Bill C-48 (Historical)

An Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments

This enactment authorizes the Minister of Finance to make certain payments out of the annual surplus in excess of $2 billion in respect of the fiscal years 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 for the purposes and in the aggregate amount specified. This enactment also provides that, for its purposes, the Governor in Council may authorize a minister to undertake a specified measure.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to put a few thoughts on the record where Bill C-43 is concerned and perhaps to speak somewhat as well, flowing from that, on Bill C-48.

However, first, there were some things in Bill C-43 that we as a party appreciated and could support, but there was more in it that we could not. Because we could not support it, we voted against it, primarily because of the surprise in it, the Trojan Horse so to speak. It contained the next round of corporate tax breaks which we thought were unnecessary. They were not in keeping with the discussions our party and our finance critic had with the Minister of Finance on the Liberals' commitment during the election.

Based on the Liberal platform and the conversations we had with individual ministers, the commitment was not in any concrete way included in the budget. All of sudden, in an agreement to win the support of the Conservatives, significant corporate tax breaks were included in the budget which would take another $4.6 billion out of the public treasury. We felt that money should have been, and will be if we pass Bill C-48 tonight, spent on the priorities of Canadians for their communities, their children, their aging parents and their infrastructure.

The tax breaks in our view were yet another gift to those in our country who already had more than enough. They have been getting corporate tax breaks for the last 10 to 15 years. When I go back and speak to my constituents, they ask me these questions. When is enough, enough for the corporations of this country and the world? When is another increase in wages to the CEOs of some of the corporations enough? When is another stock option to executives in these corporations enough? When is more income for the wealthiest of our provinces enough? When does it turn to greed?

I believe we have gone beyond that point. It is time now for us who have been given responsibilities as leaders in the country to look at those things that we need to invest in, things that will support a standard of living, which we know we can afford, for our families, our neighbours, for everybody who calls themselves Canadian.

We were not happy with the corporate tax break. However, we were pleased with the commitment that the government made to a national child care program. Unfortunately, as it rolls out, the government now finds itself in a hurry, as we seem to be going headlong toward the possibility of en election. Agreements are being made with provinces that do not fit with the framework we believed was there, those of us who were involved in the discussions, lately me more than others.

Some people in this province have been working on child care for 20 to 30 years. They have done the research and the work. They know that if we are to have a national child care program that is worth its salt, that will deliver the services we know are needed by families, by children and by the economy, it needs to be framed in legislation. It needs to be based on the quad principles. It needs to be delivered through a not for profit delivery system.

We were very excited with the first two agreements that were signed by Manitoba and Saskatchewan, two New Democrat governments that understand those principles. They understand why it is important we stick to them. We need to a program that is right from the start. This is the first national program in over 25 years. Manitoba and Saskatchewan have committed to a framework of accountability. They also have committed to a not for profit delivery system, with which we are pleased. However, we now see that Ontario, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia are getting less and less of that commitment.

However, we are getting more anxious and nervous about the way the national child care program is beginning to roll out. We know that once it gets away, it is hard to get it back into shape. We need to ensure that it truly is a national child care program, not another patchwork of child care with more money. We need to ensure that the money is spent in an appropriate way so we get the best value as an investment in our children, families and the economy.

However, money has been allocated. Reference to a national child care program was first promised by the Liberals in 1993 and the Conservatives before that. Finally, there was a reference this past year because of a significant presence of New Democrats here pushing the Liberals in that direction. It was referenced in the Speech from the Throne and then it showed up in the budget. We were pleased about that.

The economy in my community is beginning to change its direction. We used to have some valuable high paying jobs in the resource based sector of steel and paper. Those jobs are becoming fewer and fewer. We are now looking at a growing sector of call centres where people do not make as much money. They do not make anywhere near the kind of money they used to make in those valuable, unionized jobs, in the industries that were industrial heartbeat of northern Ontario.

Ontario now has jobs that are less dependable. They do not pay as much. It is important that we have a good, affordable child care system in place for parents who want to participate. If they want to make ends meet, or want to buy a house, or pay the mortgage, or feed the kids, and all the things we want for ourselves and for our families, they probably will have to work two jobs. Some work two and three jobs in the same family. If they do not have good, affordable, high quality, safe child care available to them, they will be unable to do that.

