44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 21, 2022 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, Liberals are driving the government like a rental. They do not drive it as if it is Canadians' money or savings. They drive it like they stole it, buying the flashiest items without taking care of the tires, the engine or the oil. Today, with the government moving closure on debate, it is just returning the rental car with smoke pouring from the hood and the tank empty.
The Conservative plan for Canadians and the skyrocketing inflation is quite simple: Invest in Canadians by fixing the basic problems; stop spending an excessive amount of money, and stop the tax increases to Canadians. For every item of spending, we propose that the government must find an item to save. It must stop the triple increases on gas, home heating and groceries and ensure that we give Canadians back control of their lives once again.
The car is broken. Inflation is at a 40-year high. We have immigration problems, a big, broken system that is resulting in a lack of workers. There is a lack of 1.03 million workers in this country, costing this economy upward of $30 billion. We have a housing crisis. We are over 1.65 million homes short in this country, and from that we have a homelessness problem. In my region there are over 500 homeless at this point, and there are homeless in every single area of this country. We have a health care problem: Canadians cannot find a doctor, nurse practitioner or midwife. Canadians are guaranteed universal health care under our system, but they cannot get the health care they need.
We have massive problems right now with the cost of everything. Canadians pay the highest cellphone bills in the whole world. No one else pays higher cellphone bills per month, and we have a problem even getting passports in Canada.
Canadians are hurting. Twenty per cent of Canadians right now are using food banks. Some Canadians are using food banks while they work 40 hours a week. We have problems with just getting basic services in Canada. When we talk about the economic update, we are really looking for solutions that are going to help Canadians, the most basic of solutions that can give Canadians the most basic needs they should have in this G7 nation.
We are looking, first of all, at what is driving this budget. This budget has $20 billion more in new spending than was in the budget that was passed in March. Why? It is because the price of oil has gone up, because oil itself is driving our country's economy. The 585,000 workers who work in that field, the fact that we have inflation and because of the war in Ukraine, we have had a $20-billion windfall, and that $20 billion has gone in this economic statement. However, nowhere in this statement are we fixing the basic problems: the housing problem, health care, immigration and Canadians' bills, which are the highest in the world.
Looking at the immigration system and where the biggest flaws are, I am going to focus specifically on housing. When we talk to the Canadian Construction Association and builders in my riding, skilled labour is the biggest gap that we find when it comes to housing. Yes, we have problems with regulations from the provinces and with municipalities getting homes up, but it always comes down to the most basic of needs, which are skilled builders and workers. When it comes to the immigration system, we are short at least 1.2 million, but right now we have a backlog of close to two million workers. We have 2.4 million workers in a backlog in our immigration system, and one million of those applicants are waiting longer than the IRCC service standard.
There is nothing more important than housing in Canada. More Canadians are homeless than at any time in the history of this country. More Canadians are on precarious footing with their rent and mortgage payments as interest rates rise, and every month we see more people fall through the cracks and end up homeless. The Auditor General this week released a report on homelessness, stating that the accomplishments of the government have been grossly exaggerated. The federal agencies leading the government's efforts to reduce homelessness by 50% by 2027-28 do not know if their efforts have even reduced homelessness. The CMHC has spent $4.5 billion and committed another $9 billion, but cannot tell Canadians who benefited from that money.
Infrastructure Canada spent $1.4 billion between 2019 and 2021, yet it cannot say whether homelessness increased or decreased as a result. The CMHC, which is overseeing the majority of the $78.5 billion of the national housing strategy, takes the position, as the Auditor General stated, that it is not directly accountable for the targeted 50% reduction in homelessness. If it is not, the question is, who is? Here we thought the government was good at convening. Spending money and thinking that alone gets results is ludicrous. Canadian taxpayer dollars are a means, not an end.
The labour shortage is, without any doubt, one of the biggest barriers to housing. It is also one of the biggest barriers to our health care system and is contributing to inflation. The Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, stated as much last week, when he said that labour shortages are contributing to inflation. However, in this economic update we are not dealing with the problems in immigration, meaning the backlogs and the fact that we are not getting enough workers, health care workers, or anyone we need to help lift this country out of this inflationary problem.
