Debates of Nov. 27th, 2025

Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 1

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am going to continue reading from page 53 of the Liberal costly credit card budget. It starts with “Over the past decade,” and it is no coincidence that the government has been in power for exactly one decade. It reads:

Over the past decade, Canada’s productivity performance has been persistently weak. In this time, productivity grew by only 0.3 per cent annually—less than one-third the pace of the previous two decades.... This had led to substantial productivity gaps with other G7 economies....

The Liberals like to compare Canada to the G7. It seems like we are doing the worst.

The Liberal member is going to accuse Conservatives of spreading misinformation. I read these words directly from this costly Liberal credit card budget, so he needs to check himself before he wrecks himself.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague broke out “check yourself before you wreck yourself.”

I want to say how rich that was coming from our colleague from Winnipeg North, who never misses a chance to gaslight anybody who opposes any Liberal policy. He is a good Liberal soldier. Make no bones about it. Although we may differ on policy and suggestions, I respect that he is always here, every day, fighting for the other side. I do not always like it, but he does the job for the other side and he does it well.

The Liberals and the Prime Minister trumpeted this budget as generational, when all we see is generational debt. I wonder if we can give the member an extra 30 seconds or so to talk about how this budget, the lack of support and the debt are going to impact his riding.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I see almost nothing for Richmond Hill South in this budget. This is what I see. The cost of living remains high, putting financial pressures on families and small businesses. Unemployment has increased, driven by weak hiring and layoffs. Businesses face ongoing uncertainty, delaying investment and expansion. Productivity remains weak, limiting wage gains for workers. That is the current economic landscape.

By the way—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

We have to resume debate.

The hon. member for Windsor West.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is always an honour and a pleasure to rise in this House on behalf of the good people of Windsor West.

They are not impressed with this budget implementation act. This is not just another budget for the people of Windsor. It took the government six full months to bring it forward after forming a minority government. It took six months, while families watched the price of milk go up. It took six months, while rent climbed and mortgages increased. It took six months, while the cost of everything, from basic necessities to kids' hockey, went through the roof.

When the budget implementation act finally arrived, folks looked at it and asked the same thing many of us are thinking here: Where is the help the government promised? That is the first of five questions I am putting before this chamber, not for theatre or to score points, but because people at home deserve straightforward answers.

First, where is the support families were promised after six months of waiting? Windsor is not a city of complainers. We do not expect perfection, but we expect fairness. We are a city that knows what work means, whether it is shift work, working on a line or driving a rig across the border. Our people do not sit still. They do not wait for someone else to fix their problems. They get up and get on with it.

However, they cannot keep absorbing rising costs while Ottawa keeps saying that help is coming. Help is not coming quickly enough, and sometimes it does not come at all. Grocery bills are up, rent is up, gas is up and insurance is up, especially in border communities like ours. I have met parents who have skipped meals so their kids could eat. I have met seniors who ride one bus to buy slightly cheaper bread and then another to pick up prescriptions, because every dollar matters.

Budget slogans do not fill kitchen cupboards. Press conferences do not lower bills. Families do not need speeches; they need policy that delivers. That is why budget delays matter. That is why every month counts. That is why people are asking, “If families cannot delay their bills, why was the government allowed to delay the budget this long?”

Second, how does the government spend record-high deficit money and still deliver less? I want to be fair here. I understand that the government had to spend more money during COVID, but what people want now is clarity. If we are posting the largest deficits in Canadian history outside of a crisis, the results should be tangible, visible and undeniable. That is not the case here.

In communities like mine, what we see instead are gaps. Seniors are falling behind because they are on fixed incomes. Students are taking on more debt with fewer job guarantees. New immigrants are driving for Uber because they cannot match their skills with the jobs available. That is a failure of immigration policies. Small businesses are shuttering due to high costs. Families are lining up at food banks in record numbers, and churches are stepping in to fill the gaps. When the government spends this much and life still gets harder, something is fundamentally wrong.