The national child care program, however incomplete it is as it rolls out, because of the lack of commitment by the government to the principles and to the not for profit delivery system, is still very important. That is why we need to pass Bill C-48, the budget we negotiated with the Liberals, tonight. We need that money in our communities and in Sault Ste. Marie. It represents a significant growth in that sector, not only spaces for families and for children, but jobs for child care workers, good jobs and more money for those people already working in the child care sector. They will have benefits, pension plans, all the things we all want for ourselves.

The national child care program is a very important. We encourage members of the Bloc and Conservative Party to ensure that the bill goes through tonight so we can move forward with these.

I want to talk briefly about the criticisms by the Conservatives over the national child care program, which are misleading at best. They talk about an investment of $5 billion to $10 billion in our young people, our children, as somehow pouring money into a big black hole. Their suggestion as to how we might do this, which would be to give tax breaks or tax credits to parents to buy their own child care, would not create a national child care system. Also, it would cost us four or five times as much money to put in place. We are talking $20 billion to $25 billion if we add up all the money.

That is not to speak of the reduction in the economy if we remove those people who are skilled and trained, women in particular, from the workforce. The analysis that has been done by people who know, the economists, tells us that it could be anywhere from $70 billion to $80 billion a year. We are talking a cost of close to $100 billion a year if we follow the plan that the Conservatives have suggested is better than the plan in the budget, which would give us a $2 return for every dollar we spend in early learning and early child care for our children.

[Loyola Hearn, Conservative, St. John's South, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the hon. member opposite. He is a person, over the few years I have been here, who has a social conscience, as I hope many of us here do, and his concern for the needs of society are probably second to none.

I have no argument whatsoever that people need money for education. One need only to check Hansard to see how often I have raised the need for investment in education. I have no doubt that we need shelters for the homeless. We have abandoned the people on the lower end of our society, people who cannot help themselves.

However I do have one concern. If the Liberals have the feeling that we must help people, that we must invest in education and that we must invest in housing to help the homeless, why is the money in Bill C-48, which he says must pass because we need to do this for these people, and not in the original budget? Why did the Liberals not think about these people when they brought down the budget? Why was it not brought in until they had to buy the NDP for a quarter of a billion dollars each to get its support to stay in power? How can they justify that in the eyes of the public?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to speak to Bill C-43 before the subsequent amendments and motions to be put.

I would first like to thank the Conservative Party for agreeing to support Bill C-43 today. The first inclination of the leader of the Conservative Party was that it was a good budget and that it was one his party could work with. We appreciate that.

The issue, however, has gone a little farther now. In my view, the debate has gone on for some time with regard to the amendments or the additions that have been made for the budgetary purposes included in Bill C-48.

In the main budget, Bill C-43, and I do not want to get into great detail, but members will recall that the range of the key items include health care, the Atlantic accord, the exercise of transfers of additional funds to our cities, the gas tax, day care, the military and a range of other important initiatives which have been well debated in this place.

The reality is that the Government of Canada is a minority government. I think everyone knows from the lessons of history what happens when a minority government tries to govern as if it has a majority. It is an untenable situation in which to be. It means there has to be a higher level of cooperation and give and take within Parliament. It has been so long since the last minority government , which was in 1980 and which fell in nine months, that it is taking a bit of time for the various parties to find their niche as to how we can make Parliament work.

Bill C-48 was the first concrete effort in which cooperation was made to show Canadians that a minority government could work. It is not the only item. Members well know that a large number of bills are at various stages of the legislative process, many of them in late stages in committee and ready to come back to this place for debate. They are important.

One of the bills that is very important to me is the whistleblower protection bill in government operations. It was here in the last Parliament. We are very close and I want the bill to come back. I want public servants, the important people who serve Canadians, to have whistleblower protection. It is a commitment of the government and in fact has the support of all parties. I think it would be a real shame if the budget were to go down and that legislation would die yet again before the House has had an opportunity to take it through all stages.

