44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 30, 2024 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to rise and speak today to the ways and means motion, budgetary policy. More specifically, I appreciate this opportunity to comment publicly on yet another awful budget tabled in this place by the Liberals, which shows just how out of touch they really are.
We have had nine years of deficit budgets, which have led us to the mess Canadians are facing today. Budget 2024 also shows that the Prime Minister has learned nothing from his mistakes over the past nine years. He continues to push inflationary deficits that drive up interest rates and that make life more expensive for Canadians. By continuing to add to his massive debt, he is endangering jobs and social programs like health care and education. In fact, after nine years of disastrous governance, Canada will now be spending more on its debt than on health care for Canadians.
The failures of the Liberal government are clear in this budget. It pushed off issues, kicking the can down the road, and now, those issues have come home to roost. Housing, crime, immigration and inflation, to name just a few, are the issues created by the government. These issues did not materialize overnight, but they were well known to the government years ago, yet the Liberals stuck their heads in the sand and were content to spend more money on their pointless policies to support their divisive and destructive ideology. Now that these issues have become full-blown crises, they have conceded that there may be a problem. However, rather than address the problem, they have decided to repackage their old policies in an attempt to fool Canadians into believing they are taking action. It is hard to know whether they are simply overestimating the positive impact of their policies or are completely disingenuous in their intent.
In this budget, the government's plan to repurpose federal properties to provide thousands of homes has come up short. As reported by Blacklock's, the Liberal government has found less than 400 vacant federal properties, many of which cannot be used for housing. Some of those properties include Parks Canada parking lots, a former National Defence firing range and an empty lot near a remote Coast Guard lighthouse. The review of federal lands has been a promise of the Liberal government since 2015. In that election, its platform stated, “We will conduct an inventory of all available federal lands and buildings that could be repurposed, and make some of these lands available at low cost for affordable housing in communities where there is a pressing need.”
In 2024, after the Liberals created a housing crisis, they decided to go ahead and to finally start the review. Their budget states, “The federal government is conducting a rapid review of its entire federal lands portfolio to identify more land for housing.” Perhaps I should have included the definition of “rapid” here in my speech. They are hoping Canadians have forgotten that this is a nine-year-old promise they are attempting to repackage as a new initiative. Putting aside the fact that this is an old promise in a new package, this measure is not a solution to the housing crisis.
The Prime Minister is asking Canadians to believe that he will build thousands of houses in old parking lots and in firing ranges. This is a sign of desperation. He wants Canadians to believe that, after nine years of ignoring the problem or introducing policies that have made the problem worse, he will now make the housing market fairer. He is the one who stole the dream of home ownership from a generation. He is the one who broke the system. Now, after breaking everything, he wants Canadians to believe that he will somehow find the capacity to magically fix it all. However, he has had more than enough chances to make life more affordable, which he has failed to do at every opportunity.
Conservatives gave him a chance to cut taxes or to avoid raising taxes on all Canadians, but he carried on his plan and raised the carbon tax. He also continues in his efforts to gut and block Bill C-234, which would take the carbon tax off for farmers. He continues to ramp up spending in the hopes that Canadians will not see it for the pitiful attempt at buying votes that it is.
Canadians are not fooled and are fed up with the irresponsible spending of the NDP-Liberal coalition that is driving inflation. Instead of using this budget to demonstrate that the government understands the effect its disastrous policies have had on Canadians, it is doubling down on those same failed policies. Adding $40 billion in new spending will only add more fuel to the inflationary fire. The repeated promises from the government for fiscal restraint have gone by the wayside as it continues to spend unsustainably, trading away Canadians' futures for its own short-term political gain.
Like many of my colleagues, I had the opportunity this past week to speak with constituents. Three main themes were raised following this budget. I outlined in my speech the first concern I heard: deficits and overspending. The cost of government has skyrocketed under the NDP-Liberal coalition, while it spends on its pet projects. This is going to have serious repercussions for our children's and grandchildren's futures. The Prime Minister is not worth the cost for any generation.
I also heard about the wasteful spending. Many are watching what is happening in parliamentary committees and, more specifically, in the government operations and estimates committee, of which I am a member. Canadians are shocked at the massive outsourcing contracts for Liberal insiders and at the historic levels of corruption being uncovered by Conservatives, all while the NDP-Liberal government tries to cover it up.
