Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition to provide our beloved police service dogs with the veterinary care in retirement that these valued police partners deserve. The petitioners recognize that these dogs serve faithfully alongside police officers right across Canada, providing protection, detection and life-saving support to Canadians and members of law enforcement. It is support that often results in injuries or the development of service-related conditions. Disappointingly, in Canada, there is currently nothing to assist with the veterinary costs of looking after our K-9 friends after they have finished serving Canada with such distinction. Therefore, the petitioners are calling for all police service dogs who have completed three years or more of active duty to have their veterinary care fully covered for all injuries directly linked to their policing service, and 50% covered for the remainder of their general veterinary care. After their service to this country and their fellow officers, it is the least that we can do.

There used to be a promise here in Canada, Mr. Speaker, that if a person worked hard, paid their taxes and followed the law, they could afford a home, groceries and a decent standard of living. Now, after 10 years of the Liberal government, for most Canadians that promise no longer exists. According to a new survey from the United Way, 60% of Canadians now feel anxious about their finances, 38% struggle with food insecurity, and 40% are losing sleep. When will the Prime Minister acknowledge that his policies of more spending, more debt and jet-setting around the world are just not delivering real results?

Mr. Speaker, I can tell the House that most people on Vancouver Island know one thing, which is that the economic policies of the Liberal government have been hurting young Canadians the most, young people who can no longer afford homes in the communities they grew up in, whose jobs have been shipped overseas or taken by temporary foreign workers, whose streets on which they play have been flooded with dangerous drugs and whose futures have been mortgaged this year alone with $80 billion in new debt. When will the government reverse its policies and stop throwing the next generation under the bus?

Mr. Speaker, I always thought the role of the media was to hold the powerful accountable and to unapologetically seek the truth. Apparently, however, the CBC views it as trying to deceive and trick individual Canadians into bizarre and intentional traps. A new TV series from the CBC lied and used fictitious production companies, aliases and made-up stories in an effort to dupe Canadians for the purpose of political propaganda. It deceived RCMP veterans by inviting them to fake ceremonies only to publicly humiliate them. It targeted ordinary citizens who had concerns about land claims and private property rights. It partnered with well-known, far-left American activists to attack Canadian history, Canadian institutions and Canada's first prime minister. It was all paid for using taxpayer money. The CBC is a Crown corporation. Its mandate is to serve all Canadians, not to target them, not to deceive them and certainly not to produce political propaganda designed to denigrate their beliefs.

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are outraged to learn that taxpayer dollars went to deceive and lie to individual Canadians, including RCMP veterans. A CBC production used fake websites, fake names and fake companies to lure them into supposed interviews about their lives after retirement, but it was all just a front, a set-up for some sort of twisted humiliation ritual in front of a live studio audience. This is insane. Does the minister really think that it is acceptable for the state broadcaster to use taxpayer money to lie and deceive, and to smear the reputations of individual Canadians?

Mr. Speaker, members can imagine waking up one morning in beautiful British Columbia. The sun is out. The birds are chirping. We can see the mountains, the forest and, if we are lucky, maybe even the ocean from our home. Life on the surface is actually pretty good, but that scenic reality masks a much deeper and darker anxiety. The title to that home, that deed that was signed however long ago, may no longer mean what we thought it meant. The financial investment that we built our entire life around, our home that we spent our entire life savings toward, may no longer belong to us, at least not in the same way we thought it did. I wish I could say this was just some sort of reoccurring bad dream for many B.C. homeowners. However, the truth is that this uncertainty is already their reality today. This past August, the B.C. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that has since reverberated across the province and, in time, will undoubtedly reverberate across the entire country. The ruling recognizes aboriginal title over 800 acres of riverfront property in Richmond, B.C., including over the personal homes of individual citizens, declaring fee simple title invalid and ruling aboriginal title as prior and senior title to the land. What does all this mean? No one really knows, which is a big part of the problem. However, the ruling, which is now known as the Cowichan decision, has shaken B.C. politics to its core. Because around 95% of B.C. was settled without formal treaties, the consequences of this decision are not limited to 800 acres in Richmond, but potentially impact nearly the entire province itself. While the decision is, of course, being appealed, and while the result of that appeal remains unclear, the consequences of the ruling are already being felt today. Homeowners are now being taxed on property the legal status of which is uncertain. Some are having difficulty selling their home, while businesses and industry groups have pulled billions of dollars of investment out of British Columbia as one of the key guardrails of the rule of law begins to break down. When a citizen pays their taxes, follows the law, maintains their property and still cannot be certain that they own their own home, something has gone profoundly wrong. Private property rights are not a luxury, not an appendage to our system of government, not some kind of optional add-on to our society, to our democracy. They are quite literally the foundation on which western civilization, capitalism and our economy are built. They form the basis for our savings, our security, our independence and our autonomy as a human being. Without them, we own nothing. We are a slave to our government or whatever other powers there may be. To have them infringed upon so suddenly, so brazenly, so harshly without compensation flies in the face of everything that it means to be Canadian. It also wakes up a very important fact, which is that Canada is one of the few democracies in the world today without property rights enshrined in our Constitution. That was left out of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 by our old prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and decades later, we are now living with the consequences. As a member of Parliament for a riding in British Columbia that itself comprises entire communities with homeowners facing similar legal uncertainty, it is my duty to speak out for my constituents and articulate my position and my views on this issue. For me, the defence of private property is and always will be a red line. It is not and should never be up for negotiation. It is in every way a fundamental human right, and we must never submit to trade it away to simply appease or placate the latest ideological fad or in the name of political convenience. Every citizen must know that their government will do whatever it takes to ensure that Canadians can trust that what they own is truly theirs without exception. Unfortunately, that is the exact opposite of what the Liberal government in Ottawa and the NDP government in B.C. have actually done. First, in 2018, the Liberal government instructed its lawyers, Crown counsel, to abandon their own citizens, ordering them to discard the long-held legal argument that the granting of fee simple private property took precedence over or extinguished any aboriginal title claim. That directive remains Liberal party policy to this day. Second, after the bombshell Cowichan ruling, the Liberals should have immediately halted any further agreements or treaty negotiations with first nations unless explicit protections for private property were included. Instead, again, they did the exact opposite, pushing ahead with the controversial Musqueam agreement, which essentially recognized aboriginal title over much of metro Vancouver and nearly one million Canadian homes with zero explicit protections for private property. It should be noted that a member of Parliament from within the Liberal caucus called for, in his words, the return of unceded land. Then the Liberals went ahead and negotiated three new, unprecedented quasi treaties, otherwise referred to as living agreements, all of which involved huge transfers of land, money and resources to individual first nations, again with no explicit protections for private property included. When the Liberals and the NDP are pressed on their contradicting claims that they too support the private property rights of Canadians and will defend them at all costs, their rhetorical defence is that they claim they are appealing the Cowichan decision and hope that they will win. Hope is not a strategy and prayers are not a plan. The uncertainty created by their actions is already having real-world effects today. The Liberal government must act to restore certainty to homeowners now. It must act to restore confidence to businesses and industry and reverse the billions of dollars in investment that is fleeing British Columbia. Just as importantly, the government must act to prevent the further fraying of the social fabric between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians that its policies have caused. Before writing this speech, I actually looked up a dictionary definition of “reconciliation”, and it is the act of causing two people or two groups of people to become friendly again after a falling out, an argument or a disagreement. In other words, it is about bridging divides and moving forward together. This is precisely the opposite of what the Liberal Party and the NDP have managed to accomplish over the last 10 years. It is exactly the opposite, as they are driving a wedge between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians, playing identity politics and prioritizing virtue signalling and rhetoric over tangible, real-world results. I see that, instead of creating a framework that would bring Canadians together as one, they created an agenda that has driven them further apart. It is breeding resentment and frustration between communities instead of bridging divides and moving together as one country, Canada. The vision behind our nation, from the very beginning, has always been one of working together toward a common goal and of achieving together what we could not accomplish on our own. We need to once again harness that vision to bring back and realize that mythology of Canada. That includes, as an essential component, the mutually beneficial partnership between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians, from the fur trade to the War of 1812, but for that partnership to truly flourish, private property rights must remain sacrosanct. There must be no equivocation on the part of the government. It must never allow fee simple title and the rights of private property owners to be abridged or up for debate. In each new agreement with first nations, these rights must be enshrined. In each and every court defence, the case to defend these rights must be made, and if absolutely necessary, if the courts continue to interpret legislation or the Constitution in ways that undermine Canada's sovereignty, our economic viability or the rights of individual citizens, then whatever changes that are needed in that legislation, or even the Constitution, however difficult, must be done.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member across the way. It does not mention private property, and that is the problem. There are no explicit protections for private property in the agreement and we are currently in a legal scenario. We are in legal limbo as we await the appeal process of the Cowichan decision. As we said, as the Conservative Party, we have demanded that every new agreement, every new treaty with first nations, must have explicit protections for private property. It is a fundamental human right. That is what we are going to continue to push for on this side of the aisle.

