“I want the House to pass my motion telling the Prime Minister to testify at the finance committee. Government spending is driving up debt and the cost of living. More people in my riding are using food banks, including workers and seniors. The Prime Minister must explain how he plans to cut deficits, debt interest, and taxes.”

“moved: That, given that, (i) the cost of government is driving up the cost of living, (ii) the Parliamentary Budget Officer reports that this government’s fastest-growing cost is interest on the national debt which has more than doubled since 2021, (iii) this Liberal government now spends more on debt interest than the Canada Health Transfer, (iv) an average family of four will pay nearly $6,000 in federal taxes toward interest on the national debt this year, based on numbers from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, (v) the Prime Minister promised that he would reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio and deficit-to-GDP ratio, the House call on the Prime Minister to appear as a witness before the Standing Committee on Finance to testify on saving Canadians money by cutting deficit spending, debt interest and taxes. He said: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills North. I rise today to speak to my opposition day motion. The motion calls on the Prime Minister to appear before the Standing Committee on Finance to explain how his government plans to cut deficit spending, debt interest and the tax burden on Canadians. Behind the billions of dollars we discuss here in Ottawa lies a reality we must never lose sight of: that of hard-working families, retirees counting every dollar, entrepreneurs trying to keep their businesses afloat and young people dreaming of owning a home. In my riding of Richmond—Arthabaska—des‑Sources, I meet people who get up early, work long hours and do everything they can to provide a good life for their families. These are farmers, manufacturing workers, business owners, young families and seniors who have contributed to our society throughout their lives. These people are not asking for the moon. They want to be able to cover the cost of groceries, the mortgage, home heating and other bills without constantly worrying about their finances. Above all, they want to know that the tax dollars they hand over to the federal government are being used responsibly. Public finances are not merely a matter of figures. They have a very real impact on the lives of Canadians. On October 20, the Parliamentary Budget Officer published her latest economic and fiscal outlook, and those figures should give us all pause for thought. According to this report, Canada’s real economic growth is expected to reach just 0.9% in 2026 and 1.5% in 2027. These are modest growth rates for a country blessed with such abundant natural resources, such talented people and such significant economic potential. For Conservatives and for me, that is simply not good enough. Surely, we can be more ambitious. Meanwhile, federal deficits are projected to total more than $333 billion over the next five years. That is not all. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the federal deficit is expected to reach $63 billion this year, before rising to $70 billion in 2027-28. Even in 2030-31, the government is projected to run a deficit of nearly $68 billion. In other words, these forecasts do not point to a return to a balanced budget at any point during the period under review. I want to call attention to another very alarming item in the report. Public debt charges now make up the fastest-growing category of federal expenditures. In 2021‑22, they amounted to $24.5 billion. This year, they are expected to reach $60 billion. By 2030-31, the cost of debt charges alone could reach $83 billion. These funds are not going to be used to build hospitals, hire nurses, improve our roads and highways or give Canadians a break on their grocery bills. They will be used to meet financial obligations racked up the government. Of course, all governments have to be able to borrow. Debt can be useful for funding necessary and productive investments. However, the government has to be able to show that the borrowed funds will produce tangible results and that public finances will remain manageable. This is exactly why we are requesting today that the Prime Minister come and explain himself before the finance committee. We are seeing no results on the ground. In fact, daily life is growing worse for our people. I would now like to focus this debate on a reality that I am very familiar with, the reality of Richmond—Arthabaska—des-Sources. In my region, we are fortunate to have innovative entrepreneurs, passionate farmers, manufacturers and community organizations that do outstanding work. However, behind this economic vitality, there are also people facing significant financial hardship. The recent statistics on food assistance are particularly telling. According to Moisson Mauricie—Centre-du-Québec’s 2026 hunger report, the network of 61 member organizations are now responding to over 137,000 requests for food assistance every month. That is an increase of 23% in just one year and an increase of 60% in five years. I repeat: Requests for food assistance have increased by 60% in five years. What is even more worrisome is that nearly 13% of the households assisted by this network have employment income. They have an income, but they are still struggling to make ends meet. That means that people are working, getting paid and yet still have to ask for help to put food on the table. That is what is happening. The report also indicates that over 17% of the households that receive assistance rely mainly on an old age pension or retirement pension. Let us think about these seniors who worked for 30, 40 or 50 years. These are people who paid their taxes, raised their children and families and contributed to the development of our community. Today, some of them have to turn to food banks to make ends meet. That is what is happening right now. This situation deserves our full attention. I want to take this opportunity to thank the volunteers and community organizations in our regions that meet these needs every day. Their work is essential. However, we should be asking ourselves why so many Canadians need their services. Our collective goal should be to allow people to live with dignity from their work and their retirement income. In a country as rich as ours, both in terms of resources and opportunities, we need to find a way to make the essentials more affordable. That means a more productive economy, investments that create wealth and the sound management of public finances. We need to put an end to the Liberal culture of reckless spending. This Liberal culture is all about reckless spending. I am also thinking about the farmers in my riding. In Richmond—Arthabaska—des-Sources, agriculture plays a significant role in our economy and our regional identity. Our producers have to contend with the cost of fuel, machinery, equipment, fertilizers and transportation. When a farmer’s expenses rise, they cannot always incorporate those costs into the selling price of their products. They often have to absorb the increase at the expense of their profitability. When production and transportation costs rise throughout the food chain, this inevitably affects the price paid at the grocery store. That is why economic decisions made here in Ottawa have to take into account the impact on businesses and families in our regions. The same goes for our manufacturing companies. When a company needs to invest more to modernize, hire workers, or break into new markets, it needs a predictable economic environment. As a former entrepreneur, I know that what people need is predictability. Businesses need to have confidence in the future. They need a government capable of distinguishing between investments that truly foster growth and spending that simply burdens public finances. Prosperity cannot be decreed. It is built through hard work, innovation, investment, and entrepreneurship. The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report also raises a fundamental question about the government’s financial commitments. The Prime Minister promised to reduce the deficit-to-GDP ratio. However, according to projections published on October 20, that target is unlikely to be consistently met. The Prime Minister has to be able to defend his choices to the representatives of the people of Canada. I want to close by calling to mind once again the people of my riding. A family in Victoriaville will have to make choices when revising its budget, because the cost of essentials continues to rise. The Prime Minister also has to make choices. We expect him to appear before the Standing Committee on Finance to answer our questions and those of concerned Canadians.”

