Debates of Oct. 27th, 2026

Opposition Motion—Appearance of the Prime Minister before the Standing Committee on Finance

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie South—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a relevant question, and there is a very simple answer to that. It is that there is probably nobody in this place who knows better how to game the fiscal system than the former central banker in this country. The member is quite right. The Prime Minister is actually putting this on multiple credit cards, and the debt is just mounting.

What we are asking is for the Prime Minister to come to a committee and explain himself, not in the 35 seconds that he has in question period. We saw today that there were literally no questions that were answered. That is why we now call it the non-answer period.

He can come to committee. He can be accountable, be transparent and allow parliamentarians the oversight, on behalf of Canadians, that they need to get the answers to the questions that we are asking, not avoid the questions.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Before we resume debate, there are still quite a few members having side conversations, potentially raising the volume in the House. I would invite them to take their conversations into the lobby.

As well, for those outside of the chamber in the courtyard around us who are having conversations, there is still quite a bit of noise coming out of question period. I would invite those people to leave the courtyard and perhaps take their conversations elsewhere so they do not disrupt the House.

With that, we will resume debate with the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, at the get-go, I want to follow up on what the member for Barrie South—Innisfil just finished saying about the leader of the Liberal Party having been the Governor of the Bank of Canada. I would remind my friend across the way that it was Stephen Harper who recognized the skill set he has by appointing him Governor of the Bank of Canada. In fairness, he is not the only prime minister to have recognized that. So did the Prime Minister of England in ensuring he would then become the Governor of the Bank of England. That is something that is worthy of noting.

Not only did Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Prime Minister of England recognize the leader of the Liberal Party's credentials, but Canadians as a whole did just that. In the last federal election, Canadians were very concerned about a wide spectrum of issues. They looked at what the leader of the Conservative Party had to offer and contrasted that to what the leader of the Liberal Party had to offer. Never before has the Liberal Party of Canada received as many votes as a direct result—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I have to interrupt the parliamentary secretary. I have a point of order from the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands Islands.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, despite your best efforts to remind people to lower the noise in the chamber, I very rarely hear the voice of the hon. parliamentary secretary. I would hate to miss it this time.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I thank the member for the reminder. The Sergeant-at-Arms is going around the courtyard asking those guests and others who may be circulating in the courtyard to keep the volume down because it is disturbing the work of the House.

I invite the parliamentary secretary to continue.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, what I was trying to highlight is the fact that Canadians have a very good understanding of what our Prime Minister brings to the table in terms of economic credentials. I think it is important that we take a look at the larger picture.

I had the opportunity to ask questions today in debate to the leader of the Conservative Party and the deputy leader. For those who are following the debate, the question I asked the deputy leader was in regard to very important programs. I talked about two programs in particular. I talked about the national dental program that provides support to seniors who are on fixed incomes, as an example, literally tens of thousands of seniors in every region of our country. I highlighted that program, along with the national school food program, which has 400,000 children benefiting from that particular program. I asked her to provide her thoughts on it.

Now, I will put the personal shot she took to the side, but she made it very clear that those programs are failures. I was disappointed in the manner in which, in a very clear and concise way, she said that those programs were failures. She should tell that to the senior who is on a fixed income in her own riding or a child who is receiving the benefits in a classroom.

That is the type of insensitivity that we see coming from today's Conservative Party. They talk about affordability, but when it comes to actual actions, the government has delivered a wide spectrum of actions, and I will go over them. What we see is the Conservative Party, time and again, devaluing these programs. I have heard members of the Conservative caucus calling the school food program garbage. Talk about being insensitive to the issues of the day, like affordability. They talk about it; they like to get those clips, but in reality, their actions speak louder than words. We saw that demonstrated today when I posed a question to the deputy leader of the Conservative Party.

For those who were around or who followed the speech of the leader of the Conservative Party, they should take a look at what he said. I am sure he will cut and paste, and try to make it look good for the far right. However, if we listen to the entirety of the speech, we cannot help but walk away thinking that Canada has a serious problem and, in fact, that we are broken. Talk about depressing.

There is no doubt that there is always room for us to look at ways in which we can improve. We do not question that. However, I say to the leader of the Conservative Party that Canada is not broken. Canada is doing exceptionally well when compared to our peers. We have people, companies, other governments and pensions looking at investing in Canada in a very real and tangible way. They are not going to do that if they believe that Canada is broken.

