Mr. Speaker, I rise today to represent the good people of Abbotsford—South Langley, who are frustrated with the current budget.
When the Prime Minister announced that he would be splitting operating and capital spending in the budget, it was met with widespread worry that he would use the change to cook the books. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has now confirmed that is exactly what is happening. The Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed that capital spending is “overly expansive”, expanding beyond the public accounts and international practice. Instead of following international accounting standards, the Prime Minister lumped it into corporate tax breaks and subsidies that “would not be considered capital formation”.
Also, the PBO found that capital investment spending was 30% lower than what the Liberals claimed, a $94-billion difference. He found that the Prime Minister will not balance the operating budget over the next five years, abandoning key fiscal anchors after already abandoning the previous one to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio. The PBO found that the debt-to-GDP ratio will be even higher after the latest economic update, which means we are already on a declining trend.
Last year's fall economic statement stated a declining debt-to-GDP ratio was key to preserving Canada's AAA credit rating, but even Fitch Ratings has already warned that the budget “underscores the erosion of federal government's finances”. The Prime Minister fumbled the old fiscal anchor with a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio.
Even the so-called expenditure review notes there is a “lack of detail regarding the impact on individual programs”, offering no clarity on service levels, personnel or how results will be reported. Even if the budget somehow produced $50 billion in savings, it still has a $90-billion net increase in spending. That is $5,400 per Canadian family. For the second year in a row, the Liberals failed to table the public accounts for more than seven months after the fiscal year ended.
Canada remembers when the last minister of finance resigned in disgrace over the deficit. Why did the government celebrate the deficit of over $70 billion? Canadians cannot afford baby formula and are facing precarious housing, yet the government abuses their tax dollars further under the guise of shrewd investment. Investment has become a buzzword and is used to ignore the rising inflation of the government.
When facing such economic turmoil, the solution is to remedy the productivity crisis. We should not bury Canadians in more red tape. Instead of investing in a bureaucratic mess of weak government-led projects, why do the Liberals not allow Canadians to operate their businesses as they have done before? Our fishing industry, forestry industry, military, and health care sectors are all facing major setbacks because the Liberals are too preoccupied studying their own systems into failure. The cost of this budget is pushing Canadians out of this country and into the United States.
At the same time, the areas that actually need help are left behind. These areas are facing crises. We are facing the largest drug crisis in the history of Canada, but budget 2025 remains blissfully ignorant. Cutting funding to those who are most vulnerable will only make the opioid crisis cost more lives and our cities more unsafe.
Our federal debt has reached over $1.28 trillion. That is $1,280 billion, which is incomprehensibly large to the average Canadian. Canada will be spending $54 billion just to service the debt, which is equal to federal health transfers. Servicing the debt is now a core government function, yet money is still wasted on vanity projects such as the gun grab, which will not remedy public safety.
Over 10 years, we have witnessed budget after budget with ballooning deficits. The prime minister who presented them resigned. The man who replaced him told Canadians that he would be a reasonable guy who was more fiscally responsible. With his first, late, budget, he is not the man he said he was.
With a projected deficit of $78.3 billion, this budget gets us nowhere close to balance. It is especially hard to achieve balance or strike any meaningful deal with the President of the United States when the Prime Minister is burning hundreds of thousands of dollars on photo op travels instead of doing real work for Canadians. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has indicated that the GDP growth is stagnant and will remain below 2% for the decade, making rising debt levels unmanageable.
The new finance minister has now presented a budget that will grow our debt-to-GDP ratio rather than shrink it. Budget 2025 boldly claims to have the most ambitious housing plan since the Second World War, yet Canadians today face a housing crisis that is, by many measures, worse than that of 1945. Government-imposed costs, fees, taxes and delays are making up to 30% to 50% of new housing prices. I will repeat again that government-imposed costs, fees, taxes and delays are making up to 30% to 50% of new housing prices.
CMHC now warns that red tape is one of the biggest barriers to building homes. Canada builds fewer homes now than it did back in 1970, despite having the fastest population growth in half a century. Instead of clearing the way for builders, as previous generations did, the government layers on more bureaucracy and calls it ambition. The Prime Minister promised to cut development charges in half, but budget 2025 says nothing about that. He promised to incentivize private rental construction, but budget 2025 still has nothing. The first six Build Canada Homes projects have failed. Meanwhile, CMHC says Canada needs 480,000 homes a year for 10 years. We are not even close to 200,000. Young Canadians delay having families, careers and life itself because they cannot afford homes or find an affordable house as it is. It is not the Canada that we want to leave to them.
Budget 2025 fails all Canadians who believed in the Prime Minister when he promised to build at scale. Young Canadians deserve a government that works as hard as they do, one that cuts red tape, empowers builders and focuses on getting more homes built. Budget 2025 does not meet that moment. It fails an entire generation. Mark Carney told Canadians that he was a serious—