SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 302 - Apr/18/24

Apr/18/24 4:14:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, just because I like the drapes in a house, it does not mean I would buy the whole house. The reality is that, if the member's comments were not put in context, they might have more merit. We have had nine years of the Liberal government. We see the record food bank usage. I wrote this speech because I field the calls from my constituents about not being able to make it to the end of the month and not being able to feed their kids. This has real consequences. This is the real world. We need real change.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Apr/18/24 4:14:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend from Northumberland—Peterborough South is chair of the rail caucus, an initiative that self-started, and which I am very pleased and proud to participate in. It is all-party and non-partisan. I look at this budget, and I have to say I was very disappointed not to see a real focus on ground transportation that would include integrating rail and bus service to reach more Canadians. I was pleased to see, or at least it looks like, maybe, in a future budget, the high-frequency rail project may be restructured so that it does not kill Via Rail in the Windsor to Quebec corridor. I am very interested to know my friend's thoughts on the Via Rail sections of the budget.

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Mr. Philip Lawrence

Apr/18/24 4:15:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to work on rail alongside my respected colleague. I am an outspoken supporter of rail. I, too, read that section of the budget. Ultimately, we will have to see what is in the implementation section. We do need strong rail infrastructure in this country. We can contrast that with the United States of America, which has the most rail per mile in the entire world, and in Canada, we are falling behind. Given our legacy of being one of the largest rail systems in the world 100 years ago, it is sad to see what we have come to.

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Mr. Alex Ruff (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, CPC)

Apr/18/24 4:16:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for really focusing on the need for economic growth in this country. I am wondering, considering that the Liberal government has put us in a position where we are paying more money to service the national debt than the government collects from taxpayers in GST, what impact that is having on increasing or supporting economic growth in this country. Even further, I am wondering what impact the carbon tax is having. I am not talking about the rebates, but we know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer's costing note that the government is collecting over $500 million, which will go to over $1 billion a year over the next eight years to the tune of $6.23 billion GST on the carbon tax alone. What impact that is having on our economic growth in Canada?

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Mr. Philip Lawrence

Apr/18/24 4:17:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a negative spiral. They work together, unfortunately. As there is more debt, it reduces the amount of economic growth. It is taking money out of the economy. The reality is, as that debt reduces the growth, it then reduces the amount of revenue. It gets to a negative spiral. This is exactly what Brian Mulroney had to deal with in the mid-eighties when he took over from Pierre Elliott Trudeau. It is a two-sided solution. We need to get the economy growing, and we need to reduce the debt so that Canadians could have a reasonable shot at prosperity.

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Mr. Majid Jowhari (Richmond Hill, Lib.)