The people in Windsor understand budgets. Households have them, shops have them and shift workers plan around them. They know they cannot put everything on a credit card and hope that tomorrow pays for yesterday, yet the government continues down that road, asking Canadians to trust that it will all balance out someday. The former prime minister said the budget would balance itself, but nothing balances itself. Someday is not a plan, and eventually is not a strategy.

That brings me to question number two: How do we have record spending and record deficits and still have record amounts of struggle on our homes and streets?

Third, If Windsor feels the fire of a trade war, why does the Prime Minister say there is no “burning issue”? We are a border city. We feel trade pressures before anyone else in the country. With one slowdown at the bridge, one tariff or one retaliatory measure, Windsor pays first.

We have lived this reality for decades, but this week, the Prime Minister suggested the trade dispute with the United States is not a burning issue; it is just a minor detail. He asked, “Who cares?” These are not words that Windsor West expects a prime minister to say. Jobs, exports, tool-shops and auto supply chains are not just background noise; they are real people, and these struggles matter.

Windsor cares. The workers at Titan Tool and Die care. They have been shut out of the factory because the owners have moved their operations across the Detroit River, and management is not even talking to the workers anymore. Toolmakers do not need slogans; they need fairness, predictable policy and respect from their own leadership, because when a trade war hits, the blast radius directly impacts border communities like mine. I ask the government, plainly and directly, question number three: If our manufacturing sector is sweating from the heat, how does the Prime Minister not see the flames?

Fourth, why are we encouraging Canadian pension funds to invest in the U.A.E. or the U.S.A. while Canada is put on ice? I want Canadians to hear this clearly: While our economy contracts, Brookfield is signing deals around the world at a breakneck pace, and Canada, somehow, is left standing in the hallway. We are watching pension capital flow offshore while we desperately need investment here at home. The company most associated with these deals has quietly benefited more than almost any other in the country, while average families pay the price.

People ask me questions at coffee shops, at the arena or at the temple after prayers: How do we have money for foreign investments but not enough for new homes or lower food costs? Why can Brookfield close deals abroad while Canadians struggle to pay more rent at home? How did the government become more interested in pleasing global finance, as with Brookfield, than its own workers? These are not wild conspiracy questions; these are kitchen-table questions. The fact that Canadians even need to ask them is alarming, in and of itself. Let me place this question question on the floor of this House: Why is the government prioritizing global investors over Canadian workers who built this country with their own blood, sweat and tears?

Fifth, if this budget can move billions internationally, why can it not move projects in Windsor? This is where it becomes a reality for my hometown. Let us talk about the Gordie Howe International Bridge, a transformational project that was delayed, redated and adjusted, and still we do not have a firm final opening date. Businesses are planning logistics in a blind fashion. Truckers are paying premium rates for aging infrastructure. Small companies are wasting hours while idling at border queues. Do members want to know how to kill a business slowly? It is by taking away predictability.

Then there is the Ojibway national urban park, an environmental jewel, a generational opportunity and a chance for preservation, stewardship, education and pride, yet the file is shuffled, pushed back and still waiting. Windsor waits and waits, and at some point, that waiting ends up eroding trust and begins to look like neglect. I am not here to pick a fight; I am here to ask for some fairness for our city. Every press release in Ottawa seems to come with fireworks, but in Windsor, we are still waiting for answers. We are waiting for timelines that do not move, like shadows on a wall.

Here is question number five: If the government can move money offshore in a heartbeat, why can it not move projects forward in Windsor? I am not standing here angrily. I stand here determined because Windsor matters, our workers matter, our future matters and Canadians matter. We are not asking for handouts; we are asking for fairness and for urgency. We are asking for leadership that treats border communities like economic engines, not afterthoughts. Families are tired of speeches; they want action. Seniors are tired of promises; they want affordability. Businesses are tired of waiting; they want Canada to compete, not retreat.

Today, on behalf of the people of Windsor, I have five questions. Where is the help? Why do the Liberals spend more and get less? why is the trade war not a burning issue for the Prime Minister? Why are foreign investors prioritized over our workers? Why does Windsor keep getting told to wait?

