Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian TaxPayers Federation joined Ezra live from Ottawa yesterday to speak about Budget 2023.
Franco spoke to Ezra about what happened in the budget lockup since he was there from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“Still didn’t find any savings,” said Franco. “Couldn’t find any savings in there, Ezra, even though Freeland is running around talking about fiscal prudence this, fiscal prudence that, you’ll be quite surprised to know that there isn’t any fiscal prudence, in fact, I’ll say this on the record … This budget shows that the government doesn’t care about fiscal prudence or helping taxpayers.”
“The government’s been talking about finding savings. They spent $18 billion over their own budget in 2022. And now they want to spend an extra $20 billion in 2023. So if they think that savings…newsflash, you’re doing it wrong.”
Ezra followed up with asking about the total amount of money extracted from Canadians in the form of taxes. “Is the amount of money taken from Canadians a new record?”
Franco responded:
Spending was at an all time high before the pandemic. And before the pandemic, the government was spending more money in 2018 than the feds did during any single year during World War Two.
And now the government is continuing its spending spree. We’re seeing deficits as far as the eye can see this year. In 2023, the deficit will be $40 billion, about $10 billion more than the last fiscal update.
But, you know, I think that taxpayers have every reason to believe that this government will never balance the budget.
Remember, Trudeau said the budget will balance itself. Well, I’m still waiting for that. I don’t have a watch on, but you get the point. Back in 2015, Trudeau said that they would run a few modest deficits, balance the books by 2019.
They missed that by $20 billion, even before the pandemic. And now the government isn’t even pretending that it’s going to balance the budget.
This is only an excerpt of last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show. To watch the full episode, become a subscriber to RebelNews+.