Pat Kelly

In response to a question from Mario Simard

“Public money should not have to support private projects. The government's unclear rules have scared private investment away from the energy sector for 11 years.”

“Mr. Speaker, I agree with much of what the member said. I do not think it is a good thing that the public money has to prop up any private project that would otherwise, in a proper regulatory environment that had clear criteria, make it investable. I do not agree with the government’s approach. I do not agree that it has had the right approach on infrastructure at all. I could go on. I could talk about the failure of the Infrastructure Bank. The Liberal government has chased private capital out of energy during its 11 years in office.”

In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“More investment money has left Canada than entered under the Liberals. Their bad rules scared away the private company that wanted to build the Trans Mountain pipeline. The government bought it instead and spent five times more than planned to finish it. The Conservatives left a balanced budget, a strong middle class, and two approved pipelines, and the Liberals ruined it.”

“Mr. Speaker, there is a lot to unpack there. The Liberals never talk about the investment outflows when they talk about inflows. The net has been an outflow of this country under this government. I am really glad that the member brought up Trans Mountain, because I had meant to and did not quite have enough time. The Trans Mountain pipeline was a pipeline that a private builder would have built. They started under this government, and the regulatory uncertainty chased Kinder Morgan out of Canada. That is what happened. The government nationalized the project and built it at a 500% overrun of what was projected. That is the Liberals’ approach on building pipelines. The Harper government bequeathed the government a balanced budget. The New York Times described Canada as having the most wealthy middle class in the world and two approved pipelines, and the Liberal government blew it.”