Let us take a look at last month. For the first time ever we had a Prime Minister host the world in Toronto, where we were asking people to come and take a look at what the government had been doing over the previous 12-plus months, and to look at ways in which they might be able to invest in Canada, in those major projects. We had over $500 billion, that is half a trillion dollars plus, that recognized that Canada is worth looking at. That is what they are actually doing.

It is a historic amount of money. They would not be doing that if they honestly believed what the leader of the Conservative Party was saying today in his remarks on the opposition motion. I believe that the Conservative Party is way off base. To Conservatives, it is all about the deficit.

We have the second-lowest deficit-to-GDP ratio in the G7. If we want to talk about the AAA credit rating, think in terms of the G7 countries. Everyone would like to be a part of the G7, I would suggest, but take a look at those G7 countries. We are talking about the United States, England, France and Germany. There are only two nations, Germany and Canada, that have a AAA credit rating.

When I had the opportunity to state that fact to the opposition critic of finance, his response was like, “Well, they don't know what they're talking about”. He then went into the reasons he believes that of the credit agencies, which also provide credit reports to provincial entities. He indicated that, “Well, they don't know what they're talking about.” I have a lot more confidence in those credit agencies than I do the official opposition, because day in and day out, the Conservatives want to talk down Canada.

What is at the core of the motion the Conservatives have before us today? It is hard to believe, but they are saying that, as we have the budget coming down, they are concerned about the deficit. They want to have the Prime Minister go before a standing committee. Maybe the opposition can tell me if, when they were in government, Stephen Harper ever went to a standing committee dealing with the budget. I will save them some time: It never happened. At the end of the day, if we want to do a comparison, the leader of the Conservative Party today, when he was in government, was in the only Conservative government that was ever found in contempt of Parliament. It was the only government in Canadian history.

When we start looking at fiscal capacity, what is it with the Conservative Party in terms of not recognizing the potential that Canadians have? There is potential in our resources, commodities, ingenuity and technology, which is there and real in every jurisdiction in Canada. The Conservatives' response is that they are not prepared to see that sort of investment take place, because they constantly criticize the projects we bring forward. All they say, and focus their attention on, are two things. One is character assassination, whether it is the Prime Minister or other ministers. The other is the deficit situation, but we have been very careful in demonstrating that everything is, in fact, under control. It is by making these investments that we are going to create additional revenue in the future. All one needs to do is to take a look at the projects that are on the table.

There are a couple of quotes I would like to share, and then I will go on to some of these projects I made reference to.

In regards to the Minister of Finance, I thought he made it very clear the other day in dealing with the financial issue. He said, “The International Monetary Fund just said that Canada has the strongest fiscal position in the G7 and the second-fastest growth in the G7, almost twice that of Germany and Japan.”

I see that as good news. The Minister of Finance would reinforce some of the statements I have made, if not all the statements, such as that AAA credit rating. When I talk about having our finances in order and the financial capacity to look at building a stronger, healthier Canada that works for all Canadians, I would suggest it would be irresponsible of the government not to take advantage of that. It pleases me greatly to be able to say that we very much have a proactive Prime Minister who really understands how an economy works and has the relationships not only in Canadian borders but outside of Canada in order for us to advance that.

I do not say that lightly. Let us look at the things we have done as a government that led up to the Investment Summit that Canada hosted just last month that I commented on earlier with regard to half a trillion dollars. If we want to support small, medium-sized and large businesses, we need to find customers. In the last federal election, when people were genuinely concerned about Trump's tariffs and trade, the Prime Minister made a commitment to Canadians in that campaign that we would look at ways to expand trade opportunities that went beyond the Canada-U.S. border, and that is exactly what this government has been doing in good part. We have signed 20-plus trade and security agreements. It is probably 22 or 23 at this point, with many more in the works.

Whether it is the Minister of International Trade, the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade among the provinces, there are numerous ministers, led by the Prime Minister and supported by every member of the Liberal caucus, out there in the world encouraging and promoting trade opportunities. That is why we are seeing the types of trade numbers today in terms of opportunities gained, at least in good part, working as a team with small businesses, provinces and indigenous people. This is what is making the difference. We have the opportunity to grow the economy, but it means we have to also be prepared to invest in it.

Earlier today, representatives of CentrePort in Winnipeg were in the government lobby, and I had a chance to have a very brief chat. I thanked them for what they are doing in building a stronger economy in Manitoba. It is both private and public investment that is feeding that growth because they know they can count on the federal government, the provincial government and private businesses investing in CentrePort. That is exactly what is happening today, which is creating jobs and opportunities into the future. That is a very small example, which is important to my province, of investment that takes place. We can take that snapshot and apply it to every region of our nation.

