Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House. I thank my colleague for sharing his time with me.
For 10 years now, the Liberal government has made our country weaker with overspending and deficit after deficit. Through the Liberal government, the promotion of government dependency in regard to economic development has become the staple and the identity of Canada, especially in indigenous economic development.
The current projection for the Liberal government deficit, for this year alone, is anywhere from $60 billion to $100 billion. Indigenous peoples and Canadians have questions. Why is it that the government, year after year, gets to spend recklessly and go billions and billions over budget, with little to no plan when, through the Indian Act and Indigenous Services Canada, it enforces financial and management penalties if first nations go over budget?
Why is it that first nations have default and third party management enforced on them for one challenging fiscal year, but the Liberal government gets to put Canada in debt to the tune of trillions of dollars and have billions of dollars in annual deficits? Maybe the government, led by the supposedly brilliant banker, should be subject to the same penalties it enforces upon first nations.
It seems to be rules for thee, not for me, when it comes to the government.
The deficits have cost 86,000 net job losses alone in our country. Indigenous unemployment and youth unemployment have combined to exclude an entire generation of young indigenous workers from contributing to Canada's economy. Deficits hurt community workers, frontline workers, teachers and health aides.
First nations communities see their pay stagnate while living costs soar. Just as the rest of rural Canada does, we already struggle to recruit teachers, social workers, health care workers and other frontline staff needed in our communities.
Ottawa's reckless spending does not lift up indigenous workers. It pushes them out of the workforce through affordability pressures and housing shortages.
Indigenous Canadian unemployment is exacerbated by the Liberal mismanagement of immigration and temporary foreign workers. For years, we have had workers in the indigenous communities wanting their chance to contribute to local economies in rural Canada and urban centres, but they feel left out and forgotten because of Liberal mismanagement.
It is time to put Canada first. Canadians are scared; they are scared about job losses and how they are going to put food on the table and pay the bills. Food inflation above the Bank of Canada's target is not abstract. It means $15 milk in northern community stores, families choosing between gas and groceries and higher costs for traditional foods and supplies.
People accessing rural grocery stores were hit hard with both rising food costs and the cost of fuel to get them to and from their reserve communities. Rising fuel and transportation costs erode band budgets, forcing leaders to cut community programs or delay infrastructure maintenance. Rising costs force chiefs and councils to choose between health care and social supports. This has exacerbated housing shortages and lack of access to clean drinking water, as well as increasing maintenance costs for public service vehicles and preventable costs for indigenous communities, which Canadians continue to pay for later.
Increased costs of living hit indigenous post-secondary students hard, with increased costs to study and increased costs for housing, for travel and to meet cultural and family obligations.
Indigenous students are a part of the record line-ups at food banks. The treaty right to education funding has been watered down under the Liberal government. These are our future leaders, but they are falling behind the rest of Canada.
Indigenous communities continue to struggle in the Liberal deficit environment to create and sustain their own-source revenue initiatives today. When the dollar weakens and borrowing costs rise, first nations own-source revenues and trust funds lose value. Inflation cancels out indigenous progress. Every gain from new businesses, trading programs and economic partnerships is swallowed by higher costs.
Local indigenous entrepreneurs are priced out of equipment loans and procurement opportunities. Youth training programs face cost overruns with no adjustment in funding, and $53.9 billion leaving Canada for the United States means fewer partnerships for indigenous-led projects.
Energy, food security, natural resources, mines, operations and tourism ventures struggle to attract investors.
Real reconciliation requires capital staying in Canada to grow indigenous economies, not capital fleeing and the government trying to play hero by making federal tax dollars the focus for economic development in our communities. Indigenous nations want the government to get out of the way so that we can create our own economies alongside the rest of Canadians.
Ottawa's deficits raise interest rates, which raise borrowing costs for first nations and indigenous development corporations, making self-financing more challenging or near impossible. The promise of reconciliation through economic inclusion rings hollow when inflation eats away at every grant dollar and makes indigenous infrastructure 30% to 40% more expensive to build. What indigenous prosperity needs instead is fiscal discipline that makes every dollar count; targeted investments, not blanket deficits; stable inflation, so indigenous nations can plan multi-year infrastructure builds without surprise cost escalations; true partnerships in which indigenous communities direct investment to local priorities and not to Ottawa's vote-buying announcements; and economic reconciliation grounded in accountability, stability and productivity, not recycled Liberal talking points.
The traditions of first nations people often centre on not taking more than what one needs, not wasting one part of the buffalo or the moose that we hunt to sustain us. That is sustainability. This aligns with the principle of balancing our budget and eliminating our deficits. This aligns with our values as indigenous people.
When I became chief of my nation, oil prices were down, which affected our local economy. We projected an $8-million deficit, or 10% overspending, for my first nation alone. We had overdependence on band office jobs. We had very little in terms of external investment confidence in our Enoch Cree Nation. We knew we had to make tough fiscal decisions and really do the work to restore investor confidence and our membership confidence to have good governance in our first nation and have a real plan to grow and diversify our economy.
Therefore, we created our first financial law, which holds our Enoch government accountable for how it spends. We made ourselves investable again, which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in economic development on and off our reserve for our members and for Albertans. We invested in our natural resource sector and partnered to build the first greenfield large-scale natural gas power plant in a generation in Alberta. We grew business and entrepreneurship; we focused less on government-dependent jobs, and we became stronger. We readily partner with other first nations and indigenous communities to make everybody else stronger as well.
The government talks about “Canada strong”, but I think the Liberals really need to reflect on the fact that deficits make Canada weaker. We think in terms of seven generations in our indigenous communities. The current government seems to be adding seven generations' worth of debt and burden to all Canadians in the future.