“I want Canada to build major projects like pipelines, ports, and power lines, but this bill will not do that. For 11 years, the government has used bad rules to block projects. Now they are adding more red tape instead of getting rid of it. This bill lets ministers delay project decisions forever. We do not need a new law. We need to cancel the old laws that stopped building in the first place.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back in the House of Commons debating legislation. That is what we are elected to do. That is what we are in the House for. It is good to be here and talking about Bill C-39. The Liberals call it the building Canada strong act, which rings similar to a similar bill we dealt with about a year ago. I will maybe have time to come back to that, but I will start by saying that of course we agree, or that I agree, with the stated premise of the bill, which is to enable Canada to build things, to build Canada stronger. That is certainly something that I not only very deeply believe needs to be done but also that is pretty consistent with what I have spent the last 11 years talking about. At the moment, to be sure, we are confronted with an unprovoked, unjustified, deeply damaging and unnecessary trade war with the United States. We did not choose it. It is not something that Canada chose, but it is the moment we find ourselves in. However, the issues around this, around the necessity of building major projects and building our country back up again, have very deep roots. We have been talking about this for 11 years. We have spent the last 11 years being unprepared for this moment. Before I go too much further, I will say that I am going to share my time with the member for Edmonton Southeast. As I said, we did not choose to be in a trade war with the United States. We did not choose to have our country economically attacked, but for the last 11 years, the government has left us unprepared for the moment. I was elected in 2015, and that year, the very first thing the government did was cancel the northern gateway pipeline. The Liberals are saying today, “If only we had a west coast pipeline.” There was a west coast pipeline approved and already on their desk the minute they took office. The first thing they did, by ministerial order, was cancel it: 525,000 barrels a day. At today’s price, that is $50 million a day in economic activity, $20 billion a year. An hon. member: Oh, oh! Pat Kelly: Mr. Speaker, I am being heckled by the member for Winnipeg North, who says that there was something misleading in that statement. There is nothing misleading. That is exactly what happened. There was a conditional approval that the Liberals rescinded by ministerial order, so here we are today without that pipeline. It would have been built years ago. In 2016, the Liberals introduced the carbon tax. They also spent 2016 failing to champion the Keystone XL pipeline, another one that has not been built. It was cancelled by Biden later on. The government did not champion it and did not see it through to get it built when it had the chance. In 2016, the Liberals chased off TransCanada PipeLines, which wanted to build the energy east pipeline. Not only did it abandon that pipeline because of changing regulatory goalposts, but it also changed its name to TC Energy because “TransCanada PipeLines” did not fit what it was doing. It had to move its business to build pipelines in Mexico and the United States, where the opportunities were. That is the legacy of the government. I am up only to 2016. In 2017, the Liberals brought in the clean fuel regulations, which is a misnomer. It is really just a tax on fuel. In 2018, they brought in Bill C-48, which banned shipping traffic on the northwest B.C. coast. Again, we are talking about wishing we could export our products to the Asian market at full global price. The Liberals passed a law banning the shipping traffic to be able to do that. In 2019, Bill C-69 became law. We all know what Bill C-69 is. It is the “no more pipelines” bill. That was what they passed. There have been no major pipeline applications under that law. They even made changes to the Fisheries Act that made it impossible to get a hydro project approved. We heard about that at the natural resources committee yesterday. The head of WaterPower Canada told the committee that under the 2019 changes to the Fisheries Act, it is impossible to get a hydro project approved in Canada. The Liberals will not even allow hydro projects to go forward under the current government. In 2022, Prime Minister Trudeau told the world that there was no business case for Canadian LNG to Europe. In a way, he was right, but the reason there was no business case was because of all the red tape and regulation, which the government imposed, that killed the business case. So, yes, we need to build Canada. If only we had spent the last 11 years building Canada, we would not be in such a precarious position today. We agree with the government that we need to build things. Major projects need to be built, and it is not just oil and gas. I have spent a lot of time talking about pipelines, which is a really important one, but there are terrible deficiencies in our ports. We have among the worst ports in the world for efficiency. We have everything from ports to rail, airports, electrical transmission lines, etc. We have a need for major projects, and so we do support this stated purpose to build Canada. It is funny that the fanfare with which the bill before us was tabled rings familiar, which is because the Liberals said many of the same things they said about 18 months ago when Parliament first sat following the last election. It was last spring, in June, that they passed Bill C-5. It was a bill that Conservatives supported a little reluctantly, because it granted extraordinary powers to ministers to interfere politically and cherry-pick and decide politically which projects they wanted to exempt from their own laws that they had passed. It was not quite the approach for us. We would rather they stripped away all these bad laws, but we said, “Look, we have to build something. If this is a way to get something done, we will support it”, and we did. Here we are, a year later, no major projects approved and no shovels in the ground. It did not seem to make any difference. Now, we have this latest bill that is more about bureaucratic structures than getting shovels in the ground. This is a 250-page bill the Liberals dumped on Tuesday afternoon, a little less than 72 hours ago, and so I have not gone through all 250 pages with a fine-tooth comb. We are going to take the time to make sure that we understand the bill fully, but part of what I understand about it is the movement from the Impact Assessment Act to the Canadian Energy Regulator on certain projects, which is probably not a bad idea. The structure of Bill C-69 was there to kill projects. The idea that the bill before us would give certainty to industry is quite misleading. The bill would give ministers the power, but would not compel them to make a decision within a year. It would give them the latitude to hit the pause button on how long that year takes. It would give them the power to extend the year. It would give the power to say, “No, I’m going to take extra time.” This is not going to give the certainty that industry needs. We heard yesterday at the natural resources committee about how important it is to have regulatory certainty. Regulatory uncertainty makes the country uninvestable, and we have seen investment flee this country under this government. We do not need new laws. We do not need summits. We do not need announcements. We do not need speeches. We do not need vague MOUs. We do not need photo op signings. We do not need slush funds under political control. We do not need corporate welfare. We simply need to undo the approach that, for 11 years, has prevented major projects from going ahead in Canada. We need major projects. We need pipelines. We needed pipelines 10 years ago, 11 years ago, and we need them now. We need better roads. We need better ports. We need better infrastructure. We need all these things, and we are still waiting.”

“The Liberals have a majority and can win any vote, but they need to be more humble. The finance minister refused to answer any questions from opposition members at a recent committee meeting. What more can the member say about the government's poor performance and its arrogance?”

“Madam Speaker, in his speech, the member called upon the government to turn down the arrogance a bit. The Liberals have a majority and they can win any vote they want. They could start being just a little more humble about their performance. I would note that the Minister of Finance recently appeared at the finance committee. He did not answer any of the member’s questions. He did not answer any of my questions. He ignored the questions that were put to him by opposition members. Does the member have anything else to say about the government’s performance and the need for a little humility, given that performance?”