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“I want to thank the volunteers in my riding who raise money to feed people. They have to do this because the government is not helping them. The real goal must be making life affordable so people can make ends meet.”

“Madam Speaker, once again, I want to thank the people and volunteers getting involved in our communities. In my riding, a group of men founded Clan Destins, which supports the Boîtes à lunch program. These individuals have dedicated themselves to the cause and are raising funds because the government is currently unable to support them. I thank them for that. What we need right now is for people to be able to make ends meet. That is the ultimate goal.”

“The member must have missed my speech. I did talk about seniors who worked for decades and paid taxes all their lives.”

“Madam Speaker, with all due respect to my colleague, I think she must have been absent during my speech, in which I spoke about our seniors who worked for 30, 40 or 50 years and paid taxes all their lives. That is exactly what I said in the speech I delivered a few minutes ago.”

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“Conservatives want to lower taxes. We need to cut rules in Ottawa, make the government smaller, and leave more money with Canadians. A Conservative government will do that.”

“Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party is the party that wants to lower taxes. We need to cut red tape in Ottawa, reduce the size of government and put money back in the pockets of all Canadians. That is what the next Conservative government will do.”

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“Interest on the national debt is growing faster than our spending on health care. I want to ask my colleague how the government could cut spending and balance the budget.”

“Madam Speaker, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the interest on the national debt is the fastest-growing category of government expenditures, outpacing health care transfers. How does my colleague think the government could reduce spending and put the budget back on a more responsible path?”

“We are paying more on debt interest than we spend on health care. The government wastes money without getting results. It must stop this reckless spending and manage our money properly.”