Favouritism by the Liberal government is rampant, funnelling of tens of millions of dollars to Liberal insiders and their companies. This is particularly insulting to Canadians as they struggle with a cost of living crisis created by the Prime Minister. While Canadians are asking for too much, it is clear that the Prime Minister's friends can never get enough.
Finally, a major concern brought to me is the government's underlying commitment to the carbon tax, which does nothing for the environment, but it adds to the cost of everything. As we enter spring, my constituents are seeing the full cost of the carbon tax across a winter on the prairies.
The carbon tax drives up the cost of gas and home heating, which are vital for Canadians living in rural Canada. These increased costs also extend to food and other goods, which businesses pass on to the consumer. This passing on of the cost of the carbon tax from businesses to consumers is a simple idea to understand, but it seems that only those outside of the government benches can wrap their heads around it. These added costs are putting more pressure on Canadians who are struggling with the Liberals' cost of living crisis, and this budget does nothing to alleviate that pressure.
In conclusion, it will come as no surprise that I cannot support this budget. It is more of the same failed policies from the NDP-Liberal coalition, which refuses to acknowledge its failures. Instead of having the humility to acknowledge its shortcomings after nine years, it refuses to take any responsibility and continues to blame everyone except itself. Canadians are suffering, and the government is refusing to help them.
Conservatives will bring common sense back to government after the next election, and that next election cannot come soon enough for Canadians.
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- Apr/30/24 10:28:09 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I like the hon. member, but of course, she lived through the dismal decade, as all Canadians did, with the Harper government, where the fiscal management was basically thrown out the window: $116 billion in liquidity supports for the banking sector to prop up their profits; $30 billion a year, according to the PBO, given to overseas tax havens because of the notorious Harper tax-saving treaties that have basically eliminated the fiscal capacity of the federal government, which is $300 billion over a decade. The Conservatives have no lessons to give anybody in terms of fiscal management. They were terrible.
However, I want to ask my colleague a very simple question about pharmacare. There are 17,000 people in her riding who have diabetes and who are paying up to $1,000 a month for medication. As members know, the risk of stroke, heart attack or death is four times greater for people with diabetes than for other Canadians, yet Conservatives are blocking, at every single step, the pharmacare supports that would mean a difference of up to $1,000 a month in supports for 17,000 people in her riding. My question is simple this: Why are the Conservatives blocking this life-saving medication that would make such a difference in the lives of her constituents?
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- Apr/30/24 11:31:38 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the people of Edmonton Manning have been very clear in the emails I have received in the past two weeks.
Franks says, “Stop spending our money like a drunken sailor, we cannot afford the debt.” Trevor tells me, “It is absolutely ridiculous as to how much tax Canada is being charged, where does it stop?” David asked me to “Please put pressure on the P.M. to start cutting Canada's debt and balancing the budget.” Mariette says, “This budget puts our kids further into debt.” Michael writes of his “utter disgust with the latest Federal Budget.”
The feelings are unanimous: This budget is a disaster. I can only conclude that no one in the government actually considered the contents. Maybe they were too busy watching television to think about managing the country.
I must confess that I do not watch much television. When I do, I watch documentaries or live sports events. Two of the things that I avoid completely are reality television and game shows. To me, there is very little reality involved, and the games do not seem to be all that real to me.
As a result, I have to admit that I have never watched the show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, which aired more than 15 years ago. It was a short-lived program with only five episodes made. The idea was to have a panel ask questions from elementary school textbooks to see if the contestants were smarter than a fifth grader. The top prize was a million dollars, tax-free. The idea probably offends the Liberal members opposite. They do not believe that anything should be tax-free, ever.
Contestants on the show have to answer questions about Canadian history, Canadian geography and Canadian culture. However, history, geography and culture were not the only categories covered on the show. There was also mathematics, which may be the reason no Liberal MP ever appeared on the program. When it comes to math, budget 2024 shows very clearly that the Liberals are nowhere near as smart as a fifth grader.
When children are in fifth grade, math is pretty simple: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It is not rocket science. Fifth graders know that if they receive a weekly allowance from their parents, they must spend that money wisely. Common sense tells them that they cannot spend more than they have. There is no such thing as deficit spending to a ten year old.
