Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, there is no culture without freedom of expression, just to point out the disinformation from that member. He says that all artists support this, even Margaret Atwood. No Conservative has said that this bill represents creeping totalitarianism. It gives the power to a woke agency, the CRTC, named by Liberals, to manipulate social media algorithms in order to shut down voices it does not want people to hear. When will the government realize that Orwell's 1984 was not an instruction manual?

Mr. Speaker, we do for now. I want to assure the member that as long as we have free speech, I will keep beating that party in debate after debate. Let us turn to another falsehood the government spread. It claims that its carbon tax would make everybody better off, but now the government's own Parliamentary Budget Officer has revealed that Nova Scotians and Newfoundlanders, just like people right across the country, pay about $1,500 more in carbon taxes than they get back in rebates. This directly contradicts the government. Why has the government misled the people of Atlantic Canada with this sneaky tax?

Mr. Speaker, therein lies the problem. The government will get to decide what is the right side of the debate and shut down everyone it considers to be on the wrong side. Let us be clear that this bill does not hurt big tech. It will still monopolize all of social media. Its platforms will still dominate. It is just that government bureaucrats will be able to manipulate the algorithms to shut down the voices of individual Canadians. Top experts on freedom of expression online say that and so does Margaret Atwood, who calls this “creeping totalitarianism”. If the Prime Minister is not afraid of debate, why is he so determined to shut it down?

Mr. Speaker, we are in favour of freedom of speech; it is very simple. Big tech has no problem with this bill. It will keep making money hand over fist because of its oligopoly. The government does not want to break up that oligopoly. It has been sucking up to big tech for the last eight years. What it wants to do is to shut down debate. Canadians want the freedom to express themselves without government control—

Mr. Speaker, the government says to the people, “Believe not your eyes”. When we look at page 3 of the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report today on their carbon tax, it says that the net cost for a Nova Scotia family when this carbon tax is implemented is $1,513 more in carbon tax costs than in rebates. For Newfoundlanders, the number is $1,300 in net costs. If the government is so proud of driving up the cost of gas, heat and groceries for Atlantic Canadians and consumers everywhere, why has it worked so hard to mislead everyone about the real cost?

Mr. Speaker, notice he is not even contesting the facts now. After falsely stating for half a decade that Canadians will be better off with the carbon tax, the government is now admitting what its Parliamentary Budget Officer reported. This is that, on average, Newfoundlanders and Nova Scotians will pay approximately $1,500 in net additional costs above and beyond any phony rebate they get back. Worst of all, it has not even worked. It has missed every single emissions target. Why will the Liberals not ditch this tax plan and come up with a real climate plan?

Mr. Speaker, for the Emergencies Act commission, the government named a Liberal staffer as the independent commissioner. For the foreign interference rapporteur, it named a member of the Trudeau Foundation and the Prime Minister's ski buddy. Now it needed someone to be an ethics commissioner, so it named a Liberal minister's sister-in-law to that position of independent Ethics Commissioner. This is the same minister who has already been found guilty of violating the law. When is the Liberal government going to run out of family and friends to name as independent officers?

Mr. Speaker, one can almost imagine the conversation between the Liberal intergovernmental affairs minister, who was found guilty of breaking the ethics law, and the Prime Minister, who has twice been found guilty of breaking the ethics law. One can imagine them saying, “How are we going to quit getting found guilty? I know, we'll appoint my sister-in-law as the Ethics Commissioner.” What a plan. It is foolproof. The problem is that pretty soon they are going to run out of family and friends. After they do, how are they going to avoid their next conviction for breaking the law?

Madam Speaker, all of the worst atrocities in human history were committed by governments, yet we are constantly warned by the woke parties in the House that the scary thing is too much freedom, that the people have to be feared. No. Excessive power by government has been the source of every single major atrocity committed in this country or anywhere around the world. The solution to that is freedom. What will I do to reverse this power grab? I will repeal Bill C-11 to restore freedom of speech online. I will make it my mission to transform Canada back again to the freest nation on Earth.

