The Budget
Date: 2023_04_18
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Melissa Lantsman: today, I would like to add a voice that has been missing from this debate. We talk a lot about what is happening right now, what is going on in our modern political world, what the Prime Minister said yesterday or what was in the headlines this morning, but there is another perspective that we need to consider that is equally important. More than just thinking about the present, we need to think about the future once in a while. The choices we make here directly impact the country that we pass on to the next generation, the nation that it will grow up in, live in and inherit. In many ways, the biggest job is not the making the decisions that will impact us in the next 10 days, but rather the ones that are going to affect our country in the next 10 years. Our most sacred obligation is to build a country that is stronger than the one we have today, to build a future that is bright and that is prosperous and to leave the next generation unencumbered by bad decisions. To that end, the budget is one of the most important documents that we consider in Parliament because it sets out the long-term trajectory, or at least it is supposed to do that. However, it is clear that this is no plan for the future. It is clear that the Liberals are not even thinking about it. What do we see under the Prime Minister ? We see record-high projected debt. We see record lows in projected growth, the lowest in the G7, the lowest in decades. We see record inaction in protecting our environment through some bizarre obsession of punishing the consumer; inaction on building new housing or preserving the most basic of freedoms, the freedom to work hard and get ahead. The finance minister had a brief epiphany months before presenting what was seemingly the opposite of what she presented weeks ago. Last year she said this, "Our economy will slow. There will be people whose mortgage rates will rise. Businesses will no longer be booming. Our unemployment rate will no longer be at its record low. That's going to be the case in Canada." We agree. Then the budget happened. A reasonable prescription for slowing growth would of course be smaller deficits, lower taxes, more competition, less regulation, without massive subsidies. What we got, however, were bigger deficits, higher taxes, more regulation and more subsidies than this budget has pages. Less than half a year ago, the fall economic statement projected a deficit of $36-billion for this year, falling steadily over the next five years. There was even supposed to be a small surplus. Fast forward, the deficits are exceeding $40 billion over the next two years. There is no return to balance in sight. I get it. The Liberals do not think balance is their responsibility. They say instead that a declining debt-to-GDP ratio is the measure of success, but we did not get that either. That is going up. One in five Canadians are skipping meals because food price inflation is in the double digits. The average down payment needed for a home has doubled. It is the same for the average cost of rent and the average cost of a mortgage, which have all doubled. The cost of heating a home went up by 100% in some parts of our country. One in three Canadians say that they are struggling financially, 67% say they are cutting back and making sacrifices. Nine out of 10 young people do not ever believe they will own a home. People are out of money and they are out of hope. That is after eight years of the government. The government is putting its hands even deeper into the pockets of Canadians. That is what budget 2023 is: more taxes on pensions and El; more taxes on beer, wine, and spirits; more taxes on gas, groceries and home heating. It is painfully clear that the government does not understand the struggles of the middle class or even the simple principles that govern the country's economy, because its response is more of the same. It is more of the reckless, misguided, ineffective ideas that got us into this mess in the first place. Therefore, forgive me if I do not think the Liberals can fix this. We have the most unaffordable homes in the OECD. We have the second-biggest real estate bubble in the world. The theme of this budget is "Made in Canada". It is right on the front page. What have the Liberals made in Canada? They have a made-in-Canada cost of living crisis, a made-in-Canada housing crisis, a made-in-Canada opioid and addiction crisis and a made-in-Canada violent crime crisis. That is their record over the last years. We cannot afford to spend billions of dollars with no plan to pay it back. Never in the history of our country has there been a prime minister, who has been in that chair for eight years, who has spent so much so much money to achieve so little. We cannot afford to pay the interest that the Liberals are racking up on the taxpayer credit card. This year, our debt will cost nearly $44 billion. In five years, it will be $50 billion. We cannot afford the cost of spending on consumption instead of spending on investments. We cannot stop. We cannot afford to not build new homes. We cannot afford to have an environment plan that is a tax plan that does not even lower emissions. What happens in 10 or 20 years when the bill comes due for a decade and a half of Liberal debt and deficit? What is going to happen when we have had 20 or 30 years of building four homes for every 10 new people in our country? What is going to happen when we have had 10 years of a carbon tax that keeps going up and emissions that have, so far, followed suit? More important, who is going to pay? I do not have the answer to that question, because I honestly do not know. However, what I do know is that it is not going to be the Prime Minister, . However, it will be a problem for the next generation, the young people who will want to buy a home, who will want to get a job, who will want to build a family; the people who are already struggling today; the people whom we are supposed to be leaving a bright, optimistic future, the ones we are supposed to be setting up for success. We have had eight years of the Prime Minister and the Liberals are leaving them with no hope, no money and no opportunity. We will be voting against budget 2023. We know that better is possible in our country. The Prime Minister said it himself, but that is not what he has delivered. We know that we can aim our sights higher than 0.3% real GDP growth. We know that we need to stand up for the common sense of the common people. We know that we need to be here to bring home a better, brighter future for Canadians. We are going to do that by creating powerful paycheques with lower taxes that make hard work pay again. We are going to do that by ending the inflationary debt and deficits once and for all, and to bring home lower prices and lower interest rates so hard-working families, hard-working people can save more of their own money. We are going to protect the future and the prosperity of the next generation by living within their means, something that the government has no idea how to do. We are going to bring homes that people can afford by removing those in the way and cutting the red tape to freeing up land so we can actually build housing. This is how we build a strong and prosperous country, with a small government that makes room for bigger people. We know that we have the best, the brightest and most talented individuals in our country who want to do well, who want to have better lives for their families and who want to work in their professions. We know that we are blessed to live in a country with fields full of wheat, with oceans full of fish, with reserves full of oil and with brains full of knowledge. We are squandering every single opportunity by eight years of the government's record. We know that we live in the best country on earth and we think it is time for Canadians to have a government that also believes so. It is time for change and it is time for a government that thinks about a budget focused on the future, focused on growth and not just focused on staying in power.