We talk about health care and the shortage of 60,000 nurses and 15,000 doctors. Another of the biggest problems we have is that we are not allowing trades, nurses or doctors to move from province to province. We have a military family resource centre at CFB Trenton in my riding, and a lot of our military personnel move around to postings from base to base. For their spouses, who normally are trained as nurses, paramedics or doctors, it can sometimes take from six to eight months for their qualifications to be transferred from, say, Nova Scotia to Ontario. We are not addressing those biggest targets when we need paramedics, nurses and professionals in our health care system.
When we look at the legislation we need when we are talking about the budget, that should be something that is included in what we are looking at.
With respect to the costs Canadians are paying right now, in Canada we have the highest cellphone bills on the whole planet. When we look at carriers across the world, of the 121 telecommunications carriers, Rogers, TELUS and Bell are the first, second and third priciest in the world. The results are quite something. Canadians are paying triple what Australians are paying for cellphones, for 25 gigabytes of data and unlimited text and talk, and almost double what Americans pay.
The reason for that is a lack of competition. We allow the big three to dominate the market, which is what we are seeing play out at the Competition Tribunal right now, and Canadians simply do not have a choice. The government has had six years, and it made a promise. This year, the Prime Minister stated in April that the government had reduced Canadian cellphone costs by 25%. What actually happened was this. If people had two gigabytes of data, that went down 25%, yet no one uses two gigabytes anymore. It is like having a VCR or a Blackberry Pearl. Technology evolves and when it comes to the data that Canadians use and we see that evolution, they are certainly not seeing that savings.
The Liberal government is forcing Canadians to live in a haze, to stay in the shade. Canadians are forced to sit around and wait for better days. They could use a break; they could use an “amen”, but all they can do is sit around and wait for better days.
There is nothing wrong with this country that cannot be fixed. We might have a party that has driven government like a rental, like it stole it, but we can right those wrongs with a government that knows it is not a rental, that looks at it like it is the Canadian family's minivan that needs investments into its tires, its engine and its oil to ensure that Canadians can get from point A to point B, can heat their homes, can take care of their families and can make sure they get back to doing what they do best, which is living in the best country in the world.
We can do a lot of great things for Canadians. We can invest in them. We can make sure we get the labour, the nurses and the doctors. We can make sure we build homes. When it comes to homelessness, we need to make sure we invest in putting roofs over Canadians' heads to ensure they have shelter. We can make sure we take care of Canadians, but it starts with spending money correctly and making sure we take care of their lives, their savings, their pocketbooks and their paycheques.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague underlined a few very crucial areas that Canadians are concerned about and that our government has moved forward with in the fall economic statement. Various decisions have been taken lately. One is with respect to housing. We brought forward the first national housing strategy, and we are seeing the rapid housing initiative move forward very quickly as well.
He talked about immigration, so I would like him to talk a bit about the opening up of the express entry, which will help identify the needs of Canadians to be able to fill the gap. Of the people coming in through immigration, 60% are already based on the needs of Canadians. There are some good measures in the fall economic statement. One that I would like the member to talk about is immigration.
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Madam Speaker, talking is one thing, but action is another. The economic statement states we need this, but we have a million immigrants backlogged right now. When we talk about bringing in 500,000, let us be clear about that number. Two hundred thousand of those are skilled. We have about 75,000 for refugees, and we have about 75,000 for family reunification, but we are backlogged a million.
We need these workers today, and although the budget has had a 30% increase of money in the last three years and an extra 2,500 employees for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, we are not seeing immigrants coming into this country. Employers right now are screaming, and the cost of that is about $30 billion.
It is nice to have it in the budget, but what we need is action. We need to make sure we think a little differently, get workers here and get them working.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I agree with him that this bill has no colour, no taste and no vision.
I would like his opinion. The bill includes roughly 108 references to the problem of inflation, without ever offering solutions for vulnerable people, especially while we are heading into a recession.
Does my colleague agree with the Bloc Québécois on this?
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Madam Speaker, I do believe I agree with the Bloc.
We have major problems coming here. To my point about the government needing to have a bit more action and look at the basics, we do have an inflationary problem, and our solution is very simply to create more of the stuff money buys. We create more of the stuff money buys by having workers who can work in businesses.
A report that came out last week said the lack of workers in Quebec is costing the Quebec economy $9 billion, and this was just last year. The reason was that manufacturers, and they are short about 16,000 manufacturers in Quebec, could not fulfill contracts or sign new contracts, and those contracts were worth $5 billion and $2 billion. Obviously, and the Governor of the Bank of Canada is mentioning this, the lack of workers is contributing greatly and mostly to inflation. We need to fix immigration, train more people and get more workers.
