Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-15, the budget implementation act.
The best that can be said of this budget is that it is not as advertised. The finance minister advertised the budget as a generational shift. The Prime Minister advertised the budget as bold. This budget does not represent a generational shift, and it most certainly is not bold. If anything, it is completely underwhelming. It represents more of the same. There are more of the same failed policies we have seen over the past 10 years from the Liberals, more spending, more debt and more broken promises.
Indeed, just about every fiscal and budgetary commitment the Prime Minister made to Canadians a few short months ago during the federal election has been broken with this budget. The Prime Minister said he was going to get the deficit under control and that he would preside over a government that reduced the level of debt. As recently as September 17, the Prime Minister said in the House, “We are going to have a declining level of debt.”
In the face of that unequivocal statement, people would have expected to see some follow-through in this budget, but if they guessed that, they are wrong. Instead of a declining level of debt, the Prime Minister delivered with this budget a deficit that is an eye-watering $78 billion. It is double last year's deficit, which was $36.3 billion.
By the way, the deficit of $36.3 billion under the big-spending, debt-addicted Trudeau Liberals was too much for the then Trudeau finance minister, the member for University—Rosedale. She resigned in protest. However, here we have the so-called financial genius coming to the rescue, and he delivers a $78-billion deficit. It is not only a $78-billion deficit; it is the largest deficit in Canadian history, outside of COVID. It is quite an accomplishment, but for all the wrong reasons.
The so-called new government and the so-called new Liberals, just like the old Liberals, are delivering a sea of red ink. They plan to rack up one-third of $1 trillion of new debt over the next five years. They plan $330 billion in new debt, deficit after deficit, year over year, without any meaningful plan. There is no plan at all to get to a balanced budget and no plan to restore any semblance of fiscal responsibility with the so-called new Prime Minister and new government. It is Justin Trudeau 2.0. It is Justin Trudeau, but even worse.
We have seen the debt climb to $1.35 trillion. For a lot of Canadians, it seems like 10 long years, but in Canada's 150-year history, it has been 10 short years that the government has been in office. In those 10 short years, the Liberals have managed to add more debt than all of the previous governments combined. They have managed to more than double the debt they were left with when they took office in 2015 from the previous Conservative government, which delivered, in fact, a balanced budget.
In the face of this sea of red ink, it is not surprising that debt servicing costs continue to increase. The debt servicing costs for the fiscal year 2025-26 are $55.6 billion. To put $55.6 billion into some perspective, that is more than the government collects in GST. It is more than the government spends on health care. This is at a time when Canadians face record wait times, when six million to seven million Canadians do not have access to a primary care doctor and when somewhere in the neighbourhood of 17,000 to 30,000 Canadians are dying on a wait-list for specialist care. The government is spending more on servicing the debt than it is on health care.
If anything, it speaks to the completely misplaced priorities and the misplaced focus of the government. It speaks to how it has so badly screwed things up over the past 10 years. If we think that $55.6 billion is a big number, after the government throws in the $330 billion of new debt it is going to rack up over the next five years, that debt servicing cost is going to increase to $76.1 billion, but with the Liberals, who is counting?
What do the Liberals have to show for all of the spending, all of the deficits and all of the debt? They have a flatline in growth. Look at the GDP. At present, Canada's GDP per capita is 75% of the U.S.'s GDP per capita. When the Liberals took office, Canada's GDP per capita, relative to that of the United States, was about 90%. As the member for Wellington—Halton Hills North detailed, we have seen declining productivity. In fact, productivity grew at about half of the rate it did under the Harper Conservative government. In recent years, it has not increased; in fact, it has declined. It is no wonder that we see a productivity gap between Canada and the United States that is now at 30%.
The Prime Minister said that, under his watch, he would bring investment home to Canada. This was after we saw a flight of half a trillion dollars of investment out of Canada under the Liberals over the past 10 years. Instead of seeing more investment in Canada, we have seen, over the past six months, $50 billion of investment go directly to the United States.
In the face of that, what is the Liberal government's solution? It is more spending, more debt, more interest costs and no tangible measures to make life more affordable for Canadians who are facing an affordability crisis. Canadians, after all, have seen housing costs double, rent double and food prices double. We saw inflation at a 40-year high. The budget does nothing to address the cost of living pressures Canadians are facing. In fact, under the Liberals, overall, taxes have gone up on Canadians by 32%. Canadians are paying more and getting less under the Liberals.
In short, the budget is not a blueprint for a generational shift. It is a blueprint for a government that is presiding over and managing decline. It is a budget that does not meet the mark, and it ought to be defeated.
