Debates of Oct. 9th, 2025

Opposition Motion—Cost of Deficits

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is going to make my colleague happy. My answer is no.

If his government could present us with a budget that sounds reasonable, that provides decent health care transfers to the provinces, that respects the people who built our society by increasing OAS and that provides for common-sense EI reform, we would vote for that budget in a heartbeat.

If the Liberals have questions, we can answer them. Bloc members are pretty decent economists. We can tell them what they need to know and advise them on what to do.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague on his excellent speech. What spirit.

Earlier, my colleague asked a question of the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, who is an economist and former Quebec finance minister. He lived through the period of austerity, which he helped create.

My colleague mentioned the $83 billion in support that is being paid out to the oil industry. The member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin replied that it generates revenue for society. I would like my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé, the agriculture and agri-food critic, to talk to us about the impact that the oil industry has on the environment and climate change, as well as its direct impact on the agriculture sector.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what a great question. It is practically poetry. I am stammering with emotion.

The government needs to get serious about climate change. As the agriculture critic, I can confirm that we are seeing these impacts. At the same time that the government is subsidizing oil companies to the tune of $83 billion over five years, it is neglecting to support farmers so they can adapt to climate change. This is serious.

Then, of course, it says that fruits and vegetables are expensive. Of course they are. Only one harvest every five years yields a good crop, a profitable crop. That is the whole problem. We will be reviewing the agricultural business risk management programs in the coming months. It seems like we do not start working on what needs to change in 2028 until the end of December 2027. Can we sit down and work properly and take the long view?

Long-term thinking is a difficult concept for governments in power, because they always want to make statements and announcements to win votes in the short term, unfortunately.

[Carlos Leitão, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very brief question for my colleague.

Does he really believe that the Conservative Party would agree with everything he said, particularly with regard to tax policy and employment insurance? Does he really think his new partners would agree with him?

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to reassure my colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin. No, I did not say that, so allow me to correct him.

However, I would like him to answer me at a future opportunity and explain why statutory appropriations and transfers to individuals and provinces have increased by only 2.6%, while budgetary appropriations for the bureaucracy have increased by 16% and procurement spending, including contracts for Liberal cronies, have increased by 300%.

Why is he talking to me about how the government will keep giving money to oil when I am asking him about increasing old age pensions?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, for centuries, alchemists promised to transform lead into gold, and they failed. What is surprising is that after each failure, they still managed to convince one group of people after another with their promise.

Today, the chief alchemist, the Liberal Prime Minister, is promising to transform deficits into investments. He presents this as a new promise, but in reality, it is the same promise the Liberals have been making for 10 years, since October 2015. Given that we have been hearing the same promises for a decade, it is high time to consider whether or not all this is working.

Let us take a look at the results. Among the G7 countries, Canada has seen the slowest growth in per-capita investment. Of the G7 countries, we have had the worst GDP per capita. Canada invests $15,000 for every worker here. That is about half of what is invested in the United States, where they invest $29,000. It a third less than the OECD average.

Since coming to power, the Prime Minister has doubled the deficit. Has there been an increase in investment? No. We have lost $54 billion. He promised the American President that his government's policies would take an additional $1 trillion out of Canada over the next five years. More deficits mean less investment.

The Liberals did not manage to get the budget to balance itself nor did they manage to spend less to invest more. The alchemists failed to transform the lead of debt into the gold of investment.

For centuries, alchemists promised and failed to transform lead into gold, but that is not the surprising part. What is surprising is that after each debunking, they would manage to repeat the same promise and convince even more people. It would always come with a new salesman and some flashy new jargon, always designed to dupe yet another group of people who had dreams of gold.

Today's alchemist-in-chief, the Liberal Prime Minister, promises to transform deficits into investments. This is not a new promise; it is exactly the same one that Justin Trudeau ran on in 2015. We remember that he said the budget would balance itself. To be fair to him, we all thought it was just a gaffe. What he actually meant was that deficit spending would spark investment which would grow the economy, generating enough money for the budget to balance itself.