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Madam Speaker, winter is coming, and many Canadians are worried they will not be able to afford to heat their homes.
Conservatives suggest removing the carbon tax from home heating as a way to make life more affordable for Canadians. The New Democrats know that in provinces and territories that have their own carbon pricing, like in British Columbia, and the carbon tax in B.C. was brought in by the right-wing B.C. Liberals, the carbon tax does actually apply to home heating. Removing the GST on home heating would be a better way to offer Canadians financial relief from coast to coast to coast. We have suggested amendments to Conservative motions to this effect, and they have rejected those amendments.
Why are the Conservative gatekeeping mechanisms that would help Canadians heat their homes this winter with their own litmus test on climate policy?
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Madam Speaker, it sounds like he agrees with us that removing unneeded tax on home heating is one way to alleviate Canadians' struggles, and we certainly have always stated that. We believe that we need to eliminate taxes, which is a great way to help Canadians, and to ensure we stop excessive spending.
At the end of the day, Canadians need to heat their homes. Someone in my riding I talked to on the weekend went from paying $2,500 a month in home heating to $5,000. The triple increase of the carbon tax is going to hurt them, so we are certainly pushing to eliminate that. We will make things more affordable, and then we will fix the other problems when we get to them.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and take part in this conversation. I had the opportunity last week to engage in some of the questions and answers. It was interesting to see emotions rise a little on the Liberal side when I talked about the Trudeau legacy.
In our part of the world, when we talk about the Trudeau legacy, emotions rise as well. Of course I was talking about the Pierre Trudeau legacy, but confusion arose because, when we are talking about incompetent Liberal governments, it is hard to distinguish one from the other. I think that was the difficulty on the Liberal side.
When I made those comments, it was interesting because the Liberal MP to whom I was asking a question actually answered or responded. There are not a lot of answers coming from over there these days. The member responded, clearly reading from the Prime Minister's Office talking points.
I will read a couple of quotes from her answer. She said that Canada is the third-largest triple economy in the world. I am not sure exactly what that means. She referred to the Moody; she said that the Moody has reaffirmed, just after the statement, the AAA rating deficit.
Certainly the government's recent deficits deserve a AAA rating. I think she might have been misreading the PMO talking points she had. However, it is an important point.
Credit ratings are AAA until the time that they are not, and when they are not, governments and countries get in trouble. We saw that with the Trudeau legacy. It is important to talk a little about that legacy, as it seems that many members of the Liberal Party today have virtually no understanding, no recollection, of what happened during those years.
During the 15 years that Pierre Trudeau was the prime minister of this country, Canada ran deficits in 14 of those 15 years. Coming into that time frame, there was almost no debt in Canada, very low debt. The Trudeau government ran deficits in 14 out of 15 years.
Then we came to 1984 and a Conservative government. The Liberals like to point out that the Mulroney deficits were, at the time, the highest in Canadian history, but what they do not point out is that because of rising interest rates, because of inflation similar to what we are seeing right now, the deficits the Mulroney government ran were basically interest on the Trudeau government debt, the debt that Trudeau ran up in 14 of the 15 years he was here.
If we fast-forward about 15 years, we get to another Liberal government, and that is where the lesson on credit ratings comes in. We get to the Chrétien-Martin government in the mid to late 1990s, and suddenly Canada's credit rating was lowered. The government was faced with a really difficult decision. Of course at the time, it had to slash $35 billion from transfers to the provinces for things like health care, social services and education, $35 billion slashed because the Trudeau government had run up deficits or debt in 14 out of its 15 years over time.
This is exactly the situation we are facing right now. If I were to talk about the Trudeau legacy of an inflation crisis, a housing crisis, an energy crisis, there would be lots of confusion. Lots of members on the other side would stand up and say, “Quit talking about us.” I would be talking about the Pierre Trudeau government when I am talking about the Trudeau legacy; however, it is almost indistinguishable from the Liberal government we have right now.
Let us take a look at the interest right now on our debt. We are going to spend almost $20 billion more in interest alone in 2023-24 than we were spending in 2021-22, just two years earlier. It is almost $20 billion more. We are going to be spending almost as much on interest as we spend on the Canada health transfer, and we all know the challenges the health system is having in Canada. We cannot afford to be spending that much on interest, but we are going to be because of decisions the government has taken over the past few years.
