Vincent Ho

Mr. Speaker, for thousands of years, families of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese heritage, and others, have gathered beneath the autumn moon to celebrate family, gratitude and harvest, but this tradition is not new to Canada. Chinese communities have been living on the land we now call Canada since even before Confederation. Chinese artisans first arrived on Vancouver Island as early as 1788, and tens of thousands more arrived in British Columbia in the decades that followed. They brought their traditions and languages with them, but they left their conflicts behind. They did not come looking for a handout. They came looking for opportunity. They worked and raised families. They served in the armed forces. They built businesses, new towns and a railway that connected Canada. Despite barriers and enormous hardship, they persevered and helped build this country from the ground up. Generations later, their descendants enjoy the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship that earlier generations fought so hard to attain. This Mid-Autumn Festival, we celebrate not only an ancient tradition but one that is deeply rooted in the Canadian story: people coming here for freedom and opportunity, working hard, contributing to their communities and proudly calling Canada home. Happy Mid-Autumn Festival. [Member spoke in Chinese] [English]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this month in Richmond Hill, multiple armed suspects forced their way into a family home, assaulted the residents and opened fire in the house with a gun. Families in my community should not have to wake up wondering whether violent armed criminals will be kicking down their door next. After years of Liberal soft-on-crime policies, it is arrest by day and bail by night. All Canadians are hearing is plenty of Liberal talk, but no results. When will the Liberals keep Canadians safe and repeal weak Liberal bail, house arrest and catch-and-release to lock up extortionists, human traffickers, car thieves, burglars and violent criminals?

Mr. Speaker, as Canadians are aware, the Liberals are talk, talk, talk, but no results, but people in Richmond Hill want to know when they will actually feel safe in their own homes. Conservatives have called for tougher bail and sentencing rules, and real consequences for violent repeat offenders, burglars, car thieves, extortionists and violent criminals, to keep Canadians safe. Instead, the Liberals are doing the opposite. This spring, they made mandatory minimum prison time optional with Bill C-16, and earlier this year, each and every Liberal voted down our Conservative jail not bail act. When will Canadians finally see a justice system where victims are not the ones feeling like they are being held in house arrest?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised Canadians that his government was going to build at speeds not seen in generations, and I will give him this much: He was right, because Canadians have not seen a government build this slowly in generations. A year and a half ago, the Liberals came before Canadians with Bill C-5 and told us that everything was about to change. We were told that Canada was entering a new era, that projects would finally move quickly, that investment would finally flow and that the Liberal government was going to unleash construction at a pace Canadians had not seen in decades. Eighteen months after the Liberals took office, Canadians are still left waiting. Not one new project has been approved by the Liberal Major Projects Office. Approximately 500 projects are still waiting for approval, and the government that promised historic speed has produced historic delay. The only thing the Major Projects Office has managed to accomplish is to establish a brand new Liberal bureaucracy and hire Liberal insiders and friends of the Prime Minister as new high-priced bureaucrats at the taxpayers' expense. It is no wonder the Major Projects Office is being touted as the major photo ops office. Now, eighteen months later, the Liberal Prime Minister has returned to the House with Bill C-39, another piece of legislation approaching 250 pages. The Liberals are once again telling Canadians that this time they have finally found the answer. Well, we have heard this before. For years, Conservatives have told the government exactly what it needs to do if it wants to get Canada building. We have told it to approve major projects within six months; repeal the antidevelopment laws Liberal Bill C-69 and Liberal Bill C-48, which are still on the books; eliminate unnecessary duplication between governments; adopt a one project, one single review system; and provide investors with the certainty that if they put billions of dollars into Canada, they will actually have a reasonable opportunity to build something here. Instead, the Liberals have spent years creating more layers of regulations, more uncertainty, more Liberal bureaucracies and more opportunities for delay. Then, after creating the problem, the Liberals arrive in the House every couple of years with another enormous piece of legislation announcing they are going to solve it. That is the pattern that Canadians have watched for more than a decade: create a Liberal-sponsored problem, announce a new Liberal program, create a new Liberal office, hire more Liberal bureaucrats, hold a Liberal press conference, hold a Liberal photo op, declare victory and then wonder why nothing gets built. Canadians are not going to judge this legislation by its partisan Liberal title, by the Liberal press releases announcing it or by the talking points that Liberal