Brad Redekopp

“The Liberals cut grants that paid Canadians up to $4,000 to train for skilled trades. Now they are letting employers hire foreign workers for skilled jobs without even trying to hire Canadians first. Immigration should be much lower, and the focus should be on training and hiring our own workers. I want the government to stop making it easier for foreign workers to take jobs from Canadians.”

“Mr. Speaker, Canadians who want to become electricians, bricklayers and heavy-duty mechanics used to get up to $4,000 from the apprenticeship incentive and completion grants. The Liberals cancelled these programs. Instead of hiring Canadians for skilled jobs, unbelievably, the Prime Minister’s government announced that it is going to let employers recruit foreign labour for highly trained jobs without even trying to hire a Canadian. Talk about a lack of due diligence. Conservatives believe there should always be way less immigration, and the government should be focused on training and hiring Canadians first. Will the Liberals cancel their plans to make it easier for foreign labour to take these jobs away from Canadians?”

In response to a question from Martin Champoux

“I oppose this bill. It gives too much power to the government in Ottawa instead of helping businesses. Life has gotten harder and more expensive for Canadians under this government.”

“Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt, as I have said many times, that this government is all about talk. When we speak with constituents, with regular Canadians, we will, time and again, find that their life is actually worse. If we ask, “Has you life gotten better in the last year?”, their is answer is, “No.” Things are more expensive, their paycheque does not go as far and that is a direct indictment on this 11-year-old government’s record. Also, so much of what is talked about here in Bill C-39 is centralizing power again in Ottawa, centralizing power in the government, rather than creating a level playing field, which would be the way we would want to do this: create the environment so that businesses can do what they want, rather than concentrating all of that power in Ottawa.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The government's plan is not working. We have lost a trillion dollars in business investment, and companies still refuse to build new projects here. There is too much red tape.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is one thing to say half a trillion dollars was talked about, but we have lost a trillion dollars. If we lost a trillion and we get a half a trillion back, I do not know if that is a very good deal. I do not think I would want that deal. I think the proof is in the pudding. The Prime Minister talked about this new pipeline project. The Liberals removed all the barriers. They went to industry and said, “Please come and build this. Put your money on the table. Let’s build this project”, but it did not happen, because there are still too many barriers. Sure, there is lots of talk. Of course, people want to do things. I would say to the member that hope is not a strategy. We all want all kinds of things, but we only get the things we deserve. With our bureaucracy, with our red tape right now, we are getting what we deserve, and that is a lack of investment.”

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In response to a question from Christine Normandin

