Parliamentary Speeches

Madam Speaker, I rise today to raise what I have raised in this House many times: the problem with Canada's mounting debt. We talked about this back in the spring when I last asked a question about it. I have since heard throughout the summer about all kinds of spending the government wants to do that was not part of the $65-billion deficit that it indicated in last year's spring update. Spending is continuing to mount with the government. It is as if we have a new economist as our Prime Minister who has not understood the problem with the escalating debt we have in this country. Let me give some examples, because we are a basket case when we look at the total amount of debt that Canadians have, not just government debt in Canada. The national government debt alone is approaching $1.5 trillion. Provincial debts on top of that amount to almost $1 trillion at this point in time. Of course, there is always the other debt, and that is the one that Canadians hold. Canadian individual household debt amounts to about $3.2 trillion, and then corporately Canadians have about $3.8 trillion outstanding. This is an amazing amount of debt. Combined, as an actual function of GDP, Canada, government-wise, has about 100% of its debt to GDP at the government level, about 101% at the household level and about 118% at the corporate level. That means 318% of Canada's GDP is held in debt, debt that it has to pay interest on. We are concerned here about the federal government's debt, because I cannot argue about all the rest. There are impacts throughout the rest of the debt based on what happens at the federal level. The more the federal government spends, the more it goes into debt and the more it is going to have to pay in interest. The more it pays in interest, the more debt outstanding causes other interest rates to go up, including for all the financial debt outstanding to corporations and all the debt outstanding for mortgages and loans to consumers. This is a massive amount of money. We have all seen that around the world, central banks are increasing their lending rates right now. That means that the debt profile is going to continue to go up and the amount of interest paid is going to continue to go up. Why is this so significant for the federal government? It is because fully 29% of the Government of Canada's outstanding debt is due within the next year. If we think about how much money is going to have to be refinanced, 29% of almost $1.5 trillion is going to be refinanced within the next 12 months. That is an amazing amount of money, first of all, to go to debt markets. Some of that is expiring debt, and some of it is going to be new debt. I think there is going to be more new debt with the way the government is spending money, but that is just what is expected to be renewed at this point in time. That will mean that the $57 billion Canadians are actually paying in interest payments right now is going to skyrocket. Think about that. Think about the actual rate that the government pays right now, which is about 2.5%, as a debt profile across its full portfolio. Think about one-third of that falling off and paying 100 basis points more. This is fully one-third of $1.5 trillion, or $500 billion. Where we are paying 1% more, this is going to impact Canadians significantly. We are going to have higher debt payments and higher interest payments as a result of the government's profligate spending. The issue we want to get to is how we get to a better spending profile. Short-term financing is not taken by the provinces. All the provinces have a much more flat, low-impact duration for when their payments are due. The federal government is the one that is the most ramped up toward the front end of the repayment schedule. When I heard the finance minister for the government talk this summer about—

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the numbers he is putting on the table. We do need to address this. I know that the government has been very good at always pointing out that it has to do something because there is a crisis. The crisis happens because its members have not paid attention to what is in front of them. They are always responding to what has happened behind them. This is something that has already happened. Twenty-nine per cent of our debt has to be refinanced at the Canadian government level this year. It is going to have huge impacts upon Canadians writ large. The amount of interest going out the door is going to continue to mount. The government continues to run deficits as if there is no tomorrow. We have to get ahead of this. This is my putting on the table for the government, “Address this now before it becomes a crisis and you have to do something in the rearview mirror.” This was faced by the Chrétien-Martin government way back when. The result was, of course, to cut health care funding for Canadians. We want to make sure the government is ahead of it this time.

Mr. Speaker, working Canadians are doing their best in a K-shaped economy, where those with assets are doing relatively well, while those striving to buy their first home are seeing that dream move out of reach. The government has created a financial reality where Canadians are asked to take on more debt, pay more interest and accept a lower standard of living than the generation before them. Work harder and expect less is not the legacy we were supposed to leave our children, yet the Liberal government continues to manage expectations downward because its policies have led to a less prosperous country. That means lower results for everyone, including less food security, less shelter and lower expectations for health outcomes. A generation's future is being pulled back because that is the price of the government's choices. Where we are is clear. How we got here is evident. What Canadians need now is a government prepared to change course, restore opportunity and build a future where the next generation can contribute more and expect more.

Mr. Speaker, today we honour the life and legacy of Philip Roderick MacAulay, a long-time president of the Royal Canadian Legion Calgary No. 1 Branch, who passed away on June 11. For more than 50 years, Phil dedicated himself to the Legion, serving veterans, supporting his community and working tirelessly to ensure that the branch remained a vibrant place. A proud navy veteran, Phil spent decades in service, including 20 years as branch president, and earned the Legion's Meritorious Service Medal. We remember Phil for his humour, his generosity and his unwavering commitment to keeping the Legion relevant for all. Phil's loss will be deeply felt, especially by his wife of 37 years, Susan, who continues her own service to the Royal Canadian Legion Calgary No. 1 Branch. I will miss Phil at Remembrance Day ceremonies and Legion events, for he was a constant presence. On behalf of this House, I extend our heartfelt condolences. May we all strive to carry forward Phil's spirit of service and remembrance. Lest we forget.

Mr. Speaker, last week, Calgary's Royal Canadian Legion Branch No. 1 hosted and was addressed by the leader of the Conservative Party on the importance of building a strong Alberta within a united Canada. It was exactly the right place for that message. Built in 1922 as Memorial Hall, it was Calgary's primary tribute to those Canadians who served and sacrificed in the First World War. For more than a century, Branch No. 1 has been a gathering hall, as well as a place of remembrance, welcoming generations of veterans, families and Calgarians through its doors. Today that historical building needs our help. After decades of service, it is in urgent need of repairs, starting with its roof. This Canada Day, Calgarians are coming together to restore it, because this building is more than a hall. It is a promise kept to those who answered the call to defend the ideals of Canada, and it belongs to all Calgary. I encourage everyone to support this effort, honour our veterans and ensure that this landmark stands for generations to come.

Mr. Speaker, it is great to be here, and I am thankful this debate is allowed to continue. I am surprised that it has to go through this last half hour of questions for the minister, but it is an interesting bill we are debating here today. We want to make sure that we get to the bottom of everything that is happening in the House of Commons. Of course, we know it is springtime. It is actually a great time to be sitting in Ottawa and debating the business of the country, making sure we are moving forward in holding the government to account and making sure that the legislation we bring forward is the best it is going to be for Canadians. I beseech the minister, if he can, to actually take a look at the bill. This is his fourth Crown corporation, and there are no solutions so far. There is lots of money going out the door and there are lots of announcements, but no solutions have been put forth to actually aid Canadians and bring lower housing costs across Canada. What does the minister think he would accomplish with even more money and another bureaucracy that has not been accomplished along the way with everything else that has been done so far in this field? The lack of accomplishments is stark. Can he please address why he thinks it is going to be different this time?

