The following is a transcript of the Hon. Pierre Poilievre’s from November 5, 2026. These remarks have been edited for clarity. Check against delivery.
Ottawa, ON – Monsieur le Président, la job numéro un pour le budget aurait dû être de faire économiser les Canadiens. Mais la réalité, c’est qu’avec un autre 765 milliards de dollars de dettes ajoutées d’ici cinq ans, le gouvernement dépose un budget à crédit qui va gonfler les taux d’intérêt, l’inflation, l’épicerie, l’essence et le coût du logement.
Monsieur le Président, c’est un budget qui va rendre la vie plus coûteuse pour les mères monoparentales, les petites entreprises et les aînés. C’est la raison pour laquelle les conservateurs voteront contre. On veut sauver de l’argent aux Canadiens et rendre leur vie plus abordable.
The Minister would have more aptly named this budget “Mastered by Debt”: mastered by debt that will inflate the cost of food, fuel and housing. The first priority of this budget should have been to save Canadians money. But by adding $765 billion in new debt, a record-smashing sum over the next five years, this Prime Minister will inflate the cost of fuel, food and homes. This is a costly credit card budget that Canadians can’t afford, and Conservatives will vote no.
First, our demands. We asked the Prime Minister to cut gas prices by 20 cents a litre and $1,200 per family by eliminating all federal taxes at the pump. Not only did the Prime Minister fail to do that, he intends to raise gas taxes early next year, which will mean that Canadians will pay more not only at the pump, but also for every single item that arrives at the grocery store.
Second, we asked them to cut waste. Instead, the Prime Minister is growing spending in this budget by an eye-watering $150 billion.
Third, we asked the Prime Minister to keep his promise from the election to lower the debt-to-GDP ratio so that our debt no longer gobbles up so much of the resources needed for healthcare and other basic benefits. Instead, the Prime Minister has officially broken that promise today.
As I said, the Prime Minister will add $765 billion to our national debt, the single biggest borrowing binge in Canadian history. More than Trudeau, more than during COVID, more than any other government in the history of this country: an amount that will lead to higher inflation and interest rates today and higher taxes down the road.
The single biggest item of spending growth in this budget is not seniors programs, not healthcare, not security, not sovereignty, but the opposite. It is interest on the national debt.
In fact, seniors, single moms and small businesses will now have to spend about $60 billion every year on interest to bankers and bond holders. That’s right, money for bankers and bond holders instead of nurses and doctors. Every family of four will spend $6,000 this year on interest alone, an amount that rises to $8,100 annually by the year 2030-31.
In fact, by that year, the government will be spending $17 billion more on debt interest annually than on healthcare to cover up the growing cost of the Prime Minister’s costly credit card budget. He’s cooked the books. He’s divided the spending onto three separate credit cards: operational, capital and Crown corporations.
The only problem is he has no rule to determine which expense goes where. There is no other government anywhere on earth that follows the accounting practices the Prime Minister is introducing. They violate the generally accepted accounting principles that apply to corporations. And if he were to do this with any private company, that company would be charged with defrauding its investors and its workers, Mr. Speaker.
Furthermore, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says there is no defining rule to determine what is operating capital or Crown corporation. And by putting billions of dollars into the latter category, it’s effectively like gambling away a fortune on the company credit card and then pretending you don’t have to pay it back, Mr. Speaker.
To understand the scale of the financial engineering in which the Prime Minister is engaged, let me put this into perspective for you. The budget forecasts an already staggering series of deficits of $289 billion over the next five years. But that does not include non-budgetary transactions over the same period of $476 billion, which means that the government will borrow $765 billion over that period, of which two-thirds are hidden from the budget books.
Let’s get this clear. This Prime Minister intends to borrow a half a trillion dollars off the budget books. But here’s the bad news for everyone else: you have to pay interest whether the government puts it on the books or not. The Prime Minister can mock Canadians, the single moms, the seniors, the small businesses – as he’s doing now – who will have to pay that interest, but none of them will collect the interest on that debt. The Prime Minister should show Canadian taxpayers some respect.
Mr. Speaker, this budget should have been about real people with real problems, in the real world, in their real lives. People like Sally, a single mom and a waitress whom I met at the restaurant in my hotel in Windsor. She works full-time as a waitress, and then she goes over to another hotel and works full-time again in charge of all of the laundry at that other hotel. And on the weekends in her spare time, she has a catering business.
She tells me that even with those three jobs, she’s not able to get ahead, and she wonders if her three boys will ever be able to afford a home, as I hear Liberals giggling and laughing at her misery on the other side of the House of Commons. That is the callous and cruel mentality that they have towards suffering single moms who cannot afford to pay their bills in this country, Mr. Speaker.
Or the young guys whom I met just the other day at a Southwestern Ontario pub who work at a GM dealership nonstop. And all of them, despite being in their early 30s, believe they will never be able to afford a home.
Or the small business owner who has a gym, who came here as an immigrant and opened up a small business with a dream that his family would get ahead. But every year, the costs imposed by inflation make it impossible for him to maintain his business and keep his employees going, wondering if he will even be able to stay in business.