“I do not support this bill. The government's rules have created red tape, cost taxpayers money, and failed to get major projects built. Instead, we should approve projects in six months, end the carbon tax and clean fuel rules, and cancel laws that block pipelines and oil tankers. We also need to cut taxes on diesel so food and shipping cost less.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to stand up in this House and speak on behalf of the residents of Saskatoon West. Today, we are speaking about Bill C-39, the building Canada strong act. I think everybody in our country, including those in the Liberal government, agrees that 11 years of the current government has left Canada lacking when it comes to investment, lacking when it comes to jobs and the economy and lacking when it comes to GDP per person. We need to do everything we can to get more business activity and more investment in this country. The building Canada strong act sounds very familiar to me. If we go back about a year and a half to the last election, what happened right after? We heard these words: We need to build at speeds never seen before. It is much like we are hearing today. There is a lot of déjà vu. Members will recall that at that time, the government came forward with Bill C-5. The government’s website, even today, says this about Bill C-5: Canada must build critical new infrastructure at speeds not seen in generations. This includes the infrastructure to diversify our trading relationships and to become an energy superpower in both clean and conventional energies. That is great. The government needed, at that time, to get this bill through the House and pass it immediately so we could create the Major Projects Office and create projects of national interest, because this was urgent for “speeds not seen in generations”. This House did that. This House debated the bill relatively quickly and passed it. We rushed it through. What was accomplished? We have bureaucrats in place. They are all getting paid and probably getting bonuses too. Five hundred projects have been submitted, so people in the industries stepped up with lots of ideas. However, while the member across the aisle said there were 24 projects, I saw 18 on the website that have been considered by the office. Just last week, the very first one squeaked its way through the office, but it has not started yet. The actual results of this office are that zero projects have been built. I find it kind of amusing that the solution is another bill. Last year, we had the Building Canada Act. This is the building Canada strong act, and I can only assume that next year we are going to have the building Canada even stronger act to fix all the problems that have not been fixed here. The government is about talk, not results, and Canadians need actual construction jobs, need actual work and need money so they can pay their bills. As I said, with respect to Bill C-5, there were 500 project applications, and only one cleared. I want to talk about the difference between a Conservative approach and a Liberal approach. The Liberal approach is all about control. The Liberals will not let the private sector do its thing. The Liberals want the private sector to come to them. They want people in the private sector to come begging to their offices, saying, “Please, sir, we would like to build this project.” They like the view of control. They like the ability to say yes and no. They like it when people come to them essentially begging to do things, and they like to be able to say no, yes, no, yes, to basically pick the projects. The Conservative approach is very different. Our approach is to get government out of the way and level the playing field. We need to let the private sector do what it does best. People in the private sector analyze projects. They look at the benefits, look at the costs and look at the implications on the environment and other things, and they make their decisions. Those decisions actually benefit all Canadians, because they create jobs, they create work and they create paycheques. We need to put guardrails in place, obviously, so there have to be environmental protections and there has to be a taxation system that works, but it needs to be predictable, fair and timely. If people meet the standards as laid out by the guardrails, then their project should be approved. They do not need to come begging to the government to get it approved; they can just go ahead and do it. The result of that is that more projects get built. The Liberals like to pick winners and losers. Conservatives want everyone to win. As a result, the Liberals have one project now slowly moving its way through the system. Conservatives would have hundreds of projects by now that would be moving forward. How would we do that? We have said it many times. We would repeal Bill C-69, the no more pipelines act. We would repeal Bill C-48, the tanker ban. We would repeal the industrial carbon tax and the clean fuel standard. We would establish predictable, time-limited assessment reviews with a one-and-done approach. The one-and-done approach is really important to this because it is one project, one review. It is a simple application, a firm decision timeline and predictable milestones, with a six-month approval or, in some cases, when there is an extremely complicated case, a one-year approval. We would maintain our safety and environmental standards, but we would put a predictable