ministers repeat on state-sponsored mass media. Canadians are going to judge it by whether it saves Canadians money, protects Canadian jobs and actually gets projects built. The problem Canada faces today is not a shortage of Liberal announcements. The Liberals are only good at delivering announcements and strategies drafted by Liberal consultants. These new offices are usually staffed by Liberal insiders, these frameworks are usually crafted by Liberal strategists, and Liberal memoranda of understanding have no legally binding effect. We have Liberal ministers travelling across the country standing beside maps and artists' renderings of things that might one day get built. What Canadians are missing are completed approvals, shovels in the ground, workers on job sites and projects actually being constructed. Pipelines do not carry energy products because they appear on some Liberal government list or on a website updated by a Liberal staffer. Mines do not produce critical minerals because a Liberal minister holds a press conference. Ports do not have another container moved because a Liberal memorandum of understanding with no legal effect has been signed. Factories do not employ Canadian workers because somebody in Ottawa created another Liberal advisory council drafted by some Liberal consultants. At some point, the Liberal government has to stop announcing that it intends to build and start allowing Canadians to actually build. That is the fundamental problem with the Liberal approach over the last decade. The government acts as though economic growth is something that can be produced by Ottawa through more legislation, more regulation and more bureaucracy, when in reality, Liberal governments do not build most of these projects. Workers build them. Private investors invest in them, businesses operate them, engineers design them, tradespeople construct them, and entrepreneurs take the risks necessary to actually make it happen. The government's job should be to establish clear and reasonable rules, protect the public interest and then get out of the way. Instead, Canada has become a country where somebody can be prepared to invest billions of dollars, employ thousands of Canadians and develop resources that the world desperately wants, and the first question they have to ask is not whether the project makes economic sense but whether they will spend the next decade trying to navigate a Liberal regulatory system. That is not economic strategy. It is Liberal self-sabotage. The Liberals now say that Bill C-39 will create greater certainty and faster timelines, but Canadians should remember that these are almost the exact same promises and talking points we heard when Bill C-5 was introduced last year. If Bill C-5, more than a year ago, was supposed to get projects moving faster, why do we need Bill C-39? The Prime Minister said Canada would move at speeds not seen in generations. Canadians looked around and waited, for the past year and a half. They waited for the new mines, the new pipelines and the new energy infrastructure. They waited for the new ports and the new major private sector projects that would create thousands of jobs and attract billions of dollars of investment. They are still waiting. The Liberal Prime Minister promised speeds not seen in generations, and instead, Canadians have received delays not seen in generations. Eighteen months later, the Liberals are asking Canadians to believe that the problem was simply that they needed another 250 pages of federal legislation. Canadians are entitled to be skeptical. The issue has never been that Ottawa lacks enough power, regulations, departments, bureaucrats or pieces of paper. The issue is that the government has spent more than a decade making it harder to build anything in the country. Bill C-69 created enormous uncertainty for major projects. Bill C-48 restricted Canada's ability to export our energy resources from the coast of British Columbia. Layers of Liberal federal legislation overlap with provincial processes. Project proponents face years of consultations, studies, assessments and bureaucratic demands before they know whether they will receive a final answer. While all that is happening, capital, both domestic and foreign, does not simply sit around waiting for Ottawa. It moves, and it goes somewhere. It goes to jurisdictions where governments understand that regulatory certainty matters, where permits can be obtained in a predictable period of time and where political leaders actually want investment rather than merely talk about wanting investment. Every time that happens, Canada loses more investment. We lose jobs. We lose construction jobs, engineering jobs and manufacturing jobs, and we lose tax revenues that could help pay for health care and public services. Canadian families lose opportunities for the good-paying jobs that once allowed an income to support a family, buy a home and build the future. This is why Conservatives keep coming back to a very basic principle: one project, one review. The government should not require a company to repeatedly prove the same thing to different levels of government, different departments and different regulators. They should streamline the processes and get out of the way. This brings us to a broader question before us, which is what kind of country Canada intends to become. We possess almost every natural advantage imaginable. We have some of the largest energy reserves in the world. We have critical minerals that our allies desperately need. We have enormous agricultural capacity. We have forestry, energy, uranium, natural gas and oil. We have access to three oceans. We have some of the most talented workers and entrepreneurs anywhere on the planet. Canada should be one of the richest countries in the world. There is no reason Canadians should have to accept economic stagnation, declining investment and fewer opportunities as if these things are somehow inevitable. They are not inevitable. They are consequences of Liberal choices. Canada has everything we need to succeed here at home. What we need now is a government willing to get out of the way. The Liberals promised Canadians that we would build at speeds not seen in generations. Well, they were right about one thing. Canadians have not seen us build this slowly in generations. Canadians have had enough announcements, enough Liberal studies and enough delays. It is time to get out of the way and finally let Canada build.