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Steven Bonk

Conservative 5:05 p.m.

“The government's own actions make food cost more, but I want them to feel bad about creating a program to help people afford to eat. I think the program should not exist.”

Helena Konanz

Conservative 5:10 p.m.

“I want this government to stop spending so much money. How can they think these huge deficits are okay?”

Grant Jackson

Conservative 5:20 p.m.

“I agree with you that rushing bills through Parliament without proper debate or study is bad. I think the government using programming motions to limit debate damages public trust in Parliament. I want you to say more about how these tactics hurt our institution and the people we represent.”

Jason Groleau

Conservative 5:25 p.m.

“I'm here to talk about respect for hard-earned money. The government is spending a lot of money, but we aren't seeing results. The deficit is huge and it's only getting bigger. The housing plan is expensive and won't help many people. The government is wasting money on a spaceport. The gun buyback program targets law-abiding citizens instead of criminals. The government should support businesses, but instead they make it harder for them to succeed. We need to defend our workers and businesses against U.S. tariffs. Canadians deserve better.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my esteemed colleague from Richmond Hill South. I rise today not to engage in petty politics, but to talk about something very simple that everyone in our regions understands well, except the Liberals, of course: respect for hard‑earned money. Back home in Beauce, money does not grow on trees. People earn their money early in the morning, with both hands in the dirt, behind a counter, at a construction site, or at a factory. When people earn it that way, they learn to respect it. It is with that respect in mind that I will talk about Bill C-30 and the Liberal government's economic snapshot. The Liberals projected a $38‑billion deficit in budget 2025. For the current fiscal year, the Liberal Prime Minister is now projecting a $67‑billion deficit. Yes, $67 billion. That is a lot of money. That is not just pocket change. The worst part is that he is projecting even bigger deficits in the years to come. Deficits can happen in a crisis. However, when they become a habit, Canadians have the right to ask a very simple question: Where are the Liberals' results? There are none. The real issue is not just how much money is being spent, but what we are getting in return. Take housing, for example. While people are struggling to find somewhere to live due to skyrocketing inflation in rents, the Liberals say they are going to create yet another layer of bureaucracy with Build Canada Homes and a budget of $13 billion. The results are modest. I am not the one saying that; it is the former parliamentary budget officer himself. According to his estimate, Build Canada Homes will help build 26,000 homes over five years. His conclusion is that this is a “modest” contribution. The Liberals are spending $13 billion on a modest contribution; meanwhile, young families are unable to get on the property ladder and young people are desperately searching for affordable housing. Canadians do not want announcements; they want more homes. They want construction. They do not want words; they want action. Now I will turn to another obscene expenditure that I still cannot wrap my head around: the spaceport in Canso, Nova Scotia. To recap the situation one more time, a company is leasing this plot of land from the province for $13,500 a year. The Liberal government went to this company and offered to sublet the land from it for $20 million a year. It also decided it would be smart to sign a 10-year lease, for a total of $200 million. That is money down the drain. That is insane. Why? What is on this land that is costing us $200 million? There is a 25-foot-by-35-foot concrete pad, two sea cans and a gravel road. I could build a dozen just like it with pleasure. I could do that, no problem. The time will come when the Liberals will have to explain themselves to taxpayers. This is insane. We have not received any answers. We have been here for over a year, and we are asking questions, but we are still not getting answers. Nevertheless, there were 13 meetings with the minister's team, during which someone thought it would be a great idea to spend $200 million on a concrete pad. Now let us talk about an issue that is close to my heart: the gun buyback program. What a waste of money. According to the former parliamentary budget officer's estimates, the compensation could cost nearly $800 million. That does not even include