Senator Cotter: The metaphor begins in the back row of where the senators were seated in the other place. Seven of us were more or less at the back, and one of the senators — I can’t mention their name, but let me just say I was seated directly behind and near a distinguished psychiatrist from Nova Scotia. This senator, I think in an attempt to honour Senator Wells’ early work sponsoring a private member’s bill on single sport event betting, proposed that we conduct a round of betting on how long President Biden’s speech would be. I think we each contributed about a million dollars to the betting, and we asked the most trusted member of our little group of seven, Senator Clement, to hold the money. To give you an idea of how much trust we had, we insisted on not one but two timekeepers to keep the honesty more or less intact. It was a close call, but the winner was Senator Loffreda.

On reflection, I thought this was a metaphor for life, particularly for this topic. With apologies to Senator Loffreda, the metaphor is, “The bankers always win.”

The Hon. the Speaker informed the Senate that the following communication had been received:

RIDEAU HALL

Mr. Speaker,

I have the honour to inform you that the Right Honourable Mary May Simon, Governor General of Canada, signified royal assent by written declaration to the bills listed in the Schedule to this letter on the 30^th day of March 2023, at 10:03 a.m.

Yours sincerely,

Ian McCowan

Secretary to the Governor General and Herald Chancellor

The Honourable

The Speaker of the Senate

Ottawa

Bills Assented to Thursday, March 30, 2023:

An Act respecting a federal framework on autism spectrum disorder (Bill S-203, Chapter 2, 2023)

An Act for granting to His Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023 (Bill C-43, Chapter 3, 2023)

An Act for granting to His Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024 (Bill C-44, Chapter 4, 2023)

Hon. Jane Cordy: Honourable senators, I am pleased to rise today to honour the achievements of remarkable women, including two of our very own senators. On International Women’s Day, Women of Influence+ released their list of the Top 25 Women of Influence Awards recipients. These awards, “. . . acknowledge the unique achievements of diverse women representing various sectors, career stages, and contributions to the advancement of women.”

This year’s recipients include Senator Rosa Galvez, whose environmental work was particularly highlighted. Her career provides an excellent example to young women and girls who, like Senator Galvez herself, may have decided early in life what they wished to accomplish. Senator Galvez, that 10-year-old girl who dreamed of working toward contributing to a cleaner and healthier environment would certainly be proud of all you have done. I know I speak for all senators when I say that we know you are not finished yet. Congratulations.

The other recipients this year are Cheyenne Arnold-Cunningham, Louise Aspin, Kirstin Beardsley, Linda Biggs, Elvalyn Brown, Dr. Vivien Brown, Margaret Coons, Jan De Silva, Lovepreet Deo, Natalie Evans Harris, Allison Forsyth, Haben Girma, the Honourable Karina Gould, Eva Havaris, Nicole Janssen, Janet Ko, Maya Kotecha and Carly Shuler, Dr. Rachel Ollivier, Bobbie Racette, Paulette Senior, Domee Shi, Christine Sinclair and Suzie Yorke. They represent a wide array of careers and achievements, and I offer my congratulations to them all.

In addition to those 25 outstanding women, they also named a Lifetime Achievement Award, and I am pleased to report that it is our very own Senator Dr. Wanda Thomas Bernard.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.

Senator Cordy: She has been recognized for her impressive body of work, including her commitment to building a better future for marginalized communities. Wanda, it is my pleasure to once again speak about the continued recognition you are receiving on your life’s work, which has been filled with giving to others.

Senator Bernard was interviewed by Women of Influence+ on this occasion, and I would like to quote some words she shared about what motivates her. She said:

Every action I take is rooted in a critical analysis that always takes me back to my ancestors and how they fought with so little, but left such a powerful legacy. I live their legacy. I live their hopes and dreams, and so I have a duty and responsibility to work in the spaces that I’m in to make things different for the generations coming behind me.

Senator Bernard, you have already established a legacy in your own right, and I know there are so many people who are grateful for the work you have done and the work you continue to do. You have indeed made a difference for the generations to come. You are a remarkable person and a role model for so many, particularly for young women.

Honourable senators, please join me in congratulating Senators Galvez and Bernard along with the other impressive women being honoured at next week’s ceremony.

