Debates of Nov. 19th, 2025

Making Life More Affordable for Canadians Act

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are three things that are assured in life: death, taxes and a Liberal government that breaks its promises.

Six months ago, the Liberals stood here and told Canadians to trust them just one more time. They promised lower spending, lower costs and to reduce the size and scope of the federal government. They said that they had heard Canadians loud and clear, that they finally understood the pain they had caused, like a toxic ex, and that things this time would be different. Every single one of those promises, like their record, is nothing but total and utter failure.

The House passed a budget with a record $78-billion deficit. That is more than twice the size of the one Justin Trudeau wanted to run years ago. That is not a tiny change. It is not a rounding error. It is billions and billions of dollars. If anybody thinks the Liberals are going to stop at $78 billion, I have a bridge to sell them, and I think the Parliamentary Budget Officer would also have something to say to it. In fact, he said the chances of their out-of-control spending being less than $78 billion was “less than 10%”.

If someone told a person there was a less than 10% chance of them being able to start their car in the morning, they would get a new car. If there was a less than 10% chance that someone would pass a math test, they would get a tutor. When we learn that the chances are less than 10% that the government will show just a bit of fiscal restraint or fiscal discipline, the Liberals will tell the Parliamentary Budget Officer he is likely going to be out of a job for telling the truth.

Here is what else he had to say, just so I can remind everybody watching. The spending is “shocking”, “stupefying” and “unsustainable”. He is a neutral, non-partisan appointee of this place. His office was put in by this very government.

The government is dropping $90 billion in new spending on the books, which is over $5,000 for every single household in Canada. That is money being taken directly out of the pockets of Canadian families and seniors through higher taxes, inflation and interest rates.

Why should we talk about that? We already spend more on the debt than this country spends on transfers to the provinces for health care. It is every dollar that is collected in GST. This means that every dollar collected on the sales tax in this country does not go to doctors, nurses or hospital capacity, but to bankers and bondholders to pay for the Liberals' addiction to spending.

If people think Justin Trudeau's continuing gift to them and their families is fiscal responsibility, the Prime Minister should say, “Hold my beer.” We keep paying for his irresponsible spending at $5,000 a pop per household. It is only going to get worse. The Prime Minister and his finance minister continue to run debt on the taxpayers' credit card. They are effectively sinking the next generation.

I will have much more to say about the budget, because I think it is wrong and dangerous for so many reasons, but we are here today to continue the debate on affordability.

Let us talk about what the government is doing on affordability, or, rather, what the government is doing to affordability. All we have to look at is the lineups at food banks in every major city and every small town. Two million people in this country are now visiting a food bank every single month. There are four million people in Toronto going to a food bank in the span of one year alone. One in five people is now skipping meals to make their food last longer.

It is not just about numbers; it is about the people behind the numbers. It is about the kid who goes to school every single day on an empty stomach who cannot learn and grow. It is about the college-educated worker who, despite working a full-time job, still finds themselves at the end of the month with not enough to pay the bills. It is about the senior citizen who, after years of sacrificing and saving, has to make the choice between heating their home or having a hot lunch. These are the stories we hear in our neighbourhoods every single day. All this is happening in Canada. This country is supposed to be one of the richest in the world.

The Prime Minister's response is the most troubling, because it is not compassionate. For him, inflation is something that happens to other people.

The response from Ottawa has been textbook on this: It is another government program, with some form or version of central planning, that will make this problem go away. However, it is not actually solving the problem. It is more spending. This is a central bank economist who somehow missed the class that would teach him that an increase in money supply in this country leads to inflation. Whatever the Liberals want to call it, it is spending. Whether they call it investment or any other name does not matter. It is the same thing. It costs every single family more than five grand in this country for the small amount of tax cut they get. Members can believe that we are not going to stand here and oppose a tax cut, but if the government is giving somebody a small tax cut and on the other end charging them $5,000 for its irresponsible spending, Canadians are going to have a lot of questions. That is exactly why we are here.

One plus one never equals two with the government. It is keeping in place such things as the Liberal taxes on food that make life more expensive while denying they exist. Only Liberals would deny that there is an industrial carbon tax on a farmer who grows food. Only Liberals would deny that there is a fuel standard on a trucker who ships food. Only Liberals would deny that there is a packaging tax on the people who sell food. Only Liberals would stand in this House every single day and deny that the person who is buying food is now paying more for it because of their taxes.