Apr/18/24 4:18:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, at the outset, I would like to inform the House that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Ottawa Centre. I am proud to rise as the member of Parliament for Richmond Hill to speak to the urgent action in budget 2024 that would help Canada build the homes needed to restore fairness for every generation. Last week, our government released Canada's ambitious plan to build homes by the millions, to support renters and to lower the costs of home ownership so that no hard-working Canadians have to spend more than 30% of their incomes on housing costs. With budget 2024 and with Canada's housing plan, we are going to do whatever is necessary to put money on the table to build more affordable housing, to create the market conditions necessary to get more homes built and to change the way that cities build homes. We will restore the promise of a Canada for everyone once again. Over the next part of my speech, I am going to focus on four major areas: building more homes faster, supporting home ownership and renters, building homes on public lands and building the infrastructure communities need to build more homes. I will first speak about building more homes faster. We know higher interest rate environments have made it difficult to build homes. That is why we are proposing significant action in budget 2024 to boost the housing supply and to remove the areas that often slow down the construction of new homes. For example, we are reviving and modernizing Canada's post-war housing design catalogue, which will provide blueprints that can be used across the country to speed up the construction of new houses. Budget 2024 proposes to allocate more than $11 million in 2024-25 to support the development of this catalogue for up to 50 housing designs, including row housing and fourplexes that provinces, territories and municipalities could use to simplify and to accelerate housing approvals and builds. This first phase of the catalogue will be published in the fall of 2024. Speaking of supporting municipalities, our $4 billion housing accelerator fund is already cutting red tape across the country with 179 agreements with provinces, territories and municipalities, with Richmond Hill being one, enabling the construction of over 750,000 new homes over the next decade. To continue the momentum, budget 2024 would top-up this program with an additional $400 million to build more homes faster from coast to coast to coast. As well, to help developers get the capital they need to build more rental homes, we are also topping up the apartment construction loan program, or ACLP, with $15 billion, starting next year. This proposed investment alone would help build more than 30,000 additional new homes across Canada, bringing the program's total contribution to over 131,000 new homes by 2031. We know there is no single player who can fill Canada's housing shortage on his or her own. That is why we need to take a team Canada approach to getting this work done for Canadians. That means all of us working together and using every tool in our tool kit to get more homes built much faster. To that effect, budget 2024 announces Canada builds, which would help to leverage the ACLP so that we can better partner with provinces and territories to build more rental housing across the country. Truthfully, we could not do any of this without Canada's builders, carpenters, construction workers and similar tradesmen. They are incredible people who love their jobs, who are good at them and to whom we should all be grateful because we cannot build homes without them. To help train and recruit the next generation of skilled workers, budget 2024 proposes to provide $90 million over two years for the apprenticeship service program to help create placements with small and medium-sized enterprises for apprentices. Ten million dollars over two years is also being proposed for the skilled trades awareness and readiness program to encourage Canadians to explore and prepare for careers in the skilled trades. In addition, budget 2024 proposes to provide $50 million over two years for a foreign credential recognition program, at least half of which would be used to streamline foreign credential recognition in the construction sector to help skilled trades workers build more homes. We need to do everything we can to make it easier to build homes more quickly and more cost-effectively, and the measures I have just outlined are exactly those. Now, I will go on to the second area of my speech, which is supporting homeowners and renters. Young Canadians in my own community of Richmond Hill, including my son, and across Canada are struggling to find housing that fits their budgets. That is why the government launched the tax-free first home savings account and why, in budget 2024, we are taking action to unlock additional pathways for young renters to become homeowners and to protect middle-class homeowners from rising mortgage payments. To help first-time homebuyers keep pace with the rising housing costs, budget 2024 announces our intention to amend the Income Tax Act to increase the homebuyers' plan's withdrawal limit from $35,000 to $60,000. This budget also proposes to temporarily extend the grace period, during which homeowners are not required to pay their homebuyers' plan's withdrawals to their RRSP, by an additional three years. This first measure will enable first-time homebuyers to save up to $25,000 more for their own down payment faster. For a couple who withdrew the maximum in 2023, extending the grace period could allow them to defer annual repayments as large as $4,667 by an additional three years. Thanks to the new Canadian mortgage charter, more Canadians know about the fair, reasonable and timely mortgage relief they can seek and receive from their financial institutions. Budget 2024, aims to enhance the charter by enabling first-time homebuyers purchasing newbuilds to get a 30-year mortgage amortization, among other enhancements. The government will bring forward regulatory amendments to implement this proposal. Additionally, budget 2024 proposes to call on banks, fintechs and credit bureaus to prioritize tools that allow renters to opt in to reporting their rent payment history to credit bureaus so that they can strengthen their credit scores when applying for a mortgage. We are all committed to protecting the rights of tenants and to ensuring that renting a home is fair, open and transparent. For that reason, budget 2024 proposes actions to protect the millions of Canadians who rent and who have been exceptionally impacted by recent drastic rent increases. I now move on to the third area, which is building homes on public lands. Our government is redoubling our efforts to build homes wherever and whenever possible in the face of Canada's housing crisis. We are accelerating and streamlining the process of converting surplus federal properties into housing, and we are continuing to work with Canada Lands Company to enable the construction of additional housing units. In conclusion, our focus as a government is on building more homes at a pace and a scale not seen in generations to restore fairness and affordability for every generation. I hope my hon. colleagues will support us in this incredibly crucial work.

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Mr. Greg McLean (Calgary Centre, CPC)

Apr/18/24 4:27:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is talking about housing, and he is focused on housing. The government says that it is focused on housing, but the government has been saying it has been focused on housing for how many budgets now. How successful has it been thus far? These are regurgitated words the member is saying that come from many speeches by the government. All the government has done so far is to drive up the cost of housing by running excessive deficits, repeatedly, which drives up inflation, which drives up the price of housing. How does the member think that by doing the same thing again and again, he is going to get a different result?

