Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House to speak on behalf of the good people of Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner. Today it is to discuss budget 2025.
This fall, before the budget was tabled, my office sent out a survey across my riding to hear directly from constituents about their priorities and expectations for the 2025 budget. An overwhelming 76% of respondents listed the cost of living as their top concern, and nearly 80% of business owners said rising costs are hurting their operations. Of the respondents, 85% said that they are concerned about their financial future, and 88% said they do not believe that Canada's economic situation will improve in the near future.
Conservatives have heard these concerns echoed by families, individuals and businesses across the country, which is why, before the budget was tabled, we presented the Prime Minister with a common-sense plan that laid out our expectations for an affordable budget. In our pre-budget meetings, Conservatives demanded the Liberals include measures in their budget to address the cost of living crisis by scrapping hidden taxes on groceries and gas, cutting taxes on work and homebuilding, and ending the reckless deficits that fuel inflation.
Sadly, the November 4 budget missed that mark. It would fail to provide any meaningful relief for Canadians struggling to make ends meet. Budget 2025 would add nearly $80 billion to our national debt this year alone, the highest amount in Canadian history outside of COVID, all the while keeping Liberal taxes on groceries, work, energy and homebuilding. This budget would add $10 million to our debt every hour, and the Liberals intend to add another $321 billion to Canada's debt over the next five years.
What many Canadians may not know is that, as a direct result of the Liberal reckless spending, our national debt is now at $1.35 trillion. This means that every Canadian, infant to senior, owes $33,000 as their share of Canada's federal debt, and as our debt rises, so too does the interest burden on that debt. Budget 2025 revealed that $55.6 billion will be required to debt service or interest charges this fiscal year alone. What this unbelievable amount really means is that the federal government is spending more on annual debt interest costs than it is on federal health transfers to the provinces or than is collected in GST revenues.
This level of spending is not just reckless; it is dangerous and puts the future of our nation at risk. It is not just Conservatives who are concerned about this reckless spending. Experts from across the country have spoken out against this record-breaking Liberal deficit. Fitch Ratings, one of Canada's top credit rating agencies, warned that rising fiscal spending and debt burden have weakened the country's credit profile, putting Canada's AAA credit rating at risk.
Even more shocking was the report released by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Parliament's neutral, non-partisan official responsible for providing economic and fiscal analysis to parliamentarians and Canadians. The report found that Canada's traditional fiscal anchor, the debt-to-GDP ratio, “is no longer projected to be on a declining path”. This long-standing fiscal anchor is important not only for fiscal sustainability but also for preserving Canada's AAA credit rating.
This fall, to avoid accountability, the Liberals quietly replaced Canada's long-standing debt-to-GDP fiscal anchor with a new one, maintaining not a declining debt-to-GDP, but rather a deficit-to-GDP, ratio. This one-word change effectively dismantled the fiscal anchor that has existed for more than 30 years in a process that was certainly far from transparent.
Despite changing the goalposts, the PBO's report found that “it is unlikely that the Government’s declining deficit-to-GDP fiscal anchor will be respected.” It is disappointing, though not surprising, that the Liberals have resorted to accounting tricks to create confusion instead of working to get their deficit under control and stop their reckless spending.
On top of these shifting targets, the Liberals are trying to distract from their record-breaking deficit by differentiating between operating and capital spending, despite the bottom line of Canada's debt remaining unchanged. Their fiscal anchor of balancing the operating budget by 2028 gives the illusion of fiscal stability while allowing the government to rack up huge deficit spending on the capital side of the books.
In his report, the PBO found the Liberals' definition of capital investment to be “overly expansive”, going way beyond the internationally accepted definition adopted in other countries. Using a more accepted definition, the PBO found $94 billion in spending misclassified as capital and said, “based on our definition, the operating balance in Budget 2025 would remain in a deficit position”. This report by the impartial budget watchdog lays out a clear fiscal outlook for Canadians. Not a single fiscal anchor is likely to be met, and these dangerous deficits will continue to drive up the cost of essentials and make life even more unaffordable.
In light of this analysis, the Liberals are now trying to get rid of this PBO, looking for a new officer who has “tact and discretion”. The Liberals have only themselves to blame for Canada's fiscal outlook, their poor fiscal outlook, yet instead of bringing down the deficit, they are attempting to silence those who hold them accountable. While typical of the government's record of avoiding accountability and transparency, it is nonetheless completely unacceptable. Despite these accounting tricks, the Liberals cannot hide from the fact that every dollar they spend comes out of the pockets of hard-working Canadians, causing higher prices, lower paycheques and bigger bills.
In addition to massively increasing Canada's debt, budget 2025 fails to address the housing crisis so many Canadians are facing. Since the Liberals took office, housing prices have risen 32% faster than incomes in this country, turning Canada into the most unaffordable housing market in the G7. Despite the Prime Minister's promise to build 500,000 homes annually at speeds not seen for generations, his own agency confirmed that new home construction dropped 17% this past October alone, falling to less than half of his target. The president of the Building Industry and Land Development Association revealed the Liberals' misleading claims in the budget.
He reported:
This budget relies on backward-looking data that provides false reassurances that Canada’s housing sector is prospering and that affordability is improving. But these are stale statistics. The latest figures show that new home sales have evaporated across all housing types in every major city across Canada – and a hundred thousand jobs are at risk.
It is not just industry leaders who are concerned about the Liberal housing plan; the Liberal member for Beaches—East York, the Prime Minister's former minister of housing, said that the housing measures in budget 2025 are, unfortunately, very “unlikely to move the needle on development”. To use his own phrasing, budget 2025 “falls well short” of addressing the Liberal housing promises and “does not live up to its promise of generational investments.” If the Liberals want to get serious about restoring housing affordability, they should get out of the way and scrap the red tape and taxes that make it impossible to build.
The promise of Canada has always been that every person, no matter where they are from, can work hard and build a life with a stable job, an affordable home and a strong future in the freest country on earth. Unfortunately, after 10 years of Liberal mismanagement, that promise has become increasingly out of reach. When the Liberals took office in 2015, Canada ranked number nine on the global quality of life index. After 10 years of reckless Liberal spending and mismanagement, Canada has fallen to 27th place, the largest drop of any of the top 30 countries.
Therefore, on behalf of the Canadians who can no longer afford to eat, heat or house themselves because of Liberal inflation, Conservatives do not support any aspect of this costly budget. We will continue to put forward amendments to improve Canada's quality of life by cutting taxes on groceries, work, energy and homebuilding. We will fight to restore the promise of Canada. My hope is that all parties in the House will work with us to deliver a positive, hopeful and affordable future.