Hon. Leo Housakos: Senator Gold, can you tell this chamber how much your government is spending this fiscal year on the servicing of and interest payments on the Trudeau debt? Can you compare that to the 1.29% of GDP that your government is spending on national security, defence forces and our NATO obligations?

Honourable colleagues, can you imagine if we had to carry out an operation today like we did this week in 1944 with our Canadian troops? What would happen if they had to carry out an operation on behalf of Canadians in the name of freedom? I can tell you what would happen, Senator Gold: We would be in quicksand. I read the CBC story a couple of days ago where we have Canadian soldiers paying out of their pockets for helmets and basic equipment that they need to do their job. One just has to shake their head.

Why is this government spending so much more on interest to pay for the debt that Trudeau has accumulated compared to supplying resources needed by our forces? Isn’t your government — the Prime Minister and its ministers — ashamed of the fact that you’re spending tons more to service the debt than you are to supplying our national forces with the equipment they need?

Senator Housakos: Government leader, we’re asked to vote on budget bills in this place. We approve budget bills. You’re the Leader of the Government and you don’t know that particular amount of money is $43.9 billion? I find that unbelievable. It has been unbelievable for days now, both in the House and in this chamber. We’re asking the government a basic question, and it leads to a problem where Canadians have a lack of confidence in this government. The fact is that you’re spending more on debt interest management than you are on health care transfers in this country. That’s probably why the government doesn’t even want to acknowledge the amount of $43.9 billion. It’s embarrassing and shameful.

Is it just that the minister and your government have utter contempt for Parliament and for the requirement to have to submit to our questions? Because the truth is, government leader, for weeks we’ve seen that in response to the attempts on the part of the opposition to get basic answers. When it was all over, the minister went on to accuse the member of Parliament of bullying her. Imagine, every time the opposition asks questions, we’re bullying and being partisan and so on. We’re just doing the job that Canadians have sent us here to do.

You do it too, government leader. Every member of the Trudeau government does. You denigrate our parliamentary institution and the job of the opposition on a regular basis. You put Parliament in such a negative light every time you get up and criticize us for criticizing the government, because that is our fundamental role.

My question to you and every member of the Trudeau government, for that matter — and I’d love to get an answer — is: Who do you think you are in this chamber and where do you think you are? It’s a simple question. Who are you in this chamber, what is your title and where are you?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Government leader, what you’ve just highlighted over there is a spending spree that this government has been on for the last seven and a half years. Congratulations.

That explains, of course, why this Prime Minister has doubled the debt. He has created a bigger debt on his own than every other Prime Minister in the history of this country collectively. My concern, and the concern of this opposition, is not how you and I manage our financial affairs, because the truth of the matter is that I’m not concerned about people who are employed by the Government of Canada or the Parliament of Canada. I’m concerned about people who are working for Canada, who are being taxed to death and who are, right now, having a miserable time every time they go to the grocery store or try to pay for shoes for their kids to send them to school. Those are the people I’m concerned about.

My question is simple. In 2015, this Prime Minister made a commitment to the Canadian people that he would not have a debt run longer than two fiscal years, and he promised that he would balance the deficit by 2019. That’s what he promised.

The question is a simple one: Why did he lie to the Canadian people?

Senator Housakos: Government leader, the only thing this government’s wild and overkill spending has achieved is to create historic inflation that, again, is pummelling middle-class and poor working Canadians. This government is oblivious to the fact that interest rates can rise at any moment. That’s why, a year ago, we did have one of the best debt-to-GDP ratios in the world, as we did in 2015, but we are in decline there. We are falling behind. If interest rates go unexpectedly, about which you guys were shocked — it went from 2% a year and a half ago to 5% — wait until it gets to 7% or 8%. What kinds of excuses will we hear from this government then?

And yes, the Prime Minister lied; he misled Canadians when he made a commitment to balance the budget by 2019. In this town, we have to start coming up to speed with the fact that when we mislead taxpayers, we have to account for it somehow and not double down.

In this budget tabled a few days ago, your Minister of Finance has added $63 billion of new debt. Do you think that’s fiscally responsible when we’re on the eve of a recession?

Senator Housakos: Government leader, your answer does not correlate with the facts. Over the last decade, we’ve seen the CBC reducing regional service to an enormous degree, simultaneously spending millions of dollars toward the digital platforms, and that is a fact. The only thing we can’t really determine is how much of taxpayers’ money they are actually spending to convert to digital.

