44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 25, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, who is actually my neighbour. His riding is right beside mine.
In talking about the budget, we should look at some numbers. The first number I want to talk about is $176 billion. Government spending is up $176 billion since 2015. That is a 63% increase in government spending in eight years. We might ask ourselves what all this spending has done for Canadians. It is a very reasonable question. That is a massive increase.
If I increased my home budget by 63%, I am going to guess my spouse and children might look around and ask, “Since the budget is way up, what is better? Have things gotten better here?”
Let us look at what all this spending has done for Canadians. Right now, there is a $176-billion growth in government spending per year, and one in five Canadians is now skipping meals because life is so expensive and unaffordable. I was not an A student when I went to university, but I am smart enough to understand that this is a problem.
Let us look at this other number: 1.5 million Canadians are now using the food bank. Let us go back. There is $176 billion more in government spending, and the result is that 1.5 million Canadians are using the food bank. We can take that part out of the equation. Affordability is actually being able to buy groceries and live. We know that the affordability question is awful after all this government spending. Every Canadian we talk to would say that life is unaffordable. However, we can put that aside for just one second.
Let us talk about something else that is important for Canadians. We can talk about rent. Rent has almost doubled since 2015. There is $176 billion more being spent, and one needs to pay twice as much for rent. We can imagine what that does to a family's ability to make ends meet. Families are now paying twice as much in rent. Have their paycheques gone up? Have they doubled? No, they absolutely have not, but the rent has.
It is the same thing if one wants to buy a house. Since houses are now so expensive and have gone up so much under the government, one now needs to put twice as much down as a down payment. People are thinking that their rent is terrible and unaffordable; maybe they should get out of the rental market and buy a house. What happens then? Now they need to have twice as much money as a down payment to buy that house.
Again, after eight years of the Liberal government, $176 billion more is being spent per year. When we look at affordability, or the ability to make ends meet, Canadians are skipping meals and going to the food bank. On that metric, it is an F.
Let us look at what else is going on, such as with housing. Housing is extremely important. Rents have doubled. If someone wants to buy a house, they find that down payments have doubled. A recent survey showed that nine in 10 Canadians who do not own a house think they never will. We can let that sink in for a second. That is how bad it is. This is after eight years of a Liberal government and increasing government spending by $176 billion.
To go back to my own house, if my budget had gone up by 63% and my spouse and children looked around and everything was more expensive, they might be asking me what is going on. They might ask what all this spending was for.
That is the incredible thing about it. Right now, we are in the middle of a massive public service strike. The Liberals massively increased the size of the government over the past eight years, as well as spending on the government, and still somehow managed to have 100,000 public servants go on strike. We are now on day nine. This is stunning incompetence.
Everything is more expensive. People cannot buy a house, and they can barely pay their rent. Government workers have walked off the job. That is the Liberals' record. It is astounding. When we look at all this, it has been financed with deficit spending, which adds to the debt. The debt is now $1.2 trillion. Interest payments on the debt have also almost doubled to $44 billion a year, soon to be $50 billion a year.
Many Canadians, from coast to coast to coast, find it hard to get medical appointments or specialist appointments. We can imagine for a second what $50 billion per year would do for health care. It would help to remove the lineups that Canadians are stuck in. When so many Canadians do not have access to a family doctor, it would help to hire more family doctors. Again, this is Liberal Canada after eight years.
The Liberals may not believe me; I find that often happens in this place. They seem to say they were spending all this money and ask why the Conservatives are talking about the problem. I will tell members why. It is because I get emails from people like Kim.
Kim sent me an email that says, “I am stretched so thin. I either pay bills or buy food because I can't afford both.” Again, we should let that sink in. There is $176 billion more spent per year by the government, and Kim is choosing whether to eat or pay bills. It is a disgrace what the government has done to this country and what it is putting Canadians through. Canadians deserve so much better than what the government has done. Kim goes on to say, “Food costs are ridiculous. Gas and heating keep going up. Is life better under this government? Not by a long shot.”
Can we guess what the government's answer to the affordability crisis is? It is that the carbon tax is going up. The carbon tax makes everything more expensive because the farmer who pays the carbon tax on the fuel to run the farm passes that cost on to consumers. Then the truck that takes the product from the farm to be processed has a carbon tax. That is more expensive. The plant that does the processing has a carbon tax. That makes it more expensive. It then gets trucked to a grocery store, and there is a carbon tax. It makes it more expensive. The grocery store has a heating bill with a carbon tax. That makes it more expensive. If we wonder why Canadians cannot afford to eat, it is because the government just increases the carbon tax at every opportunity.