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member is repeating talking points over and over again, and that one-minute spiel of his is not only raising the noise pollution in this chamber. It is also a testament to the Liberal talking points that have been spouted at Canadians over the last 18 months, which is that they want to do more, but there are no results. All we see is more talk, more announcements and more rhetoric coming from the Liberals. This entire act is called the building Canada strong act. That is a Liberal partisan slogan, which they now want to enact as federal law. That is the thing about the Liberals. They do not want to get things done. All they want to do is talk a big game and have no results to show for it.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for bringing up all of the labour unrest we have seen over the last 11 years under the Liberal government. The labour unrest we are seeing all across the country in almost every sector is a symptom. It is a symptom of 11 years of economic mismanagement, of a cost of living crisis that Canadians have to live through, of having the fastest food inflation and the most unaffordable housing in the G7. This is a Liberal-sponsored cost of living crisis that we are living in, and the rising costs are what is causing the labour unrest we are seeing across the country. If we can address the endless inflationary spending and bring down the cost of living, then Canadians can finally afford to live again, but the Liberals choose to live in rhetoric rather than taking real action.

Mr. Speaker, the member brings up a pertinent point. Canadians are still reading and going through the bill, but there is only one thing we know for certain, which is that it would create Liberal bureaucracy, delays and Liberal photo ops. It would be more talk with no results for Canadians. Canadians are desperate for results. They do not need more Liberal press releases.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Prime Minister is the only G7 leader and the only G20 leader who has delivered a recession in his own country. A United Way survey found that 60% of Canadians are anxious about their finances, 38% face food insecurity and 40% are losing sleep over how to stretch their paycheque. Meanwhile, this Liberal Prime Minister's luxury inflight catering bill has reached nearly $1 million over 14 trips, including $175,000 for food on a single trip, which is enough to feed a family for 55 years. Will the Prime Minister reverse his costly Liberal policies that put Canada into a recession, so Canadians can afford to live again?

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives are not tearing down Canadians. It is Liberals who are keeping down Canadians. Those Liberal talking points will not help the full-time workers living in RVs and trailers because they cannot afford homes, or the families spending 120% of their income on food and rent alone, or the 22% of Canadians who have personally experienced poverty, or the one in five households that are food insecure. Every dollar wasted on Liberal luxury is a dollar not used to lower taxes, build homes, improve safety or help Canadians make ends meet. Will the Liberal Prime Minister end the waste, cut the bureaucracy and reverse the Liberal policies that caused this recession?

Mr. Speaker, when historians study the fiscal decline of nations, they often note that collapse rarely begins with a dramatic event. It begins with habits: habits of indiscipline, habits of euphemism, habits of pretending that borrowing is prosperity, that inflationary spending is strategy and that accounting definitions can be stretched indefinitely without consequence. This Liberal so-called spring economic update is not merely an illustration of Liberal-managed decline. It is not merely a Liberal rebranding exercise. It is a statement of Liberal governing philosophy, and that philosophy is simple: spend now, explain later, redefine terms when necessary and hope Canadians do not notice the bill until it arrives. Canadians do not need a Ph.D. in economics to notice that these Liberal habits are costing them. They notice the Liberal money-printing inflationary deficits at the grocery store. They notice the Liberal taxes at the gas pump. They notice when their children conclude that home ownership is no longer a Canadian expectation but a lottery ticket. They notice it when this Liberal Prime Minister is the only G20 leader to deliver his economy a recession. They notice when this Liberal Prime Minister lectures them about making more sacrifices while failing to exercise any restraint when adding billions more to the national credit card. In public economics, there is a concept known as “government failure”. It is the recognition that governments, especially when they are run by