Madam Speaker, “War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance Is Strength”. Those are the words that repeat again and again throughout Orwell's legendary Nineteen Eighty-Four. The book is not just about massive government control by Big Brother over the citizenry. It is also about how such control is enabled by the abuse of language. We can always smell a rat when words are used to mean something other than what they say, and this bill is filled with such false words. Let us start with the very premise. The government purports to apply the Internet to the Broadcasting Act or to apply the Broadcasting Act to the Internet, even though the Internet is not a broadcast instrument. Television and radio are broadcast instruments; online streaming is not. This might seem to be merely a matter of words, but then we go through the semantics and we catch other nice little white lies. For example, the Liberals use the term “Canadian content” in their talking points and their press releases. Supposedly, the entire raison d’être of this bill, its reason for existing, is to promote Canadian content. Which two words appear nowhere in the 50-page bill itself? It is the words Canadian content. Not only is such content not defined, and it is impossible to define it, but it does not exist in the entire bill. Therefore, we have entire apparatus of bureaucracy that would have tentacles across the entire World Wide Web within Canadian borders tasked to do something that the bill says does not even exist. Why is this important? It is important because if the bureaucracy in question has its powers circumscribed to defining and promoting Canadian content, but there is no limit on what Canadian content actually means, then we give that agency limitless powers to control what people see and hear online. What is Canadian content? Is it posts about maple syrup, beaver tails, hockey and maybe lacrosse? No, that is not in the act. Is it music made by Canadian musicians? No, it is not necessarily; in fact, many Canadian musicians are no longer considered Canadian because their record labels have been sold to foreign entertainment companies. Is it books that are written by Canadians? No, that is not the definition either. We have absolutely no idea what it is. In fact, we can be very sure what it is not. Here is an example, and this will send my opposition, because they will be in the opposition soon, friends across the way into a fit of rage. Obviously, the Canadian commentator who is most widely viewed and listened to around the world today is, of course, Dr. Jordan Peterson. That is just a numerical fact when we look at the view counts that he has garnered. I see the rage across the way among those who think he is anything but Canadian. Sure, he was born in rural Alberta. Sure, he was a professor at the University of Toronto before he was censored there. However, he surely cannot be Canadian: He does not use the right pronouns, he does not mouth the right talking points and he does not meet the current government's view of Canadiana. This Prime Minister has described people who disagree with him as un-Canadian. Surely, the bureaucracy that he appoints would have to agree. If the association of psychologists, which gives out licences to practise in Ontario, does not believe that his views permit him to continue to practise in his field and if a university is effectively banning him from teaching his classes, what would stop yet another powerful bureaucracy from saying that this man is not Canadian enough to be considered Canadian content and therefore should not be found online by Canadian users? The answer, of course, is that nothing would stop that from happening when they give the power to the state to control what people see and say online. The government members across the way would say not to worry; that the bill does not apply to user-generated content, once again with the fancy, confusing words. To use real language, “user-generated content” is “stuff people post online”. The Liberals say the legislation would not apply to that, unless it does. Let me read the section of the bill: “specify that the Act does not apply in respect of programs uploaded to an online undertaking that provides a social media service by a user of the service, unless the programs are prescribed by regulation”. We have to make sure to read the fine print. Later on, the bill would specifically exempt user-generated content. This is the stuff that everyday Canadians post every day. The Liberals say the bill would not apply to any of that, unless it is posted on a platform that uses it for revenue generation. Are Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the charity business, or do they generate revenue off of the posts that go online? Do members know about that thing called “advertising”? That is revenue. Literally every single post that every Canadian puts online is used to generate revenue for an online platform. Therefore, everything that is posted online is captured by the essence of the bill. These are more weasel words. If they were going to regulate everything everybody posted online, and they believed they were justified in doing so, why would they create an exemption that does not apply to a single, solitary post? Of course, it once again is a use of Newspeak, putting in words that say exactly the opposite of what they mean. I want to quote Michael Geist, who is no Conservative. He is a former critic of mine, actually, and not traditionally a friend of people on this side of the chamber. He said: To be clear, the risk with these rules is not that the government will restrict the ability for Canadians to speak, but rather that the bill could impact their ability to be heard. In other words, the CRTC will not be positioned to stop Canadians from posting content, but will have the power to establish regulations that could prioritize or de-prioritize certain content, mandate warning labels, or establish other conditions with the presentation of the content (including algorithmic outcomes). The government has insisted that isn’t the goal of the bill. If so, the solution is obvious. No other country in the world seeks to regulate user content in this way and it should be removed from the bill because it does not belong in the Broadcasting Act. If the Liberals did not intend to deprioritize, silence and push down the voices of some, why would they even include these provisions in the bill in the first place? The answer is that they want to regulate what can be heard and seen. They want to create the false perception that people can speak merely because they can post things online, but frankly there is no reason to post something if no one is allowed to see it. It would be like screaming into an empty forest. Furthermore, the fact that the government would give the power to a state regulator to alter the algorithms of the Internet is, frankly, terrifying. Who are the shady operators in the back room who would be manipulating the algorithms that bring our newsfeeds and social media posts onto our screens? What are their motives? What is their direction? None of these things are defined anywhere in the bill or by the testimony of the head of the government agency that would be charged with implementing them. In a world where we are already overly controlled by technology, they would alter algorithms. We can think of the devastating power of artificial intelligence. We know it because there is plenty of artificial intelligence on that side. In reality, the ability of a government bureaucracy to alter those algorithmic powers is indeed an enormous and unforgiving power. I will quote Orwell: “This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs—to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.” That is exactly what we are talking about here because algorithms determine everything that appears on our devices. It is mathematical programming that puts those things in front of our eyeballs. Right now, that programming is determined by a raw human emotion: greed. There is no doubt about it. The social media platforms want to make money. How do they do it? They give people stuff they want to see. One might take issue with the fact that they want to make money off that, but that is just the reality. The outcome is that we see what we want. The economic motivation for the bill is also greed. It is the greed of the broadcasting corporations that want to dominate eyeballs, but instead of dominating them by producing things people want to see, they would dominate them by having more power over the regulator that determines what people get. That is also motivated by greed. Both of these profit motives are going to exist, one in the free world where people choose for themselves and another in the coercive world where bureaucrats choose for them. However, do not ascribe any angelic motives to the bill. It is nothing more than a dirty alliance between big government and big corporations. Big government wants to control the citizenry, and big broadcasting and entertainment corporations want to control the advertising revenue. That is precisely why Bell, Rogers and all the other broadcasting corporations have come pleading for the bill to be put forward and advanced on their behalf, not on behalf of everyday people. Here is the decision: Do we want the content on our phones and screens to be determined by the click or by the clique? The bill proposes to have it done by the clique. All the brilliant artists whose parents are not rich enough to have agents that will promote them with news and entertainment bodies and corporations will be shut out. It will be the rich kids, whose parents dream of them being famous, who will be able to go to these entertainment companies and have the ability over the years to get record labels set up. Those rich kids always had a head start; those shut out will be the poor kids who learned how to play the piano in their basements and would otherwise have posted it online and had it go viral. They will not have the political influence in Ottawa, in the CRTC, to get themselves on the big screen. This is once again protecting the privileged behind a wall of gatekeepers. On this side of the House, we believe in a meritocracy, not an aristocracy. We believe everybody should get ahead by their own merits, and we believe that Canadians are intelligent enough to decide for themselves. Let me address one other issue about social media platforms. The government claims it wants to crack down on them because they are making too much money. The bill would not affect their profit or their bottom line by one penny. It proposes to keep all the content we see on those same social media platforms. Our broadcasters do not compete with social media platforms; they compete with other Canadians who are fighting for share of voice and share of eyeball. What the bill would actually do is simply take money and opportunity away from the individual citizen to have his or her voice heard in entertainment, news, discourse and everywhere else and concentrate it once again in the hands of the politically powerful, the well-connected and those who can find favour with the government. On this side of the House of Commons, we exist to decentralize power, to disperse it among the many instead of concentrating it in the hands of the few. That is why we rise today with such alarm that the Prime Minister would censor debate on a censorship bill. I do not know if, in the century and a half of this august chamber, it has ever happened that a government has done so. It is an appalling precedent and one that should concern every freethinking Canadian citizen. We inherit our rights not from the state, not from a powerful government bureaucracy, but as a gift from God. Freedom is written on every human heart. We all have the ability to express ourselves culturally, politically and in every other way, not because the Prime Minister has bestowed us with that right but because we are born with it. Conservatives would make sure people have that right. The bill is designed to take away that right and concentrate it in the hands of the few. Members should not take my word for it but listen to Margaret Atwood. Again, she is no friend of Conservatives, but she said: “All you have to do is read some biographies of writers writing in the Soviet Union and the degrees of censorship they had to go through—government bureaucrats.... So it is creeping totalitarianism if governments are telling creators what to create.” Those are her words. She said “creeping totalitarianism”. If anyone else in Canada had used those terms, they would have been called an alarmist. She is part of the literary establishment in this country, possibly among the most well known. She is someone with whom I agree on almost nothing because our views are not at all aligned. However, she understands one thing and that is that the power of words can only exist in concert with the freedom to express those words. I am sure that she would vigorously debate most of the things that I say on the floor of the House of Commons, but that is only possible if there is freedom to debate. Disagreement is the lifeblood of democracy. It is the worst system of government, except for all the others, as the great Winston Churchill said. It is messy, frustrating and arduous. Every day and every way, it would be much easier to have, as the Prime Minister has suggested, a basic Chinese Communist dictatorship where a powerful hand can decide something on a whim. That was the reason he admired it. He said they decide on the spot what to do and impose their decisions without any debate. That would be a lot easier in the short run. Often, we are told there is too much partisanship and disagreement in Canada. There are places in the world with no partisanship and no disagreement, and they are terrible places to live. I would rather live in a place where we are allowed to disagree and speak out. That is who we are as Canadians. The question is: Who decides? Do we allow a small group of privileged insiders close to the Prime Minister decide what we think, say and believe, or do we believe that every single Canadian is endowed by God with the ability to decide for themselves? I believe every Canadian has that ability. That is why we will stand up every day, in every way, for the section 2(b) rights of freedom of expression. That is who we are and what we believe. It is the common sense of the common people united for the people's home, my home and our home; Canada, let us bring it home.