With regard to the so-called budget amendments, one thing I learned just recently was to look at the calendarization of the incremental spending that is being proposed in Bill C-48 and what impact it has. Interestingly enough, when one calendarizes the $4.6 billion, one sees that in the first year the impact is 1% of the total budget. It is a 1% increase in the total budget.

It is not an exorbitant amount in which someone would start to question whether the financial fundamentals on which the original budget was based have been compromised. If I could remind members, those are to include things like the $3 billion contingency fund on the principle that Canada will not go into a deficit. A $3 billion contingency fund has always been built into the budget.

There are also prudence factors which take into account that there are always estimates about what economic growth might be over the budget period and what short and long term interest rates might be. In the budget process, and I believe this has been articulated in every budget since 1997, there will be a conservative estimate of each of those made so that we err on the side of prudence. There is a prudence factor, which has varied from time to time, but it is in the range of about $2 billion.

When the Minister of Finance goes before the people of Canada and announces that we will have a balanced budget, the documents will show that it includes the assumption that the contingency of $3 billion and a prudence of $2 billion or $3 billion have in fact been necessary to be used. In fact, members should look at the budget as being the worst possible case that we can project, which is a balanced budget, no deficit but no surplus.

Because we have not had a recession in Canada for a long time, as members well know, and I am not sure whether any of the experts had ever anticipated that would be the case, we have gone through a very healthy economic climate in Canada as a consequence of the work of business and the people of Canada. We did not go into recession when the U.S. went into recession in the last round that it did.

As a result of the economic performance in Canada and the prudent budgeting principles that were included in the budget, surpluses have been created. Some would say that if surpluses have been created then obviously the people are being overtaxed.

Part of the equation of making a resilient economy, a resilient prudent and responsible fiscal position, is to manage the debt.

When we came here some 42¢ on every dollar was going to pay interest on the debt. Since that time we have paid down almost $60 billion of debt. The savings on the interest is what some economists have referred to as the fiscal dividend. When we get our economic house in order and there are savings, where do those savings come from? The permanent savings are the savings on the interest of financing the debt. That means that we have saved $2 billion to $3 billion annually on interest payments. These numbers keep going up because of the interest rate scenarios. This is an additional $3 billion each and every year available to sustain the important programs that Canadians want and, as time permits or as the finances permit, to introduce new programs, such as the additional moneys that have now been put into day care, another important initiative that Canadians want, or into cities, Kyoto, the military and foreign aid. We have certain priorities but they all cannot be dealt with in every budget at the same time.

However Bill C-48 brings in some other aspects. I know some members have suggested that this is just buying votes. I am not sure whether there is anyone in this place who would say that assistance for post-secondary education is inappropriate. I am not sure if anyone would vote against that. I think it is helpful. We need an educated workforce. We need to help those young people coming up to have the best possible education and be able to afford it.

Another element in Bill C-48 is additional moneys with regard to foreign aid. I do not know about other members but when I hear the details of the situation in the Sudan, particularly in Darfur, I get very concerned. How can I feel comfortable as a Canadian or happy as a person when I know there are people elsewhere in the world who have no chance to be happy, who are hungry, who do not have a roof over their heads, who have no security and whose lives are at risk? Foreign aid is an important aspect and it is important that Canada continue to play the appropriate role it can in leadership ways, as well as in providing aid to people.

What else is included in Bill C-48? Additional moneys with regard to the environment, for housing retrofits. Every little step that we can invest in ensuring our air is safe and clean and that we are dealing with greenhouse gases that affect climate change is important. Everyone knows that what comes with the creation of greenhouse gases are the health impacts created by the particulate matters. The investment in the environment is very much a health issue. Who in this place would be against the health issue?

Finally, with regard to Bill C-48, there is affordable housing. I will have to tell members that I will debate anybody in this place at any time about the importance of providing affordable housing for those who need it. Every time we touch one level of housing, if there is more affordable housing that means people who are currently in social housing may be able to now move forward into the next level, it will free up social housing.

I believe this is a good news story. I am very hopeful that Bill C-43 and Bill C-48 will pass. All Canadians in all regions of the country will benefit from this and it will demonstrate to Canadians that Parliament is working.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, when my colleague talks about a budget that should not be changed, he should remember we are in a minority government right now and that is when change occurs. That is when there is an opportunity for other parties to have an input. That is what happened during the time of Tommy Douglas. During a budget debate he said that if the government wanted the budget to go through, that it would have to give Canadians public health care across the country.

