“Grandparents from my riding came here today to listen to the debate on the economy.”

“Mr. Speaker, earlier today I was speaking with some grandparents from my riding who were actually sitting in the gallery listening to my colleague, our finance critic, speak on the state of our economy. I did not realize they were coming. I am very grateful to have met them downstairs. As they listened to the Liberal members—”

“Seniors and families are struggling with the rising cost of living. Why is the government ignoring the recession that ordinary Canadians are dealing with?”

“Mr. Speaker, the grandparents listened to the Liberal members dismiss concerns about the recession, rising debt and the cost of living. They told me they wished they could call and tell the government what they were seeing in their own lives, as seniors struggling to make ends meet. They talked about grocery bills that keep climbing, adult children who are struggling to get ahead, and their grandchildren facing a future that looks less affordable than the one they inherited. Can my colleague explain to me why so many ordinary Canadians can see we are in a recession, while the Liberal government continues to downplay the very real economic struggles that families are facing every day?”

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“The chief government whip is breaking the rules. He is not allowed to talk about whether a member is present or absent from the chamber.”

“Mr. Speaker, the chief government whip knows well that he cannot reflect on a member’s presence or past presence in, or absence from, the chamber. I would remind him to read his own rule book, for which he is responsible for the government—”

“Our economy is struggling, and the Prime Minister has done nothing to fix it. He needs to lower taxes, cut red tape, and bring in more competition for our banks and airlines. Instead, he is borrowing record amounts of money and doubling our deficit. This debt puts our country at huge financial risk, and the interest payments will soon take money away from the programs Canadians need.”

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate having the opportunity to rise today to speak to this very sobering issue. I will be splitting my time with the wonderful new member from Long Range Mountains, who is a fantastic member in this place and brings a lot of expertise. I am happy to share my time with her. Also, I want to say hi to Susan, who might be watching at home, who typically watches many of these speeches. I thank and appreciate her for all the support and the friends at Cornerstone. We are talking about a recession. We might be down by 0.1% or up by 0.1%, but the truth is that the economy is not doing very well, regardless of whether the government suggests that we are not in a recession or that, as some people like to say, it is just a technical recession. In fact, according to Sean Speer, editor-at-large at The Hub, all of this is a bit of silly semantics: “The real questions are: how much does the economy suck, how long has it sucked, why does it suck, and what are the different ideas to stop it from sucking.” We have a productivity crisis in this country, and everybody knows it. The Prime Minister has even acknowledged it. I think the Prime Minister was elected in part because of his résumé, but it appears, over a year into his term, that his economic agenda and plan are not working. It is even a bit hard to determine what his economic plan and agenda are. If it is to attack productivity, one cannot connect very many of his economic announcements to actually making the big reforms and changes we need to the economy in this country to get it going. Of course, President Trump’s tariffs weigh on our economy, but we saw serious economic trouble before anyone had heard of President Trump. The Bank of Canada has called it a productivity emergency. Senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers declared it “an emergency”, a “time to break the glass”. If it is true that we are in this economic crisis of productivity, the Prime Minister’s agenda is not addressing it. He is saying we have moved at speeds faster than ever before, but we have not seen fundamental reforms. There has been no serious competition reform, tax reform or regulatory reform. In fact, when it comes to those three items, we could classify the Prime Minister not as a bold actor but as one who supports the status quo. He is the status quo man. He is not willing to take on the banks, the airlines, the telecoms or the other oligopolies that we need to take on to enhance the productivity of our country. He must move faster. On competition, we should radically attack the profit pools of our financial institutions, in particular the banks, by introducing more competition to deliver lower prices to Canadians. If we want to send a message to the United States, let us do it through CANZUK. If British Airways wants to fly a plane between Toronto and Vancouver or Toronto and Halifax, why do we not let them and invite any airline in the CANZUK countries to do so? On taxes, we should immediately move to reduce capital gains on those businesses and individuals who reinvest in Canada and in Canadian companies. We need a tax reform package to lower taxes, business and personal, and significantly reduce complexity. On regulation, we need service standards for permitting. We need to pre-approve projects in areas of the country, which means they can be done faster. We should be working more closely with indigenous leaders across the country to identify and pre-approve projects, to de-risk them, in order to free up and attract private capital. If the Prime Minister was serious about building a pipeline, he would have already started his consultations with indigenous groups. We risk allowing this valuable time to go by without making the difficult decisions. Instead, we get announcements, speeches and bureaucracies, such as the Major Projects Office, which, by the way, in and of itself is an admission that the regulatory process does not work. We have the build Canada office, and then the sovereign wealth fund, which will be funded, of course, with debt. Now I would like to turn, for the reminder of my comments, to a specific risk that I think is growing and that the government should be paying more attention to. The Prime Minister’s fiscal plan for this country is putting us at serious risk. By doubling the size of the deficits of PM Trudeau, the Prime Minister is threatening the fiscal stability of our country. If we get into economic challenges around the world, we will be less able to deal with them. We are borrowing record amounts of debt this year and in the next two years. This year we will borrow $510 billion in the market, then we have to borrow $594 billion in the market, and in 2027-28, we have to borrow $563 billion. We borrow mostly on the short end of the curve, so what happens is that this debt has to be rolled over every two or three years. That is like signing up for only a one- or two-year mortgage on a house. One would have to go to the bank, and guess what happens. Their interest rate gets reset every single time. When 40% of the government’s debt is purchased by non-bank financial actors, which are hedge funds and financial speculators, we are at serious risk if those hedge funds and purchasers cannot continue to purchase. In the face of all of this, the Prime Minister’s fiscal plan is to borrow more money, record amounts of money. If there is an economic event, a sovereign debt crisis or a war, something that happens totally outside of Canada, our debt service costs are going to explode. They are already going to be $80 billion in just a few years, and that is $80 billion that could not go to more productive uses. That $80 billion is a projection based on interest rates staying the same or going down. What if interest rates go up? The Prime Minister, who is a two-time central banker and chair of the Financial Stability Board, should know better than to increase the size of deficits and debt in this country and put us further at risk, and I am not the only one who thinks so. The Bank of Canada is warning that we will have potential problems. It is saying that higher stock market valuations, higher corporate debt and higher amounts of money borrowed by hedge funds to buy sovereign debt are vulnerabilities. “This has made it more likely that a new shock or a combination of shocks could cause several vulnerabilities to crystallize at once,” said the senior deputy governor, Carolyn Rogers. The Bank of Canada is warning the government that there could be economic instability, and we have a risk of who funds our government in purchasing our debt. That will put our AAA credit rating at risk. We can kiss the fiscal anchor goodbye. In fact, already the Parliamentary Budget Officer is saying that the government has a less than 1% chance of even keeping that anchor. The Prime Minister’s decisions are completely imprudent when it comes to fiscal responsibility, and it will result, and may result, in more pain later. Now, one of these events might not happen, but no one predicted the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, or very few people did. However, it might happen, and with the fact that it might happen, and that the risks are growing, this Prime Minister’s decision to increase the size of the debt and the deficits can be called nothing short of reckless, because it will imperil the government’s ability to pay for social programs. The bankers and the bondholders get paid first, and our social programs will come second. As I said, one would think that the Prime Minister would be more attuned to some of these global risks and would be taking a much more fiscally responsible path with the government’s spending. As I might not get a chance to welcome everyone to Midland this weekend, it is Ontario’s Best Butter Tart Festival. Please come. I am super happy to plug that big event in my riding this weekend. I am also more than happy to answer any questions from any member in the House about my remarks.”