The Liberals say they are going to cut taxes in the bill, but we have to read the fine print. The tax cut adds up to $90 a month in savings for an average Canadian, but the more than $5,000 they are going to be spending because of the irresponsible budget really wipes out that $90 a month. The question is, who really comes out on top?

When someone goes to a casino in Las Vegas, and I am sure there are some people who are watching at home who have been to a casino in Las Vegas, the house always wins. Eventually, the house wins. When one lives in Canada, it is starting to feel as though the government always wins and Canadians always lose, because the $90 it gives them a month is entirely wiped out by the irresponsible inflationary spending of the massive deficits it is running, deficits it promised it would keep down $16 billion less than what it put on the table, deficits that are bigger than Justin Trudeau's deficits, deficits that are the biggest in this country other than during COVID.

Instead of more of this, the bait and switch that we continue to see, here is what I think common sense would dictate we should do: Let us cut income taxes for real, not by $90, but by hundreds of dollars a year per Canadian, by thousands of dollars a year for every Canadian, so that families can actually get relief and get ahead. Let us cut taxes on homebuilding so that young people can finally afford a home in this country. Let us cut the carbon tax in all its forms: the industrial carbon tax, the hidden taxes on food, the plastics ban and the fuel standard, which make the growing, shipping and selling of food more expensive.

Let us cut all those taxes. Let us not say that these taxes are imaginary, because millions of families across the country know that Canadians are paying more this year than last year and paid more last year than the year before. These are Canadians who have been to a grocery store in their neighbourhood, which the Prime Minister has not. That is a shame in this country, because it is the Liberals' taxes that are increasing the price of food.

Every Canadian who cannot make ends meet right now should know that their tax dollars are being spent responsibly in Ottawa. The government does not have money. It can only tax us to get more of it. When it spends it irresponsibly, it is going to cost Canadian families more than $5,000 a year. Everybody should know that.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec Centre, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with some attention to the member's speech. I wonder how someone from the Conservative Party could vote against a bill that reduces middle-income taxes for 22 million Canadians. How is that possible? In her speech, she said she wants taxes to be removed on new homes for new buyers, and that is exactly what the bill does. How is it possible that she would vote against such a bill?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, they needed us to get to this point in the debate.

I do not know if the member is new here, but we would never, never oppose tax cuts. What we are saying, though, is that the $90 they are giving Canadians is wiped out immediately by the $5,000 they are piling on every single Canadian family. I am not sure how the member sits with the government and votes for that.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois fully supports part 2 of the bill, but when it comes to measures like the GST exemption for first-time homebuyers, we think that it does not go far enough.

We know that saving for a down payment is one of the biggest barriers to accessing home ownership. Obviously, there is also the fact that rent and housing prices have skyrocketed and that it is hard to save up.

The Bloc Québécois made two specific proposals. The first proposal was to allow parents to cash out their RRSPs and to put that towards the home buyers' plan for their children. This is a zero-cost measure. The second proposal was to provide an interest-free loan for first-time homebuyers. This would cost next to nothing.

I would like to know what my hon. colleague thinks about those measures.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say it used to be that home ownership in this country was not a distant dream for many Canadians. Today, eight out of nine young people do not believe they will ever own a home in this country.

We brought forward solutions in the Conservative platform, and the Liberals made some promises on housing. They delivered one out of the three promises, and probably the one that affects homebuyers the least. Their solution to housing in this country is to build yet a fourth bureaucracy, at $13 billion, to build even fewer homes than we have had in this country.

Housing starts in every single city are down this month, and year over year, they will continue to go down because of more bureaucracy and fewer tax cuts on housing.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure, like my colleague and friend, many of us were back in our ridings last week talking to people. Affordability comes up in almost every conversation, whether it is about the cost at the grocery store, the cost of rent or the cost of filling our tank. I wonder if the Liberals are not getting that same feedback or are just out of touch.

When I talk to people at the grocery store, they literally look at stuff on the shelf and have to put it back because they do not have enough money left at the end of the month. The paycheques are not going as far as they used to. Also, we have seen that Canada went from 7th to 25th in the world when it comes to the quality of life index. Everything has become worse over the last 10 years. This was not the case before 2015, and it will not be the case after.