the program's administrative costs. That is nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars to target law-abiding citizens first and foremost. Meanwhile, too many illegal weapons are crossing our borders and fuelling real crime. That is the real target. It takes courage, but the Liberals do not have it. The problem is not the hunters in Saint-Georges or the sport shooters in Sainte-Marie, these proud people who obey the law. I have travelled all over Quebec and met with hundreds of hunters and thousands of sport shooters. These families feel they are being unfairly targeted. These are people who play by the rules, who complete the training, who obtain their licences, and who follow every law. Today, this government is treating them as if they are the problem. That is unfair. I can assure members of one thing: I have not finished my tour, and I will never give up on this issue. As everyone knows, I come from a region built by entrepreneurs, farmers and manufacturers who export all over North America. Beauce is a beautiful region. I own businesses myself. In real life, when a person orders $100,000 worth of goods and only sells $60,000 worth, they lose their credit. That is exactly what the Liberals are doing with our children's credit card. When a government cannot balance the books, it should make adjustments, admit its mistakes, start over and move forward for the people. The government should be there for Canadians, not for its cronies. A country's wealth comes not from the government, but from businesses. It is businesses that create wealth. They want to grow, hire people and conquer new markets, but they are coming up against endless red tape. The government is approving megaprojects that take years to come to fruition, but these are nothing more than announcements. Businesses have to deal with endless paperwork, which discourages even the best of them. This is a matter of economic survival. If we do not address this now, our children will pay the price and their standard of living will suffer. The Prime Minister talks about developing new markets. I agree with that. Everyone agrees. It will not pay off for 15 years, but we agree. In the meantime, we must never forget one fundamental reality. I just did an economic tour of Quebec with some of my colleagues. Our number one partner will always be the United States. That is just geography. Our steel and aluminum companies are facing 50% tariffs. Since April 2, as I mentioned here in the House, the metal tariffs were originally set at 25%, but for a garage door, for example, the tariffs are now at 50% on the entire product. Our businesses cannot compete. They are not getting any support from this government. It is that simple. Let us talk about other problems affecting my riding of Beauce and many regions across Quebec. Our unemployment rate is under 2.8%. We have no workers, no people to work. The government must give us the tools we need to attract workers, produce goods and be competitive. The one-size-fits-all approach that the Liberals in Ottawa are applying across the country is not working. We need flexibility, smart thinking, tact, and a clear understanding of how to support businesses. When the Liberals spend money without getting results, it is not just numbers on a page. It means lost opportunities for our regions. Agriculture is not just an important economic sector. It is the cornerstone of food security in our regions. My colleague here in the back could speak to that importance. Our families in rural areas, thousands of producers, get up every morning to feed Canadians. However, there is not much for them in the budget. Our farmers feel abandoned. Production costs are skyrocketing. Just think about fuel, transportation, machinery, fertilizer, energy, and interest on loans. Who can borrow at current interest rates? Meanwhile, consumers are paying the price at the grocery store. To conclude, I want to say this: When I come here, I think of the families who work so hard every morning. They are struggling to put food on the table. They are struggling to find somewhere to live. I think of our local manufacturers who are watching their profit margins shrink. I think of the entrepreneurs who take risks, create jobs and keep our economy going. These people are not asking for the moon. They are asking for a government that understands them, that respects them, that manages their money as if it were its own. They are asking for a government that can boost productivity, get projects moving and actually deliver on them, not just announce them. We must defend our workers and our businesses against the U.S. tariffs. Canadians deserve to have their money managed diligently.