That brings me to the whole thought we have been talking about, which is how we can build, build big and build now. Since the last federal election, we have been working collaboratively with provincial governments and indigenous leaders at ways we can build and expand the Canadian economy, and at the same time protect our environment. There are many projects.

In the past, I have talked about the premiers and Prime Minister working, virtually from day one after the last federal election, to build one Canadian economy, and the federal government has done its part in passing the legislation that was necessary to enable that to happen at the federal level. We continue to work with the provinces so that more provinces will take down some of their barriers, because Canadians made it very clear that they want one Canadian economy.

They also made it very clear that they want to expand the economy, and expanding the economy means major projects. Let me try to summarize the major projects. We can go from coast to coast to coast, from Arctic sovereignty to what is taking place in B.C. We can talk about LNG phase two and of billions of dollars of investments. We can talk about MOUs in Alberta with a Conservative government. We can talk about copper mines and about the canola issue in the province of Saskatchewan. I already talked about CentrePort, in Manitoba, but we can also talk about the Port of Churchill. We can go into Ontario and talk about nuclear power. We can talk about, in the province of Quebec, something the Conservatives often bring up, the port of Montreal or about the expansion of hydro in Atlantic Canada, among other major projects.

From coast to coast to coast, we have a federal government that is working with provinces to make big projects happen and work, and we will all benefit from that. This is one of the ways we can secure more financial resources coming into the country, and if it takes time to be able to secure that, we will put in that time, because we want to make Canada the strongest and healthiest nation in the G7, and that is what we are fighting to achieve.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I do not even know what to begin to say about the member's speech, but let us just look at some basic numbers here. The Government of Canada's own data shows that, in 2020, it had $284 billion in tax revenue. In 2025, it was $417 billion in tax revenue. The government's favourite line is to say that it is spending less so that it can invest more. However, $130 billion more in tax revenue is coming into the government than it did in 2020, yet Canadians are wondering what on earth they got for the $130 billion, plus the extra debt that is tacked on top of that.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the entirety of my speech, with the exception of the reference to Stephen Harper, was about the time since the last federal election. Canadians elected a new Prime Minister and a new government. If we were to take a look at the expenditures, I would tell the member to look specifically at the Canadian Forces, because in the Canadian Forces, for the first time in generations, we have actually hit 2% of the GDP.

This is something that has been called for, for years. Stephen Harper dreamed of it, and even the previous administration with Justin Trudeau hoped to achieve it. The Prime Minister actually achieved it within six months of being elected. I believe that it is a good expense to support members of CAF and our sovereignty.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we have a Prime Minister who has plenty of time to have plenty of meetings in many places around the world. He is even meeting with the European Union soon, and he will try to sign trade agreements on things that are the responsibility of Quebec. They will be implemented in Quebec, yet the Premier of Quebec, who represents the Quebec government, is only invited to a cocktail party.

If the Prime Minister has time for cocktails and if he has time for meetings, then why can he not find the time to come to the parliamentary committee and show some deference to the parliamentary system? I know he has ministers. I know he has people around him. Some people think he has a good team. That is an opinion, and it needs to be confirmed. Nonetheless, why is it that, in this time of crisis, in this time of great transformation, the Prime Minister is able to find 15% to cut from the public service, but is unable to find a mere 15% to cut from his daily schedule in order to free up time to appear before a parliamentary committee for just one hour and show the deference he is expected to show toward the parliamentary system?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think that members, at times, undervalue the important role that ministers of government play. We have ministers who go to standing committees. We have parliamentary secretaries who are at standing committees. There is an opportunity in opposition.

I sit just two seats behind the Prime Minister. I constantly see members from the opposition go up to the Prime Minister prior to question period when he is here, whether it is Bloc members or other opposition members.

[An hon. member]

When he is here.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I suspect everyone is absent from the House at times, but the point is that there is ample opportunity.

I think members opposite should recognize that we do have a cabinet and we do have parliamentary secretaries, so there is ample opportunity to ensure there is accountability.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. One of my colleagues just referred to the Prime Minister's absence from the chamber. We are not allowed to mention the Prime Minister's absence from the chamber, even if it is true.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I want to clarify that, when a point of order is raised, it is best not to violate the rule about which the point of order was raised. Members cannot do indirectly what they are not allowed to do directly.