Thank you.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

(On motion of Senator Dalphond, debate adjourned.)

[English]

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Klyne, seconded by the Honourable Senator Harder, P.C., for the second reading of Bill S-241, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act (great apes, elephants and certain other animals).

Senator Cotter: If I might return more seriously to my remarks, the issue of this balance between capital and labour in both business enterprises and their contribution to a productive society is a challenge in circumstances where enterprises fail, and there are not sufficient assets to compensate the various contributors to the enterprise.

The way in which we answer this question is largely articulated by markets forces, moderated from time to time by government legislation to ensure that forms of — dare I say it — fairness are achieved based on our values. The tension in this conversation is essentially between the respect we show for capital contributions to an enterprise and the contributions made by workers.

I’m not opposed to those who invest capital seeking to protect their investments. Indeed, so much of what we need in our society is the support capital provides that would otherwise not be accessible, but unabated and unmoderated markets forces will always favour the prioritization of capital over labour. The best example — clearly relevant here — is the way in which capital investments are commonly securitized. By comparison, contributions made by workers almost never receive the same level of security.

I’m more comforted that Senator Wells is here so I can refer to him by name, in a good way.

This has enormous consequences in the context of insolvencies and bankruptcies, and here is the simplest way to understand this. I have a friend who, after university, moved to Vancouver and was keen to buy a sailboat. He had a good job, but little money. He described to me his acquisition in this way, “The Royal Bank is now the proud owner of yet another sailboat.”

His point, which I eventually came to understand, is that the bank had taken a security interest — an ownership interest — in the sailboat. The significance of this in bankruptcies and insolvencies is that the assets subject to these security interests, such as mortgages and other kinds of claims and the like, are, to the extent of the security in law, not the assets of the business itself but the assets of the secured lender to the extent of the business’s indebtedness, leaving in so many cases little or nothing for other creditors who lacked the market power to have their interests protected by any kind of security interest. The shortfall in employer contributions in relation to pensions is one such example. Legislation can intervene to moderate situations where market power creates what society generally regards as a form of economic unfairness in these kinds of circumstances.

That is what this bill does. Under the present legislative regime, pension contributions by workers and contracted promises by employers to contribute to worker pensions have lost out when the assets of the failed business are insufficient to cover the pension shortfall because, in law, they belong to the secured creditors. Senator Wells and Senator Yussuff have spoken to the consequences for workers who have legitimately counted on workplace pensions in their senior years, only to discover and suffer the consequences of uncompensated pension shortfalls. The message in this bill is that it is a societally unfair distribution of the assets of the failed business.

As well, there’s a strong argument based on the distribution of risk. Those who invest capital have a range of mechanisms to guard against risk. Risk can be priced in. Risk can be distributed. Risk can itself be refinanced. But for workers, even if they think of the need to protect the value of their pensions, they have no such options. For these reasons, the creation of a super-priority for unfunded defined benefit pensions is compelling. Though I recognize there may be some knock-on consequences, nevertheless, I applaud the sponsor of the bill in the other place — MP Marilyn Gladu — and all members of Parliament, the sponsor of the bill here, the critic and, I hope, all of us for supporting this rebalancing. I applaud those who have fought for so long to achieve this result, often not for themselves but for today’s and tomorrow’s workers.

Briefly on my second topic, the very same societal balance and risk have existed for nearly all employed workers in our society in another context. I want you to think about this question: How many of you are creditors of the Government of Canada? Now, you are probably wondering, when will I get reimbursed for last week’s or last month’s expenses? Or how good is my government pension? But I want to bring it a bit closer to home. You might think yes in all those respects, but the fact of the matter is that for 29 or 30 days every month, you are a creditor of the Government of Canada as you await your pay at the end of the month. We only get paid at the end of the month. Hardly any of us have had the courage to say to our employer, “I’m going to work the month of February, but I would like to be paid on the first instead of the twenty-eighth.” Try that, and I think you wouldn’t get the job.