If they spend all their money, Mom and Dad will tell them that they have to wait until next week to get any more. They are not made of money. They have to live within their means and they expect their children to learn how to do that also, especially as they feel financially stressed by all the extra taxes the government has piled on them.
If children want some shiny toy that costs more than their weekly allowance, then they have to learn to save until they can afford to buy it. Stores are reluctant to extend credit to a ten year old, especially one who has not learned the value of saving.
As I look at this budget, I wish the Minister of Finance could go back in time and become a fifth grader once again. It is apparent that she and the Liberal Party failed to learn some important lessons in childhood, and now it is all Canadians who are paying for their inability to understand basic math.
A fifth grader could tell us that money does not magically appear. It does not grow on trees. We cannot just pick up loose bills on the sidewalk. A fifth grader could tell us that spending more money to pay the interest on the national debt than we have for health care is a recipe for disaster. Adding more debt does not fix the problem.
I will not delve deeply into economic theory here. However, the Prime Minister has asked Canadians to forgive him for not thinking about monetary policy, and it would probably be wrong of me to expect his caucus to have any more interest in such matters.
I must say, though, that there have been some changes over the past eight years in the way the government approaches its responsibility to manage the nation's finances. No longer does the government think it is possible to pluck numbers out of thin air, put them in a spreadsheet and magically produce a budget that balances itself.
Fifth graders could tell us that a deficit is not just a line on a piece of paper. It is a debt, borrowed money that has to be repaid at some point. They would also tell us that until that debt is paid interest will be charged.
In simple terms that even a Liberal could understand, running a budgetary deficit costs money. If interest has to be paid on a debt, then there is less money for the things that government is supposed to do for Canadians, things like health care.
Where does the government find money to pay its debts? It raises taxes. In other words, it charges Canadians for something they did not ask for and for some reason expects them to be happy to pay.
Parents who explain to their fifth graders how important it is for individuals and families to live within their means are being undermined by a government that spends and spends, while expecting someone else to pay its bills.
This budget would increase government spending and taxes and would bring us no closer to a balanced budget than we have been at any time in almost nine years of Liberal fiscal mismanagement. Apparently the Liberals' coalition partners in the NDP approve of this highway of economic ruin. This budget would bring in $40 billion of costly new spending that Canadians cannot afford.
In 2022, the finance minister said that the budget would be balanced by the year 2027. In 2023, the date was revised to 2028. Why do the Liberals not just admit that they have no idea how to balance the budget, since magic is not working?
Before the Liberals were elected in 2015, their leader suggested that perhaps his government would run modest deficits, about $10 billion annually before returning to the balanced books that he inherited from the previous Conservative government. We all know what happened. Record deficits followed record deficits to create a national debt never seen before in the history of Canada. With this latest budget, the Liberal-NDP government is farther than ever from doing so.
What we have now is a government that will spend more money next year servicing the debt than on health care. There is no sense in that, except perhaps to the members opposite.
Canada's per capita GDP is now lower than it was six years ago. While other countries have grown their economies, Canadians are poorer. The government's solution is inflationary spending and more taxes. It needs to go back to the fifth grade.
There is a glimmer of hope. Soon we will have a Conservative government with members who are indeed smarter than a fifth grader. Conservatives will balance the books, making the spendthrift finance minister and her fiscally unaware boss a bad memory.
The common-sense Conservative plan will axe the carbon tax, balance the budget and build homes, not bureaucracy, to bring lower prices to Canadians. Even a fifth grader knows that the Liberal government is not worth the cost.
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- Apr/30/24 11:43:09 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my point is that an average fifth grader knows that it is unproductive to heckle, name call and denigrate people on the basis of how much one person knows or another person knows.
Does the member not know that it is the job of the Bank of Canada and the Governor of the Bank of Canada to think about and consider monetary policy? It is not so much the role of government to talk about and think about monetary policy. I know the Conservatives have made much hay out of the Prime Minister's statement that it is actually the job of the Bank of Canada to talk about and think about monetary policy and that it is the federal government's job to make economic policy, fiscal policy and decisions on spending.