That is the practice when there is a minority government. Instead of just fighting in the House of Commons, we can do some work instead. I am proud that this is what the NDP has done. In two days we have done some work for Canadians. Ordinary people who vote can say that finally there is a change. The people who live on the street in Toronto in front of city hall and sleep on cardboard say that maybe they will finally have a home.

It is not a shame to change one's mind in a minority government. It has been done in the past. Canadians will say that the best government they can get is a minority government because other people can have an input. Other countries like France are used to working with a minority government. It is not the first time that France has a minority government and good stuff happens to ordinary people.

However, the Conservatives only want to look at big corporations. They want to cut taxes. They do not care if we are going to have money for highways. They do not care if we are going to have money for schools. They do not care if we have money for health care. No, they are going to privatize. If people are sick and have money, they will be served in a hospital, but if they are poor, they can stay on the sidewalk in Toronto and die there. The Conservatives do not mind that.

I say that is wrong. This is a good budget, especially with the additions put in Bill C-48. In the past we know that the opposition parties always vote against the budget. That is the practice. However, when the budget came into the House of Commons, the leader of the Conservatives said that this is a good budget. He said that his party would not bring down the government because this is a good budget. He broke the practice of the House. That is what has been done.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Madam Speaker, I wish I could have had a chance to raise a question for my colleague from the Conservative Party. I stood up, but two Liberals in a row were recognized instead of another party.

I wish I could have raised a question for my colleague from the Conservative Party on his saying that Bill C-48 is so vague. It is on one page, he said, and he asked what the government will do with that money, saying that it is pretty vague.

I remember, though, when the budget came down in the House of Commons from the Minister of Finance. The Minister of Finance had not even had the time to finish it when the leader of the Conservative Party ran outside and said he would vote for it. He did not even know what was in the budget at that time. The only thing he knew was that the taxes would go down from 21% to 19% for the big corporations. He ran outside saying he could not vote against the budget because it was a good budget.

The Leader of the Opposition never raised a question about what big business would do with that, what presidents of companies who are getting paid $10 million per year would do with that. He did not raise any questions about that. He was not worried about big corporations.

Let us look at the accord with Newfoundland and Labrador, which we agree with. There was $2 billion for the accord with Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, negotiated very fast not too long ago. Tonight the Conservative Party members will probably vote for the budget bill, Bill C-43, because they want that $2 billion going to Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia without knowing what is going to happen with it.

It seems to me that the problem, as always, is that when the NDP wants to have a good budget to bring to the ordinary people, it is wrong. That is what the Conservative Party stands for.

As I said, it is a great pleasure for me to be able to speak to Bill C-43 and the improvements to it contained in Bill C-48. The Liberal colleague from Prince Edward Island said that Bill C-43 was a good budget. The only thing he neglected to say is that, thanks to the NDP amendments to it proposed in Bill C-48, after two days of negotiations with the NDP leader, Canadians' interests are really being served. For example, and I cannot say this often enough, $1.6 billion will go to affordable housing construction, of which there was not a word in Bill C-43. This investment will put roofs over the heads of the homeless.

That is what causes a problem for the Conservatives. They say they can support C-43 but not C-48. They are not concerned for ordinary Canadians. It is as if they wanted people to stay out on the street, since there is no place and no money for them.

As for post-secondary education and worker training, there will be $1.5 billion to reduce the cost of post-secondary education and thus to help students and their families. The Conservatives are incapable of voting in favour of such a measure, because they want Canadian students to be in debt. Is that the message they want to send? The Conservatives will apparently vote in favour of Bill C-43 but against Bill C-48, which includes $1.5 billion to reduce the debt load of young Canadians. The Conservatives cannot vote in favour of that. They accuse the NDP of being too fond of spending because it wants to lighten the debt load of Canadian young people. Nothing could be more ridiculous. One hopes that Canadians will see through this.

Then there is $900 million for the environment. How can anybody argue that they do not want a clean planet for future generations? This planet does not belong to us. It belongs to everyone now and in the future. We have responsibilities toward the entire planet and we all need to do our part. How can the Conservatives vote against Bill C-48 and its $900 million allocated to the environment, which is so dear to us and so essential to our health?