Does my colleague have feedback from the constituents in her riding from this past week?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to test this out. I was at home in my riding, and like a lot of my other colleagues, I hear the same questions about affordability and the fact that Canadians are just getting sacked with higher grocery prices and higher prices on homes and gas, so I tried an experiment.

I went to a grocery store in a riding right next door to mine that is represented by a Liberal, and lo and behold, I heard the exact same conversations. People in that grocery store came up to me and they also told me about the taxes on food, the unaffordable housing, gas, groceries and home heating. It turns out that the Liberals are hearing that from their constituents. It is just that they are not doing anything about it.

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-4 and to the growing affordability crisis gripping Canadians from coast to coast. Nowhere is it felt more sharply than in my own riding of Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee. The bill fails to meet the moment, as so many introduced by the Liberal government do. It offers slogans instead of solutions and bureaucracy instead of hope.

While Ottawa debates, Canadian families are being forced to make choices that no one in a country as rich in resources as Canada should ever have to make, choices between heating their home and feeding their children. In the Okanagan, Lumby, Nakusp and the Slocan Valley, I have spoken with parents who quietly started skipping meals so that their kids can eat. Seniors who worked their entire lives are now relying on food banks. For the first time ever, food banks in our communities are reporting record numbers of working families, people with jobs needing help just to get by.

This is not the Canada they were promised. The data is as stark as it is shameful. Food inflation in Canada is rising faster than in nearly every other G7 nation. While the United States, France and Germany have all seen food price growth start to level off, Canadian families are still paying more every single month. According to Statistics Canada, grocery prices have risen more than 20% since 2020. That is hundreds of dollars a month for the average family, yet the government continues to tax the very farmers and truckers who bring food to our table. It has tripled the carbon tax, which adds cost to every stage of the food supply chain, from the fertilizer on the farm to the fuel in the trucks and the power in the grocery store. The result is higher prices on every item in the shopping cart.

With Bill C-4, the government wants to expand bureaucracy and regulatory oversight at a time when Canadians are begging for economic relief, not more red tape.

Let us be clear about what this means for real families in my riding. In Armstrong, dozens of workers at Tolko Armstrong lumber and White Valley veneer were recently laid off. These are hard-working men and women, millwrights and forklift operators, all dedicated to a proud local industry.

Tolko's statement was clear. They are not shutting down because of a lack of markets. They are shutting down because of a lack of economical fibre and because regulatory policy has made it nearly impossible to compete. The situation is made worse by the softwood lumber tariffs still imposed by the United States, tariffs that the Liberal government has utterly failed to resolve. Those illegal tariffs have cost Canadian producers more than $8 billion in duty since 2017. This money could have gone to keeping mills open, workers employed and the community stable.

Instead, it has been siphoned away by an apparently unsolvable trade dispute that the government treats as an afterthought. To make matters worse, the folks who were laid off continue to be penalized by higher prices on the food they can no longer afford, prices that are directly attributable to Liberal actions.

Canadians deserve a government that stands up for forestry families in the North Okanagan and not one that leaves them behind. They deserve a government that protects our farmers and food producers, not one that taxes them into insolvency and treats their property like its own.

Canadians deserve a government that recognizes that affordability is not just an abstract policy. It is about whether a mother can afford milk for her kids, whether a senior can keep the heat on or whether a young couple can ever hope to buy a home.

The answer is not another bill that expands government reach. The answer is to restore economic discipline, to stop wasteful spending and to remove barriers to growth in every region of the country. It means fighting to end the softwood lumber tariffs once and for all, through strong, principled diplomacy backed by a government that actually defends Canadian workers. It means repealing the hidden industrial carbon tax that drives up prices on everything every single step of the way. In the end, the debate is not about partisanship. It is about priorities.

In Lumby, one father told me that he has been working two jobs since his forestry layoff but still cannot afford groceries and rent in the same month. This is the absurd cycle of Liberal economic policy: tax more, regulate more and make life more expensive for those who can least afford it, then add insult to injury by boasting about its handouts.

Bill C-4 was presented as a step toward making life more affordable, but, buried beneath the talking points, what we actually find is yet another expansion of government control, yet another layer of Ottawa intervention that would do nothing to lower grocery bills or pay the rent.

