Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to be here tonight and to ask the questions that I did not feel were adequately answered back in June. I was talking about the increase in the amount Canadians were spending on food out of their weekly budgets. It was about $800 a year more being spent on food at that point in time. However, we can take a look at what has happened with the cost of food since then. The latest information on food inflation is that it is up over 3.4% year over year.
I acknowledge I am cherry-picking some statistics here, but people will know what I am talking about when I tell them that ground beef is up 15.3% year over year, bacon is up 13%, canned salmon is up 11.6%, oranges are up 11.6%, fruit juices are up 11.5%, nuts and seeds are up 14.2% and coffee, that ever-sustaining fluid, is up 27.9%. This is significant inflation built into our basket of goods that, I hope my colleagues on the other side will recognize, are part of daily life for so many Canadians.
I try to bring this together with respect to what is happening in the economy. Things are costing more for Canadians, and this is a result of economic policies brought about by the current government, particularly overspending. The government plans to spend, in its initial estimates from last year, 8% more this year than last year. The government is going to have to print more money. More money is not coming in. More money is going out the door. Since then, of course, we have delayed and delayed the budget, so now we are actually going to see how much more the government is going to spend, but it is going to be a lot more than an 8% increase over last year. Let us put it at a deficit of over $100 billion coming out of this year, which is more than double what the deficit was expected to be and what the deficit was last year. This means more in payments, which, of course, means more inflation. All of these things roll through the economy, and they are felt by Canadians.
The inflation is felt in basics such as food and shelter, so Canadians are bearing the brunt of bad economic policies that the government continues to go down the road on. There is a price to pay for overspending, and that price, of course, comes out of the pockets of Canadians themselves. The hidden costs of these deficits are $50 billion-plus last year. When the interest rates actually go up at some point in time in the near future, that cost to Canadians is going to be significant.
Let us look at the money leaving Canada. The money leaving Canada is an indication of how badly the economy is actually doing. Here is just a quick number. Back in 2014, the net difference between the money invested in Canada by foreigners and the money invested by Canadians elsewhere was about $100 billion in deficit. That is $100 billion more in Canadian investments going outside the country versus what is being invested in Canada. Now that number has ballooned to $971 billion as of the end of 2024. That is $971 billion more invested outside Canada than being invested in Canada. Canadian money is leaving this economy for a good reason. It is that we have bad economic policies compared to almost anywhere else in the world where it can be invested. Our Canadian dollar is going down. Here is another touchpoint: Since the government came in, $86 billion more has left the country, on a net basis, this year alone. We do not have the right policies. We have to change direction here.
I would love to hear the government say it is actually going to address the problem, but right now all I see is a Prime Minister and a government who want to continue to spend money and continue to visit economic pain upon Canadians. Will they please indicate how they are going to turn this around?