Canadians are ready. Windsor is ready. It is time that the government showed up with a real action plan and did something for regular Canadians for a change.

[Carlos Leitão, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Windsor West for his speech. Windsor is being hit especially hard by the economic uncertainty we are currently facing. However, I would like to remind my colleague that the United States is the one causing that uncertainty. I am sure he is aware of that. The trade war started by our neighbours is affecting the Canadian economy, particularly in the Windsor area.

We are talking about the budget. Like several of his colleagues, the member mentioned that the deficit in the budget for this year is a record deficit, the largest deficit outside of a crisis.

Does my colleague not agree that we are currently in the midst of a crisis?

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, that is a great question, and I could not agree more. The member seems to have his fingers on the pulse of Windsor.

It is a crisis, but a deficit becomes a problem when every dollar borrowed becomes extra pressure for ordinary Canadians. There is more inflation, higher interest rates and rising taxes down the road. Those in Windsor are not watching numbers on a spreadsheet; they are watching food prices, heating bills and mortgage renewals go up. Debt should support productivity and growth. Right now, the deficit supports speeches and press releases. That is not investment; that is borrowing with no payoff at the end of the road.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have asked my Conservative colleagues two questions now. I am not sure whether they have been given orders not to answer questions from the Bloc Québécois, but both times their answers completely sidestepped the very specific question I was asking.

What I am thinking now is that, if they want to replace the government one day, then they have to be able to answer questions when they are in the opposition, so I will ask a question that is very serious, very direct and very easy to understand.

My colleague completely tore apart the budget that was presented by the Liberal government and its implementation. My question is very simple. When it came time to vote, why did his party let this budget pass?

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I voted against the budget, pure and simple, and we tried our best to defeat it. It did not work out. Other members from other parties supported the budget. I cannot speak for them. I can speak for my colleagues. We did our best.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, Norway has $1.9 trillion in its sovereign wealth fund. It earned over $200 billion last year in dividends alone. That equates to about $340,000 per citizen. Alberta's heritage fund looks like it is making sure that nurses and teachers are not getting the fair wages they deserve. It attacks their private health care system.

Last year, Imperial Oil earned $5 billion, and it laid off 900 staff. We have the lowest corporate tax rate in the G7. The member talked about the G7.

Does he think things need to change and that the government needs to rein in corporate greed and rein in provinces that do not take care of their employees and workers, at a time when there are companies posting record profits and not even taking care of abandoned wells? We know that over $1 billion is needed to repair those wells right now.

[Harb Gill, Conservative, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, what we are talking about here is cutting waste, cutting duplication and cutting the ballooning federal bureaucracy that has grown 80% since 2015. We need direct investment into things that create value, like homes, bridges and manufacturing, and not into endless consultants and political photo ops where there is a fake home behind the Prime Minister, and he stands before it and it is done.

That is not what we want. That is not what Canadians want. They have had enough of all those things. They need real action. They need something they can look at and say, tangibly, “This is what the government produced.” Unicorns and rainbows do not make a difference anymore. We need real results that we can point to and say, “This is what the government did”, because this—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

We have to resume debate.

The hon. member for Niagara South.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to participate in the debate today, and it will come as no surprise that I will say up front that I will vote against the bill.

The Minister of Finance loves to yell in the House that this is a generational budget. What is clearly and unequivocally true is that this is a budget imposing massive, crushing and unforgivable generational debt. I cannot help but point out that our deficit is now just under $80 billion, a number that would make even Justin Trudeau blush.

Canada's productivity has slipped badly among G7 nations. Why? Capital is staying on the sidelines as confidence lags. Investments in equipment, new innovation and business efficiencies are on hold because of basic economic uncertainty. That is the essence of productivity. The last thing our economy needs right now is uncertainty, yet here we are.

I have listened intently to my colleagues on the Liberal side of the House talk about this budget, and it left me wondering how so many people have suddenly come down with a case of “sometimers”. Perhaps it is a form of political amnesia, because it seems that those on the front bench of this so-called new government have forgotten that they paved the way for this massive dive into new generational debt.

