Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington.
I am pleased to rise today to speak to the budget. For months in the House, we have heard from the Liberals, one after another, telling us that we were going to be presented with a generational, if not transformative, budget for this year, 2025. Of course, we were waiting with bated breath to listen to the budget, which is not fooling anybody.
This is not a budget; a budget is done before the money is spent. However, the current budget is the most expensive in Canadian history outside the pandemic. The fiscal year, as Canadians know, begins April 1 for the Government of Canada. The budget calls for $586 billion in spending, which is the most expensive, as I said, in Canadian history outside the pandemic, but here is the thing: Seven months have already transpired; seven months of what is in the budget has already been spent. Using simple division, with seven of the 12 months, the Liberals have already spent $343 billion.
Now the Liberals have brought this 406-page omnibus budget bill into Parliament, saying, “Hey, here's what we're going to do. Vote with us.” They do not care about what our vote is going to be. They have no respect for Parliament or the process of this place. They do not care for the house of democracy. They do not care to listen to debate. If they did, they would have presented the budget when they were elected, not wait seven months, take the summer off, go on vacation, perhaps do a little bit of golfing, travel to Europe and come back. They did not even present in September or October. On November 4, they said, “Here's a budget, and we've already spent seven months of it. If you guys don't vote for it, oops, you may want an election.”
Well, I have news for them: Canadians are not buying it. No matter how many times the finance minister stands up in the House and says that he has good news for Canadians, Canadians know that with the government, it is nothing but bad news; we know that for sure.
This year, the budget is calling for an $80-billion deficit, which is spending $80 billion more than we take in. Every Canadian family and every Canadian business knows that if we spend more than we take in, it is a formula for bankruptcy. It never bodes well. However, it gets worse; it gets a lot worse. Over the next five years, a staggering $324 billion will be added to our national debt, which is on top of the roughly $1.4 trillion Canada is still in debt for today.
Here is the problem with that: When we borrow money, we have to pay interest on that money. This year, lo and behold, the Liberal government opposite with a so-called economist brainiac Prime Minister is offering Canadians a staggering debt of almost $60 billion in interest payments, which is more than we spend on health care in this country. Today, Canadians walking into an emergency department of a hospital have to wait hours and hours to get service, and when they get that service, quite often they are put in the hallway of the hospital for days, waiting for service. However, the government has nothing in the budget that increases any previous commitment on health care. Nevertheless, there is a lot in the budget that will increase the cost of interest that Canadians will pay.
Everybody in the House, as well as all Canadians, knows that the government has no source of income other than the Canadian taxpayer. Who is going to pay for all of this? Hard-working Canadians are going to pay for the bill that they keep adding and adding to. It is a staggering number: $60 billion in interest alone.
Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. They walk into the grocery store, and the prices keep going up. I have met seniors and young people who are saying they have to eat less. I have told the story in the House about a lady in my riding, who, when I knocked on her door during the election, said, “Sir, I'm not into politics, but I'm on a fixed income and I have to eat less because the prices are so high and I want to keep living in my home.”
I was looking in the budget for some kind of relief for our seniors, but what did I find? I found the words “industrial carbon” tax. The industrial carbon tax adds costs to farmers for their equipment and for their manufacturing processes. For trucking companies, this adds cost to the freight. What do the Liberals think happens when they keep adding these costs?
Liberals will stand and say that this is imaginary and that they are not taxing food. What do they think happens to the manufacturers, the producers and the truckers, who deliver the food that people consume to the grocery store, when they increase the costs by imposing this industrial carbon tax, which is programmed to increase in the budget? What happens is very simple, which is that they will add that cost to the cost of their product. This eventually ends up added to the price of the food items we walk into grocery stores to purchase. In effect, the Liberals are raising food costs at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet.
Speaking of struggling to make ends meet, members may have heard us say in this House repeatedly that food banks have told us a record 2.2 million Canadians are now visiting food banks on a daily basis, with one-third being children. That is over 700,000 children a month. In fact, to put things into perspective, today, while the Liberals are here asking for a free credit card, a free line of credit on money they have already spent seven-twelfths of, 24,000 hungry children will walk into a food bank hoping to find an item they can consume, because they are hungry.
I say shame on the Liberals and shame on the government for not considering the impact of its actions with the budget and continuing to increase costs by imposing such things as the carbon tax and the fuel standard tax on the manufacturers and the people who deliver goods. Children do not have enough food to eat, and this is making it even harder for their families to buy food to put on the table so that they do not go to school hungry. That is shameless.
It is shameful, but the Liberals feel no shame for that at all. In fact, I have heard Liberal after Liberal get up in the House and tout the budget as being generational. We all know the only thing the budget is doing is indebting our children. The Liberals are right: It is generational in the sense that it is adding generational debt to our children moving forward.
Speaking of children, let us talk about youth. Youth unemployment is hovering around 20% in the greater Toronto area. Why is it hovering at that level? In large part, it is because of the actions of the Liberal government over the last 10 years. I have heard people stand on the other side and talk about Stephen Harper. Guess what. Mr. Harper, who was an outstanding prime minister, has not been here for 10 years. I notice the Liberals conveniently forget the 10 years they stood up in the House and spoke vociferously in support of Prime Minister Trudeau and all the additional debt he put on this country and the mess he created in pretty much every file, including, of course, immigration.
Speaking of immigration, we have international students and temporary foreign workers, all of whom are taking jobs our youth could take today. In closing, in the minute I have left, I will say that the Liberals continue down this path of bringing folks into this country who take jobs away from our children, and down the path of imposing costs on Canadians that do not need to be there. They stand up in the House and manoeuvre back and forth, and the worst thing of all is that the Liberal Party is the only party in this House that has uttered the word “election”.
God forbid that we do not want to put $324 billion of additional debt on our children; the Liberals say it is because we want an election. They are out of touch with Canadians. They do not know what people are dealing with. I myself would argue vociferously that a government has a responsibility to produce a document and spend the finances of this country in a way that benefits the Canadian people, Canadian families and Canadian businesses.