The Member of Parliament for Dufferin-Caledon isn’t pulling any punches when it comes to his thoughts on the 2024 federal budget.
Conservative MP Kyle Seeback said the document is a disaster. “It continues nine years of massive, inflationary, deficit budgets that have not made Canadians lives better.”
The Liberals are asking the country’s wealthiest to pay more and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said it would be wrong to pass on more debt to future generations. Public debt charges are on track to grow to $64.3 billion by the 2028-29 fiscal year and Seeback said Prime Minster Justin Trudeau has more than doubled the national debt during his time in office, something that has real consequences. “We are now paying $54 billion a year in interest on the debt. That’s like the minimum payment on your credit card. That number sounds scary but when you put it into greater context it’s even worse. We now spend more money on interest charges on that debt than we do on health transfers to provinces.”
The budget outlined how the Liberals plan to allocate $39.2 billion in net-new spending, something Seeback said won’t help a single resident in his riding. “All this spending has consequences and I always ask people after all this massive spending after nine years, what’s better in your life, please tell me. What’s the government doing better? No one can answer that.”
The New Democrat/Liberal confidence and supply agreement remains in place and shows no sign of ending anytime soon as an election is over a year away. Seeback said the NDP bears as much responsibility as the Liberals do. “They continue to prop them up. We had a remarkable admission by Jagmeet Singh the other day. Now apparently, he wants to axe the tax. He says he’s not in favour of a consumer carbon price but two weeks ago when we tried to stop the increase of 23 per cent on April 1, he voted against our motion.” He adds the NDP is also at fault for allowing the massive inflationary that continues to occur. “It’s all making Canadians lives worse.”