Budget a failed attempt to fix affordability problems, says MP Thomas

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on March 29, 2023.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

The Liberal government’s budget on Tuesday has failed Canadians in the opinion of Lethbridge MP Rachael Thomas.
Thomas, in a telephone interview late Tuesday, said she and her Conservative colleagues will be voting against it but expects Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to be propped up by the Jagmeet Singh and the NDP.
“At the end of the day, Canadians are hurting, they’re having a hard time making ends meet, whether its putting food on their tables, or paying their mortgage or their rent or being able to drive their kids to school. So Canadians are feeling the pressure more than ever, they’re feeling that life is unaffordable and this budget is a failed attempt to fix the massive affordability problems that the government itself created with its out-of-control spending and over-zealous subsidy programs,” said Thomas.
“So after eight years, we have a government that is totally out of touch with Canadians and they continue to launch one attack after another against the hard-working Canadian people.”
Thomas said “one can only hope” the budget spells the end of Liberal governance in the House of Commons.
Thomas said the government is trying to distract from the problem it created, that problem being “the fact Canadians cannot even afford to heat their homes or put food on their tables . . this budget really needed to be very simple. It needed to have no new taxes, it needed to reign in spending, it needed to make sure that Canadian workers can earn powerful pay cheques and it needed to remove gatekeepers that prevent investment from being made in our country which creates job. That’s what this budget needed to be, that’s pretty simple.”
Thomas added the government can’t replace a healthy economy with government spending “and yet that seems to be the Prime Minister’s only supposed economic plan. But that’s not a plan for economic growth and prosperity.”
Instead, the Liberals plan is full of debt and debt support and ultimately it doesn’t see Canadians for the hard workers they are and the potential within in.
“We needed a budget that sets them free, that took away the bridles of red tape” and that put in hope and confidence in Canadians, Thomas said.
The budget increases the deficit by $40 billion in national debt and the Liberals have abandoned their plan to balance the budget. The total debt load for the country is now $1.18 trillion, the MP added.
“At the end of the day, that lands on the back of the Canadian people… when I raise a concern the government touting that they’re going to pay this subsidy over here and that subsidy over there, what they’re really saying is that they’ll take from your right pocket a whole wad of cash and they’re going to put a few nickels in their left pocket and hope you praise them for it.”

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