Mr. Speaker, the first thing to do is to remove these legal guidelines that have restricted our Crown counsel from defending private property rights with all of the tools in their tool kit. There should be no further agreements or treaties made with first nations without explicit protections for private property embedded within. As far as what comes beyond that, my position, which I believe is also the position of my colleagues, is that when it comes to defending private property, we do whatever it takes. Obviously, we are going to support the appeal of the Cowichan decision through the courts, but there is no step along this way, along this path, where we are going to allow the private property rights, the fundamental human rights of our fellow Canadians, to be abridged and to be up for debate.

Mr. Speaker, the mayor of Richmond is simply stating the facts as they are. The federal government and the provincial government in B.C. failed to make legal arguments to defend private property. That is a fact. However, what may be even more inexcusable is that after that court decision was made, they continued to go out and sign agreements, whether they were treaties in British Columbia or the Musqueam agreement, that did not explicitly protect private property in this new era of legal uncertainty that we now find ourselves in. That is not fair to homeowners in B.C. That is not fair to private businesses. We need to get a government that is actually putting the private property rights of Canadians first.

Mr. Speaker, I rise once again in this House to submit yet another petition on behalf of the people of North Island—Powell River opposing ongoing attempts by a Bermuda-based company, Brookfield Renewables, to receive an unprecedented 30-year export permit to send Canadian hydroelectricity out of Powell River to the United States, in the middle of a trade war I might add, with no benefit to the people who live in the city, the province or our country. While the petitioners are encouraged to hear the process is now proceeding to a more thorough full licensing review, they remain concerned that the granting of a simple permit may still come, and that the power, which used to supply the local pulp mill and support thousands of jobs, may be permanently and irreversibly sent out of the country. The petitioners are outraged that there is still no plan to hold public hearings in the city of Powell River.

Mr. Speaker, what a a colossal and grotesque waste of taxpayer money. How else could one describe the deliberate Liberal decision to double the size of Canada's deficit and add $1 trillion to Canada's debt? It will increase the amount of taxpayer money wasted on interest payments to $80 billion every single year. That is $5,000 per Canadian household not going toward health care, education or roads. That is money taken from the pockets of everyday, hard-working Canadians and squandered. If we keep borrowing all this money with no plan to pay it all back, this story will end only one way. It will end with ever-increasing interest charges consuming a larger and larger share of Canada's budget, meaning less money to pay for the essential government services on which we all rely and a deeper hole that will become only more difficult to dig ourselves out of. I implore the Liberal Prime Minister to put down the shovel, stop digging and restore fiscal discipline and fiscal sanity to this country.

Mr. Speaker, there used to be a political consensus in this country that government, like the rest of us, had to live within its means. This was a shared understanding that money does not grow on trees and that eventually all bills come due. Liberals shattered that consensus, borrowing more money over the past 10 years than every other government in the history of our country combined. The Prime Minister promised to do things differently. Instead he has somehow managed to spend and borrow even more. When will the Prime Minister end his costly credit card budgets and stop leaving future generations with the bill?