“Madam Speaker, it is unbelievable. We are paying more for interest on the debt than we are investing in health care, as my colleague just said. Has anyone thought about everything that could be done with that money? The problem is the current Liberal culture; the Liberals spend recklessly without achieving any results. I often talk about a real-life example involving the lease of a parcel of land in Nova Scotia. A private company leases land for $13,500 and is leasing it back to the Liberal government for $20 million a year for 10 years. That comes to $200 million. That is how the government spends its money. We need sound management, and the culture of reckless spending must end.”

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“The government's economic plan is failing. Debt is growing twice as fast as the deficit, and the government is hiding it through accounting tricks with Crown corporations. We are spending more and more tax dollars just to pay interest on that debt, while economic growth is almost zero. The government has broken every spending promise it has made since 2015. I want the House to vote for this motion.”

“Madam Speaker, the government’s economic plan is not working. We now have enough data coming in over the last 18 months of the Prime Minister’s tenure to know that its plan is not working. That is confirmed by the most recent report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer of October 20, which warns that the federal debt is growing at two times the pace of the federal deficit. That is because the government is capitalizing the borrowing it is doing and putting it on the balance sheet through the use of arm’s-length entities like Crown corporations rather than expensing it on the profit and loss statement, on the budget. This accounting is in some ways hiding the pace of the growth of the federal debt. As a result, the PBO projects that the federal debt will increase this year from 41% of GDP to 43% of GDP by decade’s end, going from $1.3 trillion to $1.67 trillion, an increase of some $367 billion. This is despite the fact that the Liberal Party and the Prime Minister promised in the last election to ensure, “debt-to-GDP declines over the budget horizon.” Clearly, the government is not abiding by its commitment in its last platform. This massive growth in the federal debt is having real consequences. As a result of this acceleration of the growth in the federal debt, two times the pace of the deficit, interest on the national debt is now starting to grow at an alarming pace. Just several years ago, interest on the national debt cost six cents for every tax dollar of revenue. Today, it is 10.5¢ for every tax dollar of revenue. By decade’s end, in a mere just over three years, it is going to be almost 14¢ of every tax dollar, which is projected to be approximately $83 billion a year. That is almost one and a half times what the federal government spends in cash transfers on public health care. For those who say that that amount is not nearly as high as the crisis we faced in the 1980s and 1990s, I looked at the interest expense ratio charts the government produces. When the interest on the national debt started to accelerate in the late 1970s, if I recall correctly, in 1977 it was a mere 14¢ of every tax dollar. A short six or seven years later, it had skyrocketed well beyond 20¢, hitting 30¢ per tax dollar in less than a decade, leading to the fiscal crisis of the mid-1990s. This growth in interest on the national debt is concerning. It is an alarm that has been raised by many of the folks who helped get Canada on the right fiscal track in the late 1990s, like Don Drummond, who has been saying that the government should abide by its fiscal anchors and keep the debt-to-GDP ratio on a declining track, and that we are putting the very hard-earned gains of the 1990s at risk. Those hard-earned gains led to a much lower cost of capital for this country relative to other economic peers such as the United States. That is being put at risk with the government’s reckless spending. Even though the government is borrowing at twice the pace and is spending way more than the previous Trudeau government, with deficits double that of the last budget of Minister Chrystia Freeland at almost 2% rather than 1% of GDP, and is spending tons of money and borrowing even more money, the economy is not doing well. In fact, economic growth is being downgraded. The PBO downgraded economic growth for this year to 0.9%. That follows on the heels of other economic projections, which have downgraded growth over the last couple of months. The Bank of Canada has downgraded growth, and bank economists have downgraded growth. We are now in a situation where growth has been downgraded to less than 1% this year, effectively zero, all while affordability and inflation continue to be a problem. In fact, the markets are projecting that the Bank of Canada is going to hike interest rates. We have somewhat of a stagflationary environment here, again, proof that the government’s economic plan is not working. I would like to finish by focusing on this fact: The previous Liberal government blew through every fiscal anchor it established. I reviewed all the fiscal anchors it established. Do we remember the 2015 Liberal promise of a fiscal anchor, the one that they campaigned on in that election, that we would run budget deficits just on a temporary basis, capped at no more than $10 billion a year and just for a couple of years, and would return to budget balance? When they came to office, the Liberals threw that plan out the window, just like they chucked out the plan to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio they made in the last election. In the Liberals’ first budget, they replaced that temporary set of deficits with a new fiscal anchor of a shrinking federal debt-to-GDP ratio over the medium term. Then they abandoned that fiscal anchor. In the fall economic statement of 2020, Minister Freeland introduced new fiscal anchors tied to labour market indicators such as employment and unemployment. These guardrails were later dropped. Then the government came forward with a new fiscal anchor, which in some ways was the old fiscal anchor. The Liberals came forward with the fiscal anchor of refocusing on reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio. They introduced that fiscal anchor in budget 2022. That ratio did not move consistently downward, and so they later abandoned that pledge. The Liberals came up with a new pledge in the fall economic statement of 2023, where they decided that their new anchor would be to keep annual deficits below 1% of GDP. Then we got a new Prime Minister and a new Liberal leader who replaced that fiscal anchor with two new fiscal anchors, abandoning the fiscal anchor he had promised in the platform and in the last budget. Those two new fiscal anchors were a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio and to balance operating expenses with revenue by 2028-29. Here we are, less than a year later, and the government is going to blow through that umpteenth fiscal anchor that it established because the PBO projects that deficits to GDP are going to be increasing rather than decreasing, from 1.8% this year to 2% in 2027-28. I would note that this fiscal anchor is double the previous fiscal anchor that Minister Freeland had established. The government and the Prime Minister are putting us on a reckless path of spending and ever-increasing deficits. That is particularly worrying when we look at what is going on with countries that are facing high debt loads, such as France, and when we look at what is going on with the pace of growth of the U.S. deficit and debt. We are not an island, and we are not a reserve currency. If there is going to be a crisis in sovereign debt borrowing, Canada is particularly vulnerable, as we were in the mid-1990s, and we will be buffeted by whatever crisis takes place outside of this country because of this ever-increasing debt and this ever-increasing interest on the debt. The PBO is highlighting what many other reports have highlighted: that the government’s economic plan is not working, that the national debt is growing at double the pace of deficits, that economic growth is slowing, that inflation is starting to take hold again and that affordability remains a crisis. For all those reasons, I encourage the House to vote for the motion.”