In response to a question from Jean-Denis Garon

“We did not want the government to spend public money on the pipeline. We wanted them to let a private company build it with their own money. We never supported the government buying it.”

“Madam Speaker, I do not know, it probably is. We did not ask the federal government to borrow public money to build that pipeline. We asked it to get out of the way, so that a private business would invest its money without a hit to the public treasury and allow the thing to get built on its own. I do not know why the Bloc seems keen to call on Conservatives to defend that decision. We never defended that decision.”

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In response to a question from Anna Roberts

“The Liberal government does not understand how hard life is for regular Canadians. Instead, it is giving itself more power to spend public money on private business deals and help rich insiders.”

“Madam Speaker, the Liberal government simply seems oblivious to the struggle of real Canadians, whether they are seniors, young people or really anybody. The Liberal government seems more focused on these large bureaucratic structures, giving itself more power to use public money to interfere in what would normally be private investment decisions. I can only imagine where its sovereign wealth fund is going to take us in the world of corporate welfare and insider enrichment. I do not believe that the Liberals are in touch with what is going on on the ground.”

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In response to a question from Maxime Blanchette-Joncas

“Conservatives never wanted the government to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline. We wanted the government to stop changing the rules so a private company could build it with its own money. The government needs to get out of the way so private investors can build our energy projects.”

“Madam Speaker, the member brings up the Trans Mountain pipeline and, again, Conservatives were not calling upon the government to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline and build it themselves. They were calling upon the government to stop moving the goalposts on their approval process so that Kinder Morgan would commit and build it at its own expense. Conservatives do not believe in the public sector taking over and intruding on that which should be left to private investors. Let us just get the government out of the way, so that actual private investors, with their own money, will invest in Canada’s energy infrastructure and allow our production to increase. This is not about subsidizing anything. This is about getting the government out of the way.”

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In response to a question from Mark Gerretsen

“The Liberals tell Canadians that things are great. They deny that we are in a recession, even though experts have lowered our economic growth forecasts. They also deny that they are misleading the House in their budgets.”

“Madam Speaker, here we go again. Another Liberal, who would tell Canadians they have never had it so good and will deny that they are in recession, deny that the PBO and private sector economists have downgraded their growth projections and deny that they are misleading the House in their budgets.”

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In response to a question from Jean-Denis Garon

“Canada is in a recession because the Liberals spend too much money, take on too much debt, and block energy projects like pipelines. I want the government to stop breaking its budget promises, spend less, and borrow less.”

