Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Eric Duncan: if I were to give any advice to a Canadian who wanted to understand where our country is financially right now, and perhaps understand the credibility of the performance of the current Liberal government, I would tell them to not read the most recent budget. Instead, what I would encourage them to do, would be to just read the one from last year and perhaps some of the independent audits that have been done on the government's financial performance. It was just last year that the Liberals said they were finally getting tough on spending and on the country's budget. They said they were going to balance the budget in five years. They said the deficit would go down, and they used some pretty big firm words about fiscal anchors and red lines. Here we are a year later, and they broke every single one of those metrics. After eight years of Liberal government, and after all those years of budgets, Canadians are fed up with the broken promises, and they are fed up with the doubling down by the Liberals and the NDP on the same failed approach that created the mess we are currently facing in this country with government spending, the cost of living and the inflationary pressures Canadians in every part of this country are facing in every aspect of their lives. It is important that, when we talk about a budget, we understand and define why we are here in the first place. With many of the measures the government would try to take credit for, the reality is that they are forced to introduce them because of the problems they created. We have a 40-year high in inflation, and we still have food costs that are at double-digit increases year by year. Housing prices have doubled. What is absolutely painful for millions of Canadians on top of that is the fact that rent has doubled. Now, as interest rates have skyrocketed at a near unprecedented level, we are seeing mortgage payments doubled in this country. If we add up the Liberals' budgets, their strategies and their plans, there is one clear conclusion: Every time the Liberals and NDP touch something, they spend record amounts, and they make the problem worse. The interesting thing is that in the lead-up to the budget, there was a tiny part of me that was a little naive and thought maybe the Liberals finally and truly got it. It was the finance minister who went out in the days leading up to it, after years of our leader saying that, when the government drives up debt and deficits and prints half a trillion dollars over the course of a few years, it adds to and creates inflation. The Liberals denied it, and finally in the lead-up to the budget, they admitted it. They said they needed to rein in their spending and get their fiscal house in order to make sure they were not inflaming inflation further. This was a little ironic after two years of them denying it. However, when the Liberals tabled the budget, the finance minister did not even listen to what she had said the week before while out on a tour previewing the budget. The deficit went up. There is over $40 billion in new spending, debt and deficit this year alone. It was supposed to go down, but it went up. There is new spending of $4,200 per family. The Auditor General has said several times that the government will try to claim it had to add and double. The Prime Minister and the Liberals had to add more to our national debt in eight years than every other previous prime minister combined because of COVID, yet it was the independent Auditor General who called them out and said there were billions upon billions of dollars in increased spending because the Liberals cannot control their budgets. There was $15 billion found that was deemed fraudulent. The response from the government was that it was not worth going after. If someone got a bill from CRA for $79.82, they had better make that payment by the end of the month, or the CRA is going to start coming after them and mailing them repeatedly until they pay, yet the Liberals let $15 billion out the door and tell Canadians that it is not even worth it. That is the reason the financial mess is happening here in Ottawa. After eight years, Canadians believe there is not a shred of fiscal responsibility left on that side of the aisle. I want to talk tonight about interest rates. They are going up after the government, the finance minister , the Prime Minister and the governor of the Bank of Canada all said that they would not. They actually worried that, because they were spending so much, they were going to have deflation and not inflation. Not only were they wrong, but we have 40-year highs in inflation and some of the fastest increases in modern times. Here is the thing that I want to let Canadians know when they understand what this budget is all about and how it is painful to our economy and to households in multiple ways. When interest rates go up, what many Canadians see is the pain of mortgage payments. When the Liberals came into power in 2015, the average mortgage payment in this country was about $1,400 per month. Now, because of the mess they have created, interest rates have gone up and mortgage rates have gone up. The average right now for a mortgage in this country for a Canadian family or individual is $3,100 a month. Rent for a one-bedroom unit only a few years ago, when the Liberals came into power, was $973. Now, the average for a one-bedroom unit in this country is over $1,700 per month. At the same time, when the price of gas, the price of food and every other metric of a family budget is going up, families are now forced to find hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of dollars more per month to keep a roof over their heads. However, the double whammy of interest rates that I want to highlight is that there is another part. The government has a mortgage debt of sorts, which is our national debt. It has now bloomed to $1.2 trillion. That is $81,000 in debt for every Canadian household in this country. Our debt, as I mentioned, has doubled in the last five years, but there is a problem where interest rates are a gut punch to taxpayers in two ways. I talked about people's family budget and how it is impacting them, but as a taxpayer, the cost to service our national debt is skyrocketing as well. Just two years ago, the payments for the interest on the national debt were $24.5 billion dollars. That is just the interest payments and not paying it down in any way. It is a serious, major payment. This year, in the Liberals' own budget, because they have added so much to our debt and because they have allowed and caused interest rates to go through the roof with their inflationary spending, we will spend nearly $44 billion this year on just servicing the interest on our national debt. That is a major step in the wrong direction. I will say this tonight, and not only to the government but, shamefully, to the NDP: Not only are they going along with the budget, but they are also adding more deficit and more debt. They are increasing taxes. The carbon tax is going up. There is more money coming off of people's paycheques at the end of every month. They are making the problem worse, not better. The NDP continues to prop the Liberals up every single step of the way, and not just in financial policy that is bad for this country, but also in the cover-ups of the numerous ethical scandals the government is facing. I am proud that, on this side of the aisle, we have a leader and a party proposing ideas about capping spending with dollar-for-dollar savings. For every dollar of proposed new spending, we would find a dollar of savings. When the number of housing starts in this country is the lowest of the G7, when it is costing so much and we are getting further behind, we need to remove gatekeepers and tie federal money to infrastructure funding and the amount of housing units being built. We need to scrap the carbon tax, which would make life more affordable and lower the cost of living in every part of this country for every Canadian. Enough is enough. After eight years, it is time for a change, and I am anxious to get out there and let Canadians know what that alternative is.