Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my neighbour the MP for the soup and salad bowl of Canada.
Canadians elected the Prime Minister because they believed that, maybe, his experience meant steadiness in uncertain times. They believed that perhaps, finally, someone would treat the nation's finances with care.
This budget is a breach of that trust. It is a promise written with red ink in stone, a pledge of debt that my generation and my children's generation will be forced to honour long after the current Liberal government is gone. It doubles the deficit of the Trudeau years. It exceeds the red ink spilled during the global financial crisis and leaves Canadians with nothing resembling a plan for balanced growth. It is spending without restraint, strategy or an honest accounting of how the debt will ever be serviced.
Both capital and operational spending, every dollar of it, must be paid for in one way or another. The budget abandons the fiscal anchor that guided us for decades, the debt-to-GDP ratio that still governs our allies and disciplines responsible nations, and then it dares to call itself generous, offering a tax break with one hand while burdening every Canadian with approximately $2,000 more in debt with the other.
Over the next five years, our national debt will rise by $324 billion. That is like handing every Canadian family a $20,000 credit card bill and saying, “Good luck. You will pay for it.” In other words, that is $10 million of debt per hour, with every tick of the clock another $10 million on the nation's credit card. Interest payments alone will climb from $55 billion to $76 billion, which is more than all the GST collected in this country.
As a finance professional, I am troubled by another deception. The government is playing with the very definitions of capital and operating budgets by shifting tax breaks and subsidies into the capital column to give the illusion of fiscal prudence. Right on page 283 of the budget, conveniently buried in the annexes, right at the back and only because the government was forced to disclose it, corporate income tax credits are treated as capital investments. It is confirmed that the government hands Canadian tax dollars to big corporations and calls it capital investment.
Does the U.K. or Singapore do this? Do Canada's provinces do it? No, but the Liberal government does, and then it tells Canadians that it is balancing the operating budget in three years and being fiscally prudent when it is simply moving big subsidies and tax breaks for private companies as capital investments. We also know that even security for FIFA is going to be a capital investment. It is not prudence; it is the manipulation of Canada's budget.
It is always risky for an entity to change its accounting metrics, let alone when reporting is delayed, deficits are ballooning and economic conditions are deteriorating. This change, which is solely for a politically expedient communication strategy, is damning. It is an unnecessary risk to Canada's credit rating and fiscal integrity in very uncertain times.
Canadians believed there was a steady hand on the wheel. This budget has no hand, no wheel and no map. It is impossibly vague. It gestures toward major projects without naming them and military spending without strategy. It is seven months after the election, and we still have no idea where the government is leading us. We only know that it plans to spend $141 billion more, choosing the winners and losers instead of fixing fundamentals.
The budget should have unleashed domestic capital to keep investment here and not drive it away.
It should have addressed the weight of development charges and broken the bottlenecks in housing construction. Instead, the Building Industry and Land Development Association describes it as follows:
...Budget 2025’s treatment of Development Charges...is particularly troubling. Not only has the federal government’s language changed markedly, backing away from the commitment...[that] is now only a framework for federal, territorial, and provincial agreements, not an actionable plan to reduce municipal housing fees with any sense of urgency.
The Liberal government should have treated all Canadians fairly and extended the GST/HST exemption for all homebuyers. It should have kept its election promise to reduce municipal development charges by 50%.
It should have approved LNG pipelines to the east coast, freeing our allies from their dependence on Russian gas while building a bridge to renewable energy. It should have cleared the path for the mining of critical minerals in Ontario's ring of fire and the infrastructure to get them to market. It should have cut the red tape that strangles our entrepreneurs and lowered taxes so they can invest, expand and hire.
Instead, we have an $80 billion deficit, $16 billion higher than even the Prime Minister's own campaign pledge, with no road back to balance.
Behind every number is a human story. Food inflation is hitting hard. Right now, we have approximately 700,000 visits by children to food banks in a single month. That is a generation of children growing up watching their parents struggle because they cannot afford groceries because the government keeps spending beyond its means.
Private sector investment is collapsing. Since the Prime Minister took office, quarter after quarter, businesses have lost faith that the government understands how wealth is created. As confidence leaves, capital leaves with it.
One in three young Canadians are now thinking of leaving this country, not because they lack patriotism but because they no longer believe they can afford to stay. That is the tragedy of this budget.
To the government opposite I say this. It should come to its senses and return to the discipline that once made Canada a model of stability and sound management. It cannot spend its way to affordability. A government that cannot live within its means will never make life affordable for those who must live within theirs. Canadians did not elect it to max out the country's credit card.
I believe in a Canada where fiscal responsibility is not a slogan but a standard, where government acts with prudence and with purpose, and where every dollar is spent with the humility that it belongs first to the people who earned it. I believe in a Canada where our children inherit opportunity, not debt, and can look to the future and see prosperity, not hopelessness in mountains of debt. That is the Canada we must fight to restore today.