Instead of addressing the real drivers of inflation, which are overspending, overtaxation and over-regulation, the government keeps pretending it can spend its way out of the crisis it created by overspending in the first place. Let us remember that inflation did not just happen in Canada; it was made in Canada. It was made by a government that printed and borrowed half a trillion dollars, and then denied that it would cause inflation.

While ordinary Canadians tightened their belts, the government expanded its own. It increased the size of the public service by nearly 40% since 2015, yet federal services have never been slower. Passports, veteran benefits, EI claims and everything else takes longer and costs more, and the staff back in my riding can attest to that.

Canadians deserve better than this endless cycle of spending, taxing and gaslighting. They deserve leadership that believes in the strength of our workers, the promise of our industries and the common sense of the Canadian people. Do we believe in empowering Canadians to build, grow and thrive, or do we believe that Ottawa always knows best?

My constituents have made their answer clear. They want a government that gets out of the way, lets them work and lets them keep more of what they earn. They want affordable food, secure jobs and a future worth staying here in Canada for. Bill C-4 does not deliver that.

It is time for the government to stop managing decline and start building prosperity for the forestry workers in Lumby, for the families lining up at food banks in Vernon and for every Canadian who still believes that hard work should pay off.

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

Mr. Speaker, in listening to the member, I get the impression he is voting against the legislation, so maybe he can provide some clarification on whether he supports Bill C-4. I would be very interested in knowing that.

On another note, I recognize that many of the concerns he raised are about supporting Canadians. We recognize that there is an affordability crisis, and that is why we have things such as the national school food program for children; the dental program, which helps seniors and others; and a national pharmacare program. We also continue to increase things such as GIS and OAS.

Can the member provide his thoughts? Does he support those types of increases and those programs?

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite seems to be missing the point, like so many Liberals. It would be lovely for every citizen of Canada to go to Disneyland once a year, but the trouble is that it costs money, so we have to be a little careful about what we do. Sure, we can do that.

If I give someone $90 and then send them an invoice for over $5,000, does that make any sense? Is that economically viable? I would suggest to the member that it is not economically viable and we have to be a bit more careful about where we are sending our trillions of dollars.

[Rosemarie Falk, Conservative, Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for the words of wisdom in his speech.

If the government actually acknowledged that the taxes it has on food are not imaginary, and these are taxes such as the food packaging tax and the fuel standard, and if the government cut taxes in a real, tangible way that Canadians could feel, what would constituents in his riding be able to do with that extra money of their own in their pockets?

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, they would be able to feed their own kids, for one thing. They would be able to afford the basic necessities of life that they can no longer afford. We would reduce inflation, and we would make their dollars have more spending power. We have had decades of prosperity in Canada and we had it right up until 2015 when the government took charge.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Mr. Speaker, how does the hon. member reconcile his claim of this effect of inflation on our industrial carbon pricing when the Bank of Canada and the Institute for Research on Public Policy have stated specifically that this will have an effect of no more than 0.15% to, at most, 0.5% on inflation. Is the member honestly claiming that this 0.5%, at most, is making food unaffordable?

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite is looking at a mountain and talking about a rock at the foot of it. It has a cumulative effect when this Liberal government continually piles on Canadians, and then it adds insult to injury by over-regulating them on top of it.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that my hon. colleague has little or no interest in measures to fight climate change. The Conservatives do not want a carbon tax. Pollution should be free. That is fine. His colleagues have the right to think that.

However, does my colleague agree that, in the midst of the election campaign, the government took $814 million from Quebeckers to send election cheques everywhere outside Quebec to essentially buy votes?

We are calling on the government to return the $814 million that was stolen from Quebeckers. Does the member agree with us?

[Scott Anderson, Conservative, Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would think the member would prefer to stay on the topic of Bill C-4 and not address side claims that have nothing to do with it.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in a way, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-4 at third reading today. This bill was introduced at the beginning of this Parliament and was left untouched all summer. When we returned in the fall, we spent a lot of time reworking the bill in committee. I will explain later, but this is one of the bills where the fact that the Bloc Québécois holds the balance of power in committee was a boon for first-time homebuyers.