We are all creditors, then, throughout the month, until we are paid. So is virtually every other employee in this country. Now, fortunately, we do get paid, and probably never think about the risk of not getting paid. But for many thousands of Canadian workers every year, who have done honourable work for their employers — and have also earned contracted benefits like vacation pay — the risk of not getting paid becomes, regrettably, a reality. They are low on the totem pole of compensation for the same reasons — the priority of secured creditors — that have had the pride of place in employer bankruptcies and insolvencies.

I wrote my Master of Laws thesis on this topic of employees’ recovery of pay. It was later incorporated into a chapter of the leading text on employment law in Canada authored by Innis Christie, a distinguished labour and employment lawyer. In fact, some editions were Christie and Cotter — eventually, they got rid of my name.

I wanted to name the chapter one of two versions, and the first is a bit of a riff on the Cool Hand Luke movie. If you remember the movie, you may recall the warden speaking to Paul Newman in one of those southern accents that I can’t do very well. I wanted this phrase to be the chapter title: “What we have here is a failure to remunerate.” I apologize for the weakness of the joke. The second alternative that I wanted to have the chapter called, which didn’t succeed, was “Employees’ Recovery of Pay: Secured Creditors Always Win.”

The fact of the matter is that in every province of the country, and I think in most territories, efforts have been made by provincial governments to try to provide better protection for workers’ unpaid pay. All kinds of imaginative tools have been used such as deemed mortgages and trusts to try to capture the challenge that workers face in cases of bankruptcy and insolvency. Virtually all of them have failed: partly because of these rules about who owns the property; partly because they were thought of as colourable attempts to interfere with insolvency and bankruptcy, which are constitutionally the authority of the federal government.

More recently, a degree of progress has been made, with the support of the federal government through the Wage Earner Protection Program and a small super priority which provides a backstop, to some degree, in cases of bankruptcy and insolvency.

Parenthetically, when it comes to almost any one of these progressive initiatives in favour of bankers, Senator Yussuff’s fingerprints are on it, to his credit.

In this area, even by the Government of Canada’s own assessment, perhaps as much as half of employees’ promised and earned compensation is never recovered.

These claims are invariably smaller than the pension shortfalls that we’re talking about, but I would like you to think about many of these workers. They’re often the last to know that their employer is in financial trouble. They’re living from paycheque to paycheque and suddenly discover that they have lost their jobs and, for the owed wage or salary that they have earned they will have to jump through hoops to collect, in many cases, at best, half of that money. In the meantime, their own creditors — landlords, mortgage holders, grocers, car payments, Visa bills, and so on — are knocking at the door expecting to be paid.

An amendment to better protect these unpaid wages, severance and vacation pay and address this urgent societal unfairness was widely supported in the other place but was ultimately rejected there. It is tempting for me to press forward with an amendment to this bill to address a continuing anomaly and unfairness — a passionate concern of mine for over 40 years — but getting private members’ bills across the finish line is a bit like pushing a snowball up a hill.

This bill is being ably pushed up that hill by perhaps our fittest senator, Senator Wells, ably assisted by Senator Yussuff. I discussed this contemplated amendment with both of them and with Senator Plett, who advised against it. Now, Senator Plett and I don’t agree on every topic, but on this one I have taken his advice — wisely, I think. I think Senator Plett’s message, though he didn’t put it quite like this, was that more weight on this bill and even Senator Wells might not be able to get it to the top of the hill.

We are near the finish line on this nearly 40-year effort, and I did not want to risk the potential consequences that a delay in the passage of the bill might generate. Out of respect for the champions of this initiative, here and elsewhere and well outside of Parliament, I have put my amendment in my back pocket. But I do want to signal my intention to develop a separate bill in the near future that will address this remaining unfairness. I hope it will garner your support. Thank you.

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, as we embark on Autism Acceptance Month, I rise today to mark World Autism Day coming up on April 2. I want to first thank each and every one of you for your support that led to the passing of Bill S-203 earlier this week in the House of Commons.

Senator Peter Boehm and I — with a lot of inspiration from our former colleague Senator Munson — introduced this bill with the intent that it “. . . provides for the development of a federal framework designed to support autistic Canadians, their families and their caregivers.” I am so very happy for those Canadians to see this bill passed.