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Mr. Majid Jowhari

Apr/18/24 4:28:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are not doing the same thing over and over again. If the member looks at it, starting back in 2016, we made a historical investment, and we continue to do that. We also introduced partnerships with the provinces and territories. When it became clear that we needed other partnerships, such as the municipalities, we started working with them. When it became clear that we needed to remove the red tape, we started working on that. We have been working consistently on that, looking at what we need to focus on and introducing new programs.

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Mr. Luc Thériault (Montcalm, BQ)

Apr/18/24 4:28:49 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-319

Mr. Speaker, how can the member justify the fact that he voted in the House in favour of Bill C‑319, which gives seniors over the age of 65 an increase in their old age security pension, yet there is nothing to that effect in the budget? The budget talks about housing, and seniors also have difficulty finding affordable housing. How can he justify the fact that his government, after voting in favour of the bill in the House, did not bother to eliminate this discrimination, this double standard for seniors, even though that was part of the budget expectations we presented to the minister? What was he waiting for?

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Mr. Majid Jowhari

Apr/18/24 4:29:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of serving with my colleague on the HESA committee. When we talk about affordable housing and affordable rental units, we are talking about affordable housing and rental units for everyone, whether for a senior, a young couple or for an individual. We are not making any distinction among those demographics. By making sure that affordable rental units and affordable housing are available to everyone, by default, we are including seniors as well.

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Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP)

Apr/18/24 4:30:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when it comes to housing, which has been in crisis for years now, the NDP made proposals and we are happy to say that the government has accepted some of them, such as using federal land and public land for affordable housing and creating an acquisition fund to buy new land and build truly affordable housing, an important concept. In 2017, the new national housing strategy promised that all this would be fixed. However, seven years later, the situation is even more catastrophic. While it is true that historic sums of money flowed through this strategy, it ended up in the pockets of private developers and helped people make a profit. That money has not helped deliver housing that people can afford. How can we trust the government not to repeat the same mistakes this time around?

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Mr. Majid Jowhari

Apr/18/24 4:31:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I did not get a chance to cover part of my speech, which was focused on the public land the federal government is making available, but I will highlight that in a very short comment. In fact, budget 2024 proposes $5 million over three years, starting in 2024, to support and to overhaul Canada Lands Company to expand its activities to build more homes on public lands.

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, Lib.)

