Mr. Speaker, members will remember that, during the campaign, the Prime Minister promised that he had a plan ready to go, that “a plan beats no plan”. I ask this: Where is the plan?

By the way, I also want to split my time.

I have read arguments in some media against providing that plan, and none of them are compelling or convincing. What is interesting is that, in my reading, I discovered that the three longest times between budgets were during World War II, during COVID and in 2001. Do members know what I found out? All three of those periods were under Liberal governments.

As I explained at the beginning of my speech, a budget is a plan. It is a direction. It is a path forward that reveals and expresses what is important. As we heard from the National Post's assessment, right now, it appears that there is no intention of ever balancing the budget.

Let us ask that question: Why does rising government debt matter? According to Jay Goldberg in the Winnipeg Sun, “[multiple] studies have shown that an increasing debt-to-GDP ratio puts upward pressure on long-term interest rates, raising borrowing costs for [individuals, families and] governments”, all leading to an increased tax burden for families and the middle class, and creating “barriers to economic growth.”

The truth is that Liberal deficit spending also leads to higher prices at the grocery store. A recent Parliamentary Budget Officer report says the cost of servicing public debt, while currently sitting at $49.1 billion for 2025-26, will rise to just under $70 billion in the 2029-30 fiscal year. That means that, just to carry increased debt, we would be paying $70 billion in interest on our debt alone. Members can imagine what we could be doing with $70 billion, but it is going to go to paying the interest on today's spending.

We may recall that the Prime Minister said that we would judge him by the price Canadians pay at the grocery store. That being the case, let us look at some of those price increases for just this year to date. Beef is up 34%. Oranges are up 26%. Apples are up 18%. White rice is up 14%. Sweet potatoes are up 12%. Beef rib cuts are up almost 12%. Coffee is up 9%. Infant formula is up 9%. Meatless burgers, although I do not know who would eat those, are up 6%. Chicken breasts are up 6%. Pork rib cuts are up 6%. Pork shoulders are up 5%. Eggs are up 3.6%.

I find it very interesting that our supply management food processors have had the least increase. What is concerning is that the most significant increases are in the meat category, the protein that we all so desperately need, with 4% to 34% increases right across the board. Canadians are going to pay almost $17,000 on food this year alone, an increase of $800 from last year, all while two million Canadians visit the food bank each and every month.

How can Canadians afford this? Statistics Canada, in its latest report, looked at the annual income in Canada. The latest information shows that the median household income in our country in 2025 will be $68,400. If we take 30% off of that in taxes, that leaves us with $47,000. In other words, over one-third of a family's after-tax income will go to food alone. We heard in the House today that the cost of living in Ontario averages 52% of household income. That leaves a whopping 13% of a family's income for everything else, including transportation, clothing, entertainment and miscellaneous.

Canadians need more than elbows up. We need to get our elbows down and get to work. The Prime Minister said that he would collect $20 billion from the United States through tariffs, yet tariffs are, in effect, at zero for products coming from the United States. Only weeks ago, we were assured that there would be no more tariffs supplied to Canada, yet here we are. We are now facing a doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminum. With Canada being the world's fourth largest aluminum producer and top aluminum exporter, this is concerning.

In Canada, we produce approximately 3.3 million tonnes of aluminum every year, and all the projections say that production will increase. Demand is expected to increase by as much as 40% in the next five years. Aluminum mining supports 9,500 direct jobs and 20,000 indirect jobs. When we translate those numbers into the impact on working Canadians, in Canada, we are talking about 30,000-plus jobs that are going to be affected by these tariffs.

A 50% tariff was very alarming as the United States was Canada's largest export destination for a aluminum products, which accounted for 92% of total aluminum exports. From what we see, plans continue all around us. For example, I wonder which countries Canada may be talking to regarding the purchase of our raw materials. How are those conversations going?

When the President of the United States returned from a recent trip to the Middle East, he announced, upon his return, hundreds of billions of dollars in trade. According to the presidential announcements, the EGA plans to build a $4-billion plant in Oklahoma next year. That smelter will have the capacity to produce as much as 600,000 tonnes a year of primarily aluminum. This will almost double the production of aluminum in the United States. We cannot be led by these promises without seeing the plan forward.

I remember very recently we kept hearing our friends on the other side recite that we needed to take their word for it, as they repeatedly claimed that the carbon tax was not causing inflation. Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Budget Officer explained that the total cumulative effect of the carbon tax, even after the rebates, meant that most families were paying more. All the while, we kept saying, when we tax the farmer who grows the food, the trucker who transports it, the store that sells it and the family who buys it, prices will inevitably go up.

Then, as soon as the Liberal government finally heeded the Conservative plea to remove the carbon tax, Statistics Canada announced that the decrease in inflation was directly related to the removal of the carbon tax. The very next month, inflation went down from 2.3% to 1.7% in one month.

To wrap it up, the Liberals need to take a lesson from our common-sense advice. I invite them to consider the wisdom of our opposition motion. Canadians are depending on a plan that shows them the way forward.

Ted Falk

$542,410.00