process in place for businesses so that they know what they are up against. What we need is private investor confidence. That is what is lacking in our country right now. We need permanent fixes to the bureaucracy and red tape that have been created by this 11-year-old government. We need to create stability and predictability so that investors can make their decisions knowing what the future will hold. There are potentially billions of dollars in projects waiting to be done in Canada. We need them, and our workers need them. We need our national income to grow so that as the cost of everything goes up, our paycheques rise with it. They have not. We see that. All of us were in our ridings last week. I am sure members talked to many people who struggle from day to day, more people than ever before and people we would not expect. This is part of the answer, to have construction and have investment, but that is not happening under the government, and it will not happen under Bill C-39. We have capital on the sidelines because of uncertainty. Businesses have money to spend, but they are not spending it in Canada. We also need private proponents for commercially viable projects, and I will talk more about that in a second. We do not need taxpayer subsidies. We need investor confidence. Let us talk about the Pacific link pipeline announcement. This is the very first project of national interest out of the Major Projects Office. Guess what it does not have. It does not have a private proponent. Who is paying for it? It is the taxpayer. Who is taking the risk on the project? It is the taxpayer. How can it be that the Prime Minister himself has encouraged it to get built and has supposedly cleared the pathway, yet there is no private proponent? That tells us that something is definitely not right in the system, and that the bureaucracy and red tape have not been eliminated. It is government money that is going to be spent on this much-needed project. Do not get me wrong; we need this project for the sake of our country to grow our country, but it is the taxpayers taking all the risks, and that should not be. We need to get government out of the way and let builders do the building. In Saskatchewan, these impacts are very real. Our economy in Saskatchewan is based on resources. I just want to single out food production. We produce grain and potash in Saskatchewan, and this directly impacts people at the grocery store. It impacts Canadians and people all around the world. What is critical in those two industries, grain and potash, is railways, roads and ports. Any bottlenecks become a problem for our customers. What is needed in order to make farms, railways, roads and ports work? It is diesel fuel. Diesel fuel is consumed in farming, trucking and railways, in everything. Higher fuel costs result directly in higher costs to the consumer. That is why we have put forward the emergency fuel relief plan. We want to eliminate all federal taxes on diesel sales until at least Canada Day next year. We want to scrap diesel production taxes by permanently eliminating the federal industrial carbon tax and the clean fuel standard. We want to eliminate the diesel price gap between the United States and Canada within five years. We also need to create emergency permits for diesel refineries, storage and transportation. We need to get the industry going. We need to allow businesses to deduct that and build a strategic refined petroleum reserve to protect Canadians during supply reductions. The strategic fuel reserve is important because as the price of oil skyrockets, we need stability for Canadians. Canada is the only country in the G7 that does not have an oil stockpile to release from. The Prime Minister has explicitly rejected our calls for this. It is funny, because earlier this year, the Liberals promised 23 million additional barrels of oil, but we do not have them to give. We do not have a stockpile. There is no way that we can give that. In fact, Canada’s energy production actually dropped by five million barrels after the Prime Minister made that announcement. Now the G7 is going to release another 100 million barrels over the next four months, including diesel, and Canada cannot play. We cannot play in that game, because we do not have the fuel to be able to do that. We should be the solution. We have the third- or fourth-largest oil reserves in the world. We should be the solution to energy instability, not be held victim to it. I just want to highlight a couple of things. The Liberal plan is bureaucracy and red tape. That is the plan we are seeing here today. There are no tangible results. There is lots of talk about this, that and the other thing, but no actual jobs. Canadians need jobs and paycheques, and they are not getting that from this plan. The Conservative plan is to have one project, one review and six-month approvals and to eliminate Bill C-69, repeal Bill C-48, end the industrial carbon tax and get rid of the clean fuel standard. These are real, practical solutions that could be made to get government out of the way, eliminate bureaucracy and bring stability back to the private sector. It is investing in war zones right now. It is investing its money elsewhere. It is not coming to Canada. We need that money to come into Canada so that it can take the risks, invest in these projects and create the jobs. Hopefully, in a year we will not be talking about a building Canada even stronger act.”

