Melissa Lantsman

In response to a question from Marc Dalton

“We need to send this bill to a committee to study it carefully. It must have real power to protect kids, not just be words on paper. It should help parents protect their own children instead of having the government do it.”

“Mr. Speaker, Amanda Todd held up flashcards because she believed that the people who would know her story would then act. In the case of Carson Cleland, also from B.C., his parents spoke out during the hardest days of their lives because he had hoped that people would act. They did their part. I think it is incumbent on this House to truly look at this legislation very carefully and make sure that it is not just words on paper, that it has teeth, that we do not follow the example of Australia where it does not work, that we give parents the tools to parent, that we stand side by side with parents rather than letting the government parent their kids. That is what parents want to see from this legislation, and it is incumbent on the House to take this to committee and really study it.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“This bill is not clear about who will run the commission. It could be up to five people, or just one person. Neither the member, the minister, nor the bill itself has made this clear to us or the public.”

“Mr. Speaker, the legislation is really unclear about the commission, and that is the answer we are trying to seek in the House. It could be three to five and it could be one, and that one is left up to regulation after the legislation. The question that we have in the House is to make it clear. I know the member opposite has read the legislation so I am not suggesting that he has not, but he has not made it clear to this House, the legislation has not made it clear to this House and the minister has not made it clear to the public.”