I visited a farm two weeks ago in my riding. Guess what its carbon tax bill was? It was $17,000. The Liberals say the carbon tax is revenue-neutral, but it is not. The PBO has made clear that the carbon tax is making the lives of Canadians less and less affordable all the time.
I want to finish with an email from Daina. I got it just the other day. They said, “I want to express concerns for two full-time, very hard-working adults, one of which is a small business owner and in our home, so the home tax rebate doesn't assist us. We can't afford to bring a child into this world because of the costs.”
This is from a young couple that somehow managed to buy a home. It says she bought it five years ago, so things were not as bad then. They are choosing not to have children because they are barely making ends meet. I know what the member is going to jump up and say, “What about $10-a-day day care?” They know about it, and they are still making this choice. For one thing, it is just not available for everybody. Not everybody gets it.
The government spends $176 billion more per year, and everything is worse in this country. People are going to food banks. People are choosing between heating their homes and eating. People are choosing not to have children. That is the Liberals' legacy, and it is disgraceful.
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Mr. Speaker, as members know, we hear time and time again Conservatives stand up and indicate concerns about the deficit and the debt. Having gone through the pandemic, with respect to the massive investments in things such as Canada's health care system and child support and the amounts of money we are talking about, including the wage loss subsidy programs, CERB, the rent subsidy programs to support small business owners, literally keeping hundreds of thousands of jobs intact, supporting Canadians to be able to get through the pandemic and meeting the needs of health care going forward, do the Conservatives not believe those to be wise investments in Canadians or would they rather we had not done that?
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad to join the debate on the budget implementation act.
There are some interesting numbers in this budget. Total revenues coming in to the government are $456.8 billion and expenses are $446.6 billion. On the surface, when one looks at that, one would think that is not too bad. There is actually some money kicking around, but the problem is the government has run up our national debt so high that the debt charges alone are just shy of $44 billion this year, and they are going to increase to $50 billion. That is creating a deficit this year of $40.1 billion, which is $10 billion higher than what was originally projected.
Why is the interest rate so high? That is because the government, under the Liberal Prime Minister, has run up our national debt so it is now twice as big as what it was when he took office, at $1.2 trillion. That is a travesty, and it is shameful what the government is doing to our taxpayers today and in the future. Our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay off this spending binge that the Liberals have been on for the last eight years.
As shadow minister of national defence, I want to talk a bit about the expenditures in this budget. If we look at the budget and the estimates today, Liberals are going to spend $26.4 billion. That is down from last year's $27.58 billion. Despite the rhetoric coming from the Liberals, they are not spending more, they are spending less. The Prime Minister, we know from leaked documents, has no intention of ever reaching the NATO target of 2% of GDP being spent on our national defence.
However, the Prime Minister has no problem spending $6,000 a night in luxurious hotel rooms in London. He has no problem wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to go on his luxurious vacations in Jamaica and the Bahamas. It relates back to the Prime Minister just not prioritizing our national defence and how important it is, not only in protecting Canadians here at home, but also in standing up for our allies around the world and having serious relationships.
The Conference of Defence Associations Institute just wrote a letter, signed by 60 prominent Canadians. In it, they say, “Years of restraint, cost cutting, downsizing and deferred investments, have meant that Canada’s defence capabilities have atrophied.” They go on to say, “the recent federal budget was largely a summary of previous announcements without any acknowledgement that the Government must accelerate program spending, and make significant additional funding available to address the long-standing deficiencies in military capabilities and readiness.”
Our safety is not a luxury. We have to make sure we are treating national defence like we do in our homes by buying home insurance and fire insurance and paying the premium. Investment in our military is a premium that we have to pay to protect us at home. In the letter from those 60 prominent Canadians, they said, “Canada cannot afford to conduct 'business as usual'”.
Part of the responsibility we have in national defence is to stand up for our democracy and protecting democracies around the world. For 426 days, we have watched in real time the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine and have witnessed barbaric war crimes and atrocities being committed by Putin's war machine. For 426 days, the people of Ukraine have now only stood up to the Kremlin's genocidal attempt to Russify Ukraine once again.
This is a war of attrition. Vladimir Putin is prepared to play the long game, turning this war into a frozen conflict to let war fatigue overtake western resiliency. Unfortunately, it may be working. I just never dreamed that Canada would be the first ally to show signs of war weariness. One may ask what the proof of that is. In the Liberals' recent budget, the finance minister, surprisingly, offers Ukraine little more than platitudes. So much for her being a champion for Ukraine.