Mr. Speaker, the minister knows this because I met him when he first got elected here on the floor of the House of Commons, and when he was named the housing minister, I told him that the first thing he had to do was to get rid of the people who have led us into this trap in the first place. Those are the people in his department, the ones whose advice he is following now to spend another $1.7 billion of Canadians' money in accomplishing what they have accomplished so far, which is just spending money and not fixing the situation at all. He keeps referring to a crisis. This crisis is a crisis of his party's causing, along with the officials who have led him to this trap. Not getting this to committee means another $1.7 billion of Canadian taxpayer money going out the door without anybody seeing what it is about, what the accountability mechanisms might be or if the money is being spent wisely. It is just another cheque that the minister is trying to bring in front of the Canadian people. Will he please tell us if he is going to entertain any input on the accountability mechanism assigned to the $1.7 billion of new taxpayer money?

Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask the member if she can just tell us what the $1.7 billion would accomplish, because we have already thrown a lot of money at the situation. We have empty condos now that do not suit the market in Toronto. Now we would give the development industry more money when there are empty lots to be developed once the actual economics make sense. We keep aiming for these problems that we are creating, yet what the government suggests is a crisis is something of its own making. How is it going to square this by just throwing another $1.7 billion of taxpayer money at it, thinking it would solve everything that the government's last few billion dollars thrown at it has not solved so far?

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my friend from Quebec a question about government spending, because an additional $1.7 billion is to be spent on housing across the country. Quebec households are paying the cost of interest on both the federal and provincial deficits. For each household, that amounts to $3,400 a year in federal government debt and $3,000 a year in provincial government debt. That money is being thrown down the drain. We are paying more in interest. Is supporting this government bill a waste of money?

moved that Bill C‑269, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (heat recovery tax credit), be read the second time and referred to a committee. Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me acknowledge the help I have received in the conception, analysis and presentation of this bill. Janice Tran, the CEO of Kanin Energy in Calgary, provided me with the inspiration, and numerous alternative energy experts have provided their input to this bill since it was first introduced in the House. I thank them all, and I note the importance of having a channel to bring forth great ideas from Canadians for consideration in Parliament for how we help grow our country and help it prosper. The best way to start this speech about this private member's bill, entitled an act to amend the Income Tax Act, heat recovery tax credit, is to first say what the bill is intended to do. To illustrate that effectively, some context is required. First off, for the sake of those who have little background in tax incentives with which we attempt to motivate business investment in this country, let us illustrate how an investment tax credit works. A non-refundable income tax credit allows a company to deduct the amount of the credit from the taxes it has payable to the federal government in any year. Let me give an example. Let us say that a company earned pre‑tax profits of $10 million in one taxation year. Assuming an effective federal tax rate of 15% on those earnings, that would mean the company would owe the government $1.5 million for that taxation year. Their after‑tax profit, in that case, would be $8.5 million before other taxes payable to other jurisdictions. If we look at an investment tax credit of 30%, and we assume an investment in that equipment equal to $10 million, then the 30% tax credit would mean that the company could take a credit against its taxes equal to $3 million. Note that in this case, this amount would be more than the amount payable in the year's taxes, so a portion of the credit would still be available for credit against future years' taxes payable. For the company's sake, when management makes decisions about how it would invest, it would effectively reduce the capital cost by that 30%, predicated upon the fact that the company would be taxable, and any amount due in tax credits in future years would also be time‑valued. The result is that the cost of the $10‑million equipment, in the company's estimation, would be reduced by 30% or thereabouts, so the investment could meet an “investment cost of capital” analysis. The company could take actual cash flow from the taxes it would have otherwise paid to justify why it would be spending $10 million up front. There are other complications, such as the half‑year rule, that I will not address here, but I hope this illustrates the case. The reason governments allow investment tax credits for selective purposes is because they are trying to motivate investment in sectors or uses that, all other things being equal, would not occur. In the illustration I presented, the government will not be collecting $1.5 million in taxes that year and a similar amount the following year. Governments cannot do that always and everywhere because it would then not have corporate income tax collection as part of its revenues. That tax collection line in 2025 amounted to about $97 billion, 19% of all the revenue the Government of Canada collected. Therefore, we need to be selective about how we apply investment tax credits in order to have a functioning taxation system and in order not to worsen our escalating deficits and unsustainable debt situation that Canadians are facing. That should lead listeners to the next question: Why should we apply an investment tax credit to waste heat recovery? Put differently, what is the problem we need to solve and how does this approach fit the solution? Let me provide some background. In Canada, the industrial sector amounted to 54% of Canada's end‑use energy demand in 2021. The main use of energy in the industrial sector is heat production, which is used in various industrial processes. By application, the sectors with the greatest opportunity are chemicals and primary metals, followed by cement and glass production and pulp and paper. In these industrial processes, approximately 30% to 50% of heat is lost. That is from a study undertaken by Polytechnique Montréal in 2021. According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, the equipment available today would capture 13% to 18% of the unused heat resources. The equipment exists to turn waste heat into power. The economics alone are still slightly challenging; however, with a 30% investment tax credit, it would drive the levelized cost of electricity, which is the power derived from the waste heat, down to levels competitive with wind, solar, nuclear and geothermal, most of which receive generous tax incentives to add to our energy supply. In the end, what we are aiming for is energy efficiency. First, Canada needs more electricity. Last month, the Prime Minister announced a national electricity strategy to double electricity production by 2050, which included financial incentives of various sorts. The irony is that electricity production is a provincial jurisdiction and the policy‑makers who are trying to wedge the federal government into Canada's electricity markets are the same people who made an absolute mess of Ontario's electricity system over a decade ago. The problem energy consumers face is that they do not know what their electricity costs, between the various levels of government that are subsidizing power production in many non‑obvious ways. However, what the ratepayer does not see on their electricity bill, they see on their tax bill, or it is added to the fiscal deficits we are passing on to the next generation to pay. Let us accept that, in the modern construct, producing new electricity production facilities is time consuming and expensive. Therefore, getting electricity from power sources that are producing waste heat may be the most efficient source of new electricity. Second, Canada needs to further reduce emissions. The lower our emissions profile per unit of output, the better the outcomes for the environment and society. New electricity would have an emissions profile. Some of that profile would be in the capital equipment and some would be in the consumable portion of the equation. We cannot ignore the carbon embedded in the capital equipment and just count the emissions from the variable inputs. That ignores the full carbon costing, which is one of the reasons the world's efforts to reduce carbon emissions are failing. Similarly, there is a footprint to the production of the equipment that would be required to produce power from waste heat. We must recognize that this equipment is an add‑on to an existing system, so its footprint per amount produced is less than any new build. In the case of capturing waste heat and producing electricity from that heat, the new variable emission amounts to zero, so the power profile has a near zero carbon footprint. This policy serves a great environmental purpose, one that gets results with respect to flatlining emissions and produces power with no new emissions. As we need power, the most environmentally friendly power would be that with zero net new emissions. Let us address the competitive landscape, because Canada is not the first country to undertake this exercise. The United States, in particular, instituted a similar 30% investment tax credit for waste heat‑to‑power investment in 2022. By 2023, 63 manufacturers across various industries had installed equipment resulting in the production capacity of 812 megawatts of power. For comparison, Canada's most recently completed hydro dam, Site C, in northern British Columbia, has a capacity of 1,100 megawatts. That dam cost $16 billion and took 11 years to build. If we scale back the U.S. experience by a factor of 10 roughly, therein lies the outcome we can target in Canada: about 80 megawatts of new electricity per year with no new emissions. I will note the importance of timeliness in our approach, because Canada is now a net importer of electricity, so speed matters, execution matters and cost‑effectiveness matters. What is missing in Canada's set of tools is a credit for waste heat‑to‑power, which is available and being deployed effectively in other jurisdictions. This seems like low‑hanging fruit with its cost savings, new electricity production and no new variable emissions profile for that electricity. It is probably the most cost‑effective and feasible way of accomplishing our goals, which is to produce more electricity with a lower emissions profile. Why have we avoided it? I am certain federal officials have seen this approach. The answer is in the mindset of the embedded decision‑makers. In Canada, our energy production system counts on three well‑built and necessary infrastructures. There is the electricity grid, for which various input sources make electricity. There is our natural gas distribution system, which is not just for heating homes, but used for many industrial processes as it is the most efficient source for generating heat, and many industrial processes will always require heat. There is also our mode of fuel distribution network, primarily fossil fuels. Think of each of these distribution systems as representing about a third, give or take, of Canada's power production and consumption. Think of the combination of the three representing an infrastructure asset base that has served as the envy of developing countries. Generations of Canadians have built an infrastructure on which we all depend. Doing away with any of these three power distribution infrastructures would weaken our power profile and increase the risk of an overall system failure. When I mention the embedded decision-makers, I am appealing to the new representatives on the government side of the House to overrule the entrenched ideology that has put our country in the box we are in. The ideological attempt to penalize Canada's hydrocarbon energy systems is misguided. That includes our natural gas distribution system, an essential tool for our continued economic advancement. Perhaps if we approached the most easily accessible solutions, we would get better outcomes. The Liberal government has represented itself to Canadians as having changed from the painful, divisive ideology that defined the former prime minister. Unfortunately, we see that the rot the government brought to our energy systems in Canada runs deeper than just the elected representatives. It is now entrenched in what seems like the actual decision-makers in the government, the embedded ideologues who are still driving the government's aimless policies. Five years ago, the Liberals voted down my last private member's bill to provide an investment tax credit for enhanced oil recovery. This spring, the Liberal government decided to put a form of that credit into the budget. However, the credit it has put forth is uncompetitive with our peers and it has caused confusion as to its stringency requirements. A policy that still leaves Canada as the least competitive among our peers in our approach to this technology is one that will continue to see capital allocated elsewhere. No data is more consistent than that which has shown the great egress of capital from investment opportunities in our country. In that sense, the Prime Minister is accomplishing his objectives. What one cannot get one way, one gets another way, in this case, pretending one has a credit, making a big announcement and ensuring it is functionally unviable. I sense the same approach with the investment tax credits for greener power production. For the ideologues, the perfect is the enemy of the good. The approach I am proposing in the bill would be very good for Canada. Let me appeal to those voices on the Liberal side of the House with whom I have worked to build goodwill in our approach to Canada's energy system. As was our mantra when I embarked on hearings across Canada for the Conservatives' economic growth council, I say to my Liberal friends to take our ideas, please. These are better for the country. In summary, the bill would provide an incentive, an investment tax credit, to motivate industrial power users to invest in equipment that would increase Canada's electricity production with no new emissions. That means more power without more emissions, energy efficiency improvements, productivity enhancements and lower business costs, making Canadian manufacturers more competitive. Let me appeal to all parliamentarians to see the obvious good in all of this.

