Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Northumberland—Clarke.
This year's federal budget is a masterpiece of illusion, a glossy presentation that looks generous on paper but hides a mountain of debt, higher taxes and fewer opportunities. Canadians plainly say the Liberal government is drawing bigger cakes, digging deeper holes and leaving endless debts. Every year, the government paints another picture of prosperity, another big cake of promises. They promise growth, affordability and opportunity, but those promises are baked with borrowed money, frosted with rhetoric and served with no plan to pay the bills. The Liberals call it investing in Canadians. Canadians see it for what it is: a revolving door of borrowed money and recycled failures.
Behind every new announcement lies another layer of debt, money borrowed from the next generation to mask today's problems. The government is not managing the economy; it is borrowing from the future to buy the illusion of progress. Deficits that were once called temporary have become structural. This budget adds $78 billion in new deficit spending, the costliest outside of COVID, and pushes total federal debt to $1.35 trillion. Interest payments on that debt will reach $55.6 billion next year, exceeding both the Canada health transfer and GST revenues.
Every dollar Canadians pay in GST now does not go to doctors and nurses but to bankers and bondholders. This is not fiscal stewardship; it is fiscal negligence disguised as compassion. When we add in provincial and municipal debts, Canadians now carry nearly $100,000 per person in combined public liabilities. This is the real legacy of 10 years of Liberal ideology: a revolving door of borrowing, spending and taxing that spins faster every year while Canadians fall further behind. This budget once again proves that the Liberals never met a tax they did not like.
Let me be blunt. This is Canadians' experience. When we earn money, we are taxed. When we spend money, we are taxed. When we save money, we are still taxed. Canadians now pay more and get less. Families are stretched to the breaking point. Young Canadians cannot afford homes. Seniors are cutting back on food and medication. Small businesses are drowning in payroll taxes and red tape. The Liberals claim they are helping the middle class, but what they are really doing is taxing the middle class to death. The only growth they have created is in government bureaucracy, debt and despair.
The Prime Minister made five clear commitments six months ago, and he has broken every single one. He promised to cap the deficit at $62 billion, but it is $78 billion. He promised to lower the debt-to-GDP ratio, but both debt and inflation are rising. He promised to spend less, but spending has ballooned by $90 billion, $5,400 per household. He promised to cut municipal homebuilding taxes, but housing costs are higher than ever. He promised to attract investment, but the Royal Bank of Canada confirms investment is collapsing. The government says it is building prosperity, but it is burning through it instead.
RBC's “High stakes, narrow margins” report warns that this budget bets everything on “investment-led growth”, a risky gamble that requires $500 billion in new private investment. RBC also notes that the fiscal anchors are thin and that only one-third of new spending is actually productive capital. The rest is political scaffolding: programs designed to look like investment but that function like subsidies.
We have seen this before. The government incubates companies with taxpayer grants, photo ops and headlines. Those firms thrive temporarily and then move to more competitive jurisdictions once the subsidies expire.
This is not industrial strategy; this is industrial babysitting. It is fuelled by the industrial carbon tax, which is a policy that drives up costs for farmers, manufacturers, miners and energy workers while pushing investment abroad. This tax alone adds billions in compliance costs each year, eroding competitiveness and feeding the inflation it claims to fight. The result is a self-perpetuating cycle, a revolving-door economy in which government taxes production, subsidizes dependency and calls it growth. Conservatives will scrap this destructive tax and replace ideology with innovation: practical environmental policy that rewards results, not rhetoric.
The same pattern repeats in public safety. The government announces more funding, yet crime keeps climbing because laws remain weak and accountability absent. It spends millions to process crime but refuses to stop it. Offenders walk free; victims lose faith, and enforcement is ordered to suppress the issue without resolving it. This is the revolving door of justice. It is a system that cycles offenders through courtrooms without consequences while communities are forced to bear the damages and pay the price out of their own pockets.
Conservatives will stop this. We will restore mandatory minimums for the worst crimes, use the notwithstanding clause where and when it is absolutely necessary and return the focus of justice to the protection of victims, not the accommodation of offenders.
This budget is more than a financial document; it is a mirror reflecting a government trapped by its own ideology. When confronted with failure, it does not change course. It doubles down. When spending fails, it spends more. When regulations stall growth, it creates more. When inflation rises, it prints more. This is motion without direction and activity without achievement.
Leadership is not measured by how loudly new programs are announced but by whether those programs actually work. After 10 years of announcements, Canadians are asking a simple question: Where are the results?
Conservatives offer a better way: common-sense leadership for all Canadians. We believe prosperity is built, not borrowed; government must live within its means as families do; and work should be rewarded, not taxed into discouragement. Our plan is clear: We will balance the budget to secure long-term stability, end hidden taxes and scrap the industrial carbon tax, cut wasteful spending and stop corporate welfare, streamline regulations to build homes and attract investment, and restore justice so that those who harm others face real consequences. We will replace the revolving door of ideology with a doorway to growth, accountability and hope.
Canada was built by people who worked, saved and built, not by governments that borrowed, taxed and apologized. We were a nation of builders. After 10 years of the Liberal government, we are now a nation that has borrowed $100,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It must stop.
Canadians need more. They need a government that measures success not by how much it spends but by how much it delivers.
They want a plan to stop the revolving door of debt, inflation and ideology, one that replaces it with affordability, accountability and growth.