Caroline Desrochers

“Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Calgary Centre. When we look at the budget this Liberal government is presenting, we have to wonder what happened to all of its big promises. The government promised an ambitious budget. It talked about growth, productivity, streamlining and a new way of doing things. Rhetoric aside, once one has actually read the budget and looked at the numbers, what is left? Not much. This budget is all sizzle and no steak. The truth is that Canadians do not need big announcements. They need to be able to afford their groceries, mortgage, rent and bills at the end of the month. They want to know that their hard-earned money is being put to good use, but this budget is not very reassuring for them. Let me start with public finances. The government is patting itself on the back for getting additional revenue, but we need to look at where a lot of that money is coming from. One of the reasons government revenues are going up is because prices are going up, because inflation is driving up nominal revenues and tax revenues. Although the government is taking in more money, Canadian families are paying more to fill their grocery carts. It is easy for the government to pat itself on the back for this additional revenue when it is Canadians who are the ones paying the inflation bill. The Liberal government seems to be forgetting one thing: When the price of gas, bread, meat or housing goes up, it is not good news for families. It means less money in their pockets. Inflation is the worst form of taxation, because it takes what little the middle class has left and makes the rich richer. Despite this additional revenue, the Liberals continue to spend recklessly. Let us look at the numbers. The projected deficit for this year is $62.3 billion. In five years, in 2030-31, it will still be $52.9 billion, according to estimates. That is $288.7 billion in accumulated deficits over five years for government operations. That is a mountain of debt that we are leaving to our children and grandchildren, and that is not all. This year, the government will spend $60.2 billion on interest payments on the debt. In five years, that amount will have grown to $85.5 billion, meaning $25.3 billion more per year. That is more than all the revenue collected from the GST in Canada. That is money none of us will never see again, unless we happen to be among the Prime Minister’s banker buddies or other friends. Imagine what that money could do for our hospitals, schools, infrastructure and families. Unfortunately, it is going toward interest payments. We cannot build a country by working only to pay interest on the debt. It is all well and good for the government to talk about a balanced operating budget, but the overall budget is not balanced. The deficit is still there, year after year. It is a structural deficit. We will not become masters of our destiny by mortgaging our grandchildren’s future. Canadians are trapped by Liberal debt. Now let us talk about the cost of living. The Liberals are announcing a supplement to the Canada groceries and essentials benefit that will provide up to $339 for a single person and $679 for a family of four. It is all well and good to send a cheque, but does that lower the cost of the grocery basket? Does it lower food prices? The answer is no. A one-time cheque does not solve the problem. It helps some families for a while, but it does not make the cost of living go away. It does not address the root cause of the problem. Instead of dealing with problems in the here and now, the Liberals tend to cut a cheque and kick the problems down the road. The Liberals hand out cheques to help Canadians pay prices they cannot bring down. Families want to be able to live on their wages, just as businesses want to make a living by selling their products, not by relying on subsidies. No one wants to have to wait around for a government cheque just to make ends meet. I want to turn now to the Alto project, the much-touted high-speed rail link. In the budget, the Liberals present Alto as a major driver of economic growth. I have a very simple question: Where are the studies proving that? Where is the evidence that this project will be profitable? Which independent study proves it? Where is the proof that taxpayers will recoup their investment? Where are the guarantees that costs will not spiral out of control? The Parliamentary Budget Officer has already estimated construction costs at between $75 billion and $113 billion. Those are staggering figures. I doubt that those amounts are fully reflected in the current budget. This is taxpayers’ money: money from workers, farmers, small business owners and families who pay their taxes. The government already seems eager to fast-track the project. Annex 3 of the budget states: In Budget 2026, the government proposes to introduce new legislation that will support accelerating the construction of Alto High-Speed Rail. Legislation will streamline expropriation activities and enable early preconstruction work. The government is going to accelerate the expropriation process. Something is really off. The government really wants to accelerate expropriations and start pre-construction work. It wants to move the project forward. It is not even hiding it. However, serious questions remain unanswered. Is it cost-effective? Do Canadians really need it? Have the economic benefits been confirmed as announced? The government wants to accelerate the process, but it has yet to answer all of these questions. In the meantime, farmers and property owners are in limbo, unsure whether the project could affect their land and property. I am thinking especially of farmers in the Mirabel area, who already survived one expropriation for the former airport. Today, they are in limbo once again. These people deserve answers. They deserve to be heard. Now let us talk about bureaucracy. That is probably where the expectations were the highest and the disappointment is the greatest. The Minister of Finance set the bar very high. He talked about streamlining administrative procedures. Small and medium-sized businesses were expecting concrete action. Business owners on the ground do not need to be told what bureaucracy is. They experience it every day. Owners of garages, farms, restaurants and construction firms want to keep their businesses running. They spend too much of their days filling out forms, meeting the requirements of various government departments and trying to understand rules that keep changing. They want to run a business, not become experts in federal red tape. What does the budget actually offer them? It offers them a tax deduction for investments that was previously announced. That is all. After the Minister of Finance set expectations so high, where is the big plan to streamline administrative procedures? Where are the concrete measures to cut red tape? Where is the plan to eliminate redundancies and unnecessary requirements? I will say it again: This budget is all sizzle and no steak. The government announced major changes. Canadians were promised a real transformation. In the end, business owners are finding that there are very few new measures. We cannot ask businesses to be more productive while also forcing them to waste hours and days dealing with the federal bureaucracy. We need to trust them. We need to give them space to work and create wealth. When we put all these things together, we can see why this budget is so underwhelming. We have a government that continues to rack up deficits. We have an interest bill that will be $25.3 billion a year higher by 2030-31. We have families who are seeing their purchasing power decline and who are being offered temporary cheques instead of lasting solutions. We have a high-speed project with a price tag in the tens of billions of dollars but whose benefits have yet to be proven and for which the government already wants to speed up expropriations. We have provinces calling for more resources to care for their citizens. Canadians work hard. They get up early in the morning. They pay their taxes. They deserve better than promises and announcements. They deserve a government that spends prudently, respects taxpayer dollars and tackles the real issues. With this budget, unfortunately, Canadians may once again be paying a lot to get very little in return.”