While the Prime Minister says his words were poorly chosen when he said “Who cares?” about dealing with Trump, what is said in jest often holds an element of truth. His “Who cares?” comment tells us a couple of things. Perhaps he is just going through the motions with the U.S., and CUSMA is the backstop, at least for now. He loves to say that Canada has the best deal right now. Well, frankly, that is a crock. We have the same CUSMA deal we had before the election, with a pile of new tariffs on everything outside that agreement. That is an abject failure. Maybe he does not care because he is hoping that Trump loses his court cases or perhaps loses control of Congress in the midterms, or that the U.S. economy finally feels the inevitable pain of tariffs, with job losses and inflation.

Silence and saying “Who cares?” are dangerous, misguided, irresponsible and frankly lazy. We are in a trade vacuum with a case of George Costanza's elbows-down shrinkage factor. Everyone knows it is a precarious game negotiating with Trump and his sycophant team of validators. Trump is a bit like Biff Tannen in Back to the Future Part II, where the bully controls the dystopian town and the people around him. Perhaps the strategy is just to wait him out and hope for the best.

When Trump opens up CUSMA, which he most certainly will, Canada's economic stability is literally on the table. The idea that we are going to supplant our trade with the U.S. with trade in other jurisdictions may appear to be an opportunity, but it is at best a long-term objective. If we ask anyone who has built a successful SME in Canada, they will tell us that it takes decades to develop the relationships and supply chains needed to provide solid predictability in our export markets.

Some 75% of Canada's exports go to the U.S. That may fluctuate, and it has over time, but fundamentally our relationship with the U.S. is never going to change in our lifetime. To suggest otherwise ignores facts, history and the natural political, geographic, economic and basic integration of our economies. The north-south network of supply chains, transportation and logistics, built over decades in relationships and confidence and trust in financial linkages, is not something that our manufacturing and service sector can abandon or miraculously recreate in other jurisdictions just because the Prime Minister says so.

It took 100 years for our economy to evolve to ensure the efficient movement of goods and capital and ensure stable supply chains. Saying that we are going to double trade with Europe is fine, but it is not going to fix our problems before CUSMA comes up for review. Let us be clear: Canada's economy has evolved over the past 50 years through technological change and the realization that trade liberalization was the only pathway to improving the Canadian standard of living.

Money flows to the path of least resistance balanced against return. Policy drives the creation of that path. However, as we developed our north-south trade strategy, we abdicated our responsibility in supporting a national manufacturing strategy and, most importantly, a national access to capital strategy.

I know this because I have spent the past 20 years helping Canadian start-ups commercialize their ideas against strong and sometimes insurmountable barriers against capital access. There were incredible successes in the Canadian start-up ecosystem, like Shopify and Hootsuite, among many others. BlackBerry is literally responsible for the creation of the Waterloo innovation machine that paved the way for Canadian entrepreneurs to chase their dreams.

The Harper government launched an incredibly helpful program to enhance the innovation sector through support to the angel investing community. It was inexpensive yet enormously successful, and it bridged the gap between ideas and capital. Angel investor groups popped up across Canada and aggregated substantial amounts of capital to support Canadian companies. Sadly, the Trudeau government cancelled this program.

Over the past 10 years, we have missed the boat in establishing an access-to-capital platform to support companies beyond the early stage phase. Regional development agencies could have been the platform for this, but are basically acting as bailout agencies instead of a network of strategic investment for Canadian start-ups.

I have seen dozens of companies leave for the U.S. simply because they could not obtain funding in Canada. The U.S. offered the solutions to risk-averse Canadians to provide a runway of support to these companies that wanted to stay here but simply could not turn down the opportunities south of the border. This should be low-hanging fruit for us. If the government is intent on nosediving our nation into debt, how about we first take a look at how we fund our brightest and best in this country and try to fix the gap between capital and ideas.