Despite President Zelenskyy asking for more assistance and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who was just here, hoping Canada would donate more armoured vehicles and ammunition, budget 2023 provides only $200 million in new spending in military equipment for Ukraine. Much of this is a bookkeeping exercise to account for the eight Leopard tanks that we have donated to Ukraine. We can only hope that the Canadian Armed Forces will use that money to buy new tanks to replace the ones we just donated.
Regrettably, the Prime Minister and his Liberals have spent our fiscal cupboards bare. After eight years of the Liberal government, our national debt has doubled to $1.2 trillion. Our federal deficit is $10 billion higher, and it will soon reach $50 billion, which is more than what we spend on National Defence. The size of our government is $151 billion bigger than it was in 2015.
The Liberals have increased spending on just about everything in this budget except National Defence. A case in point is that they have spent a whopping $22 billion on consultants. As our Conservative leader pointed out in his reply to the budget, “Now the interest costs on the national debt have doubled. We are spending double the national defence budget on the interest costs on the national debt. It is ridiculous.”
Sadly, well-connected consultants, big bankers and wealthy bond holders will get more from these Liberals than our troops will. This is all bad news for taxpayers, and it inhibits Canada's ability from helping allies such as Ukraine or investing in our National Defence during these troubling times in Europe, the Indo-Pacific and our Arctic. To be clear, as His Majesty's loyal opposition, we have supported the military, humanitarian and financial assistance provided to Ukraine by the government, but Canada's Conservatives believe the government can and must do more to help Ukraine win this war.
Conservatives have strongly advocated to increase the production and exportation of our ethical oil and natural gas, along with other energy products, to Europe to displace the Russian oil and gas that is fuelling Putin's war machine. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine 426 days ago, Conservatives have consistently called on the government to send more lethal weapons. In fact, since March 2022, we have been asking the government to donate to Ukraine our armoured ambulances; Harpoon missiles; Role 3 mobile hospitals; sniper rifles; and our soon-to-be-retired fleet of light armoured vehicles, also called LAVs, specifically the Bison, the Coyote and tracked LAVs, also known as M113s.
National Defence confirmed in writing, in its response to an Order Paper question tabled in this House, that it has 149 LAV II Coyotes; 142 M113 tracked LAVs, and 196 LAV II Bisons. These LAVs will soon be replaced with 360 brand new LAV armoured combat support vehicles, which are currently sitting in London, Ontario. Instead of decommissioning our old LAVs and turning them into war memorials or selling them for scrap, the Ukraine defence forces would gladly welcome them. A case in point is that the U.S.A. and Australia donated 130 M113s last summer to Ukraine, and they were crucial in the liberation of Kharkiv.
The Liberals have sadly argued that our Coyotes, Bisons and tracked LAVs are too old, too worn out and have not yet been declared surplus. DND had noted that 62 of the Coyotes were deemed reparable, but they would take 220 days to procure the parts and put them back into service. That was 309 days ago, back in June of last year. Did the Liberal government act? Are we able to donate those LAVs now? Unfortunately, the answer is no, so Ukraine does without.
Regardless of the Liberals' apathy and excuses, I remain confident in the resiliency and ingenuity of the Ukrainian people. I know that if we sent our fleet of older LAVs to Ukraine, the Ukrainians would immediately put them to good use. What works, they would fight with; what does not, they would cannibalize for parts. This is not a novel idea. Just ask our Royal Canadian Air Force. The Liberals stuck it with 18 old, worn-out F-18 Aussie fighter jets, and they had to buy another seven broken fighter jets for the spare parts.
The black, fertile plains of Ukraine are soaked with the blood of millions of innocent people who were murdered during the Holodomor and the Holocaust. We must stand with Ukraine and stop today's genocide being committed by Putin's war machine. Canada must not waiver. We cannot grow weary. We must not falter. During difficult times like these, we remember great leaders such as Sir Winston Churchill, who said in his famous “blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech, “victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.” Ukraine must survive. Ukraine must win.
As I said earlier, with respect to National Defence, the Prime Minister does not seem to care. His rhetoric does not match his actions. In the leaked documents that came from the Pentagon that were on the Discord app, it said, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told NATO officials privately that Canada will never meet the military alliance’s defense-spending target”. It goes on to say—
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Mr. Speaker, I quote:
...let me be very clear. We are absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline and our deficits must continue to be reduced. The pandemic debt we incurred to keep Canadians safe and solvent must [and will] be paid down.... This is our fiscal anchor. This is a line we will not cross.
