Mr. Speaker, federal budgets are not just about numbers on a page. They at least should not be about just numbers on a page. They must be about addressing the cost of groceries for struggling families and about the price of gas for workers who depend on their vehicles to earn a living. They should be about whether or not young Canadians can afford a home. As I said, at least they should be about that. The Liberals, though, unfortunately fall far short of that mark.
During the election campaign, the Liberals pledged to get their spending and their deficits under control, but what does this budget offer instead? There will be a $78-billion deficit this year alone and projections of $321 billion in new debt over five years, more than double what was promised. What was promised was too much already. It is a worse record than that of Justin Trudeau, who was the worst prime minister in Canadian history up until now. This is not just a broken promise; it is a cynical, self-serving betrayal of trust.
Every dollar borrowed today is a dollar that our children and grandchildren will have to pay back with interest. Let us not forget that interest payments are already exceeding what is spent on health care transfers in this country. This is not compassion; it is fiscal recklessness. It is all over the place in this budget.
The budget locks Canadians into a cycle of debt that will last for decades and decades. Thanks to the government, Canadians are already paying over $50 billion annually in interest, money that could fund things Canadians need or, better yet, be left in the pockets of taxpayers, who earned that money in the first place.
Let us look at the opportunity cost that is being squandered by continuing to rack up the national credit card. Imagine what $50 billion in annual interest payments could do. It could build dozens of hospitals. It could build maybe 1,000 schools. Some 4,100 kilometres of new roads could be built. It could cover nearly half of Canada's 5% NATO commitment for our defence spending to ensure that we finally properly equip the men and women of Canada's Armed Forces. Best of all, it could give the average Canadian family nearly $5,000 a year in tax relief.
Instead, that money just vanishes into thin air, into debt servicing. The Liberals continue to choose to increase that debt and therefore the cost of that debt. As a result, they line the pockets of bondholders and bankers, their Liberal friends. They call that investing in the future, but every extra $1 billion that is borrowed today is actually a burden on Canadians who are not yet born, locking them into decades of repayments for sunk costs instead of leaving them with the means and resources to invest in their own futures and their own priorities.
I call the Liberals' debt and deficits approach what it really is: passing the bill for Liberal priorities today to Canada's children of tomorrow. Adding more government, more bureaucracy and more layers of red tape seems to be the Liberals' answer to every challenge. Their solution is to create new agencies, new programs and new bureaucracies that slow down progress and stifle innovation.
Let us think about some of the things they have done recently. We have an issue in this country with being able to get major projects built. Rather than removing a lot of the barriers and obstacles that already exist, which the Liberals, frankly, created, they have said to just build a whole new bureaucracy to decide if we might be able to exempt some of those things from the bureaucracy we already have. Well, how about just removing some of the obstacles and actually seeing things get built? That would make a lot more sense.
It is the same thing when it comes to building homes. Everyone in the home construction industry and everyone who is trying to buy a home already recognizes that the biggest cost going into the construction of a new home nowadays is complying with government, whether it is on taxation, red tape or bureaucracy. Instead of dealing with knocking that down, the Liberals are just going to build a whole other bureaucracy to supposedly build homes. More bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy, which is more of the same problem on top of the problem that already exists, is not going to get homes built.
It is the same thing when we talk about equipping our Canadian Armed Forces. It is great to hear of new investments being put in, but what the Liberals are going to do is spend all that money on new bureaucracy and consultants. What I am afraid of is that at the end of the day, there will be nothing left to buy the equipment and resources that our men and women in uniform need.
More and more bureaucracy is not the challenge. Canadians do not need more office towers full of bureaucrats. They need homes they can afford, jobs they can count on and a government that gets out of the way so that projects can get built. Instead, they are getting more of the same failed Liberal policies in a new package.
Why does this matter? It matters because every dollar borrowed today drives inflation tomorrow. It means higher taxes, smaller paycheques and fewer opportunities for Canadians.