This evening, how can the Conservatives vote against Bill C-48, after voting on Bill C-43, which will allocate 1¢ more per litre of gas? In the budget, the Liberal government agreed that a tax of 5¢ per litre of gas will go to the towns and municipalities in our country for infrastructure. How can the Conservatives vote against allocating 1¢ more to the municipalities of Calgary and Edmonton, in Alberta? This evening, how can the Conservatives rise in the House and vote in favour of Bill C-43, indicating that the Liberals have a good budget, but then vote against Bill C-48? When it is time to help our municipalities, students in debt and poor people in the streets, the Conservatives are absent.

Unfortunately, I do not approve of one part of the budget. Unfortunately, the government did not give more for employment insurance. The parliamentary committee issued a recommendation on February 15, asking the government to consider the best 12 weeks worked and to eliminate the divisor of 14. This would have helped all Canadians in regions where employment is seasonal. It would have helped people in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, the Gaspé and the North Shore, in Quebec. Unfortunately, the government decided not to consider the best 12 weeks, and this is too bad. I am asking the government once again to reconsider.

Today, people entitled to EI benefits after working for 12 weeks receive only 55% of their salary.

These women and men work in industries that pay very little, almost minimum wage: $8 per hour. If you take 55% of that, it is less than welfare. The government has set the divisor at 14, assuming that workers would abuse the system by quitting their jobs. That is wrong. That is a totally false assumption, because those who quit their jobs are not eligible for employment insurance. That is why I find it terribly unfortunate that there is nothing for them in Bill C-43. When we look at the government's budget, we can see that it contains no details about employment insurance. Any details were provided only in the press release issued by the minister the same day as this budget bill was introduced.

Today, the government still has the authority to make it the 12 best weeks. The federal government has had a new Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development for two days now. I would like to ask the new minister to show sensitivity to the plight of these workers. There are women working in fish plants in the Acadian peninsula, the Gaspé and Quebec's North Shore. These women and men working in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia cannot pick and chose their jobs. This is not Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary or Edmonton. These people need an income to feed their kids, buy clothes for them and send them to school.

The best thing we could do to promote economic development is whatever can be done to ensure that people are educated and healthy. How can one hope to achieve that while driving people to poverty? How? There is no way anyone can succeed that way.

Many of the studies that were conducted and presented to the House of Commons were adopted by the government. But when it comes to ordinary people, it is a very different story. And Bill C-48 is a case in point.

The Conservatives voted against changes to EI knowing that they involved improving conditions for ordinary people, the workers. This is not acceptable, but their political party was entitled to do so. People will decide democratically whether they will vote for them or not. However, those watching now must remember that that is what the Conservatives will be doing this evening.

The Liberal government, however, has a responsibility to respond to the request of the Subcommittee on the Employment Insurance Funds, which proposed the 12 best weeks and 360 hours to qualify for EI. The government has not made the necessary changes to help these people, but there is still time for it to do so.

There is a $46 billion surplus in the employment insurance fund. The Conservatives are concerned because $250 million is missing in the sponsorship fund and $100 million could have been invested elsewhere. I do not support that. However, $46 billion, which belonged to workers, was withdrawn from the employment insurance fund. I wonder which scandal is bigger.

I hope that this evening all the political parties will use common sense and vote for bills C-48 and C-43 so that ordinary folks have a chance for a better life.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. With respect to the member, the matter before the House now is Bill C-43. He talked a little about Bill C-48 and now he is talking about the Gomery inquiry. I believe it would be time to get the debate back to the relevant matters before this place.

[Gary Lunn, Conservative, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise on behalf of all of my constituents in an incredible part of this country, Saanich--Gulf Islands, to talk about the budget.

It is coming up to eight years that I have been a member of Parliament and it has been a great honour. To see what is happening now is absolutely unbelievable. There is a media frenzy as we lead up to tonight's vote. I want to talk a bit about exactly what is happening. It is important that we talk about the facts.