According to the 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth, 1 in 50 — or 2% — Canadian children and youth were diagnosed as being on the spectrum, making it the most common neurodevelopmental condition in Canada. It is a lifelong diagnosis that occurs across all racial, ethnic and socio-economic groups. Despite the incredible perseverance of autistic individuals, and their families and caregivers, as well as the inspiring work of autism organizations across the country — like the Giant Steps Autism Centre and the Transforming Autism Care Consortium in my hometown of Montreal — that are working across sectors to provide supports, advance our understanding and acceptance of autism and advance inclusion, people on the autism spectrum, and those that support them, still face serious challenges right across Canada.

There are significant service gaps, and the services that are offered across the different provinces and territories are inconsistent and lead to inequities. Examples include long wait‑lists for diagnoses and services, significant out-of-pocket expenses for families, funding gaps for service providers and a serious lack of supports for autistic individuals.

The passing of this bill is a watershed moment for Canada, and especially for autistic Canadians who deserve to receive the services and support that they need in order to flourish and be actively included across all sectors of Canadian society.

The framework will provide for financial supports and accountability in the use of federal funds, research and improved data collection and more services and resources.

Autism Acceptance Month — and you’ll notice the change from using the word “awareness” to “acceptance,” and that’s very intentional, colleagues — is a time to focus on accepting, supporting and including autistic people; advocating for their rights; and recognizing their important contributions to Canadian society. We should be proud of the progress we are making in Canada, but know that there is a lot of work left to be done, and it is work that we must begin together to make Canada a more autistic-inclusive country.

With that, I want to wish everyone, especially autistic Canadians and their families, a great Autism Acceptance Month and World Autism Day. Thank you, colleagues.

Hon. René Cormier: Honourable senators, I would ask your indulgence as I rise to speak to you because my voice is rather weak today, much like the French language in Canada.

The French language is weak everywhere in the country right now. The number of individuals who speak predominantly French at home continues to rise in Canada, but their relative proportion is decreasing more and more rapidly.

We are facing a growing number of challenges when it comes to reversing the demographic decline of the Canadian francophonie and taking action to remedy the situation. We need to rally our youth, ensure access to education in French from early childhood to the post-secondary level across the country, increase francophone immigration, and create cultural and living spaces that appeal to francophones and francophiles from Canada and other parts of the world.

The responsibility for securing the future of the French language and culture in Canada does not rest solely on the shoulders of official language minority communities and Quebec. It is up to all of us as Canadians to recognize the importance of this language and do our part to keep it alive.

The month of March, which is now drawing to a close, gave us the opportunity to celebrate the richness of one of our two official languages and reaffirm Canada’s place in the international Francophonie.

The mission of the Francophonie, of which Canada is a member, is to promote the French language and cultural and linguistic diversity, promote peace, democracy and human rights, and support education, training, higher education and research.

What we are celebrating this month is much more than a language. It is a cultural, social, political and economic space.

But what does Canada’s francophonie look like? Who is making sure that French has a presence from coast to coast to coast in Canada? To be sure, Quebec has invaluable linguistic and cultural wealth and is a home for those who speak and love this language.

However, we can say that it is primarily the people in official language minority communities and their friends who are taking action in the provinces and territories to ensure that the French language flourishes and develops nationwide and that there are French-language living environments that can welcome francophones and francophiles from all over, thereby reaffirming Canada’s social contract.

Colleagues, the time has come to equip our country with a strong, robust and modernized Official Languages Act. The time has come to institute a bold, effective francophone immigration policy. The time has come to bring in legislation that ensures that the French language and francophone artists get to take their rightful place in the digital realm and in our cultural spaces.

As legislators, we have the power to act. Let’s be visionary and work together to ensure the future of this national treasure, the French language, which is spoken by 321 million people on five continents. I hope everyone had a good Francophonie Month, and may we all continue to celebrate the French language all year long. Thank you, honourable senators.

[English]

Hon. Rebecca Patterson: Honourable senators:

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell,

Rode the six hundred.

Lord Tennyson wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War in 1854, but he easily could have been referring to the four Canadian divisions as they fought to take Vimy Ridge, in France, in April of 1917.