Mr. Speaker, more spending and more debt seems to be the Liberals' solution to every problem they create, forever increasing the size of government and using Canada's credit card to foot the bill. However, all this deficit spending comes with an inflationary cost: the worst grocery inflation in all of the G7, the worst household debt in all of the G7 and the worst housing costs. When will the Prime Minister realize that more spending, more debt and more government is not the solution to Canada's economic problems? The Liberals are the problem.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Dufferin—Caledon. Why do we get involved in politics? Why do those in this chamber put their names forward to stand for an election and all that it entails? The answer, of course, varies and is undoubtedly different for different people. Some run for office to seek change in their local community. Others are motivated by matters of principle or feel compelled to act on behalf of deeply held ideas or beliefs. As we have seen recently, others get into politics for the sole reason of furthering their personal interests, cozying up to power and, maybe worst of all, accumulating power for the sake of power itself, even if it means selling out their constituents and betraying those they were elected to represent. For the first time in more than 150 years of Canadian history, a Prime Minister has sought the almost unlimited power of a majority government in Canada not through a mandate from voters but through deception and deceit, quietly courting a handful of self-interested, duplicitous MPs through backroom deals and who knows what else, effectively overturning the results of an election and concentrating power that he may covet but has not democratically earned. The result is millions of Canadian voters who are angry and thousands who feel as if their vote was stolen, and I can see why. When someone is elected under a party banner, it is not just a personal victory. It is a commitment to the people who supported them and that platform, those principles and that vision for the country. In the last election, none of these elected MPs communicated to voters that they would consider crossing the floor just months after the vote. That matters, as does the context within which their decisions were made. It has been less than a year since the last election. The major party leaders are exactly the same. The party platforms are essentially the same. The primary issues facing this country, unfortunately, such as the cost of living, increasing crime, a faltering economy and the ongoing trade dispute with the United States, are also the same now as they were one year ago. If these MPs wanted to represent the Liberal Party of Canada and defend the Liberal platform in this Parliament, they should have made that decision before the last election. Then again if they had, most, and probably all, would have lost their seats. Therein lies the problem. The Prime Minister is accumulating political power he was specifically and unequivocally denied the last time Canadians went to the polls. We are not just talking, of course, about a handful of individual seats without any broader consequences. We are talking about fundamentally changing the balance of power here in Ottawa, radically remaking the minority government that voters delivered last April, when the Liberal Party and the current Prime Minister were restrained by the need to compromise and consult with opposition parties and were held accountable at committees with production orders, witness testimony and investigative motions. It was a minority government that has now been transformed through backroom deals and floor crossings to a majority that never should have been. It is unethical, it is fundamentally undemocratic, and it has had the effect of essentially disenfranchising thousands of Canadian voters. If a party wants a majority government in this country, it should have to earn it at the ballot box, just like every other government since 1867 in our country. Here we are. What is done is done, as they say. The next question is, what comes next? It only took a matter of days for the Liberals to tip their hand, moving a motion that we are debating here today to stack committees with not one but two additional Liberal MPs, trampling the oversight powers of Parliament, limiting transparency and laying the groundwork to ram through their agenda. This is from a party that loves to engage in lofty rhetoric about compromise, the defence of institutions and bringing people together. However, at the end of the day, I think what all this exposes is that the only real principle the Liberal Party knows is power, power at all costs, power even as an end onto itself. The Liberals are not about to let something as inconvenient as an election result get in the way. What will they do with all this newly acquired power and the ability to pass essentially whatever they want? We have seen, over the past 12 months, that what the Liberals say they want during an election and what they actually end up doing can be two very different things. For one, they promised to get Canada's fiscal situation under control and to rein in the excesses of Justin Trudeau, who doubled Canada's debt in just 10 years. Instead, under the Prime Minister, the deficit has actually increased. They also promised to prioritize Canadians' public safety after the increases we saw over the past decade in violent crime of 50%. Instead, the first bill they submitted to the justice committee did not target repeat violent offenders at all but rather the free speech of law-abiding Canadians. As for their signature promise, to negotiate a trade deal with the United States by July 2025, well, it has now been a year since the last election. There is still no deal, and the tariffs remain in place. In fact, the tariffs are higher now than they were back then. Meanwhile, some other legislation that the Liberals actually campaigned on, such as speeding up the construction of projects deemed in the national interest and introduced as Bill C-5, has been supported by the Conservatives and indeed improved through negotiations and the committee process. It all raises the question: For what purpose do the Liberals seek their near-unlimited power today? For what purpose do they seek to upset a 159-year-old Canadian political convention? Is it that they seek to restrict the opposition from conducting inquiries into their many conflicts of interest? Is it to shield the sunlight of transparency by blocking requests and blocking production orders for government documents and reports? Is it that they tend to introduce radical legislation they did not campaign on and know that none of the opposition parties would be able to support? Maybe it is a combination of all three. One year ago, I was elected in my riding of North Island—Powell River as the Conservative Party candidate. I ran on a clear platform, a clear set of commitments and a clear vision for this country: to stand up for Canada's resource sector, with forestry, mining, oil and natural gas; to target the real criminals in our country, the repeat violent offenders, not those exercising free speech and not law-abiding firearm owners who have never committed a crime in their life; to stop the reckless spending and endless deficits; to get the cost of living under control; and, finally, to get our men and women in uniform the equipment and support they desperately need and deserve, while always standing up for our country. I intend to honour the promises I made and the guarantees to those who entrusted me with their support and their vote. Today, with the Liberal motion, this patently naked grasp for political power, there is no denying one very simple fact: My job and the job of my opposition colleagues is certainly about to get a lot more difficult. However, that just means we will have to redouble our efforts and work harder than ever before to hold the government to account, to be the voice of our constituents and to be the voice, as always, of Conservative common sense. We can then ensure that the very real concerns and interests of hard-working, tax-paying and law-abiding Canadians are not ignored and that their priorities, through our efforts and our pressure, become the priorities of the government, however reluctant it is.

Mr. Speaker, I was elected to the House to voice my opinions. This is not a quote from me. What I can tell the member, which I totally pointed out in my speech, is that there have been many floor crossings in the history of Canada, but never in 159 years has a government openly courted a large number of MPs to cross the floor to try to change the balance of power in Ottawa and give them a majority government that they did not earn during the last election. This is what is happening today. This is why so many Canadians are angry; this is why thousands of Canadians feel disenfranchised, and this is what we are standing up against.

Mr. Speaker, the truth is that this is a question Canadians would like to have answered. I do not have the answers. We do not know what conversations were happening behind closed doors. We do not know what was offered or what enticements were made. That is the very essence of the problem. Is the balance of power in this chamber, in this House, about to be upset because of conversations that Canadians were not subject to, did not have a say in and did not have a vote on? I wish I had the answers to my hon. colleague's questions, and I think Canadians wish they had those answers as well.

Mr. Speaker, Parliament and the workings of the House should reflect the democratic mandate given during the last election. The Liberal Party and the Prime Minister sought, and did not receive, a majority government from Canadians. What they have now done, through backroom deals and who knows what else, is manufacture a majority government. Their first order of business is not to try to do something to help Canadians, but it is to radically stack committees with Liberal members of Parliament. We believe in more transparency, more oversight and more accountability for the government, and that is exactly what we are going to continue to push for in opposition, even if the government is about to make our job much more difficult.