The current Prime Minister has a slightly more sophisticated-sounding but similar idea, which is to spend less and invest more, but given that he has now taken office, accelerated the spending and doubled the deficit, it is now time for us to consider the actual results. What actually happened? Well, since the Liberal government took office, the debt has doubled, growth has stalled, investment has fallen, the budget did not balance itself and, of course, lead did not become gold.

Let us look at the facts. The core facts are these: Under the government, Canada has had the single-worst growth in investment per capita of any country in the G7. I will be splitting my time with the member for Newmarket—Aurora, who will tell the House that in fact the reality is that if we take total investment divided by the number of workers in Canada, we get about $15,000 in investment per worker, which is barely half of the $29,000 in the United States and a third lower than the $24,000 across the OECD.

The result has been that we have had the worst per capita GDP growth in the G7. Dressing up the deficits in a banker's suit has not made any difference, because since the Prime Minister took office, doubling the deficit, which is the rate at which we add new debt, we have actually seen investment drop by $54 billion. Just the other day, he promised that his policies would drive another trillion dollars out of this country into the United States, proving once again, the result, that deficits do not equal investment. Why is this?

There are a number of reasons. First, everything comes from something. There are only two ways for governments to run deficits: print money or borrow it. If it prints it, it causes inflation, which drives up interest rates, which drives down investment. If it borrows money, it has to borrow it from somebody. If the government borrows it out of the private economy to put it into the government economy, this means that the money that has been borrowed away from private investors is no longer available for productive investments in factories, mines, pipelines, new technology or other income-generating assets.

In other words, when government runs deficits, it does not create net economic activity; it simply shifts the activity away from productive private sector activity towards unproductive bureaucratic inactivity. It moves the money from where it is efficient to where is inefficient. By the way, that is called the crowding out effect. It is well known that this happens, and it is why deficits have coincided with drops in investment in most countries around the world.

The second reason is that today's deficits are tomorrow's taxes, and everybody knows that. What businesses and individuals do when they see governments racking up massive deficits is hoard their cash, waiting for the eventual tax bill. We saw this during COVID, when small businesses would say that with all the debt, they were holding onto their wallet because they knew a big tax hike was coming. They would put their money under their bed, not investing or spending it. They waited for it to be taxed away later on.

This is what economists call the Ricardian equivalence, and it very much proves that there is no net economic activity that results from government deficits; in fact, it only subtracts from the productive investments that people might otherwise make, but they are suspended in terror that they will have a future tax liability, and they therefore do not make those investments at all.

What we have seen is that when deficits are cut, investment is actually increased. Governments across Canada slashed deficits in the 1990s, and we saw a resulting boom in investment. The greatest example of all is Israel. In the 1990s, Israel was running massive deficits that required the government of that country to pay out 6% yields on its bonds. Investors could, in a very lazy way, simply buy government bonds instead of taking risks on productive investments, and that led to poor economic growth.

When Israel started to cut the deficits and in fact balance its budget, the investors could no longer lend to the government, so they had to invest in productive assets. This caused a boom in start-ups, to the point where Israel now has the single-highest density of high-tech companies in the world. As a country of 10 million people, it has more companies listed on the NASDAQ than does all of Europe combined, a continent with 75 times more people. Cutting deficits forces investors to invest in productive assets like the technological booms in Israel.

The Prime Minister will say that he can get a better return on investment with his government-made investments in big economic projects, but there are questions. If the projects he wants to invest in are money-losers, why would the government want to invest in them? If they are money-makers, why would the government need to invest in them? If a project is going to lose money, then going forward with it makes us all poorer. If it is a megaproject, it makes us a lot poorer. The logic of going ahead with massive projects that lose money is like the businessman who says he loses money on every single sale but makes it up in volume.

We do not need money-losing projects; we need money-making projects by having the fastest permits in the OECD, getting rid of the capital gains tax on reinvestments and having lower and marginal taxes on our highest achievers. In other words, the government only needs to get out of the way and stop telling us that it is going to turn deficits into investments or lead into gold. All it needs to do is get out of the way and allow Canadians to dig the beautiful gold mine that is right under our feet in Canada.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, no one in Canada has travelled Canada more to tell Canadians that Canada is broken than the leader of the Conservative Party.