Liberals, are imperfect institutions. Similar to markets, they are subject to distorted incentives, information asymmetries, bureaucratic self-preservation and Liberal political opportunism. Liberal Bill C-30 is government failure bound in legislative form. This Liberal Prime Minister promised discipline. He promised prudence. He promised to spend less and invest more. Instead, in just over a year, this Liberal Prime Minister managed to nearly double the deficit left behind by the last Liberal Prime Minister. Think about that. After a decade of fiscal excess under one Liberal Prime Minister, another Liberal Prime Minister arrived promising sobriety and immediately ordered another round at the bar. That is not renewal. That is relapse. The Liberals call this investment, but Canadians know it as credit card budgeting. When a household continually puts ordinary expenses on a credit card, not because of emergency, not because of catastrophe, but because of chronic overspending, that household is not building wealth. It is mortgaging its future. The same principle applies to nations, yet the Liberal government behaves as though fiscal arithmetic has been repealed. In academic public finance, debt sustainability matters because interest compounds, fiscal flexibility narrows and eventually governments lose the ability to respond to genuine crises. The independent fiscal watchdog, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, has once again raised the alarm. The PBO warns that this Liberal abandonment of traditional definitions of capital spending continues to undermine transparency. It is not a trivial accounting disagreement. It goes to the heart of the fiscal integrity of this Liberal government. Capital spending traditionally implies that the creation of productive assets occur, things that generate future economic value, public utility or measurable returns, or things like infrastructure, such as a new road or a new hospital. However, when Liberal accounting definitions become elastic, everything all of a sudden becomes capital. When everything becomes capital, nothing is. The PBO has explicitly stated that the lack of definitions prevents this Liberal Prime Minister from ensuring that the Liberal government's fiscal anchor remains balanced. In essence, the independent officer charged with scrutinizing public finances cannot determine whether this Liberal government's own numbers mean what the government claims they mean. That should alarm every member of the House. It is not only the PBO. The International Monetary Fund, the IMF, a global agency that the Liberals love to cite, has now called on Canada to adopt international accounting standards to improve transparency, ensure comparability over time and maintain a clear connection between borrowing and debt. Why? It is because this Liberal government's current fiscal presentation no longer inspires confidence. When both the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the International Monetary Fund are warning that our accounting lacks transparency, this is not a partisan talking point. It becomes a credibility crisis, and credibility matters. In public choice theory, governments, especially like this Liberal government, are not assumed to act as neutral benevolent maximizers of public welfare. Rather, they respond to incentives. Liberal politicians prefer spending money today while shifting costs tomorrow through higher taxes, higher inflation, higher deficits and higher interest costs. Liberal bureaucracies seek budget maximization at the expense of taxpayers, who are often deprived of any input by their Liberal governments. Liberal insider interest groups seek concentrated benefits, siphoning money from public coffers while dispersing costs across everyday Canadians. This Liberal spring fiscal update reflects every one of those pathologies. The PBO also warned that repeated spending increases beyond previous projections will “erode the credibility of fiscal plans and weaken confidence in the fiscal framework and raise concerns about long-term [debt] sustainability.” That is the exact credibility crisis that this Liberal Prime Minister finds himself in, because a fiscal anchor that moves whenever politically inconvenient is not an anchor at all. It is driftwood. What is the consequence? It is higher costs, higher debt and higher inflation, but maybe that is the new world order that this Liberal Prime Minister wants Canadians to live in. Canadians are now paying $59 billion annually in debt interest. The PBO projects that this could rise to $80 billion by the decade's end, which is 13% of federal revenues. That is approximately $1,900 per Canadian every year. It is not for hospitals, roads, defence or housing. It is just to service the interest on yesterday's Liberal excess. Every Canadian family is effectively paying thousands of dollars merely to keep the Liberal debt machine running, and the debt interest now exceeds federal health transfers and the revenues collected from the GST. Canadians pay taxes only to watch that money routed not into services but into servicing the debt for prior Liberal overspending. That is not one of the so-called progressive policies the Liberals love to tout. That is intergenerational extraction. There is another glaring black hole in this update: infrastructure spending. The Liberals have made commitments, but the Liberal spring economic update provides no year-by-year breakdown by department on infrastructure spending. It provides only Liberal press releases about so-called investments and maybe a top-line dollar commitment. That is Liberal rhetoric for, “This could blow a hole in the