The fifth graders of Martin Street Public School know the difference and perhaps the Conservatives could learn fifth grade civics, because that is where we learn about the jurisdictions of the various institutions in our government and country.
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- Apr/30/24 11:44:06 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would excuse the hon. member opposite. It is like the Prime Minister asking him to sell a radish as a strawberry. They are trying to convince Canadians of their mismanagement and inability to balance the budget whatsoever. This is the situation. Philosophically, if the Prime Minister does not think about fiscal responsibility and fiscal or monetary policy, what does he think about? This—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Apr/30/24 12:03:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Harper Conservative government members were terrible fiscal managers. They gave away $30 billion a year to overseas tax havens, massive subsidies to oil and gas CEOs and bank bailouts. Unfortunately, the Liberal government has continued many of the bad financial management practices we saw under the Harper government.
The massive corporate subsidies that are going out started under the Conservatives and seem to be continuing under the Liberals. Why will the Liberals not rein them in?
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- Apr/30/24 1:07:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to represent the people of Châteauguay—Lacolle, soon to be Châteauguay—Les Jardins de Napierville.
Budget 2024, tabled on April 16, proposes a suite of measures to make life easier for all Canadians. It addresses the needs of today while looking to the future as well. That is why we are talking about fairness for every generation. We heard from and listened to citizens from across the country, and budget 2024 reflects the needs that they expressed. After listening to my constituents, I am very proud to say that this budget puts housing, health and inclusion front and centre. It proposes a Canada where young people can get ahead, where young families can find affordable housing, where seniors can age with dignity and where everyone can succeed.
One thing we urgently need is housing. The budget proposes an array of measures that will help build more homes. As we know, the best way to make home prices more affordable is to build more housing faster. We are reducing red tape, fast-tracking development, converting public lands to housing and using innovative techniques to build homes more efficiently. In other words, we are changing the way homes are built in Canada.
More than 1,700 post offices could be leveraged to build housing while maintaining Canada Post services, for example. We are making it easier for renters, especially millennials and gen Z, to buy a home. We will help them save for a down payment tax-free. We are giving renters credit for rental payments so they will have a better chance of qualifying for their first mortgage. We are protecting affordable housing while creating thousands of new units across Canada.
These measures are in addition to the FHSA program, which we announced last year and which has already enabled tens of thousands of young Canadians to begin saving for a down payment on their first home. This program allows participants to save up to $8,000 a year, which is tax-deductible. After five years, they can take the money out without having to pay tax on it. It is a fantastic program. I encourage all of the young people tuning in today to open an FHSA at a financial institution near them. The program will make a huge difference for young families who, until now, have been unable to purchase a first home because of difficulty raising the down payment.
Building more homes also requires building more water, waste water and stormwater infrastructure. We understand that building these new homes will create considerable additional costs for municipalities. Budget 2024 launches the new Canada housing infrastructure fund, which will provide $6 billion to Infrastructure Canada over 10 years starting in 2024-25 in order to accelerate the construction of this infrastructure. That is great news for our region.
Our commitment to fairness for every generation is also seen in our fight against homelessness. I am sure I am not giving members any news when I say that it is not a level playing field for everyone here in Canada. That is why Reaching Home, Canada's homelessness strategy, is a community-based program that is so important. It is aimed at preventing and reducing homelessness across Canada. This program provides funding to urban, indigenous, rural and remote communities to help them address their local homelessness needs.
Budget 2024 proposes to provide more than $1 billion in supplementary estimates over four years, starting in 2024-25. It also provides $250 million over two years to address the urgent issue of encampment and homelessness.
Reaching Home supports the goals of the national housing strategy, in particular to support the most vulnerable Canadians in maintaining safe, stable and affordable housing and to reduce chronic homelessness nationally by 50% by fiscal year 2027-28. That is equity.
We are making life cost less and strengthening Canada's social safety net for every generation. Ten-dollar-a-day child care, which we have had for a long time in Quebec, is already saving parents thousands of dollars a year and giving young Canadians the security they need to start a family of their own.
New programs like dental care and the national school food program will also help Canadians. By the way, just this morning, the Conservatives were talking about fifth graders. I wonder if they are prepared to say no to these children who go to school hungry in the morning. Perhaps we should ask them why they will be voting against our budget, which will enable these kids to eat well every day.
