Mr. Speaker, it is $100 billion. No, that is not Dr. Evil's ransom demand from the world. That is today's headline in the National Post. The potential deficit that will be tabled in the budget in November is $100 billion. This is today's front page headline.
It is important to consider how we got here. A $100-billion deficit is staggering. This is almost twice the national transfer to provinces for health care. This is the amount of extra borrowing being piled on. The interest from that will eventually make us unable to spend money on health care, national defence and all the things Canadians rely on from their governments.
How did we get here? The government, in 2015, promised it would run limited deficits for three years. It was the only party in that election promising to do so. Even the NDP back then knew we could not borrow with impunity forever. The Liberal Party was the only party promising a deficit. It said that deficits were okay. This was going to be a short-term deficit. It was going to make historic investments in national infrastructure. It was going to make investments. Its deficits were investments, and that would lead to the budget balancing itself and make people more prosperous.
Here we are, 10 years later. We have an out-of-control structural deficit closing in on $100 billion annually.
When the Liberals were elected, this promise of limited deficits followed by a balanced budget was immediately discarded. It was never, ever acknowledged after that. Bill Morneau was the finance minister. I attended question period after question period. In the finance committee, there were appearances by that minister. He never acknowledged this solemn promise that, clearly, was a point of differentiation between parties.
That was part of what got the government elected in the first place, and it was a lie. What the Liberals had promised during the election was so obviously untrue compared to what they did in office. They were elected. They passed a bunch of anti-business, anti-job and anti-industry bills like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48. These led to immediate capital flight from Canada. Upon the election of the government, $200 billion from the energy industry alone left this country. Half a trillion dollars of investment has left Canada since the government was elected.
We are here today to call on the government to quit plagiarizing the playbook that has brought us to the point we are today. These out-of-control, structural deficits began under the Liberal government. It inherited a balanced budget. This is clear. A balanced budget was tabled in 2015. The fiscal monitors who track spending showed that we were on track to balance it until the new spending of the Liberal government was brought in. It received a balanced budget. It inherited one. It blew it immediately.
The capital flight that resulted from the Liberals' out-of-control spending and anti-industry laws kicked in immediately and began to do what these policies always do everywhere they have been tried from time to time: They led to inflation. We have out-of-control deficits. We have inflation. We have a cost of living crisis now. We have the worst-performing economy in the G7 right now. The Liberals always talk about the G7 and say we are going to be the best in the G7. Well, we are the worst. Our economy is no longer growing per capita. In fact, it has shrunk. It is lower per capita than it was in 2014, the final year of the Harper government. Per capita GDP is lower now than it was in 2014.
Let us think about that. This means Canadians are getting poorer over time. I do not even think a 10-year window covering the Depression would even reveal a period that long and that sustained of declining per capita GDP, or GDP that has shrunk.
We have lower wages, lost jobs and lost investment under the government. We call upon it to reverse course and get serious about the budget.
That brings us to the current Prime Minister. As has been remarked by others, this was the guy who was supposed to know what to do. It had been 10 years of Trudeau, and we were done. We needed to actually have a serious person and have an adult in the room. They switched leaders, and this guy who was supposed to be the adult in the room, who knew finance and had a wonderful resume, came in. He said that this was a serious point of crisis, that we are going to get serious, that we are going to rein in spending and get control of the public finances so that we can grow the economy and deal with the current challenges.
What has happened since then?
He did not do any of that. This is a Prime Minister who promised Canadians that they were going to rein in the general bloat of government that has occurred under the Liberals. The size of the public sector in Canada is the only thing that grew under the government. They added 100,000 federal public servants, yet service gets no better for Canadians. They cannot run anything over there. There are 59,000 employees at the Canada Revenue Agency, and they still cannot answer the phone.
The government was supposed to have someone serious at the helm now, someone who would get control of our finances and bring the budget under control. It has not happened.
Liberals promised, in the election, to rein in and reduce the expenditures on consultants. In the first estimates that they tabled, they have gone from, I believe, $19 billion to $26 billion. I do not have it in front of me. That is what I recall.
They have increased their spending on consultants. They told Canadians that they were going to rein this in, that this was the whole point of the change of leadership, that there was a change of style.
They keep talking about a new government, even though it is the same front bench and there have been the same policies over the last 10 years. It has not happened.
We are getting close to a new budget. I might add that, on top of the $500 billion in capital flight that has occurred under the government before the current Prime Minister arrived, it has accelerated since then. Another $60 billion has left the Canadian economy.
When investment dollars leave the country, that means there is no investment in plant and equipment and technology, which would help drive up productivity so that Canadians can earn more and live better, fuller lives and cope with the increased costs that have crept in under the government.
It is not happening. Wages are not rising. Unemployment is rising, with 900 jobs lost in my city last week in one layoff, announced by Imperial Oil.
These guys have spent the last 10 years chasing investment and jobs out of, especially, the energy sector. We call on them to fulfill the promise that they made in the election and start getting serious, finally, about the budget. We have had a PBO report and a PBO committee appearance, in the last couple of weeks, that are just devastating.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that the government's fiscal plan is unsustainable. He called it “stupefying”. He said that it is “unsustainable”.
The Liberals always claim these different measurements, such as declining debt-to-GDP ratio. When the debt-to-GDP ratio started to come up, it was our AAA credit rating. We will see them bait and switch every time on their goalposts.
That credit rating is at risk. They are trying to trick Canadians with a new accounting methodology as their deficits continue to get even worse.
It is time for the House to call upon the Liberal government to stop plagiarizing Justin Trudeau's failed policies and recognize that deficits drive investment and jobs down and the cost of living up.