Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-15, the budget implementation act, at third reading.
The Prime Minister often bills his government as Canada's new government. It is a clear public relations effort to distance himself from 10 years of failure under Justin Trudeau. Consistent with that, the Prime Minister promised that he would take, in his words, a “very different approach” than Justin Trudeau when it comes to Canada's finances.
It is true that the Prime Minister has a very different style from Justin Trudeau, but, putting aside the facade that the Prime Minister puts on, the more that things change with the Liberals, the more they stay the same. When it comes to the policies and priorities of the Prime Minister, he is nothing more than Justin Trudeau 2.0. In some respects, he is performing worse than Justin Trudeau, as tough as that is to believe.
One area, amazingly, in which the Prime Minister is performing worse than Justin Trudeau is Canada's finances. He is a Prime Minister who promised to spend less. It turns out he is spending more, an eye-watering $90 billion more. He is a Prime Minister who has managed to double the deficit. He is presiding over a $78.3-billion deficit, up from a massive $36.3-billion deficit, which was Justin Trudeau's last massive deficit. In fact, the Prime Minister now has the record of presiding over the largest deficit in Canadian history outside COVID.
It is not as though the Prime Minister can say that this is a one-off or a one-time deal, because when one looks at the government's fiscal outlook, what we see over the next three years are deficits that are projected to average $62.3 billion, double what Justin Trudeau's government forecast.
What about fiscal anchors? Justin Trudeau's government touted its fiscal anchor, and it was quite an unambitious one, as being to keep the deficit below 1% of GDP. What has the Prime Minister done with respect to that fiscal anchor? He has blown completely past it, because the deficit-to-GDP ratio has doubled to more than 2%. The government is on course to have a deficit-to-GDP ratio double that of Justin Trudeau's fiscal anchor in the coming fiscal years.
Speaking of fiscal anchors, what is the Prime Minister's fiscal anchor? He claims he has one, which I will get into momentarily, but in substance, I would say, the Prime Minister's fiscal anchor is nothing more than smoke and mirrors in an effort to create the mirage of balancing the budget, all the while hiding massive deficits and massive debt.
The Prime Minister has created a fiscal shell game by creating two budgets: an operating budget and a capital budget. The operating budget ostensibly deals with day-to-day government spending, whereas the capital budget deals with so-called investments. One of the problems is that the government's definition of an investment is quite elastic. That is not by accident. It is quite deliberate, to give the Prime Minister and the government the flexibility to move spending from the operating budget to the capital budget and say that actually it is not spending but is investing. Again, it is smoke and mirrors.
After creating this fiscal shell game, the Prime Minister has come out and announced his big fiscal anchor, which is to balance the budget by 2028-29, but not the federal budget, the operating budget.
Here is the bottom line. Whether we look at the operating budget or the capital budget, if we call it spending or we call it investment, it all relates to the fiscal finances of Ottawa and Ottawa's bottom line. As such, when we look at the fiscal projection for fiscal year 2028-29, the year the Prime Minister is going to meet his fiscal anchor of balancing the operating budget, and we look at total revenues projected versus total spending projected, the overall deficit is projected to be a staggering $57.9 billion, which would be one of the largest deficits in Canadian history.
In short, the Prime Minister is not balancing anything. All that he is doing is making the budgeting process more complex and less transparent, all to make it more difficult to see the state of federal finances. What is the Prime Minister's spending plan between now and when he balances the operating budget? The Prime Minister is planning to rack up a quarter-trillion dollars in new debt, double the amount of debt that Justin Trudeau's government was planning to rack up during the same period of time.
The bottom line is that the Prime Minister has separated operating and capital budgets to hide from Canadians the fact that he is presiding over more spending than Justin Trudeau, and with bigger deficits, and accumulating significantly more debt. It is straight-up budget trickery by the Prime Minister.
When the Prime Minister promised that he would take a very different approach to Canada's finances than Justin Trudeau, most Canadians expected that the Prime Minister meant he would be more fiscally responsible. That is certainly what he was hoping Canadians would think. By the way, this would not be that difficult to achieve, given 10 years of fiscal vandalism under Justin Trudeau. However, the Prime Minister has not taken a very different approach. He has taken the same approach as Justin Trudeau. Just like Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister is presiding over out-of-control spending, massive deficits and massive debt.
Here is the deal: He is a Prime Minister who is not as advertised. He calls it Canada's new government, but it is not a new government. It is the same old Liberals with the same failed and reckless fiscal policies. It is Justin Trudeau 2.0, except worse.