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“Canada's debt is in worse shape than international reports say. Our provinces carry huge debts, with Ontario owing more than California. Our currency is also weaker than those of other major countries. The government needs to fix our economy by helping businesses produce more, not by spending money to boost demand.”

“Madam Speaker, I disagree with the IMF’s assertion that Canada’s debt to GDP is in good shape. I think that fails to take into account the fact that Canada’s subnational governments have some of the highest, if not the highest, indebtedness in the OECD. If I recall correctly, the Province of Ontario has more debt than the State of California, whose economy is bigger than Canada’s. Subnational debt in the United States is much lower than in Canada, and that is not incorporated into the G7 rankings that the IMF has analyzed, nor is the fact that of the G7 countries, Canada is the smallest currency and is not a reserve currency, unlike the other members of the European Union, in the Eurozone, the United States or Japan. I think that assertion fails to take into account what the member opposite has been talking about. In brief, to finish, the solution is to address supply-side reforms, rather than the government’s approach of always subsidizing demand-side initiatives. That is the fundamental problem with the government’s economic approach.”

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“We must protect francophone rights, and we need a growing economy to pay for francophone programs. The government just spends more money instead of making the economic changes we need to actually grow the economy.”

“Madam Speaker, I think it is vital to defend the rights of francophones across Canada. I think that starts with ensuring that our economy grows significantly to make it possible to subsidize programs for francophones and the French fact in Canada. The problem with the government’s economic plan is that whenever a challenge arises, its response is more government spending rather than the kind of fundamental economic reforms that would create the conditions for stronger GDP growth and a more productive economy That is the fundamental problem with the government’s plan.”