I challenge the leader's comments today. Think of the deficit. Canada has the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio out of any of the G7 countries. The G7 includes the U.S., the United Kingdom, Germany and others. We are the lowest. Would he argue that all of those other countries are broken too?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, the Liberals' argument that they are not as bankrupt as the other countries is not actually true, even if it were a good argument. To start with, Canada's debt is much higher than we see in most G7 countries when we include all debt levels, both public and private, because the Liberals have indebted our households with high taxes and high inflation.

I will give a lesson to the members across the way. We have one economy that has to pay the interest on all the debt in the country. The Government of Canada does not have a monopoly on the entire GDP. The GDP has to fund interest and debt servicing for households, businesses and governments. Because the Liberal government has indebted our businesses and households to the level that we are now one of the most indebted nations in the world on a per-GDP basis, we run very real risks that higher interest rates will absolutely cripple our economy. We need a paycheque economy, not a debt economy.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, the Liberals are doing a lot of boasting about lower interest rates. They are boasting about having eased the tax burden, the financial burden on middle-class families. In reality, people are more in debt and are having a tougher time taking care of their responsibilities and meeting their financial obligations at the end of the month.

The Conservatives are proposing to make huge cuts to the public service. I would like the opposition leader to explain what he plans to do to ease the financial burden on Canadian and Quebec families.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we will cut bureaucracy, consultants, foreign aid, corporate welfare, funding for bogus refugees and the list goes on. We will reduce the size of government to bring down the cost of living, inflation and taxes. We know that the government is causing inflation by printing money.

The member mentioned interest rates. The Governor of the Bank of Canada is not saying that inflation is low. He is saying that the unemployment rate is high and that is why he needs to lower interest rates.

Despite the Liberals' promises, we have the weakest economy in the G7. We need to turn things around with a new Conservative government.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a theme emerging. We have capital flight at an alarming rate in the country. We have a productivity crisis. From the Liberals on the other side of the aisle, all we hear is that it is not their fault.

I am wondering if the Leader of the Opposition could highlight all of the negative consequences of Liberal policy and the one simple thing they could do to fix them.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it seems to be the current Liberal Prime Minister's approach, just like the prior Liberal prime minister, that they cannot do anything about the fact that we have lost half a trillion dollars of investment, cannot do anything about the fact that we are the fastest-shrinking economy in the G7 with the second-highest unemployment and cannot do anything about the fact that we have the lowest investment per worker of any country. If they cannot do anything, maybe it is time for them to get out of the way, because we can over here.

I will tell members what we will do. We will cut taxes on work, investment, energy and homebuilding. We will eliminate the production cap, the ban on the offshore shipping of oil, and the industrial carbon tax. We will rapidly approve projects and have the fastest building permits anywhere in the world. We will open Canada up for business and make this the richest nation on earth.

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if I were to describe an entity that changes its fiscal reporting midway through the year, alters the financial metrics by which it judges itself, repeatedly misses every fiscal anchor it sets, racks up unsustainable debt and refuses to provide transparent answers to basic financial questions, one might assume that I was describing a corporation on the brink of collapse. However, those are the defining characteristics of the government. This would never be acceptable in the private sector, and it should have no place in our government.

Year after year, the national debt keeps climbing. Interest payments now exceed what we transfer to provinces for health care. The deficit, once promised by the Liberal government to be modest and temporary, has now doubled. Instead of restoring discipline, the government is rewriting the rules and stretching the definition of capital investment so far that even subsidies, tax breaks and housing incentives are being rebranded as capital formation. What a joke. These are accounting tricks, a deliberate attempt to make the books look better than they are. More blatantly, the government knows it has lost control of Canada’s finances and is now redefining capital investment as a communications strategy to confuse Canadians.

The independent Parliamentary Budget Officer described this change as “overly expansive and exceeds international practice such as that adopted by the United Kingdom.” When a government starts changing definitions to hide the scale of its recklessness, it erodes the trust that underpins every dollar of public spending.

Canadians deserve honesty and transparency. They deserve a government that manages the nation's finances, not manipulates them. While the Liberals manipulate the way they will present the budget, the deficit is set to balloon to $68.5 billion. This debt will be carried by my generation and by my children’s generation. It is generational debt. It is generational betrayal. A mortgage placed on the future of our children is a failure of duty.

