Mr. Speaker, they spent $15 billion, and Stellantis just left the country.
Yesterday, guess where Stellantis was. Its representatives were at the White House. Do members know what they were saying? They are investing $13 billion in the United States, a direct transfer from Canadian taxpayers to the United States of America, while rich Campbell's lobbyists, who I am sure are probably friends with some of these guys across the aisle, are talking about people who have to eat their soup. I do not think Canadians should be condemned to eating soup. They should have choice in food.
There was a startling report today showing that next year, an average Canadian family will have to pay, at minimum, an extra $1,000 for basic groceries. That is on top of the already huge increase in food prices.
In the province of Alberta, in my riding, food bank visits are at an all-time high. In Alberta, the 127 reporting food banks were visited 210,000 times, a jump of 21.8% compared to last year and 134% since 2019.
We have a budget where the government is dumping billions and billions of dollars, endless dollars, into corporate lobbyists and corporations that are not even trying to keep jobs here. The ministers did not even bother reading the contracts. Meanwhile, we should have some highly processed soup for dinner.
There is nothing in the budget for Canadians. There is a lot for the Liberals' rich friends and and a lot for corporations that have other benefits, like regulatory benefits that keep cellphone bills high. The layers of ways the Liberals screw the average Canadian, between regulatory capture and just forking out direct cash to their friends, are so magnificently bad.
In this budget, the level of debt is shocking. It is kind of tricky of the Prime Minister to say we are saving money, because he has tried to cook the books and restructure how expenses are categorized. We are not that dumb. He might think we are. That is how he treats some of his cabinet ministers or journalists when he tells them to “look inside” themselves instead of answering a question. That level of arrogance is not going to make my constituents able to go out for a nice dinner or just afford basic groceries.
I am the shadow minister for immigration, and I have never seen a more incompetent immigration minister in the Liberal government's history, and that is saying a lot. Through this budget, the Liberals are continuing immigration levels that are unsustainable. There are not enough houses, doctors or jobs for people in Canada right now, yet they are juicing these numbers. In one bill in front of the House of Commons right now, Bill C-12, the Liberals are trying to give themselves powers to mass extend temporary resident visas. We have an amendment that I hope the government will support on that front.
Everything is about increasing the size of government, increasing the largesse of the Liberals' corporate friends and increasing the population in unsustainable ways through immigration, and my constituents are left with having a can of soup that an executive of the company calls not nutritious and highly processed. At a bare minimum, in a G7 country, people should have more to look forward to than a bare cupboard at night.
I know there are people in my community, which was once very well off, who have lost their houses. There are now parts of my community where homelessness is a problem in a big way, and people cannot afford to make ends meet. I know there are seniors in my community who thought they were going to have a safe retirement but now cannot afford to buy groceries.
The Liberals are now asking us to support $78 billion when a company they gave $15 billion to just transferred $13 billion of it to the United States. Come on. Something has to give.
The Prime Minister told Canadians that he would be the person who could better manage Canada's finances. All he did was rack up debt on the credit card. He is not the only economist in this room. His economic policy is bad; it is failed socialist policy that does not benefit anybody.
No, I do not support this budget, nor should anyone else in the House.