“We are adding thousands of dollars to the debt every second. I want my colleague to explain to the Liberals again why debt is bad.”

“Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very expensive speech, as it turns out. I just googled the debt. We are spending between $2,500 and $5,000 per second in this country on the debt. The 10-minute speech was a $3-million speech. It may only have been $1.5 million on the lower part. I would like my colleague to explain to the Liberals once again why debt is bad.”

“Our growing debt worries me. Paying for it takes too much government revenue, which puts programs like health care and education at risk.”

“Madam Speaker, the growth in the debt is concerning, because we have seen this story play out before. It starts to chew up an ever-increasing amount of federal revenues, putting at risk the very social programs, like health care and education, that Canadians rely upon.”

“The government has borrowed and printed money for 11 years. Paying interest on the debt costs about $60 billion and could soon cost $80 billion. Canadians are still lining up at food banks and cannot get ahead. I want the member to explain how this makes sense.”

“Mr. Speaker, the hon. member representing the government is omitting a key fact. The government, for the last 11 years, has been borrowing money and promising Canadians that the next day will be a better day. The government is printing money and piling on the debt. Our debt service is somewhere around $60 billion, and will probably be $80 billion in two or three years. That is very concerning. Anyone with the right economic mind can understand how concerning that is to Canadians’ lives. Canadians are still lining up at food banks. The Liberals are printing all this money, borrowing all this money. It is billions of dollars. The debt service is piling up and Canadians are not getting ahead. How does that make sense to the member?”

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“The government collects far more taxes now than it did five years ago, but it still spends much more than it takes in. Debt payments are so high that they will soon cost more than everything collected through the sales tax. This leaves less money for health care and the military. I want the member to explain where all that extra tax money went.”

“Madam Speaker, back in 2020, government tax revenue was $284 billion. In 2025, it is $417 billion. The GST went from $32 billion to $52 billion. The amount of money the government has racked up in debt means that a lot of money is going to be spent on debt servicing charges. The GST that is currently being collected is not even enough to cover the debt servicing charges, let alone things like health care transfers to the province, military spending and things like that, which Canadians are expecting. I very simply ask the member, with the government set to blow the debt servicing charges all the way up to $83 billion in the coming years, and with all the extra tax revenue the government has been generating, where did the money go? Why is the government running such a massive deficit if it has increased tax revenue by over $130 billion in five years?”

“The Prime Minister has added more to our national debt than all other prime ministers combined. We now spend more money paying off that debt than we send to provinces for health care. I want the member to explain how this huge debt stops us from building needed infrastructure.”

“Madam Speaker, there was so much in that speech that I agreed with and quite a bit in that speech that I did not agree with. I think the main thing I do not agree with is that the Prime Minister has the heart of a Conservative. A Conservative would never run up such ridiculous amounts of debt. There has been more debt added to our national debt load during the terms of former prime minister Trudeau and the current Prime Minister than there was under all of the other prime ministers combined. In fact, we see now that in a lot of the COVID spending, all the bonds that were sold during that time were short-term bonds, and $600 billion or 29% of our national debt is going to be turned over this year. When the member was mentioning hospitals and the infrastructure needs in Canada, I could not agree more with him. We are now spending more on debt repayment than we do on health care transfers. Could the hon. member explain a little further how the debt that is crippling us now is actually halting the investment in infrastructure?”

“Given the member's background in economics, does he think the Prime Minister can get the budget under control?”

“Madam Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague this: In his expertise, as he has a background in economics, does he believe that the Prime Minister could actually get this budget under control? What are some of his points about that?”

“The Prime Minister plans to borrow $733 billion over five years. Paying the interest on this debt will cost billions that could go to health care or tax cuts. Life is getting harder for Canadians, and food bank visits are at record highs. I want the Prime Minister to come to the finance committee to explain his plan to stop this spending and lower the debt.”

“Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Cloverdale—Langley City. Today we are speaking about a motion before the House that is quite timely, because the Prime Minister’s government is projected to borrow $733 billion in five years. That is more than the total debt accumulated by every prime minister in Canadian history before Justin Trudeau. It is also more than the debt added during Prime Minister Trudeau’s ten years in government, years that included a once-in-a-century global pandemic. What took generations of prime ministers to accumulate, the current Prime Minister plans to borrow in just five years. This is an extraordinary pace of borrowing, and it is mortgaging our children’s future, but what do Canadians have to show for all this borrowing and all this spending? Our economic growth forecast has been downgraded to just 0.9% this year. We have a record 2.4 million visits at food banks in a single month, and one in three is for a child. Millions of Canadians are struggling to afford the most basic necessities. Meanwhile, the fastest-growing expense for the federal government is not defence, not infrastructure and not health care. It is interest on the national debt. How sad is that? There are billions of dollars that cannot be spent on health care, infrastructure or lowering taxes for hard-working Canadians. By 2030, the government is projected to spend approximately $83 billion a year just to service the national debt. What is the government’s plan to bring this under control? There is no plan. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer projects that the federal debt-to-GDP ratio will rise over the next five years. That means that our debt burden is growing rather than shrinking, and it is in fact growing faster than our economy is growing. That is why we are calling on the Prime Minister to appear before the finance committee to answer a very simple question: What is his plan to reduce the deficit spending, bring debt interest under control, deliver tax relief for Canadians and bring the debt under control? Let me ask a question. What would we do if our household debt were spiralling out of control? Would we change the way we measure our debt? Would we start calling our everyday expenses investments? Would we move some of our borrowing onto another credit card and tell our family that our finances were improving? No, of course we would not, but that is precisely the kind of fiscal manipulation we are seeing from the Prime Minister. He built his reputation on his financial credentials. Canadians were told they could trust him to manage our country’s finances responsibly, but look at what has happened. The debt-to-GDP ratio is no longer the government’s primary fiscal anchor. Every other serious country around the world uses this fiscal anchor, but the Prime Minister has shredded it and made up one of his own. He redefined operating expenses under a broader capital investment framework, allowing spending traditionally treated as operating expenses to be treated as capital investments. There is the borrowing, hundreds of billions of dollars in loans, Crown corporation financing and other financial transactions, that adds to federal borrowing requirements without increasing the reported deficit by the same amount. In other words, the Prime Minister can borrow as much as he would like, and the fiscal anchor he has chosen will never be tripped. Then, the government turns around and tells Canadians that it is on the path to balancing the operating budget. Is that not convenient? Here is what Canadians need to understand. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, over five years, the government is projected to run $333 billion in deficits, but borrow $733 billion. That is a difference of $400 billion. Much of that difference relates to loans, Crown corporation financing and other financial assets. Loans are recorded as assets because there is an expectation that those loans will, of course, be repaid. Let us take the example of Canada Post, a Crown corporation that has loans given by the federal government. It has not reported an annual profit since 2017, and it has accumulated billions of dollars in losses. That raises a very obvious question: How confident can taxpayers be that all government loans will be fully repaid? With the government expanding its use of Crown corporations and other financing vehicles for defence, housing and investment initiatives, Canadians deserve full transparency about the borrowing, liabilities and financial risk involved. Moving borrowing into a different part of the government’s accounts does not make the financial obligations disappear. Here is what makes this even more concerning. The International Monetary Fund has called for greater clarity and independent verification of the government’s fiscal framework. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has warned that the government’s new fiscal anchors provide very little discipline on borrowing. The PBO has made one thing absolutely clear: Balancing the operating budget does not mean that the government’s finances are balanced. Here we have a Prime Minister who built his reputation on financial expertise, asking Canadians to trust him while adopting fiscal measures that provide an incomplete picture of our growing borrowing requirements. Fiscal responsibility is not about how we cleverly present the numbers. It is about whether we can actually control the debt and spending. Changing the accounting does not change the bill that Canadians will ultimately have to pay. On that note, $83 billion in interest means $6,000 per Canadian household just to service the debt. That is $6,000 in taxes just to service the debt. That does not include the repayment of the debt. That is why the Prime Minister must come before committee, answer these questions, explain how he intends to restore fiscal discipline, and present a credible plan for the repayment of the debt so we can bring this amount of debt under control. What concerns me even more than the debt is what all the government spending has actually delivered for Canadians. I judge the success of a government by a very simple measure. Can Canadians build a good life for themselves and their families? Can a young couple afford their first home? Can parents afford to raise their children? Can seniors retire with dignity? Can an honest day’s work still provide a decent standard of living? That is how we should measure success. Today, millions of Canadians are struggling to do precisely those things. We have a record of 2.4 million food bank visits in a single month, and one-third involve children. Let us think about what that says about the state of our country’s finances. This is Canada, one of the wealthiest, most resource-rich nations on earth, yet we have parents working hard, sometimes at multiple jobs, who still cannot afford to put food on the table for their children. We have a moral obligation to help those in need, of course. When someone falls on hard times, when a family faces hardships or when a senior cannot make ends meet, we should stand with them. However, we also have a moral obligation to ask why so many Canadians need that assistance in the first place. Why are millions struggling to afford basic groceries? This is not normal, and we must never accept it as normal. What troubles me is that the Liberals seem to celebrate the number of people receiving government benefits as evidence of their success. I believe they are measuring the wrong thing. I do not want to celebrate how many Canadians depend on government assistance. I want to celebrate how many Canadians no longer need it.”