We are also very proud of our pharmacare program, especially for insulin and contraceptives, which will help Canadians save even more money. I recently had the opportunity to tour my riding and talk about the Canadian dental care plan, and I saw first-hand how badly this program is needed in our communities. People have signed up in droves. This program will make a difference for many seniors, people like our parents and grandparents, who often unintentionally neglect their oral health because they cannot afford to go to a dentist. People tend to underestimate the impact that poor oral health can have on overall health. This program will also ease the burden on emergency rooms, since many ER visits are related to oral health.
Scientific research has recently linked poor oral hygiene to certain health problems, including periodontal disease, gum disease, and diabetes, heart and respiratory diseases. These findings highlight the importance of good oral hygiene.
We are using innovation and fairness to grow the economy. We have a plan that will increase investment, enhance productivity, and encourage the kind of game-changing innovation that will create good jobs and keep Canada at the economic forefront. This includes expanding and implementing key economic investment tax credits to help build the green economy, cement Canada's position as a leader in the field of artificial intelligence and invest in improving enhanced research support. All of this is really important. We will help people enhance their life's potential while creating an economic environment that is full of opportunities for them. We need this young generation, there is no denying it.
I see that my time is nearly up. In closing, I would just mention one very important thing for farmers in my region. We have announced measures to help farmers by increasing the interest-free limit on loans under the advance payments program. I look forward to taking my colleagues' questions and discussing this at further length.
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- Apr/30/24 1:57:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the debate that we are having today, but I would ask my colleague specifically if he could provide some reflections on the fiscal state of our country. Increasingly, we are hearing leading economists around the world suggest that if we continue on this trajectory, it is going to lead to significant pain for future generations of Canadians.
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- Apr/30/24 3:21:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do count the hon. member as a friend and colleague, and I always enjoy chatting with him.
I will say that the IMF statistics are there, and the member can look at gross governmental debt and the net debt bases. The standards are developed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They are commonly accepted standards. They are principles.
Canada's fiscal situation is measured by the rating agencies. I worked for a rating agency for a number of years before I went into the bond side of the business. I understand it quite well. Our AAA credit rating, which has been there since finance minister Martin's years, is there for a reason. We have a solid balance sheet, which is something we should all be proud of and something that I know Canadians hold near and dear to their hearts.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Huron—Bruce.
Just before I begin debate, I would like to wish a happy graduation to my niece. She has worked hard and deserves all life has to offer, and Auntie Tracy is proud of her.
I rise today on behalf of the residents of Kelowna—Lake Country to speak to the 2024 budget, one of the most consequential pieces of legislation the House of Commons debates every year. This is now the ninth year the NDP-Liberal government has chosen to run deficits in its budget. I was in my community all last week meeting with businesses and not-for-profit organizations and attending all kinds of events. I had days with back-to-back meetings with people who reached out. Not one person said they were happy with the Liberals' budget.
One resident said the budget is like throwing spaghetti at a wall. Another said her family has lived in the Okanagan for generations and now the whole extended family is considering leaving Canada as no one can get ahead. Another person explained how moderately successful people who have worked hard and followed all the rules are being crushed by the government. A small business owner said, “So much for building up my small business to fund my retirement.”
For nine years, the Liberal government, propped up by the NDP, chose together to double the size of the federal debt, which is on track to lead to a generational debt crisis for the children of today and tomorrow. Together, those parties chose to support expensive, third-party consultants, at the same time as seeing a decline in accountability in federal department services, with many departments not meeting their own minimum service standards. They chose together to increase taxes, including the carbon tax, excise tax and payroll tax.
What are the results of the Liberals being propped up by the NDP? It is a cost of living crisis that is destroying the spending power of working-class families and causing a record number of Canadians to have to go to the food bank. People are losing hope.
After nine years of the Prime Minister, it now takes the same amount of time to save for a down payment on the average home that it used to take to pay it off. People have a lower quality of life than previous generations. People have more mental health and addiction issues than at any time in the past.
I was hopeful that the Liberal ministers, in their ninth year of government, might listen to Canadians.
