Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House on behalf of the constituents and families in Foothills, my farmers, my ranchers, my agri-food processors and certainly my families and entrepreneurs.
Bill C-15, the budget implementation act, is anything but a plan for prosperity. It is a blueprint for higher taxes, higher debt, higher inflation and higher costs for the people who feed and power this economy. I could probably summarize the Liberal budget in two ways: It is a budget of over-promising and underdelivery.
In the previous election, the Prime Minister promised Canadians fiscal restraint, transformational change and fiscal discipline. Once again, the Liberals failed to deliver on any of those things. I would warn the Liberals that they cannot build the Canada of tomorrow, which all of us want to see, if they are mortgaging the future. This is exactly what the budget has done, with almost $80 billion in additional debt burden on the backs of Canadian taxpayers.
As a result of this, our standard of living is eroding. That is a concern for an entire generation of young Canadians, who are starting to accept that this type of debt and deficit is becoming the norm. Others have certainly noticed. For example, out of the 48 countries tracked by the OECD, Canada is expected to rank second worst in per capita growth from now until 2030. Canada has the worst per capita growth in the G7, with more than a 10% drop in investment per worker.
A decade ago that certainly was not the reality for Canadians. Under the previous Conservative government, we had the wealthiest middle class in the world. We had a balanced budget. We were respected by our most important and trusted trading partners. For the most part, Canadian families had hope. Instead, the Liberal government has chosen to burden and throw gas on the inflationary fire, with $90 billion in new spending and a $78 billion deficit.
Unbelievably, the Liberal government's deficit is twice that of the previous prime minister, Justin Trudeau, with a deficit and reckless spending that sent his finance minister packing. I find it incredibly interesting that only a year ago, the Liberal members were scrambling, outraged at the reckless spending of the predecessor, but now they are standing and cheering deficits and spending that are twice that of Justin Trudeau. It is incredible how things have changed on the Liberal benches and how easily they will twist themselves just to ensure that they win an election.
To put this in perspective, the cost of just maintaining that debt is more than $50 billion a year. That is more than what the federal government is transferring to provinces in health care. Instead of building hospitals, hiring doctors and nurses, or expanding ports and repairing highways, more than $50 billion in taxpayer money is going just to service the Liberal debt. That is an incredible number. I hope Canadians who are watching here today understand the consequences and ramifications of those kinds of numbers.
For Canadians, it is very hard to fathom that. For Canadians who are standing in line waiting for a family doctor or waiting hours on end in the emergency, I want them to think about the fact that we have solutions for those problems. However, instead of funds going to solve those problems, they are going to pay down just the interest on Canada's credit card as a result of the Liberals' out-of-control spending. As typical Liberals, they promise one thing during an election and do the exact opposite once they are elected.
During the election, they promised transformational change and generational investment. However, what they have delivered is intergenerational debt, and it will take generations of Canadians to try to pay this back. Canadians are not fooled. Even some of the Liberals' best friends are not fooled.
I would like to mention some headlines that have come out since the budget was released. We have, from the Toronto Sun, “[The Prime Minister's] budget as unsustainable as a Trudeau budget”; from the National Post, “Liberals should be kept far away from the economy”; from The Globe and Mail, “The Liberals' growing deficit of trust”; and from the Liberals' favourite publication, the Toronto Star, “Once again, [the Prime Minister] doesn't quite live up to the hype”.
These warnings are coming in when Canadians are struggling as they never have before.
Food Banks Canada reported that more than two million Canadians are being forced to line up at food banks every single month. That number has more than doubled over the last five years. It is unbelievable that four out of five Canadians now list food security as their number one financial burden. How does that happen in a country as wealthy as Canada, or seemingly as wealthy, until the Liberals got out of control with their spending?
This is hitting all of us in our ridings. For example, at the Okotoks Food Bank, in one of the largest communities in my riding, food bank use is up 200%. In the first seven months of last year, it had about 15,000 users; it now has more than 45,000. In my small hometown of High River, more than 100 families are using the food bank every single week. That is absolutely unbelievable in a country like Canada.
Food banks were never designed to be the backbone of a social safety net, but that is exactly what has happened under the Liberals. The food banks are now becoming a primary source of groceries for too many Canadian families, when they are supposed to be the source of last resort. This is a new reality Canadian families are facing.
I want to touch on a subject about which the Liberals are really gaslighting Canadians. They are trying to say that the hidden taxes the Liberals have put on food prices are imaginary. They are not imaginary. In fact Canadians are seeing the impact of these taxes every single week when they try to go to the grocery store and put food on the table. How can these taxes be imaginary when they are actually included in the Liberal budget?
In the Liberal budget, the Liberals say they are going to maintain the escalator tax on beer, wine and spirits. It is actually connected to inflation, so the Liberals cannot even say how high the escalator tax is going to be when it hits on April 1. It says in the budget that they are going to maintain the Liberal fuel standard, which adds 17¢ a litre for farmers who grow the food, truckers who move the food, and certainly the retailers who sell the food.
In the budget, the Liberals also say they are going to strengthen, which means increase, the industrial carbon tax, which increases the cost of literally everything. It not only increases those costs but also drives investment and industry out of Canada. As my colleague from Saskatchewan mentioned earlier, we have seen the consequences of that when a $1 billion new potash terminal is going to be built in Vancouver, Washington, not Vancouver, British Columbia.
Nutrien is one of the largest potash producers in the world, based proudly in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, but one of Canada's crown jewel industries is not investing in Canada. It is investing in the United States because of a regulatory regime in Canada that is unnavigable and because of high tax rates. It simply cannot carry the burden.
That is just the latest warning sign that we have seen as a result of Liberal taxes and a regulatory regime that are driving investment away. In fact more than $50 billion in investment has fled Canada since the Prime Minister was elected last spring. Since 2015, and this is a staggering number, 670 billion dollars' worth of resource projects have been either shelved or delayed as a result of the high taxes and regulatory regime of the Liberal government.
I just want to name a few of the projects that would certainly impact everybody across Canada. The Teck frontier mine, the northern gateway pipeline, energy east, the Saguenay LNG project and Pacific NorthWest LNG have all been shelved as a result of the Liberal government. Imagine the jobs that Canadians would have, had these projects gone ahead.
Finally, I want to mention this: The Liberals continue to say they are in a trade war, but we cannot be in a war if we have already surrendered. They have backed down on everything. Conservatives stand ready to work with anyone who is committed to getting Canada back on track and unleashing our resources like agriculture, mining and energy to provide Canada with the tools we need to face these challenges, to be successful and to have hope. Conservatives are willing to get that work done, and that is why we cannot support the budget, because the Liberals are certainly not willing to make those sacrifices.