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Jason Groleau

Conservative 5:35 p.m.

“You think a 17% increase in exports is a big deal? It's 17% of nothing. Our real problem is the US. 85% of our business is with them. I want my businesses in Beauce doing more with the US. Fix that.”

Jason Groleau

Conservative 5:35 p.m.

“I'm filling time by talking about a hockey pool. I can't think of anything good the Liberals have done. They didn't help the steel industry.”

Helena Konanz

Conservative 5:35 p.m.

“I also think the Liberals are bad. Do you agree that the Liberals don't care about how Canadians are struggling?”

Jason Groleau

Conservative 5:35 p.m.

“The Liberals are lying about the economy. They know the economy is bad and we're the only G7 country in a recession. They're just pretending everything is fine.”

Shelby Kramp-Neuman

Conservative 5:40 p.m.

“We went on a trip and talked to people. They were sad and uncertain. What can the government do about it?”

Jason Groleau

Conservative 5:40 p.m.

“I want to cheer for my team and say that we should protect our steel industry.”

Vincent Ho

Conservative 5:40 p.m.

“I'm filling time with kind words and saying nothing anyone could pin down later. If I talk a lot maybe it will make me look good.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, when historians study the fiscal decline of nations, they often note that collapse rarely begins with a dramatic event. It begins with habits: habits of indiscipline, habits of euphemism, habits of pretending that borrowing is prosperity, that inflationary spending is strategy and that accounting definitions can be stretched indefinitely without consequence. This Liberal so-called spring economic update is not merely an illustration of Liberal-managed decline. It is not merely a Liberal rebranding exercise. It is a statement of Liberal governing philosophy, and that philosophy is simple: spend now, explain later, redefine terms when necessary and hope Canadians do not notice the bill until it arrives. Canadians do not need a Ph.D. in economics to notice that these Liberal habits are costing them. They notice the Liberal money-printing inflationary deficits at the grocery store. They notice the Liberal taxes at the gas pump. They notice when their children conclude that home ownership is no longer a Canadian expectation but a lottery ticket. They notice it when this Liberal Prime Minister is the only G20 leader to deliver his economy a recession. They notice when this Liberal Prime Minister lectures them about making more sacrifices while failing to exercise any restraint when adding billions more to the national credit card. In public economics, there is a concept known as “government failure”. It is the recognition that governments, especially when they are run by Liberals, are imperfect institutions. Similar to markets, they are subject to distorted incentives, information asymmetries, bureaucratic self-preservation and Liberal political opportunism. Liberal Bill C-30 is government failure bound in legislative form. This Liberal Prime Minister promised discipline. He promised prudence. He promised to spend less and invest more. Instead, in just over a year, this Liberal Prime Minister managed to nearly double the deficit left behind by the last Liberal Prime Minister. Think about that. After a decade of fiscal excess under one Liberal Prime Minister, another Liberal Prime Minister arrived promising sobriety and immediately ordered another round at the bar. That is not renewal. That is relapse. The Liberals call this investment, but Canadians know it as credit card budgeting. When a household continually puts ordinary expenses on a credit card, not because of emergency, not because of catastrophe, but because of chronic overspending, that household is not building wealth. It is mortgaging its future. The same principle applies to nations, yet the Liberal government behaves as though fiscal arithmetic has been repealed. In academic public finance, debt sustainability matters because interest compounds, fiscal flexibility narrows and eventually governments lose the ability to respond to genuine crises. The independent fiscal watchdog, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, has once again raised the alarm. The PBO warns that this Liberal abandonment of traditional definitions of capital spending continues to undermine transparency. It is not a trivial accounting disagreement. It goes to the heart of the fiscal integrity of this Liberal government. Capital spending traditionally implies that the creation of productive assets occur, things that generate future economic value, public utility or measurable returns, or things like infrastructure, such as a new road or a new hospital. However, when Liberal accounting definitions become elastic, everything all of a sudden becomes capital. When everything becomes capital, nothing is. The PBO has explicitly stated that the lack of definitions prevents this Liberal Prime Minister from ensuring that the Liberal government's fiscal anchor remains balanced. In essence, the independent officer charged with scrutinizing public finances cannot determine whether this Liberal government's own numbers mean what the government claims they mean. That should alarm every member of the House. It is not only the PBO. The International Monetary Fund, the IMF, a global agency that the Liberals love to cite, has now called on Canada to adopt international accounting standards to improve transparency, ensure comparability over time and maintain a clear connection between borrowing and debt. Why? It is because this Liberal government's current fiscal presentation no longer inspires confidence. When both the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the International Monetary Fund are warning that our accounting lacks transparency, this is not a partisan talking point. It becomes a credibility crisis, and credibility matters. In public choice theory, governments, especially like this Liberal government, are not assumed to act as neutral benevolent maximizers of public welfare. Rather, they respond to incentives. Liberal politicians prefer spending money today while shifting costs tomorrow through higher taxes, higher inflation, higher deficits and higher interest costs. Liberal bureaucracies seek budget maximization at the expense of taxpayers, who