Matt Strauss
Kitchener South—Hespeler, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, Canadians know a cover‑up when they hear one. That was a cover‑up. They turned the cameras off on a scheduled meeting about the $300‑million PrescribeIT scandal. They cancelled tomorrow's meeting so they can continue to cover it up.”
“The minister responded during that question period, saying she meant that she had spoken with her representative on the board, so in a follow-up question, I asked if her representative had spoken to the chairman of the board. She said she was “not going to get into who said what”. Well, why on earth not? This matters.”
“I think, honestly, that this is how organizations come to be poorly governed. This is how they come to blow $300 million on a program that did not work but that should have been billed successfully for $5 million. The minister is making a Schrödinger’s cat out of responsibility.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to be here so late. I am hoping that if some of the Liberals get sleepy enough, perhaps they will accidentally answer the questions and provide some light on what has gone on at PrescribeIT.”
“Mr. Speaker, I asked several very specific questions. I asked whether Canada Health Infoway is independent or not. I asked whether the Minister of Health has oversight on its funding or not. I asked whether the Minister of Health has the power to fire the CEO of Canada Health Infoway or not.”
“Mr. Speaker, Canada Health Infoway blew $300 million of taxpayer money on PrescribeIT. They have blown $1 billion over 10 years with nothing tangible to show for it. For six weeks, they have failed to produce the documents the health committee has ordered them to produce.”
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“We want to protect Canada's ability to help such people by saying no to the fraudsters and the criminals who are taking advantage of them. Liberal mismanagement on this file has now prompted the Liberals to worsen health care for legitimate refugees. I am dismayed and disheartened that their solution to this issue is to introduce a copay for all refugees. That means that a six-year-old Ukrainian girl who steps on a land mine, who needs a prosthetic limb once she makes it to Canada, will have to pay 30% of the cost. She does not have that money to pay for that limb. That is insane. That is not a solution to any problem and certainly not the problem at hand. Conservatives will pay for that little girl's prosthetic limb 11 times out of 10. We will also send home the criminals who are abusing the system meant to help her.”
“It would be the easiest thing in the world for the Liberals to vote with our common-sense motion to stop this today. I love Canada and I love that Canada is a place that welcomes refugees, desperate individuals who are legitimately fleeing extraordinary hardship like war, famine, genocide or religious persecution. In fact, I would not be in Canada if Canada did not welcome refugees, because I am the son of a refugee. My grandfather brought my mother here in 1967, fleeing persecution and hunger in Communist Yugoslavia. I am not the only MP on this side of the House with that sort of family history. We just heard from the Leader of the Opposition that his wife similarly fled a communist regime as a young girl, and therefore his children, like me, are first-generation Canadians.”
“In Ontario, the medical association currently recommends charging three times the rate to the federal government as they would for a Canadian, tax-paying senior. I had to use my own physician login to get that information on its website. That one cannot be googled. Obviously, a system designed this way is ripe for abuse, and it is being abused. For instance, just this past December, Global News reported that 14 men claimed refugee status only after the B.C. extortion task force opened an investigation into them. That is not how actual refugees behave. That is how criminal extortionists behave once they are caught. This is beyond unreasonable. This is beyond unfair. Literal criminals are falsely claiming asylum to get Cadillac health benefits for years.”
“Someone could not walk and now they can. However, if someone else comes in with a Blue Cross refugee card backstopped by the federal government, the surgeon can charge $5,000 for the same procedure for that failed refugee. If members do not believe me, I invite all of them who are on their phones to google “Billing for out-of-country patients, Alberta Medical Association”. They can see that recommendation in black and white. Let me ask members a question. If a surgeon had a $1,000 case on their wait-list and a $5,000 case on their wait-list, might they not be tempted to do one before the other? I love orthopaedic surgeons. They are good guys, but they are not saints. The Liberals have constructed a literal two-tier health care system, while they fearmonger about us doing something like that.”
“If they fail to show up for their deportation, and currently the government has lost 32,000 people who have criminally failed to show up for their deportations, they continue to get these benefits, even while they are on the run from the law. Yes, they get these bonus benefits that tax-paying seniors do not get and, yes, they get them pretty much indefinitely, but it is also the case that they get better basic hospital care than Canadians. At the health committee, we heard testimony from doctors who came and said that they and their colleagues are charging five times the rate to the federal government that they would charge to the provincial government for the same service. In Alberta, if a senior citizen needs a hip replacement, the surgeon charges $1,000 to do it. That is a great deal, and I thank the orthopaedic surgeons.”