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In response to a question from Martin Champoux

“The government talks a lot and makes big promises, but it does not take real action. Adding more government offices slows down action instead of helping people. We want real action, not more bureaucracy.”

“Mr. Speaker, what the member has highlighted is something that we see over and over again from the government, and that is a whole lot of talk and a whole lot of lack of action. We could look at anything, including the youth jobs crisis, inflation, cost of living issues, the cost of rent and groceries, or our immigration system. There are so many different things we could look at. Time and time again we see a big fancy speech, a big promise and a big commitment to do this and this, but when we look for the action, the changes, the things that impact people on a daily basis, like boil water advisories, these kinds of things have not been dealt with by the government. Once again, we want to see some action. That is why it is difficult for us to get excited about creating more bureaucracy, because we know that bureaucracy impedes action. We want to see action.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“I do not support this bill. It just creates more reports and bureaucracy instead of fixing problems. The Auditor General has already pointed out the issues, and the government needs to take action to fix them.”

“Mr. Speaker, our position is very simple. We want action. That is the bottom line. My concern with the legislation is that it creates bureaucracy, investigations, reports and a whole lot of time spent looking into things. It does not solve problems. The Auditor General has already identified many problems that exist in Canada’s system, in failures of the government and of the system we have now, and yet there has been no action by the government to actually fix those things. Our position is very simple. We want to see action.”

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“I want to know how this bill will actually fix anything. It creates a commissioner to report on broken treaty promises, but that commissioner cannot force ministers to act. A new office in Ottawa does not build housing, lower the cost of living, or provide drug treatment beds for Indigenous people who are struggling right now.”