Mr. Speaker, what kind of society and what kind of country do we want to be? Is it one where the government has the power to decide what we can or cannot say, to decide what religious texts we can or cannot read and which opinions we can or cannot hear, or do we want to be a country where citizens are allowed to express themselves freely without fear of persecution or intimidation from the state, where citizens are allowed to voice their opinions, speak their truths and engage in robust political debate, and where we recognize that the price of free speech includes having to occasionally hear things that we disagree with, that are distasteful, that are repugnant and that at times may even contain hate? That is the price of free speech, is it not? That is the price of denying government the power to regulate the words we speak and, I should say, that is the price of free speech in Canada today. In years and generations past, the price paid to protect this fundamental freedom was much greater, measured not in courtrooms, in parliamentary committees or even on the floor of this House but measured on battlefields around the world by the blood spilled and lives lost to defend it. The question of whether to sacrifice some of our freedom to feel more secure and more comfortable is a question as old at least as western civilization itself, but it represents a false choice. Our security, our unity and our strength of spirit as a nation exist not in spite of our freedom but because of it, and attempts by some to erode that for the benefit and glee of others who would regulate, intimidate and control are misguided and wrong. Over the last 10 years, Liberal governments have consistently introduced legislation that is part of a trend in our country, a trend of increasing the influence of those who would wield the wand of censorship and empowering those who seek to control what we think by controlling what we can see and discuss online. It is a trend of consistently undermining the free expression of individual Canadians and attempting to stifle and socially engineer public debate, whether it was with the former Liberal Bill C-11, which decided the government, in its infinite wisdom, should have the power to manipulate the algorithms and the search results of YouTube, Facebook and other social media companies and thereby influence the information that we see and consume, or the former Bill C-63, which attempted to further criminalize and regulate speech. Now we have before the House Liberal Bill C-9, a bill that, as originally presented, would have watered down the definition of hate speech and removed important guardrails to reckless and politically motivated prosecutions. It is a bill that, at its very core, would make it easier for the government and any future government to prosecute and jail Canadians based not on their actions but on their words, and make it easier for individuals in positions of authority to wield that power as a tool of intimidation to scare those with minority or unpopular views to seek the safety of self-censorship or else risk the wrath of the almighty state. While at committee, thanks to the determination and perseverance of a handful of Conservative MPs, we were able to remove many of the most dangerous and shameful elements from the legislation. Another new alarming amendment was added. In a deal struck between the Liberals and separatist Bloc Québécois, it was agreed to remove a provision from the existing Criminal Code that prevented the prosecution of Canadians for expressing in good faith the beliefs or words of ancient religious texts, opening the door to politically motivated prosecutions on the basis of religious expression and belief, and in so doing compromising not one but two of Canadians' fundamental charter rights. To think that in a country where free speech and freedom of religion serve as two of the foundational principles and values, the bedrock on which this nation is built, a government would seek to criminalize the expression of sincerely held religious beliefs and to criminalize the reading of certain religious texts just seems so outrageous, so absurd and so fundamentally un-Canadian. This is not an exaggeration. The Liberal chair of the justice committee at the time literally singled out specific passages from both the Christian Bible and Jewish Torah, declaring them hateful in the context of further criminalizing religious speech. Beyond the obvious issues with infringing on the charter rights of Canadians, there is another issue. It is that this bill ignores, deflects and distracts from the very real and the very same challenges in Canada today that it purports to address. There is an issue in this country with some trying to hide behind the charter right of free expression to genuinely incite violence, but that is already illegal. There is an issue in our country with some attempting to intimidate and obstruct those seeking to practice and exercise their faith, but that too is already illegal. There is an issue in this country of repeat violent offenders assaulting or otherwise harming those for little or no apparent reason, some of which is undoubtedly motivated by hate. The government's response has been to repeatedly weaken Canada's justice system over the past 10 years and to refuse to aggressively pursue those guilty of breaking Canada's existing laws today, focusing not on those causing immeasurable physical harm in our cities and our streets, but on redirecting finite police resources to chase down ill-defined crimes of speech and on redeploying officers from our communities and towns to Internet message boards, Facebook posts and tweets. In the last 10 years, under the Liberal government, violent crime in Canada has increased by 50%. Homicides are up by 27%, and more than a third of these murders have been committed by known offenders on some sort of judicial release. This is the direct result of Liberal bills like Bill C-5 and Bill C-75, which have made our communities increasingly less safe by prioritizing the release of violent offenders and by weakening sentences for serious crimes. If the Liberal government actually cares about the safety and security of Canadians, it should start by fixing the problem it helped create, not by targeting the fundamental charter rights of Canadians, not by making it easier to prosecute speech and not by going after those for expressing sincerely held religious beliefs.

Mr. Speaker, I know it might be hard for my hon. colleague across the way to understand this, but those of us on this side have deeply committed beliefs when it comes to charter rights, free speech and free expression. We are not making a political calculation. This comes down to a simple question: Do we want to live in a country where the government has the right to decide what we can or cannot say, or do we want to live in a country that, despite the fact that people might say things that we disagree with or find disgusting or even hateful, we still defend to the death the right of those individuals to say it? I know the type of country I want to live in. I wish my colleague across the way wanted to live in the same.

Mr. Speaker, further to the point that I just made, the choice is a simple one. As soon as we start placing these restrictions on free speech and free expression, the question becomes who gets to define where the limits are. Where do we draw the line on what we can or cannot say? The bill proposes that it is the government that would have the right to look over its citizenry and decide how we are allowed to freely express ourselves. I believe that is a God-given right that rests with every single Canadian, and no government should have the right to control the words that come out of our mouths.

Mr. Speaker, it is simply because Conservatives on this side of the House believe in free speech. We believe in free expression, and we believe in freedom of religion. These are the foundational values and principles on which our entire country, the entirety of western civilization, was based upon. Once we start ceding that authority to government, we allow government to control what we can or cannot say. Who gets to draw the line? Who gets to decide what is or is not permitted or is not hateful? That is not the foundation of a free country. That is a slippery slope to a tyrannical regime.

Mr. Speaker, over the past 10 years, we have seen violent crime on our streets increase dramatically under the Liberal government. That is an issue that needs to be addressed, and it is not a surge in speech crimes that needs to be dealt with. It is the fact that the government keeps releasing repeat violent offenders back onto our streets over and over again, such as those who assault people and commit all sorts of other serious crimes. One-third of murders committed are by people on release. This is a distraction, and it undermines a foundational constitutional principle.

Mr. Speaker, three weeks ago, the Minister of Natural Resources claimed that the decision to allow Brookfield Renewable Partners to send Canadian hydroelectricity out of Powell River to the United States, with almost no benefit to Canadians, was out of his hands and instead rested with the Canada Energy Regulator. The only problem is that the regulator told me that it made its recommendation to reject the permit two months ago. Since that time, it has been sitting on the minister's desk. Will the minister commit to accepting the regulator's recommendation and to denying Brookfield this permit?

Mr. Speaker, it was 16 years ago this month when Canadians from coast to coast came together to celebrate the most dominant performance in winter Olympic history, with 26 medals, 14 of them gold, and nothing more iconic, of course, than Sidney Crosby's golden goal, which eliminated the United States and reclaimed Canada's rightful place as the undisputed hockey nation of the world. It was a moment etched into the very memory and identity of this great country, a defining moment of national unity and national pride. Whether people were watching that final game from their living room, at a bar or with the thousands crammed outside of LiveCity in Yaletown, as I was, it was one of those rare instances of pure, unadulterated joy. I know I speak for all members of the House when I wish the amazing athletes representing Canada the best of luck and all the success in the world. To Nate, Sid, Connor and the boys on the ice, let us go get another gold medal.

Mr. Speaker, devastated, anxious and fearful of what the future may hold are just some of the emotions, I am sure, that the 25,000 Canadians who lost their jobs last month undoubtedly feel. These are individuals, like all Canadians, who, even when working, were already struggling with the cost of groceries, the cost of rent and the cost of just getting by. Now, not only are they dealing with a cost of living crisis, but they are also out of a job. The Prime Minister promised the fastest-growing economy in the G7. When will his policies deliver anything other than job losses, massive deficits and the highest cost of groceries among our economic peers?