“Mr. Speaker, I wish we were here today to talk about health care. Instead, we have to talk about health care fraud. The fraud is undeniable. It is unfair, and the Liberals could stop it by voting for our motion today. For the Canadians watching at home, let me please explain. Currently, if someone declares themselves a refugee to Canada, they get Cadillac health benefits that tax-paying, law-abiding seniors do not get. They get vision care, pharmacare, dental care, physiotherapy, home care, etc. If, after years of waiting for their refugee claim to be denied, it is denied, they continue to get these Cadillac benefits while they spend years making appeals. If their appeals are denied, they continue to get these Cadillac benefits waiting for their deportation to be scheduled.”
“Mr. Speaker, that minister knows very well that he has lost 32,000 people who have been ordered deported. As a physician, as the son of a refugee to Canada, this issue is very close to my heart. I wish we were speaking about health care today, but instead we must speak about health care fraud. We are talking about people who claim refugee status only after they are investigated or arrested for crimes like terrorism or extortion. We need to talk about such people because they are receiving better health benefits than ordinary tax-paying Canadians. When seniors in Kitchener cannot find family doctors and cannot afford their medicines, how on earth does the Liberal government—”
“Why will the Liberals not reform the parole system to respect the bereaved family's trauma rather than the so-called mental health of a psychotic killer?”
“Mr. Speaker, 21 years ago, residents of Kitchener, Ontario, were shocked to hear of a mass murder in our community. Self-described Satanist Michael Sirois rang the doorbell of 87-year-old Verna, whom he once knew from church. He stabbed her and 47-year-old Randy 27 times, including through both eyes. Danny Penner is the brother of Randy. He shared with me the incredible trauma these murders continue to cause in his family to this day. Out of respect for his brother's memory, he has resolved time and again to speak at Michael Sirois's parole hearings. Last week, Danny had flights booked to attend the scheduled hearing, only for it to be cancelled at the last minute out of respect for the psychotic mass murderer's mental health. The justice system is not delivering justice. Parole should not even be a question for this crime.”
“That is about as much as I have to say about it. I know that the members opposite like to say that they are in a new government and are doing new things. This would be a tremendous opportunity for them to turn away from the legacy of the Trudeau government and the legacy of restricting transparency and begin to restore that transparency, even in this small way. Again, this is not going to send anyone to jail. This is not going to stop the practice of gigantic writeoffs for corporate fat cats with a stable of lobbyists, but it is at least going to give the public the answers they deserve. I urge everyone in the House to vote for this bill. For the members opposite, when they vote for this bill, I urge them to consider apologizing for their actions during COVID and apologizing for their actions during the SNC-Lavalin scandal.”
“It was, by the way, my understanding that the common practice, for years and years, was that parliamentarians could at least ask Order Paper questions and put to the government, “Who did you forgive and why?” However, just in recent years, the CRA has stopped providing that basic transparency. We used to have it by convention, and somehow it has gone away over the last 10 years. Now we need to actually write it into the law that this transparency must exist henceforth. I think it is a shame. I wish that we could use the honour system and could continue with our tradition of open government. It is particularly a shame, given that 10 years ago Justin Trudeau came to power promising to have the most transparent government in Canadian history. In this and so many other ways, we have been betrayed.”
“I instructed my staff, if the meeting did not say Kitchener South—Hespeler somewhere in it, if it was not from a constituent of mine, I did not want to take it. Let me say that from what I have observed during my time here, many of those meetings and receptions are attended by the members opposite. It is my view that these corporations do not spend all that money on lobbying for no reason. They know how to get a return on investment, and I think they are getting that return on investment, as evidenced by the $18 billion that the government forgave large corporations in the last fiscal year. We want transparency. We want the registry. We want to start asking these questions.”