Let’s try another question. Senator Gold, the minister responsible for your government’s online censorship bill, Bill C-11, has written a letter to the chair of the CRTC, whom the minister himself had just appointed, expressing concerns that his bill could be used to infringe on freedom of expression. Shocking. The bill is still before Parliament, so I’m not so sure why the minister would write a letter instead of just writing something in the actual bill to protect against the very thing we have been raising concerns about all along, which is the trampling of the freedom of expression.

Senator Gold, are the members of your government, the Trudeau government, unaware that they are in government and that it’s not being done to them, but it’s being done to Canadians by them? Why is the minister sending a letter to his appointee?

Senator Housakos: Thank you, Senator Loffreda, for expressing very eloquently the government’s point of view as independently as you might have done. I will, independently of course, ask some questions on behalf of taxpayers in this country — starting with the fact that we saw the Auditor General put out a report very recently calling into question $27.4 billion of COVID spending that you allotted the government. Of course, we participated in getting a lot of that COVID spending out the door very quickly. Clearly now, the Auditor General has questioned the transparency of a lot of that spending.

What in this bill — what mechanisms — and what action has the government taken to make sure that a lot of the programs you just highlighted, and a lot of the new spending that will be taking place, will have better checks and balances than, clearly, the previous couple of budgets that we approved?

Senator Loffreda: Thank you for the question, Senator Housakos. It’s very relevant as, in my previous life, I was an auditor — way back more than 20 years. I started in 1984. How many years is that? I lost count. It’s 38 years, right? So it’s over 20 years.

But I think what does matter here is there are a lot of measures that are there for tax avoidance. A lot of measures are there to show that fiscal responsibility is imperative. I think the government is showing that.

You are right; the Auditor General did state that there has been a lot of COVID spending that has been distributed that must be recovered. We have to recover those funds, so we have to put measures in place to adequately look over as to how they could be recovered.

But this bill — Bill C-32 — is basically the Fall Economic Statement. It’s going forward. It’s putting in measures of tax avoidance, updating the Income Tax Act and looking at ways that we could go against tax avoidance. I’m fully in support of these measures in the bill. Hopefully, in the future, we will have additional measures that will be productive, and go against the unnecessary COVID spending that did occur.

Senator Housakos: Government leader, do you recognize that the average Canadian family in Canada will be spending $1,000 more this year than they did last year for food, for milk, for eggs, for bread — essential elements needed for parents to feed their children? I appreciate that for the Prime Minister and his cabinet and maybe parliamentarians $1,000 isn’t that much, but for your average Canadian family that is a substantial burden to carry.

In this country, we have been facing 30-year high inflation rates. We are currently in a situation where fruits and meats are 10% more costly than they were exactly a year ago. That’s the reality, government leader, and your government has taken actions that are making food more expensive for farmers to produce, including the carbon tax and the tariff on fertilizer imports. At a time of record inflation, when many Canadians are forced to choose between buying food and paying their bills, why are your policies that are making food even more expensive for Canadians something your government is still embracing and holding dear to?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Very happy with suspending Charter rights in this country.

My question is for the government leader in the Senate. When asked on Thursday about the seizure of Canadians’ bank accounts, Minister Freeland said, “. . . due process remains in place. Charter rights remain in place. And of course, the courts are there . . . .”

In fact, the Trudeau government’s Emergency Economic Measures Order states clearly that, “No proceedings under the Emergencies Act and no civil proceedings lie against an entity for complying with this Order.”

Leader, what recourse do Canadians have if they can’t take legal action against their bank, for example? And why would Minister Freeland suggest that the courts are an option when her government explicitly prohibits these Canadians from availing themselves of that option and their courts?

Senator Housakos: The Leader of the Government in the Senate will only say that inflation is a global phenomenon. As was the case last week, you are leading us to believe that the Trudeau government does not take seriously the accessibility crisis in our country and its effect on the lives of Canadians. However, the reality is that Canada’s inflation rate is the second highest in the G7. Across the country, the cost of food, housing, home heating and transportation has skyrocketed. What will the Trudeau government do to help all Canadians deal with the cost of living crisis? Will you cut your reckless spending, or will you continue to sit back and do nothing, under the pretext that inflation is a global problem?