Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the rose scholarship, a scholarship put on by a good friend of mine, Andrew Addorisio, and his wife, Sarah Addorisio. It was inspired by his mother, Rosella Addorisio. This scholarship aims to help underprivileged youth that face barriers to education and the things they are trying to achieve. I want to congratulate them on establishing this scholarship. It is an honour to rise on behalf of the great people of Vaughan—Woodbridge to speak to Bill C-31. Before the government asks Canadians to believe another budget promise, I should explain why so many people can no longer afford to eat. Today, the Salvation Army reported that one in three Canadians surveyed had skipped meals or reduced their size because they could not afford groceries. Among young adults, that number was 41%. These are young Canadians who are trying to establish themselves, build careers and start families. They are being robbed of a Canadian promise, falling behind on what is the most basic of necessities. The Daily Bread Food Bank also released its latest report today. One in eight Toronto children now lives in a household that relies on a food bank, nearly double the rate in 2022. Toronto recorded 4.1 million food bank visits for the second consecutive year. After housing costs, clients now have a median of just eight dollars a day left for food and other essentials. Can members imagine that? Eight dollars is not even enough to grab a meal at Tim Hortons. Let us think about people trying to get to work, feed themselves and replace a child’s worn-out shoes when all they have left is that amount. I am sure we will hear the Prime Minister deliver another speech about the strength of the economy, another talking point in the House that will be dressed down if spoken to the average Canadian. As we have heard, “Affordability is the best it has been in over a decade.” After all, if we listened to the government very closely, we would get the impression that Canadians have never had it so good, but I would ask Canadians watching at home if that resonates with them. Are they better off today than they were yesterday? Are they better off from anything that the Liberal government has done? Parents, when they open their fridge when they get home, know the truth. That is exactly the reality against which we will judge Bill C-31, the second act implementing last year’s budget and, of course, the budget the government is preparing to introduce later this week. Canadians deserve to know whether any of this will leave them in a better position to pay their bills. The government cannot keep raising the cost of doing business and expecting the consequences to stop before they reach the customer. The Prime Minister, over the past decade and a half, has doubled the deficit, with the biggest deficit outside of the pandemic estimated to be the highest spending as a share of GDP this century. There are serious threats, of course, from outside of our borders. American tariffs are hurting Canadian employers and workers. This makes it even more urgent to address the costs the government can control. Canadians should be able to count on their own government to make it easier for them to earn a living here. Instead, the government’s finances are moving further away from the discipline that it promised when it was first elected. The Parliamentary Budget Officer now projects a $63.3-billion deficit this fiscal year. Federal debt as a share of the economy is projected to rise every year over the forecast. The government is also projected to miss its fiscal anchor of a declining debt-to-GDP ratio. It is the Liberals themselves who chose that very commitment, and Canadians are certainly entitled to expect them to keep it. Earlier today at the finance committee, I asked the Bank of Canada governor what his thoughts were on the importance of fiscal anchors from the perspective of the market and what the signal of missing a fiscal anchor might do. Of course, his response was predictable: These are plans, and they give confidence to the market. The government ignores its fiscal anchors, and it has been doing this for the last 10 or 11 years. We might remember a time when Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, when he was finance minister, got us back on track with our fiscal anchors and balanced budgets. Of course, since then, we know about Justin Trudeau’s time here. How many of us would love to forget how the Liberals ran deficits year after year, blowing our deficit to smithereens? Worse than that, they set numerous fiscal targets and ran through every single one of them. Now the Prime Minister has set fiscal anchors, and it appears he will already be blowing through at least one of them. When a family cannot make its payments, it cannot solve its problem by inventing a new description for its bills. A small business can not reassure its bank by moving the goalposts whenever it misses a target. The Prime Minister should face the same basic demand to have an honest plan, one that he is able to stick to and that breathes confidence into the Canadian economy. The PBO projects interest on the federal debt will cost over $59 billion this year, rising to $83 billion in the next five years. Canadians will end up paying that through taxes while trying to manage their own debt. Imagine that. We now live in a time when we are going to be spending more on debt interest than we do on health care transfers. If we recall, former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge once had a proposal for keeping debt servicing costs below 10% of government revenue, or roughly 10¢ for every dollar. According to the PBO, we are already around 10.5¢ for every dollar, and that is expected to rise over the next five years to just under 14¢. Borrowing certainly has a cost. The larger that cost becomes, the harder it is to fund essential services and provide lasting tax relief for Canadians. We should be focusing on metrics that will help the structural issues of our economy and get it moving again. Often, we see from the government that its measure of success is how much money it spent. What we need to do is signal to the economy that we are ready and open for business and want to attract investment. We would like to see some regulatory and tax reform, which is much needed in this country. This is why Canadians are asking for a budget that saves them money. In this budget, we would love to see the Liberals cut wasteful spending, reduce their reliance on expensive consultants, cut unnecessary bureaucracy and corporate handouts, and cancel the $150-billion Alto project rather than committing taxpayers to another enormous project while families struggle. I find that interesting. When we were discussing Bill C-31 at the finance committee, I asked the transport minister what the ceiling was on this project, and he would not commit to a ceiling. There are certain projects that some people try to argue, the way the government has, are in the national interest. That does not mean there is a blank cheque awarded to government for these projects. We have a project that is already demonstrating that the cost will be exponentially higher than first considered. Oftentimes, when projects are put on the books and a costing plan is looked at, there is a large buffer in the plan when dealing with bigger projects. There seems to be no end in sight to the amount of money that this project is going to cost taxpayers. Let us think about the GST on fuel for a second. Conservatives are calling for the elimination of federal diesel taxes until Canada Day, the suspension of the GST on fuel until summer and the permanent repeal of the fuel standard tax. That is exactly what it is: a tax on Canadians and a tax on the trucks that carry groceries to the store, materials to a construction site and products from Canadian factories to their customers. Reducing fuel taxes would lower transportation costs and give families direct relief at the pump. We also need more good jobs and stronger paycheques. That requires businesses willing to invest in this country and to expand and hire in Canada. Ottawa needs to speed up approvals, remove unnecessary regulatory barriers and make it easier to build homes, develop our resources and manufacture Canadian products. The responsibility to protect taxpayers also needs to apply to defence procurement. Division 16 of Bill C-31 would establish the Defence Investment Agency in legislation. One thing we are constantly questioning is why, with every new agency developed, there seems to be less and less accountability from the government. I thank members for their time. I stand here on behalf of Canadians fighting for a more affordable Canada.