nation's finances and we have no way of tracking where the money is going.” In the accounting world, this is called deferred disclosure, and it takes me to my next point. The Liberal Major Projects Office was heralded with great fanfare, but where are the progress reports on the infrastructure? Where are the timelines? Where are the approvals on the projects? The PBO notes the absence of public reporting. The Liberal government has allocated hundreds of millions of tax dollars for so-called project acceleration, yet it has provided zero clarity. It is no wonder that this office has been described as the “mostly photo ops” office. The only thing we know is that this brand new bureaucracy is staffed with Liberal insiders and executives who are collecting salaries as high as $700,000 a year. This reflects a classic principal-agent problem. Taxpayers are the principals, while Liberal government institutions and their corporate insiders are the agents. When agents face weak accountability, asymmetric information and vague mandates, they optimize for process and motion, rather than outcomes and results. That is what we see with the Liberal mostly photo ops office. We see Liberal bureaucratic expansion without measurable performance, Liberal administrative theatre without delivery and Liberal insiders getting rich off executive salaries that could reach close to $1 million per year in some cases. The Liberal housing hell is another prime example of this. After 11 years of failure, Canadians might have hoped for some urgency. Instead, even after allocating $13 billion to the so-called Build Canada Homes, the PBO projects that just 5,200 units will be built annually. In an unprecedented national, made-by-Liberal housing crisis, the PBO explicitly stated that this is “insufficient” to meet the previously targeted pace. If we recall, the Liberal Prime Minister promised 500,000 homes per year during the campaign, but his own brand new housing bureaucracy can build only 1% of his stated target. Housing starts continue to lose momentum and there are no specific metrics, no pace targets and no credible plan. We have the most unaffordable housing market in the G7. The Liberal government offers nothing but bureaucracy in place of home building. Public economics teaches that regulatory barriers distort supply. When governments create friction through permitting delays, duplicative approvals and antidevelopment frameworks, prices rise. The answer is not endless, unconditional taxpayer subsidies layered atop supply constraints. Those merely inflate demand against an artificially limited supply. The answer is to remove those governmental barriers and let builders build, yet the Liberals persist in governance through announcements, rhetoric and blocking, rather than execution. We arrive at the newest Liberal fantasy, which is the so-called sovereign wealth fund with no wealth. It is an office to prepare for a future press release to eventually borrow money, at the expense of taxpayers, to fund and siphon into politically charged investments. The Liberals already have the Infrastructure Bank, the growth fund and the defence bank. They have agency after agency, fund after fund and office after office, and the result is that Canada still has the worst investment performance in the G7. This is textbook government failure. If a project has a viable business case, capital markets will invest in it. Private investors will fund productive ventures. If a business case does not exist, taxpayers should not be conscripted into subsidizing political vanity. Instead, we get what public choice theory would call rent-seeking. Politically connected actors position themselves around state capital allocation, all while consultants, advisers, insiders, transition offices, boards and task forces take out their straws and siphon off their share of taxpayer money. The beneficiaries are concentrated and the costs are diffused. That is how inefficient states grow, and Canadians can see it and feel it. Canadians deserve better. They deserve an affordable government so that they can have an affordable life, honest accounting, discipline, prosperity and a government that understands the basic truth of economics. A nation cannot borrow and block its way into lasting prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, what is embarrassing is the Liberals' record. What have they done? Let us look at their record. The macroeconomic results are devastating. We have the highest household debt in the G7, the most unaffordable housing in the G7, the lowest investment per worker in the G7, the second-lowest productivity in the G7, the second-highest unemployment in the G7 and the worst food inflation in the G7. Was that the promise my Liberal colleague made to his constituents in the election campaign?

Mr. Speaker, when I speak to my constituents, a lot of the concerns they talk about have to do with the affordability crisis and the housing hell the Liberal government has created after 11 years in power. Some Liberals will say that is a conspiracy theory, but the United Way released a recent survey that says 60% of Canadians feel anxiety about their personal finances; 38% face food insecurity, with one in five reporting that all of the food in their home had been eaten and there was no money left to buy more; 40% lose sleep over how they will stretch their paycheque; 34% know someone close to them has experienced poverty; and 22% have personally experienced poverty. Those are the stats, but some Liberal members will have us believe they are a conspiracy. It is time for the Liberals to get out of the way and adopt Conservative solutions.

