Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River MP Gary Vidal in the House of Commons (Twitter/@GaryAVidal)

By Derek Cornet

federal budget

Northern MP calls Liberal budget ‘reckless’

Mar 29, 2023 | 4:54 PM

Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River MP Gary Vidal is calling the 2023-2024 federal budget reckless.

“Just simply the amount of spending,” he said. “If you go back to 2015, when the Liberals came to power, the annual expenditures of the government were about $280 billion. At the end of 2022/2023, … we’re going to be at about $480 billion. That’s $200 billion more than they were in 2015 and their projections over the next six years take that up to $557 billion. That’s another $76 billion from what we spent in 2022-2023 in seven years.”

The budget, released on Tuesday, is calling for spending of nearly $491 billion in the 2023-24 fiscal year and the deficit set to reach $40 billion. In the next five years, the government expects to increase spending by nearly $60 billion. That means the government no longer expects to be able to balance the books by the 2027-28 as was projected in the fiscal update last fall.

Some of the highlights from the budget include a one-time grocery rebate, which will provide eligible families with up to $467 and single people with no kids up to $234. There’s also a 40 per cent increase to Canada Student Grants, a $13-billion plan to expand dental care to families earning less than $90,000 per year, a new 15 per cent refundable tax credit for clean electricity investments and a refundable 30 per cent tax credit for investments in clean tech manufacturing.

The budget also calls for cuts to government spending and a tax on share buybacks.

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In regards to the grocery rebate, Vidal explained there’s no way it will take a bite out of rising costs. He said due to inflations, families can expect to pay an extra $1,000 in the next year for groceries.

“What would really help people is to get rid of the carbon tax on April 1,” he said “When you live in northern areas … everything on every shelf everywhere has a significant freight cost. They are actually increasing carbon taxes on April 1. That carbon tax is going to add to the costs on every item on every shelf including our food items. That amount they are going to give what they are calling a grocery rebate is going to be eaten up so fast in the increase in the costs that it just honestly isn’t helping.”

Vidal also doesn’t believe expanded dental care will help as many people as the Liberals would like people to think. The NDP estimates nine million Canadians with no dental insurance will gain access to oral health care.

“We always want to make sure we help people who need the help, but if you actually go dig into that, there’s an awful lot of those people, a vast majority of those people have dental coverage through work plans, through other sources, through provincial coverage plans,” he said.

The federal government plans to spend $4 billion over seven years on an urban, rural and northern Indigenous housing strategies beginning in 2024-25. Of that amount, $1.9 billion is expected to be spent in the next five years.

Vidal explained that amount of money won’t put a dent into the housing crisis in Canada and that more creative solutions are needed.

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derek.cornet@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @saskjourno