Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to join and add my comments to what is a disastrous budget 2025.
The member for Winnipeg North may be surprised by this, but I find it hard to believe that the Prime Minister can outspend even Justin Trudeau. Mr. Trudeau added more debt to our country than all other prime ministers combined. Then this new guy walks in and is like, “Hold my beer. If you think that is spending, I will double Trudeau's promises.”
The Liberals got elected on the fact that this new Liberal Prime Minister, kind of the same as the old Liberal prime minister, was a financial wizard. He was going to control spending. He was going to deal with Donald Trump. He was the master negotiator who was going to get a deal done by July 21. I remember; everyone remembers that he said that.
I want the member for Winnipeg North to know that this will be my most factual speech. Everything I say is a commitment that the Prime Minister or one of his ministers made.
I was here in 2023, when the current finance minister promised grocery prices would go down by Thanksgiving. That was in 2023. The member can shake his head, but that is true. I just have an MNP report that says grocery prices this year, in 2025, are up $800 per family. That is $800 per family, according to the MNP report. Once again, we have a promise made but a promise not kept.
Another promise that was made, and I have heard nothing about this and there is nothing in the budget about it, is that they were going to break down interprovincial trade barriers. It was a promise made by this Prime Minister. I have actually asked a couple of ministers, a couple of times, to break down where they are at and what they have done to make interprovincial trade easier in this country. I have talked to a few of my counterparts in different provinces. There has been no progress made on that.
The Liberals said they were going to unleash the economy, another promise by the Prime Minister. I have not seen or heard of any change to interprovincial trade barriers since the Prime Minister made that commitment.
I do want to go back to the fact that the Prime Minister promised to get spending under control. As I said, I am going to use his own standards: It is a promise made but a promise not kept. The Prime Minister promised to keep the deficit to $62 billion. It is at $78 billion, almost $80 billion. He promised to lower the debt-to-GDP ratio. It is rising, and so is inflation. It will continue to rise.
He promised to spend less. He is spending $90 billion more than his campaign budget committed to. That actually adds $5,400 more in inflationary spending for each household. He promised more investment. The budget reveals that investment is collapsing.
I always find it amazing that the Liberals say they are going to invest more, that they will take taxpayers' dollars and decide which businesses should get it or not. There is always a follow-up question to that. Why do they need to invest more? What happened to private sector investment in this country? Why is the private sector not investing more in Canada?
I see a little quizzical look from one of my Liberal colleagues. Nutrien decided to invest $1 billion in Washington to add more capacity, instead of in Vancouver. The members across could not answer why they would invest $1 billion in the U.S. instead of in Canada right now, when they are headquartered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It is because they do not think we have a dependable infrastructure or transportation system anymore. We lost $1 billion of investment, and the Liberals just shrugged. That was a Canadian company.
Why is it that TC Energy is investing in pipelines in America but not Canada? Where is that private investment going? It is going south. Why is that? It is because they do not believe in the regulations. We have Bill C-69, which the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional. The Liberals have still not done anything about it. We have the shipping ban off the port of Vancouver, which I think had a fair bit to do with Nutrien making the decision to invest in Washington and not Vancouver.
We have companies that will continue to look at Canada and see it as an unattractive place to invest, and that is because of government regulation and policy. When we hear Liberals talking about the investment the government will make, this is because they have scared away all the private investment and there is an atmosphere of uncertainty around investment in this country. They are going to take more and more taxpayers' dollars and throw them at projects, because they cannot convince private companies to invest in Canada anymore. That is a sad state of affairs, but that is where we are.
Imagine if, back in 2015, we had been able to see our country in 10 years' time and seen that in 2025 there would be the highest number of people in Canada's history who were using a food bank. Is that where we thought we would end up after 10 years of a Liberal government? The Liberals said they cared. I remember Justin Trudeau, with his hand over his heart, saying that the government was going to take on debt so Canadians did not have to. This was on national television, and he had this Care Bear stare that I remember very vividly.
Who do the Liberals think pays government debt? There is no magic money tree out behind the PMO, although sometimes I wish there was. The only way the government gets rid of debt is by taxing and taking more money from Canadians who earn a paycheque, or from companies' earnings, each and every day. Every time the Liberals say they are going to spend money so Canadians do not have to, Canadians need to realize they are taking that money out of their pockets. It snowed here yesterday, and it was a little chilly in Ottawa. It was so cold I actually saw the member for Winnipeg North with his hands in his own pockets for a change. He continues to nickel-and-dime Canadians to death.
The Liberals bring out their flagship program, the school lunch program. I have a big issue with it, because it actually is not feeding the number of kids they say it is, first of all, since 90% of kids do not get fed by this program. There are five million kids in this country, and the program is going to feed 400,000, which it has not done yet.
I also have a problem that the flagship program is giving food stamps to kids. The Liberals have run the government so poorly that parents cannot afford lunches and to feed their kids. Why is that? It is because they continue to layer tax upon tax on parents. Hard-working parents, after they get off work, instead of going to the grocery store now go to the food bank. That is what this country has come to after 10 years of their terrible fiscal policies and their inability to create more economic activity through the private sector.
I look at my kids, who are eight, 10 and 12 years old. My son was here with me a couple weeks ago, and he always asks, “Dad, why don't you stand up and say what you actually feel?” I say, “Son, there are some parliamentary language rules, and I am making sure I am following the rules,” but I am very passionate about this, because I believe there is nothing more that Canadian parents want than the ability to support their family and feed their own kids. If we took a poll, there would not be a family who said that they think the government should be the one that feeds their kids lunch.
Why can we not live in a country and work toward a country where parents have that ability? That is what I want for the next generation. There is a poll that shows that only 8% of Canadians, and members should hear this, think the next generation is going to be better off. People are losing faith in our country. Can members believe that? I never thought the next generation would be worse off than our generation. Something we should all aspire to is handing over a country where a person can do better than their parents. Every parent wants their kids to do better than they have done.
Under these 10 years with the Liberal government at the helm, people have lost faith in that. Youth do not think they can buy a home. Eight out of 10 youth do not think they are ever going to buy a home in this country. I never thought Canada would be in this kind of shape, where Canadians are working hard and trying to get ahead, and the government layers tax upon tax upon tax on them and makes life unaffordable.
This budget does the same thing. There is going to be $361 billion of debt added to this country over the next five years. Debt payments are going to go from $55 billion to $75 billion, which is exponentially higher than health transfers. It is a horrendous indictment and shows the failure of the Liberal government.