We need to incentivize Canadian capital to actually invest and stay here in Canada. Eight out of 10 start-ups ultimately fail. Angel investors, angel funds and venture capital funding vehicles are familiar with this risk, but as we navigate this uncertain time, as I said earlier, capital is staying on the sidelines. Fifteen years ago, it was easier for us to attract early-stage investment because it was the policy priority of the federal and provincial governments. Accredited investors organized and went on a tear of investing in Canadian companies. It was a beautiful thing, but investing fatigue has now set in because deal flow is weak and confidence is low.

The incentives for investing in start-ups today in Canada are non-existent. That is the barrier to investment. That is the tragedy of where we missed the chance over the last 10 years to provide incentives for investment. To be clear, this is not a tax break for the rich; this is an incentive for people who are willing to take risk on Canadian companies. Make no mistake: The risk is high. The two out of 10 that actually make it to market need years of mentoring and support, with multiple rounds of investment. Unless we are prepared to support this ecosystem, we will continue to tilt at windmills, watch our best and brightest move south and continue to weaken our domestic innovation ecosystem.

My leader is onto something. He is really onto something when he talks about eliminating capital gains taxes, provided that the gains are invested in Canadian companies. People understand this at the ground level. If we could provide this kind of incentive to support Canadian start-ups, we could build a more diversified economy where Canadian companies and capital stay here and grow here. This is the real nation-building effort, one company at a time. It will create confidence and enthusiasm and bring massive private capital reserves back into our economy.

Canada is over-regulated, overtaxed, disincentivized and uncompetitive, with the worst productivity rate in the G7. The government says it wants new ideas. I just threw several at it, all validated by past best practices and all cancelled by the Liberals.

The Liberals talk a good game, but talk is cheap. The “we believe in Canada” ad nauseam is offensive to me. It suggests that only Liberals believe in Canada. I also believe in Canada. My life's work has been dedicated to creating value for Canadians, jobs for Canadians and growth in my region.

My small grandchildren will pay the price for this, and only Conservatives will bring sanity and solid fiscal policy back to our country and put Canada first.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, here is a very quick flashback. As we are talking about foreign investment leaving Canada and going to other countries, in particular the United States, I will remind the member that when his leader sat around cabinet, we had the biggest destruction of the manufacturing industry in the province of Ontario in generations. Fast-forward to today. We have a Prime Minister who is attracting hundreds of millions, going into billions, of dollars of investment to Canada from around the world as we look at ways to expand trade opportunities.

I appreciate the member raising his ideas, but I think we need to recognize the substantive difference in the way the government has approached increasing trade, doing so with our one Canadian economy, by expanding opportunities and by bringing investments, into the billions of dollars, to Canada because of the efforts of the Prime Minister.

I wonder if the member could provide his thoughts on that. Does he support the Prime Minister's travels given the degree to which he has been successful at bringing in export opportunities for his constituents and indeed for all Canadians?

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Madam Speaker, that was the most delusional question I have heard since I was elected.

The Prime Minister has been on 28 trips around the world for photo ops, handshakes and MOUs that are non-binding. Not a dollar has set foot in Canada yet.

I would like the hon. member to give me the name of a specific company that has moved capital into Canada. Right now, capital is leaving Canada at record rates to the U.S. That is where we need to focus our attention, not on the fictitious view that letters of intent and memorandums of understanding have any meaning at all. It is all photo ops and gaslighting.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, earlier, my colleague from Lac‑Saint‑Jean asked a Conservative member a question after his speech. He noted that the Conservatives tore apart the Liberal budget in their speeches, and rightly so. However, my colleague wanted to know what efforts the Conservatives made to defeat this budget. The Conservative member replied that his party tried its best to defeat that budget when it came time to vote.

The Bloc Québécois has 22 members, and all 22 members voted against this budget. I would like to know how many of the 143 Conservative members actually voted against this budget, not counting the curtains.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Madam Speaker, if the question is how many Conservative members voted for the budget, the answer is zero. We all voted against the budget. I voted against the budget. This is a generational disaster of debt for Canadians. When I said the amount of deficit we are going to accrue this year would make Justin Trudeau blush, I meant that this is a generational catastrophe that my grandchildren are going to pay for.