Let us start with the genesis of this bill. This year's election campaign was pretty odd. We had a Prime Minister who did not know what he was talking about when it came to economics. I know that the Prime Minister is an economist, but he quickly turned into a politician. I am a politician too. There is not necessarily anything wrong with that, but being a Liberal politician is not always a good thing.

This Prime Minister saw that people were afraid of the Conservatives and that President Trump was making threats, so he decided he would say whatever it took to get elected, without any regard for the budgetary consequences. It was in that context that the current Prime Minister announced in January or February that he would eliminate the deficit.

Then he walked into a room, probably a back room somewhere, and the people around him told him that it was not going to happen. Instead, he decided to invent a new definition of operating deficit. His definition is disputed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, does not align with how things are done in Singapore or Great Britain, and violates established accounting principles, but he decided to invent it in order to renege on his promise.

The same is true of the Liberals' budget framework during the election campaign. The Prime Minister said that the countertariffs would bring in $20 billion, that that money would be used to finance current spending and that this would help reduce deficits. We know that, in the end, the government received only a fraction of that amount in countertariffs. As a result, we are now facing a projected deficit of almost $80 billion.

If we are to believe most analysts, including the Parliamentary Budget Officer and Fitch Ratings, who believe that the government will not be able to achieve $50 billion in cost reductions over five years, the deficit is going to be even larger.

Despite this, despite the fact that the Liberal Party was unable to table a halfway decent financial framework, which we rather successfully picked apart during the election campaign, Bill C-4 includes election promises that were hastily made by the Prime Minister whenever he wanted to grab a vote from the left or the right.

Let us talk about the $26-billion tax cut over five years. A tax cut could be a good thing. It is okay to take care of the middle class. However, when do we see a tax cut like that without a budget, without a budget forecast and without any regard for the impact this will have on balancing public finances? What is more, there was no mention of what exactly would be cut. Everyone now knows that health care and seniors are paying the price. It is the carbon tax.

The Liberals, who were the champions of the carbon tax in the last Parliament, aggressively criticized the Conservatives for wanting to abolish the carbon tax. Suddenly, during the election campaign, the Liberals decided that votes, seats and power were more important than principles, the planet, the environment and, above all, their credibility, so they got rid of the carbon tax while stealing from Quebec. That is what is in Bill C-4.

We do agree with some of the measures, particularly the GST rebate for first-time buyers purchasing a new home. However, this was essentially an election stunt and should be viewed as such. First, there is the GST rebate on a new first home. It is important to understand that this measure is designed to stimulate demand, much like the tax-free first home savings account, or FHSA.

The Liberals have been saying for several years that housing prices are going up and up. Construction costs are up. Demand has also gone up a lot. Today, we know that there is also an element that is related to immigration, the population and demand. The Liberals decided to help first-time homebuyers, who are angry about the current market, so they can have the money to outbid others using a tax shelter. That is why they created the FHSA.

According to CMHC data, the FHSA allows a person, such as a young person whose father, mother, grandfather or grandmother has money to help them contribute to an FHSA, to go fuel bidding wars in the housing market, because the supply of houses is fixed in the very short term. The result is that people are fighting for the same houses.

Today, there is another measure that is very similar, and that is the GST rebate. New homes very quickly come up for sale in new subdivisions. There are people who can afford the down payment on very expensive homes. In my riding, there are now bungalows that cost almost $1 million. I know that in places like Vancouver or around Toronto, that is still considered affordable by some people's definition, but people back home cannot afford that. If these people get GST rebates on a new home because they are first-time homebuyers or because they have not owned a home in four years, that is a good thing.

The Liberals are accusing us of voting against the budget, even though we told them our priorities. The Bloc Québécois made six demands that were affordable, all things considered. These six demands had to be met in order for the Bloc Québécois to support the budget. One of our proposals was aimed at helping first-time homebuyers who do not receive money from their parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles to fill their FHSA. This measure was intended for those who do not necessarily have an income that would allow them to maximize these accounts and who have not yet saved enough for a down payment to buy their first home and, by the same token, obtain a GST rebate.

We proposed an interest-free loan from the government to help these people finance their down payment. It was a measure that would have cost $200 million or $300 million for all of Canada, from coast to coast to coast. This measure would have cost the government about $300 per year for every $10,000 loan it granted for a down payment. We are talking here about the down payment, not the total price of the home. This measure would have ensured that the least fortunate were not left behind. The government said no.