Mr. Speaker, working together is great, but the question was about jobs. In the real world, Liberal rhetoric and platitudes do not create a single job. GDP was flat in November. Real GDP is projected to decline. The Bank of Canada says that business investment will remain weak. Meanwhile, 5,400 forestry workers in coastal B.C. are already out of a job. The government promised to build nation-building projects and create jobs at a speed we have never seen before. My question for the government is this: Where are these projects and where are these jobs?

Mr. Speaker, I have good news. The Canada Energy Regulator has rejected Brookfield's plans to send Canadian hydroelectricity to the United States with almost no benefit to the people who live here, and has instead recommended a full licensing process and review. However, the final decision still rests with the Minister of Natural Resources. Will the minister commit to accepting the Energy Regulator's recommendations and ensuring that Canada's national interests always come first?

Mr. Speaker, last week was a devastating one for forestry workers and their families on Vancouver Island. Just outside Port McNeill, the Atli Chip plant announced it would be permanently closed, and curtailments were announced at the Ladysmith and Saltair locations of the iconic Chemainus sawmill, where my grandfather worked for 30 years. These were good-paying jobs, the type of jobs that built communities up and down Vancouver Island and right across B.C. The government promised to stand with these workers, to have their backs. Instead, mills keep closing and workers are being laid off. When will the government's actions and results finally live up to its rhetoric and its words?

Mr. Speaker, I have a suggestion, and it is to drop the ideological 30 by 30, which stops forestry workers from doing their jobs. I appreciate my colleague's comments on this issue, and I appreciate the government's promises of support, but forestry workers in my riding and across B.C. cannot eat Liberal promises and they cannot pay their mortgages with a Liberal speech. They need action. They need results. They need the government to actually deliver something. Literally thousands of jobs have been lost. How many more mills have to close? How many more people have to be put out of work before the Liberal government steps up and takes this crisis seriously?

Mr. Speaker, what constitutes a free society? What are the identifying characteristics that separate nations whose people live in freedom from those whose subjects live under tyranny and fear? I can think of no guiding principle more fundamental to this question than the existence, or lack thereof, of free speech and free expression: the legal ability to express oneself without fear of government coercion, oppression or use of force. This why I am so concerned by the Liberal government's Bill C-9, which would open the floodgates and abandon the guardrails on prosecuting and criminalizing speech in Canada, including the reading of sacred and ancient religious texts such as the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. Make no mistake; once we cross this Rubicon, once we accept the premise that governments and politicians in the House have the subjective right to determine what we may or may not say, or what religious texts we may or may not read, we have lost the plot. Free speech is a western value, a Canadian principle and a human right, and we must always defend it.

Madam Speaker, on July 20, 1871, British Columbia became the sixth province to sign on to the audacious vision that was Canada as laid out by the fathers of Confederation, a vision that was as bold as it was courageous, which was to create a new nation, one that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the Rockies, across the Prairies and over the Canadian Shield to unite these small, disparate and insignificant colonies of what was then British North America. It was perhaps the greatest nation-building project the world had ever seen. Over a century and a half later, we owe much of our prosperity, identity and independence to them and those who followed in their footsteps. They built and defended this country from the ground up. From the national railway through two world wars, their determination and perseverance shaped not only the land around them but also those who called it home. What has happened to that tenacity, that fortitude, that resolve, the ability to get things done? Where are our leaders, our statesmen for a new century, those who could live up to the lions of Canadian history, such as Laurier, Macdonald and W.A.C. Bennett? Where are the leaders who can rediscover the boldness and audacity that built this country and couple it with a vision as befitting a nation as vast and bursting with potential as our own? That vision starts with getting back to the basics, with actually building things. In the late 1800s, Canada was a small country, divided by language and having a much larger and more powerful neighbour to the south, yet, in that historical context, we completed what many consider to be one of the great political and engineering feats of the time, the Canadian Pacific Railway. Today, the Liberal government cannot even bring itself to openly support a pipeline. It is content instead to sign vague, indeterminate pieces of paper, promising to one day maybe consider building a pipeline to the Pacific. The consequences of this lack of vision and follow-through are very real. Today, our lack of market access forces us to sell our oil, our number one export, at a massive discount to the United States, a reality that has cost us tens of thousands of jobs and $70 million each day, or $25 billion every single year. At a time of predatory and hostile U.S. trade action, which is a deliberate attempt to destroy our forestry, steel, aluminum and automotive sectors, we are essentially giving our oil to the Americans on the cheap because the Liberal government does not have the political fortitude to get a Canadian pipeline built, a pipeline that would secure our economic sovereignty, energy independence and the leverage that we need over the United States. However, this is not really a new issue. Back when Macdonald was first proposing the Canadian Pacific Railway and undertaking, as I mentioned, what many thought could not be done, there were loud voices, mainly in the Liberal Party at the time, that demanded that the east-west railway be built through the much easier terrain of the United States. They argued it would have been politically easier, and undoubtedly more affordable, and on those two points they were right, but it would have come at the expense of Canadian sovereignty and left us a mere dependent, a colony of the Americans. Fortunately, our leaders in that era had the foresight and the passionate devotion to our national interest to see through the railway that we now call the ribbon of steel on an all-Canadian route. Unfortunately, the Liberal government today has essentially accomplished the exact opposite and is moving us in the opposite direction. Let us think about how ridiculous this is. Canada has the third-largest reserves of oil on the entire planet, yet we are still importing oil from repressive, dictatorial regimes, such as Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, as we have allowed our Canadian oil industry to atrophy, American oil output has grown by more than 50%. What are we doing? We have the oil, the know-how, the skill and the determination of the Canadian people. I can guarantee that. All we are missing are the politicians with the courage and vision to get the job done. To be clear, and this is an important point, the world needs more energy. It needs it today, and it is going to continue to need it for decades to come. In fact, the International Energy Agency predicts that global energy demand will continue to grow well past 2050, and more than a quarter of that total energy demand will continue to come in the form of oil. The problem is that that increase in demand is concentrated in Asian markets, markets that, without pipelines, Canada has little to no access to. Today, over 90% of our country's oil exports are sold to one country, the United States. Make no mistake, if we do not get these pipelines built, if Canadian oil stays in the ground, which, by the way, I think is the true objective of at least some members of the Liberal caucus, those investment dollars and jobs will go elsewhere. They will go to brutal, repressive regimes, such as Venezuela and Iran, to fund the priorities of their governments, which are to repress peaceful dissent and export terrorism and hard drugs, instead of supporting the priorities of our government, which are health care, education, roads and the support of our brave men and women in uniform. Here is the truth: No one does environmental stewardship and safety better than Canada and Canadians. As long as the world needs and demands oil, as much of it as possible should come from right here in Canada. To do that, we need pipelines. Unfortunately, instead of showing leadership on this file or following in the nation-building footsteps of those who built this country, the Liberal government has done the exact opposite by axing the northern gateway pipeline; killing energy east; and introducing the bill known as the no more pipelines bill, Bill C-69, and the tanker ban, Bill C-48 as well as the industrial carbon tax. It is a suite of policies compiled by design for one purpose, which is to kill Canada's oil and gas industry to leave our most valuable resource, asset and commodity in the ground. Let us take the tanker ban as one example. Why is it that 24.4 million tonnes of foreign oil are allowed to transit Canada's east coast, including down the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, yet on B.C.'s north coast, this is banned? There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that suggests that tanker traffic in northwestern B.C. presents a greater risk to the environment than anywhere else. In fact, because there is a lack of maritime traffic in general, the exact opposite is true. Here is the kicker: There are already tankers off of B.C.'s coast. Four tankers each day, filled to the brim with American oil, depart Alaska, heading south alongside the very waters where Canadian tanker traffic carrying Canadian oil is currently banned. It continues a trend of the Liberal government pursuing ideological policies and virtue signalling to one group or another over straightforward, common-sense results. However, there is good news. Canadians are seeing through the spin. In recent polling, 67% of British Columbians believe that new pipelines are important to Canada's economic future, and 54% are confident that pipelines can be built while protecting the environment. Pipelines are the most environmentally friendly and sensitive way to transport this commodity, yet we have the B.C. Premier saying that the pipeline will “never be built”, and the Prime Minister has been unwilling to assert the nation-building and constitutional roles of the federal government to get this project done. When it comes to building this pipeline, a majority of British Columbians and Canadians agree, but most importantly, it is in the essential national interests of our country. The truth is that the silver lining to this challenge lies in the solution. We do not need the government to step up in any particular way. We just need the government to get out of the way to give this country back to those who built it and continue to build it, the people. That is why I urge every member of the House, regardless of their province, party or ideology, to vote with us for Canadian workers, prosperity, economic sovereignty, energy independence and building things, including pipelines, in this country once again.