Madam Speaker, do I believe that the government wants to limit people in putting cat videos online? Of course I do not. However, his question is very telling. I would first say that it is designed, like everything the government says, to make the people feel small and tell them that they are really only concerned about cat videos. The people of Canada are smarter than that; they are not idiots. The people of Canada post poetry, music and beautiful stories online. They share their most beautiful moments. To distill all that down to cat videos is, once again, an insult by a Liberal snob on the common people. It is to suggest that they are interested only in frivolous and stupid things that need to be filtered out by a class of much more elite people. We believe in the common sense of the common people. We believe they have the judgment to choose what they should post, read and do online.

Madam Speaker, we caught him. Just at the end there, the truth jumped out of his lips. He said the problem is that disinformation, like the opinions expressed here today, would not be allowed if Bill C-11 were passed, which is an admission that the NDP believes government should be able to decide what is true and what is false and censor out what it does not like. That is exactly what we suspected from the beginning. What happens when the government is a liar? The government said the Prime Minister did not interfere in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. That turned out to be false. It said the budget would be balanced in 2019. That turned out to be false too. Do I have to go down the long list of falsehoods stated by the government? Now we are supposed to trust this same government to censor out what is true. I guess government members believe there should be a ministry of truth populated with people who agree with them. The only way to distill the truth is through the hot cauldron of debate, not through the clamping down of censorship. That is why we believe in allowing people to make their own decisions. Government members may think they are the watchmen, but the question is, who watches the watchmen? The only ones who can do that are the citizens.

Actually, Madam Speaker, I will backtrack. It is a big group of insiders. It is a big, sprawling bureaucracy with far too many people working for it. There will be fewer people working for the CRTC when I am Prime Minister, because they will have less power and a hell of a lot less to do when I restore freedom of speech and freedom of expression online and on the Internet. As for the definition of “woke”, woke has one purpose and only one purpose. It has plenty of pretexts but only one purpose: control. It is designed to divide people by race, gender, ethnicity, religion, vaccine status and any other way one can divide people into groups. Why? It is because then one can justify having a government to control all those groups. No more woke; we need freedom.

Madam Speaker, let us be clear. The member is not proposing to take away any power from Google, Facebook or any other social media giant. All he is proposing to do is give the government the power to manipulate the controls that those social media platforms already have. Right now, social media algorithms are designed to give people the stuff they want to see, because that is how social media companies make money, just like a restaurant gives people the food they want to eat. The government wants to take away the power of people to choose for themselves and have government authorities decide for them.

Mr. Speaker, one year ago, the Minister of Finance admitted that deficits add fuel to the fire of inflation. She promised four things. She promised that the debt-to-GDP ratio would decline, but it is going up. She promised that the deficits would be reduced, but they are going up. She promised that the debts incurred due to COVID-19 would be paid down, but they are going up. She promised that the budget would be balanced in 2027, but now she is promising that it will never balance itself. How can Canadians believe anything this minister and the Prime Minister say about money?

Mr. Speaker, it is a pipe dream. A year ago, the finance minister said, “We are absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline.” It is going up. She also said, “Our [pandemic] deficits must continue to be reduced.” They are going up. She went on to say, “The [extraordinary] debt[s] we incurred...must...be paid down.” They are not only not being paid down, but they are going up. She said as well that the budget would be balanced in 2027. Now the Liberals admit that the budget will never balance itself. Given these four falsehoods, how can Canadians believe anything the minister or the Prime Minister says about money?

Mr. Speaker, they are so out of touch. They have presented a budget containing $60 billion in additional inflationary spending, which represents an extra $4,200 for every family in Canada. That is insane. Canadians can no longer foot the bill for a government that has lost control of spending in our country. Canadians are struggling to pay their bills, feed their children and buy a house. How will they survive this budget?

Mr. Speaker, they admitted that deficits drive inflation and promised restraint. Instead, what they delivered was $60 billion of brand new spending. That is $4,200 for every family in Canada. These are families that are already skipping meals because they cannot afford food, and 35-year-olds are living in their parents' basements because they cannot afford housing. How will Canadian families carry on their backs an extra $4,200 in government costs when we are already going broke as a country?

Mr. Speaker, we had eight years of these multi-billion dollar government programs, and what has it given us? We have 40-year highs in inflation, one in five Canadians skipping meals because they cannot afford groceries, nine in 10 young people stuck in their parents' basements because they cannot afford housing, and students living in homeless shelters because the cost of living has risen so fast. These hard-working Canadians who do the work deserve a country that works for them, not an out-of-control tax-and-squander NDP budget like the one we have before us today. When will they rein in their spending so Canadians can pay their bills?

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Prime Minister fled the House of Commons instead of answering questions about public safety. The current crime wave is the direct result of Liberal-NDP policies that put the criminals who are usually considered the most dangerous back on the streets. Half a dozen people have been murdered in the past week, including a police officer in Quebec. Will the Prime Minister reverse the policies that set the most dangerous offenders loose? Will he protect the safety of Canadians?

Mr. Speaker, still the Prime Minister does not have the guts to stand up and answer the question. Of course not. He is protected by armed men every single day, so he is not worried about the streets that are turning into savage chaos since he brought about catch-and-release bail. We do not need to work with the provinces to change the bail laws. They are exclusively federal jurisdiction, right in the Criminal Code. The Prime Minister has unleashed a 32% increase in violent crime since he brought in the catch-and-release bail policies. Will he finally summon the courage to stand on his feet, admit he was wrong, reverse the policies and choose jail, not bail, for violent offenders?

