Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today in opposition to the Liberal budget. I am confounded by the fact that it has been called “building a strong economy that works for everyone” when the economy is neither strong nor working for everyone. That should be quite obvious to anyone paying attention.

In the spirit of my former colleague at the National Post, Rex Murphy, I would like to take some time to speak to the concerns of everyday hard-working Canadians to try to help make sense of how a government can call a budget, at this time and in this economy, strong and working for everyone.

I have been in Ottawa now for just over a month. I was sworn in as a member of the House in April. One of my key observations is that we have a Liberal government that is living in an alternate reality from the one I lived in before I was in politics and the one I cling desperately to every time I am here. It seems as though, in this economy, we have Liberal elites experiencing one thing and everybody else experiencing something else.

There are some things I would like to share with the Canadian people that I have observed since April when I was sworn in. For the last two weeks, I have heard the Liberal member of Parliament for Whitby defend high grocery bills and make excuses for the fact that it is very expensive for families to purchase the food they need, never mind the healthy food they need. Earlier today, he went on and on about that.

Last week, he said, “Mr. Speaker, I know that the member opposite feels that grocery prices are too high, and they have been, certainly. However, the CPI index has shown that food prices are stabilizing in our economy, which is good news for Canadians.” I would like to point out the obvious. Canadians listening to me right now might be asking if it is good that high grocery costs are stabilizing and if the objective of the government should not be to bring down the costs since they are so high. This is a good window into the kind of thinking going on. This is what I mean when I say we have an economy for Liberal elites and one for everybody else. Let us continue exploring this.

The day before the Liberal MP for Whitby made the comment that grocery prices are stabilizing, despite being obscenely high, a new food bank opened in Whitby. In his riding, the day before he said in Ottawa that things are going great and he has good news for Canadians, a new food bank opened up down the street from his constituency office. This is an alternate reality. The Liberals are creating some kind of bizarre picture of what is going on in this country, and people deserve to know that. They are saying how dare the Liberals produce a budget and call it “building a strong economy that works for everyone”.

Let me share some more observations from what I have seen since coming to Ottawa last month. Yesterday, across the street at the housing committee, Trudeau's housing minister, the member for Central Nova, said something that I had to ask him to repeat just so I could confirm it was even true because I was shocked. I thought I must have misheard him, but no, I heard him correctly. He said that the Liberal government's national housing strategy has exceeded its objectives. How is that possible? How is it possible that in this economy, they are running around Ottawa saying they have exceeded their objectives?

Jamil Jivani