Southeast MP criticizes costs in latest federal financial statement

Some criticism has been levied as the federal government released its fall economic update earlier this week, to update the country's economic status compared to earlier in the year.

While the federal government issued multiple items in its budget, most of the criticism from the Conservative Party of Canada touched on the current cost put forward by the government.

That's echoed by Conservative Souris-Moose Mountain MP Robert Kitchen, who took issue with their updated spending numbers.

"When you look at what this government did, I mean ultimately they made this big announcement where they talked about they are being fiscally responsible, and yet they've added another $20 billion in new spending. In the old days, we used to talk about nickels and dimes and thousands of dollars and millions of dollars. Well, they've inflated that to be billions of dollars."

The government also updated its deficit outlook for the next few years, raising the deficit amount by up to $11.4 billion some years.

Combined with some falling revenue, Kitchen says that debt payments are going to be highly impactful for the budget.

"When we look at what they're projecting in this fall economic statement on the budget and through the budget, which was done back in the spring, we're just talking the interest on the debt. It was going to be $46 billion. This year it's going to be $52.4 billion and just like I mentioned with those other numbers, they're going to increase exponentially."

Kitchen says that cost is most striking when put up next to other government programs, saying that the costs are similar to that of the health transfer payment and the budget for National Defence.

"If you want to take that even a step further, this government basically, if you took the Employment Insurance and the Canada Child Benefit packages that they're paying for and combined those two, that's how much they're going to be paying on the debt and the interest costs. So these costs are just going through the roof and this government is continually spending, spending, spending."

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