Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to get up and make my first budget speech on behalf of Skeena—Bulkley Valley. It is quite the auspicious event because this is everything that the Prime Minister promised not to deliver.
The Prime Minister promised less spending and more fiscal responsibility but reversed that once elected. Budget 2025 has brought Canadian debt up to $1.35 trillion. That number is pretty hard to visualize for the average Canadian, let alone a new MP. The interest payment on this debt for 2025-26 is $55.6 billion. That is more than the health transfer agreement. That is more than what the Canadian government collects in GST. For all the younger people watching this, because it is going to be their debt, this budget adds $10 million to our debt every hour.
I want to talk about specific items in the budget that relate directly to my constituents in Skeena—Bulkley Valley. One is the firearms confiscation program put together by the Liberal government. The overall budget for this program is $742 million, and the budget actually earmarks $38.7 million for the pilot project in Cape Breton. The Liberal minister responsible for this program said that it will not work, that it is a political stunt and that he would bail his tenant out of jail if these provisions actually affected the tenant renting his property. I think everyone is aware that the Liberal minister responsible for the confiscation program does not even support the program.
I want to talk to Canadians about the penalties. The Liberal government has criminalized law-abiding citizens overnight, the citizens who lawfully and legally registered their guns, got their PALs and obeyed the law. This one piece of legislation turns them into criminals overnight. This includes indigenous people as well, such as indigenous hunters and indigenous sport shooters.
If people do not abide by the legislation, they could face up to five years in prison for an indictable offence. For a summary conviction, it is up to two years less a day. This is the penalty for law-abiding citizens. The elbows-up strategy is missing Trump and hitting law-abiding Canadians. This does not make any sense. If we are going to crack down on crime, we should go after criminals. Criminals do not register their guns or get licences.
The amount of money being spent on this program, the $742 million, could go toward programs for Canadians. It could go toward seniors and youth. It could go toward our economy. It could pay down our debt, God forbid.
It does not make sense for people who inherited firearms, people who purchased firearms or people who are sport shooters to turn their guns in on a voluntary basis and receive $1,300 per firearm, especially when some of these firearms are a lot more expensive than that.
The cost of groceries is up, and it is going to keep going up. The Prime Minister said he wants to be judged based on prices at grocery stores. The verdict is in: He is guilty of doing nothing. In fact, as prices go up, the usage of food banks increases.
As seniors and middle-income people flock to the food banks, over two million in Canada, 700,000 of which are children, the Liberal government proudly gets up and talks about its contribution to food banks instead of fixing the root cause.
The Liberals have stunted the economy. They have increased taxes, with more on the way. There is a packaging tax. Everybody is talking about how the packaging tax is going to increase costs at the grocery store.
There is another tax coming that the government failed to talk to Canadians about, the International Maritime Organization's carbon tax on shipping. It is not official yet, but it is Canada's intention to vote in favour of this shipping tax that will raise the cost of goods and groceries for Canadians.
I want to talk briefly about the decriminalization experiment that happened when I was an MLA in B.C. It turned B.C. into a haven for drug use; federal dollars were even used to purchase hydromorphone and distribute it unmanaged and unchecked. It started making its way into our general population. This experiment the Liberals used on British Columbians, which Oregon actually got rid of because it did not work, is going to take decades to recover from. This is going to be a generational issue for leaders and legislatures. This experiment was not needed, not when Oregon had already tried it and, when it failed, got rid of it.
Contrary to popular opinion, the emissions cap is not gone. If all the other mechanisms mentioned in the budget fail, the emissions cap will be enforced on the Canadian resource economy. That will limit the Liberal government's plans to turn Canada into an energy superpower and turn us into the best-performing country in the G7.
By the way, if we want to be the best-performing country in the G7, we have to outperform the United States, the largest economy in the G7, if not the world. We are going to have to do 100 times better than what we are doing now. The government is going to have to get rid of the legislation that limits our economy if we want to be that energy superpower or a well-performing country in the G7. It cannot do it by allowing all these tariffs to take hold in our economy. From the United States alone, the softwood lumber tariff is 45%, reciprocal tariffs are 25% to 35%. There are steel tariffs. The list goes on. India has imposed 30% tariffs on yellow peas. China has 100% tariffs on canola oil, peas, pork, seafood and canola seed. The list goes on. I am not a banker. I did not even graduate high school, but I am pretty sure I could have gotten a better deal than this.
What is the strategy of allowing an ad by the Ontario government to air in the United States to anger it even further and have it stop all negotiations on trade? Can the Liberals please explain to me the strategy behind that?
By the way, after the Prime Minister saw that ad and allowed it to air, B.C. was going to do the same. It later declined, saying it was going to align itself with Canada's strategy on trade. What is the strategy? The strategy so far is putting so much pressure on Canadians that it is stunting our economy.
I have not even talked yet about the Arctic sovereignty that Russia, China and the United States have their eyes on. The government has a sovereignty clause in there, but it does not mentioned the Northwest Passage, which Russia has aimed its eyes on for shipping goods and drilling for oil and gas.
We are a mess. This budget proves it. That is why I cannot support the budget put forward for 2025.