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“I want a committee to study this social media safety bill before we vote on it. Kids are being harmed and bullied online, and tech companies have failed to protect them. This bill has some good ideas, but it leaves out private messaging, lowers fines for tech companies, and leaves too many decisions to be made later. We need parents and experts to help us fix it.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am going to split my time. In 1965, The Who sang The Kids Are Alright. In 1998, The Offspring answered that with The Kids Aren’t Alright. That was before Instagram and Snapchat and before strangers across the world could come into a child’s bedroom. Today, that answer is truer than ever, and I think most would agree in the House the kids are not all right. They are being hooked by algorithms engineered on purpose to keep them scrolling past midnight because every extra minute they scroll is worth money to somebody on the other side. They are being bullied in ways that never log off, and they are being hunted in their own bedrooms by predators who never have to pass a parent’s bedroom. A generation ago, a child’s bedroom door was a wall, and now it is a window to the entire world. There are no Liberal kids and there are no Conservative kids. There are no NDP kids. There are just kids, so I want to approach this bill, Bill C-34, in a way that any parent would: not asking whether it sounds good, but whether it actually keeps people safe. Every member of the House knows the name Amanda Todd. She was 12 years old when a stranger in the Netherlands hiding behind 22 different aliases found her online. He coerced her. He captured images of her. He threatened to send them to everyone she loved, and then he did. Weeks before she died, Amanda held out flash cards to a camera one at a time and told the world what was happening to her. She was 15 when she took her own life, and she carried all of that alone. Then it took 10 years to put the man responsible behind bars, and by then he had been convicted of crimes against 33 other young people. We told ourselves that this would not happen again. Then came Carson Cleland, 12 years old, from Prince George. A sextortionist found him on Snapchat, an app whose own rules said that he was too young to be on there. Nobody stopped him from signing up. Nobody stopped the stranger from finding him. My colleague from Cariboo—Prince George told the House it was just 12 hours from the first threat to his death. His father said it best when he said our kids are “not built for adult problems in a kid’s world.” For Amanda, justice took a decade. For Carson, the harm took half a day. The predators get faster and the laws do not keep up. Amanda and Carson are not rare. They are just names that we know. Behind them, there are thousands of names that we do not know of thousands of other cases. In 2023, Canadian police recorded almost 20,000 incidents of online sexual exploitation, up 59% in a single year. That is more than 50 cases a day. Sextortion reports to Cybertip.ca rose 300% between 2020 and 2025. Where the victim is known, more than four out of five are boys, boys like Carson. Nearly two-thirds of cases happen on Instagram or Snapchat or some app on some kids’ phones tonight. These companies have the data, the engineers and the billions, but they have lacked will. One in four Canadian youth has been cyber-bullied. In a classroom of 28 people, that is seven kids. Every one of those numbers is a child on the edge of their bed at two in the morning with a phone glowing in the dark, scrolling and too ashamed to wake their parents up to tell them what happened. Here is a number I want every member of the House to remember: Nine in 10 Canadian teens who were sexually victimized online were harmed in private messages. It was not the public feed and not in the DMs, but behind a closed door on a screen that no parent can see. There are ideas in this bill that deserve our attention, there is no question, such as a duty on platforms to act responsibly, a 24-hour takedown of child sexual abuse material and non-consensual intimate images and a duty on AI chatbots to connect a child in crisis with an actual real person. For years, we let these platforms police themselves. They buried the safety fixtures six menus deep. Self-regulation has had its chance and it has failed kids. Parents were too busy maybe to find it six menu items deep. An idea on paper has never really protected a child. What matters is how the law works on an ordinary Wednesday night like tonight when a stranger sends that first message. Those questions cannot be settled just on the floor in a short debate. The committee has to do some work on this. These are some of the questions. First, would it reach the harm where it happens? Private messaging where nine out of 10 victims are harmed would be expressly excluded from the bill’s duties. We want to know why. Committees should ask what safety-by-design duties, like stopping strangers from messaging minors by default, could protect kids in the DMs without anybody reading their messages. Second, what would the rules actually say? This has not been clear in the legislation. Roughly 50 key decisions in this legislation are left until after passage: 19 of them for cabinet and 31 of them for a commission that does not actually exist yet. Which platforms are covered? What is safety by design? Are gaming platforms in there or at all, or will that only come later? Parliament should vote on the whole house, not just a framework of it. Third, we all have seen the example of Australia. We want to know what it teaches us. Australia went first, so we do not really have to guess. Platforms there shut down 4.7 million children’s accounts in the first month, but three months in, its own regulator found that teen social media use had barely moved. It went from 86% to 81%. About half of the teens still online said that nobody even checked their age. As a result, parents became less aware about what their kids were doing because of it. A ban with a weak age check is not really a ban at all. It is like leaving the key under the mat at the front door. It does not really keep kids out. It moves them out of their parents’ sight, or it moves them, in the case of Australia, to other platforms that are not captured within the legislation. Fourth, we want to know if the penalties are strong enough. The last online harm bill, which was a terrible bill in this House, set the minimum fees at 6% of global revenue. This one would cut that to 3%. There are some questions about why. For some of the richest companies in history, a fine that they can budget for is not really a punishment. It is like a licensing fee that they work into the cost of doing business. Fifth, does it touch the actual business model? On these platforms, kids are not the customers. Their attention is actually the product. That is the problem. Our own heritage committee recommended banning targeted ads and data harvesting aimed at minors. The government declined, while admitting that the algorithmic feeds drive the actual addictive designs. We want to know more about that, certainly. Finally, most importantly, the member before me spoke about the digital safety commission, but who will watch the watchdog? Who will write these rules? What judge would enforce this? Is it five people? Is it one person? The legislation really is not clear on any of that, so we would like to hear more from the government. Hopefully we will get that in the course of this debate in this House. What recourse does a family have when the platform fails a child? Through all of this, there is one principle that should guide everyone here: Parents know their kids better than any government or tech company ever could. A mother can tell her son to put his phone down and go to sleep, but what she cannot do is out-muscle an algorithm built by thousands of engineers to keep him awake at night. A good law does not take her place. It stands beside her. I hope that we have that conversation in this House. There must be a law that protects all privacy. It is the work of the committee not to blindly support something that needs clarity, but to hear from the experts and parents like Carson’s parents. It must be a law that protects adults’ privacy too. We cannot find every user under 16 without checking every user over 16, so there are some real questions about what that could mean for every parent and grandparent who would have to give their identification to a platform. Who stores that data and for how long? What happens when it is breached? It is not a question of if, but it is a question of when. I will end with this. A paper tiger does not keep a child safe. It does not stop a predator and it gives no parent peace of mind, so it is important to get this right. We owe it to the families of Carson and Amanda and thousands of others. I started by saying the kids are not all right and I mean it. The kids are not all right today, but if we ask the hard questions and put down good legislation to keep kids safe, then maybe they will be all right.”

“Canada now spends more on debt interest than on health care, child benefits, or employment insurance. Eleven cents of every federal dollar goes to interest because the Liberals doubled the national debt. I want the Prime Minister to tell Canadians what matters more: their services or the people he owes money to.”

“Mr. Speaker, the Canada health transfer child benefit, EI, the child benefit and equalization payments do not have much in common, but they do have one thing in common: Canada spends less money on each of those than it does on interest on the debt. After the Liberals doubled the national debt, the Prime Minister doubled the deficit in his first year alone. Eleven cents of every federal dollar is now for interest payments. That is not social programs, it is not health care and it is not police. It is just interest. Will the Prime Minister get out of his seat and tell Canadians which matters more to them: their services or his creditors?”