Madam Speaker, I think, in my speech, I addressed that very clearly, but I will give another data point for the hon. member. All of the government's investment tax credits for clean energy production amount to the expected spending of $103 billion, between when it started a handful of years ago and 2035. In fact, because it is a misguided approach, only $22 million of that money has been spent, That is because it is misallocated. We have to go for the low-hanging fruit here first of all. The low-hanging fruit is the waste heat that is already being produced, which we can cost-effectively get into our electricity system. I hope my colleague looks at this from a cost-effective perspective. I have, and I think it is our best approach going forward.

Madam Speaker, the thing about this tax credit is that it is manufacturing. It is across Canada. I mentioned some of the industries across this country that would benefit enormously from this as it would reduce their costs and give them an electricity source they can actually gain some revenue from. Every tax credit should have a benefit as well, at the end of the day. With this benefit, there would be more power for the country and more revenue for the companies that use this tax credit, it would lower costs all across the country and it would make us more productive as an economy. Of the industries involved, pulp and paper is one that produces a lot of waste heat to power. Using this credit would give the companies more electricity to use on site, and they could potentially put it back into the grid if they use some other equipment.

Madam Speaker, that is a complex question, but I appreciate it, because we have to model this somehow. We talked about the credits that exist. The government expected $103 billion for its investment tax credits. Of that, only $22 million has been allocated so far. This one would bring about 83 megawatts of power into the grid. The production of extra power for this would probably offset the credit that the government would have to take out of its revenue.

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his responses to many of the questions being asked of him today. This is an important question, because Canadians have seen over the last number of years, and increasingly so, the limits of debate in this House in terms of how we address government bills. When Canadians elect a Parliament, they elect a government, with the most seats, and they elect an opposition. The tools of the opposition, of course, are to make sure the government is held accountable for what it is doing, and it brings those things forward through a process that has been well understood for a long time. If the government thinks that our role as the opposition is just to roll over and not perform our role as His Majesty's loyal opposition, then it is mistaken. We need to continue to look at what the government is proposing. I have a number of issues with the bill at hand, including why we have allocated less than half the credit for carbon capture, utilization and storage in enhanced oil recovery than in any other of the environmental approaches. It is the most accessible way we can reduce CO2 emissions in this bill, and yet it is not going to be debated at committee. These are the types of things that have to be brought forth, and we have to respect the fact that Canadians need to see democracy being performed in the House where they elect people to represent them. Can my colleague please tell us where he thinks Canadians will get a view of how we are getting things done here in a democratic forum when his leader is using it less and less?

