Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin today by thanking my colleague from Edmonton West for splitting his time with me to share some words about Bill C-4.
The last question of my fellow Manitoban from Riding Mountain about the interest payments on our debt now being higher than health care transfers to provinces was an alarming note to leave it on. With a health care system that is in crisis across Canada, that is an absolutely disastrous record for the Liberals to be leaving this country with.
Six months ago, the Liberals stood in the House, and during the election campaign, and asked Canadians to trust them one more time. They promised lower spending. They said, spend less to invest more. They promised lower costs and a smaller, slimmer federal government. They said that they had heard Canadians loud and clear and that they understood the pain their policies had caused for nine and a half years in this country. They assured us all that things would be different, but every single one of those promises has turned into failure, and this bill is no different.
The House has now passed a budget with a record $78-billion deficit. That is more than twice the kind of deficit that was at one time considered excessive in this country. This is not a minor miscalculation; it is a massive burden added by the government to the future of this country.
According to the independent budget officer, the chance the deficit stays below that is less than 10%. That is no surprise given that it took the Liberals more than halfway into this fiscal year to come up with the amount of money they had already spent and what they planned to spend for the few remaining months left in this fiscal year, by the time they introduced their budget. Make no mistake: The words used to describe the government's spending, including “shocking”, “stupefying” and “unsustainable”, did not come from partisan critics. They came from the very independent fiscal office that the Liberals themselves put in place and staffed.
Meanwhile, the government is adding $80 billion in new spending, which works out to over $5,000 for every household in Canada that someday will have to get paid off. That is money being taken out of the pockets of families, seniors and workers through higher taxes, inflation and interest rates. Why does this matter for the people in southwestern Manitoba? It matters because many working families and individuals are already making due on modest incomes while the cost of living climbs.
Let us consider this. In Brandon, the average monthly cost of living for a single renter, including housing, food, transportation and basic necessities, is estimated to be approximately $1,800 a month. That is roughly $22,000 a year. Meanwhile, the typical household income in Brandon is lower than the national average. Local data suggests the average individual income does not match national paycheques in my region. For some residents, especially renters, younger workers or those early in their careers, that means a very tight budget from month to month. A small tax cut or a few dollars here and there will not move the needle for these households when rent, groceries, fuel and utilities continue to rise due to Liberal inflationary spending.
Looking at the structure of employment in Brandon and Westman more broadly, around 45% of jobs in Brandon are in health care and social services, retail trade or manufacturing sectors. These sectors often run on modest wages, where many workers feel the pinch of inflation and rising costs most severely. Manitobans are hard-working people. Families raising children, seniors on fixed incomes who worked hard all their lives and young adults trying to start their lives deserve more than vague promises and symbolic gestures.
While the Liberal government continues to rack up debt and deficits, cost of living pressures mount. There are higher taxes, higher inflation and a rising burden on ordinary Canadians. At the same time, we see record food bank growth, including in my constituency at the Samaritan House Ministries food bank in downtown Brandon. This is a rising burden on ordinary Canadians that is resulting in families skipping meals and seniors being forced to choose between heating their homes or putting fuel in their cars.
That is not governmental success; it is a systemic failure on a grand scale that is forcing more and more Canadians to be reliant on government handouts just to get by. The Liberal answer is more government programs, more spending and more planning, increasing the money supply, raising debt and calling it investment. This does not change the reality that every dollar collected from Canadians is being poured into interest payments and debt service rather than helping Canadian families make ends meet.
I find it ironic that after a decade of lecturing Canadians, the Liberals have finally admitted what Conservatives have said from the very beginning. The carbon tax was a costly, punishing failure, and the mental gymnastics that these Liberals now go through, after 10 years of flogging how the carbon tax was going to save the planet and then proudly putting forward a bill that cancelled it, are nothing short of hypocritical. For years they mocked and demonized anyone who questioned their tax-and-spend climate scheme, and they told families in southwestern Manitoba that paying more to heat their homes, drive their trucks and buy their groceries was somehow good for them in the long run. Now 10 years later, in the middle of an affordability crisis that they helped create, the Liberals are desperately trying to walk back the very policy that they flogged and pushed for countless years.
Canadians are supposed to applaud the Liberals for putting out the fire they started, but they would not find much of a warm reception for that in my constituency. Let us be clear: The Liberals did not scrap this tax because it was the right thing to do. They scrapped it because Conservatives made it impossible for them to keep defending the indefensible. For years, our party warned that the carbon tax would raise the cost of everything without reducing emissions, and for years, the Liberals insisted that they were right, we were wrong and everyone else was wrong as well. However, now they are plagiarizing Conservative common sense and pretending it was their idea all along. If they had listened a decade ago, families in communities like Verdin, Boissevain, Souris and Killarney would not be drowning in skyrocketing costs today.
Now we see the Liberals rolling out a temporary GST new-housing rebate for first-time homebuyers, a policy that Conservatives campaigned on in the spring election. It took pressure from our party to finally get the Liberals to act, and even now they are presenting it as if it was their own idea. The reality is that homes are being built incredibly slowly due to bureaucratic red tape and gong-show housing policy legislation on the Liberal side.
Home ownership, with or without this GST rebate, has never been further out of reach for Canadians. Young families and first-time buyers are struggling to enter the market, while construction stagnates, costs rise and regulatory red tape continues to slow the growth of new homes. Conservatives have long been fighting for real solutions, like lowering taxes, cutting red tape and supporting builders, so that Canadians can finally achieve the dream of owning and not just renting a home.
Conservatives support letting Canadians keep more of their own money, but when the government gives small tax cuts here, while taking away thousands on the other side, that is not relief; it is just a bait and switch. As such, while we are pleased that there are small tax cuts, this bill certainly does not go far enough. We would have liked to see in this bill a full carbon tax repeal on everything, to support affordability and increase Canadian competitiveness abroad; the GST removed from more homes as well as home construction; a bigger income tax cut that would actually help those in the working class; and responsible government savings by cutting wasteful bureaucracy, foreign aid and corporate handouts to protect the financial health of this country for future generations.
That is the government Canadians deserve. That is the legislation they deserve. That is why Conservatives are standing here. We will continue to stand up for that in this Parliament every day going forward until we deliver a Conservative government that will bring that home for Canadians.
I look forward to my colleagues' questions on this bill.