In response to a question from John Brassard

“The government introduced the budget right before a break week to avoid questions about it. We need to pass this motion so the Prime Minister comes to committee. He needs to explain why he claimed life is affordable when families are paying $6,000 more a year and cannot afford basic groceries or vacations.”

“Mr. Speaker, if the budget looks like the last budget, then I understand completely why government members would not want to be questioned on it, not on a Friday and not on a Monday. The government introducing a budget on a Thursday before a break week, and then taking that next week, tells us everything we need to know. That is why this motion is so important. It is important to get the Prime Minister at committee to explain his comments, to explain why he told the House that affordability is better than it has ever been and to explain to Canadian families why he is charging them $6,000 a year while they cannot buy raspberries or take a vacation.”

In response to a question from Mario Beaulieu

“The member can ask that question to the Prime Minister when he comes to committee.”

“Mr. Speaker, the member opposite can absolutely ask that question of the Prime Minister when he comes to committee.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The government's programs have failed. More Canadians use food banks now than before, and the help does not cover the thousands of dollars families pay in interest. The Prime Minister should answer these questions himself instead of having his House leader repeat talking points.”

“Mr. Speaker, the member just listed a grand list of failures. Everything the government has put forward in a program has failed Canadians because there are more Canadians eating food from a food bank than there were before the government started its food program. Everything is getting worse under the government, and all of those programs are a drop in the bucket compared to what those families are paying for interest, which is $6,000 now and will be $8,000 in 2030. They have questions. Is it worth it? The Prime Minister should answer those questions instead of colleagues just hearing talking points from his House leader.”

“Most Canadian families are spending more money than they make. The government has doubled Canada's debt, and paying the interest on that debt costs billions of dollars that could go to services. I want the House to pass this motion to make the Prime Minister answer questions about this debt at the finance committee.”

“Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the Leader of the Opposition. I want to set the scene. It is Friday night in a kitchen somewhere in this country. The kids are asleep. A mother sits alone at a table, with a paycheque in one hand and a stack of bills in the other. She lays them out side by side, and she adds them up once. Then she adds them up again, and then a third time. On the third time, the paycheque wins. That kitchen table is in every single riding in this country. No matter who we are or where we come from, we have heard the stories from our own communities. Every morning before the sun comes up, millions of Canadians lace up their boots, kiss their kids goodbye and head out the door to earn that paycheque. It is an overtime shift, a night course, years of training and a sore back at the end of the day. For generations, it meant something simple: If a Canadian worked hard, they could build a better life for their children. For too many families, that promise is very broken in this country. We come here every week with those stories that families tell in our communities. That is what I am going to talk about here today. A recent C.D. Howe Institute report found that 60% of Canadian households now spend more than they bring in. The lowest-income families spend more than double their disposable income, the next group overspends by nearly a third, and the middle-class families in this country, the backbone of what creates our economy, are spending 12% more than they make every single month. For a family with $60,000 in take-home pay, that means it is $7,200 short every single year. Behind those numbers are actual people and their stories. It is the mother at the grocery checkout putting raspberries back because the total came up to more than she expected. It is the dad picking up a second job and missing his son’s games. It is the parent who tells their kids they are not hungry tonight, just so there is enough food on the table. It is the conversation no parent wants to have: “Not this year, sweetheart. Maybe next year.” It is the young couple that wanted to start a family but keeps pushing it back. It is a senior who has worked her whole life but now has to decide between prescriptions and filling the fridge. It is the parent lying awake at two o’clock in the morning doing the math over and over again in their head, hoping it comes out different. These families are not irresponsible. Nobody puts groceries on a credit card for fun. Nobody takes a payday loan to keep the lights on because they like the interest rates. Nobody drains a retirement fund they have been saving for 20 years for the thrill of it. They do it because they have no choice. What does the government tell them? Well, the Prime Minister specifically says that affordability is the best it has been in a decade. How did we get here? Part of the answer is across the aisle. It has been the same people sitting in the same chairs and saying the exact same thing over the last 11 years. The Liberal government has doubled the national debt in that time, adding more debt than all previous governments in Canadian history before it, all of them combined. When Ottawa borrows and spends without restraint, the families I spoke about are the ones paying the bill. They pay it again and again, because debt is not free. It comes with interest. According to the PBO, who was hired by the Liberal government, Ottawa will pay $59 billion in interest on debt this year. That is more than $1 billion every single week. It is more than double what it was five years ago. It is now the fastest-growing expense line in the entire federal budget. Nobody can dispute those facts. Every Canadian has a share in that interest. It is $1,400 a year for every individual, and for a family of four, that is roughly $6,000. By 2030, the PBO projects that it will be $1,900 for every person, which is nearly $8,000 for that same family. That money is enough for a hockey season that a kid did not get. It is a modest camping vacation they keep putting off till next summer. It is a birthday party that is scaled down to cake at the kitchen table because times are tough. Those are the real stories and those are the real impacts of $6,000 a year for a family going to $8,000 a year because of reckless spending. What does the family get for that? The Liberals will stand up today in the House and ask them if they like this or that program, but the fact is they get nothing for the interest they pay on it. They do not get a single hospital bed. They do not get one classroom. They do not get a kilometre of highway. They do not get anything for their military with the interest on that debt. All of that money goes directly to bankers and bondholders, not to the families that are struggling, the mom who put the raspberries back on the shelf, the dad who took on a second shift and will miss his kid’s hockey game, or the senior who just cannot decide what to do next. That money goes straight to bankers and bondholders. The bills keep growing. Every Canadian share of that federal debt is now over $33,000. For a family of four, that is more than $130,000. It is a second mortgage they never asked for. It is a second mortgage they will one day hand to their children. Here is the cruellest part of it: Parents in this country are working themselves to the bone so their kids can have a better life, and the government is sending these same kids the bill. Today, the question is very simple. How does the Prime Minister expect these families to pay that bill? How does he expect them to pay $6,000 more a year or $8,000 more a year? I know there are a lot of people, including him, who do not worry about $6,000 or $8,000, but there are a heck of a lot of families in this country who absolutely do, and they are asking questions. Canadian families are all doing their part. They get up, and they go to work. They stretch every dollar until it squeaks. They sacrifice every single day without complaint. When the money runs out, they sit down at the kitchen table and they face those numbers honestly. Then, they go over and over it again in their heads, trying to make the math work out differently. The Prime Minister should be willing to do the exact same thing. This is why this motion calls on the Prime Minister to appear before the Standing Committee on Finance. It is very simple. It calls for him to not send a minister and not send a list of talking points, but to come himself to the table and answer the questions every single family in this country is asking: How is a mother with a stack of bills supposed to cover $60 billion in interest? How is a young couple supposed to start a family with a $130,000 share of debt hanging over them? How much more does he plan to put on the Liberal credit card before it all comes due? Every family, every person and everybody in the House, at one point in their lives, had to explain their budget to someone, to a bank, to a landlord, sometimes their own kids. The Prime Minister should be able to explain that to every single Canadian taxpayer, and he should be able to do that at a table without getting up in the House and telling those same families that affordability is the best it has ever been and that they have never had it better. I urge every single member of the government to vote for this motion, to vote for accountability. They have asked for the trust of the public, and they owe something in that trust relationship. The public is asking questions about how it is going to pay its fair share of that debt, and the Prime Minister ought to come to committee and answer those questions. It is not a difficult motion, and I hope members vote yes.”

In response to a question from Carlos Leitão

“We will vote for this bill because it cuts taxes and helps families. But the government must admit that people need much more help than this.”

“Mr. Speaker, I wish the member had listened to my speech before he asked the question. Of course we will vote for affordability measures. Of course we will vote for tax cuts. It is a small piece of relief for families that need it. However, we want the Liberals to recognize that a whole lot more needs to be done. It was needed well before the member got here and will be needed well after he is gone.”

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In response to a question from Jim Bélanger

“Canadians cannot afford everyday life right now. The government's temporary tax cuts do not go far enough, and earlier today, other members voted against tax relief. After 11 years of Liberal rule, things will only get worse for Canadians because the Liberals broke the system.”

“Mr. Speaker, we voted on a very simple motion in the House today. Again I will remind other members that they stood up and voted against it, recognizing that Canada is in an affordability crisis. There is a problem with these temporary measures that do not go far enough. Coupled with the vote today, if someone does not recognize and does not admit to themselves that we are in an affordability crisis, if they do not listen to their constituents and do not look at Canadians out there, then they can never truly solve it and can never truly do the work to help Canadians. If we look to January and February, the record of the Liberal government over the course of the 11 years will continue, and things will continue to get worse, not because this country is broken but because the Liberals broke it.”

