no restaurants for us. We did not have money for that. It was too expensive, but the one thing that we never had to worry about was the price of gasoline for our Chevy with a big V8 engine.
I wonder what the story would be like today, if we were to relive that. To stick with my personal example for a minute longer, there was not a lot of extra money to cut out of our travel budget. Motels and restaurants were already out. Maybe we could have cut the mini-golf at campgrounds or the comic books that kept us quiet sitting in the back seat for hours on end or maybe we could have cut some of the excursions like taking the airtram down to Hells Gate in Fraser Canyon. Every Canadian should see our amazing nature and the engineering around building the railroad through the Fraser Canyon.
The decisions that families have to make these days are much more difficult and much more challenging than that, because after nine years of the Liberal government, Canadians are being forced to cancel their summer vacations altogether, as the Liberals' ill-conceived tax-and-spend agenda has made even a simple road trip unaffordable.
Parents can barely afford necessities, much less a summer road trip. Families will pay $700 on average more for food this year than they did in 2023. Last year, food banks had to handle a record two million visits in a single month, with a million more expected this year, as food inflation continues to be such a challenge for people.
Let us talk about housing inflation. This is what I hear from people in my community of Langley. Tanya wrote to me and said, “Youth in high school and university don't even dream of owning a home now. They simply hope to one day be able to afford to rent their own place. The inflation is stifling the hopes and dreams of Canadian youth.”
Similarly, Fred and Elaine wrote to me and said, “We are in our mid 80s. We can't leave B.C. because all our family live here and it's getting harder for us, and many of our friends are feeling frightened the way things are going. Rent prices are terrible, how are our grandchildren and great grandchildren going to live?”
I thank Fred and Elaine for that comment.
I get a lot of comments like that, and here is another one from Anthony, who is a business person. He is talking about the cost of housing and the effect it has. He said, “I am having trouble retaining and attracting young employees as the cost to live in Metro Vancouver is simply unaffordable. I had a great apprentice leave last summer and move to Calgary, he took a pay cut but was wanting to start a family and saw no chance of that happening here in B.C.”
That is good for Calgary once again. Someone else leaving is British Columbia to go to Calgary where things are more affordable, but it is a real challenge there as well.
