Mr. Speaker, I know that you are a bit of a student of history, and I just want to point out that 158 years ago today was the first convening of the Parliament of Canada.
For 148 of those years, all the governments that we have had combined spent less than the Liberals have spent in the last 10 years. I know that when Canadians heard the title of the budget, “Canada Strong”, they expected a budget that would be more affordable, would reward hard work and would restore confidence in our future. Instead, the Minister of Finance has delivered a budget that spends more, borrows more and achieves less.
It is the 10th Liberal budget, and after nearly a decade of reckless Liberal spending, Canadians are poorer, investment is weaker and our economy is falling further behind those of our global competitors. This is not strength. This is stubbornness disguised as leadership.
The Minister of Finance told Canadians he would control spending and bring discipline back to Ottawa, but, once again, the government could not resist the temptation to use borrowed money to paper over deeper concerns. He promised to rein in deficits, but the deficit continues to grow. He promised to make life more affordable, yet Canadians are hit with higher costs on everything: groceries, fuel, housing and interest rates. He promised that the budget would rebuild confidence, but confidence is collapsing, investment is leaving and Canadian productivity, the backbone of our standard of living, remains stuck in neutral.
For all that talk about nation building, the budget continues a dangerous pattern of more debt, more bureaucracy and no results. The government now spends more money on interest payments than it does on health care. That is not a sign of a strong nation. That is the sign of a government that refuses to make the hard choices.
Canadians are making sacrifices every day, but the federal government refuses to make any on their behalf. Every dollar spent on servicing the debt is a dollar that we cannot spend on helping seniors, supporting hospitals or investing in infrastructure. This is not sustainable, and it is not responsible.
I want to share a story from a farm family I met recently in my riding. It was nothing dramatic, just coffee at a kitchen table and a conversation about how things were going on their farm. They run a small mixed operation, grain and cattle. They are not the type to complain. They are the kind of family who gets up early, works late and steps up when their neighbours need help. As we talked, the wife said something very interesting to me. She said, “We've always been careful with money, but in the past year everything has just moved faster than we can keep up with.” Fuel, fertilizer, repairs, insurance, groceries, every single cost went up, but their income did not.
Like so many young farm families, they are doing everything right. They are managing their debt, working extra hours and cutting back where they can, but they are still falling behind. Then she told me something I did not expect to hear from farmers. She said, quietly, “We had to go to the food bank.” Then she added something that cut right to the heart of it, “We're farmers. We feed Canada and the world, and now we rely on the food bank to feed our own family.”
She was not asking for sympathy. She was not angry. She was embarrassed, but she should not have to be. This is a family that works at community fundraisers, helps neighbours and contributes to feeding the entire country and the world. After nearly 10 years of Liberal policies driving up costs at every turn, even the people who feed Canada cannot reliably feed their own children.
This is not what a strong country looks like. It is not the Canada they were promised. If there is one symbol of prairie success, it is canola, a made-in-Canada innovation that farmers turned into a world-leading crop. However, the government has failed to defend the success that canola represents. Foreign tariffs remain in place, trade barriers continue and market access is shrinking.
Instead of fighting for our producers, the government issues press releases and photo ops, while the actual work of trade sits undone. Instead of lowering taxes on fuel and fertilizer, the government raises them. Instead of helping producers move product to market, it creates layers of new red tape.
Farmers do not need handouts; they need trade deals and respect. The budget delivers neither.
This budget claims to invest in the future, but when we read the details, the Prairies are treated as an afterthought again. There is no plan for the roads or rail lines that move our exports, there is no meaningful investment in trade corridors and there is no support for the rural infrastructure, water, broadband and bridges that communities depend on. Instead, we get another Ottawa-run sovereign fund and another layer of bureaucracy deciding which regions get attention and which get ignored. This is not partnership; this is paternalism. Prairie people do not need Ottawa to run more programs. They just need Ottawa to get out of the way.
The same neglect extends to our resource industries, which build our economy, fund our social programs and support thousands of hard-working families. From the potash mines around Rocanville to the oil fields near Estevan and Weyburn, workers are ready to innovate, grow and help make Canada energy-independent. However, this budget offers nothing to accelerate responsible development, nothing to improve regulatory timelines and nothing to secure long-term export capacity. Instead, the government is layering on new rules, new taxes and new delays that would make it harder for projects to move forward and easier for investors to look elsewhere.
A strong country needs strong resource industries, but this budget would weaken them instead of strengthening them. For all the money that is being spent, there is almost nothing in this budget to make our country more productive. There is no plan to make it easier to start a business, no plan to reduce red tape or regulatory duplication and no plan to attract investment and keep it here.
The Minister of Finance talks about “inclusive growth”, but Canadians are excluded. They need opportunity. They need confidence that their hard work will pay off. This budget does not deliver that confidence.
Conservatives cannot support this budget for one simple reason: It would make life harder for the very people it claims to help. It would drive up inflation through uncontrolled spending, discourage investment through higher taxes and regulation, undermine the provinces through federal overreach, and ignore the sectors of agriculture, energy and manufacturing that create wealth.
Canadians are not asking for more programs. They are asking for the ability to get ahead by their own hard work. This budget would make that harder, not easier.
Conservatives believe in a Canada that works for the people who do the work. We believe in rewarding effort, not punishing it. We believe that every region and every province should have the same chance to succeed. We believe a government should respect the people who feed us, build our homes and power our economy. Our vision is simple. We would make life affordable again, end inflationary spending and build homes and infrastructure more quickly. We would celebrate agriculture and resource development, not punish it, and restore hope in hard work so that once again it will be enough. That is the country we believe in.
This budget tells Canadians that the government knows best. Conservatives believe Canadians know best.
This budget would grow the government while shrinking opportunity. It would punish work, erode trust and leave entire generations behind. For that hard-working family in my riding and countless others like them across this country, Conservatives cannot and will not support this budget. The real strength of Canada does not come from another deficit or another announcement, but from the Canadians who build, grow and produce the wealth that keeps this nation alive. They deserve a government that trusts them, respects them and finally stands up for them.