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In response to a question from John-Paul Danko

“The government increased its deficit from $25 billion to $60 billion in under 10 years, and it will reach $83 billion by 2030. That is a 232% increase. That money does not go to nurses, groceries, or gas. It goes straight to paying interest on debt.”

“Mr. Speaker, I know that the member came here with a prepared speech to read to another member without listening to their speech, but I will just make something clear to the member opposite: One of the biggest reasons is that the government, in less than 10 years, went from a $25-billion deficit to a $60-billion deficit, only to go to an $83-billion deficit by 2030. That is a 232% increase. It is not for nurses, not for groceries and not for gas, and it does not go into the pockets of ordinary Canadians. It goes straight to interest payments. If the member wants to sit here and deny the record of all the members in the front benches for the last 11 years, he can do so, but he is going to have to look his constituents in the eye and explain that to them.”

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“I support this bill because any tax cut helps, but it does not go far enough. It only takes 10 cents off gas for a short time. Canada is in an affordability crisis. We should remove all federal fuel taxes until at least Canada Day in 2027 to give families real relief.”

“Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Sudbury East—Manitoulin—Nickel Belt. I want to bring members back to a couple of hours ago when the House voted on a motion. We had a very simple vote on a very simple motion earlier today. I will read the text for everybody watching at home just so they see how simple it was. It reads: That the House officially recognize that: (a) the Liberals have been in power for 11 years; and (b) Canada is in an affordability crisis. The entire motion is one sentence, and nothing in it is untrue. The Liberals have been in power for 11 years, and we do not need a calendar to confirm that. On the second part, members can ask anybody across the country who is trying to save up to buy a place of their own, put food on the table consistently or even pay their bills, and they will tell them that the answer to that question is yes, Canada is in an affordability crisis. However, earlier today, every single Liberal MP on that side of the House stood up to oppose that motion, and in doing so, they denied reality. They denied the reality of millions of Canadians. They denied their own record in the same way they have been running from it since the Prime Minister got here. They pretend that the same MPs, the same cabinet ministers and the same advisers who served under Justin Trudeau, many of whom are now promoted, are somehow not responsible for everything that happened over the last 11 years. What is worse is that they deny the financial reality that millions of Canadians are living right now, just outside of this place. I invite them to visit a food bank in Toronto and defend that vote. Some have foolishly taken a picture in front of that food bank, but they should actually go in and see the rising numbers. Last year, Toronto food banks recorded 4.1 million visits, which is the highest number recorded, and a 340% increase since 2019. The line did not just double. It more than quadrupled. Maybe the Liberals could explain their vote to the 46% of Canadians who say that they are less than $200 away from not being able to pay their bills every single month. Maybe they could explain it to the nearly three in 10 who say they already do not earn enough to cover their bills and their debt together. That is who they voted against today when they voted to deny reality and deny the financial reality of so many of those people. That same denial runs through the legislation that we are debating again today. The government frames Bill C-38 as a major affordability measure. In reality, as we have heard many times, it would extend a temporary pause on one federal tax at the pump, which is a 10¢-a-litre excise tax. By the finance minister’s own math, that is about five dollars off of a 50-litre fill-up. It is something, that is for sure, but it is not enough. It is not enough for the affordability crisis that we are facing, and it comes with an expiry date, as if that affordability crisis, which was created over the last 11 years, would just automatically disappear. On February 1, half of that tax comes back and the relief drops to 5¢ a litre. On April 1, the rest comes off and the relief drops to zero. Every other federal charge built into the price of fuel stays in place, which means the GST stays in place, the clean fuel standard stays in place and the cost of the industrial carbon tax stays in place. We could remove all of them and families, seniors and truckers could save up to 25¢ a litre, but that is not what we are talking about here. It is what we could be talking about. Under the Conservative proposal, the relief would not vanish next February. It would last until at least Canada Day in 2027. It would be up to $1,000 of savings for the average Canadian family, which is real money that would help, but if members vote against even recognizing an affordability crisis in the House just hours ago, then why would anybody trust them to fix it? Throughout this debate, we have heard a lot of bluster from the other side and not so much on the facts point. I just want to lay out a timeline for those following, because some Liberal MPs have been trying to take credit for the ideas, and other Liberal MPs do not understand why they are doing it. On April 2, Conservatives called for federal taxes on gas and diesel to be removed for the rest of 2026. Twelve days later, the Liberals announced a partial version of that plan, pausing only the excise tax and only until Labour Day. Fast-forward to August 16, when we demanded cancellation of the Labour Day tax hike and removal of all the federal fuel taxes until at least Canada Day in 2027, and on September 2, the Liberals backed down again and announced that extension, which is the bill in front of us today. Each time, they arrived late, and each time, they brought less than Canadians needed. If not for our Conservative pressure, I do not think we would be debating this at all. If nobody on this side of the House had called for it, I do not think we would be standing here. I do not think it would have existed in the budget, which we should have seen a couple weeks ago, and I do not think they would have done it, because the current government has a habit of dealing with problems by pretending they do not exist, hence the vote earlier today, just as the Liberals are pretending that we are not in an affordability crisis by voting against Canadians, who are clearly living much of their lives in that crisis. In March, the Prime Minister told Canadians that affordability was the best it had been in a decade, but I want him to really look in the faces of a family and tell that to the family filling its minivan this week. Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whom we heard from today, reports that the deficit went from $36 billion under Justin Trudeau in the last fiscal year, to $72 billion this year. That is not a little more spending. That is double. It is putting groceries on the credit card and calling it a budget. We will see what happens in the next couple of weeks. The problem still for all those families is that it is getting worse. Yesterday, Statistics Canada reported that inflation rose to 3.1% in September, up from 3% in August. Gasoline prices are up nearly 28% from a year ago. Fuel oil is up almost 58%, hitting families in Atlantic Canada the hardest, because that is what many of them there use to heat their home. Grocery prices are up 33% since 2020. We know there are lots of reasons for these costs rising, but today we are debating actually giving relief to families and taking some of that money off their bills. Families obviously feel this. Six in 10 Canadians say that at least half their paycheque is already spoken for before it even arrives. Yes, we need to do more, and Conservatives are never going to stand in the way of relief or a tax cut. That is what we came here to fight for, no matter how small it is and no matter how time-limited it is, because even a little money makes a difference for people who are facing strife in their communities right now all over the country. However, we will keep daring the government to do more. We will keep advocating from this side of the House, because the only reason we are having this conversation is that the Liberals were put in a corner to have to do this. We will keep making it very uncomfortable not to act, and we will keep speaking for all the families who need the relief, who need longer-term relief and who need bigger relief on their paycheques. The Liberals have already moved from denial to partial acceptance, and we see that with this bill. We just want them to go further. We want them to get rid of all the taxes that they continue to put on fuel, such as the fuel standard, which will eventually raise the price of gas by 17¢ a litre by 2030. First they refused to touch the gas tax, period, and now they are giving us a hidden carbon tax. We want them to not actually stop the tax cut on Labour Day, and we want them to stretch it for a few more months or even longer, as long as it takes for families to get out from under the affordability crisis the government has buried them in. If the Liberals want to keep borrowing ideas, that is fine. If the Liberals want to react to a strong opposition that is going to push them to do the right thing, that is fine, but we actually want them to get this done. Canadians should not have to wait for the Liberals to always catch up. They certainly should not have to watch the government take credit for doing the bare minimum. That is exactly what we are going to advocate for with this bill and so many others that will come to the floor of the House of Commons. We want real relief for families and for every Canadian from coast to coast.”