Mr. Speaker, when the current Parliament started, I had the opportunity to meet in the middle of the floor with the new housing minister to talk about what his new portfolio would entail. At that point in time, I told him very clearly that he should just throw out what he had and start over anew, because all the advice he had been given, and what I have seen over the last six years since I have been in the House, has been a bunch of garbage and a bunch of non-results from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The entire bureaucracy that he is in charge of at this point in time has just layered on more and more spending but has accomplished nothing. That is a preamble to my speech about where we need to go in this country. Since 2019, the federal government has introduced or expanded roughly a dozen major housing programs and initiatives, layer upon layer on top of its existing strategies. Today we have a system with overlapping funds, loan programs and agencies, and now there is a brand new Crown corporation added to the mix. All of this sits within a $100‑billion‑plus national housing strategy that was designed not as a single focused solution but as a collection of complementary programs. The problem is not a lack of federal activity. It is that this growing web of programs is not translating into the number of homes Canadians actually need, but instead of focusing on why that is happening, the proposed bill would take us in the wrong direction. Bill C‑20 is not really about building homes. It is about building another federal bureaucracy. We have to be honest about what is driving housing costs in this country. The number one factor is not a lack of ideas or a lack of programs. It is the cost of building, and that cost is increasingly driven by government: taxes, fees, regulations and constant changes to the rules of the game. We heard this across the country when I was chairing the economic growth council. Every time the government changes a building code, adds a requirement or delays a permit, it adds costs, and those costs do not disappear. They get passed on directly to the homebuyer or the renter. We have seen what happens when governments overreact with broad, top-down policies. In Ontario, there are now entire segments of the housing market dominated by 500‑square‑foot condo units. They were being built not because families were demanding them but because policy decisions pushed the market in that direction. That is what happens when government tries to centrally shape outcomes instead of enabling the market to respond to real demand, and we are seeing a similar lesson play out in my hometown of Calgary. Over the last four years, the municipal government in Calgary took a blanket rezoning approach, promoted as a solution to affordability. What actually happened? A recent assessment showed that the primary beneficiaries were not homebuyers. They were land speculators and developers who captured the increased value. Communities suffered, while affordability did not materially improve, and Calgarians took notice. That is why there was a political reset at the municipal level. Politicians were thrown out for their false start and what they said they were trying to do versus what they were actually accomplishing. People understand that simply changing zoning everywhere without addressing costs and implementation does not automatically result in affordable homes. This brings us to Bill C‑20. Instead of addressing the structural cost drivers in the system, the government would be expanding its footprint. Build Canada Homes would have sweeping powers in financing, land acquisition and development authority, and it would come with a significant price tag: another $13 billion over five years. However, the question Canadians should be asking is simple: What would we be getting for that money? The evidence suggests that it would not be very much. Even government-backed analysis shows that the program would deliver only a fraction of the homes that are promised: 5,200 projected homes per year. At the same time, we would be expanding the size of government, with more administrators, more overhead and more layers. That cost does not build homes. It builds bureaucracies. We must also consider the cost per unit. When the government steps in as a developer, costs tend to rise, not fall. Projects take longer, risk increases, accountability becomes less clear, and ultimately, taxpayers are left carrying that burden. We would, effectively, be asking Canadians, who are already dealing with high housing costs, to also fund an expanded federal structure that has no clear targets for delivery. Experts have already warned about this. They told the committee that Build Canada Homes lacks clear goals, lacks targets and lacks accountability. We would not only be expanding government; we would be doing so without a clear measure of success. It is clear that the cost of housing is too high in Canada, but it is also important to be clear about the causes. Those are the taxes, fees and regulations that drive up construction costs. Every new regulation, every delay, every change to the National Building Code creates additional costs, and those costs are paid for by Canadians. Bill C‑20 does not resolve those issues. On the contrary, it expands the size of government and creates more bureaucracy. As the experts said in committee, there is neither a clear target nor an accountability mechanism. What we need is not more bureaucracy. We need an environment where builders can build faster and at a lower cost. How do we stop the cost escalation? We bring discipline and stability to building codes, reduce delays and uncertainty in approvals, limit the growth of government structures that add costs without adding supply, and ensure that public money actually delivers measurable results. Canadians are already under significant financial pressure. There are rising debt levels, and more households are stretched to their limit. Canadians cannot afford policies that increase costs, whether directly through housing prices or indirectly through higher government spending. At the end of the day, this is all about outcomes. Would we be building more homes? Would we be lowering costs? Would we be improving affordability? On all three counts, the bill would fall short. Bill C-20 would expand government, increase spending and avoid the real work of addressing the cost drivers that are holding back supply. I will continue to support solutions that focus on what actually matters: lowering the cost of building homes Canadians need and making home ownership achievable again for Canadians, including the people of Calgary and across Alberta. There are many ways we can get involved in this from the federal perspective, but as I told the minister when he first took the housing portfolio, the main thing he can do is second-guess the people who have been giving the government advice for the last 11 years, because all they have done is added cost to the system, cost to the building of homes and cost for Canadians, including more debt. A ridiculous amount of money is continuing to be spent in the sector for housing. People need housing. It is the number one expense for all Canadians now across the board. We cannot continue to add more cost to the basic needs of shelter in our society, not to mention what is happening with food inflation in this country. Housing inflation is definitely something we have to get under control. The bill would do nothing of the sort. It would add costs, and those costs would be borne by Canadians. Let us think about the cost of debt per household in society. The cost of paying for debt is about $3,400 per household. The average rent in Calgary for a two-bedroom house is $1,700 per month, so every Canadian family in Calgary is actually paying two months' worth of rent to cover the interest being paid on the federal debt right now. This is an atrocious amount of money that adds to the cost of everything we have to pay in society at this point in time. It continues. This is just the federal level. Of course, there is provincial debt, municipal debt and corporate debt. There is also personal debt. The bill would do nothing to reduce the debt level that Canadians are facing. It would make things less affordable. It would make things worse for Canadians. We oppose it strongly.

Mr. Speaker, I do not appreciate the narrative that we are denying Canadians a solution. The Liberal government, for 11 years now, has made several attempts to resolve this issue by addressing the problem that they see with homelessness and with housing in Canada, and they have only made matters worse over the last 11 years. The Liberals have to accept failure at some point in time and realize that the best thing to do is probably to get rid of the infrastructure we have for housing here in Ottawa and transfer the funds to the province, which would be more adept at solving the problem than the government has proven to be.

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question from my colleague. That is exactly the issue. If an application comes from a Province of Alberta or City of Calgary organization, it has to have support from the provincial government. After that, there is another form at the federal level. It requires the organization to put in a lot of time, effort and money. It is a waste of time, human resources and money. It would be better if there were a single process for applying for housing grants in Canada.

Mr. Speaker, I am getting a great deal of great questions on the subject today. Answering the question goes a little deep into the weeds, so I apologize ahead of time to my colleagues on both sides of the House. The reason the government is setting up all these Crown corporations right now is that Crown corporations have their own balance sheets at the end of the day, and those balance sheets are not included in the government's balance sheet, believe it or not. The government is $1.4 trillion in debt right now. However, it has borrowed almost $2 trillion. Where is the other $600 billion? It is on the balance sheets of and borrowed by all the Crown corporations, which have a lack of accountability practices. We have proven in the House many times that there are a whole bunch of expenditures that should have been written off by those organizations that continue to rest in their balance sheets. The cost to Canadians, at the end of the day, is going to be huge. The actual debt we are paying interest on is $2 trillion. This is going to make that even higher still.

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the member on the other side. He gave a speech about what the opposition is doing right now. I am a little dismayed, because I think he needs to speak to what the motion is, which is about the recession that Canada is very clearly heading into now. There are a number of data points we have to give here, but the member has to identify, and probably has to own, quite frankly, some of the policies the government has pushed the country to that have led us to the economic point we are at right now. Would the member please address that as opposed to blaming others, either south of the border or on this side of the House, saying that we are the ones misspeaking on this? The data speaks for itself. The country is in economic decline. Can he tell us what he thinks he should change on the other side of the House in order to arrest that trend?

