A budget of blatant ineptitude and a corruption cover-up

 

 

 

OTTAWA – With the SNC-Lavalin corruption scandal still dragging them down, yesterday, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government introduced Budget 2019. John Barlow, Member of Parliament for Foothills, released the following statement in response:

“The deliberate failure of the Liberals to balance the budget has undermined any fiscal credibility of this government.

This budget is, simply put, the most expensive cover up in Canadian history. Trudeau is trying to distract Canadians from the SNC-Lavalin corruption scandal by throwing around billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. These are promises bankrolled on borrowed money future generations will be paying for because of mounting Liberal deficits.

This is a budget of $41 billion in new spending and a $19.8 billion deficit all because Trudeau is afraid to let his former Attorney General speak.

A failing economy is a failure against hard-working Canadians and the businesses that support job growth. It is a botched opportunity that will fail to grow the Canadian workforce and a blatant disregard for the businesses that generate employment opportunities across our nation.

The implementation of the Training Benefit program for instance, is not achievable unless the provinces and territories amend their labour laws on leave provisions. Over five years it will cost $710 million just to implement a $1.7 billion program and employment Insurance premiums are expected to increase by $1.5 billion over the same period.

As stated by the CFIB, “this new and expensive program will increase the cost of the Employment Insurance (EI) system by over $300 million per year with no guarantee of any link to the needs of employers.”

If Trudeau really cared about skills training and jobs, he would not be blocking the construction of pipelines and scaring off tens of billions of dollars in capital investment with the likes of the No Pipelines Bill C-69, the carbon tax and crippling regulatory regime which has left 120,000 energy workers without jobs.

If he really cared about students, he would not have canceled the student text book tax credit or the public transit tax credit, both important for people going to school.

If he was serious about helping Canadian workers, he wouldn’t have tried to tax employee discounts, health and dental benefits and go after small business owners.

His actions speak louder than intentionless promises in this budget.

This Liberal budget reaffirms Trudeau cannot be trusted with the Federal pocketbook or with transparency.