Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand today to speak about the spring economic update.
Before I begin that, I want to reiterate what a privilege and an honour it is to represent the wonderful people of Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, a very vibrant, diverse and dynamic community in the heart of the GTA.
Today, we are debating the spring economic update. I want to give a little context as to where we are.
The Liberal government was re-elected on April 28 of last year. We were waiting with bated breath to see the first budget come out. We thought it would come out in May or June at the latest. Given that the fiscal year started on April 1, we thought that it would be prudent to at least present the budget a couple of months in, given that the election delayed that a bit, but no, the Liberal government decided that it would be best to present the budget to the House of Commons, to Parliament, a good seven months after the fiscal year had begun. In essence, seven months after it had spent seven-twelfths of the money in the budget that it was to present, which of course makes no sense at all and certainly does not make any sense to Canadians who know that one cannot spend money before one earns it or has the right to spend it.
Nonetheless, the Liberals presented their budget with much fanfare, an omnibus project in a book that was some-464 pages, I believe, which showed that they were continuing more of the same kind of leadership they had learned over the years from the prime ministership of Justin Trudeau. Of course, we know that there is not much change on the other side, because most of the ministers were Trudeau ministers. We were not expecting much change, but we thought that with a new Prime Minister touting a résumé of economic and banking credentials, we would see something somewhat different. Unfortunately, what we saw was more of the same deficits year after year, giving very little hope to Canadians that the Canadian economy would turn around anytime soon.
Nonetheless, the budget was presented in the House and debated. We went back and forth, and then we waited with much anticipation for this new document that the finance minister presented in the House on Tuesday of this week, which he titled “Canada Strong For All: Spring Economic Update 2026”.
I thought, “Maybe there is something in this. Maybe they needed more time to get it right and get it together.” Then I was further encouraged, as were Canadians, because the day before this was presented, the Prime Minister went to the media and said that we were going to have “good news” from the finance minister.
The day when the economic update was presented at four o'clock in the afternoon, literally 90 minutes before this document was presented in the House, every single Liberal minister or secretary of state responding to questions in question period made sure that they got the following words in: that within the next hour and a half, we would hear “good news” from the finance minister. I thought, “There has to be something good here.”
I waited for him to get up, as did all of us in the House and many Canadians across the country who were hoping for some pocketbook relief for them, their families, communities and businesses from coast to coast to coast in this country.
Then the finance minister started speaking and these books were distributed to all parliamentarians. We quickly looked through to get the summary. What did we see? We saw deficit after deficit, year after year. In fact, the previous prime minister, who the current Prime Minister considers a mentor, only had a $31-billion deficit projected for this year.
This document came out, and the finance minister announced with much fanfare that it was good news for Canada that we were going to lose $67 billion. The only person who uttered that was him. Then, of course, there was resounding applause from the Liberals, very happy and thrilled that Canadians and the Government of Canada were going to lose another $67 billion.
I scanned through the book to see what their projections were. I thought maybe, just maybe, it was just this year, but no. Over the next five years, they are projecting loss after loss, indebting Canadians an additional $363 billion. There is no hope for turning the economy around, no hope for making life more affordable for Canadians. In fact, we then see they are borrowing all this money. They cannot print the money; they are borrowing it from banks and financial institutions. One would assume they are borrowing from Canadian banks, American banks, Asian banks and European banks. They are borrowing the money wherever they can.
What does that mean? That means we have to pay interest on that, like every Canadian has to on their mortgage, their car or any loan they have. Canadians pay interest for this. Interest payments are projected this year to be more than the amount of money we spend on health care. I think if we knock on the door of any Canadian family and ask them what is more important to them, paying interest or having better health care, we would get a 100% response that it should be health care. Instead, we see the opposite here.
The Liberals keep borrowing, ballooning that interest line item in the budget to about $80 billion in five years. Here is what $80 billion a year can do for Canadians. With $80 billion, we can twin the TransCanada mountain pipeline. With $80 billion a year, we can build 47 hospitals the size of the very beautiful new Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital in the heart of Vaughan, in the York region where I live. With $80 billion, we can buy 800 F-35 fighter airplanes. Eighty billion dollars is more money than all the money transferred as part of the Canada health transfer. At that time, $80 billion will be about $30 billion more than we are putting into health care. We could cut the GST to zero if we had that $80 billion. Every Canadian would benefit, but no, we are putting it in interest.
The economist, banking Prime Minister may have a good education from good academic institutions from around the world, but what he does not have is practical experience. The guidance he has given, which he learned from his predecessor and mentor Justin Trudeau, to the finance minister is to continue more of the same. Let us put Canada more and more in debt. In fact, they are trying these fun, fancy words now, such as the sovereign wealth fund, which of course we know is a debt fund. They could have a wealth fund, but they would have to have money for it. They do not have money when they are coming to Parliament and saying they are losing $67 billion this year. They certainly do not have money when they are saying they are going to be paying $80 billion in interest within five years, or that they are going to add more debt to the tune of $363 billion, so he comes up with this fancy thing.
The other thing they are saying over there is that they spend less so they can invest more. How are they spending less? They are not spending less. They are spending more. In fact, the highest the Government of Canada has ever spent in the history of the country since Confederation is in this year's budget. Where they are spending, there is no transparency. We should not expect transparency from these Liberals. If we had transparency, we would know who had the green slush fund money. If we had transparency, we would not have the finance minister saying he is recusing himself from talking about Alto, the $90‑billion fiasco, because his wife is a senior vice-president in the firm. He said he was part of the decision, but now he is recusing himself because the world has found out that he has a vested interest in this from a family perspective.
The bottom line is that Canadians are concerned about affordability, their grocery bill, their mortgage payment, their business and employment. The government is entirely tone-deaf to what Canada wants.