Mr. Speaker, there is something happening in this country that the government does not want Canadians to know, but my constituents can feel it in their paycheque. They sure notice it at the grocery store, and it really hits home when they open their heating bill and swallow hard before they look at the number. For the first time in our history, thanks to the Liberal government, Canada is getting bigger and Canadians are getting poorer. That is not my opinion; it is the national scoreboard. It is what the numbers tell us.
The government is supposed to be all about evidence-based decision-making. Well, I invite it to look at the evidence. This is what happens when the government that worships control forgets that freedom is the engine of prosperity. When the urban elite tries to run a country it does not understand, ordinary people pay the price. Bill C-15, the so-called budget implementation act, would not fix it; it would make it worse, hide it and excuse it.
Common sense used to guide this country. Now it is lefty Liberal woke ideology, reckless, expensive, downtown Ottawa ideology, steering every direction and decision.
The people who pay for this ideology do not live anywhere near the gated communities where it is dreamed up. The people who pay for this failed ideology work all day, every day, drink double-doubles and eat their grandmother's brown bread, while the folks who dreamed up the ideology work five and a half hours a day and drink goat's milk lattes while nibbling on their avocado toast. While my constituents get poorer, the Prime Minister takes another trip at the taxpayers' expense and avoids accountability here in the House.
My grandfather used to joke, “Don't stay in one place too long; someone will put you to work.” It seems the Prime Minister has taken that advice very seriously. Since becoming Prime Minister just eight months ago, he has visited at least 18 countries, some of them twice: France, Italy, Vatican City, Belgium, Netherlands, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Latvia, Mexico, Egypt, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. He has visited the United Kingdom twice. Despite three visits to the United States and his promises of elbows up, the only deal Canada has been able to close with the United States since March is that former prime minister Justin Trudeau closed on Katy Perry.
The Prime Minister travels the world talking about growth and does what bankers always do: turn our hard-earned equity into debt. He waves his hands. He quotes big numbers. He smiles on red carpets. He talks about growth, but it is the kind of growth we get when we fill a hot-air balloon with cheap air; it looks big on the outside, while the people inside can barely breathe.
Real GDP per person, the number that matters to working people, has fallen two years in a row. Let us think about that. In one of the richest countries on Earth, after 10 years of Liberal leadership, the average Canadian is going backwards. Canada is a country running in reverse, and instead of taking responsibility, the government hands us Bill C-15, a bill built on the idea that if it spends enough more money, nobody will notice there is less in their pockets. Canadians notice. My constituents notice.
While all this is happening, the government spends its time on buying back hunting rifles from hunters and farmers. A government of socialists who confuse Elmer Fudd with Al Capone cannot be trusted. They crack down on the wrong people while at the same time they reward the wrong people, every single time. They are lecturing working folks about what kind of car they are allowed to drive, pushing $70,000 and $80,000 electric vehicles nobody asked for, when what most families really need is to fix the muffler on their 2010 Impala that gets them to work every morning.
The communities of Miramichi—Grand Lake seem like a long way from downtown Ottawa, but my constituents have sent me here to this town to stand in the House and tell it that this town, the government, has lost their confidence. The government has lost respect for the dignity of the hard work that ordinary Canadians, my constituents, take very seriously. The government regulates, mandates, restricts and lectures because it thinks Canadians cannot be trusted with their own lives. That is not governing; it is Liberal overreach.
Unemployment is climbing. Participation is flat. Young people cannot find work. Families are cutting back on everything except fear. Instead of embracing their values, the drive, the ambition and the grit of hard-working Canadians, the government clings to ideology that punishes every effort and rewards bureaucracy, yet the budget and the implementation bill tell Canadians, “Don't worry; Ottawa will take care of it.”
From what I have seen so far in this town, Ottawa cannot even take care of itself. Canada's tax burden sits at 34.8% of our entire economy, above the OECD average. People are paying more, working harder and getting less. Where I come from, we learn at a very young age not to take any wooden nickels, but that is exactly what the government is leaving in Canadians' pockets. Then there is the debt. The government can play games with the net debt and the gross debt all it wants, but Canadians get one bill at the end of the day, not two. Our debt sits at around 111% of GDP. One does not put out a fire by throwing more gasoline on it, but the budget does just that.
Behind all that spending and behind every photo op and ribbon cutting is the cold truth the Liberals refuse to face: Canada has a productivity crisis. We are not running out of workers; we are running out of growth.
Despite the fact the Prime Minister has bamboozled Ottawa and London bureaucrats for a living, Canadians know we cannot run a modern economy from a boardroom in Toronto or a cocktail reception in Paris. We build it in a machine shop, in a mill-yard, in a welding bay, by hanging drywall or by early mornings on a fishing boat on the small craft harbours in my riding that the government is allowing to fall into the water that surrounds them. Wherever real Canadians earn real paycheques is where the real economy is in this nation, and it is here where the government is failing every Canadian working man and woman.
Other countries are pulling ahead while we are falling behind. Instead of a plan to build a stronger engine, this budget gives us more government, more bureaucracy, more slogans and more of nothing.
For years, the government opened the immigration floodgates to asylum seekers while ignoring those who followed the rules, all of this with no matching plan for housing, health care or infrastructure. Last year, we added nearly three quarters of a million people to a country that cannot build homes fast enough. Then when the pressure became unbearable, the government slammed on the brakes. This is not leadership; this is panic, and the government is right to panic. It all stems from the mindset of a government that thinks it can shape a nation from the top down instead of trusting the bottom-up strength it has in its people.
Now the Liberals show up with Bill C-15 pretending nothing happened, that our systems are not failing, that the country is not straining under the weight of the government's many mistakes. Meanwhile, ordinary Canadians are paying the price.
In our justice system, the government has nearly lost control of our streets. In our education system, more and more private schools are replacing the public model. These foundations, which were built by earlier generations, foundations the government inherited, are eroding brick by brick.
I want to be very clear. Canada is not a failing nation; Canada has a failing government. This country is not broken, but the people running it are breaking it. Bill C-15 is the government's attempt to pretend decline is normal, that falling living standards are normal, that a future smaller than our past is normal. Canadians know better.
Decline is not destiny; decline is a choice. The Liberals have made that choice. They made it with 10 years of straight deficits. They made it with taxes that rise while paycheques shrink. They made it with an immigration system pushed past its capacity. They made it with productivity that falls while government grows. They made it with the debt piled onto the backs of children not yet born. This is what decline looks like before people wake up, and Canadians are waking up.
Canadians know that Conservatives will build a country where hard work pays off again, where taxes are low and paycheques are strong, where the budget is balanced and the government lives within its means like every family has to, where new Canadians join a system ready to support them, not one buckling under policy made here in Ottawa by the kids in short pants, and where productivity rises not because Ottawa orders it but because free people, free markets and free enterprise are allowed to breathe again. It is a country strong enough to carry its past, ambitious enough to build its future and confident enough to say it chooses growth, chooses freedom and chooses Canada.
The Liberals have made their choice with Bill C-15 and we will make ours. We voted against the budget and we will vote against this bill. We will stand for the working people who cannot afford another year of decline. We will offer this country something the government cannot: hope, direction, a plan and a future worthy of the nation we inherited.