Official Hansard
Mr. Chair, it is my turn to talk about Bill C-30 and to talk about the economic context in which our economic update was presented recently and, especially, the Canadian economy. What we have witnessed in the last year at least, since I have been here, is that our colleagues from the official opposition have developed this skill of offering really simplistic solutions to what are highly complex and serious problems. In that context, let us talk about the economic update. It was an economic update, not a budget, but of course, there were some fiscal measures that were also announced in the budget. What does the economic update tell us? To start with, the economic update tells us that the deficit for 2025‑26 in fact turned out to be about $66.9 billion rather than the $78.3 billion that had been forecast back in the November budget, so there was an improvement of about $11 billion in the public accounts of the government, of the country. Why was the deficit less than expected? It has nothing to do with the high price of oil. Conservatives talk about the GST on oil and say that it causes oil prices to go up and that is where the government makes its money, etc. No, the deficit was $11 billion less than what had been anticipated earlier because the economy in 2025 was much stronger than what had been expected. Government revenues were higher, and government spending was lower. That is where that $11 billion comes from. Not only is the economy of Canada a resilient economy that has been able to withstand severe shocks, but it grew at a reasonable pace when compared with our neighbours and peer countries. The economy of Canada is not broken. We are in fact leading the way among the G7 countries, which is recognized by our peers. That brings me to the next point I want to make, which is that this proves that Canada really has considerable fiscal strength. Our fiscal house is in order. We have a deficit of 2.1% of GDP, which, when we compare it to peer countries, is perfectly manageable. That deficit is projected to go to 1.4% of GDP by 2030, so the deficit is on a downward track. The debt-to-GDP ratio is at about 41% and will remain around that level in the fiscal framework into 2030 as well, which gives Canada a AAA rating. How can a country with a AAA rating have a broken economy? It does not. It does not make sense. We have a AAA rating because our fiscal house is in order and because our economy is growing despite the severe headwinds and shocks. By the way, I remind all members of the House and all those listening to us with great enthusiasm that this Friday, the GDP numbers are coming out for the first quarter. I do not know what those numbers will be, but I am pretty certain that Q1 GDP growth will be fairly strong. We hear this business that Canada has the fastest-shrinking economy in the G7. No. In fact, we have one of the fastest-growing economies in the G7 despite the shocks and the very uncertain context in which we are operating. I would like to take some time to talk about that context. It is important to talk about the economic context because context is everything. Our colleagues from the opposition keep on saying that “2014 was this, 2014 was that, and 10 years later, blah blah blah.” The context is very important. We could go all the way back to 2007-08 and the financial crisis. I will not go that far, but I think we could because the world economy did go through a severe shock in 2007-08. The adjustment that took place afterwards took some time and left some scars globally. What has happened since 2020? We had the pandemic. The economy shut down. Governments in the OECD area shut down their economies because no one knew what was going to happen. Everything was stopped. To prevent a massive depression, because that was what was going to happen if nothing was done, governments in the OECD area spent massively to support their economies. The Conservatives will say we wasted all that money. If governments had not done that, then the OECD economies and the global economy would have slipped into a major depression. That was a big shock in 2020. It was then followed by an economic rebound, a very sharp rebound, that took place in late 2021 into 2022, and it was a rebound in the context of broken supply chains. The result of that was massive upward pressure on prices. Inflation took off in the OECD area. It was not a “Liberal deficit”. Were the Liberals also responsible for the U.S. deficit, the German deficit and the French deficit? Let us be serious. It was a result of the sharp rebound with broken supply chains, compounded by the war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine led to, among other things, a very sharp increase in the prices of oil and other products, like grains. The global economy was already unbalanced in 2022-23. It was a very different environment than what we had before. New solutions and new proposals had to be put in place because the times were very different. As if that was not sufficient, then what did we have in 2024-25? A new administration in the United States decided to trigger a trade war. The world as we knew it is no longer the same. The United States, our trusted ally, no longer wants to buy things from Canada, because it claims it does not need anything from Canada. It does, but that is what it claims. Therefore, we have this weird world of 50% tariffs on aluminum from Canada in the name of the national security of the United States. The U.S. actually needs Canadian aluminum. We have a very complex world. The tariff war is real. The tariff war is something we did not ask for. The tariff war is what is leading to profound adjustments in our manufacturing sector and in our economy as a whole. As our Prime Minister has repeated over and over again, this is not just a simple adjustment. This is a rupture in the world as we knew it, and the world now is different. The world has changed. That is something provincial premiers have fully realized. Whether it is Mr. Ford in Ontario, Ms. Smith in Alberta or Mr. Moe in Saskatchewan, all Conservative premiers, they have realized the world has changed and Canada has to adjust to this new world order. Then, as if that was not enough, we have the war in the Middle East, which has led to a doubling of oil prices. That is a very different context that requires serious measures, which is what was done—