Apr/18/24 4:31:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as the member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre, it is a great pleasure for me to speak to this budget: “Fairness for Every Generation”. I have 10 minutes and I can probably speak for hours in terms of things that are in this budget document that support members of my community here in Ottawa Centre. We announced things like a national food program. That is going to help thousands of children in my riding. It is significant. The expansion of the $10-a-day child care is another. I continue to hear from parents about how the reduction in fees is helping them. Now we are reinvesting more money to create more spaces. That is going to help more families and more children. We have the Canada dental care plan that is going to help so many seniors in my community of Ottawa Centre. We have also announced pharmacare that will allow women to be able to access contraception for free and provide insulin for those with diabetes. I can go on and give individual speeches on all the benefits to my community on each issue. However, I am going to use my remaining time to talk about the housing plan that has been outlined in this budget. It is extremely important to my community. In fact, I am going to home in further on the initiatives to develop public land to build more housing, for people to both own and rent. My community of Ottawa Centre is primarily made up of the downtown community just outside this beautiful building, the House of Commons. Like many downtown areas across the country, ours has gone through a really challenging time as a result of the pandemic. In fact, when it comes to Ottawa's downtown, it was really built upon a model of Monday to Friday, nine-to-five businesses, because of the federal government. As we know, when the pandemic hit, all of us had to work from home to keep all of us safe, to manage the spread of COVID-19 and to protect not only ourselves but our respective families. That has caused a lot of challenges for downtown Ottawa, particularly for our small businesses, which relied on the workers who came to the downtown core. As we are coming out of the pandemic, we know that hybrid work is here to stay. We saw that trend coming before the pandemic. Of course, during the pandemic, working from home became a norm because we all had to work and to stay safe. Now a lot of workers are choosing to have a hybrid format to how they work. In my community, as a result, we are having many conversations as to the kinds of things we need to do to revitalize our downtown. As a member of Parliament, I initiated the downtown Ottawa revitalization task force, which started in 2022. We brought in partners from indigenous communities, small businesses, large landlords, for-profit housing developers, not-for-profit housing developers and tourism stakeholders. This was all done from the perspective of coming together to share not only the challenges but most importantly the solutions that we can champion that would allow for people to work, to live and to visit our downtown. I strongly feel that Ottawa is a unique place, given it is a G7 nation's capital. If our downtown Ottawa thrives, not only is the entire city of Ottawa going to do well, but it is also reflective of our country on the international stage. There are too many members of the committee to name, but I want to thank every single one of them for their incredible work. They were all volunteers who had full-time day jobs, but for the love of their community, they spent time consulting with others online and in person. After about a year and a half of work, toward the end of last year in 2023, we issued a report outlining a vision to revitalize downtown Ottawa. It is worth looking at it. It is on my website at yasirnaqvimp.ca, if anybody is interested in it. What it does is it presents many ideas as to how we can help revitalize downtown Ottawa. One of the key areas in that is using public lands. We have a lot of federal buildings in the downtown core. Some have already been deemed surplus buildings, which means that the federal government has decided that they do not have a need for them, so they will be put on the market to be sold. Some of them are in a place where they can be converted from a commercial building to residential. We have already seen those projects happening in downtown Ottawa. In fact, I must say, Calgary is a shining example of that. I had the chance to visit Calgary about a year or so ago to see the kinds of conversion projects that are taking place. We are trying to copy that model right here in Ottawa as well. As the local member of Parliament, I have been advocating with the federal government on a few things, such as how we make these public lands more available and accessible, and how we can make sure that the properties that have been deemed surplus can be disposed of in a relatively shorter period of time, so that we can find ways to be creative, so that, if it is possible, we can convert those buildings from commercial to residential, for people to live in. I am really happy to see that the advocacy my community and I have been doing is reflected in this budget. This budget devotes a significant amount of time to talking about how we can make better use of public lands and buildings, whether to sell them or to lease them, so that we can use them at a far more faster pace, which is an incredible opportunity. The budget actually speaks of conversion of unused office spaces as well, and it has given the responsibility both to PSPC and Canada Lands Company, which is a federal Crown corporation, to find ways to expedite that process. There are various programs that have been announced, such as the apartment construction loan program in this budget, which will allow for these projects to take place at a faster pace. I am also thrilled to see the creation of an acquisition fund that was also a very specific recommendation in the downtown Ottawa revitalization task force report, which will allow not-for-profits like Ottawa Community Housing or CCOC in my city to be able to buy smaller buildings that allow for affordable rents and to protect those affordable rents and make sure that the people living in them continue to live in their homes. All of these measures added on, and there are many more, create a tremendous opportunity for communities like mine, in a practical way, to really take the next step, postpandemic, as we rebuild our community. It is an opportunity to be able to use excess, surplus federal buildings like the ones we have in Ottawa Centre to create more homes and bring more businesses into the community. We also have federal lands in my community such as Tunney's Pasture and LeBreton Flats. It creates opportunities to use them as well to build more affordable housing, not just to rent but to own as well. As I hope members can hear in my voice, I am really excited about what is in this budget, because it really is addressing a real need that has been identified by my community here in Ottawa Centre as something that is going to help us build a better community. For that reason, I am supporting this budget and I urge all members of the House to do the same.

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Mr. Greg McLean (Calgary Centre, CPC)

Apr/18/24 4:41:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague represents a downtown riding. I represent a downtown riding in another part of this country, but when I am in Ottawa, I stay in his riding, where my apartment is. I will tell him that his riding, in the four years I have been here, has become more and more of a disaster. It is practically a dead zone when one walks down Bank Street now, and more and more people are lining up in the streets, living in the streets, as a result of the policies of his government. This city is getting worse and worse under his government's watch: drugs, destitution, homelessness. The other day, I was walking down Bank Street and there was another building and a whole bunch of low-income people who were cast out on the street. His policies and his government's policies have clearly made this city worse than when they started. How does he reconcile that with the words he just put on the floor of the House of Commons?