are often deprived of any input by their Liberal governments. Liberal insider interest groups seek concentrated benefits, siphoning money from public coffers while dispersing costs across everyday Canadians. This Liberal spring fiscal update reflects every one of those pathologies. The PBO also warned that repeated spending increases beyond previous projections will “erode the credibility of fiscal plans and weaken confidence in the fiscal framework and raise concerns about long-term [debt] sustainability.” That is the exact credibility crisis that this Liberal Prime Minister finds himself in, because a fiscal anchor that moves whenever politically inconvenient is not an anchor at all. It is driftwood. What is the consequence? It is higher costs, higher debt and higher inflation, but maybe that is the new world order that this Liberal Prime Minister wants Canadians to live in. Canadians are now paying $59 billion annually in debt interest. The PBO projects that this could rise to $80 billion by the decade's end, which is 13% of federal revenues. That is approximately $1,900 per Canadian every year. It is not for hospitals, roads, defence or housing. It is just to service the interest on yesterday's Liberal excess. Every Canadian family is effectively paying thousands of dollars merely to keep the Liberal debt machine running, and the debt interest now exceeds federal health transfers and the revenues collected from the GST. Canadians pay taxes only to watch that money routed not into services but into servicing the debt for prior Liberal overspending. That is not one of the so-called progressive policies the Liberals love to tout. That is intergenerational extraction. There is another glaring black hole in this update: infrastructure spending. The Liberals have made commitments, but the Liberal spring economic update provides no year-by-year breakdown by department on infrastructure spending. It provides only Liberal press releases about so-called investments and maybe a top-line dollar commitment. That is Liberal rhetoric for, “This could blow a hole in the nation's finances and we have no way of tracking where the money is going.” In the accounting world, this is called deferred disclosure, and it takes me to my next point. The Liberal Major Projects Office was heralded with great fanfare, but where are the progress reports on the infrastructure? Where are the timelines? Where are the approvals on the projects? The PBO notes the absence of public reporting. The Liberal government has allocated hundreds of millions of tax dollars for so-called project acceleration, yet it has provided zero clarity. It is no wonder that this office has been described as the “mostly photo ops” office. The only thing we know is that this brand new bureaucracy is staffed with Liberal insiders and executives who are collecting salaries as high as $700,000 a year. This reflects a classic principal-agent problem. Taxpayers are the principals, while Liberal government institutions and their corporate insiders are the agents. When agents face weak accountability, asymmetric information and vague mandates, they optimize for process and motion, rather than outcomes and results. That is what we see with the Liberal mostly photo ops office. We see Liberal bureaucratic expansion without measurable performance, Liberal administrative theatre without delivery and Liberal insiders getting rich off executive salaries that could reach close to $1 million per year in some cases. The Liberal housing hell is another prime example of this. After 11 years of failure, Canadians might have hoped for some urgency. Instead, even after allocating $13 billion to the so-called Build Canada Homes, the PBO projects that just 5,200 units will be built annually. In an unprecedented national, made-by-Liberal housing crisis, the PBO explicitly stated that this is “insufficient” to meet the previously targeted pace. If we recall, the Liberal Prime Minister promised 500,000 homes per year during the campaign, but his own brand new housing bureaucracy can build only 1% of his stated target. Housing starts continue to lose momentum and there are no specific metrics, no pace targets and no credible plan. We have the most unaffordable housing market in the G7. The Liberal government offers nothing but bureaucracy in place of home building. Public economics teaches that regulatory barriers distort supply. When governments create friction through permitting delays, duplicative approvals and antidevelopment frameworks, prices rise. The answer is not endless, unconditional taxpayer subsidies layered atop supply constraints. Those merely inflate demand against an artificially limited supply. The answer is to remove those governmental barriers and let builders build, yet the Liberals persist in governance through announcements, rhetoric and blocking, rather than execution. We arrive at the newest Liberal fantasy, which is the so-called sovereign wealth fund with no wealth. It is an office to prepare for a future press release to eventually borrow money, at the expense of taxpayers, to fund and siphon into politically charged investments. The Liberals already have the Infrastructure Bank, the growth fund and the defence bank. They have agency after agency, fund after fund and office after office, and the result is that Canada still has the worst investment performance in the G7. This is textbook government failure. If a project has a viable business case, capital markets will invest in it. Private investors will fund productive ventures. If a business case does not exist, taxpayers should not be conscripted into subsidizing political vanity. Instead, we get what public choice theory would call rent-seeking. Politically connected actors position themselves around state capital allocation, all while consultants, advisers, insiders, transition offices, boards and task forces take out their straws and siphon off their share of taxpayer money. The beneficiaries are concentrated and the costs are diffused. That is how inefficient states grow, and Canadians can see it and feel it. Canadians deserve better. They deserve an affordable government so that they can have an affordable life, honest accounting, discipline, prosperity and a government that understands the basic truth of economics. A nation cannot borrow and block its way into lasting prosperity.