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak about an economic matter in the House of Commons today again. Before I actually get into my speech, I want to talk about the broader terms we are talking about here. We are talking about what a recession is. Of course, there is a technical definition of a recession, but the real indication is usually in the rearview mirror. It is an indication that there has been a significant decline in economic activity that has spread across the economy and has lasted more than a few months. A wide range of data go into that, including GDP decline, which we have had and jobs decline, which we have. We are now at a 6.9% rate of unemployment. Other indications include incomes going down, which is clearly the case in Canada; production going down, so manufacturing and all these other industries that are actually declining in Canada at this point in time; and an inverted yield curve, which we had in 2023 and is usually an indicator that down the road we will enter a recession. All of these indicators are here right now, so we are looking at where we are going to be. There is falling consumer confidence. Once people are losing their jobs and are out of work, we are going to see them participating less in the economy. That makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy because they pull in their spending. They decide to forgo the expenses that would lead us to where we need to go as an economy. Rising bankruptcies are an indicator. Let us look at the debts that Canadians have right now. There is a significant amount of debt. We are the most indebted country in the G7. There are a whole bunch of statistics here. I know they are just statistics when we talk about numbers. They are not just statistics to real people who are losing their houses and are having to refinance their mortgage at higher rates. These are pain points that people are feeling across Canada and that we have to make sure that we are looking at rather effectively. Let us think about our unemployment rate now. It was 6.9% this last month. When we had what is called a technical recession in the rearview mirror in 2015, the unemployment rate was 7%. That is 7% versus 6.9%. We are not far off from an unemployment indicator that would be severe for this country. To get down to the real pain points here, we have half a million former students in Canada who are still unemployed and who do not have the jobs that they trained for in their educational institutions. These are real lives. They are real contributions that people are trying to make to our economy that are not being fulfilled right now. We need to move in that direction. Payrolls are down, but let us think about where they have gone. Since 2023, we have 300,000 more public sector employees and what we call MUSH employees, municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals, and there is less private sector employment. That is a problem in an economy running a huge deficit, and we note that the current government is not shy about running higher deficits. That is what is contributing to inflation and what is going to contribute to the fact that we are going to have economic pain here going forward and we need to get ahead of that as quickly as possible. GDP is going down. Labour productivity is not improving. I want to talk about this motion today in support of Canadians who are increasingly asking a very simple question: Why is it getting harder to get ahead in this country? The debate is not just about G7 rankings. It is great to make sure we compare ourselves to other economies, but it is about whether Canadians feel progress in their daily lives. In my riding of Calgary Centre and across the country, people are working hard, doing everything right and still finding themselves falling behind. That should concern every member of this House. The motion before us reflects a troubling pattern. Canada is underperforming relative to its peers. Growth is weak. Household debt is high. The unemployment rate is rising faster than in comparable economies. This did not happen overnight and it did not happen by accident. Choices have been made all the way along that have caused us to be exactly where we are right now. For years, there were warning signs. Economists raised concerns about persistent deficits during periods of economic growth. My Conservative colleagues and I on this side of the House spoke about it repeatedly here. The Liberal government was told that continued spending without corresponding productivity gains would eventually create inflationary pressure. Those warnings were dismissed. We saw early signs of declining business investments, particularly in key sectors like energy. We saw capital beginning to leave the country. Those signals were ignored by the Liberal government. We told the Liberal government that global demand for Canadian energy would remain strong, and it has, but instead of positioning Canada to meet that demand, the Liberals layered on uncertainty and delay through job-killing policies, like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48, that told investors loud and clear to take their capital somewhere else, and that is exactly what they did, leaving Canadian workers and communities behind. Again, the warning signs were there, even on productivity. Long before today, experts pointed out that Canada was falling behind our peers: less investment per worker, slower output growth and weak gains in competitiveness. None of this is new. The real concern is that these warning signs were not only ignored then; in many cases, they continue to be ignored now, because instead of correcting course by repealing Bill C-48 and urgently amending the Impact Assessment Act to provide certainty, the government has doubled down on the very approach that caused the problem: more regulation, more delay and more confusion for those looking to invest in Canada. The signs have been clear for years. Economists warned us that persistent deficits would lead to inflation. Investors pointed out that regulatory uncertainty was driving them to look elsewhere. Workers saw opportunities dwindling in key sectors. However, the Liberal government did not take these warnings seriously. Today, Canadians are paying the price. It is time to acknowledge these mistakes and change course to restore the conditions necessary for Canadians to succeed. The consequences of these choices are now showing up in the daily lives of Canadians. Household debt has reached historic highs, not because Canadians are reckless, but because many have had to rely on credit to maintain their standard of living. At the same time, inflation drove up interest rates, and now families are facing the combined pressure of higher borrowing costs and higher everyday expenses. I hear it constantly. People who felt financially stable just a few years ago are now reassessing everything, from major investments to everyday spending. This is not abstract. This is real, and it is widespread. Nowhere is the gap between potential and performance more obvious than in Canada's energy sector. We are one of the most resource-rich countries in the world. We have the expertise, the workforce and the environmental standards to be a global leader, and yet, at a time when the world was actively seeking secure, democratic sources of energy, Canada failed to step forward. That was a moment of opportunity, and we missed it. In Calgary, the consequences are clear. Investment decisions are delayed, projects face prolonged uncertainty and the new memorandum of understanding does very little to solve that problem. Capital looks for more predictable environments. This is not because the resources are not in Canada. It is not because the talent is not in Canada. It is because the policy framework has not kept pace with reality. The world continues to need energy, and Canada should be part of that solution, responsibly, sustainably and competitively. This leads to a broader issue: productivity and investment. Canada is falling behind. We are attracting less capital per worker than our closest peers. We are seeing weaker productivity growth, and over time, that erodes living standards. When investment slows, everything slows: job creation, wage growth and economic mobility. Investors are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for clarity, clear rules, predictable timelines and confidence that Canada is a place where long-term investment is welcome. Today's motion calls for a plan, and rightly so. A credible plan must start with recognizing how we got here. Then it must focus on restoring the fiscal discipline to reduce inflationary pressures and rebuild economic confidence; re-establishing Canada as a destination for investment through clear, stable and competitive policies; and embracing a realistic approach to energy, one that supports both economic growth and environmental progress without undermining either, because growth is not accidental. It is the real result of consistent, coherent choices over time. Canada has everything it needs to succeed, the resources, the talent, the entrepreneurial spirit, but potential is not enough. Without the right policies, opportunity is lost.

Mr. Speaker, there is a memorandum of understanding that some provincial governments say is a change in direction in the Liberal government but a change in direction on paper only. When we actually analyze that paper, as many of us have, we see that those changes in direction are not clear enough to actually indicate that people want to invest here. Ask the private sector entities that are impacted by those announcements and those words on paper that the government has put forward. It is still not committing capital. The reason it is not is that there is no clarity about the outcome for the process they have to go through. Getting infrastructure built in Canada requires an onerous process in which the companies involved, large companies, have to spend more time, resources and money going through the process than they actually have to spend putting the infrastructure in place. That has to change. The process cannot be the only thing that matters. We have to get things built in this country again.

Mr. Speaker, that actually was an excellent question, because people ask me all the time, “What would you do differently?” I think we need to be very clear. We would make sure that those rules are very clear, unlike the muddled rules we keep coming up with where we are talking out of one side of our mouth to this group of people and the other side of our mouth to another group of people. There will be clarity about how we get through process quickly and sustainably in Canada. That is something every investor is looking for. What is the process? How long will it take? When can they start building and get a return on their investment? That has to be clear to all investors, all proponents, in getting things done in Canada once again.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from my colleague. I know that Alberta, frankly, has a very robust social welfare system, the envy of many provinces across the country. Whether those funds come from the federal government or the provincial government, they are stacked and actually represent a level of sustenance across the economy that people in need actually require. That includes money for housing, for health and for all the things we look at in a social system, where people need to have a basic life and make sure they are taken care of. That is part of governing in this country: making sure we look after the people who do not have the ability to quite look after themselves and that we are there for them in that respect. Layering on a federal program on top of provincial programs is no way to approach federalism in Canada. That is something we want to make sure of: that we give the province the ability to solve this at its level when it has that jurisdiction to take care of.