Mr. Speaker, history is full of governments that believed deficits did not matter, until they suddenly did. History is full of administrations that were convinced they could borrow indefinitely because markets were patient, until they were not. Canada is not exempt from arithmetic. Debt must be serviced, confidence must be earned and budgets must eventually reconcile aspirations with reality. We need to live in a Canada that does not reward bureaucracy, but rewards hard work. The Liberals like to live in press releases, but Canadians live in reality.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is just the Liberals living in their own fantasy and illusions, rather than speaking to Canadians about real life. The $90-billion Alto rail boondoggle and the $742-million gun confiscation scheme are just a couple of examples of the Liberals' wasteful spending and a testament to the fact that they are completely detached from reality. Canadians live in real life and they are suffering. All the Liberals know how to do is print more Liberal press releases.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government's open borders policy has let 700 IRGC regime-linked terrorists into Canada. On May 28, the failed Liberal immigration minister told the House that 17,800 applications have been reviewed for potential inadmissibility, but after all these reviews, what Canadians got was a handful of visas cancelled, some CBSA investigations under way and only one person deported. Canadians of Iranian heritage in Richmond Hill and across the country no longer feel safe in their own communities. How can the Liberals say they are protecting Canadians when they keep letting the terrorists roam freely here at home?

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise on behalf of the people of Richmond Hill South, where petitioners are concerned that the Liberals have committed $200 million to a private spaceport project that has yet to conduct a single orbital launch; that the Liberals have agreed to rent a launch facility that is not yet ready, while failing to provide clear milestones, timelines or accountability for delivering functional space launching capability; and that Liberal insiders and connected individuals are tied to the project, reinforcing concerns about insider benefit and political favouritism. The petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to, number one, release all documents related to the $200‑million spaceport Nova Scotia agreement; number two, reveal which Liberal insiders and connected individuals stand to benefit from the project; number three, explain why Canadians are paying $200 million for a launch facility that is not yet ready; and number four, end reckless Liberal spending and stop rewarding politically connected projects with taxpayer money.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise on behalf of the people of Richmond Hill South and the almost 10,000 people across Canada who have signed this petition. The petitioners are concerned about when a member of Parliament crossing the floor to join a different political party significantly alters the representation chosen by the electorate without providing voters the opportunity to reconsider that choice. Partisan affiliation can undermine democratic accountability, and Canadian citizens and residents require a formal mechanism to hold members of Parliament accountable when a fundamental change in party membership occurs mid‑term. Therefore, the petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to introduce legislation to, number one, establish a recall mechanism for any member of Parliament who leaves their caucus to join another political party; number two, mandate that a recall petition process be automatically triggered within an electoral district once a member of Parliament formally joins a different political party than the one under which they were elected; number three, establish a requirement that if a recall petition receives signatures equivalent to at least 20% of the total votes cast in that riding during the previous federal election within 90 days, the seat shall be automatically vacated; and number four, require that a by-election be called immediately following a successful recall petition, to allow voters to determine their representation under the altered circumstances.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Prime Minister's latest report card is out. Canada is the only G7 country with a leader who took its economy into a recession. Canada's economy declined in the last two quarters and contracted in three of the last four quarters. There were 112,000 jobs lost in just three months and 46,000 more Canadians are jobless than when the Prime Minister took office. Business investment fell for the fifth straight quarter and $109 billion in investment has fled Canada since he took office. Canadian households now carry the highest debt in the G7, the least affordable housing in the G7, the highest food inflation in the G7, the lowest investment per worker in the G7 and the second-highest unemployment in the G7. Consumer insolvencies are up 19%, 1.5 million Canadians missed a debt payment in just three months and mortgage delinquencies are up 32%. Nationally, food bank visits have doubled, one in four Canadians is food-insecure and households pay 120% of their income on rent and food. Canadians do not need more bureaucracies and slush funds for Liberal insiders. Conservatives will end inflationary deficits, repeal Liberal antidevelopment laws, cut red tape and bring home jobs, investment and hope.