“It does not say that it cannot continue to exercise this forgiveness; rather, it says that the public is owed a debt, that the government, in its boundless wisdom, has decided to write off that debt, and that we need to know whose it was and why. At the very least, it would give us the opportunity to look at the lobbying registry to see how much that corporation paid to lobby the Liberal government and to ask if those two numbers were related. (1150) For those watching at home, I have to say I was so struck, shortly after my election, the first time I opened my parliamentary email. There were literally hundreds of invitations to meet with lobbyists, and there were hundreds of invitations to attend receptions in downtown Ottawa.”
“SNC-Lavalin was able to get its lobbyists, who had the ear of the prime minister, to get sweetheart deals for forgiveness, similar to what the CRA is dishing out to massive corporations, while mom and pop get nothing. However, I do not have any interest in bribing the dictator of Libya anytime soon. An hon. member: Oh, oh! Matt Strauss: Madam Speaker, I am glad that got a laugh. What the bill would do is restore some of the fairness and some of the transparency. If it passes, which I dearly hope it will, and the CRA forgives more than a million dollars in loans or taxes, it would at least have to say who it gave it to and why. I think the vast majority of Canadians would never see a million dollars, let alone have a tax bill of over a million dollars. It is very simple.”
“Through my work in politics, I have come to know some of these lobbyists. They had gigantic contracts lobbying governments, both federal and provincial, to stay open in a way the Vandervoort hardware store simply could not do. Another major example is the SNC-Lavalin scandal. If I were to bribe the dictator of Libya and provide strippers to his sons, I think I would go to jail. However, if I were the proprietors of SNC-Lavalin, I would have the former prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, in the Attorney General's office, violating the principle of prosecutorial independence, which by the way is the same principle the President of the United States broke, resulting in his first impeachment.”
“This arrangement raises the question: Who is the government working for? Is it working for the people or for its friends on Bay Street? I can think of two cases in recent memory where the same question arose and where the same principles of transparency and fairness were broken all across the land. One was the COVID pandemic and the mom-and-pop stores. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was teaching medicine at Queen's University in Kingston. There was a hardware store downtown that stood for 70 years. It was run by the Vandervoorts and was called the Vandervoort General Store. Unfortunately, it closed after 70 years of continuously serving the community while Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Walmart all stood open. Similarly, small-time mom-and-pop gyms were closed down while major branches managed to stay open. How did that happen?”
“For those watching at home, I am thinking of my friend Dave, who is a plumber, and my friend Ryan, who is a contractor. Yesterday, we had a skating event put on by my office in Kitchener, where I met Dragon, a short-haul truck driver, and Lilly, a grade one schoolteacher. Did they receive any forgiveness on their taxes? Did they receive any writeoffs on their loans to the CRA? The answer is that they did not. The vast majority of these writeoffs went to large corporate fat cats who have big lobbyist budgets and spend a lot of time in the offices of the government across the way. The CRA is systematically forgiving the taxes that massive corporations owe to the public. The Globe and Mail reported that last year only 11 corporations accounted for nearly a quarter of the writeoffs.”
“Madam Speaker, it is such a pleasure to rise in support of this very excellent bill, presented by my very excellent colleague from Simcoe North . The bill is important. It speaks to principles that are fundamental to a just government, to fairness and to transparency. I am sorry to say that these principles have been sorely lacking in the actions of the Liberal government over the last 10 years. For those just tuning in at home, every year for the last 10 years the Canada Revenue Agency has forgiven or written off more than a billion dollars in taxes or loans owed. In the last fiscal year of 2023‑24, it was $18 billion. As my colleague just mentioned, this is on the order of our entire defence spending, which is about $35 billion a year.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that the definition of disinformation includes purpose or intent, that it would be equivalent to intentionally misleading or lying. I just wonder if you would rule that it is unparliamentary to accuse the opposition of doing that.”
“Mr. Speaker, I found most of that member's speech totally unnecessary. I will explain it very succinctly. Conservatives are here to oppose bad laws. Bill C-9 has become a bad law because of this bad amendment that the Liberals have agreed to, clandestinely with the Bloc, as reported by the National Post. When the former chair of the justice committee said that he thinks some religious texts are hateful and should be banned, we found that appalling. We thought he was on his way out. He has since been elevated to cabinet, and apparently it is now the position of the government and the Prime Minister that some religious texts are hateful and need to be banned in Canada. I have a very simple question for this member: Who was the Prime Minister when the religious exemption was put into section 319?”
