Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to continue the debate.
I was talking about this affordability crisis we are facing right across Canada and specifically in my region of northwest Ontario. We are seeing a housing crisis along with that. People are struggling to afford rent or housing for first-time homebuyers. Those who have a home are also worried about being able to hold on to it, with rising interest rates and the rising costs associated with that.
For younger people, many of them have given up completely on that dream of home ownership. It used to be the case in Canada that if a person played by the rules, worked hard, did the right things and got a good education, they could expect to have an affordable life, an affordable home, a safe neighbourhood and a good job, and to be able to pay the bills. That is the promise that has been broken after 10 years of Liberal policies.
We see this affordability crisis manifest itself at the grocery store as well, with food inflation on the rise. Stats Canada is reporting a massive increase in food costs, with beef up about 17%, chicken up 6.2%, apples up over 4%, carrots up 11%, and infant formula up nearly 6%. It is no wonder, with these rising costs, that over two million Canadians are visiting food banks in a single month. Again, that is a large national number. We see that happening in small communities across northwestern Ontario as well. I have spoken to individuals at food banks right across the region.
Recently, I had a chance to visit the food bank in Kenora. Thankfully, it had just received a lot of donations ahead of the Christmas season, but it is continuing to see an increase in people needing to visit the food bank, even just a couple times, just to get by. Of course, other people are struggling on a more steady basis and needing to visit more frequently. However, that demand has just continued to increase each year under this Liberal government, with the government's industrial carbon tax adding to the cost of food, and the food packaging tax and the Liberal fuel standard adding 17¢ per litre of gas, not to mention that the Liberal government's inflationary spending is driving up the cost of living. All of these things are adding to that cost of food.
If members look further than just the cost and the affordability crisis, Canada has the worst employment rate in about 25 years, and youth unemployment is at a record high that we have not seen since 2010, outside of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of this paints a picture of the economic situation we are in and why the Liberals are bringing forward Bill C-4, intending to make life more affordable for Canadians.
I would like to go into a bit more detail about this bill and the government's overall economic policy in terms of where it misses the mark. I would like to comment as well that in the budget we see just more of the same policies: bureaucratic spending driving up the cost of living, more taxes, and all of the things that are the status quo after 10 years of Liberal government.
The Prime Minister promised that spending would go down; it has increased by $90 billion. He promised the deficit would be $62 billion; it is now $78 billion. He promised that investment would go up, yet his own budget shows that investment will decline in Canada. We already heard today that the Prime Minister said he should be judged by prices at the grocery stores, but we know they are skyrocketing.
By every single measure, every single standard the Prime Minister has set for himself, he is missing the mark. Again, these are not the standards or the measures that I myself or the Conservative Party laid out for him. These are the measures that he has asked Canadians to hold him to account on, and he is failing on each and every one of them. While the bill does bring in some tax cuts, what they result in is about $90 per month in savings for the average Canadian. With Liberal inflation and spending, those savings are going to be wiped out.
The government has added, as I mentioned, $90 billion in new spending. That is $5,000 more in spending for every Canadian family, to put it in perspective, driving up the cost of living on all Canadians and pushing our fiscal situation to the point where we are going to be paying more to service our debt than the federal government is spending on health care transfers to the provinces.
This bill also brings in a GST rebate for first-time homebuyers purchasing new homes, and I think that is a very important aspect. It is for the purchase of new homes. I do not want to say it is none, but it is next to none. Virtually no first-time homebuyers in northwestern Ontario are going to be buying new homes. The majority of homes in northwestern Ontario are about 30 years old, give or take, and those are the ones that first-time homebuyers and young Canadians are going to be able to afford. Perhaps this is a well-intentioned policy on the part of the Liberal government, but it is one that, in practice, will not be effective for the vast majority of people in my region.
The Liberals, although looking to move on removing the consumer carbon tax, are leaving in place the industrial carbon tax. In fact, they have actually tripled that tax, and that is just going to make everything even more expensive, especially when it comes to the cost of food. Whether it is fertilizer on the farm, fuel in the trucks to ship it or power in the grocery store, this industrial carbon tax is still going to be passed down to consumers, just not in the more obvious way of the consumer price. Canadians are still paying for this carbon tax, even under the new Prime Minister's plan.
That is where I think this bill misses the mark. The Liberals have tried to adopt some Conservative ideas, but they have not gone far enough to actually implement them in the right way. As I mentioned earlier with the price of food, food inflation in Canada is rising faster than in nearly every other G7 nation. According to Stats Canada, grocery prices have risen more than 20% since 2020. Again, that is just to paint the picture of where we are.
Bill C-4, although bringing forward some steps in the right direction, at least from a rhetoric standpoint with the Liberal government, is not doing anything, nor is the budget doing anything, to address the real drivers of inflation, which are Liberal overspending, overtaxation and over-regulation. Those are the things that Conservatives are going to keep fighting against, and we are going to continue to stand for a plan that truly makes life more affordable for Canadians right across this country.