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Vincent Ho

Conservative 5:50 p.m.

“You make me sad. I think the government's record is bad. The Liberals have not made life better.”

Vincent Ho

Conservative 5:50 p.m.

“I want to talk about how the Liberals made life unaffordable. Many Canadians feel anxious about money. I want my party's ideas to replace Liberal programs.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, when I speak to my constituents, a lot of the concerns they talk about have to do with the affordability crisis and the housing hell the Liberal government has created after 11 years in power. Some Liberals will say that is a conspiracy theory, but the United Way released a recent survey that says 60% of Canadians feel anxiety about their personal finances; 38% face food insecurity, with one in five reporting that all of the food in their home had been eaten and there was no money left to buy more; 40% lose sleep over how they will stretch their paycheque; 34% know someone close to them has experienced poverty; and 22% have personally experienced poverty. Those are the stats, but some Liberal members will have us believe they are a conspiracy. It is time for the Liberals to get out of the way and adopt Conservative solutions.

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Steven Bonk

Conservative 5:50 p.m.

“The Liberals keep redefining fiscal anchors to make their debt look better. First they changed it to 'deficit-to-GDP ratio'. Now they want a sovereign wealth fund based on debt, so they can borrow more without hurting that ratio. I want my colleague to explain how this is just another case of Liberals moving the goalposts midway.”

Vincent Ho

Conservative 5:55 p.m.

“The government thinks it can borrow forever because markets are patient. That won't last. Canada is not exempt from math. Debt must be serviced. Budgets must balance. We need a Canada that rewards hard work, not bureaucracy. Liberals live in press releases. Canadians live in reality.”

Tamara Jansen

Conservative 5:55 p.m.

“Why does the government think more spending and debt will make life cheaper? It's like a family in trouble borrowing more on their credit card.”

Vincent Ho

Conservative 5:55 p.m.

“The Liberals are detached from reality. They spend on wasteful programs like rail and gun confiscation. They don't know how to help real Canadians.”

Grant Jackson

Conservative 6:15 p.m.

“It's laughable that you've been in this place so long and still can't plan to get your legislation finished. You always act surprised when regular things like summer happen. When are you actually going to figure out how to get your job done?”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it always amazes me that the theme for the government should be that someday they will get it done, and that member is certainly no exception to that rule. He is in charge of planning for the government, in terms of the House schedule, as is the House leader he serves. That member has been elected in this House since 2010. There is nothing new on the Liberal benches about that member. In fact, I was 13 years old when that member was first elected to this place, and he has not figured out by now that summer comes every year, midway through June, and that they need to plan accordingly to get their legislative agenda through. When exactly does that member think he is finally going to get ahead on the planning of the legislative agenda to get the government's legislation finished in this place?

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Rhonda Kirkland

Conservative 6:20 p.m.

“I'm filling time by arguing about who gives long speeches. You talk too much. You're not a man of action. You don't let others speak. I'm shocked that you won't give them a turn. I want your newer MPs to talk so I can ignore them too.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, there is so much that I could unpack on this member's 20-minute speech in the House, starting with a few things. He kept saying that they talk about this and they talk about that and they talk about this, and he is right. They do an awful lot of talking on that side of the House. It makes a lot of announcements but it is not very much a government of action. The hon. member also called it a so-called new government, and yet he is here giving his 20-minute speech. I looked it up. I believe that there are about 60 to 70 new Liberal members who were elected in 2025, compared to about 45 new Conservative members who were elected in 2025. The comparison is crazy. When I think about the number of times that those new members have gotten up to speak in the House, compared to this member, who has been here since 2010, it is shocking to me. He talks about filibustering. Why is he getting up and giving a 20-minute speech when he has 60 to 70 new members who were elected in 2025 and who could get up and talk about this as well? I would like to know why he is always doing all of the talking and does not let other people do it. He is the king of filibustering.

