Mr. Speaker, I apologize.
How does the Prime Minister spend more and invest less? Even Justin Trudeau, in his last budget, projected his deficit for that year would be $39.8 billion. He ended up spending $61.8 billion just before leaving.
The Prime Minister led us to believe that it would be easy to do, and many believed that based on the out-of-control spending of Justin Trudeau. How could the Prime Minister make any mistake by reducing the budget? We all knew that Trudeau was an out-of-control spender. We knew the government was an out-of-control spending government, so we thought that it would be a relatively easy task. However, as we have all seen, the deficit will be $78.3 billion, and we have learned that it is likely to be worse. We have seen that over and again with the Liberals. It is a major broken promise and not a good sign considering that promises were made just a few short months ago.
The Prime Minister broke even more of the promises he made just months ago. Do members remember the fiscal anchors he was going to adhere to? The fiscal anchor that he promised during the election he would adhere to was the debt-to-GDP ratio, but he raising it. He promised to spend less, but he is spending $94 billion more, which is costing each household another $5,400 per year.
If $78 billion in deficit spending is not bad enough, the Prime Minister is also padding the number to hide operational spending as capital spending. This is from the Parliamentary Budget Officer's recent report. His new definition of capital spending “is overly expansive” and “expands beyond the current treatment in the Public Accounts and international practice based on the System of National Accounts (SNA), such as that adopted by the United Kingdom”.
After using a more accepted definition, the PBO found that capital investment spending was 30% lower than the Liberals claimed. That is where the $94-billion amount comes from. It is a $94-billion difference. Even the promises the Prime Minister made are false. In other words, his investments are much lower than he promised, $94 billion less.
Furthermore, the PBO found that the Prime Minister will not even balance the operational budget over the next five years. It is another fiscal anchor abandoned by the Prime Minister. That is a lot of broken promises in a few short months, and that is after he abandoned the Liberals' previous fiscal anchor of reducing the federal debt-to-GDP ratio. The PBO found that the debt-to-GDP ratio will be even higher than in the last economic update and that Canada “is no longer projected to be on a declining path over the medium term.”
It is a scary direction we are headed in. The PBO had previously warned in September that Canadians could be paying more for debt if the Liberals tried to change accounting standards. We know they have.
In the Financial Post on November 18, two days ago, was this article: “PBO calling out the federal government's fiscal approach should raise red flags for all of us”. Indeed it should. It states:
[The] Prime Minister...promised a new budgeting framework during the Liberal Party leadership campaign when he said he would separate the federal budget into an “operating budget” and a “capital budget,” with the operating budget being balanced within three years [total].
Tricks such as this are a blatant attempt to baffle people by transferring many day-to-day expenditures from an overall budget to a capital budget and crow that you are “investing.” The key to making it work is to ensure that the definition of capital is so broad that you can transfer amounts easily into the capital budget.
Again, if members and Canadians out there do not want to take my word for it, they can take the Parliamentary Budget Officer's word.
I think Canadians are wondering what the cost is to them, because they hear big numbers, billions and trillions. What is the true cost of the Prime Minister right out of the gate? He will add $321.7 billion in new money to the federal debt over the next five years.