I am going to switch to English for a moment just to make sure that members understand that we cannot do indirectly what we are not supposed to do directly. Members should not mention the Prime Minister's presence or lack thereof. I thought the parliamentary secretary went around that artfully. I know he is a very seasoned member of this House and a provincial legislature that has the same rule. Members should be mindful about not making a reference to the presence or lack thereof of a member of the House.

All members are called upon to do work outside of the House, both directly in parliamentary committees and in conducting the business of the House beyond just this chamber. It is just a good reminder for all of us to be mindful of that.

I thank the member for Lac-Saint-Jean for raising this point of order. That is a very important rule.

Questions and comments, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing and Infrastructure.

[Jennifer McKelvie, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing and Infrastructure]

Mr. Speaker, the member spoke about the proactive approach of our government, so I was just hoping that he could really elaborate on what it is that excites him the most about the investments that are being made. It is important that we are investing in ourselves right now so we can build Canada strong. I would really like to know what he has found to be the most important investments, not only for the country but also for his home province.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, for me, I have always perceived myself to be a nationalist, first and foremost. I love the fact that the government's approach has been to ensure that every region of our nation is getting major projects. We are working with indigenous people and provinces to make sure that every region is going to benefit from major projects and investments.

For me, in terms of my home province of Manitoba, of course, I am somewhat partial to that. I love the attention that is being given to our aerospace industry through investments in the Canadian Forces. I love the idea that Port of Churchill, for the first time, is being talked about as a viable port into the future. I like the idea that we are working so collaboratively with Wab Kinew as a premier, as well as the other premiers, in building a stronger and healthier nation for all.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I did, of course, notice the investment summit to which my hon. friend, the parliamentary secretary referred, and it is with a sense of déjà vu. The hon. member was not at the Glasgow climate negotiation in 2022, where the Prime Minister was basically the star of the show because he was the special climate envoy for climate finance to the UN Secretary-General. He announced the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which he pegged at $128 trillion of available investment. Now, this may have a familiar ring to some of us here. Nothing is quite as ephemeral as bankers' non-binding promises, so that $128 trillion announced as GFANS, as they actually made it an acronym instead of a website, is all that is left of it. The only thing that was net zero was the actual investment that emerged from the $128 trillion.

Now, the question I have for my hon. colleague is a precise question: Why will the government not amend the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act? We have real dollars, $800 billion of Canadian pension plan dollars, that right now, by law, can only be used and invested where it gets the best return on investment.

To my hon. friend for Winnipeg North, I, in retirement, would like to look down the road at my investment in a local school or a local hospital and not where it went, that $200 million, because the investment board decided it would make more money in Grok developing AI and deepfakes.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think I will save the CPP issue for another day. I am going to provide a comment on the Toronto summit.

The Canada investment summit attracted the potential for a half trillion dollars of investment. To give the member opposite a sense of the excitement that was created around this summit, we had the premier of Manitoba there, Wab Kinew. He said that, if somebody wanted to invest in the Port of Churchill, Manitoba would exempt them from paying provincial sales tax.

I think there is a wide expectation because this is not just the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister might have been the one who brought everyone to the table, but we have provincial jurisdictions, indigenous people and investors from around the world. I believe there will be billions of dollars of investment as a direct result of that particular summit. It is only a question of time, and I am glad to see that we had so much take-up, in particular from provincial governments.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians know that the Liberals just changed the math around a bit to make it work with their 2% commitment, such as making the Canadian Coast Guard fall under national defence so they could take credit for the money being spent on the Coast Guard. They did not actually, truly or properly reach that 2% by providing our military with the things that it needs.

What I want to double down on here is that the Prime Minister became Justin Trudeau's adviser in 2020. Again, tax revenue for the government was $284 billion. When the current Prime Minister was advising the former prime minister, it went all the way up to $417 billion. I know that number is going to continue climbing. At the same time, the government is blowing past a balanced budget. It is on a path to keep it going up to around $80 billion a year. At one point, it was projected to be sustained at $63 billion a year. The PBO said that.

Canadians are still wondering what they got for this, other than more people at the food bank.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to recognize that the member wants to talk about Justin Trudeau, and I would talk equally about Stephen Harper. Both of those former prime ministers saw the merit of seeking the advice of our current leader of the Liberal Party, today's Prime Minister. I see nothing wrong with seeking advice. I see that as a positive. I can assure the member opposite that there are many people who sought the advice of today's leader of the Liberal Party, the Prime Minister of Canada. I suspect that it has a lot to do with his economic credentials.