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi

Apr/18/24 4:42:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would never cast negative aspersions on the member's community, and I thank him for spending time in my community and supporting local businesses in my community. He mentioned the last four years that he has been here. Almost three of those years were during the pandemic and that, indeed, had a huge impact on our community as it did across the country. It created a lot of hardship for people. We have seen increased homelessness. That is why I, as a local member of Parliament, am working so hard along with many community partners, who are excited about the measures in this budget because they are going to address very specific needs. I had hoped that not only would he support this budget, but that he and the members of his party would have supported all of the anti-poverty measures that we have brought in over the last several years that have helped many members in our communities. The measures outlined in this budget are going to help make my community and, I am sure, his community, a better place to live for many people.

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Mr. Luc Desilets (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ)

Apr/18/24 4:43:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are some very interesting things in my colleague's speech, including converting government buildings or commercial buildings into housing. I think that is truly interesting and there are some great examples of that. My question is much broader and much more existential than that. There is a Constitution that exists and we are working with it. In any case, we are working with the Constitution, and I am talking about areas of jurisdiction, unfortunately. We might want to restore some order to all of this because the power-grab that the federal government is attempting here is becoming abusive, excessive and shameful. It is widespread. Does my colleague think that it is time to reopen the Constitution to restore a bit of order in this and determine what belongs to whom?

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi

Apr/18/24 4:44:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. I have had the honour of serving in the provincial legislature as well. For 11 years, I was the provincial member of Parliament for the same community of Ottawa Centre, which was kind enough to elect me as their member of Parliament. As a former provincial cabinet minister, I had my share of battles and debates with the former Harper government, which starved many of the provinces like mine in Ontario, by cutting off all kinds of funding and by downloading those services. I held and still hold the view today that our federation works really well when all three orders of government work together. That gives us the opportunity to not make cuts and download all of the important services like the Harper Conservatives did, which I understand the current Conservative Party wants to copy by cutting services and downloading those important services to the provincial governments. Rather, we need to make sure that we are investing in Canadians and working with our provinces and territories. That is precisely what we are doing when it comes to housing and when it comes to health care. In health care alone, the amount of work we are doing by working with our provincial and territorial counterparts, including Quebec, to ensure they have the resources necessary to provide important health care services will make the lives of Canadians far better than ever before.

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/18/24 4:46:09 p.m.
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It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill, Public Safety; the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Finance; the hon. member for Victoria, Climate Change.

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Mr. Scot Davidson (York—Simcoe, CPC)