Let us now come back to Bill C-4, which is another example of the fact that, at the time, the Prime Minister did not know the difference between a party leader, someone who campaigns, and a prime minister. On March 20, when he was Prime Minister, he issued a press release saying that the government was going to refund the GST on new homes for first-time homebuyers. Some people started buying new homes. They thought it might be a good idea to buy a house in a new subdivision. People bought houses and signed contracts. They thought they were going to get their rebate because the Prime Minister had said they would. This was not announced during the election campaign, and the Prime Minister had said it himself. Then the Prime Minister called an election and launched his election campaign. He put on a show for 36 days and then recalled Parliament. All of a sudden, people were being told that the GST rebate would only be available to people who had signed contracts on or after May 28.

Everyone who believed the Prime Minister because he was the Prime Minister, everyone who thought this man had a modicum of integrity and principles and who signed a contract to buy a home, were not eligible for the rebate. We heard from representatives from the Ontario Home Builders Association. They told us that many people were in this situation. We also heard from representatives of the Association des professionnels de la construction et de l'habitation du Québec, or the APCHQ. They told us that many of their clients were in this situation.

At the Standing Committee on Finance, we proposed an amendment to move up the date for the GST rebate on new homes so that it could also apply to these people. How did the government respond? It responded by filibustering. There was opposition from the parliamentary secretary to the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, who is also known as the Minister of Finance. I do not think that he makes many decisions in the current government. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance was opposed to including these people who were trusting enough to believe the word of the Prime Minister of Canada. The Liberals refused.

At that point, in committee, the legislative clerks had found our amendments to be in order. However, the government tried to convince the committee chair that the bill could not even be amended to bring it into line with the Prime Minister's words. The chair accepted the government's arguments and our amendments were rejected. Thankfully, the Bloc Québécois holds the balance of power on the Standing Committee on Finance. We overturned the decision of the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance not once, not twice, not five times, not eight times, but eleven times.

Eventually, we came back here to the House to plead the case of the first-time homebuyers who had been cheated by the Liberal government. The Speaker of the House told us that we were right and that the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance was wrong. With that we scored a victory for first-time homebuyers in Quebec and in the provinces. This is a victory for Quebec.

This is another example of how the Liberals operate. They make promises before the election, they get elected, and then they give as little as possible and tell people to deal with their own issues if they were naive enough to believe them. That is exactly what happened.

Now, let us talk about the other part of the bill regarding the tax cut. The tax cut will cost $26 billion over five years. Funnily enough, the Liberals are offering a tax cut of $26 billion over five years while running a deficit of at least $78 billion. We should come back to this again in a year, because the deficit could be $5 billion, $6 billion, $7 billion, $8 billion or $10 billion higher. To them, $26 billion is not a lot of money. However, when the Bloc Québécois said that we had reasonable demands for the budget, the government told us that it was too expensive.

The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, who I assume knows how to count, was so determined to show that our budget demands were unreasonable that he multiplied them by five so he could say that we were asking for too much. We had submitted demands totalling $6.6 billion. What we were asking for was half a percentage point of GDP. It is next to nothing.

We were asking for a program for first-time homebuyers, the program I mentioned earlier. We were asking for an investment of $1.4 billion per year for social housing because, generally speaking, Quebec does not receive its share of funding from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation programs. These programs are designed for high-rise residential buildings, whereas Quebec's housing stock consists mainly of small multiplexes and buildings with five stories or less, made up of five, six or eight units. This would also have been a program for social and community housing, because there is one province in Canada that has permanent programs for the construction of social, community and co-operative housing: Quebec.

We therefore requested our share of a separate program, the rapid housing initiative, which amounted to $1.4 billion. Old age security benefits for seniors amounted to $3.18 billion. With regard to health care transfers, we were essentially asking that the amounts provided for in the temporary agreements under the Trudeau government be renewed, since they were expiring. That represented $6.6 billion. Apparently that was too much. This tax cut alone would have paid for the Bloc Québécois's requests within five years, but our demands were too expensive.