Let us stop pretending the numbers do not matter. We cannot spend our way to affordability. We cannot manipulate the books and pretend our performance has improved. We cannot betray future generations by burying them beneath mountains of debt and calling it investment.

For 10 years, the Liberals promised that deficit spending would fuel growth. However, after a decade of their investment, investment per worker has fallen by 10.8%. Their deficits have fuelled inflation, driven up interest rates and left Canada with the worst economic growth per capita in the G7. Now the Prime Minister is continuing with the same mistakes and producing the same failures.

The Prime Minister likes to talk about the private sector. Let us be clear. It is the private sector that is condemning his ideology, not with words but with actions: 86,000 job losses, the second-highest unemployment rate in the G7 and $54 billion of investment fleeing this country. It is saying no to reckless spending. It is saying no to a lack of transparency. It is saying no to excessive regulation and a government that is obsessed with punishing success.

Capital is leaving because confidence in the Prime Minister has left. Businesses will not invest in a government that punishes success and calls it fairness. Businesses will not invest when projects can be held in regulatory purgatory. They will not build under a government that spends without restraint and calls it compassion. The job losses, unemployment, food bank use and investment withdrawal numbers are not Conservative numbers, Liberal numbers, NDP numbers or Bloc numbers. They are reality, and reality has a way of catching up.

They tell us that a young couple in Aurora, Ontario, working five jobs between them, still cannot afford to start a family. They tell us that small business owners, once the backbone of our economy, are shutting their doors because they simply cannot keep up. They tell us that a generation is losing faith, not in their abilities but in their government and in their future.

I would like the share a special message I received last night from a young woman. She said she tried to do everything right: get married, have a family, go to school and get a career. Her husband makes six figures, and once upon a time, that was a dream. They are now unable to afford the house they desperately need for their young family. She said she knows life gives us curveballs, but she did not think her own government would be her undoing.

Every dollar that leaves this country means lower wages and fewer jobs for Canadian workers. Every dollar the government spends comes straight from the pockets of those same workers, with families already stretched to the limit. Let us be honest: A government that cannot live within its means will never make life affordable for those who must live within theirs.

This week, Canadians watched as the Prime Minister visited President Trump and promised $1 trillion of investment flowing from Canada to the U.S. We in Canada need a counterweight to bring investment to Canada, and the Prime Minister's lack of action has failed to deliver.

Canada needs decisive leadership now. We need our natural resource sector opened; our housing sector unleashed from taxes, excessive development charges and permit delays; our domestic capital reinvested here at home, not in the U.S.; and a Canada where investors see stability, opportunity and transparency.

Canada can be strong. We can restore discipline. We can restore trust. We can restore the promise of this beautiful country, but only if we have the courage to face the truth. Instead, we have a Prime Minister focused on manipulating the budget to hide the extent of his reckless spending from Canadians.

It is time to stop the illusion that Ottawa can spend its way to prosperity. It is past time to bring truth, discipline and integrity back to our public finances. It is what our children and their children deserve from us.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the Canadian public at home that Canada has the lowest deficit in the G7 and the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7. However, the government recognizes that there is really important work to do to make tough choices. That is why our budget is going to be coming out November 4.

The member mentioned that the government is not trying to be transparent. It is actually trying to be more transparent by showing Canadians where operational spending is and where long-term capital investments are happening to grow our economy.

I find it a bit rich when Conservatives talk about balancing budgets and deficits. Can the hon. member explain why they promised to spend $106 billion in their platform a few months ago? How was that fiscally responsible? How can she stand in this House and suggest the Conservatives are the moral authority on budgeting?

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the member that the Parliamentary Budget Officer is non-partisan. He is independent, and he himself has said that the government's finances are very alarming, that they are “unsustainable”, “stupefying” and “shocking”.

In the financial sector, the integrity of financial statements is crucial. If we start to change the definitions of what “expenses” are, that is a problem. An expense is an expense. An expense does not become an asset. When we start to change the timing of financial statements, there is no transparency because we cannot compare them to prior years and we cannot compare them to benchmarks of the past. That is the problem.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there has been some verbal sparring between the various parties since the beginning of this debate. However, there is one thing that has not been mentioned, and that is the fact that this is a minority government. The government received a minority mandate from the people.