Apr/18/24 4:46:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my hon. colleague and friend, the member for Simcoe North who we actually meet out in the middle of Lake Simcoe in rural Ontario. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the 2024 budget on behalf of the hard-working residents of Bradford West Gwillimbury, the soup and salad bowl of Canada; East Gwillimbury; Georgina; and the Chippewas of Georgina Island. After nine years of the Liberal government, Canadians are worse off than ever before. Sadly, this failure of a budget will only make things even worse. The Prime Minister and finance minister have refused to listen to common sense and have presided over a shrinking middle class and record-low levels of national productivity. Prior to releasing this budget, the finance minister promised it would be a plan to unlock pathways to the middle class for the next generation. Wow, can members believe that? The Liberal government used to brag about its ambition to grow the middle class. The first chapter of the Liberal Party's 2015 platform was entitled “Growth for the Middle Class”. The 2019 platform emphasized “Forward: A Real Plan for the Middle Class”. Now, here we are in 2024, and instead of looking to grow the middle class, the Liberals are admitting that because of them, the middle-class lifestyle, which used to be a reasonable and attainable expectation for living life in this country, is now something that few Canadians will ever enjoy. It seems that, over nine years, the promise of Canada is gone. This is the day-to-day reality facing Canadians. Two-thirds of young Canadians have resigned themselves to being worse off than their parents. Can members imagine that? With this budget, instead of restoring that promise for our citizens, the Liberals are sending a clear message to millennials, to zoomers and to everyone else left behind, saying that it's tough luck and that they should have been born sooner or in better circumstances. However, Canadians, both young and old, are well aware that it is the punishing taxes and the high-spending agenda of the Liberal government that are to blame, and the policies have locked Canadians out of so many of those pathways that people used to join the middle class. The cost of living is out of control. It has left half of Canadians living paycheque to paycheque. After paying for their everyday expenses, Canadians just do not have money left over to save, and others are resorting to charities and food banks just to get by. It did not need to be this way. Common-sense Conservatives have been calling on the Liberal government to restore the promise of Canada and to bring home lower costs by axing the tax, building the homes and fixing the budget. Unfortunately, the Liberals did not axe the tax. In fact, the Prime Minister increased it by 23% on the first of the month, making it so that families, rural residents, farmers and small businesses suffer even more. For months, I have been calling on the Liberal government to address the unfairness that has excluded rural communities, like York—Simcoe, from the rural top-up. The Liberals insist on classifying them as Toronto, making them pay more in carbon taxes than other Canadians. After ignoring this problem for years, budget 2024 finally says that the government will look to better define rural areas, but it only commits to put forward a proposal to do so later in the year. Let us talk about a day late and a dollar short. This is just further proof of why we have to axe the tax for everyone everywhere. The Liberals also have not built the homes, after nine years of the Liberal government. The government promised to lower the price of housing, but now rents and mortgages in Canada have doubled, and middle-class Canadians are forced to live in tent encampments in nearly every city across Canada. Even small towns like mine are seeing the impacts, as all forms of shelter have become unavailable and unaffordable. Budget 2024 will not make things any better. It will certainly give more opportunities to Liberal ministers to pose for photo ops, but it will not help Canadians who cannot buy a home or who cannot afford to renew their mortgage. With $40 billion in new spending in budget 2024, it is obvious that the Liberal government has failed to fix the budget. The Prime Minister has failed to put a stop to the inflationary deficits and has failed to rein in spending. He will continue to make life worse for Canadians. The Liberals are now spending more on interest and more on the debt than on health care. There is more money for bankers than for nurses. It is no wonder there is still no hospital in York—Simcoe. To protect our social programs and to lower costs, Conservatives have called on the government to cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation. That would require the government to find a dollar in savings for every new dollar in spending. Instead, the Liberals are misleading Canadians, pretending that the rich would pay for the Prime Minister's spending. We all know that it is the everyday Canadians, the extraordinary Canadians, not the Liberal bigwigs and Bay Street billionaires, who have been paying the price. The government even admitted in its response to Order Paper question 2407 this week that it does not even know how many wealthy Canadians have fled the country and no longer paying taxes. When Canadians look around at what this country has become, they see abysmal failures of the Liberals to address the problems that the Liberal government created. It is more clear now than ever that the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost. I recently received a letter from a constituent of mine, Laura. I will read it into the record so that the government can finally understand the pain it is inflicting on Canadians. She wrote that her family lives in Pefferlaw in a small bungalow. They are a single-income family. She is a stay-at-home mom of two, and her husband works 60 hours a week, just so they can survive financially. They received their gas bill, and over the months, the carbon tax has steadily increased up and up. Now, it has officially become more than their actual usage. They, like so many others, are struggling after the bills are paid and the groceries are purchased. Her grocery shop one day was $167 for just four bags of groceries. They have nothing left over. She does not pretend to know the intricacies of big government, but she is also not a fool. She really feels like they, and everyone else, are being cheated by the Liberals, who rob from the poor to feed the rich because they lack the ability to budget taxpayers' money. They do not go on vacations. They do not eat out or take their kids to the movies. They live like that, apparently, because the Liberals need their money more than her family does. The Liberals can choose to keep ignoring the common-sense proposals put forward by Conservatives, but it is shameful that they continue to ignore the plight of everyday Canadians like Laura. Every Canadian knows what a budget is and what it is supposed to do. By definition, it is a means to determine financial goals. With budget 2024, it is evident that the Liberals have no financial goals, no vision, no plan to bring back balanced budgets to our country and affordability to the people. Their only objective is to spend as much of Canadians' money as they can before they are sent packing. The needs of ordinary Canadians be damned. Canada is broken. Canadians are broke. I will be voting, alongside my common-sense Conservative colleagues, against this budget.

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The Deputy Speaker

Apr/18/24 4:56:19 p.m.
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I am going to work my way backwards because I know the NDP have a couple of questions. The hon. member for London—Fanshawe.

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