Carlos Leitão

“Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Sudbury East—Manitoulin—Nickel Belt. I want to bring members back to a couple of hours ago when the House voted on a motion. We had a very simple vote on a very simple motion earlier today. I will read the text for everybody watching at home just so they see how simple it was. It reads: That the House officially recognize that: (a) the Liberals have been in power for 11 years; and (b) Canada is in an affordability crisis. The entire motion is one sentence, and nothing in it is untrue. The Liberals have been in power for 11 years, and we do not need a calendar to confirm that. On the second part, members can ask anybody across the country who is trying to save up to buy a place of their own, put food on the table consistently or even pay their bills, and they will tell them that the answer to that question is yes, Canada is in an affordability crisis. However, earlier today, every single Liberal MP on that side of the House stood up to oppose that motion, and in doing so, they denied reality. They denied the reality of millions of Canadians. They denied their own record in the same way they have been running from it since the Prime Minister got here. They pretend that the same MPs, the same cabinet ministers and the same advisers who served under Justin Trudeau, many of whom are now promoted, are somehow not responsible for everything that happened over the last 11 years. What is worse is that they deny the financial reality that millions of Canadians are living right now, just outside of this place. I invite them to visit a food bank in Toronto and defend that vote. Some have foolishly taken a picture in front of that food bank, but they should actually go in and see the rising numbers. Last year, Toronto food banks recorded 4.1 million visits, which is the highest number recorded, and a 340% increase since 2019. The line did not just double. It more than quadrupled. Maybe the Liberals could explain their vote to the 46% of Canadians who say that they are less than $200 away from not being able to pay their bills every single month. Maybe they could explain it to the nearly three in 10 who say they already do not earn enough to cover their bills and their debt together. That is who they voted against today when they voted to deny reality and deny the financial reality of so many of those people. That same denial runs through the legislation that we are debating again today. The government frames Bill C-38 as a major affordability measure. In reality, as we have heard many times, it would extend a temporary pause on one federal tax at the pump, which is a 10¢-a-litre excise tax. By the finance minister’s own math, that is about five dollars off of a 50-litre fill-up. It is something, that is for sure, but it is not enough. It is not enough for the affordability crisis that we are facing, and it comes with an expiry date, as if that affordability crisis, which was created over the last 11 years, would just automatically disappear. On February 1, half of that tax comes back and the relief drops to 5¢ a litre. On April 1, the rest comes off and the relief drops to zero. Every other federal charge built into the price of fuel stays in place, which means the GST stays in place, the clean fuel standard stays in place and the cost of the industrial carbon tax stays in place. We could remove all of them and families, seniors and truckers could save up to 25¢ a litre, but that is not what we are talking about here. It is what we could be talking about. Under the Conservative proposal, the relief would not vanish next February. It would last until at least Canada Day in 2027. It would be up to $1,000 of savings for the average Canadian family, which is real money that would help, but if members vote against even recognizing an affordability crisis in the House just hours ago, then why would anybody trust them to fix it? Throughout this debate, we have heard a lot of bluster from the other side and not so much on the facts point. I just want to lay out a timeline for those following, because some Liberal MPs have been trying to take credit for the ideas, and other Liberal MPs do not understand why they are doing it. On April 2, Conservatives called for federal taxes on gas and diesel to be removed for the rest of 2026. Twelve days later, the Liberals announced a partial version of that plan, pausing only the excise tax and only until Labour Day. Fast-forward to August 16, when we demanded cancellation of the Labour Day tax hike and removal of all the federal fuel taxes until at least Canada Day in 2027, and on September 2, the Liberals backed down again and announced that extension, which is the bill in front of us today. Each time, they arrived late, and each time, they brought less than Canadians needed. If not for our Conservative pressure, I do not think we would be debating this at all. If nobody on this side of the House had called for it, I do not think we would be standing here. I do not think it would have existed in the budget, which we should have seen a couple weeks ago, and I do not think they would have done it, because the current government has a habit of dealing with problems by pretending they do not exist, hence the vote earlier today, just as the Liberals are pretending that we are not in an affordability crisis by voting against Canadians, who are clearly living much of their lives in that crisis. In March, the Prime Minister told Canadians that affordability was the best it had been in a decade, but I want him to really look in the faces of a family and tell that to the family filling its minivan this week. Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whom we heard from today, reports that the deficit went from $36 billion under Justin Trudeau in the last fiscal year, to $72 billion this year. That is not a little more spending. That is double. It is putting groceries on the credit card and calling it a budget. We will see what happens in the next couple of weeks. The problem still for all those families is that it is getting worse. Yesterday, Statistics Canada reported that inflation rose to 3.1% in September, up from 3% in August. Gasoline prices are up nearly 28% from a year ago. Fuel oil is up almost 58%, hitting families in Atlantic Canada the hardest, because that is what many of them there use to heat their home. Grocery prices are up 33% since 2020. We know there are lots of reasons for these costs rising, but today we are debating actually giving relief to families and taking some of that money off their bills. Families obviously feel this. Six in 10 Canadians say that at least half their paycheque is already spoken for before it even arrives. Yes, we need to do more, and Conservatives are never going to stand in the way of relief or a tax cut. That is what we came here to fight for, no matter how small it is and no matter how time-limited it is, because even a little money makes a difference for people who are facing strife in their communities right now all over the country. However, we will keep daring the government to do more. We will keep advocating from this side of the House, because the only reason we are having this conversation is that the Liberals were put in a corner to have to do this. We will keep making it very uncomfortable not to act, and we will keep speaking for all the families who need the relief, who need longer-term relief and who need bigger relief on their paycheques. The Liberals have already moved from denial to partial acceptance, and we see that with this bill. We just want them to go further. We want them to get rid of all the taxes that they continue to put on fuel, such as the fuel standard, which will eventually raise the price of gas by 17¢ a litre by 2030. First they refused to touch the gas tax, period, and now they are giving us a hidden carbon tax. We want them to not actually stop the tax cut on Labour Day, and we want them to stretch it for a few more months or even longer, as long as it takes for families to get out from under the affordability crisis the government has buried them in. If the Liberals want to keep borrowing ideas, that is fine. If the Liberals want to react to a strong opposition that is going to push them to do the right thing, that is fine, but we actually want them to get this done. Canadians should not have to wait for the Liberals to always catch up. They certainly should not have to watch the government take credit for doing the bare minimum. That is exactly what we are going to advocate for with this bill and so many others that will come to the floor of the House of Commons. We want real relief for families and for every Canadian from coast to coast.”