“Mr. Chair, that is a big question for one minute. The major problem is 10 years of failed Liberal policies that have put us in such a weak position where somebody might want to have a trade war with us. We have more resources per capita than any other country. We have the space. We have the people. We have to let them get to work and get bureaucracy out of the way. The Prime Minister and his budget have been building that bureaucracy.”
“Mr. Chair, I am a simple physician from Kitchener, Ontario. I grew up in Hespeler. I represent the people of Kitchener and Hespeler, and I care about the jobs in Kitchener South—Hespeler and the Toyota plant there. All of my effort is on that plant. There are many members on this side who have met with all of those groups. Those lobby groups know not to bite the hand that feeds them. They are still working on the Liberals, begging them to take appropriate action, so, no, they are not going to come out and condemn the Liberals while they are in that situation. It is up to us to be bad cop.”
“Mr. Chair, Canadians do not want handouts when they lose their jobs; they want their jobs back. The Liberal solution to every single problem is to take tax money and then throw it at the wall. We want our jobs back. We want to work. We do not want EI. It is the opposite of what the Liberals ran on. It is the opposite of what the Prime Minister promised. After 10 years, it is still not going to work.”
“Mr. Chair, I respect the honourable gentleman very much. I am very concerned that he did not listen to a word of my speech. We are in a trade war. I am asking the government to fight the trade war, to take actions on the trade war. We do not win a war by lying down and going to sleep. We do not win a trade war by going to the Oval Office and promising the President $1 trillion of Canadian investment for nothing, and then nodding meekly and saying nothing when he promises to rob us of every single Canadian auto job. That is not winning a trade war. That is not what the Liberals ran on. That is not what they promised. I am asking them to take action.”
“If we would all commit, with the leadership of a Prime Minister living up to his promise, to buy the vehicles that we make, it would help those families that are worried about their jobs and about buying presents for their kids this Christmas. Number six is to get rid of the industrial carbon tax. It makes no sense. Let me explain something very simple: Global warming is a global problem. When we put in taxes that drive manufacturing down south, where gas-powered vehicles are made that could have been made in Canada, it does not reduce carbon emissions globally. It is a nonsense policy, and the Liberals should get rid of it today. I look forward to the Liberals explaining to the House, and to all Canadians, why they will not take these concrete actions, which, by and large, they promised in their platform.”
“They announced it in the spring and re-announced it in the fall. No auto manufacturer knows where that money is going or what the Liberals are doing with it. Auto manufacturers cannot make investments until they find out. Number four is to get rid of the HST on Canadian-made vehicles. It is simple. That ties in to number five, which is to just ask Canadians to buy Canadian. Why is it left to the Premier of Ontario to be Captain Canada pouring out a bottle of Crown Royal because one bottling plant was moved down south? The Prime Minister has never asked Canadians to step up and buy Canadian. Why will he not be Captain Canada? The math is simple. In this country, we buy 1.8 million vehicles a year, and we only make 1.3 million vehicles a year.”
“Number two is to get rid of the ridiculous EV mandate. For those following along at home, Toyota makes awesome, low-emission hybrid vehicles in this country and it gets no credit for it. Under the Liberals' mandate, Toyota has to buy EV credits from Tesla, which makes no autos in this country. It is a cash transfer from the Canadian auto worker to Tesla. It makes no sense and should end tonight. The Liberals could end it tonight. I had representatives from Toyota in my office last week explaining that, even if it is paused, they still cannot invest in their people and in their plants if they do not know if they are going to be punished by the radical, woke, nonsense caucus of the Liberal party. Number three is to get clarity on the strategic response fund. It was in the Liberals' platform.”
“I have six concrete actions that Conservatives are proposing that the Liberals could take tonight. Number one is to have countertariffs. It was the core of the Liberals' election platform, and it makes sense. Here is the math: Ford Motor Company is an American car company. After 10 years of failed Liberal industrial policy, it barely makes any cars here anymore, but it does make 150,000 F-150s in the United States and ships them up here, where zero tariffs are paid. Conversely, the Toyota plant in my riding makes 500,000 vehicles, of which it ships 400,000 to the United States, and it is getting killed on tariffs of, on average, 15% of the purchase price. Why does the government not keep its promise, put tariffs on the F-150s and use the money it gleans to offset the tariffs Toyota is paying to protect our auto sector?”