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Calgary Centre. I rise today because Canadians deserve a government that lives in the real economy, not in Liberal talking points. The facts are now impossible to deny: Canada has entered a recession. Canada's economy has contracted in two consecutive quarters. It has shrunk in three of the last four quarters. Business investment has fallen for a fifth straight quarter, and household savings have fallen to their lowest level in years. Business and capital investment has also fallen by 0.7%. However, on Friday, a Liberal stood in the House and said, not once but twice, “let us be clear: Canada is not in a recession.” That is not economic leadership. That is economic denial. Canadians do not need another lecture from the Liberals about projections, models, forecasts or fine words. They need reality. They see reality every time they open their credit card bills. They see it every time they go to the grocery store. They see it every time they check their savings accounts, and they see it every time their paycheques run out. The Liberal Prime Minister likes to remind Canadians that he is an economist. He likes to quote projections. He likes to hold signing ceremonies. He likes the language of global summits, high finance, transition plans, industrial strategies and bureaucratic frameworks, but Canadians live in reality, and the reality is this: The Liberal Prime Minister is the only one in the G7 who has taken his economy into recession. Every other G7 country is facing tariffs. Every other G7 country is facing global uncertainty. Every other G7 country is operating in the same world economy, but only Canada, under the Liberal Prime Minister, is in recession. That means this is not simply a global recession due to global factors. It is not simply a tariff recession. It is not simply an outside shock. This is a homegrown made-by-Liberals recession. Let us start with a simple economics lesson. Growth comes from work, investment, productivity, innovation and capital formation. A country becomes richer when workers become more productive, when businesses invest in machinery and technology, when entrepreneurs take risks, when capital stays in or is attracted to the country, and when government policy rewards production and innovation instead of punishing it. Over the last 11 years, the Liberals have done the opposite. They increased the industrial carbon tax. They layered on antidevelopment laws. They buried our resource sector in red tape. They chased away investment, domestically and abroad. They created new Liberal bureaucracies staffed by Liberal insiders, new Liberal slush funds that benefited Liberal friends, new bloated programs and new political photo ops. They even doubled Justin Trudeau's deficit and told Canadians it was all an investment. In capital markets, there is a simple rule: Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is rewarded. Under these Liberals, capital is not being rewarded in Canada. It is being regulated, taxed, delayed, blocked and politicized. That is why business investment is falling. That is why major projects cannot get built. That is why Canadian productivity is weak. That is why dollars that should be building Canadian mines, energy projects, factories, homes, ports, pipelines and technology are leaving the country. Since the Liberal Prime Minister took office, $109.3 billion in investment has left Canada, while only $88.4 billion has returned. That is a net loss of $20 billion. That is not a rounding error. That is lost opportunity, lost jobs, lost paycheques, lost productivity and lost national leverage. Canadian households now carry the highest debt in the G7, the least affordable housing in the G7, the highest food inflation in the G7, the lowest investment per worker in the G7, the second-lowest productivity in the G7 and the second-highest unemployment in the G7, and now Canadians are paying the price for this Liberal failure. Canada has lost 112,300 jobs in just three months. There are 45,800 more Canadians who are jobless now than when the Liberal Prime Minister took office a year ago. There are now three unemployed Canadians for every job vacancy. The promise of a better future is being replaced by the fear of falling behind. That is what happens when governments forget the basic lessons of economics. When we tax production and innovation, we get less production and innovation. When we punish investment and capital, we get less investment and capital. When we make it harder to build, fewer things get built. When government consumes more of the economy, families and businesses are left with a smaller part of the pie. That is not complicated; it is basic economics, but after 11 years of Liberal economic policies, Canada has become a case study in how a rich country can make itself poor. The Liberals inherited one of the world's most resource-rich, highly educated and stable democratic economies. They inherited a country rich with energy, minerals, farmland, ports, universities, entrepreneurs and workers who want nothing more than to build a good life. They spent 11 years vandalizing this country by making it harder to work, harder to build, harder to invest, harder to hire, harder to buy a home and harder to feed a family, and now the consequences of this Liberal economic vandalism are being felt everywhere. Food Banks Canada's 2026 poverty report card found that one in four Canadians is experiencing food insecurity and that food bank usage has more than doubled since 2019; one in 10 of greater Toronto area residents now relies on food banks. In 2025, food banks in the GTA saw a record 4.1 million visits, which is up 340% since 2019. Food bank visits have doubled since 2020. One person in five now visiting a food banks is employed, so a job is no longer enough to guarantee stability. That is an indictment of the Liberal government's economic vandalism. That is what this homegrown made-by-Liberals recession looks like. It looks like empty fridges, empty grocery baskets and empty bank accounts. It looks like parents skipping meals so children can eat. It looks like workers doing everything right, but still falling behind. The Liberal Prime Minister and his state-sponsored Liberal media machine may call it technical, but there is nothing technical about a quarter of Canadians being unable to adequately feed themselves. There