Mr. Speaker, most Canadians do not spend their evenings reading budget tables or credit reports, and frankly they should not have to. In a well-run country, those numbers are supposed to be boring. However, nothing about Canada's finances is boring right now, because the government has pushed us into territory where ordinary families are paying the price for extraordinary mismanagement.
Let us start with the simplest truth, one that is understood by any family, business or responsible adult: One cannot spend more than one earns forever. When a government does it, the consequences do not hit the politician who overspent; they hit Canadians. They show up in higher taxes, prices and interest rates, and they show up when one's grocery bill climbs but one's paycheque does not. Overspending may happen in Ottawa, but the fallout lands on Canadians' dinner tables, in their gas tanks and in their monthly budgets.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed, to the Liberals' great irritation, the very thing they hoped no one would say out loud: The deficit is not shrinking like they said it would. It is doubling, not because of a recession or an emergency but because the government has chosen to grow spending by tens of billions of dollars. When government expands operating spending faster than the economy grows, deficits explode. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is arithmetic.
The government insists that all this spending is investment. That would be convenient if it were true, but a label does not change reality. An investment is something that pays back, and a cost is something paid for. Confusing the two does not make someone sophisticated; it makes them irresponsible. A family understands this intuitively. Buying a new tool for work is an investment, while buying a new flat-screen TV for a man cave is a cost. Both may be great, but only one produces a return.
The government has been calling almost everything it does an investment, even things that are clearly not. Museums and cultural centres may sound great, but they do not generate revenue for the country, pay down the debt or expand Canada's productivity. They are costs. There is nothing wrong with costs when we can afford them, but it is dangerous to pretend that costs will magically behave like investments.
The PBO found that the government inflated its so-called capital investments by $94 billion simply by renaming ordinary spending as assets. Other countries do not do that, and nor do accountants and economists. It is the kind of creative bookkeeping that hides problems rather than solving them.
Now we see the consequence. Fitch Ratings, the agency responsible for evaluating our financial health, has warned of a downgrade of Canada's credit rating. That is not a symbolic gesture; it is the financial world's saying out loud what many Canadians have already begun to feel, which is that we do not trust the government to manage debt. A downgrade will mean we pay more to borrow. When we owe as much as Canada does, that is not a small problem. It means that the interest on the debt grows faster and that more tax dollars go toward servicing yesterday's overspending instead of building tomorrow's opportunities.
Canadians deserve honesty. They deserve a government that understands the difference between spending and investing. They deserve policies rooted in reality, not wishful thinking. Above all, they deserve leadership that protects the next generation instead of sending them the bill for this one.
How do we quit maxing out the national credit card and pull Canada back from the edge before the next generation pays the price?