Mr. Speaker, today the CEO of the spaceport described questions about this $200-million giveaway as a “clueless meme”. He is in good company. The Minister of Defence has similarly responded to questions about the egregious lease terms as being “stupid”. Let us review. The minister signed a lease gifting $20 million of taxpayers' money in arrears to a near-bankrupt company. Insiders immediately cashed out millions of dollars. Canadians are rightly asking questions. Can the minister explain how this makes taxpayers clueless or stupid?

Mr. Speaker, before the member goes too far defending this boondoggle, let me refer him to the publicly disclosed documents. A year ago, the spaceport's auditor indicated it was near bankruptcy. Nothing indicated the potential windfall of a $20-million lease with the government. Overpaying is one thing. Gifting $20 million to one's friends is an egregious abuse of taxpayer trust: Liberal insiders selling their shares for millions of dollars after the minister's giveaway. The securities commission will have to investigate. Will the minister tell us who he thinks is going to be left standing when the music stops?

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned the whole issue of a new electricity system across Canada to double our electricity. The thing I like best about this approach is that for years, the government, including this member, who has been here for years, as I have faced her for over six years now, has hobbled our electricity system across this country. Now it is flying in at the last minute saying, “Oh my gosh, we don't have enough electricity in Canada,” because we are actually importing electricity in Canada right now for the first time in decades, as a result of failed policies. It is now coming in as if it is the saviour and saying, “I get to fix this.” Well, if someone is an arsonist, they get to put out the fire. Can I ask the member how she thinks she is going to solve something that she actually helped the government create, as opposed to turning it over to people who actually know how to solve something?

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from New Tecumseth—Gwillimbury. This has been quite the spring economic statement or spring economic update, whatever the government wants to call it. A lot goes into every financial statement the government puts forward. It seems that there is no shortage of money to keep pouring out, but there is a real lack of fiscal discipline. One thing I did notice about this government over the last six and a half years that I have been here is its ability to announce and announce, as if it is going to continue to do great things. Announcing things, spending money and accomplishing very little seems to be the flavour of the day and that happens all the time here. I want to go through a bunch of things in my speech here. I do not mean to just be critical, so I will also be giving some good feedback on some of the things that work in this budget. First of all, let us talk about what my colleague across the way talked about, all the announcements of the 20 economic and defence partnerships signed in the last year. Partnerships are signatures. I would like to see what really comes out of those at the end of the day. We need to measure these outcomes. These are not just papers we sign. We are not a republic. Our Prime Minister is not a president who gets to write executive orders and say, “This is the way things are.” We are diminishing the role of the House of Commons here. We need to get back to actually doing things in the House of Commons that are good for all Canadians and include the input of people from across this country. I went through the budget. The budget talked about a few things, and I know that the government likes the high-level stuff to start the budget. It talks about the rule of law in Canada. If we had the rule of law in Canada, we would have a very stable investment dynamic right now, which we are clearly missing. This stable, reliable financial system is one that is layered more and more on top of an oligopoly that really benefits from the weight that it maintains and that, of course, the government would like that to be. We need to make sure we have a more diverse economy, a more open economy, an economy where people can see what the rules are and invest accordingly, not just invest when the government says, “Hey, we have some friends here, let us give them some money so they will put some more money into the economy.” That is not the way a modern, democratic country is supposed to run. It also talked about investment attractiveness. Let me tell the House what investment attractiveness would actually mean. It would mean that the pension funds that collect money from Canadians in Canada would actually reinvest that money into Canada. Most of those pension funds invest most of their money offshore and for good reason, because this government has created an economic and investment climate in this country that does not work if we want a return on capital. That return on capital, of course, is competitive with jurisdictions around the world, even to the south of us, where we have a trade partner that is not behaving as if we actually had a trade agreement with them. We have to make sure that we actually stand up against that. The next thing the budget talked about was tax competitiveness, but it was talked about under new business investment. All the current business investment is not taxed efficiently here in Canada. However, the government will give all kinds of tax credits if some new capital is brought into Canada. There is no clear path to what that represents as far as the rule of law going forward is concerned. Then it talked about Canadian resources, which we are proud to stand for on this side of the House. I am sure the members know the numerous entreaties we have made to the Liberal government to make sure we actually have a better resource industry in this country, with more transparency and more ability to get some things done, because the budget did talk about transparency. However, there is no transparency. There is a complete black hole. What are the rules today? What are the rules tomorrow? Continually changing the rules on our resource industry is what holds back investment in our most important part of our economy. I say most important not because I am trying to diminish any of the other parts of the Canadian economy, but because I want to make sure people understand how much those resource industries contribute to Canada, in employment, in taxation and in the balance of payments with our trade partners around the world. It is lopsided how much we actually benefit from the resources we export. We have to make sure that we have a level playing field that says, “Invest here, in this country, in these resources and you will get a return and there will be a line of sight on how that actually turns out for your shareholders and your company.” Now I am going to differ with a few things the government said in this economic statement. It talked about having the second-fastest growing economy in the G7. That is great, but most of those are in Europe. Japan's in a bit of a mix right now. Compared to our neighbour to the south, we are forecast to be growing at 1.5%, and they are at 2.3%. The growth rate in the United States is one and a half times higher than our growth rate. We are not doing that well considering who our nearest neighbour is. We have to take a step back to understand what is happening here. Part of what is happening, of course, is the lack of transparency with respect to what happens to the investments people make in Canada. The government talked about fiscal discipline. Let me contradict it very clearly here: There is no fiscal discipline on that side of the House whatsoever. The Liberals talk about changing from a $78-billion deficit in the fall budget to a $67-billion deficit looking forward in the spring economic statement because of $7.8 billion more in collections from the resource industry. This is how we are making our money. This is how we are getting better. However, no sooner do they see a whole bunch of new revenue coming in from taxation than they decide to spend that in a bunch of other maladjusted ways as far as investing and throwing more money out the door. They can call it an investment, but it is a really bad use of our money. This is not a bottomless pit. Canadians need to make sure that we get back to balance at some point in time. That balance means at least a zero deficit, and hopefully a surplus at some point in time, because we have gotten massively into debt in this country. The government got cute in the spring economic statement and changed its actual fiscal anchor from a net debt to GDP and a declining deficit to a net deficit to GDP. That is because the GDP is not increasing enough. Members would know that when we talk about GDP, we are talking about consumption plus investment, plus government expenditures, plus exports, minus imports, one of which is government expenditures. Government expenditures keep increasing and therefore keep increasing the GDP. The rest of the equation is not holding weight because it is not that investable an economy. We need to do much better in that respect. A $67‑billion deficit is one thing, but $1.4 trillion in debt is the government's book number. Let me explain what that means. The government has borrowed almost $2 trillion. It is paying interest on almost $2 trillion through its various agencies. The difference between $2 trillion and $1.4 trillion is $600 billion, which is in the various accounts at Crown corporations and other borrowing entities, many of which have opaque accounting mechanisms where they are not writing off their debts. Therefore, when the new government comes in, we are going to have to see a massive writeoff of all the debts that the current government has accumulated and has not put on its books at this point in time. That includes things like, of course, the Canada Infrastructure Bank. We pointed out at committee that it had $600 million‑plus in loans to Lion Electric in the first place. We have all kinds of boondoggles like that sitting in several Crown corporations that are part of the government's debt profile. They have to be more transparent. This is something that has to change going forward. On March 27, the Liberals increased the borrowing authority to $2.54 trillion. That tells Canadians where they are going with this. We are going to have an extra half trillion dollars in debt going forward. Congratulations. There is no stopping this train. I need to give the government credit for what it has done with respect to training and for allocating a whole bunch of money to the trades. I am very thankful for that. I would like to thank the government because that is another page from the Conservative book that it took out of our policy manual, having more money put into the trades in this country so that we have better outcomes. For that whole layer of jobs that is unfulfilled at this point in time, we need to make sure we get those technical people trained. I thank the government for putting that in there. Something else I think the Liberals could put on there, if they are thinking about taking something else from our books, is defence. I know they have increased the money for defence. They have increased the salaries. Good for them. Now they are going for another defence procurement agency, a defence bank, and all these things where they are spending money on bureaucrats. Here is what the Liberals need to do. They need to spend money on defence and spend money on actually getting things. The United States has rightly been complaining about how much we have not spent on defence in Canada. They should take another page from our book. In the last election, we talked about getting Iqaluit built as a base. That should be a 90‑day process: Here is the money we need to spend on this and here is where we have to get going. They should act as if there is some urgency here and get some things going. We do not mind sharing these ideas with the government. We need to make some things happen in this country as quickly as possible. I beseech the government to take the good ideas we have presented to it and make them work going forward. There are a whole bunch of other issues here. I would love to keep talking, because there are other things I have to talk about, but I know my time has come to an end.