“Madam Speaker, Canada is in a recession, but the Liberals, and even some of their apologists among the punditry, say that it is only a technical recession. Allow me to get technical for a few moments. Technically, economic growth is shrinking, and that is how we measure the strength of a national economy. Technically, 40,000 more Canadians are out of work so far this year. Technically, the cost of living has left millions of Canadians unable to afford basic necessities, like food. Technically, under the Liberals, Canadian families are the most indebted in the world, which means they are tapped out, and cannot lead the way out of a recession through increased consumption. Technically, young Canadians are giving up on the dream of home ownership, and with it, the dream of starting their own families, because Canadians technically have the most unaffordable housing among peer countries. Technically, over the last 11 years, the Liberals have passed a series of laws and ministerial orders that have prevented Canada from bringing its resource wealth to world markets and provide high-paying jobs for Canadians. Technically, the Liberal finance minister would make Chrystia Freeland and Bill Morneau blush over the fire hose of new spending and federal debt that young Canadians know they are going to be on the hook for. Technically, the PBO said the finance minister misled Canadians in his budget. Today, we are having a debate about the recession that the Liberals are responsible for and we demand specific actions in response. I can already hear the howls of protest from the Liberals saying things like, “What about the tariffs? What about the war in Ukraine? What about the war in Iran?” These global events affect every other economy in the world. Let me say something before I hear even more howls from the Liberals claiming, “Do the Conservatives not know that Canada is more vulnerable because we are more trade dependent on the United States than those other countries are?” They are the same Liberals who claimed that their leader would have a trade deal with the United States by summer 2025. They are the same Liberals who spent the last 11 years actively preventing Canada from diversifying its export markets by systematically preventing the construction of the energy infrastructure necessary to export Canadian energy to the world. Canadian oil and gas is by far Canada’s most valuable export. It dwarfs everything else. Oil and gas exports are worth $160 billion a year. The Prime Minister said that he had the experience for this moment and assured Canadians that he would be successful in defending Canada’s interests by negotiating a deal with the Americans while diversifying our trade. What has the Prime Minister done? He teased Canadians by saying it was time to get things built. He teased Canadians by claiming that his government would see that major projects would be built at speeds thought unimaginable. I thought that might mean that a year after he made these claims, there would be some kind of approval on the horizon for a pipeline project. I could easily imagine that. In fact, I could imagine maybe one like the Pacific north coast pipeline that the previous Conservative government approved and that the Liberals cancelled only a few days after they were sworn in, in November 2015, a decision endorsed by the current Prime Minister at an energy committee meeting in 2021. He said then, five years ago, that he supported cancelling northern gateway, and now all of a sudden, he is scratching his head saying, “Yeah, maybe we should build some major projects,” but the projects are not being built. The northern gateway pipeline that the government cancelled and the Prime Minister opposed did not get built. If it had been built, it would be carrying 525,000 barrels a day today to world markets. At today’s prices, that would bring about $20 billion per year to the Canadian economy. Would we be in a recession today, if the Canadian economy had another 525,000 barrels a day in exported production? I do not know, but it would be better than what we have now. What if Canada had built an east coast pipeline too? Let us think of what that would mean for world energy security and what it would mean for the Canadian economy. The opportunities squandered by the Liberals contribute to the recession we are in now. They have prevented Canada from being part of the international solution to world markets that are cut off from the Middle East and from those that want to defund Putin’s war machine. So far, all the government has done is create a so-called Major Projects Office that will have incredible sweeping powers of exemption from Canadian law. It was set up nearly a full year ago and there are no major projects. On top of the economic self-harm the Liberals have imposed on Canada, 11 years of incessant debt, deficits and money printing have left Canadians deeply in debt and unable to afford necessities. As bad as Bill Morneau and Chrystia Freeland were, the current finance minister is even worse. He might end up challenging Allan MacEachen and Marc Lalonde as perhaps the worst finance minister in Canadian history. Do members remember those guys? They ran up deficits in the eighties that were so big that by the time the Liberals were defeated in 1984, Canada was literally kiting interest payments by issuing new debt just to cover the interest on the existing debt. That disastrous time under the Liberals took successive governments, Conservative, Liberal and Conservative, to restore sanity to Canada’s finances. Now the current government is threatening to take us back to those dark times. After Pierre Trudeau, there was a consensus that balanced budgets matter and ought to be every government’s goal. The Liberals have blown it, despite their 2015 promise. Last week, there was a series of terrible reports that challenged the very credibility of the government and the finance minister. The Parliamentary Budget Officer published a report that said that the deficit would be billions of dollars higher than the finance minister said in his budget. It would be higher this year, higher next year and every year in the projection. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that spending would be higher. She said that borrowing would be higher. She said expected income tax revenues would be lower because she expects Canadians will have less income than the finance minister projects. She said that, based on the government’s stress tests, which, “draws on decades of Canadian economic and fiscal history, including, recessions, financial crises, oil price crashes, and runs thousands of combinations to show the range of possibilities....that the likelihood that the deficit-to-GDP ratio will decline...is less than 1 per cent.” That was the Liberals’ latest fiscal anchor, the one they came up with when their last fiscal anchor was cut loose. They said that the deficit would decline as a percentage of GDP every year through 2031. The PBO said that the odds of that happening are less than 1%. After 11 years, they have made promise after promise about fiscal anchors and guardrails and have broken every single one of them. The finance minister is like a sailor who forgets to connect the anchor chain to the boat, then drops the anchor in the water and has to go back to the chandlery to get a new one while everybody on the dock laughs at him. I can only imagine what next year’s fiscal anchor is going to be. This latest anchor, the one that is already on the bottom of the ocean with no chain allowing the budget to drift toward the rocks, was never even a good anchor to start with. In fact, the PBO notes that the IMF thinks Canada would be better off with its old anchor of a declining debt-to-GDP ratio, but that anchor is also overboard on the bottom of the ocean. It has been dumped overboard without a chain I do not know how many times. Canadians are increasingly asking why the Liberals cannot table a plan to return to the balanced budget they started with in 2015. Many witnesses at the finance committee have called upon them to do so. However, the minister, in his arrogance and hubris, refuses and lectures those who ask him to simply do what his government promised to do way back in 2015. It is not just the PBO, not just the finance committee witnesses and not just Conservatives challenging the wisdom and credibility of the government’s budgets; two of Canada’s major banks have dropped reports downgrading their forecasts for the Canadian economy to below 1%. Given the fact that Canada is in a recession and the government’s budget outlook is deteriorating and lacks credibility, Conservatives ask this House to call on the government to reverse its 11 years of continued deficits and broken fiscal promises, and rein in its spending and borrowing before things really do spiral out of its control.”