We stand up in question period day after day and talk about the fiscal crisis facing the country. What we get in terms of responses is absolutely meaningless language, mind-numbing references to having Canadians' backs as Liberals talk about spending money as though the current Prime Minister is writing cheques from his own personal bank account. However, that is not the case. That money all comes from Canadians. It does not just come from Canadians now; it is actually coming from Canadians in the future. There is a mind-numbing reference to that.
There is a reference to tax refunds and tax rebates, which is basically that the government is collecting tax and then it is blessing Canadians by giving back to them their own tax dollars that the Liberals have spent.
There are references and a lot of criticism from the other side. When we talk about the amount of spending the government is doing and the lack of fiscal responsibility, there is a lot of criticism from the other side. The Liberals will list off yet another new spend the government is doing and then demand why Conservatives cannot support it.
I will tell them why Conservatives cannot support that. It is because, right now, in 2022, if we look back seven years and talk to our constituents, and I am sure those on the other side who were here in 2015 talk to their constituents as well, it is very rare, almost non-existent, to have a conversation with a constituent who says, “My life is better off today than it was in 2015 from a financial standpoint.”
We are facing crisis after crisis, and when we take a look at program expenditures from the government, in 2022-23, post-COVID, which is our hope, at least post-COVID massive spending, we are going to be looking at 72% more in program expenditures than the 2014-15 budget put forward by our Conservative government, a budget in which we balanced the finances of the country. Now we are spending 70% more and we are obtaining fewer results. Conservatives are just not going to give a blank cheque to this government to spend even more with the results it has gotten over time.
I am really looking forward to hearing questions from the other side. It is questions and comments, so maybe folks might decide to comment on how they have come to a realization. Maybe they will make a commitment to go back and take a look at the record of the Pierre Trudeau government of the 1970s and 1980s. Maybe they will go back and ask their government, with all of the spending they are doing and the fiscal situation we are in right now, how they cannot even find the $4.5 billion the Liberals promised in their election campaign for a Canada mental health transfer. Where is that $4.5 billion? With all of this spending, the Liberals cannot even find the money to pay for things they promised in their election platform a year ago.
I will conclude with that. I really look forward to hearing some thoughtful questions from the government side, hopefully.
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Madam Speaker, I listened closely to the hon. member's remarks, and he talked about history.
The Harper government began with a surplus. The previous Liberal government left, I think, $13 billion at the time. Therefore, it started off really well with a surplus to manage. Also, I checked the record. Under Harper, for the nine years that the Conservatives were in government, not a single year's unemployment rate went below 6%. However, we saw the constant dropping of the unemployment rate under the Trudeau government prior to the pandemic, and now we are seeing five point something per cent as a new norm for Canada. I think we have done quite well.
By the way, the real debt-to-GDP ratio for the federal government is 31%, which was just released in the public accounts.
Which program is the hon. member proposing to cut, perhaps in an amendment, that he thinks is a waste of money—
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- Nov/21/22 4:05:26 p.m.
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I will let the member answer because I have to put more questions through.
The hon. member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin.
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Madam Speaker, I love the opportunity to stand up and talk about the Harper legacy, if we want to talk about that.
First of all, we cut virtually every tax Canadians could pay. I think over 60 different taxes were cut under our government. We dealt with a global economic meltdown in a world-leading way—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Nov/21/22 4:05:50 p.m.
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The hon. member had an opportunity to ask a question, and I do not think he needs to try to answer it. I would also remind the hon. parliamentary secretary as well that I did not recognize him, so at this point he should wait if he has questions and comments.
The hon. member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin
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Madam Speaker, I get as equally excited as they do talking about the Harper record.
When the world dealt with the global economic meltdown, we laid out a seven-year plan, we followed that plan to a tee, and by 2015, we balanced the budget. In contrast, as this government faced a significant global challenge, what it did was bring out the chequebook and responded by just cutting cheques with no eye toward and no signal in any way that we would ever talk about getting back to balance. In fact, the Prime Minister talked about it being an opportunity, and the Liberals have experimented with all sorts of new things that they never ran on as we went through that.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
It is interesting to talk about the economy, and we can see that next year will be full of uncertainty. The Bloc Québécois is concerned that this is being used as an excuse to bring in austerity measures in essential sectors. I am talking here about the Bloc Québécois' three priorities.