“When I was knocking on doors, people would ask me what to do about Trump, and I would be honest with them. I would say then that we cannot control him. We can only do in this country what we can do in this country, which is a lot, but the Liberals are not doing those things. I sat here during the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry 's speech to kick off this debate. It was a bizarre, ChatGPT history of the auto sector in Canada. Conservatives did not call this debate to talk about the auto sector's history; we came here to talk about its future and how we can secure that future with concrete actions tonight. Do the Liberals even believe in the future of the auto industry in this country? If they do, why were they eulogizing it?”
“Mr. Chair, the debate tonight should not be necessary. The Prime Minister of Canada called an election saying that he needed a mandate to take action to stand up against Trump and to build Canada strong. It has now been nine months, and he has not taken those actions. Many people took the Prime Minister at his word, but we all saw him nodding meekly in the Oval Office while President Trump threatened to take every last one of our auto sector jobs. Today, the President is making good on that threat, and the Prime Minister is failing to live up to his promise. When we ask the Liberals what they are going to do about it, they say, “Who cares?” and that they cannot control Trump anyway. No kidding, we knew that. We were not the ones who called an election saying that we were going to solve the problem by gesticulating with our elbows somehow.”
“Mr. Chair, in 2023, I was a simple Canadian citizen, a physician from Kitchener, Ontario, and I was really concerned that the government signed a $15-billion contract on my behalf, and on behalf of all Canadians, with Stellantis, without showing us that contract. I know that my colleague from Vaughan—Woodbridge is a successful businessman in the steel industry. We now see, as it was disclosed at the industry committee, that the industry minister did not even read the contract, much less show it to the Canadian public. Reflecting on his extensive business experience, could the member explain what on earth could justify that?”
“Mr. Chair, it is such an honour to rise on behalf of the people of Kitchener South—Hespeler, thousands of whom work at the largest car plant in Canada, the Toyota factory in Hespeler. We, on this side of the House, have explained time and again how this electric vehicle mandate directly hurts workers right now and how it ends up being a cash transfer to Tesla, which does not make cars in Canada. It is a cash transfer from Canadian auto workers to an American auto firm. Every time we bring it up, the Liberals on the other side say they are looking at it and working on it. The member is more experienced in politics than I am. Can she explain why the Liberals cannot just end it today?”
“Mr. Speaker, that member did not answer the question, so I am going to ask it again. The Prime Minister caved on countertariffs, on digital services taxes and on legal disputes about softwood lumber. We thought he was getting nothing for Canadians, but it turns out he was getting lots for his company, Brookfield. Days after he was in the White House, the Americans signed an $80-billion nuclear reactor deal with Brookfield. Why is it that everywhere the Prime Minister goes, Brookfield gets a sweet deal and Canadians get no deal? Why?”
“Madam Speaker, I think we have decades-old standards for how budgets are disclosed to the Canadian public. To suddenly change those standards is shifty or sneaky. Then, it causes me a crisis of faith to find out that, even based on the Liberals' own terms, they are not increasing investment by as much as they are increasing spending. I was looking at Brookfield Asset Management's stock price increase. Shortly after the Prime Minister became the chairman there, he did some reorganization, moving the money around into different pots, and its stock price shot up compared to the S&P 500. Two years later, it is coming back down, because playing these sorts of shell games between operating expenses and capital may look very good and may attract some investor dollars, but in the end, those investors are going for a wash.”
“That is why we have had housing minister after housing minister from the Liberal side promise to solve the housing crisis.”
“Madam Speaker, as for the second point, it is easy to tell mistruths with statistics. Canada's federal debt is low compared to pure countries as a percentage of GDP, but in terms of Canada's total public debt, because the federal government off-loads so many services to the provinces, such as education, housing in some important respects and health care, the provinces have taken on terrible debts. The federal government has to backstop that debt, which is what puts us at risk of having a difficult time financing our debt. It is important to choose the correct statistics when we are talking about a specific problem. As for my leader 's record as a housing minister, this is a very tired attack. I cannot believe the member did not hear the answer in the speech I gave. Builders build homes; housing ministers do not build homes.”