I will vote against the budget again, vote against all of the enabling legislation and be proud to do it.

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague just gave an excellent speech, and in that speech, he mentioned capital flight, which is a real concern in Canada at the moment. We recently heard that another company, a Canadian company that actually has a mine in my riding, is now building an export terminal in the United States instead of Canada because of overtaxation, over-regulation and overburdening by the Liberal government.

Could my colleague expand a bit on why policy matters and why it is important to have pro-business, business-friendly policies in Canada?

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to take that a step further. Not only are we over-regulated, overtaxed and disincentivized regarding investment coming into Canada, but the upfront costs of getting access to capital in this country are enormous. Companies are fleeing to the U.S. because there are incentive programs there, especially in California in the technology sector. They can get funding in innovation centres in California far faster than they can in Canada. It is a burden here.

We need to deregulate and get rid of red tape. Just building an industrial building in this country right now can take years before shovels are put in the ground. The cost of development charges, fees and regulation is outrageous. We have painted ourselves into a corner over the last 20 years and it needs to stop. The Conservative Party will put a stop to it.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister was elected on a promise that the Liberals would stand strong against Trump and would fight American tariffs. He even did an elbows-up dance following the election.

What has the Liberals' rhetoric, with Canada strong against Trump and elbows up, looked like since the election? The U.S. has imposed a 35% levy on all Canadian goods, even though most are exempt under an existing free trade agreement. Trump has slapped sector-specific levies on Canadian goods, including a 50% levy on metals and a 25% levy on automobiles. Trump has imposed a new 10% tariff to the existing anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Canadian lumber, bringing the levy to over 45% and crippling the industry. In addition, 25% has been imposed on certain finished wood products.

In the Prime Minister's definition of elbows up to appease Trump, he has rescinded the digital services tax, which is a 3% tax for massive multinational companies operating in Canada such as Google, Amazon and Netflix. This is a tax the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects would generate over $7 billion in new revenues over five years for Canadians.

While the Prime Minister wanted Canadians to believe that every tariff blow Trump threw our way was met with retaliatory countertariffs, in reality, after the initial hurrah, the Liberals removed all tariffs on goods from the U.S. that are covered by CUSMA. They then quietly removed countertariffs on American goods that are not compliant with CUSMA.

As if the Prime Minister was put on steroids to further appease Trump, he committed to boosting defence funding from 2% to 5% of GDP, and we saw a commitment of a whopping $81.5 billion over five years made in budget 2025.

It does not stop there. To further placate Trump, under the guise of border security to address Trump's imagined fentanyl border crisis, Bill C-12 was the Prime Minister's first piece of legislation in this House, a dangerous omnibus bill that threatens Canadians' civil liberties, infringes on their privacy rights, eliminates due process and takes a page directly from Trump's anti-refugee, anti-rule-of-law agenda.

When Trump took offence to an ad that accurately recounted former president Reagan's view on tariffs, the Prime Minister kowtowed to Trump and apologized. This is not exactly elbows up, is it?

The Prime Minister's actions are a far cry from his election promises to Canadians, and as it stands, Canada has become the only G7 nation without a trade deal with the U.S.

During the campaign, the Prime Minister promised Canadians he would get clean energy projects built. At no point did he say he would end the tanker ban and build a new pipeline. What is the Prime Minister doing? He is signing an MOU with Premier Danielle Smith on advancing a new pipeline to the B.C. coast, an agreement developed behind closed doors with zero consultation with B.C. and first nations.

British Colombians do not want another megaproject that increases emissions and threatens coastal ecosystems. The Prime Minister cannot justify negotiating a pipeline deal with Alberta that excludes B.C. entirely, affected first nations and impacted communities. None of them has been at the table.