Mr. Speaker, it is not a billion; we are talking about a trillion. We have a problem here. There is not actually a word for trillion in the French language. It does not actually exist. The government's debt is so big it violates the Official Languages Act. Today I am announcing that we will be filing a complaint with the Commissioner of Official Languages. The reality is that it is 3,000 billion dollars. That is how much the Liberals are going to spend over the next five years. That is more than this country's annual economy. Then, if these numbers are to be believed—but their numbers are never to be believed—and if they do not increase spending until the end of their term, the projected deficits will add another $130 billion to the national debt. The national debt will reach a record $1.3 trillion. Interest on the national debt will increase from $44 billion today to $50 billion in five years, if the interest rate calculations are correct. That is not all. The Prime Minister laughed when a reporter asked him how we were going to pay for all this debt. He said it was not an issue, that interest rates were low, that we were never going to have to pay for this spending. That was two years ago. Two years ago, he said interest rates were going to stay low for the rest of our lives. Now the interest costs on the national debt have doubled. We are spending double the national defence budget on the interest costs on the national debt. It is ridiculous. We are spending nearly as much money to pay the interest costs on the debt as we are spending on health transfers. These interest payments hinder the government's ability to provide services to everyday Canadians, people who pay the bills. Let us look at other facts. The $3 trillion in spending and the massive deficits will throw fuel on the inflation fire and cause the interest rates to increase even more. During the last year that our Conservative government was in power, spending for programs was $280 billion. Now it is $465 billion. That is a 63% increase. According to the numbers, the government is going to increase spending until it reaches $543 billion. That is an increase in spending of nearly 100%, or double. Have Canadians received twice as much for health, public safety or quality of life in Canada? No, that is not really the case. That is the point. The Liberals measure their success on the fact that they cost a lot of money. Imagine a restaurant where the food is disgusting, where the service is bad, where the atmosphere is terrible, but it costs $500 to eat there. That must be the best restaurant. That is the Liberals' logic. Every time I ask why the crime rate has increased by 32%, the Prime Minister tells victims of crime that there is no problem because he is spending a lot of money on public safety. When we talk about firearms crossing the border, he says not to worry because he is spending more money to protect our borders. Failure is not acceptable but it is even worse to pay dearly for failure, and that is what this government is doing right now. These exorbitant expenditures have given us a country that is truly broken. What is broken is the fact that people can no longer walk in the streets and feel safe when the crime rate has gone up 32%. Street gang murders have increased by 92%. We can also think about the number of families who need to use food banks each month. There are 1.5 million Canadians who cannot feed themselves. One in five Canadians has to skip a meal because food is too expensive. Nine out of 10 young Canadians cannot even dream of owning a home some day, because mortgage payments, rent and costs associated with purchasing a home have doubled, even though the government spent $89 billion on affordable housing. The country is worse off after all this spending, and everything is broken. Worst of all, the contract that existed between the citizens and this country is broken. It was a very simple contract: Here in Canada, people who work hard can have a house, good food, a good quality of life and can achieve all of their dreams. That is why immigrants come here. They do not come for the weather; they come here for that contract. When people come here, they basically sign that contract when they make their declaration of citizenship. People declare that they will work hard and obey the law, and that way they can have a home and a good quality of life. That was the contract between our country and ordinary people. It is just common sense. That is why people chose Canada, but that deal is broken. We, the Conservatives, will restore that contract between the country and the people. Our country will work for those who work. We believe in common sense, and we want to bring common sense back. We are going to bring the loans back to a lower rate by eliminating government waste, the carbon tax and inflationary deficits. We are going to reward work by eliminating and reducing penalties and taxes on paycheques thereby boosting their value. Here in Canada, people are punished for working. They can lose 89¢ on every additional dollar earned when all the government taxes and penalties and all the payroll taxes are added up. A government I lead will eliminate those penalties and make working more profitable. We are going to give Canadians back the ability to buy a home. We are going to eliminate the red tape and barriers to building houses across the country. We are going to make Canada's streets safe again so that people feel safe. We are going to do that by eliminating the bail and parole policies that the government put in place so that we can put the real criminals in prison. We will ban drugs like heroin, fentanyl and others to protect our citizens. We will also stop spending taxpayer money to pay for drugs for people who are addicted. Instead, we will ensure that people get real treatment. We will go after the big pharmaceutical companies that caused the crisis in the first place. We will bring our brothers, sisters and friends home by helping them end their addiction and rebuild their lives. We are also going to bring freedom back to Canada. Freedom will be protected and strengthened when I become prime minister. We will also bring democratic power back to Canada by eliminating foreign interference in our electoral and democratic system. The capital of Canada is Ottawa. It is not Beijing or Davos. This is our home, and we will make our own decisions for the future. We are going to give back to Canadians control of their lives and give them the power back. We will make Canada the freest country in the world by giving people back control of their lives. What I am talking about is just common sense. It is the common sense of ordinary Canadians, working people who are paying the price for this incompetent government's overspending. That is who we are working for. That is our mission and that is what we will do as Canadians and as a Conservative government. The government cannot give people anything it has not taken away. The Liberals have no money over there. All the money they spend belongs to other people. There are only three ways they can extract it: by taxing, borrowing or inflating. The current government has done all three. It is incredible. Just weeks ago, the finance minister admitted that deficit spending leads to inflation; it pours fuel on the inflationary fire. This admission was a long time coming. I have to admit I was waiting anxiously. It only took her three years after I started warning her about that. Slowly but surely, a group of random Liberals started to agree with me. First it was the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who had originally predicted that deflation would result from his money printing. He came around to the view that inflation is caused by government deficits and money printing. Then it was a former Liberal deputy prime minister. John Manley said that all this spending is going to drive up the cost of living. Then it was another random Liberal, Bill Morneau, the former finance minister. Bill Morneau, who has become “Bill no more”, said that we would have inflation as a result of all this spending. Then, finally, the finance minister we have now came out and said that spending money we do not have drives up the cost of living. It was a wonderful epiphany, and we thought that weeks later it would translate into a budget that would show responsibility with the people's money. Instead, after the Liberals doubled the national debt, adding more debt than all previous prime ministers combined, they decided to dig even deeper. Let me share some of the astounding facts that the shadow minister of industry dug up about the government's financial plan. The budget sets cumulative spending for the next five years at a record $3.1 trillion. That is bigger than the entire GDP of Canada. Remember that we cannot believe almost anything they project, but if these numbers are to be believed and they do not add more spending, they admit that they plan to add another $130 billion to our debt. The debt will rise to $1.3 trillion. Interest on the national debt this year is $44 billion; it would rise to $50 billion under this fiscal plan. To put that in perspective, the Liberals have literally doubled the amount that Canadians have to spend on bankers and bond holders since the Prime Minister promised that interest rates would stay low and there would be no cost to all this debt. We now spend more on interest for debt than we spend on our military, child care benefits and transfers for education and social services to the provinces and almost as much as we spend on health care. Instead of giving the money to soldiers and nurses, the Prime Minister gives it to wealthy bond holders and bankers. This is exactly the opposite of what he promised. The Liberals admit that the spending this year will be a staggering $456 billion. This is an increase of 63% since the Prime Minister took office just eight years ago. That is almost a 10% year over year annual increase in spending. If we believe their projections, spending is set to rise to over half a trillion dollars over the life of the five-year plan we have before us. That means they will have literally doubled government spending. What is twice as good in Canada today? Can members think of anything? Are our streets twice as safe? We just have to look around this week to get an answer to that question. A father was stabbed to death in broad daylight at a Starbucks in front of his kids for asking someone not to blow smoke from a vaping instrument into his children's faces. A 16-year-old was stabbed to death on the Toronto transit system by someone who had multiple prior criminal offences. In the last 36 hours from the time I stand and give this speech today, two young people have been stabbed, and one of them killed, on Calgary's transit system. Violent crime has increased by 32%. Gang killings have gone up by 92% under the government. We do not have streets that are twice as safe under the twice-as-costly government. Have we got twice as affordable housing? No, it is exactly the opposite. The average mortgage payment and average rent have doubled. The average required down payment to get into a home has doubled. We do not have better health care. The time it takes to get treatment has gone up to 26 weeks, which is double what it was when the Prime Minister took office. What are we getting for all this money? Every time we stand up and highlight problems that are raging out of control in this broken country of ours, the Prime Minister stands and defends himself by bragging about how much money he has spent. It is incredible. It is like saying he got a car. It breaks down on the road, and the air conditioning does not work. One of the windows was broken when he drove away from the dealership. However, we should not worry because he paid $200,000 for it, so it must be a terrific car. That is how Liberals judge success. It is by how expensive they can be. They have no common sense. The average single mother would do a far better job of managing this budget than the Prime Minister does because she understands budgets do not balance themselves. The good news is that we are going to turn the hurt that he caused into the hope that Canadians need. We need to bring home a country that works for the people who do the work. That means bringing home lower prices by eliminating the inflationary spending, deficits and carbon taxes. We know that more money chasing fewer goods always equals higher prices. We need to reduce the burden of government on the shoulders of people to bring down costs and bring home more dollars with more purchasing power for people to have a better life. We are going to bring home more powerful paycheques by ending the war on work the Prime Minister has unleashed in this country. At some income levels, when one earns an extra dollar, one loses as much as 89¢ in income tax, payroll tax and clawbacks of benefits that governments give out. We wonder why people do not want to work and why we have a labour shortage. If one taxes labour, one gets less labour. We have become a country that does not reward good or punish bad. If a hard-working person puts in an extra day's work, they lose it all to clawbacks and taxes. If a criminal goes out in the streets and commits a violent crime, they pay no penalty. We do not differentiate between good and bad behaviour, and that is why we see everything coming crashing down across the country and in the lives of everyday Canadians. We need to reward the good work of the people who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules. That is why a Conservative government would reform our tax and clawback system to make work pay so people can once again bring home powerful paycheques in this country. Bringing home powerful paycheques means we also need to get out the gatekeepers who prevent those paycheques from coming home in the first place. Brilliant immigrants come to our country ready to contribute but then are prevented from working in their very professions. Right now, we have a doctor shortage of 40,000 doctors. We have 19,000 immigrant doctors who are banned from working in our hospitals. Most of them are qualified to do the work. I had to help one doctor who had been doing heart surgeries in Singapore get his licence to practise here in Ottawa. I hate to break it to members, but Singapore is actually a more advanced country than Canada is; yet we block someone like that from doing surgeries at the Ottawa Heart Institute. We have 19,000 foreign-trained doctors who could be helping in our medical system but for these government gatekeepers. There are 34,000 foreign-trained nurses blocked from working in our health care system. It is not just doctors and nurses; it is all professions. We had the head of the Aviation Association testify that there was an aviation mechanic working for Air Canada in Munich for 20 years. Then he moved to Canada, assuming he would just keep his job with Air Canada. However, they would not let him do the same job on the same planes that he did in Germany. This is insane. A Conservative government, led by me, would bring in a common sense blue seal standard, a national merit-based test to determine who is qualified and who is not. Therefore, our internationally trained professionals can take a test, get a “yes” or “no” based on their proven abilities within 60 days and get to work in their fields. We would back up 30,000 small study loans so our immigrants can take time off work to study up to our standard. We would make it possible for future immigrants to this country to begin preparing to get licensed to practice in their field before they even arrive in Canada. That way, our immigrants could have big, powerful, inflation-proof paycheques, and we could have more doctors, nurses and engineers in this country. Bringing home powerful paycheques means getting the gatekeepers out of the way of our resource sector. We have the sixth-biggest supply of lithium on Planet Earth. The government now wants to spend $80 billion on subsidies for so-called green businesses. Would it not be nice to actually harvest the lithium we have in this country and put that lithium in the batteries of the future rather than relying on slave camps in other parts of the world, in dictatorial parts of the world, or relying on China to refine 60% of all the lithium that comes to surface? Do members know how much lithium we had mined in Canada in 2021, after six years under the Prime Minister? It was zero, nada, nothing. We did not even get a tablespoon of the stuff. Why is this? It is because, by the government's own admission, it takes up to 25 years to get a mine approved in this country. No wonder every other country in the world is leaving us in the past. We could be shipping our natural gas overseas. There were 15 proposed natural gas liquefaction plants on the table when the Prime Minister took office. Zero have been built, even though the Americans have built seven in the exact same time. The Germans built an import plant, from the application process through the final construction, in 194 days. We could be shipping our gas overseas. With me as prime minister, we could remove the gatekeepers, deliver fast permits, build natural gas liquefaction plants, cool that gas down to -161°C, and ship it over to Europe to break the European dependence on Putin and over to Asia to break the Asian dependence on dirty coal fire. We would turn dollars for dictators into paycheques for our people in this country. We are going to bring homes that people can afford again. It is hard to believe that housing was cheap in this country eight years ago before the Prime Minister. A person could buy the average home for $450,000. That was all it cost. The average mortgage payment was a reasonable $1,400. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Canada's 10 biggest cities was $1,100. What is it now? The average mortgage payment is now well over $3,000. It has doubled. The average down payment required for a minimum down payment of 5% is $45,000. It has doubled. The average rent is now $2,200. It has also doubled. Why has this happened? There are two obvious reasons. Inflationary deficits are driving up interest rates on mortgage borrowers and local government gatekeepers are blocking construction from happening in the first place. That is why we have the fewest houses per capita of any country in the G7. In fact, according to Scotiabank, we actually have fewer houses today, per capita, than when the Prime Minister took office. In Vancouver, the cost of government gatekeepers and red tape is $650,000 for every single unit of housing. We are not building anything because we are ranked 64th in the world for the time it takes to get a building permit. If they cannot build houses, they cannot house people. They want to bring in half a million people every single year and they have no idea where they are going to put them all. They are setting us up for a massive financial and social catastrophe over the next two years as people have nowhere to live and nowhere to go. We are going to see a massive breakdown in our communities as a result of this policy. Luckily, we can get the gatekeepers out of the way. Do colleagues know who showed us how? The first nations people in Vancouver. There is a reserve in Vancouver, inside the city of Vancouver. The Squamish people took on 10 acres of land. They are building 6,000 units of housing. That is 600 units per acre. The reason they are able to do it is because they do not have the rules of the City of Vancouver. They are their own boss and they got the gatekeepers out of the way. They did what would have never been possible with big-city mayors. There has been this tradition that prime ministers do not criticize mayors and use all of the fluffy language we read in press releases about “working together in collaboration and partnership for a better future”, all the garble that we are so used to hearing.