“Credit rating agencies have warned the government about its rising debt. Our debt compared to our economy will get worse over the next five years. The government needs to admit it is borrowing too much money and share a real plan to pay it back.”

“Madam Speaker, I would encourage the member to understand how those credit ratings are issued. If the member remembers, in the last budget, there was a warning from Fitch Ratings to the federal government about the amount of debt it was incurring, because it dropped the fiscal anchor that measures debt, which is the debt-to-GDP ratio. For a rating to be maintained, the debt-to-GDP ratio must be maintained. What are we seeing? It will be getting worse over the next five years. Members from the Liberal government continuously stand up in the House and say that they will take no lessons from the Conservatives. Well, perhaps they can take a lesson from the cold, hard math, and the math is not looking good. I would encourage the member to take a sobering stand, recognize that there is a problem with the amount of borrowing the government is taking on and provide a credible plan to repay it.”

“Government spending is out of control. Our fastest-growing cost is interest on the debt, which is at $83 billion. Working Canadians pay for this interest. We cannot keep ignoring this debt and spending.”

“Madam Speaker, it is, of course, important to look at the full equation when we are looking at the country’s finances. Revenues are important. We need to continue to generate revenues, but what we are seeing right now is that expenses are out of control. More importantly, the interest expense is the fastest-growing expense on the books, at $83 billion in interest. This interest has to be serviced. Ultimately, it has to be paid, and it is paid by dollars taken from hard-working Canadians. We cannot continue down this trajectory of ignoring the spending and ignoring the debt and how the debt is going to be repaid.”

“Canadians have to pay back the government's growing debt, and it hurts our children's future. Young people and seniors are already struggling to afford things. I want the member to explain how this debt and overspending hurt everyday life now and in the future.”

“Madam Speaker, I will take this opportunity to ask the member what it means to have more debt, deficits and interest payments. We all know that taxpayers are on the hook to pay the debt, which is amortizing their future and their kids’ future. We have seen that everyone is struggling with affordability. Youth are struggling, and seniors are looking for relief. What are the impacts of the debt and deficits on future generations and everyday life for Canadians at the present time?”

“I spent 15 years working with business loans, and debt can be very risky. The government is hiding how much debt we really have by putting it in Crown corporations. We cannot make good financial choices when we cannot see the full picture.”

“Madam Speaker, I was a commercial lender for 15 years. I worked with debt and loans, and there is a certain level of sustainability that has to be considered. Debt can be very risky. Right now, we have a government that is, in fact, hiding the true amount of debt. The Liberals are hiding it in Crown corporations. When we cannot see the full picture, how can good decisions be made? A business owner will tell us that they need reliable financial statements to make decisions, and we do not have that in our country’s finances.”

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