Madam Speaker, the Liberals' new fund they have announced should never be called a “sovereign wealth fund”. A sovereign wealth fund is a fund that takes surplus government revenue, usually from resource export revenue, and invests that surplus internationally. That is what a sovereign wealth fund, by any normal understanding of the term, means.
The government in fact even explicitly compared its new fund to actual sovereign wealth funds, like those found in Norway and Saudi Arabia, but the government has no surplus. It will borrow 100% of the funds to seed its fund, so it is not a sovereign wealth fund at all. It will become a Liberal slush fund that will inevitably become a plaything for the Prime Minister and his Liberal insiders, bought on national credit.
The government's own announcement said, “the government will provide $25 billion over 3 years, on a cash basis, to seed the [fund].” Well, the Liberals just tabled an economic statement with a $67-billion deficit, without counting the $8.3 billion the government will need to seed the fund initially, which is in the cash flow statement and does not show up as a balance sheet entry.
The Liberals enter this new debt with an offsetting asset that produces nothing, but Canadians will still have to pay the debt borrowed to seed the new fund. The fund is created by new debt to be repaid by Canadians, not created by surpluses invested on behalf of Canadians for their future. This is going to be a $25-billion hit on the national credit card. There is simply no denying this. The government's own announcements and fiscal update confirm it.
The government announced, “The Fund will invest in strategic Canadian projects and companies alongside other investors—with a clear objective to achieve commercial returns to build the wealth of Canada.” Well, that sounds wonderful, does it not? Who could be against Canadian projects and investing in companies that deliver commercial returns for the wealth of all Canadians?
However, the skilful announcement cannot hide what this really is. The problem is that borrowing money and handing it to politicians and their hand-picked cronies to invest in companies that are chasing preferential regulatory treatment, subsidies and self-enrichment, all done on the nation's credit card, is absolutely the worst possible way to go about building Canada and the wealth of Canadians. The best way to build Canada and the wealth of Canadians is to repeal the laws that the Liberals passed over the last 10 years that have resulted in capital flight from Canada and in economic stagnation.
In 2015, the government inherited a balanced budget from the previous government. The New York Times, hardly a Conservative media organ, declared that Canada then had the most prosperous middle class in the world. Homes were affordable for most people. Food was affordable. A pipeline to the west coast was approved. Kinder Morgan was preparing to invest billions of dollars to expand the Trans Mountain west coast pipeline. The TransCanada pipeline project, as it was then called, was doing the preliminary work for an application to build an east coast pipeline. This was what was on the table in 2015.
Then the Liberals formed their government in November 2015, and their election promise was to run three years of modest deficits to fund unprecedented investments in national infrastructure, resulting in economic growth that would lead the budget to balance itself. However, the very first thing they did was cancel the existing pipeline approval for the west coast. They did it by a ministerial order before Parliament even met in November 2015.
If they had not done that, the west coast pipeline would already be built. Half a million barrels of Canadian oil would be on world markets today. At today's price, that is $50 million a day in Canadian energy exports. That is nearly $20 billion a year at today's prices. Now the Liberals are having a sort of out-of-body experience, wondering why we cannot supply our allies and the world market with energy.
Before anyone says, “Wait a minute, Trudeau's gone. All the leave-it-in-the-ground Liberals have been shuffled off to the back row and off to the sides or given cushy diplomatic appointments,” let us not forget, let no one in the House forget that, in 2021, the now Prime Minister appeared at the industry committee and was questioned by the opposition leader. He was asked about that decision to cancel the west coast pipeline, and he said then that it was “the right decision.”
These Liberals have been wrong about everything for the past 10 years. Their deficits were not a transformational investment into productivity-enhancing infrastructure construction that allowed the budget to balance itself. Their deficits quickly became structural and have now spiralled ever upward since.
It did actually come to a head in the late 2024 session. Does anybody remember what was happening in December 2024? That was when a projected $30-billion deficit for this year was so bad that Chrystia Freeland refused to sign off on it. Do members remember that? Remember when $30 billion was enough for her to resign as the finance minister? Remember the wave of resignations and retirement announcements? Remember when fiscal management finally became the focused issue and finally forced Trudeau out?
The man then who was supposed to be this serious, experienced, credentialed, technocratic adult in the room who would restore the health of Canada's finances after nine years of neglect is now doubling down on the state-led, rent-seeking, crony capitalism of the Trudeau years and has doubled that deficit, which was such a crisis for how huge it was at the time.
Consider now the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Nine years ago, the government said that this new thing it gleefully announced would transform Canada. Its members said that it would leverage private sector investment and unlock hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure investment. It was all nonsense. Their press release said that there would be four private dollars invested for every public dollar.
Do members remember Bill Morneau? He went even beyond his own announcement and said that it would be $5 to every one dollar, in his speech, where he announced it. Here we are nine years later, with billions of dollars still not invested, no projects done and the real number of leveraged private sector investment is 66¢ on the dollar. Now the current Prime Minister wants to do the same thing with this new fund.
I do not have time to explain all the things that are wrong with the Infrastructure Bank. This is the same industrial policy that failed with the Infrastructure Bank. With this system, the government makes rules that kill investment, then sets up an office staffed by the Prime Minister's appointees, cherry-picks which projects it does not want the existing laws of Canada to apply to and then leaves itself free to create whatever future rules or subsidies to force the taxpayer to guarantee the success of whatever project it has chosen. This is what the Prime Minister has more or less admitted himself.
All the government needs to do to undo the damage of the past 10 years is to repeal its anti-development laws, rein in its deficits and lower or repeal its taxes and investment will flow. It will flow to its logical conclusion of projects built, jobs created, taxes collected, public services funded, taxes lowered and people free to live in comfort, plenty and freedom.
That is why we call on the government to cancel this Liberal slush fund that is being charged to the national credit card. Its approach is not free enterprise; it is state control. It is the approach that always leads to decline, poverty and, eventually, it follows all the way to its logical conclusion: loss of liberty. I call on the government to not proceed with yet another Liberal slush fund.