Madam Speaker, a Liberal is heckling across the way, but they do say that. They think that having a grocery benefit is a good thing, but it means they are failing. It means the economy is going down the dumpster, because they have to give food stamps to Canadians. The fact that they have to give out food stamps is not a measure of success. Those guys should wake up over there. It is actually a sign of how badly they have governed this country over the last 10 years.
Another report came out, on child care. This is one of our Liberal friends' favourite comments, about child care. Do members know that a child care report came out about child care spaces in Saskatchewan? Ninety-two per cent of people say it is hard to find child care in Saskatchewan since these Liberals brought in their day care program. They promised to make 255,000 day care spaces. They have missed that. They have done only 65% of that.
In the GTA, there are fewer child care spaces now than in 2019, and there are a lot more people. That is going backwards. Before this program, there was a 5% to 7% increase in child care spaces a year in the GTA. Now, for some years, it has actually gone backwards and there are fewer child care spaces. That is what happens when they make promises they cannot commit to fulfilling.
Saskatchewan was actually called a “child care desert” because there are so few spaces right now. Saskatoon and Regina are bad, but if we go out to rural Canada, rural Saskatchewan or Alberta, there are hardly any child care spaces for anyone, especially the ones that are government-run, because they have very strict hours. The people who need child care the most, the people who work shift work, sometimes cannot find a day care because the government ones have kicked out all the private day cares that were open before and worked different hours. Now, even if people got on the list and waited two years to get into the child care program, it does not work the hours that people need it to work anyway. That is what happens when the government takes over where there are actual private sector solutions.
Just to go back to our frustration on this side, I find it very funny that the Liberals always bring up day care in their answers in question period. They talk about programs. Parents would prefer to actually feed their own kids, if they were not taxed to death and could make enough money to feed their own kids, instead of having a government program do it. They talk about the grocery benefit. They brag about giving people food stamps.
We should cut government waste, decrease taxes and let more economic engines run in this country in the energy sector. We lost $60 billion in investments in the energy sector this year.
That is why this Prime Minister is an illusion. The fact is that he is the only leader in the G7 who has led his country into a recession. He cannot blame anyone but himself. If he wants to know what the problem is with Canada right now, why we cannot get anything done and why we cannot grow, he should look in the mirror.