Not even 50 years since Confederation, the four divisions of the Canadian Army fought together for the first time and set out on April 9 to take the ridge that had thus eluded the Entente powers.

The 38th Ottawa Overseas Battalion, who used the front lawn of Parliament Hill for drill practice and who today live on as the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa (Duke of Edinburgh’s Own), was one of the many battalions that took part in the battle.

Then captain, later major, Thain MacDowell, was awarded the Victoria Cross, the 38th Battalion’s first, for his efforts at Vimy, where he and two runners captured a German trench and bunker, seizing two machine guns and taking 77 prisoners.

Over four days, Canadian soldiers — our sons, our brothers, our husbands — gave it their all. And they paid a terrible toll, with more than 10,000 who were either killed or wounded.

Those injured soldiers were cared for by the still nascent Canadian Army Medical Corps, the CAMC, which was founded in 1904. Over the four years of the Great War, 21,453 men and women wore the Canadian Army Medical Corps badge, three of them earning the Victoria Cross.

Canadian women played a valuable role in the First World War. More than 2,800 Canadian women served as nursing sisters, earning the nickname “bluebirds” on account of their blue frocks and white veils, giving peace and comfort to wounded soldiers. While not in the trenches, Canada’s nurses served in support of every battle, including at Vimy Ridge. Of those 2,845 nurses who served, 58 made the ultimate sacrifice.

I’d like to close with some lines from another poet, who also happened to be a Canadian Army doctor — you may have heard of him — Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. As you pause next week to commemorate the Battle of Vimy Ridge and to reflect on the sacrifices paid, remember these words:

[Translation]

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved,

and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

[English]

Thank you, honourable senators.

Hon. Patricia Bovey: Honourable senators, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the eleventh report (interim) of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology entitled All Together — The Role of Gender-based Analysis Plus in the Policy Process: reducing barriers to an inclusive intersectional policy analysis and I move that the report be placed on the Orders of the Day for consideration at the next sitting of the Senate.

(On motion of Senator Bovey, report placed on the Orders of the Day for consideration at the next sitting of the Senate.)

[Translation]

Hon. Leo Housakos: Honourable senators, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, which deals with Bill S-242, An Act to amend the Radiocommunication Act.

(For text of report, see today’s Journals of the Senate, p. 1358.)

The Hon. the Speaker informed the Senate that a message had been received from the House of Commons with Bill C-226, An Act respecting the development of a national strategy to assess, prevent and address environmental racism and to advance environmental justice.

(Bill read first time.)

Hon. René Cormier: Honourable senators, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Senate Committee on Official Languages entitled Francophone immigration to minority communities: towards a bold, strong and coordinated approach and I move that the report be placed on the Orders of the Day for consideration at the next sitting of the Senate.

(On motion of Senator Cormier, report placed on the Orders of the Day for consideration at the next sitting of the Senate.)

[English]

Hon. Nancy J. Hartling: Honourable senators, March is National Social Work Month, a time to honour and celebrate social workers for their unwavering dedication to their profession from coast to coast to coast. I believe they are absolutely essential to the well-being of Canadians.

Thanks to the Canadian Association of Social Workers, to Senator Bernard and our staff who helped organize two virtual events during National Social Work Month 2023. Since 2019, we have been involved in social work events like this on the Hill.

This March, we were able to highlight two very critical themes, including intimate partner violence, in the context of Bill S-249, with our guest speaker Rina Arseneault, former associate director of the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre for Family Violence Research in Fredericton. Our second session focused on poverty and the impact of a guaranteed livable basic income and Bill S-233, with guest speakers such as Senator Pate and Chrys Saget-Richard, a social worker.

Poverty and gender-based violence affect all Canadians deeply, and social workers are always there to provide critical support. It was a great opportunity to discuss the intersection of legislation and issues that affect all of us and to explore with social workers the process of how legislation works.

In addition, I want to sincerely recognize and thank all social workers, who have worked diligently throughout the past three years and who will continue to work hard during this post‑pandemic period. So often quietly doing work without much recognition, you are valued, needed and deeply appreciated. Also thanks to all the social work students who often carried out studies online.