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“Canada is the only G20 country in a recession, and the government is already failing its own spending rules. Will the government admit this?”

“Madam Speaker, last Friday, we learned that under the Liberal Prime Minister, Canada is the only G20 country in a recession. Yesterday, we learned that there is only a 1% chance that their latest fiscal anchor will hold. The Liberals have, so far, refused to acknowledge their own government’s reports. Will they admit today that they caused the only recession in the G20 and that they are already breaking their latest fiscal anchor, or are they going to say that it is all just a technicality?”

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In response to a question from Mario Beaulieu

“The government should remove all federal taxes on fuel. It should also get rid of the rules it passed since 2015 that stop new projects from being built. These rules are holding Canadian industries back.”

“Mr. Speaker, if the member meant that we have called upon the federal government to eliminate all the federal taxes on fuel, he is correct that we have called upon it to do so. We are disappointed that the government has not done it. As for subsidies, we are the party of free enterprise, and if the government would simply eliminate all the regulations and laws it has passed since 2015 that prevent projects from being built, we would be much better off today. I spoke about a couple of specifics on that in my speech, but it is on the government and its red tape that is holding Canada and our industries back.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The Liberals claim Canadians are doing well, but that is not true. While a few rich people got richer, regular Canadian families are falling deeper into debt and using up their savings to pay bills.”

“Mr. Speaker, there we have it again: another Liberal saying that Canadians have never had it so good. I really wonder whom the member talks to. The member raised the issue of the net worth of Canadians. I wonder if he has bothered to determine just how that average number might work out. Is it that there is an extraordinarily small number of people who have seen their assets inflate in value while the typical Canadian household is deeply in debt, getting deeper in debt and exhausting its savings just to keep up with bills?”

