Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my speech this morning with a movie review, if I may. The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, is widely considered to be James Cameron's masterpiece, won 11 Oscars and brought in $2 billion at the box office. Of course, I am talking about Titanic.
One of the most memorable scenes from that movie is when the ship is first coming up on the iceberg and the lookout yells, “Iceberg, right ahead!” All of a sudden, the captain and crew spring into action, reverse the engines and turn the wheel and rudder as hard as they can to try to save the ship from hitting the iceberg. Unfortunately, it is too late. The ship crashes into the iceberg and sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
Historians have long agreed that if the lookout had seen the iceberg just a few seconds earlier, the ship could have turned in time and the disaster could have been avoided. Imagine for a minute if, instead of seeing the iceberg only one minute or two minutes before the crash, they had seen the iceberg 10 years in advance. How would events have turned out differently? It would not have made for a very good movie. If the lookout could have seen the iceberg from miles and miles away, it would have been pretty easy, presumably, to avoid crashing into it.
Ten years is how much warning the Liberal government has had about the dangers of Justin Trudeau's reckless spending and the continuation of those reckless policies under the current Prime Minister for the past six months. However, it was not always like this.
A generation ago, the Chrétien-Martin Liberals were the party of fiscal responsibility. Former finance minister Paul Martin once said the Liberal government would balance the budget “come hell or high water.” Tough choices were made in the 1990s, but eventually, the books were balanced, because the government understood that a nation cannot spend its way into prosperity with money it does not have. Conservatives may have disagreed with some of the decisions that were made along the way, but on the core principle of fiscal responsibility, there was support from both parties.
Unfortunately, in more recent times, Justin Trudeau said the budget would balance itself. In 2015, he said the Liberals would run three small deficits for three short years and then the budget would be balanced. Fast-forward to December 2024, when the Liberals were to present their fall economic statement. By that time, their deficit had ballooned to the figure of $62 billion, an amount so embarrassing that the finance minister chose to resign that morning instead of facing the embarrassment that would inevitably come with a deficit so massive and out of control.
That raises the question of how much the deficit is in 2025. Sadly, no one knows, because the Liberal government has until this point procrastinated, postponed and delayed the tabling of a budget and has continued to sail full steam ahead as though nothing was the matter.
We got a glimpse of it recently from the Parliamentary Budget Officer when he testified before the government operations and estimates committee. He described the government's finances as “unsustainable”. He went on to say:
It's not a funny fiscal outlook. It's a really serious fiscal outlook. We don't lightly use the word “unsustainable”. Unsustainable means you don't have the option of saying, “Maybe I'll wait a couple of years and see how things go.” It means, if you don't change, this is done.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer might as well have stood up and yelled, “Iceberg, right ahead!”
The Liberal government needs to change course before it crashes the ship into the iceberg, but unfortunately, the current captain of the ship is continuing on the same course Justin Trudeau had us on. We are already seeing the harms caused to our economy and our standard of living.
In 2015, the Liberals said that their deficit spending would lead to investment, but 10 years later, investment per worker has fallen by 10%. The burden of debts and deficits on our economy over the last 10 years has caused us to have the worst per capita economic growth rate in the G7. Under the current Prime Minister's watch, since he took office earlier this year, 86,000 net jobs have been lost, leaving Canada with the second-highest unemployment rate in the G7.
Food inflation has doubled. In fact, in a recent report from Food Banks Canada, the government received a failing grade when it comes to food insecurity, down from a C grade just two years ago.
Since the Prime Minister took over six months ago, $54 billion in net investment has left the country. Without investments in new factory equipment, new farm machinery and new businesses, the productivity of the Canadian worker and the standard of living of Canadians will continue to decline.
Another unfortunate thing about the Liberals' massive, out-of-control deficit is that the number has gotten so big that it is difficult for people to understand just how big it is. When the price we pay at the grocery store, gas pump or a favourite restaurant goes up, we understand right away how much money that is. This is because people make these purchases all the time and notice when a tank of gas or a favourite meal costs more than before. However, when we are talking about the size of the federal deficit, the number is so huge that it almost becomes meaningless to ordinary people. That is especially true when the Liberals refuse to table a budget and hide how much the deficit actually is.
For argument's sake, let us take the $62-billion deficit from last December's fall economic statement. How much is $62 billion? How big does that amount of money look?
The largest-denomination bank note issued by the Bank of Canada is the $100 bill. If someone were to go down to the bank, go to the ATM and withdraw $62 billion in $100 bills, it would be 620 million $100 bills. Each $100 bill is about 0.1 millimetres thick, which means that if we were to stack those 620 million $100 bills one on top of the other, the stack would reach 62 kilometres high. Put another way, that is about seven times the height of Mount Everest. If we were to use $10 bills, we would have 70 Mount Everests. Using rolls of toonies, there would be enough toonies to wrap around the entire planet. If the rolls were loonies, there would be enough loonies to wrap around the entire planet twice.
Fortunately, pennies have been taken out of circulation, so I will stop my analogies there, but I hope I have made my point about the enormity of this economic iceberg Canada is sailing into. The Liberal Titanic may have gotten a new captain last winter, but the course that was charted 10 years ago under Justin Trudeau has not changed. We are still sailing straight into an Everest-sized economic iceberg. It is time to change course.
I encourage members today to support the Conservatives' motion.