Ottawa, ON — The Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Official Opposition, released the following statement:
“With his announcement today, Mark Carney is planning to cook the books with a sneaky accounting trick to take billions of dollars of new Liberal spending off the budget records. To be clear, under the current rules for government financial statements, capital investments are already amortized over the life of assets based on generally accepted accounting principles. That is not what Mr. Carney is proposing. Instead, he wants tens of billions of dollars of new spending to be hidden from the budget altogether despite the fact that Canadians will have to pay for every penny of them.
“It is déjà vu—all over again.
“Carney’s plan is reminiscent of Justin Trudeau’s 2015 plan to run ‘three small deficits’ in order to ‘invest’ in growth that would help the middle class. We know the results: In 2015, Justin Trudeau promised Liberals would run three deficits followed by a balanced budget, saying his new borrowing would stimulate growth and cut middle-class taxes. Ten years later, the budget is still not balanced, the middle class can’t even afford homes while they pay more tax and debt, housing costs and food bank line-ups have all doubled. Now, his economic advisor is making exactly the same promise. Only this time, Mark Carney says he wants to hide billions of dollars in government spending from the books.
“Let’s be clear, Carney’s promise that he will balance the “operating budget” while racking up limitless inflationary deficits on pork barrel spending, pet projects and Liberal waste will result in the same disastrous results as fellow Liberal Justin Trudeau. Carbon Tax Carney can’t change the fact that all spending must be paid for, either through higher taxes or inflationary debt and money printing, all of which Canadians end up paying for. All money borrowed will need to be paid back, with interest. Mark Carney cannot change this fact.
“Only Common Sense Conservatives will fix the budget by bringing in a dollar-for-dollar law to find one dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending, so that we can bring down the deficit, bring down inflation, cut taxes and bring home lower prices for Canadians.”