“How could I kiss them goodbye this morning and tell them that I am going to Ottawa to vote for a budget that puts them in thousands of dollars of debt before they even hit kindergarten? I honestly ask whether the Liberal MPs have small children. Have they told them that they are raiding their college fund, foreclosing on their future, to place bets on government bureaucracies that never pay off? I cannot imagine they have. In fact, I suspect that they were rather taken in by the Prime Minister 's promises as well. I suspect that they did want to build Canada strong, spend less money and invest more and that many of them are feeling terribly disappointed now. To them, I extend my warmest personal invitation to come sit next to me on this side of the House. I ask them to please stand up now if they would like to take the offer.”
“Even if people thought the Liberals had perhaps turned over a new leaf after 10 years of bad investment, I am sorry to disabuse them of this notion. Pouring money into bureaucracy will not fix the housing crisis; it is the cause of the housing crisis. We need to build Canada strong, but the budget builds Canadian bureaucracy strong. I want to make a last point about the Liberals' last promise: generational investment. The budget is not providing generational investment; it is providing generational debt. They are increasing spending by a lot and investment by a little. The sum total is $2,000 of new debt for every man, woman and child in our nation just this year. I have a three-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son.”
“He moved locations, and to get his operations running up at capacity, he needed to put in a new washroom for a change room. It took months and months to get that permit for a toilet. In each case, it is terribly demoralizing and financially injurious to have bureaucrats tell people what they can and cannot do with their own property when they are trying to build houses and provide services for our communities. In every case, and this is the issue from coast to coast to coast, bureaucrats stand in the way and say it takes nine months to approve a toilet. Rather than standing up against this violation of property rights and letting builders build, the federal government is going to spend $15 billion for a new federal bureaucracy to add on to the municipal bureaucracies. This will not work; it is a bad investment.”
“In Canada, home builders have always built homes. The reason they are not building homes now is that they are not allowed to. (1540) My friend Cal is a small-time renovator who lives in Kitchener. He bought a dilapidated house in London, Ontario, and wants to renovate it into a triplex so that three families can move in. He has waited months and months for the city to approve it. I have an Albanian friend, Ben, who is a mid-sized housing developer in Kitchener. He bought a plot of land and wants to build 36 townhomes. The city fought him and said he can only build 16. He had to get lawyers and fight in the Ontario Land Tribunal for two years to finally be allowed to build homes during a housing crisis. My friend Mike owns a gym in Kitchener.”
“It does not seem to me that in the aggregate or in any specific case, when the Liberals say they are going to take people's money to invest it on their behalf, they do any sort of a great job at it ever. It never seems as though their investments provide anything like an acceptable rate of return. In fact, Bernie Madoff gave his clients a better rate of return. However, let us take a specific case and drill deeper: housing investment. I find myself asking how many members in the House have ever, with their own hands, built a house from start to finish. An hon. member: I have. Matt Strauss: Madam Speaker, there are not many, and this does not surprise me. In general, politicians do not know how to build anything, because they do not build things. Builders build things, and home builders build houses.”
“In fact, I see that it has been decimated by the Liberals' inflationary deficits. Lastly, as a practising physician, I can promise we are far from eliminating health system wait-lists as they promised; wait-lists are worse now than they have ever been. Furthermore, the national debt has gone from $600 billion to $1.2 trillion over the last 10 years. None of this quite seems as though the Liberals' investments are paying off. It rather seems as though Canadians know how to invest, but the government keeps taking their money and then investing it on white elephant programs that provide no rate of return. What is the top-line conclusion of this? It is that we are now spending $60 billion on debt financing. This is more than we spend on health care transfers or on national security.”
“If that house loses 20% of its value, that person is $200,000 poorer, and that is a very bad investment. Every single year the Liberals have been in power, they have told us that they are taking our money through taxes to invest it for us, because we do not know how to invest as well as they do. They did it in 2015. Their platform promised “historic new investments in infrastructure”. In 2019, their platform promised, “We will run modest deficits for three years so that we can invest in growth for the middle class”. Their 2021 platform promised to “Immediately invest $6 billion...to support the elimination of health system waitlists.” What sorts of returns did we get on this investment? Did any of that happen? I do not see the historic infrastructure they built from 2015. I do not see that the middle class has experienced growth.”