Madam Speaker, what it comes down to is that we should be getting the top price for Canadian oil that is possible. We are going to get that top price only if we have access to world markets. If we allow ourselves to be backed into a corner for the Americans to have ultimate leverage over our number one export, we are not going to be able to get the top price. This is why we need to get pipelines built; we need to get a pipeline built to the Pacific and finally create more Canadian jobs, create more Canadian revenues and start building things in this country once again.

Madam Speaker, I cannot predict the future, but I will tell the House one thing: It needs to be built. It needs to be built for the national interest of this country. We cannot continue to be an economic dependant of the United States, an economic colony of the United States. We need to take control of our own future and start building things again. Whether it is mines in Saskatchewan, pipelines in B.C. or nuclear power plants in Ontario, we need to get building again in this country. Unfortunately, I think that only with a new Conservative government will it actually get done.

Madam Speaker, look, the point the Liberals do not understand is that we should not even need an MOU in this country to build things. A private proponent proposed a pipeline and got the project approved by the National Energy Board. The project met all the requisite requirements but was killed for political reasons by the Liberal government. One should not need to go on bended knee to the Prime Minister to beg for a project to get built. We are supposed to be a first world country, not a banana republic. We set the highest environmental standards in the world. If one meets them, one should be allowed to build the project, whether it is a mine, a pipeline or a new housing development. We need to get things done.

Madam Speaker, I was 21 at the time, if I am doing the math correctly, so I am not familiar with all the ins and outs of what was or was not in the platform back in 2011. What I can tell the member is that we support a pipeline. We support getting top dollar for Canada's number one export, expanding our trade markets, becoming less dependent on the United States, actually getting things done, following the science and the evidence, and not making political decisions that kill individual projects.

Mr. Speaker, devastated, gutted and heartbroken are just three of the emotions I felt after learning that 375 Canadians would be losing their jobs with the closing of the Crofton mill. These are Canadians with mortgage payments and with young families, Canadians who were already struggling with the rising cost of living before receiving this terrible news. The government promised to support our workers and secure market access for our goods. Instead, lumber tariffs have tripled, and thousands of Canadians have lost their jobs. If the Liberals' so-called plan is really working, can they guarantee that no more mills in Canada will close as a result?

Mr. Speaker, Canada used to be a country that built things and got things done. It built the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Rockies and across the Canadian Shield. Today, we are governed by Liberals who spend more time building fake backdrops for press conferences than on nation-building projects to secure our sovereignty from the United States. A new pipeline to the Pacific was already approved 11 years ago, and the Liberals killed it. Macdonald did not promise one day to maybe review a proposal and hope a railway got built. He promised a route to the Pacific and he delivered. Will the government do the same, yes or no?

Mr. Speaker, this Prime Minister promised to build Canada strong, yet when it comes to a pipeline to the coast of B.C., a pipeline that could end the U.S. monopoly on Canadian oil and bring billions of dollars into Canada, he transforms into a helpless bystander, hiding behind the NDP premier in B.C., ceding responsibility and abdicating leadership. The Constitution is clear: National pipelines are the sole jurisdiction of the federal government. Failing to act is a betrayal of our national interests; it is a betrayal of our workers, and it is selling out to the Americans. Will they build the pipeline, yes or no?

Mr. Speaker, maybe if Brookfield proposed a pipeline we could actually get one backed by this Prime Minister. Let us be clear: a majority of Canadians support this pipeline. A majority of British Columbians support this pipeline. As long as the world needs these resources, as long as the world needs oil and gas, until that last barrel comes out of the ground, as much of those resources as possible should come from right here in Canada. Why will the government not take up its mantle of leadership, deliver on what it promised and get this pipeline built?

