Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to join the debate in this place on behalf of the good people of Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna. This particular debate is noteworthy, and I will explain why.
After 10 years of Liberal budgets under Justin Trudeau, this is the first budget under what the Prime Minister and his cabinet like to call the new Liberal government. Really, who could blame them? We all know that the old Liberal government frequently blew past its budget numbers and ignored its cast-in-stone promise to return to a balanced budget in 2019. The last Trudeau government was a full-on fiscal disaster, so it is no wonder the new Liberal government wants to distance itself as far as possible from the old one.
During the election, we heard the current Prime Minister loud and clear. He promised to spend less. Literally hundreds of times at campaign stops across Canada, he looked Canadians square in the eye and told them that he would “spend less”. Not long ago in this place, in his throne speech, he was sharply critical of the former Trudeau Liberal government for dramatically increasing spending and running large deficits. He condemned it for allowing spending to grow by 9% annually and told us that he would reduce spending growth to under 2%. That was a clear and unequivocal Liberal promise.
What are we seeing in this Liberal budget?
The Prime Minister, who advocated for spending cuts, announced a projected deficit of $78 billion. To put things in perspective, that is almost double the $42-billion deficit projected by the previous Trudeau government. I repeat: the Prime Minister who criticized his predecessor for spending too much and who promised Canadians that he would spend less is actually promising to spend twice as much. Honestly, who does that? Who criticizes their predecessor for their excessive spending, gets elected on a promise to spend less and then goes ahead and spends twice as much?
The $78-billion deficit proposed by the current Prime Minister is the largest in the history of Canada outside a pandemic or global crisis. It is an astronomical figure, no matter how one looks at it.
That is not all. Budgets, as we know, also outline future spending plans, and here the picture becomes even more alarming. Over the next four fiscal years, the “spend less” Prime Minister is proposing deficits that total roughly $265 billion. Let us compare that to prime minister Trudeau's last budget, which projected $131 billion in deficits over the same period. Once again, the “spend less” Liberal Prime Minister is proposing to spend twice as much as his predecessor, despite having campaigned on so-called fiscal discipline.
From my perspective, this is part of a troubling pattern. Guess what happened every time since 2015 that the old Liberal government set spending targets in a budget. It missed the mark every time. For example, in 2015, Prime Minister Trudeau promised modest deficits to fund infrastructure and invest in Canadians, followed by a cast-in-stone balanced budget by 2019. We all know the result: It was never honoured. The old Trudeau government created a fiscal mess with runaway spending.
It is easy to understand why the current Prime Minister criticized that record during the campaign and promised to fix it. Canadians expected a change in course, yet the budget from our new Liberal government follows exactly the same old path as the old one, only on a much larger scale. That is not what the Prime Minister nor any Liberal member of Parliament promised Canadians just a few months ago.
In my riding, I have met constituents who have told me they voted for the current Prime Minister because they believed in him. They believed in his promises. After all, bankers are supposed to be trustworthy; they are not supposed to make promises they have no intention of keeping. That, to me, is the real rub. The new Prime Minister is not even trying to spend less. In that regard, he is exactly like the former prime minister. It is not unlike in the movie with Alec Baldwin, Glengarry Glen Ross, but instead of ABC, always be closing, it is ABS, always be spending.
For all these reasons, I will, of course, be voting against the budget. Frankly, every member on the government side of the House should do the same, because they were elected on the promise to spend less, not unlike the elbows-up promise. However, that is a topic for another day.
In closing, I would like to thank all members for taking the time to hear my comments. It is greatly appreciated.
I expected the budget to be different. When the Prime Minister talked about the need to spend less, he made an excellent case for why he campaigned so heavily on the commitment. Many Canadians believed he would be the one Liberal Prime Minister who actually did what he said he would do, yet here we are. Again, the fiscal anchors are completely adrift.
The Prime Minister loves to say we should focus on the things we can control, but he does not follow his own words. He could control how much he spends. He could repeal the regulatory regime the previous Liberals created instead of drafting Bill C-5 to selectively manoeuvre around that regulatory mess. He has not done that. He could repeal the net zero mandate for electric vehicles, which automakers have said will harm their vehicle sales and their interests in Canada, but he has not done that either. He could repeal the industrial carbon tax, which makes Canadian steel more expensive and less competitive against steel from other countries that we compete against. However, he has refused to do that. He could decide not to finance BC Ferries' vessels built in China and let China finance its own shipbuilding industry, instead of Canada.
All of those actions would cost very little, yet the Prime Minister refuses to take them, despite preaching that he would rather focus on things he can control. Instead, he is choosing to spend money, and not just a little. It has been spend, spend and spend.
For these reasons, I believe the budget and the budget implementation act must be opposed, just as the Prime Minister argued during the election. We need to spend less.