“People in my area are struggling with high living costs and lower wages. I want my colleague to explain why the government will not admit its spending has hurt the economy and increased family debt.”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my excellent colleague for his speech, not least for the way that he ended it. I might just have to find myself down there for a couple of butter tarts. His speech accurately portrayed what I am hearing, and what I know most of our colleagues in this place are hearing, from constituents. They are feeling the recession. They are feeling the inflationary policies of the government that have driven down their wages and driven up their cost of living. I would like the member to provide a little more clarity on why he thinks the Liberals cannot admit that their 11 years of inflationary spending have had a devastating impact on our economy, on household incomes and on household debt, and what the implications of that could be going forward.”

“The government was too slow to admit that inflation and the slowing economy are real problems. They do not want to admit these problems because they have been in power for 11 years and should have fixed them.”

“Mr. Speaker, that was a wonderful question from a great colleague and contributor in this chamber. This is a movie we have seen before. The government was slow and late to acknowledge that inflation was a problem. It is slow and late to the party on the economic decline and stagnation of this country. Why? It is because if the Liberals acknowledge there is a problem, because they have been in power for 11 years, well, gosh, maybe they could have done something about it.”

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“Our economy only helps people who are already rich. Everyone else is struggling to pay for food and fuel. It seems the only people doing well are close friends of the Prime Minister.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. My friend in the Bloc has great taste in colours of ties and colours of suits, today for sure. The member raises an important distinction. There is something called a K-shaped recovery in the economy. That is, those who have assets and wealth are actually doing quite well, like those who are invested in Brookfield, and those who do not have assets and wealth are struggling. They struggle with higher costs and higher food prices and fuel prices. This is really what is happening in the economy. There are those who are doing well and those who are not doing so well. It just so happens that everyone who seems to be doing well knows the Prime Minister very well.”

“My riding depends heavily on trade and resources, and our unemployment rate is 8.5%. I want the member to explain how the government's economic policies are hurting ridings like mine.”

“Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has a lot of expertise in the area of trade. I, of course, come from a riding and a place in this country that is heavily dependent on resources, on trade, on forestry and on north-south exports and imports. Unemployment in my riding is now at 8.5%. I wonder if the member could talk about how the economy is not being felt the same in different parts of the country and, perhaps, explain to the members opposite why their economic policies are hurting ridings like mine in particular.”

“The government is celebrating new jobs, but people are still hurting in different parts of the country. Unemployment is not the same everywhere, and new jobs are not helping the 80,000 people who just lost theirs. The government needs to pay attention.”

“Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her excellent question and for pointing out that the economy is not uniform across the country. The government applauds job numbers that we saw on Friday, and by the way, those monthly numbers happen to get revised quite substantially. Unemployment is different across the entire country. Those jobs that we see added are not necessarily going to those 80,000 people who lost jobs in the previous number of months. This is a challenge. We are trying to show the government that there is economic pain in different parts of this country, and the government ought to start paying attention.”