Official Hansard
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise on behalf of the great people of the riding of Vaughan—Woodbridge. Every Canadian household will pay $3,400 this year for the interest on the federal debt. That is $3,400 per household gone, just to service what the government has borrowed. That number is only going to rise in the foreseeable future. That one number tells Canadians everything they need to know about the Liberal government’s 2026 budget. The finance minister stood in this place just three days ago and told Canadians, “the dream of Canada is alive and well. Young people, increasingly, see themselves in building Canada strong, and we will be there with them.” I would invite the minister to put down the prepared remarks and speak to the young people I represent. About 47% of Canadian home builders are laying off workers. In Ontario, that figure climbs up to 65%. More Canadians are starting businesses in the United States than in Canada. Half a trillion dollars in net investment has fled south of the border. How does the minister call this a dream? For too many young Canadians trying to afford a home, find a job or start a business in this country, it is a nightmare from which they cannot awake. The minister went further and told this House, “Generations will look back at the Prime Minister, the government and the current Parliament and say that we were there for them. We are building long-term wealth and growth.” Indeed, generations will look back at this. They will look back at $80 billion a year in interest payments. They will look back at a government that called debt an investment and mortgaged their future. The government is not building long-term wealth. It is building long-term debt and calling it long-term wealth. It gets much worse than that. The Prime Minister himself straight up misled Canadians when he claimed, just a few weeks ago, “Affordability is the best it has been in over a decade.” Every Canadian I have spoken to, regardless of who they are, knows this is false. Let us consider what Conservatives asked for in this update. We asked for the deficit to be capped at $31 billion, the figure Justin Trudeau projected in his last fiscal update, a figure that brought down a finance minister and a prime minister. It is the very deficit that almost toppled a federal government. Under this Prime Minister, the Liberals have more than doubled that number: $66.9 billion this year. That is six straight years of deficits above $53 billion and 11 straight years of deficits from the Liberals. What is amazing is that the Liberals celebrate their $67-billion deficit as if they are being fiscally responsible and stewards of economic management. Imagine this. The Liberals put forward a budget and have a projected deficit of around $80 billion. They then put out a spring economic statement and say, “Look how amazing we are. The deficit is only $67 billion, still more than double what was projected the year Trudeau was prime minister, but less than what we projected a few short months ago. How great are we?” We do not have to imagine that, because that is exactly what the Liberal Prime Minister has done. Outside of the pandemic, this is the largest deficit in Canadian history, and spending as a share of our economy is the highest it has been since 1996. The government calls this fiscal discipline. This is not discipline. This is a windfall. There was $60.3 billion in new revenue that walked through the finance minister's door, the product of higher personal and corporate taxes, which hurt our competitiveness, and higher oil prices. What did the Prime Minister do with this extra money? He spent it. The government spent two-thirds of a gift it did not earn and asked Canadians to applaud the restraint. The trajectory is actually worse than the headline. Public debt charges are rising 50%, from $54 billion today to almost $81 billion five years from now, more than the government spends on health care transfers and more than it collects from every Canadian who pays GST. While interest climbs, growth falls. Real GDP growth has averaged 2.1% over the last 25 years. It is projected to be 1.7% this decade, and 1.5% for decades to come. The government is borrowing more, growing less and spending the difference on interest. It is mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren. Then, there is the sovereign wealth fund. The key word in “sovereign wealth fund” is “wealth”. Norway has surpluses. Saudi Arabia has surpluses. Singapore has surpluses. Canada has a $66-billion deficit and $1.3 trillion in debt. The $25 billion seeding the fund is borrowed. That is not a sovereign wealth fund; it is a sovereign debt fund. Members do not have to take my word for it; they can take the word of independent voices. Build Canada, a non-partisan civic movement that supports founders and innovators in this country, calls the Canada Strong fund a “war bond”, where Canadians are being asked to “buy equity in the projects” that the government cannot get off the ground by its own merits. The Montreal Economic Institute put it plainly: “We don't need a Canada Infrastructure Bank 2.0”. The Infrastructure Bank is a cautionary tale. Of 108 projects, only 11 have been completed. The Parliamentary Budget Officer found that the bank will fall $20.1 billion short of its disbursement target. Sixty-seven per cent of its partner funding came from the public sector. The very private capital it was supposed to attract, it is not attracting. The transport committee of this House recommended abolishing it. The government's response was to raise its spending limit by another $10 billion. Canadian pension funds hold $1.33 trillion in foreign assets, 51% of their total holdings. Let us think about that: 51% of their total holdings not invested in Canada. Capital is not missing in this country; confidence is. The spring economic statement mentions artificial intelligence six times across its entire length. There are six mentions and six pillars of the strategy that does not yet exist. The Minister of Artificial Intelligence set his own deadline to deliver the framework. He missed it. His office now tells Canadians the framework is coming soon, but with no specific timeline. Witnesses appearing before the industry committee on this very subject have called the government's consultation process rushed and too corporate-heavy. They have noted the absence of unions, civil society, researchers studying AI work, governance experts, privacy experts and human rights experts. A list of pillar names is not a strategy. While Canada drafts press releases, our competitors are building the technology that will define the next century of economic growth. Debt will cost $3,400 per household this year and $80 billion a year in interest by the end of the decade. We have a sovereign wealth fund with no wealth, a strategy with no plan, a finance minister who calls this a dream and a Prime Minister creating an illusion. Conservatives reject this credit card budget. We would build a paycheque economy where hard work brings home a powerful paycheque, where families can afford groceries and can afford their homes, and where neighbourhoods are safe and opportunity in this country is real. That is the promise of Canada, and that is the promise we will keep. That is why I move this amendment, seconded by the member for Parkland: That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "That" and substituting the following: "the House decline to give second reading to Bill C-30, An Act to implement certain provisions of the spring economic update tabled in Parliament on April 28, 2026, since the Bill reflects the Prime Minister's approach to credit-card budgeting by: (a) adding $37.5 billion in inflationary, net new spending; (b) running a deficit more than double the $31 billion last projected when Justin Trudeau was prime minister; (c) continuing to drive inflation up through the creation of more bureaucracies, rather than taking meaningful action to confront the affordability challenges facing Canadians by axing the taxes on groceries, eliminating the fuel standard and industrial carbon tax, scrapping the food packaging tax to make life affordable again; and (d) failing to cut inflationary spending, currently being racked up on the country's credit card, such as the Alto rail project, the Liberal gun grab, excessive use of external consultants, foreign aid, corporate welfare, and taxpayer-funded handouts for fake asylum claimants.
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