Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to stand here in this place as a member of Parliament representing Newfoundland and Labrador, and especially the riding that sent me here, now known as Central Newfoundland.
I stand today to talk about Bill C-15, the budget implementation act, and the impacts it would have on ordinary Canadians, Newfoundlanders and the folks from Central Newfoundland, as well as the impacts it would have on industry in Canada. This is my take on this budget, as the shadow minister for fisheries and oceans.
Budget 2025 lays out a $78-billion deficit. There is a Liberal spending problem in this country. The Liberals have increased our national debt by as much as all of the governments in Canada that preceded this one, and they have done it in just 10 years.
How do we pay for that debt? Where does the money come from? One simple way is by selling bonds and paying interest to the bondholders, but who is really paying the lease on those new printed dollars? It is ordinary Canadians, and the cost is $55 billion. That $55 billion could be giving relief to Canadians and lowering their cost of living. It is more than the amount spent on health care by the federal government or collected in HST. This big debt is breaking Canadians, and half of that $55 billion in interest is due to the Liberal government.
Printing money devalues a nation's currency. We recall pictures of Germany in World War II, when it took a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread. Inflation here is not quite that bad yet, but it is getting up there with the doubling of food bank usage since the Liberals came to power.
We are really reaping what we have sown in Canada. Let me rephrase that. We are reaping what the Liberals have sown since 2015. Not only do they have a spending problem; they now have a revenue problem. We have lost billions of dollars in revenue in mining and oil and gas, and we are feeling that now. Canada is a country with a vast social net for citizens, but it has to be paid for. If we cannot harvest our resources properly, we are leaving revenue on the table.
In the case of Newfoundland and Labrador, in the last three years, we have not had one bid on an offshore lease for oil and gas. No one wants to take a chance on investing in an exploration program in Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore with the unconstitutional Bill C-69. In the case of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, we have Bill C-49, which industry experts tell me is an even bigger drag on investment in Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore than Bill C-69. The last little piece here is the emissions cap, but I am told it is not as crippling as Bill C-49.
How many billions of dollars are we losing in royalty revenue? In the case of Bay du Nord, which took almost 1,300 days for permitting, for every day that project is not producing, $333 million in royalties is stranded. I hope that paints a little picture.
There is continued crippling of the oil and gas and mining industries by the Liberal government, and false narratives are being spun. Liberals talked in the budget about how the emissions caps may go one of these days if A, B, C, D, E, F and G are all done, but there is no guarantee that emissions caps will be gone. They will not be gone based on what is in the budget, because it is all hypothetical, yet Liberals and certain media in Newfoundland and Labrador have touted the budget as being the end of emissions caps or production caps. It is a false narrative that has been spun.
The Prime Minister talks a big talk about national projects, but in the meantime, billions and billions of dollars continue to flee Canada, and it is not going to stop until the crippling red tape I outlined earlier gets cut. The resource industry-killing pieces of legislation desperately need to be changed. It is more important for resource provinces to have proper legislation in place than it is to continue to keep them on the dole, to keep them waiting for handouts, always beholden to Ottawa.
I will speak a little about how the budget relates to the fishery. I just alluded to the misleading nature of the Prime Minister. In the election, the Liberals promised a $250-million expansion of the small craft harbours budget. There is nothing in the budget except mentioning money that was promised. In fact in one instance, and I do not know who proofread the budget, it refers to 2022 and 2023 small craft harbours money. It is unbelievable.
Continuing on down to the shoreline on the fishery, a big report just came out of the Marine Institute at Memorial University, which talked about the amount of predation by seals on the fish stocks. This new study says that 24 times more fish are consumed by harp seals alone than in the fisheries catch rates. The harp seal accounts for only about half of the biomass of seals in the Atlantic Ocean, considering it is only one of five species.
Since 2010, Canada's fishing industry has had its GDP shrink. In the meantime, Norway's GDP in the fishery has increased 4.5-fold in the same length of time. I see the pittances put in the budget, about $20 million a year for agricultural food and seafood product marketing, and it is a joke. It is a slap in the face for the fishing industry. For folks in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, P.E.I., New Brunswick and Quebec, which have seen tariffs due to China, the China fiasco that is on the go, it has cost the industry about $100 million this year.
I will not be supporting the budget. It is an amateur scrapbook job.