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Tamara Jansen

Conservative 6:25 p.m.

“I'm supposed to talk about the budget. But I'm going to complain about other things instead. The government spends too much. It's not working. I don't like that. They should do less. Debt is bad. The government is spending more after the budget. I don't like that either. These programs sound like they were just made up. They weren't in the budget. That's suspicious. Government shouldn't keep throwing money at problems. But I'm not going to give any specifics on what to cut. Just that there's too much spending. Spending is bad. It's the largest deficit ever! Inflation is bad. Everything is more expensive. The government promised fiscal responsibility but didn't deliver. We should look at this bill more before passing it. Let the committee keep working.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay. The government has asked us today to accelerate consideration of the spring economic update because we are told time is short. What the government neglects to mention is that much of the time pressure is entirely of its own making. Let us be clear about what this motion would do. It would force all remaining amendments at committee to be moved and voted on without further debate. That is not a normal legislative process. It is Parliament being asked to do less of its most important job. A budget is supposed to be a statement of priorities. It is supposed to tell Canadians what the government intends to do, how much it intends to spend and how it intends to pay for it, yet within weeks of presenting budget 2025, the Prime Minister began announcing billions of dollars in new spending commitments that had not been presented when the budget was tabled. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that these additional measures are roughly $48 billion over five years. Basically, a second budget is being unveiled piecemeal through press conferences and announcements, while Parliament is expected to simply keep up. The most striking example is the newly announced Canada Strong fund, a $25-billion sovereign debt fund that did not appear as a central feature of the government's original plan. When a government finds $25 billion for a brand-new sovereign debt fund, only weeks after presenting a budget, Parliament should begin to wonder if perhaps these programs are not emerging from a coherent economic plan, but are being invented on the fly whenever the government finds itself in need of a new announcement. The same pattern can be seen in the government's new commitments on defence and international affairs. Billions of dollars have now been announced for new defence procurement structures, a Defence Investment Agency and a defence industrial strategy. Why do so many huge financial commitments continue to emerge after the government's fiscal plan was supposedly complete? The Prime Minister has also unveiled team Canada strong, a multi-billion-dollar labour strategy. Then came the government's new electricity initiative. Canadians were told that billions more would be going towards transmission infrastructure, electricity corridors and long-term transformation of Canada's power grid. Once again, the government presented the announcement as though it had just came up with the idea at the last minute. How come these were not in the budget in the first place? Then, last week, the government announced a $3-billion national food strategy. The government appears to believe that food security can be achieved through creating funds, hubs, agencies, financing mechanisms, planning structures and administrative frameworks. Food security has never been created by government planners. It has always been created by farmers, truckers, processors, retailers and entrepreneurs who bring the food from the field to the table. The announcement contains billions of dollars in new programs, but remarkably little discussion of the policies that have made food more expensive in the first place. Food security depends on farmers who can afford to farm, processors who can afford to process, truckers who can afford to transport goods and businesses that can operate in a competitive environment, yet after years of inflationary Liberal policies that have increased costs throughout the supply chain, the government now proposes another layer of inflationary programs and administration as the solution. Each one of these announcements arrives with a new price tag attached to the national credit card. Every few weeks, Canadians are presented with another announcement, another commitment, another expenditure and another promise that government spending will somehow unlock future prosperity, yet after 10 years of this approach, Canadians have become entitled to ask a reasonable question: If government spending were the key to economic growth, why have the billions of dollars of new spending not made anything better? The government would like Canadians to believe that these new programs are finally going to make life more affordable, but it is just an illusion. Every new fund, every new agency, every new strategy and every new spending commitment ultimately lands on the country's credit card. The bill always arrives. It