Mr. Speaker, I am willing to accept that the government meant well in bringing the budget forward. The Prime Minister claims that he wants to reshape Canada's economy so that it is more self-reliant, more resilient and less vulnerable to outside shocks.
That starts with food security. The Prime Minister has said that Canadians should judge his leadership by their experience at the grocery store. If that is the test, then the government is failing it. After seven months, food prices continue to rise, families are making impossible choices about what they can afford and the weekly grocery bill has become the clearest sign of a government that is out of touch with the struggles faced by Canadians today.
While the Liberal government may believe the goals of budget 2025 are noble, the budget itself simply does not achieve them. It tries to be all things to all people, but it fails to deliver on the basics. Canadians want a plan that strengthens our foundation and rebuilds hope, but they also need to put food on the table, keep a roof over their heads and provide for their families. The budget does not meet that moment.
“Canada's Food Price Report” for 2026 confirms what Canadians already know, which is that if 2025 was difficult, 2026 will be worse. The report warns that families can expect almost $1,000 more in food costs next year. Compared to 2015, Canadians will pay 112% more for groceries for their family. Food costs have more than doubled in a decade, and nearly 85% of Canadians say that food affordability is their top financial concern. Food banks saw a record 2.2 million visits in a single month this year. These are not abstract numbers. They are the lived reality of a country in which working families increasingly rely on charity to eat, yet budget 2025 does not present a coherent plan to address that crisis.
Budget 2025 does not reduce taxes in any meaningful way that families can feel today. It does not reduce the fees or the regulatory burdens that drive up the costs through the supply chain. It does not relieve the pressure on farmers, whose operating costs rose 2.5% in a single year. If members think that is not passed on to the consumer through food prices, then I do not know how to explain the math on that. Fertilizer, fuel and transportation costs have all increased, and producers were forced to take on 14.1% more debt in 2024, which is the largest increase since 1981.
A budget that claims to strengthen resilience should support the people who grow our food. Instead, it leaves them with higher costs and greater uncertainty.
Canadians understand the world is changing. They see global geopolitical instability, inflation and rising global competition, but what they want is a clear plan that responds to those challenges. They want their government to understand the day-to-day struggles that shape their lives right now. A resilient economy cannot be built when families cannot afford groceries.
Instead of delivering clarity, the budget presents pages upon hundreds of pages of contradictions. One of the clearest signs of that is the government's use of the new separation between what it calls “operating spending” and “capital investment”. In theory, this could provide discipline and transparency, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer has indicated that a full $94 billion in expenses has been mis-characterized as capital spending.
While the budget pledges to balance operational costs someday, it never commits to balancing the budget overall. Canadians know that when we spend more than we earn, somebody pays the price down the road. That would be our children and our grandchildren. Deficits still count even when they are hidden in new categories of line items in the budget.
The contradictions in the budget extend to the economy. The government keeps saying that Canada has strong economic fundamentals, yet families are telling me that they want groceries for Christmas. On Vancouver Island this week, another mill, one in Crofton, announced that it is closing its doors. This means 375 more families without paycheques and more than 1,000 others who are indirectly hurt.
Thirty-one mill closures across British Columbia, and counting, means shrinking tax bases, weakened communities and more pressure on food banks. Budget 2025 offers slogans, not solutions. Meanwhile, the food price report makes clear how widespread the affordability crisis has become. Eighty-six per cent of Canadians say they are eating less meat because it has become too expensive. The report notes how rare it is for beef, chicken and pork prices all to rise sharply in the same year, yet that is what Canadians face in the grocery store. The pressures extend to every aisle.
Since the Prime Minister took office, strawberries are up 51%, beef is up 30%, chicken is up 23%, coffee is up 22% and even salad dressing is up 13%. Meatless burgers are up 17% year over year. Food inflation is now double the Bank of Canada's target rate and rising 48% faster in Canada than it is in the United States. These increases are not a force of nature. They are the consequences of policy choices, including the government's refusal to remove the hidden taxes, including the industrial carbon tax, that raise the cost of everything from farm inputs to food transportation.
Conservatives proposed real solutions to reduce costs and rein in the record-high deficit that fuels inflation. The Liberals voted against both. The gap between the government's rhetoric and reality is also evident in its behaviour toward a food bank in my community.
Loaves and Fishes operates in 44 communities across Vancouver Island, each with increasing need, and it was promised $5 million to expand operations in the December 2024 fall economic statement by a Liberal government. Nearly a year later, the money has still not arrived. The government initially denied its obligation to honour its written promise, saddling the organization with $35,000 in additional monthly interest costs and forcing cuts to its Christmas programming this year. If the money does arrive, it will do so only as a result of immense pressure from the organization, me and our community.
Ministers in the government stand up every day and claim to champion the hungry, but when it takes many months and a full-court press to shame the government into keeping written promises to a food bank during a national food affordability crisis, it tells us everything we need to know about where the members' hearts are.
Budget 2025 claims to reshape our economy for resilience, but one cannot strengthen a country by ignoring the immediate needs of its people. The government talks about productivity, but hungry people cannot work to their optimum level. It talks about building Canada strong but provides little to nothing for the seniors who built this country. It provides even less for the students who are its future and even less than that for working families. With food inflation running rampant, it offers no meaningful plan to make groceries affordable again. Brookfield must own stock in a grocery chain somewhere.
Canada needs its government to understand that affordability is the foundation of economic security. The government must see families, workers and vulnerable people not as footnotes to a capital plan but as the heart of a strong country. The government must recognize that it cannot build resilience on borrowed money alone.
Budget 2025 may have set out worthy goals, but a budget is only as strong as its execution. This one does not deliver the clarity, the discipline or the conviction that Canadians need. We see that in the fact that there is no clear message from the government around the budget. It does not address the soaring costs of food. It does not ease the pressure on producers and farmers. It does not bring inflation under control.
Canadians deserve better. They deserve a plan that works. Conservatives will continue to fight for pragmatic, practical measures to make our lives better.