Mr. Speaker, welcome to the Speaker's chair. Today I will be splitting my time with the member for Long Range Mountains. It will be her premier speech in the House. For many of us, it is our first time rising in this House of Parliament.

I want to welcome everybody to the 45th Parliament. I thank the voters of Calgary Centre for sending me here for a third mandate, in the 45th Parliament. I have many people to thank: my colleagues, people around Calgary Centre, all the hundreds of volunteers who came out and knocked on doors with us, and, of course, my wife and my family, who were so supportive throughout the whole process and have been very supportive of the role I play here in the House of Commons. Also, I thank the energy community in Calgary and the finance community across this country, which are looking for better results from governments they elect to run Canada.

I know we have a new Prime Minister.

I welcome the new Prime Minister to the House. He is new here, but I am confident that he will learn about the workings of the House of Commons and democracy in Canada. I am sure this is all new to him, but there are customs here that the new Prime Minister did not have to practise in his life prior to politics. It is obviously different.

I am looking forward to debating with the Prime Minister, because I have been here five and a half years and have had little debate with the other side of the House as far as economic matters go. I have heard Liberal talking lines again and again, so I am looking forward to some actual economic debate that does not just float things by but actually addresses what I think are some of the key issues Canada faces going forward.

Real economic questions require real economic answers. Our country's economic future has been at risk for some time now, 10 years. As we know, we have had the second-worst-performing economy of the OECD's 36 countries around the world over the last decade. That is a choice the previous government made, including the majority of the front bench that allowed this to happen and allowed the economy to go down as far as it did.

I do have to respond to the Speech from the Throne, because there are many things in that speech. The first thing I will say is that there were some excellent issues and concerns raised in the Speech from the Throne. One is tax cuts. Who has been campaigning on tax cuts the entire time we have been in Parliament? The Conservative Party has. We thank the government for picking up that Canadians need tax cuts, not more inflation, not more taxes all the way through and not an extra capital gains tax increase, but tax cuts and the GST cuts to housing. That would be a great position to have during an election, and I thank the Liberals for finally coming to the table and emulating the Conservative position on tax cuts for housing.

Reducing internal trade barriers is a great idea. We have had that idea for Lord knows how long now, to actually get things such as one major project office done in Canada again. It is the instruments that the previous Liberal government put on the table that have hindered economic development in this country. With respect to a safer, more secure Canada, there is border investment, and we thank the government. On military investment, we thank the government. On taking crime seriously, we thank the government.

It is almost as if I were talking to my own colleagues here on this side of the House, with all the great things that were in the Speech from the Throne. I appreciate that the other side of the House has actually come to the realization that this is something that Canadians are experiencing. Therefore I am congratulating the government on the excellent parts of the speech, including, by the way, the indigenous loan guarantee program, which again was promulgated by this side of the House as an idea to advance indigenous reconciliation, economic reconciliation, across this country.

Nonetheless, the government fails at a few things in the Speech from the Throne. Number one is that it is not particularly ambitious, although I realize it is high-level. At the same time, it has to address a number of issues. The Prime Minister, in his Speech from the Throne, talked about spending less and investing more. This is where I am critical of financial subterfuge, because it is subterfuge.

The current government and its predecessor government have run advancing deficits for years and years. If we look at the Liberal program during the election, we see that it increased the budget deficit this coming year and for the foreseeable future to over $60 billion per year. That is not the actual deficit; that is the planned deficit. Events always come forth here that actually push that higher. I guarantee, and I will tell this to my colleagues on this side of the bench, that there is going to be nothing that actually reduces that number.

Financial subterfuge and fooling Canadians about what the government is spending by putting it in a different category is nonsense. Get real. Let me say that to the Prime Minister. These are economic measures that we measure ourselves by in Canada to make sure we are not throwing the baby out with the bathwater as far as the economic future of Canadians goes.

I am going to quote the Speech from the Throne, which was written by the Prime Minister and his staff: “Day-to-day government spending—the government’s operating budget—has been growing by nine percent every year.” Surprise. It goes on: “The Government will introduce measures to bring it below two percent.”

Transfers to provinces, territories, or individuals will be maintained. The Government will balance its operating budget over the next three years by cutting waste, capping the public service, ending duplication, and deploying technology to improve public sector productivity.

I could have written some of that myself, but I am going to ask this: If they are limiting the growth to 2% as far as the operating budget goes, and inflation is at 4%, how do they continue to fund the provinces, which have to fund health care, if they are penalizing them as far as the money they are transferring to them goes?

Inflation is going to be a factor. It has been a factor and will grow to be a factor as they continue with large budget deficits. This is a problem that is going to have to be addressed sooner rather than later. Hiding the numbers in an operating budget or an investing budget is not solving the problem at all. The government has a spending problem, and it has to address the spending problem.

Now I am going to get to something I am really critical of in the speech, and I will quote the government again:

Critically, the Government will undertake a series of measures to help double the rate of home building while creating an entirely new housing industry—using Canadian technology, Canadian skilled workers, and Canadian lumber. The Government will introduce measures to deliver affordable homes by creating Build Canada Homes.... The Government will drive supply up to bring housing costs down.

This is in contradiction to what the housing minister himself said about not bringing down the price of housing. The proof is in the pudding again here, and let me challenge the other side of the aisle, because over the past eight years, from 2016 to 2024, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's budget went from $2 billion a year to $5 billion a year, all while building about 40,000 more homes per year in that period. That is 40,000 homes for an extra $3 billion per year.

Do the math: That is $75,000 per home. The result was that it drove up the price of housing by $200,000, which is 45%. That is great success on that side of the bench: driving up the price of housing and making Canadians more indebted. Therefore, regarding “build Canada homes”, the Liberals are blowing the budget every time, and their results are not there. They need to figure out something else.

I actually spoke to the housing minister and said that the Liberals need a restart. Continuing to spend is not solving anything. They need to get back to a solution where house prices can actually come down, and that starts with their own house. That starts with balancing the budget.

One thing we have not seen here in the lead-up to this Parliament is the commitment to a budget. That is one of the most fundamental democratic instruments we have here in Parliament to hold the government to account for what it is going to spend, and we have seen none of that at this point in time. When is the last time this happened? The last time it was more than 150 days before there was a budget was when Ralph Goodale was the Liberal finance minister, in 2005. The last time we did not have a spring budget, because the Government of Canada operates from April 1 to March 31, was over 25 years ago.

The government has to start respecting the rules of Parliament, the rules of running this country, the accountability it owes Canadian people and the transparency that is required. I do challenge the government to do better. There is much in the throne speech, but there is much that could be much better.

Greg McLean

$598,041.00