Madam Speaker, when the Liberals first announced their costly credit card budget last fall, Conservatives asked where their platform commitment to spend less and invest more went. Then, when the Prime Minister announced that he planned to split operating and capital spending in the Liberal budget, the alarm bells started to go off. Canadians do not get to split their credit card spending into different categories and pretend they owe less money. The Prime Minister should not get to do that either.
Since then, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has found contradictions in how the Liberals classify spending, making it harder to determine whether they are actually meeting their own fiscal targets. The Prime Minister claims that they are ahead of their targets, but the PBO projects that the Liberals will not balance their operating budget until 2029 or 2030, a year later than originally promised.
The question is simple. Does the government still stand by its promise to balance the operating budget by 2028-29? If not, who is misinformed, the Prime Minister or the Parliamentary Budget Officer?