Trudeau Budget Hurts Working Canadians

March 29, 2023

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OTTAWA, ON: Conservative Member of Parliament for Peace River – Westlock, Arnold Viersen issued the following statement regarding the release of the 2023 Federal Budget:

“Today’s Liberal Budget continues Justin Trudeau’s record of high spending with a $43 billion bonanza of new debt. In fact, Liberal government spending is still up over $120 billion compared to pre-pandemic spending levels.

“The Finance Minister boasted that her budget reflected Canada’s ‘proud tradition of fiscal responsibility.’ Yet she conveniently left out of her speech that Canada’s fastest growing expenditure was public debt charges. The cost to manage our surging national debt has risen from $24.4-billion in 2019-20 to $43.9-billion this year and projected to rise to $50.3-billion by 2028.

“Ballooning deficits, strangling regulation, and punishing taxes. All of that fuels inflation, slashes paycheques and destroys productivity.

“As Canada faces a recession, this will make it more difficult for families to buy groceries, pay their heating bills, or cover their car payments.

“The priorities of the Conservative plan to ‘make Canada work for the people who work’ are:

· Bring home powerful paycheques with lower taxes, so hard work pays off again.

· Bring home lower prices, by ending inflationary carbon tax hikes & deficit spending.

· Bring homes people can afford, by removing government gatekeepers to free up land and speed up building permits.

“A Conservative government will bring home a country that works for people who work. We must bring back the common sense of common people. As Pierre Poilievre says: ‘Our country can’t borrow it’s way to prosperity.’

“Conservatives work for those who work and we will vote against Justin Trudeau’s inflationary budget.

“There is one sliver of good news in the budget. The government hopes to cut $7 billion in spending on consultants and government travel. However considering the Liberals spent $17.7 billion on third-party consultants in 2022, this just doesn’t go far enough.”

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