Mr. Speaker, Bill C-4 is being presented to Canadians as a solution, a path toward affordability and relief in a time of real struggle, but when we peel back the layers, it becomes painfully clear that this bill is not a bold plan but a political strategy. It is a collection of half measures cobbled together from Conservative ideas, watered down and repackaged by a government that has spent the last 10 years creating the very problems it is now trying to solve.
Canadians are smart. They know when they are being sold a talking point instead of a real fix, and they know that these issues, the cost of living, the housing crisis, the damage done by the carbon tax, did not come out of nowhere. They were caused by the very people now claiming to fix them.
Let us look at what is really in Bill C-4. Let us talk about the removal of the consumer carbon tax. The bill proves what Conservatives have been saying all along: The carbon tax is driving up the cost of living. The Liberals basically copied it straight out of the Conservative election platform, finally admitting what they spent years denying, that the carbon tax is hurting Canadians. It is making life more expensive, especially for the people who can least afford it.
They did not suddenly have a change of heart; they had a change in polling. Canadians were fed up, and in all honesty, it is Pierre Poilievre who made this a national fight. It was that pressure that forced the Liberals to act, not principle. Here is the problem, though. They did not scrap the tax; they just made the visible part disappear. That is it. They are removing the part that shows up on the receipt, hoping that if people cannot see it, they will not notice that it is still buried in the price of everything else. The reality is that the tax is still here. From the farmer growing the food to the truck delivering it and the shelf at the grocery store, every single step still gets hit, and Canadians still pay.
This is not relief; it is optics. It was an election year, and it is a gimmick dressed up as a policy. After years of punishing working Canadians, the Liberals now want credit for copying our plan while leaving the pain in place. How is that anything but a slap in the face?
There is a tax cut in Bill C-4, which, unfortunately for Canadians, is all smoke and no fire. I have talked to a lot of families who are barely getting by, and now the Liberals want people to believe that this tax cut will fix things. Let us be honest. It is a weak copy of the Conservative tax cut we promised in our platform, and it does not even start until halfway through the year. That means the cut is only 0.5% in 2025. Most people will get about $420 back. That is not help; it is barely enough for a coffee a day.
Meanwhile, the Liberals are spending money like there is no tomorrow. They are handing out billions in consulting contracts, even though the Auditor General just exposed that many of these contracts cannot even prove value for money. Canadians are being squeezed at every turn, and the government keeps throwing cash at well-connected firms while offering working families crumbs.
In fact, when we add this all up, including the billions it plans to spend on fancy consultants, which will cost families around $1,400, Canadians will be losing ground, so while they are getting back $420, they are paying more than triple to fund Liberal waste. That is not a tax break; it is a bad joke. This tax cut is not about helping Canadians. The Liberals did not do this because it is good policy. They did it because they were losing support and hoping Canadians would not notice. Canadians actually know the real thing when they see it, and this is not it.
Now we come to the GST rebate. It sounds nice, but it helps almost no one. The Liberals say they are helping first-time homebuyers by giving them a new GST rebate, but the truth is that it will not help most people. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, this program will cost $1.9 billion over six years. That sounds like a lot, but only about 5% of new homes will actually qualify. That means more than nine out of 10 Canadians will not get any help at all.
Also, it is only for first-time homebuyers, so if a family is growing and they need a bigger place, too bad. If they have gone through a divorce and need to start fresh, sorry, they are not included. That is not fair. That is not real help.
Even for newcomers to Canada, if they are a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident and have not owned or lived in a home anywhere in the world in the last five years, they can qualify. If they are still waiting for their permanent residency, even if they have never owned a home, they are out of luck. Even for those who do qualify, this applies only to brand new homes, not resale homes and not older homes, which might have been more affordable for someone. People who are hoping to rent out a suite to help pay the mortgage do not qualify either.
This rebate is like offering a life jacket to a handful of people while the rest are left to tread water in a sea of rising prices and shrinking hope. I have talked to families in my riding who are doing everything right. They are working hard and saving what they can, but they still feel like home ownership is slipping further and further out of reach. This plan will not fix that. It barely even tries.
It is clear. The Liberals copied our homework, but they got the answers wrong. Canadians deserve better than this half-baked rebate. Canadians are exhausted. They are working harder than ever, and they are falling further behind. Instead of bold action, Bill C-4 gives them a series of half measures that copy Conservatives' ideas without the conviction or the follow-through: a carbon tax that is half removed, a tax cut that barely buys a daily coffee and a housing rebate that helps one in 20. This is not leadership. It is damage control. The government has spent 10 years creating a cost of living crisis, and now it wants credit for tossing out a few band-aids. Canadians do not want slogans. They want solutions, and Conservatives are the ones who will deliver.