Mr. Chair, “Who cares?” is what the Prime Minister said when asked when he had last spoken to the U.S. President about Canada's ongoing trade negotiations. The Prime Minister claimed that he had no “burning issue” to discuss with the United States at the moment and that he would speak to the President again “when it matters”. To the over 200,000 Canadians who earn their living in forestry, who harvest our wood, mill our timber, and provide the lumber from which we build our homes, and whose blood, sweat and tears built cities like Campbell River, Powell River and Port McNeill, it matters, and it matters to their families, to their communities and to this country. More Canadians work in forestry than in the steel, aluminum and automotive sectors combined, and they are getting killed right now, especially in my home province of British Columbia. On the coast alone, harvest volumes have collapsed to half. More than 5,400 jobs have been lost. Mills have closed and others are curtailed, and we are now harvesting only one-third of our annual allowable cut. It could be about to get even worse, because if just one more major mill closes, if just one more domino in the supply chain falls, the entire industry faces the very real possibility of total collapse, and there are two major reasons why. The first reason is that the Prime Minister promised he would have a deal with the Americans by July 21 to remove the punitive and baseless tariffs and to provide some certainty for an industry eager to return to its feet. That did not exactly happen, did it? Instead, American tariffs on Canadian softwood, far from being removed, have tripled under the Prime Minister, and his response, beyond some flippant comments like “Who cares?”, is nothing. In fact, to add insult to injury, Canada, one of the most forested jurisdictions in the entire world, is now importing raw logs from the United States. I will just remind Canadians of the backstory to all this. In 2006, the previous Conservative government signed a much-celebrated softwood lumber deal with the U.S. that expired in late 2015. The Liberals have had more than 10 years, under three different U.S. presidents, to renew or otherwise modify this deal. I would say they have done nothing, except the truth is that they have done worse than nothing, which brings me to the second reason this industry that built so much of our country is in crisis. That second reason is the current government's reckless and arbitrary commitment to close up to 30% of Canada's lands to economic activity, including forestry, as part of the United Nations' 30x30 policy, a policy that risks exacerbating uncertainty around permitting delays and access to fibre, and that was suffocating the industry before the latest tariffs even came into place. There are mass closures that have nothing to do with permitting delays and access to fibre but have everything to do with ideology and ticking the box of bureaucrats and activists in New York, and for what? It is to put our industry and our workers at a competitive disadvantage and to send our forestry jobs to Brazil, to Russia and to the United States, countries with lower environmental standards than our own. This is at a time when forestry in Canada and the 200,000 Canadian workers that it employs face an unprecedented existential crisis due to predatory trade action from the U.S. Every day, I see the effects of all these policies in my riding: people out of work; families cutting back; lineups at the Comox Valley Airport of individuals desperate for work, seeking whatever they can at mines and energy projects hundreds or thousands of miles away; and young Canadians, be it in Campbell River or Port Hardy, whom I talk to, who see no future for forestry at all. All they see is uncertainty and a perpetual downward spiral to nothing. However, it does not have to be this way. Canada has the best forestry workers and the best forestry companies of anywhere in the world. We have an industry that can operate sustainably for generations to come, and we have a product in softwood lumber that builds our homes and is the envy of countries right around the world. There is no reason why the industry should not have a bright future of growth, success and prosperity, but if the government does not act to secure trade access to the U.S., to diversify our markets and to lift ideological restrictions on access to fibre, the current trend will continue, a trend of decline, of pessimism and of slowly destroying one of the foundational industries that built our incredible country. For the sake of future generations and for Canada, I urge the Liberal government to rise to the occasion, finally do what needs to be done and deliver on what it promised.

Mr. Chair, while it would be great to boost some domestic demand for softwood lumber, that is not the problem. This is an export industry. About 90% of Canada's softwood exports go to the United States. That cannot be replaced with domestic demand. We can build all the homes we want, and we are all in favour of building homes here on the opposition side of the aisle, but if we do not fix the issues with access to trade markets and access to the United States, this industry will collapse. It is collapsing right before our eyes. In the process, while we are securing that access, the government should get out of the way and remove this ideological access to fibre that the 30 by 30 United Nations commitment is currently doing.

Mr. Chair, I thank my hon. colleague for the question; that is a great question. The truth is the Prime Minister promised that he would have a deal by July 21, and he did not get one. Instead, the Liberals have gone around poking the U.S. administration in the eye. Their solution to everything seems to be to print and hand out more money. The truth is that this industry in British Columbia, and on the coast of B.C. in my riding, is completely falling apart. Coastal mills are closing, and 5,400 people have been put out of work. If just one more of these pulp mills or sawmills closes, the domino effect could be a collapse of the entire industry. I cannot speak for the Prime Minister on why he is incapable of delivering on his promise and getting a deal. What I do know is that this is what he campaigned on, and he is not getting it done.

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for the question. I am sure he knows, in talking to forestry companies, especially in British Columbia and right across this country, that other than the trade issues with the United States, access to fibre is the number one issue that these companies face. It is the number one issue facing the industry and preventing it from going forward and being successful. As far as 30 by 30 goes, that is just another ideological restriction. That is just another source of uncertainty that scares away investment, that scares away companies from making hiring decisions and investing in mills and that scares away what should be one of the most profitable and prosperous industries in our entire country.

