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.
