Senator Housakos: We’ve seen that before.

Senator Housakos: I know that you do not accept my assertion and that you cannot answer my question. However, the reality is that while you’ve spent like drunken sailors, the result should be that every single pothole in the company should be filled, infrastructure should be pristine, all Canadians should have doctors, our health care system should be accelerating, our education system should be the best in the country and we should have passports arriving at our homes within minutes. I could go on and on, but these are some facts that you’re just not willing to accept.

I’ll give you a few more facts. Government leader, right now the average Canadian spends over $2,000 per month in rent. In the Greater Toronto Area it is over $3,000 per month. This year, families will spend $1,065 more in groceries. The truth of the matter is that this is a result of the government’s free spending style with no fiscal anchor.

The truth is that you came into power in 2015 promising to be the government that would defend working-class and middle-class Canadians and those working hard to join the middle class. When you look at these statistics, your government and its policies have pummelled the middle class and poured pain on the poor in this country.

The question is simple: Will you apologize — you, the Prime Minister and Minister Freeland — for the pain that has been bestowed on the middle class and the poor, and will you finally acknowledge that you have to change course vis-à-vis your fiscal policies?

Hon. Leo Housakos: I want to follow up on the questioning from the opposition leader with regard to Prime Minister Trudeau’s incompetence.

You have to admit, government leader, that it takes a special type of incompetence to increase the public service in this country by 53%, spending $21 billion more in the public service while achieving what? — the largest public service strike in the history of the country. The Prime Minister has achieved this marvellous realization while spending $22 billion on outside consultants.

Honourable senators, that is $1,400 per year, per household, for those outside consultants.

You have to admit, government leader, that is a special type of ability. Can you please share with this chamber what kind of skill set and what kinds of policies are required in order to achieve this high level of incompetence?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Government leader, no one is questioning the validity of a grocery rebate at a time when this government has created or helped create such great inflation, and Canadians are suffering, but we have seen time and time again in this place that when you pass legislation with all the best intent in the world that legislation isn’t clear and transparent in giving directives to those that are going to apply this particular bill and apply this particular program with clear regulations.

We are just asking if it wouldn’t make sense to have some regulations and guidelines to make sure that all these billions of dollars would go to a grocery rebate and not to a hardware store rebate.

And there is nothing wrong for people in need who might need tools, Senator Cardozo, but there is something wrong when you take a government program, and then it is used, for example, to go on a vacation or to buy accessories for an automobile or to buy sporting goods, for example, for entertainment and sports reasons.

Would the government leader agree that we need to attach to the title of this bill clear guidance to make sure that all the money goes for grocery rebates and nothing else?