Official Hansard
Madam Speaker, what if I told Canadians that every single week, the federal government spends $1 billion on something that will totally shock them? That $1 billion does not put a nurse at a bedside, does not build a home for a struggling family and does not make life one bit more affordable for Canadians. That $1 billion is 1,000 times $1 million, every seven days. What are Canadians getting for all that money? It is the bill for interest alone on the national debt. The worst part is that the $1 billion a week does not pay off a single penny of the debt itself. I think most of us know what it is like to sit down at the kitchen table with a pile of bills and wonder how we are going to make everything work. Imagine a family that has been relying a little too much on their credit card just to get through the month. They are doing their best, but the balance keeps growing, and every time they make a payment, so much of it goes toward interest that they barely make a dent in what they owe. One would think the sensible thing would be to sit down together, take a good look at where the money is going and figure out what they can cut back on. Instead, someone comes up with what they think is a brilliant idea: Why not get a second credit card and divide all their spending into two categories? On the first card, they can put everyday necessities, things like groceries, prescriptions, gas for the car and monthly bills. On the second card, they can put everything that they decide is an investment in the family’s future, like replacing a roof, buying new clothes for the kids and even taking the family to the movies, because, after all, spending time together is an investment too. Here is the clever part. From now on, they will only judge how well they are managing their money by looking at the first credit card. As long as they can get that balance under control, they will tell themselves that they are finally living within their means, even while the spending on the second card keeps growing. When the bills arrive, the bank does not care what they have decided to call their purchases. It does not matter whether the money went toward groceries, a new roof or a night at the movies. They still owe every dollar that they borrowed, and they are still paying interest on it. They have not solved their debt problem. They have simply found a new way of keeping score that makes one part of their finances look better without improving the overall picture. That little story might sound ridiculous, but it is a good way to describe how the Prime Minister is presenting the federal government’s finances. He is completely ignoring accounting practices accepted worldwide and has now decided to divide government spending into two categories. On the one side are the everyday operating expenses, and on the other are things his government calls investments in Canada’s future. Just like our family with the two credit cards, the Prime Minister wants Canadians to focus on getting that first account balanced while borrowing buckets of money to pay for what is going on the second. One does not have to take my word for whether this approach is actually keeping government spending under control. Just last week, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released her latest report, and the numbers tell quite a story. Since June, the government has announced $52.6 billion in new spending and tax measures over the next five years. Of that amount, $43.8 billion, more than 80%, has been classified as capital investment, which means it does not count against the Prime Minister’s promise to balance his operating budget. Think about that for a moment. For every five dollars in new measures that the government has announced, more than four dollars has been put into the second bucket, where they do not count against the Prime Minister’s promise to balance the day-to-day budget. Let us go back to that family sitting around the kitchen table, looking at their two credit card bills and trying to figure out how they are ever going to get ahead. They have been making their payments every month, but the balances never seem to come down because so much of what they are paying is being eaten up by interest. The longer they carry that debt, the more money they lose to interest, instead of being able to spend it on things the family needs. Most Canadians understand that problem because they have either experienced it themselves or watched somebody they love struggle with it. What many Canadians may not realize is that the federal government has run up such an enormous debt that the interest alone now works out to nearly $6,000 a year for every family of four in Canada. The Parliamentary Budget Officer tells us that the interest on our national debt is now the fastest-growing expense in the federal budget. We are not talking about health care, where Canadians are already waiting months for treatment, or national defence, where our military desperately needs new equipment, or even the benefits that seniors rely on to get by. We are talking about interest payments to corporate bankers and bondholders. This year alone, the federal government is expected to spend approximately $59 billion on interest. According to the PBO projections, that annual bill is going to climb to $83 billion by 2030. We can just imagine what that means for the next generation of Canadians, who will inherit not only the debt but the cost of servicing it. Here is where I find this especially troubling. When the Prime Minister took office, he promised Canadians that he would spend less, that he would bring some discipline back to Ottawa’s finances and that Canadians could expect a different approach to managing their money. Instead, we are looking at a deficit roughly twice the size of the one left behind by Justin Trudeau, with the government continuing to borrow billions more every year. Anyone who has ever tried to get out of credit card debt knows that they cannot keep increasing the balance and expect the interest payments to somehow take care of themselves. Eventually, those payments begin to crowd out everything else in the budget, and they find themselves working harder and harder just to keep up with what they already owe. That is exactly the concern we should have about our federal finances because every dollar Ottawa spends paying interest on the debt is a dollar that is not available to hire another nurse, provide another hospital bed, improve the services Canadians depend on or leave a little more money in the pockets of hard-working Canadians. The really frustrating part is that those Canadians are already making difficult choices every single day. They are putting things back on the grocery store shelf because they cannot afford them. They are postponing repairs to their homes. They are telling their children there simply is not enough money for some of the things they used to enjoy. They understand that when money is tight, they have to make choices. Canadians are entitled to expect their government to show that same kind of discipline, which it promised. At the end of the day, it does not matter whether someone has one credit card, two credit cards or a hundred different ways of dividing up the spending. If they keep borrowing more than they can afford to repay, the interest will keep growing. Eventually, someone has to pay the bill, and in this case, that someone is the Canadian taxpayer. The Prime Minister came into office promising to spend less, but Canadians are still waiting to hear how he intends to bring down the deficit, reduce the enormous interest bill we are leaving to our children and grandchildren and give hard-working families some relief from the taxes they are paying. That is why Conservatives are calling on the Prime Minister to come before the House of Commons finance committee and explain his plan. We want to know how he intends to get government spending under control, how he plans to reduce the interest we are paying on the national debt and when Canadians can expect to see some of their hard-earned money stay in their own pockets. This week, every Liberal member of Parliament will have an opportunity to support this request. Surely, asking the Prime Minister to explain how he intends to keep his own promises should not be controversial. Canadians have been doing their part. They have been working hard, paying their taxes and making difficult decisions around their own kitchen tables. I believe they have earned the right to expect their government to be just as careful with their money as they have to be. The Prime Minister has told Canadians he knows how to manage the economy. We are simply asking him to come to the finance committee, show us the numbers and explain his plan. Canadians do not need another credit card. They need a government that knows how to pay the bill.
