Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be here this evening to maybe get a little bit better answer to a question I asked in October. I talked about the fact that 86,000 jobs were lost in October and that 1,000 jobs were lost in Calgary, and about how that actually leads to more households' being food-insecure.
Since that time, the Canadian food sentiment index report came out last week. It said that 80.6% of Canadians say food is their top expense pressure, that 28% of Canadians needed to use savings or borrow money to buy food and that 25.5% of Canadians are experiencing food insecurity. The average family of four will spend $800 more on groceries this year than last year.
That is an indictment of the 10 years of failed Liberal policies we have had in this country. I have been in the House long enough to remember when the current Minister of Finance was minister of trade and announced that grocery prices would go down by Thanksgiving, but that was Thanksgiving 2023, and grocery prices have continued to increase.
Then the Liberals tried to make food prices a global phenomenon, saying that they were going up this fast everywhere. However, we have heard time after time that food price increases in Canada are outpacing those in the United States by 48%, so this is a made-in-Canada problem, and it started with the out-of-control and reckless spending by the Liberal government.
Meet the new guy, the same as the old guy. Justin Trudeau never met a tax dollar he did not want to spend, and the Prime Minister is blowing past even the deficits of Justin Trudeau. It would make him blush. It was actually so cold outside today that I saw Liberals with their hands in their own pockets. That almost never happens.
After 10 years of failed Liberal policies, and this is the data, food insecurity is increasing time and time again, and food lines at the food bank continue to grow; more people are using the food bank than ever before. The Liberal plan has failed miserably. My question, to whoever is going to answer on the other side, is this: When will the Liberals get it together, stop their out-of-control spending and get budgets under control so families can afford to put food on their own table?