I do not think Canadians are fooled by what has been going on. The facts speak for themselves. The government is obviously in a desperate situation because of the Gomery commission, because of the vote buying scheme by the Liberal Party of Canada to try to prop itself up to save its existence. The only way it can do that right now is through the budget. It has taken away all the opposition supply day motions. To be quite frank, I fully expect that the Liberals will be successful tonight from what has happened. However, let us talk about they have done.

Bill C-48 could be called the NDP budget. Applaud the NDP. It was successful. It was able to go to the government and say, “No. What you told us two months ago, just toss that out the window. This is what we want”. In order to save itself that is what it has done.

It is important for every Canadian to know that Bill C-48 is exactly, in English and French, two pages long. In other words, the English version of Bill C-48 is exactly one page. When I flip the pages of Bill C-48, there is nothing on them. It is quite remarkable. The pages are blank. There is not even any ink on the page. Some staples are pushed through the paper, but the pages are absolutely blank.

I want to focus on what happens when the Liberal government comes in with legislation that is blank, with no specifics. What has been the record when we have seen that type of a slush fund?

The gun registry was about a $2 million expenditure. It was very short on details. I am unable to tell the Canadian people exactly what happened. The government sort of panicked, put money into that, and now it has grown into a $2 billion unmanageable database. It is incredible.

In the mid-1990s there was the sovereignist movement in Quebec. Of course the Liberal government was in power when all that happened, the last people to try to keep this country united. The Liberals responded by saying, “We need a sponsorship program. We are going to save the country”. Again what happened? The Liberals came in with no details and said, “Here are buckets of cash”. It is no different from this NDP budget bill. Buckets of cash. Imagine spending $4.5 billion in just a few sentences, maybe about five paragraphs. Not bad. That is probably millions of dollars per word. It is incredible.

We have found out how the government goes about spending money with no details, no substance. Let us look at some of the facts.

Between 1994 and 2001 Lafleur Communications earned 78% of its income from the federal public works department and crown corporations. Jean Lafleur earned more than $9.3 million from the sponsorship program. That one individual earned $9.3 million of taxpayers' money, but that was not enough. The government needed to throw in a little tip. His family members got another $2.8 million. Those are hard-earned taxpayers' dollars. I suggest what is in here has likely ended up with the same type of activity.

Jean Brault of Groupaction testified that he made $1.1 million in contributions to the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party and that those contributions were covered up by fake invoices. Luc Lemay, whose companies took in $36 million in sponsorship contracts, testified that he paid Jacques Corriveau, a close friend of Jean Chrétien, nearly $7 million in commissions over three years. The list goes on and on.

Numerous witnesses have come forward. Benoît Corbeil, former executive director of the federal Liberal Party's Quebec wing, the very top of the pyramid, the boss of the Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec, said that he received $100,000 from Jean Brault and used it to pay volunteers in the 2000 election campaign.

Liberals ran around across the country and sprinkled around taxpayers' money. It is unbelievable. That is the record of this Liberal government in managing the public purse. It is unrefuted. It has never been denied.

I will accept some members' comments that there are discrepancies in the testimony, that there is conflicting testimony. Absolutely there is conflicting testimony, but it is uniformly bad. Witness after witness talks about phony invoices. It is about putting Liberal Party workers on campaign payrolls.

All Liberals should hang their heads in shame, because silence is consent. None of the Liberals are standing up. They are not denying this. How this was done is the most offensive thing I have ever seen. Even worse, to add insult to injury, what have we witnessed in Parliament in the last weeks and months? A government that is embroiled in the largest scandal in Canadian political history.

What was that scandal? Let me sum it up in a few words. In essence, it was a vote buying scheme. It was taking taxpayers' money, stuffing it to their friends in the Liberal Party and volunteers in the campaigns and buying some votes. That is the essence of the sponsorship program.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Kelowna--Lake Country said that there were some good things in the government's budget Bill C-43 and that he was going to vote for it on balance because he thought it merited his support. However, I understand from what he has said this morning that later tonight he will vote against Bill C-48 which will ultimately cause the defeat of the government, or would work toward the defeat of the government. This would undo all of those good things that he was supporting a few minutes ago in the main budget bill.