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  “Canada is officially in an affordability crisis.”

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“A budget expert says our debt will get worse every year until 2031, and interest on the debt is our fastest-growing expense. Will the government admit it needs to change course and cut spending?”

“Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, an expert in economics and finance, just issued a scathing report card on the Liberals’ fiscal management. She said that the debt-to-GDP ratio will get worse every year until 2031. She said that the Prime Minister will blow past his own benchmark of a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio, and she found that interest on the debt will be the fastest-growing expense in the entire federal budget. With such stark warnings from an expert the government itself hired, will the Liberals finally admit that it is time to reverse course and rein in spending?”

In response to a question from Gord Johns

“Workers voted for the Conservatives in the last election because we support them. I want the member to stand up for workers against the government spending and high prices that are hurting their paycheques.”

“Madam Speaker, it is not about whether we are friends with labour. It is about whether labour supports a party that supports it. In the last election, it certainly came over in droves and the member knows it. I wish the member would speak this vigorously against the inflation that is driving down the paycheques of every single worker in this country. I wish he would stand up for labour when it comes to the fact that its buying power is not nearly as much because of the government’s spending. I wish he would stand up for labour.”

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  Relevance 5 of 100

  None of this reply addressed the specific point raised or the topic under debate.

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• Little substance
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  Signal 15 of 100

  Much of this statement went to praise, blame, greetings, routine procedure or general stories rather than reasons, requests or specific points.

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