Member of Parliament for Skeena-Bulkley Valley Ellis Ross described the recently approved federal budget as “gambling with our children’s future.”
Mark Carney’s first budget as prime minister was approved in a narrow vote. The Bloc Québécois and Conservatives voted against the budget including Ellis Ross. The government described the budget as making “generational investments,” with funding committed to several major projects, including four in northwestern B.C. Conservative MPs raised concerns about the large investments at a time of economic uncertainty.
“I think the broken promise of less spending and more fiscal responsibility is going to hurt our kids in the long run. The debt is over $1 trillion now. This deficit is going to be $56 billion at least, and that’s just the interest payments on the debt that this budget’s going to incur. This budget’s going to mean a lot of debt, not only for the younger generation, but a lot of spending priorities that weren’t necessarily promised in the election,” said Ross.
Ross said the Conservatives had a chance to offer amendments, such as reducing government spending, investing in resource development and improving affordability, but the amendments were not adopted.
“We didn’t like the idea of borrowing on our children’s future and never have, so we did offer some amendments, but they got rejected.”