British Colombians will not stand for the lifting of the tanker ban, and B.C. Liberal members know it. Instead of sowing division, why does the Prime Minister not work on truly nation-building projects that are good for the economy and the environment and help Canada meet its Paris accord commitments?

Canadians were told that budget 2025 is a bold statement of generational ambition. They were shown the headline figure of $1 trillion in public and private investments over five years and told that this budget would secure the future of Canada, yet despite all the fanfare, few Canadians feel inspired. Why? It is because the budget, at its core, is underwhelming, contradictory and deeply conservative in its priorities.

It is back to the future with austerity and the Liberal government.

The Prime Minister calls this a “generational investment budget”, but it is not the kind of investment that working Canadians have been asking for. It misses the mark.

The budget shifts resources away from everyday people in an affordability crisis. It has very little investment in indigenous communities and indigenous-led projects, and there is no mention of the calls for justice on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

It delivers deep cuts, at 15% across most ministries, and downsizes critical public services, all to make room for a record increase in military spending. The government is reining in its day-to-day spending through a so-called comprehensive expenditure review, cutting $13 billion annually by 2028-29, for a total of $60 billion in savings, it says. That means shrinking public services, targeting the very frontline workers who deliver the essential care that everyday Canadians rely on.

The Prime Minister hides the impact of the cuts in euphemism. The budget is riddled with terms such as “modernizing”, ”streamlining” and “recalibrating”. What does that really mean? It really means that services will be cut, and it imposes austerity that disproportionately affects women, frontline workers and vulnerable communities.

For the workers and families who have lost their jobs, or the 40,000 workers who will lose their jobs because of the 15% cut across all departments, with a few minor exceptions, there is no support for them in budget 2025. There is no EI reform for these workers and their families, retraining or transition; there is no support for them. It is not exactly a worker-friendly budget, is it? Canadians are struggling with the cost of living, a housing crisis and an overstretched health care system, yet the government is asking workers and families to tighten their belts while defence contractors get a windfall.

The cuts to the federal public services are short-sighted and unnecessary. These are the people who process benefits, GIS applications for seniors, tax refunds and EI applications, which are services that keep government running. Undermining these things means undermining services that Canadians need. A truly generational budget would invest in people, in affordable homes, green jobs, public health care, climate change mitigation and a post-secondary education system that has been decimated by the Liberals' mismanagement of student visas.

On the issue around housing, Build Canada Homes comes with a lot of hype and promises. The government talks about delivering 40% affordable units and deep affordability tied to 30% of the median income. It turns out that this commitment only applies to six sites. For the rest, there are no affordability criteria attached. Not only that, but there is only $6.5 billion of new money in budget 2025; the rest of the $25 billion is carried over from previous budgets. With that, so far, the only target we have heard from the government is that 4,000 new homes are scheduled to start next year. This is a drop in the bucket of the million non-market housing units needed over a decade to address backlogs.

The government is also leaning heavily on provinces to subsidize deep affordability. With no firm commitments, and without clear affordability guarantees, Build Canada Homes will fail to deliver the affordable homes Canadians desperately need.

Budget 2025 promises a lot, a trillion dollars of investment, but most of it is pre-committed, reclassified or private sector investment that may never materialize. The government talks a lot, and there is a lot of fanfare and hype, but in reality, much of it is just hot air, with recycled announcements and recalibration of existing programs and investments that have already been committed. A $25-billion headline number shrinks to just $0.3 billion in new R and D—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, the member who just spoke is a part of the Conservative Party of Canada alliance to try to cause an election. This is the reality. She actually voted with the Conservative Party.

At the end of the day, what is in the budget? It is a budget that provides pharmacare, dental care and food for children in schools. She actually believes the Conservative Party would be better at governing Canada than the current Liberal Party.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

The Conservative Party stands and gives her applause.

Madam Speaker, at the end of the day, does she truly believe the investments that the budget is making into communities from coast to coast to coast would be better done with the Conservative Party? Is that what she really believes? Why could she not identify things in the budget that are to the benefit of her community and, indeed, all Canadians, and vote—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. member for Vancouver East.