Normally, in that sort of context, the government must ask an opposition party for help in passing the budget. I have not heard any rumblings about the government deciding to consult with any given opposition party to determine whether they have demands and whether they could agree on the budget.

My question is this: Is this government behaving like a majority or a minority government?

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is one of my main concerns. I truly wish that the government would be honest and would focus on balancing the budget and reining in spending so that we can actually have a future for our children.

We cannot spend our way to affordability. We cannot continue to spend and spend and pretend there are no consequences. There are consequences. It is generational debt. It is generational betrayal, as I said. That is mortgaging our children's future, and the government does not seem to be concerned about this at all. That is irresponsible.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my new hon. colleague from Newmarket—Aurora. They voted her here today to represent her community.

Seventy-six per cent of seniors are having to support their families today because of the Liberal government's affordability crisis. They do not understand budgets. My colleague does. She comes from the banking sector, so I would like to ask my colleague how she might be able to teach the Liberals to balance a budget.

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, all I hear from across the aisle is arrogance and no desire to actually work together for a better future for Canadians.

Fiscal responsibility is important. It has long-term consequences, but the Liberals seem to be laughing and think that it is a joke.

On the topic of seniors, there is a senior in my riding who shared a story with me. He said that his father taught him to work hard and give it his all to achieve what he wanted in life. He gave it his all, and he is still struggling, and those are the consequences of the failed policies of the Liberal government.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation]

Mr. Speaker, I have been following this conversation with a lot of interest, and I am quite surprised by what we are hearing from members opposite. They claim to know the economy, fiscal prudence and what investment is about, but as we heard in question period yesterday, they do not seem to know what the private sector really is.

I suppose one thing I might share with my colleagues across the way is some fact. The fact is that Canada's economic position right now is the strongest relative to other G7 countries. It is in the strongest position in the G7 right now in terms of economic growth. We heard statistics that are inconvenient for the opposition, such as the fact that Canada is now among the top nations for foreign direct investment. Opposition members talk about investment leaving the country, but the reality is that more and more people want to invest in Canada.

Why is this? People want to invest in this country because of clear facts. First, there is a stable government run by somebody who actually understands how the markets work. Second, people understand that Canadians are not just resilient but also understand innovation and what it takes to be able to deliver the goods.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Trois-Rivières, who will also, I am sure, have lots to add on this point.

The reality we see right now, the facts on the ground, are that when we look at Canada's position globally, we are the strongest economy. We have the strongest potential economy in the G7 and are in the best economic position. Members heard the metrics already from my friend from Kings—Hants regarding the debt-to-GDP ratio.

The reality the Conservatives refuse to accept is that Canada is actually well positioned to deal with global uncertainty. We can look at economic instability south of the border and the economic instability caused in Europe as a result of the Russian invasion in Ukraine; people are looking to Canada as an island of stability. They are looking to Canada as a place where workers are ready to roll up their sleeves and do great things, where innovators are building for the economy of the future. We are making transformational investments in digital and AI, which is where the world needs us to be.

Why Canada? It is because Canada has proven itself to be a trusted partner, a reliable ally and a place where our word matters. That matters to the world. It matters in trade, in commerce and in business when someone's word is their bond. People are looking to this country and saying that they know they can place their investment dollars here. They know they can place their interests here because Canadians know how to value those investments and build with those investments, and they know they can trust their investments will be safe and secure, because the fiscal position of this country is in outstanding shape.

Conservatives would like to be able to spin a narrative that Canada is broken. We all saw how that worked in the last election. Canadians believe in Canada. The government believes in Canada, and the Liberals believe in Canada; that is why Canadians returned us to lead this country. They did not buy the “Canada is broken” mandate, because they know Canada is not broken. They know Canada is the place that will lead when the world is in trouble.

Canada is going to lead, and that is why Canadians put their confidence in us. Had they believed the Conservatives' narrative, the members opposite would have been sitting on this side. That is an unfortunate reality for them. It is a fortunate reality for Canadians, because Canadians see a government that is leading with optimism and pragmatism. They see a government leading with fact.