Mr. Speaker, if I have said something that upset my colleague, I apologize, because I know they are working hard, but as I said in my speech, I think it is very clear that we need to measure these outcomes. At this point in time, we have signatures on letters of intent and everything. I am saying that the Liberals should bring these paths forward to the House of Commons. Let us pass all these documents they are signing that they think are going to do better for Canada. Let us measure the results. We do have a problem south of the border that we need to deal with at this point in time. Diversifying our trade, of course, is one of the most important things we do. We will look at the results when they arrive.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his long question. I think I got the gist of it. It is important to have support for stakeholders in the Canadian economy right now. I wonder how the federal government will measure success when we are losing so many jobs to the United States. It is important to keep jobs here in Canada. What measures will the government put in place to mitigate the effects of this situation?

Mr. Speaker, it is very important. The government talks about training people, but it does not talk about how that is actually going to fit into the economy. I know the Prime Minister made an announcement while we were not sitting in the House of Commons last week about building our electricity system across Canada. Talking about the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, we know they are going to need those jobs. I think we have to take a good look. As I said earlier, the government has caused the problem with the electricity system in Canada because it inherited a bunch of policy advisers from the Government of Ontario who more or less botched the electricity system in Ontario for a decade. Then they moved to Ottawa and decided to botch it even further. All they seem to be able to do is add a whole bunch of money into the equation whenever those messes seem evident to everybody. We have to make sure we have a real solution here that gets people working and actually gets an electricity system that works for the whole country.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Defence signed a $200‑million contract for access to a spaceport that the company itself leases for just $14,000 a year. That is $20 million a year for a decade. Worse, the contract is backdated by a full year when no lease was being negotiated and while the company's own auditor warned it may be bankrupt. After the deal was signed, the company's stock surged and a well-connected Liberal insider cashed out for millions. Will the minister explain how this is not another multi-million-dollar boondoggle rewarding friends while taxpayers carry all the risk?

Mr. Speaker, let me explain "stupid" to the minister. He gifted $20 million, backdated to a company on the brink of bankruptcy. The company's chairman, someone with a history of securities infractions, made millions on a quick pump-and-dump sale of shares. The lease that taxpayers are paying for is nowhere in the company's previous regulatory filings. The company's Liberal insiders met with officials 158 times. Someone is going to face the music here. Will it be the Liberal insiders who were stuffing money into their jeans or the minister who signed this God-awful document?

Mr. Speaker, I just want to ask my colleague a question, because the questions coming at her all the time from the Liberal side are about how we should not be talking about this in the House of Commons because Canadians are uninformed. I want to ask my colleague if it is incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to raise issues, discuss the issues and get the facts on the table about how we deal with the issues, rather than bury our head in the sand like ostriches.

Mr. Speaker, one thing the member missed in his speech that I think needs to be brought here very clearly, and I know the member will be able to address this, is the extra $3 billion put forward by this government, in a horrendously overstretched deficit, for international climate initiatives around the world. Does the member really think that Canadians can afford an extra $3 billion, and what does this signal as far as the government's commitment to actually get things done properly with Canadian taxpayers' money?

Mr. Speaker, in recent town hall meetings, I heard clearly that people do not feel safe downtown. Residents told me they avoid going out at night. Some leave their homes only to step directly into an Uber. Drug paraphernalia litters our streets, and open drug use is now a common sight on the CTrain. A Fraser Institute study shows that Calgary ranks 27th out of 334 municipalities for property crime. A smashed window can be the final blow for a small business. Boarded-up shops and graffiti drive away shoppers, not criminals. Property damage means higher insurance costs and higher condo fees. Frontline services are stretched and lack the legal tools to keep repeat offenders off our streets. We do not have to accept this as the new normal. Bill C-14 was the first step in getting our streets back. More must be done. We need laws to protect first responders, preferential sentencing and to put victims first. Calgarians are demanding action so they can have safe, normal neighbourhoods again.