You're right. You had better believe a big change is coming. Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister accused me of fighting with the mayors. Damn right, I am going to be fighting. I will be fighting to get housing for our people. Our young people deserve to live in a home and I will be putting in place serious financial penalties for big-city mayors who block housing construction and big building bonuses for those who get out of the way and allow housing to be built. Yes, absolutely, we will bring it home. Their solution is to shovel another $4 billion into municipal bureaucracies so that there are even more gatekeepers to block construction. My view is very simple. I will pay for results. Their infrastructure budget from the federal government will be based on the number of keys in doors. The houses will have to be finished and there will have to be people moving in for every dollar they want to get in federal infrastructure money. I will require every federally funded transit station to have high-density apartments built around and over top. Why is it that Hong Kong has the only profitable transit system on Planet Earth? They sell the air rights right over the stations so that people live right on top of the transit. That is the most effective way to do it. However, in Canada, the gatekeepers and the rich, leafy neighbourhoods filled with champagne socialists do not want anybody else living in the neighbourhood. They want the transit stations all to themselves. That is not going to happen any more. If I am going to fund transit stations, I am going to require that working-class people are allowed to live next to them and they will be able to live there without even having to work there. We have these big, ugly buildings, 37,000 federal buildings. Most of them are actually empty with people working from home. These big, ugly, empty buildings are shrines to the incompetence of the government. I will sell them off to developers so that they can be converted into low-income housing. It warms my heart to think of the beautiful family rolling up in their U-Haul to move into their wonderful new home in the former headquarters of the CBC. We are going to honour the trades. We need tradespeople who can actually build stuff. We are going to make sure, unlike Liberals, who turn their noses up at working-class tradespeople, that trades and apprenticeships get the same support from government that universities and professionals do. We are going to accelerate bringing in more tradespeople from abroad and we are going to make sure that young people are told that working in the trades is every bit as honourable and prestigious as working in a profession. Our tradespeople are the backbone of this country. We are going to bring home safe streets again. We know that the crime, the chaos and the savage violence that has been unleashed across the land is the direct result of Liberal-NDP policies, which have flooded our streets with violent criminals and dangerous drugs. They brought in catch-and-release, so that the same violent criminals get released again and again. The same 40 people were arrested 6,000 times in Vancouver in one year. That is 150 arrests per person per year, as a direct result of the Prime Minister's bail reform. My government will end the catch-and-release and bring jail, not bail, for repeat violent offenders. Secondly, we are going to tackle the scourge of drug overdose deaths that have been unleashed in this country under the policies of the Liberals and the NDP. They told us that they had all the evidence to do the things that made no sense to common-sense people. They said that if we only legalize drugs and we use taxpayers' money to give people the drugs, then there will be no more overdoses because we will be able to guarantee that these drugs are safe. They actually have heroin vending machines that they are funding with tax dollars. They are very proud of it. They say that they are using biometrics so that people can walk up and put their fingerprint out and out pops hydromorphone. Oxycontin causes the opioid crisis. Hydromorphone is three times more powerful than oxycontin. It is almost heroin. What happens? The users take those drugs and they find that they are not strong enough after a while, so what do they do? They sell them to kids and they take the money and use it for fentanyl. This government is spending, in this budget, hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funds to provide even more drugs that will kill our people. This policy is an unmitigated nightmare. The lower Eastside of Vancouver has turned into hell on earth. The number of overdose deaths is 300% higher in British Columbia than when this Prime Minister took office. We are now seeing, across Canada, 22 overdose deaths every single day. It does not make sense. By the way, the same disgusting pharma companies that started the crisis in the first place are going to get some of the money from this budget to sell the hydromorphone that will perpetuate the ongoing addiction. The same corporate scumbags that unleashed this crisis by deliberately turbocharging sales and encouraging overdoses, with bonuses for distributors who caused them, are now getting money from this government to pay for the so-called safe supply of what is nearly a heroin-grade opioid. This is the most disgusting and outrageous policy perhaps that the government has ever implemented. We have a solution. We are going to ban hard drugs. We are going to stop using tax dollars to hand out those drugs. We are going to provide treatment. We are going to make it easier to get treatment than it is to get drugs. We are going to make the pharmaceutical companies that caused this crisis pay the bill when I launch a $45-billion lawsuit to recover the money from them. That is what I am going to do. We are going to bring home our brothers, sisters, friends and neighbours, drug-free. We are going to restore the hope that anything is possible in this country for them, that there is always a chance at redemption, that anybody can turn their lives around. We have seen what treatment can do, the countless stories that I have heard when I go across the country. I met a nurse in Timmins who had been a nurse until she got hooked on opioids in the hospital. She lost her job, lost her family and ended up on the street, but went and got treatment and recovered. Now she has a job as a waitress. She has her daughter back, she has her dignity back and she has her life back. There are going to be many more stories like that when we bring home our friends and family drug-free. We are going to bring home our freedom to this country. The more government we have, the less freedom remains. This big, powerful government forgets its core responsibility. First and foremost is our national defence. We are going to bring the dollars out of the back office and onto the front lines and stop wasting defence dollars on big corporate procurement screw-ups. We will make sure the money goes into the soldiers' hands and into the support of our soldiers, sailors and airmen. We are going to end the woke culture that is driving our young people away from the military and restore pride in our armed forces again. Bringing home our freedom means bringing back democratic decision-making to this country by fighting against foreign interference, including by introducing a foreign interference registry and stopping foreign governments from interfering in our elections. Our capital is Ottawa; it is not Beijing and it is not Davos. By the way, I would be banning every single minister in my government from any involvement in the World Economic Forum. We would bring home free speech by repealing Bill C-11, which attempts to give government the control of what people see and say on the Internet. We think that there are already 37 million Canadian content regulators. They are called the citizens of Canada and they have the right to decide what they see and say on the Internet in a free country. I pointed out earlier that we had a deal in this country that if people work hard they get a good living and a good life. It is a deal that, like everything else in Liberal Canada, is broken. However, it is not the first deal that has ever happened in the history of our democracy. The first deal was over 800 years ago when a spoiled, power-hungry inheritor of the Crown, King John, had taken the Crown from his father. Does that remind people of anyone? He was overtaxing his people. He was taking away their freedoms: arresting without charge, confiscating without compensation and violating all the rules that we now take for granted. However, the commoners forced him to the fields of Runnymede and required that he sign the deal: the Magna Carta, the great charter, which, for the first time, brought liberty under the law and made what is now called “the state” a servant and not a master of the people. That is our purpose here as well. We understand, on this side of the House, that we are servants. We are not masters. This is the House of Commons, the house of the common people. It is green because the first commoners met in the fields of Runnymede, which were also green. They were the ones who harvested that field. They are the ones for whom we work. We stand for the common sense of the common people, united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.