Who said that? It was our finance minister. A year ago, she made that bold statement, said those bold words, when she proclaimed to the world that Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio would be Canada's anchor and that she would not cross the line of allowing it to increase.
Here we are a year later. Can we guess what happened? Our finance minister took a big step across the line. The issue for Canadians is this: Whom do they trust to manage this country's finances?
We asked for three things. We asked that the war on work and lower taxes for workers be ended, that the inflationary deficits that are driving the sky-high cost of living be ended and that the gatekeepers be removed from home construction across Canada so Canadians can have their dream of home ownership restored. None of those three requests were followed through on by the Liberal government.
I want to touch on a couple of issues, including affordability and inflation, the problem of uncontrolled spending, the staggering cost of government and, finally, economic performance. I do not know if I will have enough time to cover all those issues, but I will do my best.
First is affordability and inflation. Taxes on everything are going up. There is a reason that Canadians should not trust the current government to manage finances. It is a tax-and-spend government under which the cost of living has skyrocketed, including the cost of groceries, gas at the pumps and home heating.
Let us not forget the cost of housing. Under the Liberal government, nine out of 10 Canadians now say that dream of home ownership has disappeared. It is a dream I grew up with. I assumed it was attainable for most, if not all, Canadians. Today, nine out of 10 young Canadians say that dream is no longer a reality for them. A down payment on the average Canadian home, the average mortgage payment and, quite frankly, the average rent payment have doubled in Canada over the last seven years under the Liberal government.
Inflation has eroded what a dollar buys. We see stagnating wages across the country. It is at the point now where the gap between the rich and the poor is growing ever greater. Those with assets are growing richer, whereas those who earn paycheques are growing poorer. We now have one in five Canadians skipping meals just to get by and have enough to eat. Let us think about that. There is a perverse situation in which the poor are going to food banks and asking for medical assistance in dying, or in other words, assisted suicide. This is not because they are sick but because they do not want to go hungry. Is that the perverse situation in which we find ourselves in Canada? The government is expanding access to medical assistance in dying, while at the same time, it is not providing the resources Canadians need to at least survive and have some kind of satisfaction in their lives.
I will talk about the problem of uncontrolled spending, which is a critical issue for this country. Today, the government is spending $151 billion more than it did in 2015, when it came to power and took over from the Harper government. That spending has created unprecedented inflationary pressures that are driving the skyrocketing cost of living for Canadians, who just cannot afford life in Canada anymore. Today, we have a deficit of $43 billion. Does everyone remember when the Prime Minister, back in the 2015 election, promised tiny deficits of no more than $10 billion? Every year since then, budget deficits have been much greater than that.
We all acknowledge that, during COVID, there had to be supports and benefits provided to Canadians to allow them to make it through that very troubling period. However, we are out of COVID now, and the deficits continue despite the government's promises to return to balanced budgets. The Minister of Finance promised we would return to a balanced budget. She promised that last year, just one year ago, and today she broke that promise. Promise after promise after promise is broken by Canada's corrupt and failed government.
The result, of course, is that over the last seven years, Canada's national debt has doubled. In fact, the government has racked up more debt than all other Canadian governments combined. That, by definition, is profligacy. That is irresponsible use of taxpayers' money. The government does not understand that we have to live within our means, the way any Canadian family has to.
I will go on and talk about the staggering cost of government. Under the current government, the federal public service has increased by nearly 31%. In seven years, over 80,000 new federal government positions have been added. I can ask an average Canadian citizen out there whether they are getting better service. Those 80,000 professionals who have been hired by the government must be providing an enhanced level of service. How are passports doing? What a failed program that is. How are visas doing? That is a failed program. Immigration is a failed program. It goes on and on and on. Service is going down, and the cost of government is going up. Who pays for it? Canadians do.
Finally, I will talk about economic performance. One thing I had hoped the government was going to include in the budget was something addressing the issue of competitiveness. We compete with other countries around the world for capital, for investment and for human resources, and we have a productivity gap in this country that continues to grow. Canadians are producing less and less product. That is undermining our national competitiveness, and it is driving inflationary pressures. Every economist will tell us that. There was nothing in the budget to address that gaping hole in our productivity.