Mr. Speaker, I am splitting my time today with my hon. colleague from Regina—Lewvan. I first heard the announcement on Monday morning that the government was starting a sovereign wealth fund. The first thing I thought, I have to admit, was that the government was putting up a big smokescreen because it was going to have a miserable day the next day with the budget announcements. Yes, the budget is still at a $67 billion deficit for this year. It is still the highest budget, and double what Justin Trudeau, the previous prime minister, indicated we would have at this point in time. The government sees no reason not to continue the fiscal expansion and to continue debt upon debt for Canadians, and this, as I have come to realize over the last few days, is something the Liberals are actually somewhat serious about, but the seriousness of it has to be questioned, as far as Parliament is concerned. That is why we are here today: to ask what they are talking about and how they actually mean to structure this and to give them some background on this. As I am sure members know, I used to manage funds. Hopefully, we can understand the basics of funds here. I do not mean this to be a tutorial for my colleagues across the way, but there are a whole bunch of gaps in what they are talking about here. There is this whole notion of “announce-ology” that the Liberal government seems to continue to go through, where they are going to do big things. Well, what do the details of those things look like? There are a lot of great sovereign wealth funds around the world, across a whole bunch of jurisdictions, including Norway, which we have talked about here a lot, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and other gulf states that are amassing money from surpluses. Those surpluses are often resource-based surpluses. Why do we not have that in Canada? It is because we have been held back on our resource development by a narrow-minded, prejudiced government. It does not like hydrocarbons. It has made that very clear several times in the House of Commons. Now, that is a problem. We take a look at what is happening in the gulf region, and the gulf is full of money. It is buying the patrimony of Europe, buying all kinds of assets in Asia and buying all kinds of assets in Canada. Where is the Canadian wealth? It is going offshore because it does not see the opportunities in Canada. Let us get back to the basics here of what we are talking about. What are the definitions of actually getting a sovereign wealth fund in Canada? It is nice to have, if we actually had some money to buy it, but this government thinks, “Don't worry. We'll just borrow the money.” Did anybody notice any borrowing for this in the budget? Well, it actually was there. It is actually in the cash flow statement at the end. People think Canada has $1.4 trillion in debt, which is an embarrassing number considering where we were a decade ago. We have more than doubled the number over the last decade. It is a shame that, on that side of the House, the government would risk Canadians' money so much that it doubled the debt, and it is continuing on that path. Recently, in March of this year, the Liberals came back and added more space for borrowing for the government, from $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion, and so $2.5 trillion is the space it has. Canadians think the government is $1.4 trillion in debt, but its borrowings are actually almost $2 trillion right now. What is the difference between $1.4 trillion and $2 trillion? It is all the money the Liberals are plowing into the Crown corporations, such as the Bank of Canada. Nobody sees the deficit and the debt incurred by the Bank of Canada because it continues to float. It has assets and liabilities, and who knows what it is worth until one actually writes it off? Well, it is actually almost $900 million in debt, or almost $1 billion. Members can think about that. It is nowhere on the government's balance sheet, except in the cash flow statement, the amount of money it is borrowing from foreign institutions, which we have to pay Canadian taxpayers' money to in order to get that money to float the way government operates. It is embarrassing. We have to make sure we understand exactly how broke this government is making Canada and how dependent we are on foreign wealth already. Doubling down, as the Liberals continue to do, there is this $25 billion extra they are talking about, which is going to add to that balance sheet, but members will notice, again, that it did not show up in the budget, except for the $6 million they were going to spend to stand up the office, to hire a bunch of people to go through the effort of what this looks like along the way. It is an embarrassing amount of money to have to spend to establish a fund. We can ask any fund manager why, if they got a captive $25 billion, it would take them $6 million to stand up that fund. It effectively means structure. Most of those structures are pretty well known. It should cost almost nothing. If it costs $1 million, they have drastically overspent; $6 million is an embarrassment. I know where that money is going to go because the government over there has a lot of pockets it needs to fill, and that is part of the problem of why we are in such a debt predicament in this country. Let us go into definitions, because of the definition of a sovereign wealth fund, which we have already heard from many people along the way here. We invest surplus funds in other places. We do not want to invest in our own economy, because we would create what is called Dutch disease. I know my colleagues across the way would not know about this, but Holland, in the Netherlands, actually had a problem where it had too much revenue coming in and being cycled through one sector of its economy, and that starved the rest of its economy. It is called Dutch disease for a reason. Every country uses that example now and makes sure they do not double down on one sector in any economy and make it too prevalent in their total economy. However, step one in setting up a sovereign wealth fund is to get a surplus, not a $67-billion deficit like this year's. We actually have to get back to balance and start creating a surplus and then probably pay off our Canadian government debt before we start sinking a surplus into new spending vehicles. The best wealth is when we do not lose money. The number one rule for making money is to not lose money. If someone is a fund manager, they should not lose money, but be cautious and prudent with other people's money. It is one of the first things we learn in finance. Funds start with one thing, and that is fiscal discipline. The government does not have any fiscal discipline. We have seen that in so many ways, and we will have more egregious examples to show in the next few weeks in Parliament of how the government will be spending willy-nilly. It has been spending willy-nilly and unaccountably, and making sure it gets all its fish fed. I know that is a funny way to put it, but that is the way Liberals actually say it. It is time to feed the fishes. All the little people who support the Liberals with all their narratives along the way give them money, and those little people get the narrative back. It is a circular economy, as they call it. We already have a lot of funds in Canada. I brought a list of them here. I know I am not going to get midway through my speech, because I have a lot to say here, but let us look at all the funds the government already has. There are a bunch of them. I think when the government put this one forward, all it did was cut and paste from a bunch of the other funds it had put together, where it is wasting Canadians' money. There is the Canada Development Investment Corporation, CDEV. Who do they think put the money into the Trans Mountain pipeline? It came through CDEV. The Trans Mountain pipeline cost $35 billion. There are a whole bunch of other investments in CDEV. I think about how big that fund is and why we need another fund now for the benefit of Canadians. It is a wealth fund. It is not a wealth fund; it is a way to tap into a whole bunch more debt and make money less relevant for Canadians. Next is the Canada Growth Fund. What a joke. It is a way of financial manipulation, but again, it is billions upon billions of dollars. The government allocates another silo of Canadians' money that it is trying to take and actually borrow against. We talked about that balance sheet to borrow and pay money on, because the government wants to pick certain things in the economy that are going to move its people forward. The Canada Infrastructure Bank is an example. The Canada Infrastructure Bank was set up. It is a joke, frankly. It was set up and there were a whole bunch of infrastructure funds in Canada that wanted to invest in Canada. I think about our investment deficit at this point in time. A whole bunch of funds were set up to invest in infrastructure in Canada and then suddenly the government put together a fund and all those funds had to pay their investors back or invest outside Canada, because the government does not know what it is doing on infrastructure. The government does not know what it is doing on debt. It was terrible. I am only going to get partway through this list, because it is a long list. We have the Export Development Canada. We have Canada account by EDC, which is another account. There are two accounts in one organization. We have FinDev Canada, which has billions of dollars to invest. We have the Business Development Bank of Canada, with over $55 billion. We have the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which has billions of dollars that it invests on behalf of Canadians. There is Farm Credit Canada. The Canada Strong fund is a new one. They cut and paste, as I say. It is a wonderful way to do something without any principles whatsoever. There are a bunch of other ones like the strategic investment fund, another replication the Liberals are going to have to go through here. There was the sustainable development technology fund. I remember the $400-million boondoggle where the government was caught shovelling a whole bunch of money into the pockets of its friends. This is another boondoggle. I know I am going to run out of time here very quickly, and I want to get to the conclusion of my speech, because I am not going to get to too much else. I had a lot to say, so if anyone wants to hear from me again, they can just let me know. The fact is that setting up this fund is one of the worst things the government can do. The government is borrowing tens of billions of dollars to create another state-directed investment vehicle. Parliament must first answer the very question that frames today's debate: Is this truly the most responsible path forward for Canadians?

Mr. Speaker, the Canada Infrastructure Bank is a government stood-up instrument that had to change its mandate because it did not have anything to do. It changed its mandate to step on other funds that were already in the market. It was a government institution looking for a market that was not there, so it morphed into one that was. These projects would have been funded more efficiently with less overhead if they had not been government-invested. I would encourage my colleague across the way to look at my cross-examination of the leadership of the Canada Infrastructure Bank on its investments in Lion Electric, because it was a complete boondoggle.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague very much for that, because there is a part of my speech I did not get to: the cost of debt. The more that is borrowed, the higher the cost of debt goes up. It is not just linear but actually exponential. He will know that because he is a good financier as well. The issue, of course, is that the more the government piles on, the more it is borrowing money. It wants to borrow more money. The beneficiaries are the people who are lending the money. There is no risk in lending Canada money. Those rates are going to go up. The people at risk are the people who are actually bearing the equity investment, and that is going to be shovelled onto the backs of Canadians in this exercise. That risk is going to be borne exponentially, as the cost of capital goes up and as the risk that the government puts on these projects goes up. The government wants to finance a whole bunch of things that the market does not want to finance. That is the problem. Here is the solution: Change the regulations, and we will get things done in this country.