Mr. Speaker, it is insane. The government has already caused the highest inflation in 40 years by doubling the national debt and adding more to our debt than all the other prime ministers in the history of this country combined. He admitted that government spending is increasing the cost of living for ordinary Canadians. For three years, I have been warning the House of Commons. The so-called experts, including the Governor of the Bank of Canada, former finance minister Bill Morneau and others, have admitted that the government's spending is driving up inflation. The minister herself finally came to that same conclusion. Two weeks ago, she said that she did not want to add fuel to the fire of inflation, so yesterday, we expected the government to introduce a budget that would curb the inflationary spending that is harming ordinary Canadians. What we got was the exact opposite. The Liberals made four promises, but they broke them all. They said that the debt-to-GDP ratio would decline, but every year, it goes up. They said that the deficits would come down but they are going up. They said that the pandemic debt incurred would be paid down. It has not been and it continues to rise. Finally, they said that the budget would be balanced in 2027. Now, they admit there will never be a balanced budget. We realize that the government can only give what it has taken. The government has no money. Every cent spent by the government must come from taxpayers. There are three ways to pay for expenditures: through inflation, by printing money; through debt; and through taxes. This government has chosen those three methods. I am going to share some shocking figures about government expenditures with my colleagues. I would like to thank the official opposition's innovation, science and industry critic, the member for South Shore—St. Margarets, for this data. The budget sets total expenditures for the next five years at a record $3.1 trillion.