I have had so little time to flesh out why we, as Conservatives, cannot support the budget. This is a failed budget. Canada has a failed government, and Canadians deserve better.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague has spent a lot of time telling us that we need to shrink government and reduce debt and the deficit. I understand that; he is a Conservative. I respect his point of view, even though I do not share it.
That being said, the government has fundamental responsibilities that should be important, even to a Conservative. One of those responsibilities is employment insurance. He and I will both agree that a company like Sunlife is not going to provide a decent private-sector EI program.
For years, the Liberal government has been promising to reform the EI system. We need to expand coverage, ensure that there is no longer an EI spring gap and change the way it is funded, because we are going to shift the burden of pandemic-related expenses to our businesses and workers. Does my colleague agree that the government has broken its promise, and does he think that the system needs to be reformed?
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, which focused on fiscal responsibility, a balanced budget and a zero deficit. I would simply like to remind my colleague that a deficit was posted in eight of the nine years of Stephen Harper's Conservative government. The only year that did not show a deficit was the year before the election, and that was because his previous government had sold the GM shares it purchased during the auto sector crisis. It was a bit artificial.
I have two questions for my colleague. What would he cut and where would he look for the additional money to balance the budget?
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Madam Speaker, tonight we are hearing a lot about fiscal responsibility from the Conservatives. That is nothing new, and we are not surprised. However, they never seem to mention the fact that the Harper government ran deficits eight of the nine years it was in power, and it was not until the ninth year that it balanced the budget. Even then, it was because the government sold off the GM stock that it had bought during the auto crisis.
If the member really wants to eliminate the deficit, what is she going to do? Is she willing to go out and collect more revenue by stopping subsidies to oil companies or taxing billionaires? If not, what public programs and services does she intend to cut?
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House and, today, to speak on behalf of the hard-working people of Flamborough—Glanbrook, whom I serve. This time, I am speaking about Bill C-47, the budget implementation act.
I would like to focus on three areas in my speech today. First, there is the out-of-control inflationary spending and deficits that are driving up the cost of living and interest rates for people in my riding and across Canada. Second, there are the tax increases that are being piled on at a time when Canadians can least afford it. Third, there is the desperate need in this country to have homes people can afford.
First, the $46-billion bonanza of new spending in the budget is on top of the billions in wasteful spending that we have seen in the last few years from the government. Certainly, it makes for great photo ops for government ministers and MPs, but all this spending is adding inflationary fuel to the already raging affordability fire. Gone are the fiscal anchors and guardrails.
What does this mean for people in my riding and across Canada? I will paint a picture for us of what is happening at kitchen tables in suburban communities in my constituency like Waterdown, Binbrook or Mount Hope. For context, this is a five- or six-hour drive from this place, both literally and figuratively removed from the Ottawa bubble that the out-of-touch Liberals live in here.
I know this from the hundreds of conversations I have had with constituents in the past few months, particularly the last couple of constituency weeks, when I had a number of meetings across the riding. These are typically young families, often new Canadians, who have moved to fast-growing suburbs of the Hamilton area at the western end of the GTA. They have done so, over the last five to seven years in particular, in search of a home in which to raise their children. A detached family home is attainable for these couples, who often have two incomes, in these communities.
Certainly, the prices in Toronto or Mississauga, where these people have come from, are far more out of reach. They have come here in search of more affordable living. They feel fortunate because at least they got into the market before the prices skyrocketed.
There are others they speak to in their peer groups who have good jobs but cannot even contemplate saving up enough for a down payment, particularly when that has doubled since the Liberals took office. Moreover, they do not have the means to qualify for the million-dollar-plus mortgage that would be required, given the average cost of housing in the area.
These families and individuals are really worried right now. A lot of them are at the point where their five-year mortgages are coming up for renewal. Interest rates, of course, have gone up. Some of these people have seen their renewals cause their mortgages to double or be hundreds of dollars, maybe even a thousand dollars, more of their monthly budget. That is a real punch to the gut.
This comes at a time when they are also dealing with credit card bills that are mounting. This is because, far too often, there is more month left at the end of the money. They have also just gotten their natural gas and home heating bills and noticed a significant increase not just in the cost of natural gas but also in the line items, with the carbon tax and then the tax on top of the carbon tax, the HST, on their bill. There was an article in the local weekly paper about this recently. This has been another hit to their budgets.
They are also often commuting to work. Filling up their tank is now taking a bigger bite of their household budget. Of course they are feeling squeezed.