At the end of the day, if we were to be judged on the last 18 months, whether on issues of affordability, the Canadian Forces, investments in Canada or major projects, I believe Canadians would see through the Conservative games.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform the House before I begin that I will be splitting my time today with my esteemed colleague from Vaughan—Woodbridge. I am happy to share time with him.

Today, we are going to talk about the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report. I agree with parts of it. The House will hear my critiques of parts of it as well, because all of this is open to debate. I hope my colleagues across the way will listen to some of this debate on how we forge our direction in Canada economically going forward.

I will quote from the report:

PBO anticipates that federal borrowing will grow significantly faster than deficits, which are measured on an accrual basis. Over the next five years, cumulative deficits are projected to total $333.3 billion, whereas federal borrowing is projected to rise by $732.9 billion....

Let us look at the delta there, the change, if we can. There is over $400 billion more in borrowing than deficits. This is a partial result of what the financial wizards on the other side of the House are bringing to Canadian federal government budgeting. It is a whole bunch of cash out the door that Canadians have to pay interest on without it looking like debt. This is the issue about investments versus spending. They have changed the way we look at debt and deficits in Canada and have categorized them differently.

Nevertheless, the number Canadians need to worry about is the amount of interest they are paying on that debt. That number has gone from $24 billion a year in 2020, around when I first came to the House in 2019, up to $59 billion this year and $83 billion in four years' time. Let us think about that escalation of debt. That escalation of debt is two things: It is more money we are paying interest on, but it is also a higher rate of interest. The Parliamentary Budget Officer illustrates clearly that the stress we have on the debt and the amount in bonds outstanding are going to cause Canada to start paying a higher interest rate. It is right in the report.

We can talk about our AAA rating, but the fact is, because we are borrowing so much, we will have to start paying a higher rate of interest. It is not just more interest on more debt and more debt, but a higher rate of interest as well. This is what we call a waterfall. This is going to continue to impact Canadians. It is $83 billion at the federal level alone.

If we take a look at all the debt in Canada in U.S. dollars, we have about $4.6 trillion in debt across the nation. This puts us as one of the most indebted nations in the world. This is a problem. It is a combination of consumer debt, corporate debt and government debt.

The government always tries to say that our debt-to-GDP ratio is only 40% plus, but let me say that that is an illusion, because government debt in this country is not just federal government debt; it is federal government debt plus provincial government debt. The amount of debt that provincial governments are in collectively across the country is about $1 trillion. If we add up the debt, not the amount outstanding, of $1.6 trillion at the federal level and $1 trillion at the provincial level, plus the massive amount of debt that consumers and corporations have outstanding, we have a massive wall of debt in Canada that is almost the worst in the world.

There comes a point in time when this becomes a problem and we have to start addressing it. That time is right on our horizon, because interest rates are starting to rise. Not only are they going to rise for the federal government, making it pay more money, but they also going to rise for consumers, who are going to have to start paying more for their mortgages and more for their consumer debt. They are also going to start rising for corporations, which will have to cut back because they are paying more in interest and have less money to invest, as the Prime Minister likes to say.

Let us look at the $83 billion in debt interest, which is ridiculous. When Canadians ask why we cannot fix health care, I am going to bring them back to the Jean Chrétien years. I remember the Mulroney years when we talked about an operating balance. Brian Mulroney was a very good prime minister, in my opinion, and he got us to a point where we had an operating balance. We still had a huge amount of debt we were paying, but we had an operating balance.

This is where the current government pretends it wants to go, although it is very selective about what it uses in the numbers in the operating balance. The Parliamentary Budget Officer's job is to assess the government against its performance, but a lot of the numbers are now hidden. I am glad she points out the accrual basis and the extra $400 billion in borrowing under the government's new way of accounting for these programs.

It is a mirage. We have to get ahead of this. This $80 billion a year in debt interest payments is far too much for Canada. That is $2,000, give or take, per person in Canada, not per family. For a family of four, $8,000 goes out the door before they even see it. Most families in Canada are probably not paying $8,000 in taxes, but that is going out the door whether they like it or not. Everybody is behind, not counting their personal debt as well.

