Mr. Speaker, Canadians asked for relief, but with this Liberal budget, all they got was spin. Families asked for stable prices, safer streets and a clear plan to grow paycheques and bring investment back. Instead, they got the largest deficit in Canadian history outside of COVID, more debt and more creative accounting from a government that keeps saying, “Trust us”, while going out of its way to make life harder and less affordable.
The public reaction has been telling. Business groups called it directionless. Economists flagged the risks. Community leaders asked where the affordability plan actually is. Even more telling is that the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed what Canadians suspected: The government's numbers do not add up in a way that builds confidence or credibility. With $365 million in this budget for advertising, Canadians are literally left paying for Liberal talking points. Conservatives seek to give them results.
I do not expect people to just take my word for this, so here is what our country's top expert has to say on these matters. The Parliamentary Budget Officer told the parliamentary committee that he does not know if the government currently has fiscal anchors, calling that “a considerable degree of concern”. He further cautioned that the government's shifting definitions between capital and operating spending make it “impossible” to assess whether any target will be hit and that “the deficit will absolutely be higher.” He also warned that playing accounting games risks higher borrowing costs for Canadians.
I say, when the referee says the scoreboard can no longer be trusted, the game is in trouble.
Markets hear that. Rating agencies hear that. Families living paycheque to paycheque will end up paying the price in higher interest, weaker growth and fewer opportunities. This budget takes a bad habit and makes it worse, labelling routine spending as investment, backloading costs and burying off-cycle decisions in footnotes. It is typical of the Liberals' playbook to shift the definitions, claim victory and hope that no one reads the fine print. Unlike them, I know Canadians are smarter than that and will not be fooled. They are the ones who are left reading the receipt at the grocery checkout counter, and they see through it. If the plan is so strong, why the constant need to redefine the terms? Why the sudden innovative accounting to make numbers look less bad? When the government changes the ruler, its measurements become meaningless.
The Prime Minister likes to wave around his résumé, but even a first-year student has learned that the rampant spending is not strategy. In a period when inflation has eaten household savings and interest rates remain elevated, this budget piles on new borrowing with no credible path to balance. This is not compassionate assistance to those in need; it is intergenerational transfer, stealing the futures of people's kids and grandkids to fill today's political promises.
Every extra billion dollars borrowed today is a future tax hike or a program cut. Interest on the debt is crowding out the very things Canadians care about: health care capacity, community safety, national defence and infrastructure that actually gets built. We are already spending more just to service the public debt than we are on critical priorities. This budget accelerates that trend.
Investment goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated, but this budget doubles down on uncertainty with ever-changing rules, surprise levies and vague megaproject announcements with no shovels in sight. I look at how our dollar is crashing right now. We are witnessing capital choosing clarity elsewhere. Energy, mining and manufacturing projects and payrolls are drifting to jurisdictions with predictable timelines and real competitiveness plans.
We cannot build national prosperity on catchphrase-filled press releases. We build it on a stable, bankable framework that gets things approved and built, like pipelines, power lines, LNG terminals, critical mineral processing and housing at scale. Conservatives have been saying this for years. We have actually invited the Liberal government to steal our ideas. The offer is still open, because clearly they still do not know what they are doing.
The Prime Minister said Canadians would judge him at the grocery checkout. In Middlesex—London they have, and the verdict is not good. By the end of summer, headline inflation was 1.9%, but food inflation was 3.5%, year over year, still outpacing the overall basket. Meat rose by 7.2% and beef was up 12.7%, compared to last year. We cannot view food inflation as a graph. It is supper, and the portions are getting smaller. This is after years of compounded increases.
Let us put this in family dollar terms. In 2025, a typical family of four is expected to spend about $16,800 and change on food, which is up roughly $802 from last year. Over the past several years, the cumulative climb is now in the thousands of dollars. Many families describe it as hundreds more each year, with the steepest jump happening right now. In Ontario, staples keep getting higher. Sirloin is up 33%; canned soup is up 26%, coffee 22% and sugar 20% in recent months.
A rebate cheque is not a food policy. A school meal press release does not reduce the price of groceries for a two-income family just trying to keep the lights on and gas in the car. When government policy drives up costs then offers taxpayers their own money back, that is not help; it is a headline. If the Liberals let people keep more of their own money, they would not have to play saviour and feed their kids for them. They created the problem, and now they want us to pat them on the back and say “good job” for refusing to fix it.
I want to share some of the many voices from Middlesex—London, anonymized because Conservatives believe people deserve privacy from their government, but their words deserve the House's attention. I quote: “We're choosing between groceries and gas this month. If something breaks, we're sunk.” I quote: “Both of us work full-time. We've never used a food bank before. Now we do twice a month.” I quote: “I don't want a one-time cheque. I want my weekly grocery bill under control.”
Food bank use is up sharply across this country. Major urban centres are reporting record visits. Local food banks are stretched thin and are often forced to reduce what goes into each hamper. That should not be the normal in a country blessed with farmland, energy and ingenuity. It is the consequence of Liberal political and policy failures on competition, supply chains, energy and taxes that pile on costs every step of the way.
However, the Liberal government thinks it can trick people. The budget inserts the word “affordability” into more programs and more announcements, but the structure is the same: centralize, spend, label it investment and hope prices somehow come down. Here is a news flash: They will not, not while we constrain energy, choke approvals, fail trade negotiations and add costs at each link in the supply chain from farm to fork.
Families need less government in the checkout lane and more common sense in policy. Conservatives do this. We keep policy simple, demanding that the government scrap hidden and cascading taxes that inflate the cost of producing and transporting food, fast-track logistics and processing capacity so harvests move more efficiently and cold storage is available, increase real competition in grocery retail and wholesaling by ending the supply chain bullying that feeds higher prices and green-light energy and critical infrastructure to reduce embedded costs in every product on the shelf. That is what a real plan looks like. Canadians want a plan that measures success by lower prices, more paycheques and safer communities, not by how many failed programs were renamed.
A Conservative plan means we will bring home lower costs and cut wasteful spending; unleash homegrown energy and industry; approve and build energy infrastructure, pipelines, power lines, LNG, nuclear and mining; streamline permits with firm timelines and a “one project, one review” rule; restore competition and fairness in the food supply chain; remove expensive hidden taxes on food such as the industrial carbon tax, front-of-pack labelling and the plastics registry; maintain safe streets, secure borders and get serious about justice.
We will end catch-and-release for violent repeat offenders; enforce at the border to stop the smuggling that fuels organized crime and drives up costs through theft and insurance; focus police resources on criminals and not on law-abiding citizens; have a credible fiscal anchor; publish a clear and independently verifiable path to balance; stop shifting definitions to game the ledger; and invite the PBO to audit the government's capital and operating methodology so that Canadians and markets can trust the numbers once again.
In Middlesex—London, farmers, processors, truckers, shopkeepers and families are not asking for utopia. They are asking for the government to stop getting in the way: predictable rules, faster approvals, real competition and honest books. They are asking to bring discipline to government so families can bring dinner to the table. They want to make more here at home, such as food, energy and materials, and build homes and industry so we are not at the mercy of foreign supply chains and foreign governments. That is real resilience. That is the Canadian way.
This budget is a glossy brochure for a product that keeps breaking, and Canadians have tried it for 10 years. The Liberal lemon costs more, delivers less and leaves future generations with the bill. Enough is enough.
To the families in Middlesex—London, we—
