Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the people of London—Fanshawe to speak to Bill C-15. The budget implementation bill seeks to carry out a narrowly passed budget that the Liberal government tried to sell as a generational investment bill. In reality it is a generational debt that will leave young people with higher costs, fewer opportunities and a heavier financial burden for years to come.
In my community, people are not talking about capital classification or fiscal modelling; they are talking about everyday life. They are talking about how hard it has become to make a paycheque last. They are talking about standing in the grocery aisle hoping that the total stays below what is left in their account and trying to decide what has to go back on the shelf. They are also talking about the reality facing young people in our region, where youth unemployment is at levels that have not been seen in years.
Families worry that their kids will not have the opportunities they had, and young people worry that they are starting behind and falling further behind every month. This is where the budget lands, right in the middle of family budgets already stretched to the breaking point.
The government would like Canadians to believe its accounting changes are just technical adjustments, but they are not. The government redefined capital spending, but not because it discovered a new economic insight; it redefined it by dressing up spending as an investment, and when budgets are dressed up instead of disciplined, Canadians end up paying more. When fiscal anchors are abandoned or quietly replaced, the result is not an academic debate; it is higher debt, higher interest costs and higher prices for the families I represent. These details matter because they help explain why life keeps getting more expensive for people in communities like London—Fanshawe.
The independent Parliamentary Budget Officer exposed what the government tried to hide: By expanding the definition of capital spending far beyond international standards, the government counted corporate subsidies and tax breaks as investment. However, when the Parliamentary Budget Officer applied the proper definition, the supposed capital investment dropped by $94 billion. That is not a small discrepancy; it is a massive credibility gap, and it tells Canadians that the government is not being straight with them.
We are also hearing these concerns from leaders in the Canadian tech sector. Tobi Lütke, founder and CEO of Shopify, one of Canada's most successful technology companies, recently warned that taxpayer-funded subsidies for foreign branch offices do not strengthen Canada's economy at all. He says that these subsidies lower the cost basis for foreign firms and are “toxic” to our tech economy because the “fruits of the subsidized labour will accrue to the wealth of other countries and not Canada.”
When the government pours money into subsidies that distort markets instead of strengthening our own economic foundations, Canadians pay twice, once through their taxes and again through lost opportunity. It gets worse. Even with those redefined numbers, the government will not balance its operating budget over the next five years. Its previous fiscal anchor is gone. Its new one, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, has only a 7.5% chance of being met.
That is not a plan; it is wishful thinking backed by borrowed money, and borrowed money has consequences. This year's deficit is $78 billion, $16 billion more than the government promised, and double what its predecessor delivered. Next year, interest on the debt will hit $55.6 billion. That is more than the government will transfer to provinces for health care, and it is comparable to all the GST revenue Canadians pay. Every dollar of GST essentially goes to servicing debt, not to supporting Canadians or providing essential services.
The massive debt burden reflects only what has already been spent and accumulated in the past. It does not account for the future spending pressures the government continues to create with out-of-control budgets like the current one. With no credible plan to rein in costs or restore discipline, there is every indication that this number will keep growing year after year. The debt load Canadians are carrying today is only the beginning. Without a change in direction, it will continue to rise, pushing more of every tax dollar away from the services Canadians rely on and into interest payments on past decisions.
This is not fiscal responsibility; it is the cost of a decade of overspending: a decade of pushing the envelope further and further rather than showing restraint, and a decade of ignoring long-term consequences while digging future generations deeper into debt. The Prime Minister has nearly doubled the deficit left by his predecessor.
Nothing in this budget suggests that the government has learned from its mistakes or intends to take long-term economic stability seriously. The consequences of that failure will not be paid by the people making these decisions today but by young Canadians who will carry this weight for years to come. Families in London—Fanshawe cannot absorb any more of these costs, and they should not have to.
Not long ago, a young man told me something that stayed with me. He said that he has stopped thinking about buying a home in the usual way. Instead of planning, saving and building toward that goal, he now feels that his only realistic path to home ownership is to one day inherit his parents' house. He said it not out of impatience but out of genuine discouragement. He works hard, he saves what he can and he still feels like he is running up a down escalator.
That is what a decade of rising prices and falling opportunity has done to an entire generation. This budget does not fix that. It keeps the industrial carbon tax in place, the very tax that makes construction materials more expensive and drives up the cost of building homes across this country.
For years the Liberal government championed the failed consumer carbon tax. Canadians rejected it; they made it clear they wanted nothing to do with it. The new Prime Minister arrived, promising change, but instead of listening, his status quo government simply shifted the same costs out of sight. They call it industrial pricing, but it is the same agenda of making everything more expensive, only hidden further up the supply chain.
Families still pay the costs through higher grocery bills, higher homebuilding costs and higher prices on nearly everything they need. It is carbon tax 2.0 dressed up as a responsible policy, and it continues to punish the very people who can least afford it.
This budget does not fix that. It keeps the industrial tax on construction materials, making homes more expensive to build. It backs away from the government's own promise to help municipalities cut development charges, even though those charges can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a home. If a government wants more housing built, it should not make building it more expensive, and if a government wants to restore the Canadian promise of home ownership, it should not raise costs at every step of the process.
This budget also falls short on the most basic measure of public policy: Does it make life more affordable? The answer is no. Food bank usage is at record highs. Housing costs are the highest in the G7. Investment is collapsing. Families are doing everything right by working, saving and budgeting, yet they are somehow falling behind. This budget was supposed to help; instead it pours fuel on the fire.
Conservatives are not here simply to say no. We offered a constructive alternative. During second reading, our caucus introduced a reasoned amendment that would move Canada toward an affordable life by ending the industrial carbon tax, cutting wasteful spending, bringing down debt and inflation, unlocking our energy potential and clearing away the red tape slowing homebuilding across this country.
We believe that Canadians deserve a hopeful future, one where young people can own a home, where seniors can live with dignity and where every person who works hard can get ahead. This budget implementation bill would not deliver that future. It would deliver higher costs, higher debt and a heavier burden on the next generation.
Conservatives will continue fighting for an affordable life and a hopeful future for every person in this country.