“It is an honour to be back in the House after summer. Welcome back, Mr. Speaker. I trust that you had a good summer, and if you will indulge me for a moment, I would like to welcome all of my colleagues back, on both sides of the House. I hope everybody had a great summer and was able to get back to their ridings and talk to a lot of people. I certainly had that opportunity. I heard a lot of stories from people, and unfortunately, people are still struggling. People are struggling with the cost of living and groceries and the high price of rent, gas, clothing and things like that. Safety is another thing I heard about a lot, such as crime, drug use and homelessness, and just struggling with the state of our economy in general. Youth are having such a hard time finding good-paying jobs, and raises are not keeping up with inflation. I am sure all of us heard these stories, including my Liberal colleagues on the other side. My goal when I am here representing the people of Saskatoon West is to save them money and make their lives better. When we look at legislation like Bill C-10, the lens I use is this. Would it help people in that way? Would it save people money? Would it make their lives more affordable and easier? We have a Conservative plan to restore the promise of an affordable, safe and independent Canada that saves people money, saves jobs, keeps people safe, fixes immigration and puts Canada first. I am curious about whether this bill would actually do any of these things. We are now at the third reading of Bill C-10, the commissioner for modern treaty implementation act. At this stage, the question is no longer whether the subject matters; of course it does. The implementation of modern treaties matters. The honour of the Crown matters. The relationship between Canada and indigenous peoples matters. The question is whether the mechanism in this bill would actually produce better results. Bill C-10 would create a new commissioner for modern treaty implementation and a supporting office. The commissioner would review and report on how federal institutions are implementing modern treaties. Supporters argue that an independent officer can shine a light on failures and give treaty partners another means of holding Ottawa accountable. I understand that argument, but when I spoke at second reading, I raised a basic concern that remains today, which is that identifying failure is not the same as correcting failure. Bill C-10 went to committee and was reported back to the House without any amendments, so the core questions remain. If a federal department is behind on a treaty obligation, what changes the next morning? If a minister has failed to meet an obligation, what requires action? If the same failure appears year after year, who is responsible for fixing it? Those are not arguments against accountability. They are questions about how accountability produces action. Bill C-10 is specifically about modern treaties. It is not a general solution to every challenge facing indigenous people in Canada, and we should not pretend that it is. I represent a riding where indigenous issues are not theoretical. According to the 2021 census, nearly 30,000 people in Saskatoon identified as indigenous, so the work we do here in Ottawa should make a real impact on the lives of people in Saskatoon. This debate also takes place at an important time of the year. On September 30, Canadians will mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day. It is a day to honour residential school survivors, their families and their communities. It is also a time to reflect on the lasting consequences of government policy toward indigenous peoples. For me, reconciliation has to include truth, respect and action. Truth means being honest about our history. Respect means listening seriously to indigenous people and respecting treaty commitments. Action means delivering tangible results, such as food and clothing people can afford, better housing, economic opportunities and jobs, access to education and treatment, strong local services and governments that keep their word. That brings me to something I saw first-hand this summer. I travelled to East Hastings Street in Vancouver. I visited Green Road Park in the Halifax region. I do not have to travel across the country to see the same human suffering. I can see the effects of addiction regularly around 20th Street in my own riding of Saskatoon West. What I saw this summer was not an abstract policy debate. I saw people living outside, caught in addiction. I saw communities struggling with disorder, poverty, mental illness and illicit drugs. I saw first-hand how illicit drugs can ravage individuals and destabilize communities. It reinforced for me just how vulnerable some off-reserve indigenous people can be when addiction, homelessness, mental illness and poverty collide. The evidence in my own city should concern every one of us. Saskatoon’s 2025 point-in-time homelessness count identified 1,900 people experiencing homelessness, and of the people surveyed, 83% identified as indigenous. That is a staggering overrepresentation. We see similar vulnerability when we look at the toxic drug crisis in British Columbia. The First Nations Health Authority reported that although first nations people represented approximately 3.4% of British Columbia’s population, they represented 16% of toxic drug poisoning deaths in 2025. Those numbers do not mean that every indigenous person experiencing homelessness suffers from addiction. They do not mean that every person suffering from addiction is homeless. We should not make assumptions like that about anybody or about who is involved. They do demonstrate that indigenous people are dramatically overrepresented among some of the most vulnerable Canadians living at the intersection of these crises. When we speak about reconciliation, that reality has to matter too. There is an important connection here to Bill C-10. Modern treaty implementation is important, but for an indigenous person sleeping outdoors in Saskatoon, Vancouver or Dartmouth, a new office in Ottawa is not a treatment bed. It is not affordable food or stable housing. It is not a counsellor or a job. It is difficult for me to see how a new bureaucracy in Ottawa would help put food on the table in Saskatoon or save an indigenous family money when they pay their rent. We must honour treaty commitments, and we must respond to the urgent human needs directly in front of us. My approach to addiction policy is that it should ultimately be oriented toward recovery. That does not mean pretending addiction is simple, because it is not. People have unique needs, and recovery can take time. Relapse can happen, but surely the goal should be to help people regain control of their lives and, wherever possible, escape destructive addiction. That is why the Conservatives have put forward proposals centred on treatment and recovery. Last election, the Conservative Party proposed federal funding to create 50,000 treatment opportunities for Canadians seeking recovery from addiction. Conservative MPs have also put legislation before Parliament aimed at making treatment a more meaningful part of the justice system. We introduced Bill C-231, which would give youth justice courts additional options to connect young people with problematic substance use treatment. We introduced Bill C-240, the offender rehabilitation act. That bill proposes additional rehabilitation and addiction treatment measures within the criminal justice and corrections systems. These proposals reflect an important distinction. We should distinguish between the person trapped in addiction and the criminal organization or trafficker who profits from that addiction. A person in the grip of addiction needs a path toward recovery. A dealer or organized criminal network deliberately trafficking fentanyl presents a different problem, requiring law enforcement and criminal accountability. Those are different situations, and government policy should be capable of recognizing the difference. It is good to see a shift to recovery-oriented solutions. That can mean intervention, when someone is in immediate danger, or detox, treatment and long-term recovery supports. I have seen examples of that recovery-oriented thinking right at home. The Saskatoon Tribal Council implemented a program that meets people on the streets and in encampments. The program is called Sawēyihtotān, which is a Cree word that means “to bless each other”. Staff provide wellness checks, food and cultural supports. They advocate for detox beds. They connect people with emergency shelters. The program provides pathways toward transitional and supportive sober housing. That is worth paying attention to. It does not write people off. It meets people where they are. Crucially, it also helps to move them somewhere better. To me, that is compassion with a destination. That same principle should inform how we think about reconciliation. The government should not measure success by how many structures it creates, how many reports it publishes or how much process it generates. We should measure whether people are actually better off. Are treaty commitments being fulfilled? Are people finding housing? Are young people finding opportunities? Are people trapped in addiction getting access to treatment? Are communities becoming safer? Are families being reunited? Those are outcomes Canadians can understand. The commissioner created by Bill C-10 may provide useful information. Reviews and performance audits may help Parliament identify where treaty implementation is failing, but the commissioner would not replace ministers. The commissioner would not implement treaties. The commissioner would not build housing, operate treatment centres or deliver the services that people depend on. Those responsibilities would remain with government and the institutions that already possess the authority to act. Were the commissioner to identify a problem, the responsible minister should have to answer plainly. What is the problem? Who is responsible? What is being done? When will it be fixed? That is meaningful accountability. As September 30 approaches, we should remember that reconciliation is not something Parliament completes by passing one bill. It is a continuing responsibility. It is found in whether treaty promises are honoured and whether governments listen. It is found in what happens on the ground, in places like 20th Street in Saskatoon West and in communities right across the country, where people are trying, every day, to build safer, healthier and more hopeful lives. That is a standard I will continue to apply to Bill C-10 and to the broader work of reconciliation.”

