Madam Speaker, last week in Davos, the Prime Minister outlined his vision to restore Canada's position as a leading middle power in the world. In the prequel to that speech last October, he reminded a room full of young Canadians that it will take time and sacrifice to realize that vision. In both speeches, the Prime Minister framed the hardship we will face in Canada to realize that vision as unavoidable, temporary and noble. He promised to always be straight about the challenges we have to face and the choices we must make as a country.
The promise of the Prime Minister's Canada appears to be this: Things are going to be hard now, but worth it in the long run. If we just hold on, the future will be better. We will be an energy superpower, diversified abroad and strong at home. This message has gone over well with Canadians who have the assets to weather the coming storm, those seeking stability and soothing reassurance in turbulent times. However, for those Canadians who do not already own a home and those who do not already have those sustaining investments, those people, and especially our youth, are faced with a future that keeps moving further away.
For them, the struggle is not about great power rivalry or global supply chains. It is about rent that eats up more than half their paycheques, groceries that cost more every month and having two or three jobs that still do not provide enough to live on. For them, Canada has become a country where doing everything right no longer guarantees stability, let alone prosperity. It is a place where they are being told their sacrifice is the price of global leadership, the price of a new world order.
The question they are asking is, order for whom? For these folks, it feels like Canada is asking them to continually give things up, while asking very little of those who already have the most. They are asked to delay home ownership so asset values of current homeowners can be protected. They are asked to shoulder debt, taxes and rising costs in the name of an abstract national good that never quite shows up in their own lives. They are being told that what they are experiencing is inevitable, the fault of global forces beyond our control. They work, they pay, they comply and the promise of Canada feels increasingly hollow to them.
Across the board, our youth are the first generation who will be worse off than their parents. Their parents are the first generation that believe their children will not be better off than them. The most dangerous divide in Canada today may be between those who are willing to accept that and those of us who are fighting tooth and nail to change it. When a system only works if the next generation accepts less than the last, that system is not stable. It is living on borrowed time.
The Prime Minister speaks beautifully about honesty in foreign policy, about taking signs out of windows and about refusing to pretend that old systems still function as advertised. That same honesty is needed at home because we cannot talk about building strength domestically while an entire generation feels weaker every year. We cannot speak of resilience while young Canadians are one missed paycheque away from crisis. We cannot claim to be investing in the future while systematically pricing that future out of reach.
We are told that Canada must be outward-looking, engaged everywhere and invested in everything: trade deals, partnerships, defence commitments and global leadership. However, a country that is everywhere abroad and absent at home is not strong. It is distracted. Being principled does not only mean standing up on the world stage. It means standing up for the people who live here now, not just those who bought in decades ago. That is why the Conservatives have proposed a Canadian sovereignty act.
The rhetoric in the summer and fall sessions of the House seemed to pit Liberal ideas against Conservative ones: We could have the Major Projects Office to fast-track anointed projects, or we could repeal the long list of legislation that gets in the way of those same projects. Conservatives let the Prime Minister have Bill C-5, giving him the chance to show Canadians through his Major Projects Office that his big ideas about big government would do the trick for Canadians. However, the Prime Minister's words are moving faster than his work, turning the Major Projects Office into another bottleneck to prosperity.
After announcements in September, October and November referring two tranches of projects to the MPO, we have heard nothing. Referring a project to the MPO does not mean that it has been approved, and none of the potential projects of national interest have actually emerged from the black box of the MPO to be formally recognized by cabinet as such, which means that they are not yet, in fact, exempt from the federal laws holding them back.
This is where our Canadian sovereignty act comes in by getting government out of the way by repealing the federal laws that block development, incentivizing the provinces to fully open their markets to fellow Canadians, rewarding those who reinvest in the Canadian economy to stop the flight of capital from our country and ensuring continued Canadian ownership of Canadian innovations. We do not have to choose and we should not have to choose. We should be able to have the Major Projects Office and get government out of the way for the rest of us.
Younger Canadians are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for a fair deal, for a country that does not require them to sacrifice indefinitely so existing wealth can be preserved untouched, for policies that recognize housing is a place to live before it is an investment, and for a government that recognizes that security starts with food security at the grocery store and that economic strength is measured in whether people can build a life, not just on whether capital can move freely in global markets.
With the Canadian sovereignty act, Conservatives have taken the sign out of our domestic window on behalf of those without homes and on behalf of those without investments to protect from the changing world order, because those generations no longer believe the government's story about future prosperity. If Canada is serious about building strength at home, that strength must include our next generation. That strength must include those who are struggling, not as an afterthought, not as a talking point, but as a priority. We do not need nostalgia from the past. On that, I agree with the Prime Minister. However, we do need fairness and opportunity in the present.
Young Canadians are not turning away from this country. They are waiting for this country to turn back to them. If we want them to believe again, if we want them to invest their lives here, then Canada must stop asking them to carry the cost of stability in a disproportionate way. That is what living in truth looks like at home, and that is the path forward that actually lasts.
I say again: Canadians should not be forced to choose between major projects and getting government out of the way. They should be able to have both. That is why we have put forward a Canadian sovereignty act, and we call on all parties in the House to support it.