2022-11-21 Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act C - 32

Mr. Speaker, the NDP and the Liberals are patting themselves on the back for this fall economic update. They should not. This is a fall update. Canadians are falling, and the NDP-Liberal government is failing. Canadians are seeing their standards of living erode and the cost of living skyrocket because of inflation.
If one wants to get depressed, they should go grocery shopping. Basic food costs are way up: bread, apples, cereal up 17%; lettuce is up 21%; chicken, 11%; cheese and bacon, 10%; pasta is up 22%. For those who want to cook from scratch because they think they are going to save, flour is up 24%.
The Abacus poll that came out earlier this month said that 50% of Canadians are finding it a lot more difficult and 38% a little more difficult. That means almost nine out of 10 Canadians are feeling the impact of inflation at the grocery store. One in five Canadians are saying they are having to reduce meal sizes or meals altogether in order to save money. This is Canada.
More people are going to the food banks now than in history, 1.5 million in October alone. I know this has been repeated by a number of speakers, but I think we cannot just accept it as just another statistic. These are Canadians who are facing tremendous difficulty. I talked with the local food bank where I live, in Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, and they said they have never seen anything like it.
The Liberals just shrug their shoulders and do not take responsibility for this mess. They blame it on Ukraine, on COVID, on anything but themselves. Going back to the polls, 56% say the Liberal policies on inflation are making things worse, while only 7% say it has helped. The summary of the Abacus poll is this, right here: Inflation is making life difficult for millions and is the number one political issue in Canada. The biggest impacts are felt in food, but millions are finding it difficult to cope with their energy and housing costs.
On the issue of inflation, Liberals are like a deer caught in the headlights, stunned and dangerous. I have seen deer sometimes in traffic. They can bounce around anywhere. What we are seeing are the Liberals making poor decisions that are causing a serious accident in Canada.
I wish I could just say it was an accident. Let me explain. They have printed hundreds of billions of dollars that they put into the economy over the past three years. Nearly half of that money that they have pumped into the economy has had nothing to do with COVID. The money supply has increased by 25%. What does that mean? It means there is a lot more money around for the same goods than there was a few years ago. That just makes everything more expensive. It is like Canadians have had a big pay cut. They may not have seen the number of dollars on their paycheques go down. As a matter of fact, it may have even gone up a little, but because the dollars do not go as far, it is essentially a significant pay cut.
It seems that the Liberals have seen this pandemic as a time to be silly with Canada's economy. That is a nice way of saying stupid. The finance minister said it was no big deal to print money or to borrow money. She said, listen, it is half a percent. It is at only half a percent. Let us just borrow, borrow and borrow and spend, spend and spend. They said it was going to be like this for years to come. In the past few months it has gone up 750%. Yikes. That is how much interest rates have gone up: 750%.
Now there is trouble. The cost of interest rates on the deficit is going to be as much as what the government is spending on health care. In this very dangerous time, when we are seeing war in Ukraine and threats elsewhere, it is going to cost more than the government spends on National Defence, which, I will say, is not a priority for the Liberals at all. This is very significant.
Canadians are very concerned about energy costs to heat their homes and keep fuel in their cars so they can go to work, go to the supermarket and take their kids to sports. Seventy-five per cent of Canadians say this is an important issue. The Liberals are absolutely oblivious to our call to axe the carbon tax, which is making everything more expensive, from transportation and food costs to everything else.
I must admit it is very challenging for me, and I am sure for my colleagues, to listen to the Liberals brag and pontificate about their plan to save the world by tripling home heating costs. They have a tax plan, but not a climate change plan. The Liberals' plan is just to promote. We are number 50 out of 63 countries on the greenhouse gas reduction target. The Liberals have not met any of their targets. What they are doing is ridiculous and, yes, full steam ahead toward the iceberg.