First there are the health transfers, which are not negotiable. Budget cuts by the Liberals and the Conservatives are what got us into this situation in the first place. More than ever, the government needs to reinvest in our health care system, despite the year of uncertainty that lies ahead.
Then, we are calling for a major reform of employment insurance. During times of crisis, that is how we protect people who lose their jobs. This reform is important, because far too few people are eligible for EI. In fact, most people cannot access the program.
I will end with help for seniors. They are directly affected by inflation, because they are on a fixed income. They are deeply concerned about next year.
What does my colleague think of these three priorities and—
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- Nov/21/22 4:07:49 p.m.
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The hon. member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin.
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Madam Speaker, I have a couple of comments. First of all, during the Harper era, we increased health transfers by about 6% per year for almost every year that we were in government.
In the plan that our leader has laid out, he has simply said that, after a 70% increase in program spending over the last eight years, and an endless succession of spending plans and massive deficits, we would have a sensible plan that, for every dollar spent, we would find a dollar of savings.
We did that when we were in government. I sat on a cabinet committee charged with looking at ways we could find efficiencies so we could get back to balance in 2015, and that is a sensible way for a government to approach fiscal planning.
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Madam Speaker, with regard to the Harper era, I had an independent study done by the Library of Parliament on the bringing in of the HST. It was $6 billion in expenditures. That was required for a couple of provinces. If it were to be paid over 10 years, it would actually cost $10 billion.
I would like the member's thoughts about that. Was that a good idea, in the sense that we are still paying debt on bringing in the HST?
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Madam Speaker, I am not familiar with the specific study the member is talking about. I would be glad to talk to him afterward.
I would reiterate that, during our time in government, we cut virtually every tax that Canadians pay, and I think that is a plan that is prudent for this country, as we take a look at responsible spending moving forward.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand today, as we get to the dying minutes of debate on the bill, to critique the fall economic statement. We have a lot of concerns about the fall economic statement because the Liberal-NDP coalition government failed to address the concerns of Canadians, who are asking how we are going to control the cost of living, how we are going to get inflation under control and how we are going to get government spending under control. We did not see any of that in the fall economic update, and that is why we will not be supporting this bill.
We know that the government, under the Prime Minister, has run up more deficits than every prime minister before him. The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, as finance minister, have increased our national debt by over half a trillion dollars. Today's national debt sits at over $1.1 trillion. In my opinion, that is child abuse of the next generation. Our kids and grandkids and our great-grandkids are going to be saddled with a debt because of the orgy of spending we have witnessed from the government.
We know that, whenever we run high deficits, inflation gets out of control because there is too much money in circulation. The Bank of Canada then has to intercede. Of course, what does it do? It jacks up interest rates. We are seeing interest rates from the Bank of Canada go up, which is impacting mortgage rates and lending rates, so it is impacting every Canadian, whether they own a business, own a home or are trying to get a job, because the cost of government continues to accelerate the cost of living crisis right across the country. We have not seen this type of inflation since the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. I have always wondered why Liberal times are tough times for Canadians, but I think, like father, like son.
We have the tripling of the carbon tax, which will impact every Canadian's life in a negative way because everyone has to eat. We continue to witness the cost of food escalating out of control. With respect to the net cost of the carbon tax, in my riding in Manitoba, they are going to be paying $1,145 per year per Manitoban more than what they get back in rebate cheques from the government.
Not everyone has the opportunity to take a train or jump on a bus, and this is because they live in rural parts of the country. They have to drive to get to work. Maybe they are retired, living on a fixed income, and need to drive to see their doctor in the city. Maybe they want to retire out at the lake. I have in my riding the beautiful shores of Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba. Canadians, and especially people in Winnipeg, want to move out there and enjoy their retirement time.
It is going to cost them more just to commute back and forth to the city, to visit their doctors and do their shopping, and the government seems to callously not care. This is hurting those seniors. It is hurting rural Canadians who are driving around to get their kids to hockey, soccer or other sporting events. Sometimes they want a drive to school. It is not like they can just jump on a bus to get there. They have to drive since there is no other option.
There is also the idea that everybody is going to be able to switch to electric vehicles, which still have not been tested in the severe climate we have during the winter months in Canada. They have not actually taken a hard look at how we would go long distances, especially in rural areas where they do not have rapid charge stations, or how the electricity to charge these vehicles would be generated. Would it be clean hydro, like we have in Manitoba, or would it come from thermal-fired generation plants, using either natural gas or, even worse, coal? We have to look at the overall carbon footprint that it would be creating.