Mr. Speaker, in Powell River, one of the local communities I represent, two hydro dams provided a clean, reliable and cost-effective source of electricity for over 100 years. Their electricity powered the local pulp mill, created thousands of jobs and quite literally built this amazing and beautiful city. That was until the mill fell into financial trouble and was forced to sell the dams as distressed assets to Brookfield, the company that registers its subsidiaries in Bermuda and has avoided paying more than $6 billion in Canadian taxes. Now we have found out it wants to use these amazing assets not to create Canadian jobs nor to power Canadian homes, but to export all of the electricity to the United States, with no benefit to the people of Powell River, B.C. or Canada. However, to export this power, it needs a permit from the federal government. That is why I am imploring it today, as the local elected representative, to deny this application. Let us get back to putting the interests of Canada and the Canadian people first, instead of foreign-owned corporations.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to the Liberal budget, a budget put forward by the government that I believe to be fiscally reckless, utterly immoral and lacking any kind of grand unifying vision that Canada, at this moment in its history, so desperately needs. I speak first and foremost, as always, on behalf of my constituents of North Island—Powell River. However, I also feel duty-bound to speak today on behalf of another group of Canadians, a group without voice and without champion, a group of Canadians who are all too often overlooked, whose interests are marginalized and whose concerns are ignored. I speak of course of future generations, of people still in cradles, strollers and schools, and of those yet to be born. Over the last 10 years of Liberal government, the debt being left to these future generations to pay for has doubled. Put another way, the Liberals have borrowed more money since 2015 than every other government in the history of this country combined, borrowing even more money than it took to build the national railway and to win the Second World War, and that is accounting for inflation. Before the unveiling of this budget, I think many Canadians, including those of us here in opposition, were hoping for something bold and something special, a budget that was transformative, that was daring, that marked a clear departure from the decade of Justin Trudeau and that set Canada on a new fiscally sustainable path that a majority of Canadians could support with pride. Instead, we got more than $300 billion in new debt and the largest deficit in Canadian history outside COVID. In other words, it was nothing remotely transformative at all but rather a simple continuation of the same old Liberal policies of spending money that we do not have and leaving the bill to the next generation to pay. If the same policies are enacted, we should not expect a different result. For starters, we can expect the taxpayer money wasted paying interest on our debt to rise even further, with the government's own projections forecasting a 37% increase, to more than $76.1 billion a year. That is more than 11¢ of every dollar that Canadians pay in taxes squandered, taxpayer money that cannot be spent on roads, health care or Canada's national defence. It is money that is wasted paying interest to big banks on Bay Street. Because governments rarely if ever pay back the principal on their debt, Canadians have to pay the interest over and over again, year after year. In fact Canada's federal debt today stands at around $1.2 trillion, yet since 1980, Canadians have paid over $1.4 trillion just in interest on that debt. I have not met a single Canadian who thinks that has been a good return on investment for them. With the Liberals' announcing plans to spend and borrow even more, the problem will only be getting worse. Just to be clear, this is not an issue with taxes being too low, or some sort of government revenue problem. In 2015, when the budget was balanced, the government took in $282 billion in taxes and other government revenues. For the current fiscal year, today the government projects that number to be $507 billion, an increase of more than 80%. The issue, instead, is reckless, totally unrestrained government spending that has increased during that same time period by 109%, to $586 billion this fiscal year. Now the Liberals have announced, in this budget, that they want to spend $90 billion more. What is their justification for all the spending and all the debt? It is the same tired refrain as it has always been, that Canadians need their government to step up to do and spend more. However, if we look back on the last 10 years of faltering economic growth and ballooning national debt, we see the exact opposite. Canada's economic stagnation is not due to government not stepping up in any particular way. Canada's economic stagnation is the direct result of government, and the Liberal government in particular, getting in the way, whether by blocking pipelines like northern gateway and energy east, by scaring away investment with bills like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48 and the industrial carbon tax, or by overseeing a dramatic increase in federal spending and a doubling of Canada's national debt, with almost no discernible benefits to everyday Canadians. What is more is that all of this reckless spending and borrowing has another cost: high inflation. My grandfather, who will be turning 95 years old next month, first came to Canada in 1956, fleeing persecution and communism in eastern Europe. He instilled in me a very basic lesson early in life: There is no such thing as a free lunch, that everything has a cost and that eventually all bills come due. That is also true about government spending and borrowing massive amounts of money. If the government injects billions of dollars into the economy without producing more of what that money buys, it will not make Canadians any richer or any better off; it will simply devalue the Canadian dollar and by extension make the same goods more expensive than they were before. That is why, over the last decade of the Liberal government, we have experienced the highest levels of inflation in 30 years, at a time when the majority of Canadians identify the cost of living as the single most pressing concern in the country. At a time when Canadians identify the rising price of goods and homes as their most important issue, the government has introduced a massive budget deficit that will make that exact problem even worse. Because assets like homes and stocks tend to experience a corresponding increase in value along with inflation, inflating the money supply always ends up hurting most the people with less, especially younger Canadians. It is truly a regressive economic and social policy that prioritizes political short-sightedness over long-term economic strength and generational equity. Of course, our Prime Minister claims that he is not spending more money and that nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead, he is investing; he is building Canada strong. The truth is that a deficit is a deficit, and government debt is government debt. All the money that is borrowed in tax goes into one giant pot and then is spent on a variety of government priorities. Creditors do not care if we borrowed the money in order to build a road, to pay teachers or to buy new submarines. It all costs interest. It all erodes our fiscal capacity as a country, and it is all being passed on to the next generation to pay for. Here is the kicker. The new Prime Minister, the fiscal hawk, the central banker, is planning to borrow more than double what Justin Trudeau was planning: $321 billion over the next five years. Many people probably know me from my last five or six years of making political documentaries or other short films, but before that I worked with a group called the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. My role at the CTF was to organize and tour its giant debt clock, which showed how much debt governments in Canada had racked up and how fast that number was ticking up, to university campuses right across this country, to wake up the next generation whose future was being mortgaged by a cabal of politicians either too blind or too self-serving to recognize and admit a truth that only numbers can truly tell: that this country was and is on the path to insolvency and that we are leaving young Canadians with the bill. It is for this reason more than any other that, as a Conservative, I will be opposing this budget, a budget that spends and borrows on the backs of those who in the last election did not have a vote and did not have a say. This brings to mind a very Canadian thing that used to happen, and I suppose still sometimes happens, at Tim Hortons drive-throughs right across this country, where people would pay it forward. Someone would drive up to the window, only to find out that an anonymous stranger in the car in front of them had paid for their coffee and their doughnut. It was always a pleasant surprise. For future generations, the government's budget is the exact opposite. It is like someone's driving up to the window with $5 in hand to cover their double-double and Boston cream, only to find out that the guy in front of them had not paid his bill and that now they are on the hook for not only their own meal but for his as well. That is government debt. It is unethical, it is unfair, and it is something I hope all parliamentarians will join me in fighting and voting against.

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for giving me the opportunity to point out something that needs to be raised in this House, and that is how bad the deterioration of the fiscal situation has become in this country. The truth is, and I believe my hon. colleague will know this, that Canada's federation is structured differently than other countries in the G7. We hold massive amounts of what is called “sub-sovereign debt” in our provinces. Historically speaking, the federal government has backstopped those provinces if necessary. Looking at total government debt, according to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, Canada is the seventh most indebted country in the entire world. We are right up there with Italy and France. We are right up there with the United States, but it has the world's reserve currency, so it has a slightly different set of circumstances to deal with. If the government truly thinks that sub-sovereign debt should not matter in that calculation, as it does in all the international metrics, then it should get up and declare publicly that it is not willing to support or back any provincial governments that may run into problems down the road. Barring that, we need to start looking at total government debt in this—

Madam Speaker, my colleague raises a very good point, which is the fact that what the government is trying to do, and we have seen it happen in corporate Canada before, is move money around into different pots and try to mask the top figure, which is the massive amount of new debt. What matters is that the government is planning to borrow $321 billion over the next five years and put that money on the back of future generations to pay for. If the government moves money around, it does not matter whether it is put into Crown corporations or whether it is called an investment. When a creditor is lending money, they do not care if the money was borrowed to buy submarines that are going to last 50 years or to pay schoolteachers today. Debt is debt. It all comes with interest. It all affects the carrying capacity of our country. We need to cut through the spin and look at the bottom line of how much the government is borrowing and how that compares to previous generations. As I pointed out, the government has more than doubled our national debt. It is time to get back to fiscal sanity and fiscal responsibility in this country.

Mr. Speaker, after 10 years of the Liberal government, young Canadians are struggling. They are struggling to afford homes in one of the least affordable housing markets in the world. They are struggling to find jobs in an economy that is increasingly slowing down, and they are struggling just to afford food after some of the highest food inflation in more than 30 years. The budget was an opportunity to do right by the next generation. Instead, the Liberals announced over $300 billion in new debt, debt that will be left to these exact same young Canadians to pay for. How is that ethical? How is that fair? How is that remotely fiscally responsible?

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for the Liberal government. Over the past 10 years, it has doubled Canada's national debt. In that same time, unsurprisingly, it has also doubled the amount of taxpayers' money that it has wasted on paying interest on that debt. In fact, today, we now spend $55 billion a year just on interest payments. That is more than we collect from the GST. That is more than we spend on health care. Now it wants to borrow another $320 billion. Does the government really think that spending $55 billion not on health care, not on roads, but on interest, is a good use of taxpayers' money, yes or no?