Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today on behalf of the great people of Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford.
I come from a very entrepreneurial riding. Right now in Canada, small businesses are under real pressure: rising costs, persistent inflation and complex regulations. Across Canada, 30.5% of small business firms with fewer than 20 employees reported lower revenues last year and over 20% worry about cash flow. Confidence is slipping. Only 58% of small business owners feel optimistic about 2025, down 10 points from last year. In British Columbia, insolvencies surged 65% in 2023 and major failures continued through 2024, hitting sectors like construction, hospitality and manufacturing hard. This reflects a declining entrepreneurial spirit in Canada.
I met with the president of the Business Development Bank of Canada yesterday evening. She reported an alarming statistic: Canada has 100,000 fewer entrepreneurs today than it did in the year 2000, despite our population growing by over 10 million people since that time. This is described as an “alarming decline” by the Business Development Bank of Canada. In 2000, about three out of every 1,000 Canadians started a new business annually. By 2022, that rate had fallen to 1.3% per 1,000 people, a drop of more than 50%. Today, there are approximately 3.5 million entrepreneurs in Canada, but the pace of new business creation slowed significantly during and after the pandemic.
That brings me to budget 2025. This budget purportedly lays out a broad plan to restructure the Canadian economy, boost investment and improve confidence in how we operate as a country, but I do not believe it achieves its objectives. This budget, in my view, is a series of piecemeal wins, not the structural reform Canada needs to see in order to address the very real challenges we face in 2025.
In my 10 minutes today, I will address three areas where I believe we could have seen more improvement and focus from the government.
The first is internal trade, the ability of Canadians to trade between provinces and territories. My belief is that the Prime Minister failed to show real leadership in dismantling the internal trade barriers that continue to stifle Canada's economic potential. These barriers cost billions in lost productivity and limit opportunities for businesses and workers across provinces. The Prime Minister has both the authority and the responsibility to convene the provinces and territories and demand progress on the issue where provincial or territorial jurisdiction needs to be amended. Canadians expect a federal government that does not just talk about economic growth but will also use its leadership to take decisive action and make it happen. Canadians of all political stripes agree that this is something we can be doing as a country.
Just imagine how much stronger our economy would be today if there was alignment on transportation rules, if wine growers in British Columbia could supply all provinces and territories with our great agricultural products, and if doctors could practise their profession in any province or jurisdiction without having to go through another regulatory process to be certified in another province or territory. The Prime Minister, by this time, could have made all those things happen. Indeed, he promised that he would, but he did not deliver in the very document that he said would address those major failings in Canada's economic structure.
The second issue is regulatory reform.
Canadians are tired of watching 10 lost years of economic development with a government set on tying our economy in knots with endless layers of regulation. The government created the Major Projects Office in recent months, an agency meant to fast-track approvals and coordinate development, as if adding another layer of bureaucracy will somehow fix the mess of our country. The irony is staggering. Instead of repairing a broken regulatory system, they keep building new structures to work around it.
The Prime Minister's strategy will not work for the entirety of Canada's economy. Under this approach, the Prime Minister gets to hand-pick which projects receive a concierge-style fast-track approval, projects he deems politically or economically convenient, while others remain buried under red tape. That is not leadership; that is favouritism.
The Arctic economic corridor, or the Grays Bay port and road project, is a perfect example of what is at stake. This project could unlock billions in private sector investment, strengthen northern sovereignty and create critical infrastructure for trade and resource development, yet despite its strategic importance, the government allocated zero funding for it in budget 2025. That omission, in my opinion, shows how disconnected the government is from the real opportunities that could drive growth and security for generations to come.
The government claims it wants to double Canadian exports in the next 10 years. That is a wildly ambitious goal, yet its polices make it nearly impossible to achieve. It cannot double exports when it refuses to build the infrastructure that moves goods to markets. It cannot grow the economy by layering on more bureaucracy, instead of clearing the path for investment and development. It cannot double exports if it leaves in place our flawed environmental review process, which has slowed direct foreign investment and Canadian investment and turned it to other rich jurisdictions like Qatar.
If we truly want to see oil and gas infrastructure, critical minerals infrastructure and major projects built in this country, the answer is not a Major Projects Office or more government. It is the opposite; it is less. We need to dismantle the barriers. We need to cut the red tape and we need to empower the private sector to do what it does best, which is to create jobs and build the prosperity Canada wants to see from its federal government and for its people.
The third issue is the affordability crisis.
Canada's affordability crisis runs deeper than the inflation crisis that we face today. It is a structural failure of our tax and wage systems. The Parliamentary Budget Officer notes that the Liberal tax cut would save the average family about $280 next year, a modest relief that would do nothing, however, to address the systemic complexity of fairness in our taxation system. What Canada needs right now is a royal commission-style review of the entire tax system, similar to Australia's repeated “root and branch” inquiries, including the landmark Henry review, which produced over 130 recommendations to modernize and simplify their tax framework. Without such a comprehensive overhaul in Canada, we will continue to patch holes while wages stagnate and costs soar. To make our economy work, employment must pay, which means reforms that boost productivity, raise incomes and ensure that work provides a real path to affordability, not just token tax breaks.
In closing, Canada's economic future depends on bold structural reforms, not half measures or winners and losers. We must tear down internal trade barriers that fragment our market and cost billions in lost productivity. We need real regulatory reform that clears the path for investment and infrastructure, not more layers of bureaucracy that slow progress and breed favouritism. We must confront the affordability crisis with a comprehensive overhaul of our taxation system.
If we fail to act decisively, the numbers I outlined in respect to declining entrepreneurship will only continue to go in the wrong direction. So much needs to be taking place in Canada and this budget missed the mark on the hard choices Canadians wanted to see from the Prime Minister.