What does the hon. member have against ensuring that there is more affordable housing in Canada that will help people who live in poverty, who need housing, and who spend way too much money on housing right now? This budget will benefit the economy. We all know that the housing industry is a key aspect of our economy.

What does he have against post-secondary education spending and helping students who need assistance to get the education that they need so they can participate in the economy? What does he have against public transit and helping the environment, and all of those kinds of things which will benefit both our economy and our society?

[Werner Schmidt, Conservative, Kelowna, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is indeed an honour to speak to Bill C-43, the budget implementation bill that the government has presented to the House. However I do so with mixed feelings because we actually have before us two budgets. We have Bill C-43 and Bill C-48 which will be debated right after this particular debate collapses.

We need to recognize that certain elements in Bill C-43 are actually quite encouraging and we can support them, particularly the business of implementing the Atlantic accord. This is a very significant issue and we will be supporting it.

However there are some things that I believe the people of Canada and particularly the constituents of Kelowna—Lake Country need to be aware of. This budget implementation bill is not as great as it appears to be.

I want to speak in particular to the personal tax cuts and to tax cuts a little bit more generally because there seems to be a feeling among the Liberals of “Look at how benevolent we are. Look at what we are doing. We are cutting personal income taxes”.

Yes, indeed, the Liberals are cutting them: $16 next year. Most of us know there are 12 months in a year. If we divide 16 by 12, it does not leave us very much per month, does it? I suggest that there are not even enough tax cuts in each month to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

The Liberals then go on to tell everyone what they will do in the future. Yes, by the time we get to 2009, four or five years from now, it will be $192 in savings. That is a pittance. If there is to be a tax cut, let us make it a real tax cut.

The interesting thing is that in those tax cuts and counterbalancing those tax cuts, we need to look at what the budget also does. It increases the overall spending of the government. If we look at it in some detail, we discover that in 1996-97 the real federal program spending per capita was $3,466. It will have risen to $4,255 by the year 2005-06, the year we are talking about now. That is an increase of $800 per capita in volume terms, or $3,200 for a family of four. The current Liberal spending plans will take it to $4,644 by 2009-10. That is a projected increase of almost $1,200 per person.

However increases in real government spending do not necessarily equate to solving problems or getting better results. Imagine if that same money had been left in the pockets of the citizens of Kelowna, for example. If they had put $1,000 of tax savings into an RRSP, which they should all be doing, and if that had been invested at 3.5% per year, and that is a very low level but is, at the same time, very realistic, that would result in a nest egg of $29,200 in 20 years and $53,000 in 30 years. A return of 5% would result in a nest egg of $34,000 and $69,000, almost $70,000 in 30 years.

It is pretty evident that if that money had been left in the hands of individual citizens and they had invested it as they wanted to do it and at these very minimal rates of return, they would have benefited far better than a measly $16 tax cut or, in 10 years, $192. That is on an individual basis.

We need to cut the taxes of industry. I have been an advocate of cutting taxes to business for a long time. There is a reason for this. What does not seem to be clear is that business employs people and it is business that actually is the economy of a country and makes the country work. It is business that creates new ideas, that innovates new products, that commercializes the findings of research, that actually conducts research to make better products, that makes the process of manufacturing a little bit more efficient, that provides employment for all kinds of people and that focuses the application of money in such a way that it gets the greatest resources.

We have a tremendous industrial sector and a great manufacturing sector in this country. However, by increasing the taxes and making the tax burden so heavy, these people are finding themselves hamstrung to do the innovation they know they can do but cannot implement because they do not have the capital to make it possible. They do not expand their plants or invest in machinery and equipment because the tax burden is too high.

There was a time when the government even had a capital tax. It really did not matter whether a business was doing anything at all. Simply by having invested millions of dollars in equipment and machinery, they were taxed on the fact they had put that money to work.

Can anyone imagine anything less economically stimulating than a capital tax, and yet that was done? It cost many people their jobs. It is such backward thinking to do that sort of thing and yet we do no have a reasonable tax cut for businesses in this budget. I cannot help but encourage members to think about increasing the tax cuts for business.

The other point I want to make has to do with trust and the management of our country's affairs. We will soon be debating Bill C-48. I will not go into it in any great detail but I want to refer to a provision in the bill that essentially provides $4.6 billion without a plan as to how that money will be spent.