Mr. Speaker, that is why Conservatives said a week ago that the single job of this budget should have been to save Canadians money, and you don’t do that by adding $765 billion of debt on the backs of Canadians.
And then there’s the theatre. They claim that they’re going to help small businesses on capital gains. Well, they listed this new capital gains break and they said everyone qualifies except if you’re in agriculture, mining or restaurants.
In other words, everybody qualifies except for everybody, Mr. Speaker. I suspect that if you want to qualify, you’ll have to apply for a special carve-out at the Major Projects Office, and maybe those companies that have employees on their payroll can get themselves a tax carve-out.
Everyone else will be paying more, will be filling out more forms and will be burdened with even more costs.
Now, the only thing that is worse than the Prime Minister cooking the financial books is cooking the books on immigration. We know that he did that earlier this year when he claimed that the population of Canada was 300,000 fewer people than it actually was.
You have to wonder: is it incompetence or is it dishonesty that would have the government lose track of 300,000 people? And today, yet again, the Prime Minister uses a side window to increase the number of people who can come in through new programs that are not counted by existing ones.
Mr. Speaker, new Canadians and those born and raised here, both of them, deserve an immigration system that works. We need to ensure that we always have housing, healthcare and jobs by getting immigration back under control.
Monsieur le Président, nous avons présenté un plan au premier ministre afin de faire sauver de l’argent aux Canadiens. Ça a commencé en éliminant le gaspillage. Nous avions proposé à peu près 200 milliards de dollars d’économies en coupant dans la bureaucratie, les consultants, l’aide à l’étranger, le BS corporatif et Alto, un projet qui va gaspiller de l’argent en enrichissant les amis des libéraux.
Nous avons proposé ces idées, ces économies, afin de pouvoir réduire la taille et le coût de l’État sur les épaules de monsieur et madame Tout-le-Monde, de cette mère monoparentale dont j’ai parlé, de ces jeunes hommes qui veulent avoir une maison ou sur les épaules des petites et moyennes entreprises. Nous avions proposé d’éliminer toutes les taxes sur l’essence pour économiser 20 cents le litre à la pompe et réduire le coût de tous les produits qui arrivent dans un camion. Nous avions proposé que le premier ministre respecte la promesse électorale qu’il avait faite il y a un an et demi de réduire la dette par rapport au PIB. Mais le premier ministre a rejeté ces propositions et il a mis en danger notre système financier.
Monsieur le Président, nous allons continuer à nous battre pour les Canadiens. En fait, j’ai un mot d’espoir pour tout le monde : ce n’est pas trop tard. On peut changer ce budget. On peut remplacer le budget sur la carte de crédit avec un budget qui va faire sauver de l’argent aux Canadiens, si et seulement si le gouvernement est prêt à accepter notre amendement qui est offert de bonne foi. Monsieur le Président, c’est un amendement qui va faire sauver de l’argent aux Canadiens et remplir notre pays d’espoir.
Mr. Speaker, we put forward a plan that would have saved Canadians money by cutting waste, getting rid of all taxes on gas and by reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio, as the Prime Minister had promised. We put forward a clear plan to save that money by cutting bureaucracy, consultants, foreign aid, handouts to fake and phony refugees, cutting back on corporate welfare, money that is going to the little club of Liberal insiders like those at Telesat: the Prime Minister’s very close personal friend whom he helped out with a two and a half billion dollar handout. And I know he’s getting very nervous and agitated about it today, just as he did earlier.
By stopping the handouts to the big AI giants who take tax dollars from single moms and small business people and by cutting back the waste and corruption in this government, he could have taken our plan to reduce taxes, debt and inflation.
But I bring to the government some hope: it’s not too late. They can reverse their costly plan today. They can replace the costly credit card budget with a budget that saves Canadians money, if only they accept our amendment, our friendly amendment, which is brought forth in good faith. I know the Prime Minister will be glad to receive it.
And so I move, seconded by the Honourable member from Newmarket—Aurora, that the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after “That” and substituting with the following:
This House rejects the costly credit card budget because:
- The budget should be titled “Mastered by Debt”;
- It inflates the cost of gas, groceries, homes, and interest;
- It fails to save Canadians money and instead costs them more;
- It fails to take taxes off gas and diesel and instead raises taxes even further;
- It adds $765 billion in new debt over the next five years, totalling $44,000 per family;
- It increases the money spent on debt interest more than what we spend on military and healthcare, totalling $6,000 per family of four;
- It fails to keep the Prime Minister’s promise to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio;
- It excludes major regional economic drivers like agriculture, forestry, minerals and fisheries from the capital gains tax exemption;
- It fails to reduce immigration targets to match the rate of growth in the number of houses, doctors and jobs; and
- It fails to eliminate wasteful spending, increases spending on bureaucracy, consultants, corporate handouts, tax havens, foreign aid, deluxe benefits for false asylum claimants and the wasteful Alto Rail boondoggle.
Mr. Speaker, this is an amendment brought forward in good faith that will actually save Canadians money and fill this country with a sense of optimism, hope and freedom.
And I call on the Prime Minister to adopt this motion and put our country first. Thank you.