Worse yet, the tax cut is an ill-conceived, poorly thought-out election ploy. It is a fairly small tax cut. According to figures from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, which I am quoting from memory, we are talking about an average of approximately $180 per person in Canada. With the cost of housing and groceries rising, that is clearly not enough to keep people afloat. However, for 60,000 people in Canada, this is a tax increase. Who are those people? They the most vulnerable people, including people with disabilities.

Canada has something called the disability tax credit. This tax credit is calculated based on the tax rate applicable to the same bracket, which has been reduced. When the tax rate on the first personal income tax bracket is lowered, the tax credit is lowered. It is a refundable tax credit. People with a disability who are too poor and who sometimes do not even pay personal income tax because they are in such a difficult situation were losing money. We are talking about 60,000 people.

Did the government think about those people? No, it did not. The Bloc Québécois did. The Conservatives also worked with these groups, who came to us and said they had not received a response from the government. The government told them that there was nothing it could do, that this is how tax credits are calculated. We are talking about 60,000 people.

These people did not benefit from an $180 tax cut. For a single person, it is more like a loss of $141. For people with disabilities who do not pay income tax, the government's tax cut increased their taxes by $141, even though they are among the most vulnerable members of society. For a couple, we are talking about a loss of $155, due to the form these tax credits take.

We had to prod the minister into announcing that he was going to try to find a solution. He ended up announcing it right out there in the foyer of the House before his appearance at the Standing Committee on Finance meeting, because he was afraid that his testimony might do him too much harm after he was confronted with all of this. That is why holding the balance of power in committee is so important. That is what making gains looks like. It means giving genuine first-time homebuyers a real GST tax credit after the government let them down. It means ensuring that vulnerable people are not abandoned by the Department of Finance. Right now, we are studying the budget implementation act and, thanks to the Bloc Québécois's work with the groups that flagged this issue to us last spring, we know that the Department of Finance will look into this matter. We are confident of that.

The carbon tax is just one example among many of how this government is backpedalling on the environment. Just before he called the election, the Prime Minister decided to abolish the carbon tax because he did not want a carbon tax election, as the Conservatives wanted. This is how the mechanism worked. In provinces where the tax applied, the tax that would be paid later in the quarter was refunded upfront. It would be collected later. This was intended to make the mechanism socially acceptable when it was introduced. The government said it would send out the cheque first and collect the tax later. What did the Liberal government do? It abolished the tax. It never collected it for that quarter, and yet it still sent a rebate to people in seven provinces who had never paid it in the first place. The government still sent them cheques.

The government told us that we had a different pricing system in Quebec, and that was why we did not get a cheque. When it sent out those cheques with money from the government's consolidated revenue fund, 22% of which came from Quebec taxpayers, not one province, including Quebec, was paying a federal carbon tax. The move was denounced by a motion passed unanimously in the National Assembly of Quebec and by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, journalists and analysts. The only ones who thought the Earth was flat in this case were the Liberals. There are 42 Quebec Liberals here who claim that they are proud Quebeckers and that they represent Quebec. How can they claim to represent Quebec when a Prime Minister from Ontario, who represents an Ontario riding, a parliamentary secretary from Winnipeg and a bunch of members from British Columbia tell them to vote against Quebec and they obey, despite the motion adopted by the 125 members of the National Assembly? That is exactly what happened, and it is just one example among many of how this government is backpedalling on climate action.

The last budget included $4 million for the environment. I was at the budget lock-up with the member for Repentigny, and we were looking for the government's environmental policy. To pretend that they were investing money, the Liberals had to include critical minerals in that part. We are talking about $4 million over five years for the environment. Now the government wants to go after the only thing left, the industrial carbon tax. It is funny that the Liberals want to go after this, because we heard from the Governor of the Bank of Canada at the Standing Committee on Finance.

The Conservatives said that everything produced by big businesses that would be hit with the industrial tax is expensive, including steel, and they produce materials that are used to build housing, so that would increase the tax on homes. The Governor of the Bank of Canada said that it had no effect on inflation and that we should look elsewhere to find the source of price increases, because these big businesses export their materials.

Bill C‑4 is a mishmash of all sorts of things. We are obviously in favour of the part about housing, but how can anyone be in favour of a major environmental reversal that only served the Liberals' electoral interests? How can anyone support that? It is rather difficult. How can anyone unreservedly support a tax cut that ignores people with disabilities, that gives very little to households and that is ultimately being used to fund the cuts to health transfers that we saw in the last budget?

