Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, it is really fitting that we should be here today discussing budgetary matters the day before the Liberal government tables its 2026 budget. This is a budget implementation act, so it is an opportunity to talk about the state of federal finances, to have a look at where we are, how we got here and what the road ahead looks like. We should all buckle up because it looks like it is going to be a bumpy ride. Let us start with where we are now. Well, for starters, we are in the red. There is a lot of debt. Even the Prime Minister’s own economists confirm it. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, a non-partisan finance and accounting expert appointed by the government itself, just came out with a scathing report card saying exactly that. She said that our deficit now is more than double the size of the one left behind by Justin Trudeau just 18 months ago. Canadians already watched Justin Trudeau spend unprecedented amounts of money. Can members imagine just how much someone would have to spend to double that? Somehow, the Prime Minister and his finance minister found a way. The Parliamentary Budget Officer warned that borrowing is backloaded and will get even worse before the end of this decade. What happens when someone spends more money than they earn? Anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage or carried a balance on a credit card knows the answer. Eventually, they have to pay for that borrowing. That is exactly what is happening here in Ottawa. The bankers and bondholders are not donating this money out of kindness. Every dollar of deficit the government borrows must be repaid, complete with interest. The Liberal government may run up the tab, but the bill always arrives in the mailbox of Canadian taxpayers, and that bill is becoming increasingly expensive. The federal government could take every single dollar it collects in GST from everything bought and sold across Canada for an entire year and it still would not be enough to cover 12 months of interest payments on our national debt. The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s calculations show that interest on the debt now costs Canadians more than the Canada health transfer. Ottawa is spending approximately $59 billion a year on debt charges, compared with about $57 billion for health transfers to provinces. Let us think about what that means. We have reached a point where the interest of past borrowing exceeds the federal government’s largest transfer for health care. That should concern every Canadian, regardless of political stripe. Every single year, tens of billions of taxpayer dollars leave the federal treasury before a single hospital bed is added, before a single doctor is hired and before a single Canadian receives faster access to care. We can imagine what $59 billion could do if it remained available for Canadian priorities. It could help reduce wait times in our health care system. It could provide meaningful tax relief to families struggling with the cost of living. It could strengthen the Canadian Armed Forces and support our brave men and women in uniform. Instead, that money is being consumed by debt charges while Canadians see no improvement in services, no shorter wait times and no direct benefit in their daily lives. We all know the Prime Minister used to be the governor of the Bank of Canada. Given that background, Canadians could reasonably expect fiscal discipline from the government. In fact, David Dodge, another former governor of the Bank of Canada, offered a simple rule of thumb. The federal government should keep debt servicing costs below 10% of its total revenues. Beyond that point, borrowing becomes increasingly expensive as lenders demand compensation for the greater risk. When too much of the government’s income is being consumed by interest payments, it becomes a warning sign that the country’s finances are heading in the wrong direction. The Liberal government crossed that threshold, and the problem has only gotten worse since. With more people and an aging population, there is a greater demand for services, so people might expect the fastest-growing federal expense to be health care, old age security or the Canada child benefit, but it is not. In fact, it is not even a service provided to Canadians. The fastest-growing line item is the interest on our debt. Just a few years ago, every Canadian owed about $600 in interest on the government debt. Right now, that stands at nearly $1,500. In five years, it will be nearly $2,000, or more than three times what Canadians were paying only a few years ago. I want to speak directly to the people at home in Cambridge and North Dumfries who are watching today. They can think about what $2,000 could do for them right now. That is a month or two of groceries to help feed their family. It could cover a month’s rent or help make a mortgage payment to keep a roof over their head. It could help pay down student loans, cover rising utility bills, replace a broken appliance or put a little money aside toward a down payment on a first home. For most Canadians, $2,000 is not a small amount of money. It is the difference between getting ahead and falling further behind. That is the real cost of the Liberal government’s reckless spending. Money that could be helping Canadian families build a better future for themselves is instead being used to pay interest on the government’s debt. That brings us to the next bump in the road. How did we get here? Deficits and debt do not appear overnight. They are the result of choices. The Liberal government repeatedly assured Canadians that there was a plan to keep the country’s finances on track. It told Canadians that it could be trusted with a national credit card. The Prime Minister pointed to a series of so-called fiscal anchors that were meant to guide spending decisions and limit borrowing. The problem is that what he says and what he does are two very different things. This week, the Parliamentary Budget Officer was clear. She said those anchors provide very little fiscal discipline when it comes to spending. Specifically, the Liberal government set out two fiscal anchors: a declining debt-to-GDP ratio and a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio. However, instead of going down, both of those ratios are going up. The government’s problem is not that it missed its targets. The government’s problem is that its targets are moving in the wrong direction. By its own metrics and standards, the government is failing. It is perfectly clear that the government cannot be trusted to self-regulate when it can simply sit back and spend someone else’s money, and that is why Conservatives are here: to hold the government accountable when it goes too far, to ask the tough questions Canadians deserve to have answered and to be the voice of reason and responsibility in this place. The question is not whether there is a problem. The numbers make that perfectly clear. The real question is whether the government is prepared to change course before the situation gets worse. More importantly, where do we go from here? The government is set to table another budget tomorrow, and Conservatives have some suggestions. To start, the government needs to rein in reckless spending and start living within its means. Fiscal responsibility does not mean abandoning priorities. We are not talking about cutting important social programs. We want to always be able to afford these programs, but in order to do so, we need to cut back on wasteful spending. Conservatives have identified $150 billion in wasteful spending on foreign aid, consultants, bureaucracy and pointless projects that could be cancelled tomorrow to save Canadians money. If the Prime Minister does not want to do that, then we at least want him to keep his word and stick to the so-called fiscal anchors that he himself laid out. They are insufficient, but they are a start. More importantly, they are something the Prime Minister promised Canadians. Promises are easy to make. Fiscal discipline means keeping them when it counts. Finally, we want the Prime Minister to save Canadians money on gas, groceries and everything else. He can do so by eliminating punitive taxes like the GST on fuel, the industrial carbon tax and the fuel standard. At the end of the day, this really is not all that complicated. Every person understands that one cannot spend money one does not have. They know that when the credit card bill comes due, somebody has to pay it. Every dollar the Liberal government spends ultimately comes out of a hard-working Canadian’s pocket. That is why we expect the government to exercise a little common sense, to prioritize the things that matter, to make responsible decisions and to recognize there is a limit to what taxpayers can afford. However, that is not what we are seeing from the government. Instead, we are seeing a government that wants to spend more, borrow more and tax more, while asking Canadians to simply have faith that everything will work out in the end. Canadians have heard that story before, and they are paying the price for it today. Tomorrow, the Prime Minister will have another opportunity to demonstrate that he understands the seriousness of the situation. He can present a budget that gets spending under control, restores fiscal discipline and gives Canadians some much-needed relief, or he can double down on the same approach that got us here in the first place. Conservatives will be watching very closely, because our job is not to give the government a blank cheque. It is to make sure that every dollar of taxpayer money is spent responsibly, that families get a break wherever possible and that the next generation is not left holding the bill for today’s decisions. If the Prime Minister cannot do that tomorrow, then Canadians should know exactly why.