“I thank God for the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Table 1 of the PBO report on the budget shows an increase in capital investment based on the PBO definition of $7 billion for 2025. The deficit has doubled from $40 billion to $80 billion, which is a $40-billion increase, and only a fraction of this, or $7 billion, is new investment under this definition. Obviously, this is not generational or transformative, just in terms of the size of the investments, but are they good or are they bad investments? I am a physician, and I do my own investing for my retirement. How to define an investment as good or bad is very easy. A good investment provides a good rate of return, and a bad investment provides a negative rate of return. To use the Prime Minister 's Instagram example, if someone buys a $1-million house, that is indeed an investment.”
“Millions of thoughtful and prudent Canadians did believe him and did vote for him. Today the rug has been pulled out from under them. The budget is a sham; the Liberals are spending more. Before they start shouting about tariffs across the way, those at home can please turn to page 66 of the budget document, Table 1, in which the government estimates that $7 billion of the deficit is due to tariffs, or what they call “Economic and fiscal developments since FES 2024”. Therefore, the operating deficit increases by $33 billion, but only $7 billion of that is in any way a consequence of tariffs. The rest is self-inflicted. Let us talk about the second half of the Liberals' promise, which is to invest more. The issues are twofold: how much investment there is and whether the investments are good or bad.”
“The day-to-day operating balance was minus $4.1 billion under the Liberals' definition for 2024, and it will be $33 billion under their definition for 2025. Is this what spending less on operating expenses looks like to the Prime Minister , increasing the operating deficit by 700%? Have the Liberals gone mad? Do their promises mean nothing? How are we supposed to have a democracy when someone can run an election on balancing the operating budget and then increase the operating deficit by 700% in their first year? This is a terrible trick on voters. If I was not already signed up for blue team and a well-dressed Goldman Sachs banker ran for prime minister with red team promising to spend less and invest more, I might have believed him. I might have voted for him. That is how much I agree that we should spend less and invest more.”
“In an April 19 Instagram video, the Prime Minister explained what he meant by that. He likened it to purchasing a house: The purchase price is a capital investment, and heat and electrical are operating expenses. Let us take the first half of his promise on his own terms. Is he spending less on operating expenses? No. By the Liberals' own extremely loose definition of investment, the operating expenses are going up under budget 2025. I would ask those following at home to please turn with me to Table A1.5 on page 233 of the budget.”
“Madam Speaker, this is a real doozy of a budget. It is such a doozy that perhaps this will be my last speech in this Parliament, so let us make it count. I want to start with some confessions. I believe we need to spend less and invest more. I believe we need to build Canada strong. I believe we need to make generational investments in Canada's future. Unfortunately, this budget does none of those things. Each of those slogans is taken straight from the Prime Minister 's mouth or the Liberal Party platform. We are six months in. The budget is six months late. Even with that homework extension, the budget fails to produce on each one of the Liberals' own platform promises, and the House must give their work a failing grade. Let us walk through them. The central promise was to spend less and invest more.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is adjusted for the inflation that they caused. The Liberals' new budget is generationally expensive. It is historically expensive. Every dollar the Prime Minister spends will come out of Canadians' pockets. The more Liberals spend, the more things will cost. Through either taxes or inflation in the future, the costs will come. Eighty billion dollars is $2,000 for each man, woman and child in our country. That is $2,000 for my three-year-old daughter and $2,000 for my one-year-old son. Why should they have to pay this generational debt the Prime Minister is saddling us with? Why is the Prime Minister breaking his promise to spend less?”
“Madam Speaker, I have admired the hon. member's oratory skills for many years, so it is a real delight to get to ask him this question now. One part of his speech that I admired most was his defence of provincial jurisdiction. I think it is important that the people who would be most affected by a policy be the ones who design it, so then I was surprised when he said that he thinks the national carbon tax was critical for fighting climate change. Does he not find that a bit contradictory with what is otherwise his defence of provincial jurisdiction? Would he maybe provide some comments on the fact that in the United States, carbon emissions per capita have gone down by a greater percentage over the last 10 years that the Liberals have been talking about the carbon tax?”