“I want permission from the House to share my speaking time with another member.”

“Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like unanimous consent to split my time with the member for Langley Township—Fraser Heights.”

In response to a question from Kurt Holman

“Unemployment is a big problem in Canada, especially for young people. I want the government to explain why it keeps bringing in temporary foreign workers instead of helping Canadians get these jobs.”

“Mr. Speaker, unemployment is a problem in our country, and as the member indicated, in his part of Ontario, it is a really significant problem. To me, this raises an important issue. Why is the government continuing to bring temporary foreign workers into this country? Why do we keep bringing more workers into this country? We have a lot of capacity for jobs. Our youth unemployment rates are even higher than the numbers he mentioned. They are up to close to 15%, yet the government is not putting forward programs to help with that. Instead, it is doing the easy solution, which is bringing in low-cost labour from overseas.”

In response to a question from Martin Champoux

“Committees are important because they let us question the government. The government wastes too much money on things like consultants. It needs to prioritize its spending and stop this waste.”

“Mr. Speaker, my colleague highlights the value and importance of committee work, wherein questions can be asked, ideas can be brought to the government and the government has to defend these things. On the specific issue he raises, I think there are a lot of things with the government, like a lot of spending that happens, that is completely wasteful. We talk about consultants, we talk about all kinds of things, and we need to be going through and talking about these things. The government actually needs to be prioritizing spending. A lot of us joke that if we had a chance to get into the books, we could probably save billions and billions of dollars, and we could be using that money much more effectively.”

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In response to a question from Ryan Turnbull

“I want the government to explain why it is rushing to pass this bill at the very end of the session. It had months to get this done, and this shows it cannot manage Parliament.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is just like a typical Liberal government to say that standard procedures and things that we do every day in the House are a waste of time. That is right on brand for that party. I would like the parliamentary secretary to answer the question of why it has taken so long to get this through. Why all of a sudden, on the third- or fourth-last day of Parliament, is there a panic, and it has to be done? There were weeks and months that this could have been done, and it has not been done. I think it is just a testament, as I said, to the inability of the government even to manage its own House, let alone to manage the country.”