What effect does this have on the economy? It causes inflation. If we look at what the Parliamentary Budget Officer says in this report, she talks about the reduction in real GDP growth, to 0.9% in this economy. The nominal is 5.4%. What is the difference? It is called the GDP gross domestic product deflator, which is 4.6%. If anybody tells us the interest is only 3% or 2.5% in Canada, then why is the GDP deflator, which is a proxy for inflation, at 4.6%? If we measured these things, as they are real and affect people's lives, we would understand the pain that Canadians are feeling right now, as opposed to hiding behind a bunch of numbers.

Let me correct the Parliamentary Budget Officer, because she buys into this mirage of what net debt is. When the government describes its net debt, what it is doing is taking hundreds of billions of dollars of pensioners' assets and saying that it is the government's asset. It is not the government's asset; it is the pensioners' asset.

The government should tell Canadians directly that when things get rough, because things are going to get rough with our financial situation, it is going to reach in there, grab some of their pension earnings and put them on its balance sheet, because the bankers across the world we owe interest to are expecting us to do that. If that is part of the arrangement, the government needs to make it clear to Canadians that their pensions, and Quebeckers' pensions, which are not managed by the same management team, are on the table for the government to use. That is how it calculates its debt-to-GDP ratio. It is dishonest, unless the government has some arrangement with the Canada pension plan behind the scenes to make that happen.

What makes this even more troubling is that Canadians were promised fiscal discipline by the very well-educated Prime Minister. We have to acknowledge that he is a well-trained economist. However, the results we are getting from this well-trained economist are anything but good. If he is hiding the numbers in different balance sheets and raising the debt that Canadians have to pay, he is not performing as expected.

Canadians were promised fiscal anchors. There is not one fiscal anchor, in the seven years I have been here, that the government has stuck to. It keeps making things up as it goes along. Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer in her report has said that it is not going to meet its fiscal anchors.

When are we going to say enough is enough? It has no fiscal discipline whatsoever. An economist like the Prime Minister must understand our debt position in the world. He must understand that he is visiting inflation upon Canada. He must understand the cliff we are getting to as far as our outstanding debt in this country goes, including in the provinces.

Commitments are made to balance the budget. Commitments are made to get back to fiscal discipline in this country. None of them have been met. If anybody has been watching over the last several months, even though the government set itself a $60-billion-plus deficit, it has continued to make announcement after announcement as if money is no object. If money is no object to our Prime Minister and he thinks he can continue to keep spending, making announcements and blowing $40 billion here and $50 billion there without any consequences, then we have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what exactly is going to happen.

I will tell members what happened when Jean Chrétien had to deal with the debt. Former prime minister Jean Chrétien had to cut payments to the provinces. The result of those cuts to the provinces is that they had to adjust their health care spending, and health care was cut across Canada. That was the result of a choice that that government had to make because it was fiscally off base. The debt had gotten too high in Canada. We are approaching that position again.

When I ran for this position, a key consideration was to get this country back to balance. We need to get back to balance. Will the government commit to getting us there sooner rather than later?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to recognize that the government has made a commitment with respect to the operating balance, which I think is a positive thing. The member might find some light in that.

He made reference to the PBO quite a bit in his comments. I wonder if he is aware that even under Stephen Harper's administration, warnings came from the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

At the end of the day, I believe we have fiscal capacity. Does the member believe that if we have fiscal capacity, we should seriously look at investing in Canadians to try to build a larger economy, which would help out in the long run?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we have talked about the operating balance. I have pointed out a bunch of numbers that were part of the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report. Fiscal capacity is there until it is not. Suddenly, it all turns around overnight, and it turned around when Jean Chrétien was Prime Minister. I pointed out the example. It happens very suddenly when the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, comes in and says that we can no longer pay our bills.

What is on the horizon here? I will point out to the member that interest rates are rising around the world, primarily because of excess government debt everywhere, in Canada in particular. The increase in government debt is going to cause more risk. Therefore, bond rates will go up and more people will have to pay money. This avalanche will happen before it is planned. It will happen very suddenly, and we need to get it in front of us. We need to make sure we are aware of it. We need to make sure we know how to deal with it. Fiscal capacity will disappear very quickly.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

Mr. Speaker, when the Prime Minister was the governor of the Bank of England, he had a fancy for printing money. We know that the Trudeau government's response to COVID was to print money. Some $600 billion of extra currency was printed in Canada. Now we are starting to see the effects of that through inflation.

When we see the government trying to use creative accounting practices to cook the books in its favour, I am wondering if the member could explain a bit more the problems that it creates for Canadians, who are really struggling with the cost of living crisis, because opposite to what the government claims, affordability is the worst it has been in a generation.