In response to a question from Kelly McCauley

“Canada is the only G7 country in a recession, and we have the worst household debt and housing costs. The government cannot just blame global events for this. I want the government to admit this failure and present a real plan to fix our economy.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to speak to opposition motions. Today Conservatives call on the House to recognize that the Liberal Prime Minister has given Canada the only recession in the G7. It is so sad that it has come to this and that we have to call on the House to recognize the sad fact that Canada is in a recession and is the only country in the G7 for which that is the case. Why is Canada alone in the G7? The government has blamed international events and continues to blame international factors for Canada’s poor economic performance, but I point out to the House that every other G7 country faces the same international factors. The Liberals cite war in Ukraine, in the Persian Gulf and in Iran, but this affects all countries. They talk about the trade war that we certainly do not want and did not ask for in Canada, but I point out that the United States is tariffing itself. It faces tariffs. It has made the decision to make its own citizens pay tariffs on what it imports, yet it is not in a recession. It is Canada alone among G7 countries that is in a recession, so we have to look at other factors driving this. The Conservative motion calls on the government to recognize that Canada has the worst household debt in the G7. There was devastating testimony at the finance committee about a month ago. Equifax and TransUnion, two of the businesses that track consumer debt behaviour, informed the committee that indebted Canadians are getting deeper in debt. They are going further into debt, and the credit balloon is continuing to expand but not with additional players. It is not that Canadians are buying homes for the first time, or this kind of thing, and becoming new participants in credit. No, indebted Canadians are getting deeper in debt. They are coping with this not with higher salaries and higher incomes to pay their debts. They are stretching out their payments, refinancing their loans, skipping out on essentials, cutting back on other expenses and exhausting their savings. This is not sustainable. This is not going to give us a consumer-led recovery, because consumers are tapped out. In fact, Food Banks Canada just released a report that says that among lower-income Canadians, food, other essentials and housing combined are more than 100% of the average household budget. People at the lowest levels are the people getting deeper in debt. They cannot afford food. They cannot afford gasoline. They cannot afford housing. They are coping with it by exhausting any savings they might have and getting deeper into debt. Affordability is part of the crisis that we find ourselves in. With respect to housing, we call upon the government, in the motion, to acknowledge that we have the worst housing affordability in the G7. A first-time homebuyer, a young person or young family hoping to establish a new household and buy a home as part of a long-term financial plan or as a way to put down roots in a community, has not have a hope under the government. The Liberals have presided over the astonishing run-up in the cost of housing that has shut out a generation of young Canadians from home ownership and traps people in rents that they are increasingly unable to afford. Rent has more than doubled under the Liberal government. Even though rents have been coming down for the last 18 months, as it has pointed out, they are still more than double what they were when the government took office. We see housing as unaffordable. The Liberals have killed the dream of home ownership for a generation of Canadians. They have created a country in which one’s ability to become a homeowner is really tied up in the question of whether or not their parents were homeowners and are able to share their equity with their children by refinancing their own home, lending them the money, co-signing, or all the different things. I was in the mortgage industry, and for the entire length of my career, a normal person with a normal, proper job who wanted to buy a home could save up the down payment over a period of a year or two and could come in, qualify for a mortgage and buy a home. That is simply impossible now in almost all of Canada’s major cities. It is a real shame. We heard testimony to that effect at the finance committee. Our motion calls upon the government to present a plan to reverse the situation we are in. The Liberal government squandered the opportunity it had when it was first elected. Let us go back in time for a minute to 2015. In 2015, when the government was sworn in, it had a balanced budget and a conditionally approved pipeline to the west coast. Literally days after the government was sworn in, it cancelled the northern gateway pipeline. If that pipeline had been built, it would right now be pumping 525,000 barrels a day to world markets. Let us think of the economic activity just from that one project alone. At today’s prices, that is nearly $50 million a day. Let us think of the tax revenue foregone by the government. Let us think of the paycheques that do not exist from all the jobs that would go into the production and transmission of 525,000 barrels a day at today’s prices. The Liberal government blew it, and that was just one pipeline. There was also not yet an application, but there was an intent to build an east coast pipeline as well, and the government chased off that project when it started musing about changing, even before it put in Bill C-69, which really nailed the door shut and made sure no pipelines would ever get produced. What the Liberal government has done is it squandered the opportunity. There were years when there was a strong world economy in the early years of the Liberal government, and the Liberals blew it. They still ran up deficits. They spent the cupboard bare in times of relative prosperity globally. Ever since then, they have been less able to cope with crises and have left us where we are today, extraordinarily in debt with a $67-billion deficit that the government just tabled and fiscal anchors that have been just cut loose. They announce one and then they abandon it. The Liberals have presided over a productivity crisis that, two full years ago, the senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada said was a break-glass emergency. Well, the Liberals did not break the glass and deal with the emergency. They have just fumbled along right up to this very day. The Prime Minister told everybody, about 15 months ago, that he was the man for a crisis and that he was the person who would have a deal with Trump’s America by July 2025. The Prime Minister said that this was the time for prudent fiscal management and that as a banker he had the skills to manage the national budget. He said that he was a man for a crisis. It was all an illusion. Here we are now at a time when we are in a recession. We are the most indebted country in the G7. We have food bank usage that is off the chart. We have housing that is staggeringly unaffordable. We have the same global concerns as every other country, but we are the one that is in a recession. The responsibility for that lies on the Prime Minister, and the 10 and a half years of financial and economic mismanagement that has occurred under the Prime Minister and the government’s watch.”

“Canada is the only G7 country in a recession because the government took on too much debt and made bad rules. Why are we the only one in a recession?”

“Mr. Speaker, Canada is now the only G7 country in a recession. The Prime Minister spent the last year creating new bureaucracies, racking up debt and refusing to repeal job-killing regulations. Food insecurity is up. Job losses are up. Income insecurity is up. Insolvencies are up, and housing remains unaffordable. The rest of the world faces the same outside factors that this government is blaming for its failures. Why is Canada the only G7 country in a recession?”

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