Toronto, ON – Today, the Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and the Conservative Party of Canada, sent the following letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney laying out the Conservative demands for the Spring Economic Update:

Prime Minister,

I am writing to demand an affordable government so Canadians can have affordable lives. 

It is no wonder people cannot afford food, fuel and homes under your Liberal government. The more you spend, the more things cost. Your money-printing deficits and high fuel costs fund your reckless spending and drive up the cost of everything people buy. You are the costliest Prime Minister in our history. 

Despite your promise to “spend less”, you have doubled the deficit in less than a year. Your deficit is nearly twice the deficit Justin Trudeau left behind. 

You did it by adding $90 billion of net new spending above and beyond promised savings, with two-thirds going to operating spending, not investment, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Outside of COVID, you have the biggest deficit in history and the highest spending as a share of GDP since 1996.  

You promised to shrink the bureaucracy, but in your first 11 months as Prime Minister, it grew by 7.4 per cent. Consultant spending is up too, and far from spending less, the overall cost of day-to-day operating spending is up 9.1 per cent in under a year. 

It is credit card budgeting: you put the nation’s bills on the credit card and force Canadians through inflated prices to put their bills on their credit cards.

The consequence is that your government’s interest payments on the national debt are now higher than what you spend on health care transfers or National Defence, and more than you collect in GST. Every penny people pay in federal sales tax now goes to bankers and bondholders, not to doctors and nurses. 

You have given Canada the worst household debt, the worst food inflation, the worst housing costs and the second-worst unemployment in the G7. Your record is more cost, more debt, more taxes and more of the same. With the greatest respect, you are just another Liberal.

Canadian economists are sounding the alarm. On Thursday, the C.D. Howe Institute reported that “Canada can no longer pride itself on its fiscal discipline,” and that “the Federal Government Must Change Direction.” The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said earlier this month that “Ottawa’s debt binge and soaring deficits put Canada’s economic future at risk.”

It is not just that you are spending more. It is that you are wasting it with massive spending on boondoggles, foreign aid and phoney refugees. You have enriched insiders like yourself with corporate welfare cheques and tax havens that have allowed your company to be Canada’s number one tax dodger. 

You refuse to pay your share while forcing others to pay more. Removing these policies could reduce deficits, inflation and taxes for hardworking Canadians. 

Let me be clear, we should have no deficit. And if I were Prime Minister right now, we would be on track to achieving that. But your Liberal government has made that impossible for this year. 

That is why I am writing to demand you stop credit card budgeting. Here is how:

  • Cap the deficit for this year at the level Justin Trudeau announced in his last fiscal update: $31 billion; and
  • Present a plan to return to a balanced budget in the medium term. 

Let me show you what you could cut:

  • Axe the $90-billion Alto rail project;
  • Scrap the $742-million Liberal gun grab;
  • Cut back the $20 billion spent on external consultants in 2024-25;
  • Reduce spending on the federal bureaucracy, which will reach $65.8 billion this year;
  • Lower foreign aid spending, which totalled over $12 billion in 2024-25;
  • Cut corporate welfare;
  • Stop taxpayer-funded handouts for fake asylum claimants and abuse of the immigration system; and
  • Close tax havens for insiders while cutting taxes for working Canadians.

Cutting bureaucracy, consultants, corporate welfare, foreign aid, handouts to fake refugees and tax havens can bring down debt, taxes and inflation. 

End credit card budgeting. Bring affordable government, so Canadians have affordable lives.