is nothing technical about a young family paying double the rent they would have paid a decade ago. In 2015, rent for a one-bedroom unit in major Canadian cities was about $970 a month. Today, it is about $1,850. That is not a technicality. That is a generation locked out of independence. There is nothing technical about housing costs. In November 2015, the typical housing cost in Canada was $435,000. Today, it costs $659,000, so it is up 51%. In 2015, it took 39% of median pre-tax household income to own a home. Today, it takes 52.4%, and that does not even account for housing units having smaller square footage today than they did in the past. Every leading economic indicator is flashing. That is not prosperity. That is a decline managed by Liberal press releases. In public finance, Liberal deficits matter because they have consequences. A deficit is tomorrow's tax bill with interest. It is a claim on future wages due to higher inflation. It is a transfer from young Canadians, working families and seniors to fund today's Liberal ideological vanity projects. The Liberal Prime Minister is expected to increase our federal debt to nearly $1.63 trillion by 2031. That is $1 trillion more than when the Liberals took power. Canadians are expected to pay $58.3 billion per year just to service the interest on that debt, which is more than what the Liberals collect on the GST and what the federal government pays provinces for health care. While Canadians were tightening their belts, the Liberal government was loosening its own. While families were cutting back, the Liberals were spending more. While small businesses were watching every dollar, the Liberals were expanding government and bureaucracy. The Liberals wonder why inflation became embedded, why affordability collapsed and why household balance sheets are breaking. Canada now has the highest household debt-to-disposable income ratio in the G7. That is according to Statistics Canada. That means Canadian families are more exposed, more leveraged and more vulnerable when interest rates rise, when household costs increase or when their jobs disappear. Equifax has reported severe stress in household credit. More than 1.5 million Canadians missed a credit payment in the fourth quarter of 2025. Mortgage delinquencies are up 32%. Consumer insolvencies are up 19%. The financial stability is gone for too many households. This is where economics and finance meet real life. When Liberal governments run inflation deficits, it pushes costs into the economy. When inflation rises, interest rates rise. When interest rates rise, households get squeezed. When households get squeezed, consumer spending slows. When consumer spending slows, businesses need to pull back net new investment. When businesses pull back, jobs disappear and productivity tanks. That is how a homegrown Liberal recession is made. It is the chain reaction of disastrous Liberal policies. The Liberals taxed energy and made everything that is moved by truck, train, ship and tractor more expensive. They blocked development and weakened the investment case for Canada. They ran deficits that fed inflation. They created uncertainty with endless rules, reviews, delays and political favouritism. They expanded bureaucracy instead of productivity. Then when the bill came due, the Liberals blamed global factors, but the world did not pass Liberal antidevelopment laws in Canada. The world did not impose Liberal carbon taxes on Canadians. The world did not double Justin Trudeau's Liberal deficit. The world did not create Liberal slush funds for connected Liberal insiders. The world did not chase away Canadian investment. The world did not tell the Liberal government to put politics ahead of everyday Canadians. The Liberals here in Canada did all of that. Liberal excuses do not create growth. Liberal speeches do not create growth. Liberal signing ceremonies do not create growth. Liberal Party slogans do not create growth. Growth comes from workers, builders, farmers, miners, manufacturers, entrepreneurs, innovators and families that are allowed to keep more of what they earn and build more of what this country needs. That is why Conservatives are calling on the Liberal Prime Minister to reverse the policies that created this homegrown made-by-Liberals recession. That means ending inflationary spending and Liberal credit card deficits, repealing Liberal antidevelopment laws, scrapping uncompetitive Liberal red tape and stopping the creation of new Liberal bureaucracies and slush funds for Liberal insiders. We need to get projects built, bring investment home, reward work, restore productivity and put money back in the pockets of Canadians. Canada does not need managed decline. Canada does not need another Liberal lecture. Canada does not need another glossy strategy document written by Liberal consultants and announced at a podium. Canada needs a government that understands the economy is not built in Ottawa boardrooms. It is built by Canadians who get up every morning, go to work, take risks, pay taxes, raise families and keep this country moving. They have done their part. Now it is time for the government to let Canadians build again, let Canadians work again, let Canadians invest again and let Canadians hope again. That is how we reverse this Liberal recession.

Mr. Speaker, this is another example of a Liberal Party mouthpiece laundering their disinformation here in Canada. The Liberals like to accuse Conservatives of cherry-picking information, but that is exactly what they are doing. They are cherry-picking statistics here. The truth is that $109 billion of investment has left Canada, while only $88 billion was attracted. That is a net loss of $20 billion. The Liberals can brag about foreign direct investment, but more money is leaving Canada at a faster pace. About a trillion dollars has been lost since the Liberals took power. Those are the facts. Liberals need to live in reality. Canadians do not live in Liberal speeches.