arrives in the form of larger deficits, higher debt, rising interest costs and, ultimately, a higher cost of living for the very people the government claims it is trying to help. Bill C‑30 is simply the latest example of what has become a familiar Liberal pattern: more spending, more borrowing, more debt and higher costs for Canadians. The Prime Minister promised fiscal responsibility. Instead, this budget more than doubles the deficit left behind by Justin Trudeau, from $31 billion to $72 billion. Outside the pandemic, this is the largest deficit in Canadian history. Canadians were promised a new approach, but it turns out that the new approach means spending way more than Trudeau could ever have imagined. What makes this particularly troubling is that all of this is happening while Canada stands alone among the G20 countries as the only one in recession. The government continues to insist that more spending is the solution, yet with all that spending, Canada is the only G20 nation that has managed to achieve this disastrous distinction. One would think that after 10 years of disappointing results, the government might pause long enough to consider the fact that the remedy it keeps prescribing is actually making the illness worse. Canadians are already carrying the highest household debt burden in the G7. They are coping with some of the least affordable housing in the developed world. Food bank usage has reached record lows and young families can only dream of home ownership. Seniors are stretching fixed incomes further every month. Working parents are making impossible choices between groceries, rent, transportation and basic necessities. The Prime Minister did not campaign on doubling deficits. He did not campaign on larger government and ever-expanding spending commitments. He presented himself as the supposed adult in the room, the person who would restore fiscal discipline, bring competence back to the government and provide a new economic direction for the country. However, only months later, Canadians are looking at a $72-billion deficit, the largest deficit in Canadian history outside of the pandemic, and billions of dollars in additional spending commitments that were not even included in the budget. The Prime Minister promised to lower the debt-to-GDP ratio. This budget shows it is rising. He promised spending discipline. Spending is increasing faster than inflation and faster than economic growth. He promised economic renewal. Canada remains the only G20 country in recession. He promised to build faster, yet despite his creating new offices, new agencies and new approval processes, Canadians are still waiting to see any results. The concern is not simply that these promises have been broken. The concern is that the government appears not to have learned anything from the experience of the last decade. For 10 years, Canadians have been told that another spending program, another fund, another agency or another strategy will solve the problem, yet the problem continues to grow as the government continues to grow. The result is a country carrying more debt, paying more interest, experiencing weaker growth and facing higher costs than Canadians were promised. At some point, governments must be judged not by the announcements they make but by the results they achieve. Now the government has asked Parliament to spend less time examining legislation at the very moment it is asking Canadians to accept more spending, more borrowing and more debt. That is backwards. When a government announces another $48 billion in commitments after tabling a budget, scrutiny becomes more important, not less. When deficits are growing, debate becomes more important, not less. When Canadians are struggling to afford groceries, housing and everyday necessities, accountability becomes more important, not less. Parliament was not created to rubber-stamp government announcements. It exists to test them, challenge them and ensure taxpayers understand the consequences before the bill arrives. After 10 years of rising debt, rising costs and declining affordability, Canadians have every right to ask whether more spending will solve the problem or simply make it worse. The government might not like that, but it is not a reason to curtail debate. It is the very reason debate exists. That is why Conservatives support the amendment moved by my colleague from Cariboo—Prince George. His amendment would allow the finance committee to continue its work instead of forcing members to vote on remaining clauses and amendments without debate. It would restore the basic principle that Parliament should examine legislation before passing it. Canadians can no longer afford more of the same, and they certainly cannot afford less scrutiny of the policies that brought us here.

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What they said. What they meant.

Recent debates

Government Business No. 12—Proceedings on Bill C-30

Steven Bonk

Helena Konanz

Grant Jackson

Jason Groleau

Jason Groleau

Jason Groleau

Helena Konanz

Jason Groleau

Shelby Kramp-Neuman

Jason Groleau

Vincent Ho

Vincent Ho

Vincent Ho

Steven Bonk

Vincent Ho

Tamara Jansen

Vincent Ho

Grant Jackson

Rhonda Kirkland

Tamara Jansen