Senator Plett: Leader, isn’t it embarrassing that the Prime Minister used President Biden’s visit to hide the truth from Canadians?

Senator Plett: The answer changes. It was one room; now it’s multiple rooms. Why didn’t the Prime Minister say that months ago, that it was multiple rooms that he had used?

Last fall, leader, I questioned you repeatedly about who had stayed in this $6,000-a-night hotel room. If the Prime Minister had answered the question himself at any point, he would not have had to put you in the position of defending the indefensible, which you again have done a number of times today.

Instead, as I said to you a few weeks ago regarding the foreign interference allegations, no one can get a straight answer out of this man. This is the government that once claimed to have set a higher bar, leader, for openness and transparency. Instead, using the visit of an American President to try to bury this story is probably the lowest of the low in terms of transparency.

Leader, yesterday the Trudeau government claimed that this $6,000 room included rooms for security and that saying otherwise was misinformation — and it took them months to decide that.

How can that explanation be trusted when the Prime Minister has lied on numerous occasions? How can that explanation be trusted when the Prime Minister could have said from the start but chose not to do so? Isn’t that misinformation?

Lastly, leader, as I said yesterday, when will Justin Trudeau realize he has lost the confidence of Canadians, and step down and call a federal election?

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?

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?

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Leader, to the surprise of absolutely no one in this country, it turns out that the member of Canada’s delegation to Her Majesty’s funeral last September who stayed in the $6,000-a-night hotel room was — you guessed it — Justin Trudeau. This information was not given during any of the times that the Prime Minister was directly asked about this in the other place. It also wasn’t provided through access to information, as his name was redacted from hotel invoices released in February. No, this information was given to the House committee just as Air Force One was touching down in Ottawa last Friday.