We know that groceries are up almost $1,100 for the average household in Canada. Often, it is more. The carbon tax has been added and increased for home heating, groceries and, of course, driving a vehicle. That is all expensive. There are no savings for these individuals to dip into.
This is the reality at the kitchen tables across the GTHA and across the country. There is worry. There is concern. We have also heard, from recent polling, that six in 10 people are looking at cancelling their summer vacation plans because of this.
That is why this Liberal budget is so disappointing. It really makes matters worse. It has more inflationary spending, more deficits, more money wasted and billions of dollars in contracts to high-priced consultants. Certainly, the Auditor General found billions in COVID supports that were sent to people like prisoners and dead people.
All this inflation means more dollars chasing fewer goods. It is driving up interest rates, which are really the cruellest tax of all. The budget makes matters worse by not getting this inflationary and wasteful spending under control. When we are on track to spend almost as much or more on interest on the national debt than on transfers to the provinces for health care, as we are now, we know something is very wrong.
As my hon. colleague from South Shore—St. Margarets pointed out in his speech on this bill last Friday, every prime minister since former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who was responsible for the original debt-and-deficit binge of the 1970s and 1980s, ran operating surpluses. That includes Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin and Harper.
We are now back to operating deficits. Canadians are paying the price, with 40-year high inflation and now eight interest rate hikes over the past year. It is no wonder young families, seniors on a fixed income and new Canadians trying to make a fresh start in our blessed country are sitting worried at their kitchen tables.
If inflation and interest rate hikes were not enough to handle in this cost of living crisis, taxes are also up in this budget. This is an incredible thing during the worst cost of living crisis that Canadians have seen in a generation.
We know the carbon tax went up on April 1. That is increasing the cost of three essentials: home heating, gas for vehicles and groceries. It is also increasing an unmanageable tax burden on our farmers, the ones who produce our food.
Fortunately, members on this side of the House supported Bill C-234 from my hon. colleague from Huron—Bruce to remove the carbon tax from farm fuels, the heating and cooling of barns, and farm production. We hope the Senate passes it quickly.
Farmers feed our cities. Canada feeds the world. It is especially important now in the time of Putin's illegal war against Ukraine that Canada be there to feed the world. We should be encouraging this world-class and world-leading agriculture in our country and the agri-food industry in every way possible, not taxing it to death.
The excise tax also went up on April 1, despite a motion from this side of the House to pause that increase this year. Canada already has among the highest excise taxes in the world on wine, beer and spirits. We certainly have some outstanding wineries. There is one in my riding. There are many just down the road in Niagara. There are some cideries and craft breweries. They are being punished by this escalator tax. In fact, this is hampering their competitiveness. That is a shame.
I am running out of time, so I want to touch very briefly on the third area where I think the budget is failing, which is bringing in homes that people can afford. For new Canadians and young people, the dream of working hard, staying focused on goals and achieving home ownership is fading. It is really sad to me that nine out of 10 people who do not have a home today have given up on the dream of home ownership.
We have seen under the Liberal government that down payments and mortgage payments have doubled. How is it possible to get into the market? I am the grandson of Dutch immigrants who came to Canada with nothing from war-torn Europe after World War II. They built a better life for their families by doing exactly that. They worked hard. They built a modest, middle-class life through hard work and sacrifice.
After eight years of the Liberal government, the dream that Canada is the land of hope and opportunity is no more. We know the CMHC said that Canada needs to build 3.5 million more homes to reach the projected number to restore affordability.
We are in a time when the cost of living crisis is ravaging many Canadian households. They need better than what is in the budget implementation act. Families are struggling, and 1.5 million or more are going to food banks. They need better. Our economy needs better.
Conservatives stand ready to deliver and unleash Canada's great potential for everyone.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke at length about the fact that Canadian households have difficulty finding housing. That is a huge problem. He quoted the excellent study by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation showing that Canada needs to build 3.5 million units of all kinds in the next 10 years.
The Conservatives speak of fiscal virtue and reducing the deficit, but investments will have to be made in some areas. For example,Quebec needs 1.1 million housing units in the next 10 years. The private sector will build 500,000, but, one way or another, the government will have to participate in the construction of 600,000 more units in the next 10 years. We will have to spend on programs that work, which is not the case for the Liberals' programs at this time. The big national housing strategy provides $78 billion over 10 years. A little over 100,000 housing units have been built in five years. That is a disaster.
How will the Conservatives solve this problem?
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Mr. Speaker, 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 are 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.
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