Mr. Speaker, they want more, so at least I will move a motion. I move: That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the House reject the government's budget statement since it will cost every Canadian household $4,200 and it fails to make Canada work for the people who have done the work, namely: (a) bring home powerful paycheques with lower taxes, including scrapping the carbon tax; (b) bring home lower prices by ending inflationary debt and deficits that drive up inflation and interest rates; and (c) bring homes people can afford by removing government gatekeepers to free up land and speed up building permits.

Mr. Speaker, I find it sad that the member has been standing up here regurgitating the phony talking points of the Prime Minister for eight years, and all he has is a fake position not even halfway up the House of Commons. The member has done nothing but reinforce the inflationist policies that are robbing the paycheques of hard-working people right across this country. On this side of the House, we stand for the common people, who actually do the work in this nation. We are going to lower the tax burden so that people can bring home more of what they earn. We are going to make this a country that works for the people who do the work, and that will happen as soon as we form a Conservative government.

Mr. Speaker, will I fire the Governor of the Bank of Canada? I have a few questions for the Bloc member. If a mechanic does not do his job, what happens? He gets fired, right? The mechanic gets fired. If an electrician does not do his job, what happens? He gets fired. If, instead of doing his job, which is to keep inflation at 2%, the Governor of the Bank of Canada borrows and prints money to fund the government's deficits and this leads to inflation that, now, is creating poverty among Canadians, yes, he will be fired. In the real world, if someone does not do their job, they get fired. I will take the Government of Canada into the real world by firing people who do not do their job.

Mr. Speaker, to the first question on why I would quote someone I want to fire, I quote members of the Liberal government all the time, and it is my plan to fire them in the next election. As for the blue seal, we did not promise that in 2006. We did promise to speed up foreign credential recognition, which we actually achieved. However, we need to go further, and in the last eight years, that has only gone backwards. We would bring in a blue seal standard, a merit-based standard, to test people who are professionals so they can qualify just like those who were born in this country. The member finally said that I simultaneously criticized the government's spending on housing while praising the first nations that removed gatekeepers to get things built. Let us be clear. The first nations in Vancouver did not build housing with money from government. It is private financing that builds the vast majority of housing in this country. We do not have a lack of financial ability to build housing. The Liberals are spending $89 billion on it. The problem is that we ban housing from being built in the first place. If we get the gatekeepers out of the way, we will build more homes and spend less money. It is common sense. Let us bring it home.

Mr. Speaker, that is a great question. The member is quite right in pointing out that every dollar we have to give to bankers and bondholders is money we cannot spend on hip replacements, heart surgeries and other necessary care in our hospitals. What is astonishing to me is the wealth transfer endorsed by the NDP and the Liberals. They have no problem taking money away from treasured national social programs to give it to the wealthiest bondholders and bankers. Even the most famous global left-wing economist, Piketty, from France, has pointed out that debt interest is a major wealth transfer from the working class to the super-rich. We are the only party against adding this debt. The other parties want to continue to add to it. We on this side of the House will bring hope to young people by capping spending and unleashing the productive forces of our talented people so we can produce more of what cash buys rather than just create more cash. We are going to make this a country that works for the people, where it does not matter if a person's name is Martin or Mohamad, Singh or Smith, Poilievre or Patel. As long as they are prepared to work hard, they can bring it home and achieve their dreams.

Mr. Speaker, the former Liberal finance minister, Bill Morneau, the future Liberal leader, Mark Carney, the current Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, and now the Minister of Finance have all admitted that deficits and added debt fuel inflation. When presenting the last budget, the Minister of Finance stated that they were absolutely determined to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, that it had to continue decreasing, and that it was a line they would not cross. Is the Prime Minister going to cross that line today?

Mr. Speaker, here is what has happened over the last three days in Canada: On Saturday night, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed to death at a Toronto subway in an unprovoked attack by a repeat offender. On Sunday evening, a father was stabbed to death outside a Vancouver Starbucks with his wife and daughter present. On Sunday night, a man was stabbed on a Toronto city bus and taken to hospital. On Monday night, a sergeant, a police officer, was killed near Trois-Rivières. In addition, in the early morning of this day, a young girl was shot to death in Calgary. This is part of the 32% increase in violent crime since the Prime Minister took office. Will he reverse the policies that caused it?

Mr. Speaker, people are tired of hearing about his concern. They want to know what he is going to do to reverse the damage he has caused. He brought in a bail system that allows repeat violent offenders back on the street again and again, sometimes released the very same day. In Vancouver, the same 40 violent offenders were arrested 6,000 times in a year. That is 150 arrests per criminal each year, as a direct result of the Prime Minister's easy bail system. Will he replace bail with jail for repeat violent offenders?

Mr. Speaker, this is unbelievable. He thinks that a hunter in Nunavut is responsible for the stabbings in downtown Vancouver. That is ridiculous. Under his policy of targeting law-abiding citizens, while we are allowing repeat violent offenders to go out on the street again and again, we have seen a 32% increase in violent offences. In fact, one of the detectives close to the case in Toronto said that the offender was out again on numerous releases, with probation and prohibited bail. If one can name it, he has been released on it. This is a full-scale justice system failure. Will the Prime Minister reverse it?