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“I do not want the House to pass this motion. The government is rushing this spending bill through and cutting off debate. The bill will lead to massive deficits, high debt interest, and more inflation. The government should stop overspending and look at practical ideas to make life cheaper, like cutting the sales tax on used cars.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak today to this motion and, of course, Bill C-30, which underlies it. This is the spring economic update. There are billions of dollars of spending, there is new taxation and there are significant legislative changes. This programming motion that the Liberals are trying to ram through the House right now in the last week of sitting just demonstrates to me how poorly the government can manage work around here, in Ottawa. It is no surprise that all the disasters and messes are happening in the country, because the current government cannot even manage the House, let alone try to manage the country. Here we are now in this last-minute panic, and we would essentially eliminate debate. The finance committee would get 30 minutes to debate the bill. That is embarrassing. The committee is where questions get asked. The committee is where witnesses come to explain things. Very good things happen there. Sometimes errors are found. Furthermore, there would not be a report stage debate in the House, and there would be a very restricted third reading. Essentially, the normal operations of the House would be severely restricted in a last-minute attempt to do something the government could have been doing for the last couple of months. It is rather embarrassing. We need to make sure that ministers and officials are held accountable. We proposed some good amendments to let the committee do its work and to let MPs do their work, but of course they were rejected. A confident government would defend its work, but a weak government does not want to do that. The Liberals do not want to have questions asked; they want to avoid all that. As they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, it appears that they are evading accountability. That is not a good look, and Canadians can see that. The decisions that would be made in this bill would impact Canadians for decades. In fact, they would impact the grandchildren of members of the House. It is very significant. In the good old days, going back 10 or 15 years, a single-digit deficit was considered a big deal. Fast-forward to where we are now, and the previous prime minister, Justin Trudeau, kind of blew that up. Not only were there single-digit deficits and double-digit deficits, but there were triple-digit deficits. Now, deficits are much bigger, and it is very bad for our country. The last Trudeau deficit was $35 billion. The first deficit of the new Prime Minister, who supposedly has all kinds of economic knowledge, was double the Trudeau deficit. It was up at $78 billion, and now this economic update would reduce that slightly to $68 billion, or $65 billion or something like that. That is kind of like when a piece of furniture that should cost $2,000 is marked up to $5,000, and there is a big sale where it is knocked down to $4,000, and it is as if it were a big deal. However, the buyer is still paying double what they should have before. That is exactly what is happening here. The government cannot stop itself from spending money. Even when there is good news happening, such as when there is extra revenue from high oil prices, which benefits the government bank account, the Liberals still spend it. It is pretty ridiculous. Even by 2030-31, there is still going to be a deficit of over $50 billion, by their own estimate. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is an officer appointed by the government, a person whom the government trusts, tells us it is going to be even worse than the government is saying; the government is actually not telling us the truth, there are going to be deficits of over $70 billion, and it is going to continue like that for the foreseeable future. It is structural, permanent deficit spending. The PBO also said that there is a less than 1% chance that the Liberals will meet any of their fiscal anchors. This is not good for the country, because when governments borrow money, that creates a lot of demand in the system and means that there is less room for tax relief in the future and for additional spending on essential services. The debt charges this year will be just about $60 billion. To put that into perspective, the amount of money the federal government gives to the provinces for health care is $55 billion, so we are actually spending more on interest than what the government gives for health care. It is not hard to imagine that interest rates will go up a bit. It is also, then, not hard to imagine that the $58 billion in debt charges could increase significantly and very rapidly, which would put major stress on the government’s budget and would lead to a circular problem, with more and more deficits and more and more interest. It is kind of like paying one’s credit card bill but making only the minimum payment. That is essentially what the government is doing right now, and this adds inflationary pressures and causes high interest rates. Everybody understands how, when the government borrows money, inflation increases and interest rates stay higher. Of course, that impacts people directly with higher mortgage payments, higher rents and extra costs. Canadians are under severe pressure due to the cost of living. Inflation was up 2.8% in April, and it stays stubbornly high. Food inflation is even higher. It was up 4.4% in March. What that means is that people are eating less meat and fewer fruits and vegetables. Parents are sometimes skipping meals so their children can eat. Seniors may not be getting their prescriptions, and they may be turning off the heat or the air conditioning in the house. Higher interest rates mean that mortgage payments rise, and costs are passed through to customers as well through higher prices because businesses face all of these higher costs as well. Bill C‑30 would make this deficit permanent. There is no future where we can imagine the government eliminating a deficit. I want to talk for a minute about housing because it is a perfect illustration. Governments need to be thinking about cost. We do not need more announcements. The government is so good at making announcements and talking a big game, but actually delivering is not something that it knows how to do. What people need are homes that they can afford. Every delay, duplicated review and unnecessary requirement is ultimately paid by the buyer. One of the aspects where we see that is in the building code. Changes are looked at, but they are not actually costed. Particularly when we look at a multitude of changes happening at once and add them all up, it can be very significant. Would it not be nice if the government had to show its work, had to make looking at things from a cost perspective a core objective and had summaries that would tell Canadians what each cost would be? We could actually then decide if it made sense, if the benefit outweighed the cost. This is something very effective and relatively simple that the government could do. Most of this information is available. It is just not being used. At the same time, we could maintain strong standards of health and safety, and we could advance technology. If we were careful about costs through the building codes, which does not cost the government anything, it would actually help people. It would make housing more affordable, reducing the cost of houses. This would help first-time buyers, renters, small and mid-sized builders, families and new Canadians. It would help everybody. This would not cost the government any money. In fact, there could be less bureaucracy, and it could save money. That is something we could definitely use in our country and would be a simple way for the government to make life more affordable for all Canadians. I also want to talk about something that my leader talked about on the weekend. What if we were to cut the GST on used cars? Dealers charge GST on used cars. A car could be sold multiple times during its life, two, three, four times, and every single time, GST is charged, and the government makes money on that. We think that is unfair. The government should get the GST at the beginning, and that should be the end of it. I want to thank my colleague the member for Elgin—St. Thomas—London South for putting forward the private member’s bill to eliminate the GST on used vehicles. It makes a lot of sense, and it could save about $1,800 on a typical vehicle purchase and would eliminate that double taxation. We have many practical ideas. I just gave two of them. One is the used car GST removal, and the other is on building codes. Of course, the government does not want to hear that, and that is why it is putting forward this motion to end debate. It does not want to hear any of our ideas. It just wants to ram this through and move on. That is the pattern we have seen for the last 11 years from the Liberal government. It likes to call itself a new government, but it has been around for 11 years. It is mostly the same people, doing the same things that got us into the mess that we are in. The Liberals seem to be ashamed and afraid, and that is why they are putting forward this motion today. I would urge the House not to pass this motion.”