Conservatives were clear about what we wanted in this budget in order to support it. We wanted the government to axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234 in its original form, which would give farmers in my community and across the country much-needed tax relief. We wanted the Liberals to build homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities to permit 15% more homebuilding each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure funding. We wanted the government to cap its wasteful spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation, which presently impacts Canadians in many ways, including mortgage renewals.
Just like a family managing its household budget, Ottawa should always look to find a dollar in savings before looking for a dollar in new spending. Sadly, the NDP-Liberal government did not meet any of these common-sense requests. The finance minister has again chosen the same inflationary deficits that have pushed Canadians into a cost of living crisis.
In listening to the Minister of Finance present her budget, I was particularly struck by one line. In her budget speech, the Minister of Finance discussed the importance of not passing on ballooning debt to our children. That is exactly what the budget does.
That is what the NDP-Liberal government has been doing for nine years; just look at the numbers. Budget 2024 forecasts that the federal debt will rise to $1.2 trillion this year and the interest Canadians will pay in servicing that debt will increase to $54 billion this fiscal year. That is more than the government intends to spend on provincial health care transfers.
The budget also shows that the government raised $51 billion in revenue from GST last year. That means that every cent of GST that every Canadian, business or not-for-profit organization may pay on the products and services they buy will not go toward a single government service program. It does not matter if someone buys a key chain or a car. If they pay the government GST, it will not be used to pay for roads, health care or armed forces. Instead, that amount will be used solely to pay the interest on the government's credit card.
Canada is not paying down its debt. Canada is paying the interest on our debt, while the debt still grows. That means these payments will only increase by a projected $54 billion again next year, $57 billion the year after, $60 billion after that and $64 billion after that. From now until the end of this decade, taxpayers will provide the government with $289 billion, which would not be used to pay for any public services Canadians depend on.
As the shadow minister for persons with disabilities, I have been greatly concerned with the government's string of broken promises regarding the Canada disability benefit, which all parties in the House supported. The Liberal Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities will not even acknowledge that persons with disabilities are in a cost of living crisis.
I asked her three times yesterday at the human resources committee, and the most she would say is that it has been “a challenging time”. We heard testimony during the Canada disability benefit legislation at the human resources committee that persons with disabilities were considering medical assistance in dying because they could not afford to live.
The Liberal government's pushing off implementation until late into 2025, with a peek into the limited regulations and amounts that might be, saw widespread backlash from my local residents and from national groups representing persons with disabilities. Many persons with disabilities are already among the hardest hit by the cost of living crisis, but apparently the minister does not agree.
Five years of Liberal minister photo ops and announcements on this benefit have produced another broken promise. Ironically, the NDP-Liberal government's 2024 budget title is “Fairness for Every Generation.” Skyrocketing federal debt will consume more of our tax dollars, while potentially threatening future social, environmental or security initiatives. This is not worth the cost to any generation, and it certainly is not fair to young adults and kids who will bear the brunt of paying the debt down.
This unwavering commitment to higher debt and deficits has characterized the Liberal government's last nine years. We have seen a doubling of rent, mortgage payments and down payments. There are reports of people not meeting the mortgage stress test and having to sell their homes to rent, only to find rent to be more expensive than their mortgage payment. It is a real concern that there is a big wave of both residential and commercial renewals coming this summer. Insolvencies are already increasing.
This budget projects unemployment to rise to 6.5% this year. Despite the employment minister telling us, at the human resources committee in December, that he had a plan to address it. We have not seen that plan.
All these issues are not coincidences. They are the consequences of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal deficits driving up costs.
David Dodge, the former Liberal-appointed governor of the Bank of Canada, said that this budget is the worst he has seen since 1982. The previous finance minister, Bill Morneau, has also criticized it. The Bank of Canada and former Liberal finance minister, John Manley, both confirmed that the federal Liberal government's deficit spending was pressing on the inflationary gas pedal, forcing the Bank of Canada to balloon interest rates.
Liberal ministers have been travelling the country to create photo ops for their new spending. However, new spending outlined in budget 2024 would not meaningfully impact consumer costs if inflation is not brought under control, therefore, lowering interest rates. The government, at the same time, continues to increase taxes. Rising food and gas prices are predicted to rise through 2024.
I have no confidence in the government. My Conservative colleagues and I will vote against the Liberal government's ninth deficit-and-debt budget.
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