In Canada, there are 52,823 social workers and over 2,950 in my home province of New Brunswick. These dedicated individuals work in many different capacities and workplaces from hospitals to schools, child welfare, youth and seniors care programs, addiction centres, correctional institutions, community agencies, universities and even right here, as policy-makers. Thanks a million.

As a parliamentarian and a social worker — you never stop being a social worker — I know that social workers are essential to navigating complex systems on behalf of the people they help, in particular, the criminal justice, health, education and employment systems. They are essential advocates for diversity, anti-racism and the elimination of all forms of oppression and marginalization. They are focused on the future where dedicated social workers continue to have an extraordinary impact on people in this country.

Our social worker motto is, “We support. We mobilize. We advocate. We are accountable. We are social workers.”

[Translation]

Thank you to all the social workers across Canada for your incredible determination and commitment.

I wish everyone a happy National Social Work Month.

Thank you very much.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Government leader, when Minister Freeland brought forward her first fall economic statement as finance minister in December 2020, she said in an interview at the time:

If you have guardrails on the road, they need to be physical and anchored to something. Once we start driving down the road, let me assure you, there are going to be some very clear, anchored, material, concrete guardrails there.

I want to draw your attention to a comment that an analyst made on the Scotiabank report on the budget, where he was quoted as saying:

There will be $171B more spending per year than they were spending in FY19-20 by the end of the projection horizon. At present it is 32% higher in FY22-23 than FY19-20. Minister Freeland calls that prudent; I beg to differ as she is the most free spending Minister of Finance this country has seen in a long time.

Leader, the Trudeau government has sold themselves to the NDP and stopped even pretending to care about fiscal restraint. There are names for people who sell themselves. I’m not sure whether it’s parliamentary language or not, so I will refrain from using it.

Leader, there are no lines that the NDP-Trudeau government won’t cross, no fiscal guardrails and no anchors. What’s left?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question. This budget provides important assistance to Canadians who are struggling with the high cost of living and targeted measures to make sure that those 11 million households receive important help, while at the same time meeting the moment that our country is experiencing to make the necessary investments in our future, our children’s future and our grandchildren’s future for a cleaner energy grid and a more sustainable environment.

Indeed, economists and commentators quick to respond will have differing views, as there are almost as many views as there are schools of thought and ideologies amongst them. Since you cited one such analyst, let me respond with the words of the former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, who wrote extensively in The Globe and Mail recently. He stated as follows:

In a high-inflation environment with dark clouds on the economic horizon, a credible fiscal strategy should demonstrate caution. Acknowledge downside economic risks. Limit new measures. Maintain fiscal rules. On balance, the 2023 budget has a credible fiscal strategy.

Our performance economically demonstrates this, colleagues. Our debt-to-GDP ratio in Budget 2022 was 42.4%. It has risen somewhat. Higher interest rates, to be sure, are contributing this year to 43.5% debt-to-GDP ratio, and it is targeted in our projections — consistent with the budget projections of last year — to fall below 40% within this decade. This compares to the debt-to-GDP ratios of 66% in Germany, 92% in the U.K. and 98% in the United States. We are leading the G7 countries in the important measure of debt-to-GDP ratio. It’s a testament to the responsibility that this government feels to Canadians now and in the future.

Senator Plett: You and I will both get our opportunity to make speeches on the budget in a few weeks’ time, but since you didn’t want to answer the question, let me answer it for you. I’ll tell you what’s left. That was the question.

What’s left behind by all the spending is debt that is beyond comprehension. Doubling mortgages is not helping the average person who can’t afford to make a mortgage payment. Canada’s federal debt for the upcoming fiscal year is projected to increase to $1.22 trillion. I can’t get my mind around a number that high.

Minister Freeland once promised Canadians that the pandemic debt would be paid down. However, according to the Jagmeet Singh-Trudeau government budget, the debt will never go down. By 2028, it will reach $1.31 trillion, leader. Let’s face it, if the NDP remains the driver of this government — and there’s no indication that they won’t — they will blow past that projection as well.

Leader, yesterday you said this was a responsible budget, and you alluded to that again today. I disagree with you. How can you say it’s responsible to leave a sky-high amount of debt for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to deal with? Is this the way you run your household budget, leader?