Mr. Speaker, I was very proud to speak this week at the Future of Energy Global Summit. Of course, the member for Lakeland would have been a much better speaker. She has so much knowledge and experience. I want to take a moment and wish my seatmate the very best. She is a fierce advocate for her constituents and our shared Conservative values. She is in our thoughts and prayers.
The panel I was on was very relevant to today's topic. It was called ”making major projects viable”. Of course, this is something we as Conservatives have been advocating for for the last decade, whether it is ports, bridges, tracks, reactors or pipelines, which is of course my favourite as an Albertan. The conference was amazing and the panel was incredible, but of course I wanted to do my best to prepare for it, so I researched the bios of the panellists and the proposed major federal projects. Then I received a copy of the 2023 white paper, which included the presentations in the inaugural year of the conference. Lo and behold, the Prime Minister had presented at this conference in 2023. I thought this was interesting, so I looked to see what he had to say.
The topic of his speech was the challenges and opportunities of the energy transition. That is very interesting. I was listening. His title then was United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance.
One key point is that the presenter highlighted the need for approximately an additional $3 trillion per year for a quarter of a century to meet the Paris Agreement and the net-zero targets. This is from the man who is trying to convince Canadians that he has their best interests at heart. This is from the man who wants us to believe that he is for industry, productivity and the common good of our nation. This is from the man who promised Canadians that he would increase productivity and rein in spending.
My mother taught me a very important lesson as a young woman when a close friend let me down. I think it applies here. That lesson is that, when somebody tells us who they are, we should believe them. When somebody asks for $3 trillion, creates a deficit of $78 billion, puts forward a budget of $414 billion and is comfortable with a $50-billion interest payment on debt annually, that somebody is telling us who they are, and when somebody tells us who they are, we should believe them.
In the Prime Minister's book Values, he spent years evangelizing carbon pricing. Carbon taxes, he insisted, should increase, yet when polling indicated that a majority of Canadians would reject carbon pricing, a position that was the cornerstone of Conservative policy under the leader of the official opposition, he announced in his 2025 platform that he had eliminated carbon pricing. This, of course, was not the case. The industrial carbon price remained. This is no surprise given his previous claim that the Canadian federal carbon pricing framework is a model for other nations. After acting for years as the global spokesperson for carbon pricing, he arrives as the Liberal candidate for Prime Minister and claims he will do away with it, yet he retained the industrial carbon tax. In his book, he goes so far as to say that global interests should take priority over national interests. We can only assume that he also, within that, includes Canada.
The Canadian energy sector has some of the strictest environmental regulations in the world, yet the Prime Minister and the government continue to impose additional barriers, citing international commitments. This approach scares away investors, delays projects and forces Canada to rely on oil from countries with no transparency or no environmental responsibility. When somebody tells us who they are, we should believe them.
Then there are the things the Prime Minister would like Canadians to believe he has achieved. He claimed, in February of 2025, at his campaign launch in Edmonton, that he had helped manage multiple crises and saved not one but two economies. The leaders who were in charge at the time have different stories to tell. Former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, the greatest prime minister in the history of Canada, for now, wrote that the Prime Minister's experience is not all it is cracked up to be.
He said his “experience is NOT the day-to-day management of Canada’s economy during the global financial crisis”. He went on to say, “I have listened, with increasing disbelief, to [the Prime Minister’s] attempts to take credit for things he had little or nothing to do with.... He has been doing this at the expense of the late Jim Flaherty, among the greatest Finance Ministers in Canada's history, who sadly is not here to defend his record.” Harper goes on, “But let me be very clear: the hard calls during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis were made by Jim.” Former prime minister Stephen Harper went on to say that his record as an adviser to former prime minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals was so bad.
Likewise, former prime minister of England Liz Truss said the Prime Minister “did a terrible job” as the Bank of England governor. She counts the Prime Minister as a regular among those who caused the British pound to drop to its lowest-ever rate against the U.S. dollar, citing them as those who believe in big government and high taxation. According to his record, he printed too much money, something we have seen in Canada under the Liberal government; lost control of regulation, presided over a steep decline of London and, most seriously, politicized the bank.
In the years since the Prime Minister left, it is written that his successors have been struggling to clear up the mess that the Prime Minister left. This misrepresentation even exists within his own party. He claimed in the English-language Liberal leaders' debate that it was his privilege to work with former prime minister Paul Martin when he balanced the books and kept the books balanced. The only problem is that the Prime Minister started out in finance in 2004, according to his own LinkedIn page, almost a decade after former prime minister Martin's ship-righting 1995 budget and well after Martin finished balancing the books in 1998.
Finally, we arrive at the topic of today's debate, the budget and its implementation. The Prime Minister stated, “We need discipline for our spending, it's necessary”, and that Canadians could expect a prudent budget. However, the Prime Minister's spending plans make his predecessor, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, seem like a tight-fisted miser. We have seen in his budget an increase in spending and a further $90 billion in deficit spending over four years. Of course, that is only if the government meets its targets, which it has not done in years. It has consistently had much higher deficits than even its own projections call for.
“These are very prudent numbers”, the Prime Minister has said. The $78 billion deficit, $414 billion in spending this fiscal year alone and $50 billion annually in interest on the debt is not prudence, but this is what the Prime Minister would like to have Canadians believe. The greatest predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. The Prime Minister wants us to believe that he has put forward a budget of austerity and disciplined spending, but he also wants us to believe that he saved two economies.
When we look at his actions, they tell us otherwise. As poor as his actions are, his own words speak even stronger. “People will charge me with being elitist or a globalist...which...happens to be exactly what we need.” That means the Prime Minister will always put his wealthy friends first. He will always put nations before Canada. His loyalty does not lie with Canada or with Canadians. He has told us in his own words exactly who he is, and when somebody tells us who they are, we should believe them.