Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley for sharing his time.
It has been three years since I have had the opportunity to speak to an opposition day motion in the House, because of my previous duties as a chair occupant. First, let me say how proud I am to stand here today to represent the magnificent riding of Acadie—Annapolis. I thank my constituents for their continued support.
My campaign team and volunteers are the best. It is thanks to them that we have succeeded three times since 2019. I thank my family: my wife, Anne, and my sons, André and Alec, for their unwavering support through my political career. Of course, I thank my mom and dad, who are probably watching tonight, for all their support. I thank my awesome staff in the Yarmouth office, Joellen and Krista; Agnes, who was in my Kingston office; Esther, who is there now; and my two staffers here on the Hill, Isabelle and Mikhail, who are phenomenal and make our office rock.
I want to thank volunteers. As members know, in southwest Nova Scotia, in my riding of Acadie—Annapolis, we have had a pretty bad fire season. We had the largest fire ever in Nova Scotia this year. I want to thank the volunteers, the municipality of Annapolis, the Province of Nova Scotia, the firefighters and the first responders for all their awesome work on the Long Lake wildfires complex; almost 8,500 hectares burned, 20 houses were lost and folks in West Dalhousie were out of their home for over 40 days. They got back just a few days ago.
Can anyone imagine losing their house or being out of their house for over 40 days? On behalf of everyone here in the House of Commons, I want to wish them well and let them know that we are thinking about them and hopefully helping them as time goes on as the province finally figures out exactly what it is going to be asking of the federal government when the time comes.
On another note, I want to thank everyone for their well wishes for a speedy recovery from my broken collar bone. I unfortunately relearned something very important from elementary school, the first law of inertia: that an object will continue in motion with the same speed and the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced external force. I was the object, and the bike path was the unbalanced external force.
I want to thank everyone who wished me a speedy recovery.
Now let us get into why we are here today. I want to speak in support of the Conservative motion, because Canadians are hurting. Families are being forced to cut deeply into their grocery budget just to get by, and frankly, that makes me a little bit angry and a little bit sad.
Canada is a wealthy country, but under the current Liberal government's mismanagement, taxpayers are feeling the pinch and their hard-earned money is being wasted.
In southwest Nova Scotia, where I have lived my entire life, people work hard. They want to own a home, feed their children and provide a good education for them, and maybe take a vacation every once in a while. However, since 2015, everything has changed.
Since I was first elected here in 2019, the cost of living has skyrocketed. Even then, families in West Nova, as it was called at the time but is now Acadie—Annapolis, were struggling. We warned that the Liberals' out-of-control spending and massive deficits were irresponsible, but of course they did not listen. Now, after six months under a new Prime Minister, who promised financial discipline, Canadians are still waiting. He said that he would be judged by the costs at the grocery store. Well, Canadians are judging him, and they are not impressed.
Instead of delivering relief, the government delayed its budget. We are still waiting for a budget; we have not seen one in a year and a half because the Prime Minister is projecting a deficit of over $92 billion. That is a monstrous, irresponsible burden on future generations. We will hear, I am sure, maybe in the questions, that they are talking about a “generational investment”, but really it is a generational debt that my kids, their kids and their kids' kids are going to have to try to pay in one way or another, one that causes inflation and extra costs to future generations.
While the government boasts about withdrawing the carbon tax, it left in place the industrial carbon price on fertilizers and farm equipment. That is not relief; that is just politics. The result is that food inflation is 70% higher than the Bank of Canada forecast. Since the Liberals came to power, food prices have risen by 40%. We have heard it many times here today. It is deliberate, and it is unacceptable. It is inhumane for a G7 country. We are a rich country. We are a food basket of a country. We can produce all the food for many people in the world, and we can barely feed ourselves, for some reason.
People find themselves pinched. They are having to make tough decisions on whether to feed their children, heat their homes or buy the things that school requires, and then get their kids into sports, if they are lucky. Unfortunately, the food basket is far too expensive. In my riding, food banks are overwhelmed, and I am sure food banks across Nova Scotia are experiencing the same thing. Food bank usage is up 142% across Canada. While the government claims to be putting money back into taxpayers' pockets, it continues to take it away through many other means. Low-income Canadians spend more of their income on essentials such as food and rent, yet these items are the fastest rising in price. Where is the relief?
In my province of Nova Scotia, the situation is dire. In 2023, 28.9% of the population faced food insecurity. In 2024, that rose to 29.3%. It did not get better; it got worse. There are 71,000 children living in food insecure households. Feed Nova Scotia, which supports many of the food banks across Nova Scotia, supports 23,000 people monthly. That is a 52% increase since 2022. These numbers are heartbreaking. They demand action. We must protect our food sovereignty.
It is difficult in Nova Scotia. Lots of things can be produced in the Annapolis Valley, up near Truro and into Cape Breton, but a fair amount of stuff has to be trucked in from other parts of the country. We need to support the farmers we have. We need to support farmers across Canada. We need to support our producers, and we need to support truckers so product gets to our grocery stores. Once again, it is the taxpayer who ends up paying. It is the people going to the store who are finding all of these things to be far more expensive and, most times, out of reach when they need them.
I would be remiss if I did not bring up the challenges that face the main economic driver in my riding. That is the fishery and, more specifically, the lobster fishery. Last season was a tough one. A number of new entrants did not make it because of the expense of everything. Some of it revolves around tariffs, but some of it revolves around input cost and taxes. I could spend a couple of hours on how fishers feel that the government is doing its best to make sure that the whole fishery fails. Rather than the fishery being treated like the safe and healthy food source that it is, it is being squeezed by competing federal initiatives that do not take into consideration coastal communities, which are a long way from a lot of the services in urban areas, but that are providing safe food products for consumption. When we add up all of those things, and it is not unlike what farmers are telling us, it is very difficult to make ends meet.
This Conservative motion calls on the government to eliminate the carbon tax on fertilizer and farm equipment. It is not just policy, it is survival. We need affordable food. We need responsible governance. We need to stop taxing the grocery basket. We need to do everything within our powers as legislators here in the House of Commons to ease the burden that Nova Scotians and Canadians are seeing at the grocery store. What has been happening is absolutely the opposite.
I urge members to vote with us. Let us work together. We hear a lot of that here in the House of Commons, especially from the government side, where members say that we should just work with them. A number of suggestions have come from the opposition side, whether from the Conservatives, the Bloc or other opposition members, for finding ways to work with the government, but the government continues to close its ears and not listen to the good ideas that come from opposition members. Let us work together for Canadians, our economy and our future.