On Parliament Hill

On Monday, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland presented her government’s fall economic update.

Canada has been operating without a budget for the longest period in our nation’s history.

This update was supposed to be roadmap to guide the government as it moved into the new year. Instead, it was confusing jumble of fringe economics and failed Liberal promises.

The speech was long on promises, most of them recycled from previous Liberal platforms – national daycare, planting 2 billion trees, other “green” initiatives – and big on proposed new spending.

The government is currently running a deficit of approximately $381 billion. To put that in perspective, the budget deficit in 2019 was $19.8 billion.

Our national debt is pushing the $1 trillion dollar mark, with a debt to GDP ratio of over 50%.

The Liberal Government plans to spend an additional $100 billion to “jump-start the economy” after COVID – though when that will be is anyone’s guess because what was glaringly absent from their report was any semblance of a plan.

I have written numerous times over the past few months calling on the Liberal Government to present a clear plan to Canadians of how they intend to get life back to normal. I had hoped that Monday’s speech would offer at least some measures. Sadly, it did not.

No plan to approve and deploy non-invasive rapid (antigen) testing – something our party has been calling on the government to do for months. Other countries have approved this method and, as such, been able to go back to work, school, travel and be reunited with family.

No plan to approve, procure, store and deploy a viable vaccine.

Ten months since the first case of the Coronavirus arrived on our shores and still the Liberals have no plan.

The Liberals were already working at a disadvantage having cancelled our pandemic early warning system in 2019. They also, inexplicably, chose to rely solely on communist China for a vaccine.

To rely solely on the country that not only gave us the coronavirus but then lied about it – all while holding Canadian citizens hostage, refusing to import our pork and canola and engaging in countless acts of espionage, hacking, intimidation and the propagation of misinformation – is unconscionable, and frankly, just plain irresponsible.

When that deal fell apart, the Liberals were left scrambling and have since signed deals with multiple pharmaceutical companies (spending hundreds of millions of dollars) for millions of doses of vaccines that have yet to be produced or proven effective. As a result, for those who want a COVID-19 vaccination, they will be forced to wait behind roughly one third of the world’s population who are in line ahead of them.

Canadians don’t want more government handouts and platitudes, and they don’t want recycled versions of previously broken Liberal promises. What they want are their lives back.

This fall economic report is another dismal failure by a government drowning under the weight of their own incompetence.

No plan. Only debt.