Mr. Speaker, when we were in office, in the last year, there were 124,000 fewer violent crimes than there were last year. Violent crimes, including murders, have skyrocketed under this policy of the Liberal Prime Minister. He is targeting law-abiding hunters and farmers rather than the repeat violent offenders who are committing the crime. Why would the Prime Minister not look at the evidence, which has demonstrated that our streets have now turned into war zones after eight years of his policy? Will he replace bail with jail for repeat violent offenders?

Mr. Speaker, a moment ago, I listed four stabbing deaths that have happened in the last three days, including that of a police officer, and the Prime Minister glibly got up and said he was going to ban hunting rifles. Stabbings happen with knives, not hunting rifles. Perhaps that is why we see a 32% increase in violent crime since the Prime Minister took office. He is not looking at logic or facts. It is the criminals wielding the knives who are doing the killing. Does he really believe that banning the rifles of rural hunters will stop knife crime in big cities?

Mr. Speaker, the question was for the Prime Minister, who did not have the guts to get up and answer. A moment ago, I listed four murders and near murders that happened with knives in the last three days. This is part of a massive crime wave that the Prime Minister's catch-and-release bail system has unleashed right across the country. We did not have crime like this before he took office. His solution is to ban hunting rifles in rural communities. I ask him again, does he really believe that banning hunting rifles in rural communities will stop knife crime in downtown cities?

Mr. Speaker, I will read what the minister of inflation stated last year: “On this point, let me be very clear. We are absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline...This is a line we will not cross.” One year later, she has missed the mark. That is important, because she already admitted a few days ago that deficits would fuel inflation. Today, she tabled a budget of $43 billion in additional spending that will be paid for by taxes and result in inflation. The Conservative Party will always work for those who work. That is why we will vote against the Liberals' inflationary plan. The finance minister was telling us only a few days ago that deficit spending would spark even more inflation, higher grocery bills, more expensive housing and other costs for families. Today, she rolls out a bonanza of $43 billion of new inflation, debt and taxes that will be on the backs of everyday, hard-working Canadians. We set three conditions for our support of the budget. The first was that it bring home lower prices by eliminating the inflationary carbon tax and deficits. The second was that it bring home powerful paycheques with lower taxes that reward hard work. The third was that it bring homes that our young people can afford by removing gatekeepers to speed up building. None of these three demands have been met. All that the Liberals have delivered is more debt, more inflation and more costs on the backs of the hard-working and beleaguered people of this country, and that is why Conservatives are proud to announce we will be voting against the inflationary spending. In fact, the gross cost of all the new spending announcements in the budget works out to $4,300 for every single family in Canada. That is almost enough to house the Prime Minister in a hotel room for one night. That is how expensive the government has become. The war on work continues. The inflationary policies intensify. Canadians are living in desperation, skipping meals, living in parents' basements, unable to drive to work, falling into depression and even considering suicide because they cannot afford the pressure and the bills the Prime Minister has imposed after eight long years. The budget would make all of those pressures, pains and costs even worse. This budget adds to the costs, pressures and hardships each and every family is facing. That is why we will be voting against this budget. We are going to bring forward our own common-sense approach that takes into account the common people who work and pay the bills in this country. We are on the side of the people who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules. We want to bring home a nation that works for the people who do the work, bring home lower prices, bring home powerful paycheques and bring homes people can afford. It is the common sense of the common people united for our common home, my home and everyone's home. Let us bring it home. I now move to adjourn. (Motion agreed to)

Mr. Speaker, what we voted against is the Prime Minister's war on work, with higher and higher taxes and clawbacks that punish people for working hard. In fact, a worker can lose as much as 88¢ on the next dollar that he or she earns. There is no common sense in that. Why would people work more just to give it over to the Prime Minister? Will the Prime Minister reverse his antiwork taxes and give Canadians a break, so that hard work pays off and Canadians can bring home powerful paycheques?

Mr. Speaker, the only place he has been is in the pockets of Canadian workers, taking away their money. He has raised taxes on paycheques, raised taxes on gas, raised taxes on home heating, raised taxes on food and raised taxes on small businesses. What does he want to do this Saturday? He wants to raise taxes again. Inflation is at a 40-year high. After eight years under the Prime Minister, Canadians cannot afford to eat, heat and house themselves. Will he show a little bit of restraint and commit, in tomorrow's budget, to no new taxes?

Mr. Speaker, the trickle-down is his. He wants to take away everybody's money, centralize it in his own hands and promise that it will trickle down through his mighty bureaucracy and all the prodigious interest groups that gobble it up. There may be a few little drops that get down to the people who actually earned it in the first place. When I first said that deficits would cause inflation, all the experts disagreed. Now they all agree with me. In fact, even the finance minister has now come around to my view, admitting that deficit spending causes inflation. That is why people are paying more than at any time in 40 years. Will he cap government spending and put an end to the inflationary deficits tomorrow?

Mr. Speaker, the worst part of his inflationary policies is in the price of housing. We see that now Vancouver is the third-worst housing bubble in the world. Toronto is the 10th. They are worse than Manhattan; Singapore; London, England; and countless other places. The average required down payments, rents and mortgage payments have doubled under the Prime Minister. His inflationary policies have made life worse, and his gatekeeping friends prevent housing construction. Will the Prime Minister announce in tomorrow's budget serious penalties for the gatekeepers that drive up housing prices so that hard-working Canadians can have homes they can afford?

Mr. Speaker, for a thousand days, the two Michaels sat, hopeless, in a windowless torture cell not knowing when they would be freed. Yesterday, we learned from Global News that, according to two national security sources, a Liberal MP allegedly, and I quote, “privately advised a senior Chinese diplomat in February 2021 that Beijing should hold off freeing [the two Michaels]”. These members of our national security forces allegedly gave the Prime Minister that information. When did the Prime Minister know?

Mr. Speaker, for 1,000 days, the two Michaels sat hopeless in a windowless cell, fed in doggy bowls that were slid under their door, going eight months without seeing consular support, yet, according to Global News, a Liberal MP allegedly contacted the Chinese consulate and encouraged it to delay the release of these two Michaels for partisan Liberal gain. The intelligence services that came up with this information to the media would have told the Prime Minister. When did they tell him?

Mr. Speaker, we have two members of our national security services who have told the media that a Liberal MP told the Chinese not to release the two Michaels. I have now twice asked when the Prime Minister, his office or his department were informed of this startling revelation. I am going to ask a third time and I ask the minister to answer. When did the Prime Minister become aware of these allegations?

Mr. Speaker, the importance of this question cannot be overstated. The Prime Minister knew that a member of his Liberal caucus was working to keep two Canadian citizens arbitrarily and illegally incarcerated in windowless cells, potentially being tortured. He knew that and did nothing. That would be a devastating scandal against our national interest. I am simply asking for the government to clarify. On what date did the Prime Minister find out the revelations that one of his MPs may have helped keep our people in jail?