No one is getting hurt more by this, though, than farmers producing food, and the cost is impacting food inflation. I have to remind Liberals of this all the time, but they put a carbon tax on the price of growing that food. Thankfully, we just recently passed a bill from the Conservatives that would reduce the carbon tax being paid by farmers, especially on heating their buildings and drying their grain, but still, after that food is grown on the farm, it has to go on a truck and hauled to a processing facility. Often it gets put on a train after that, and every time they haul it, there is carbon tax.
That will continue to increase the cost of production. It will increase the price of that food stock. Whether it is bread, beer or vegetables, every time it goes through an energy system of transportation or processing, the cost of food will increase disproportionately.
I want to talk a little about national defence. As the shadow minister of national defence, I am concerned that some of the spending in the fall economic statement does not recognize the threat environment we are currently in, not just because of the war of Ukraine, with Russian's aggression and its genocidal war atrocities being committed by Putin's war machine in Ukraine, but also because we are seeing a lot of sabre-rattling coming out of China these days, out of Beijing, with President Xi talking about Taiwan and trying to take Taiwan into that system by force. We need to make sure that Canada, through our Canadian Armed Forces, is prepared to protect Canada, in our Arctic, on the Pacific and on the Atlantic.
We are seeing, again, this year, that the Liberals are allowing defence spending to lapse. At over $2.5 billion, this is the biggest lapse of spending we have seen since they took office. Last year, it was $1.24 billion. Since they introduced their defence policy, SSE, they have allowed over $6.8 billion to lapse.
They said that they would never allow a cent to lapse, but here is money that should be invested, in an expedient manner, in our Canadian Armed Forces to buy equipment and deal with the recruitment crisis, yet we are not seeing that turn into assets for our forces to use to defend Canada and protect our interests around the world while we fight beside our allies against adversaries, as we are witnessing happening in Ukraine today. Because of their slow investment and inability to invest in the proper procurement, we do not have our surface combatants yet, or even the design finalized.
We are not seeing NORAD modernization done in an expedient manner. We know that NORAD is critical to continental security. It is critical to our relationship with the United States and we still have not seen how we are going to update our North Warning System. We are not seeing how we are going to make sure that we have submarines that can go under the ice and other monitoring systems, whether they are unmanned vehicles or not, to monitor what is happening in our Arctic sea.
We are not seeing the investment in that continental security, no only in the Arctic but also in making sure that we are getting more of our assets to our borders to help with our continental security.
The case in point is that, in this economic statement, they announced they are going to extend the lease on the auxiliary offshore replenishment ship we have, the Asterix, which is privately owned with federal leasing, but it ends in 2025. We still do not have our first joint supply ship in the water. Why would we only want to have one vessel when we are trying to project our abilities beyond our shores?
If we want to have a blue water fleet, then we better have offshore oil replenishment capabilities in the Atlantic and in the Pacific. We need to make sure that we have the ability to also deal with things like maintenance on those vessels once they are out to sea. Having one on each coast is not enough. We need to have at least one more ship to deal with the need to provide that scheduled maintenance, which happens throughout their life cycle. We need to have that extra ship to sail, and we have to think long term on why we need another AOR.
We still have not signed the lease on our F-35s. The government has been sitting on its hands instead of signing the contract to make sure that we buy the F-35s. The surface combatants need to get in the water to get built.
There is no money in here to deal with the real crisis happening today in the Canadian Armed Forces, which is recruitment. Chief of the Defence Staff General Wayne Eyre has said that this is a crisis. I say that it is a catastrophe, and we need to deal with that very quickly.
We have a lot of needs, but we are getting no vision. It seems like everything these Liberals touch, they break.
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Madam Speaker, I tried to follow my hon. colleague but, at times, I got caught between spending and investing. He is saying we are spending too much. We are investing in our country. That, by itself, is definitely a different approach between our government and the opposition, because we are investing in Canadians. We invested in improving our CPP, for example.
Let us look at the economic situation today. We have the lowest unemployment in 40 years. We have over 400,000 new jobs since the pandemic, which was a major increase. We have the AAA rating, so we have a strong economy. We have been there through the pandemic. We are there now with affordability.
I am having trouble because he is saying that we are spending too much, and then he is saying to cut. Which one is it? Which areas are the Conservatives going to cut as we move forward?
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