All I can say is that the government needs to stop introducing bills like this one, where everything and anything is all mixed together.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec Centre, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the good fortune of sitting in front of my esteemed colleague, who is an academic and economist by profession.

I was a little troubled by his comments on the possible role of a trained economist in politics. The current Prime Minister is a world-class economist. He was the governor of two central banks. I do not know of anyone else in the history of Canada, or perhaps anywhere else, who has done the same. This is someone who has had an international career and who knows how finance and economics work. My colleague seems to be saying that someone like that who enters politics is not a good politician by definition. I am a little confused, because he and I have somewhat similar backgrounds. We are not professional politicians. We have done other things in life.

Why would a trained economist not have a place as a politician in Canada?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, members often say "esteemed colleague", but in this case, it is really true.

I think my colleague misunderstood what I said. The Prime Minister is an economist who has done great things. I have read his book Values. I have it at home. I even made notes in it. It is because of all the wonderful things he has said and written in the past that I am disappointed in his behaviour today.

The disappointment is proportional to the Prime Minister's previous values. I would love to believe that the member for Québec Centre has been true to his values throughout his political career. I want to believe that. One example is that he reinstated benefits for families in his first term. This is someone who came in and made political moves that were in line with what we can read about his academic career.

The Prime Minister is doing the exact opposite. He is someone for whom values are just a word and for whom everything else can be sacrificed on the altar of votes and power.

[Burton Bailey, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member's speech highlights how dire the situation in our country has become over the past 10 years of Liberal government. The government seems to forget that there is only one taxpayer and that there is no such thing as government money. All the money the government spends comes off the backs of Canadians.

I would like to give the member an opportunity to explain why he thinks the government believes it is okay to spend Canadians' hard-earned money recklessly.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are all in opposition and usually, we rarely attack each other. My colleague is right on the first point. Ultimately, there is only one taxpayer. At the end of the day, the taxpayer gets all the tax bills. That is why we are calling for health transfers. That is why we think that the government should stop disengaging from health care funding and stop keeping the health transfer escalator at a level lower than system costs.

What happens at the end of all this? What happens is that Quebec and the provinces become unable to provide care and are forced to raise taxes, increase the debt and cut back on services. That is exactly what is happening. I do not mind the Conservatives being alarmist over the current situation, but we have been asking them for the past four years whether they want to see health transfers increased, so why have we never gotten an answer?

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his eloquent presentation.

He talked about the elimination of the carbon tax, which created a debt that has yet to be paid. The Quebec National Assembly roundly condemned this unpaid debt.

We both sat in the last Parliament. Members will recall that every time the Conservatives rose during question period, they said the government was going to “triple, triple, triple the carbon tax”. They would not stop repeating that. Every time, the Liberals insisted that the carbon tax was fundamental, essential and necessary and that the future of the world depended on it.

Then, all of a sudden, the Liberals scrapped it. Can my colleague explain the shift in thinking that led them there?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is because the Liberals became conservative to steal votes from the Conservative Party. It is true and it has been proven that the Liberal Party of Canada, which currently forms the government, stole $814 million from Quebeckers. It stole that money.

When the 42 Liberal members from Quebec tell us that they are standing up for Quebec, that is utterly false. They were not elected by Quebeckers to steal from Quebeckers. They took advantage of people's fear of Donald Trump so they could get elected and then said they were going to take $814 million. That $814 million is as much as the whole SAAQclic project cost.

It is more than what we are asking for in health transfers. It is three times the annual amount that the Prime Minister is going to spend in Quebec next year on hospital infrastructure. It is a lot of money that was stolen from Quebeckers.

[Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I gather from his speech that my colleague from Mirabel believes it is important to be there for the people who need it the most.

Budget 2025 includes several measures such as automatic benefits to ensure that everyone who really needs federal benefits receives them. We made the national school food program and a tax credit for personal support workers permanent. However, when it came time to vote on this budget, our colleague voted against it. It is a bit like spending years calling for funding to extend the runway at the Magdalen Islands airport and then voting against that funding when it is granted.

My question for my colleague is as follows. Will he commit to voting for Bill C-4 this time? It includes a tax cut for the middle class and a GST rebate for first-time homebuyers, so it will truly help Canadians.