Let us talk about some of the facts. Conservatives talk about failed policies. They think providing dental care to five million Canadians is a failed policy. They are saying to more than 16,500 residents of my riding that it is a failed policy that they can now access dental care. They are talking to tens of thousands of parents who have benefited from $10-a-day child care and saying that it is a failed policy. I wonder how many of their voters are taking advantage of those very same $10-a-day day care spots.

[An hon. member]

There are 3,000 on a wait-list, bud.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite is yelling that there are 3,000 people on a wait-list. This shows there is demand for a government program. That is clearly not a failed policy.

On top of that, Conservatives talk about caring about Canadians and young people in this country. They talk about their concern about the prices of food. They voted against a school food program. They voted against a program that gave parents the ability to ensure that their kids, where necessary, would have food in their bellies. That is who these Conservatives are. They are no longer the Progressive Conservatives of old, who understood that strong social policy and strong economic management can be matched.

The Conservatives have turned their back on economic management. We saw some of the largest deficits in Canadian history under the previous Conservative government. They have turned their back on caring for Canadians. That is what this new right-wing Conservative opposition has become, and that is why Canadians have turned their back on the Conservatives.

Let us talk about the future. Let us talk about what Canadians are looking for. In a world where sovereignty matters, digital sovereignty is at the top of what we are investing in. Why are we investing in that sovereignty? We are investing in that sovereignty because Canadians' data, important information about Canadians; Canadian research; and Canadian innovation need to be protected from governments that may not act in the best interest of Canadians.

When we were investing in the sovereign cloud, when we were investing in compute capacity in this country and when we were investing in quantum in this country, we were investing in data centres to make sure that Canadians know they can be protected in a world where technology and artificial intelligence are everywhere. What we are saying is that we are building for the future, not just for Canada but for the world. We are saying to European partners that they can trust Canada, they can trust our rules and they can trust our guidelines. We understand that innovation should not come at the cost of workers, and it should not come at the cost of values. One can innovate and still treat people with dignity and respect. That is the balance we are trying to set on this side of the House when it comes to investing in Canada.

Investments, as we all know, require all of us to think about the future for the long term. While members opposite may be thinking sound bite to sound bite, our government is thinking generationally for what matters to Canadians and for the future of this country. That is why the investments that we are making matter to Canadians. We are ensuring that we are able to maximize our natural resources while also protecting our environment. We are investing generationally in building homes for Canadians, something that the Conservatives would know nothing about. We are investing in the technologies of the future today. Those investments are creating the jobs of the future. We are setting up Canadians for the jobs of the future by ensuring that they have the money to train and retrain. Therefore, we are putting the money of the economy where our mouth is.

We are not just saying that tax cuts are going to solve everything, but we did that. We have put more money into the pockets of Canadians by cutting taxes while also investing. It proves that we can think about investing in the future while also making life more affordable today. That is what the premise of this government is. We are spending less and investing more. For people who do not understand the difference, it is very clear. Families may spend less at home on things like a Starbucks coffee so that they can invest in their RSPs. In our family when we are talking about prudence, that is how it works. People take money that they do not need to spend on the day-to-day so they can put it into things that are going to deliver a return for them in the future. That is how families plan. That is how governments plan. That is how we are planning for the future of this country.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

The Conservatives may laugh, Mr. Speaker. They may laugh because they think it is funny to think about the concept of managing our economy in a responsible way, making prudent investments that are going to be there for the future of Canadians. That is okay because they are not running this country; thankfully, we are.

The reason that we are in this position is that Canadians trusted the vision of the Prime Minister. They understood that pragmatism and thoughtfulness can be paired with compassion and resilience. They understood that in the time we are in, when we are facing the significant challenges to our economy from the United States, strong stewardship, building a Canadian economy and working together across jurisdictions in a way that is unprecedented would be best handled by our government and best handled by our Prime Minister and by the members on this side of the House.

I look forward to the opposition motion being defeated, as it should be, as the Conservatives were in the last election, so that we can continue the hard work and the important work of building Canada in a way that works for all Canadians.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciated hearing the comments with regard to sovereignty. I would like the member to provide the House and Canadians with a definition of what the government means by Canada being a postnational state. I think he is capable of doing this. Could he please define that?