We are in the business at the moment of listening to the discoveries of Justice Gomery. He is revealing what happened over the last number of years because there was a fund designed to build stronger unity in Canada, particularly with Quebec. Two hundred and fifty million dollars were spent in the advertising program to build things up but with no plan as to how that was supposed to actually be done. The result is that the money was spent not only willy-nilly but very clearly through fraudulent activities. We now know it as ad scam.

How did that ad scam program actually work? There are essentially three points. First, advertising agencies overcharged the federal sponsorship program with fake invoices for work that was never done. Second, the agencies then gave the money to Liberal Party workers and riding associations. Third, in some cases the agencies hired Liberal Party campaign workers and paid them using taxpayer money gained from the sponsorship program. I am sure some people listening want us to provide some evidence of this because we make these broad, sweeping statements. We had witnesses and testimony has been presented. Let me read into the record some of the testimony that was actually given to the Gomery commission.

Lafleur Communications took a commission of $112,500 for simply delivering a $750,000 cheque to VIA Rail. It received $112,500 to carry a cheque from one corporation to another? Those were taxpayer dollars.

Bernard Thiboutot of Groupaction funnelled cheques totalling $57,000 to Liberal Party organizers through an employee consulting company. These too were taxpayer dollars.

This is all sworn testimony.

Luc Lemay, whose companies took in $36 million in sponsorship contracts, testified that he paid Jacques Corriveau, a close friend of Jean Chrétien, nearly $7 million in commissions over the years. He said that Corriveau did little or no work for this money. These were taxpayer dollars.

Those are three examples.

In conclusion, I want to thank the people who voted for me in the last election. It has been an honour to represent them in this House, but at the same time I feel honour bound to tell them this about the budget. We will support this implementation bill at the end of this day because it has some good things in it, but I want them all to know that there are some things in this budget that are very wrong and they will see why in the debate on Bill C-48.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we are on the eve of a confidence vote that is going to take place tomorrow on the budget. This budget seems to have become one of the main issues now facing Canadians with respect to the continuation of the Liberal government. The Liberal government has been going around the country touting that if the government were to fall, there would be major and severe impacts because of the promises it made in the budget it tabled in February 2005.

Today we are speaking on Bill C-43, a budget implementation bill which followed the budget and of course tomorrow we will be speaking on Bill C-48, the other budget implementation bill. We will have votes on both Bill C-43 and Bill C-48.

As we rise in the House to speak to these main issues all we hear from the Liberal government side are all the expenditures that have been promised to everybody in the budget. Should the budget not pass and should the government fall, the Liberals say there is going to be a major impact, as if everything is going to come to a stop. They talk as if the Conservative Party does not have a plan, as if the Conservative Party members would suddenly close their eyes and not do something about faults in the Canadian economy addressed by the budget.

I have stood in the House many times in the past eight years to speak about budgets which contained many of the issues that the government is now saying it will implement. We talked about the gas tax, about royalties to the provinces, infrastructure, raising money for seniors living on fixed incomes, and tax relief for individuals and businesses.

The Conservative Party members have been standing up in the House and pinpointing all those issues. We know that the current Prime Minister, who was the finance minister for eight years, has been talking about surpluses and surpluses, and how he brought the books under control. Let me ask this question. Where do surpluses come from? Obviously, there was something wrong in the way that they were being forecast or Canadians were being taxed and were not being told the truth. They were being taxed and we did not need their money. They should have reduced taxes a long time ago and not announced surpluses over that eight year period.

Today, on the eve of this vote, the Prime Minister is signing and writing cheques all over the country because he says these are moneys that are needed. Obviously, the government did not address this before, and now it has become so urgent. We are talking as if the whole structure of the country will come to a stop if the government falls. No, the Conservative Party is saying that if it forms the government, it has a fiscally responsible platform that talks about where investment would be made in the Canadian economy, starting with tax breaks and infrastructure.

As a matter of fact, the leader of the Conservative Party just met with the Liberal leader of Ontario and told him that the Conservatives would honour whatever has been signed. The Canadian public should not expect that there would be no money to address many of their concerns and issues that we have talked about if the government falls.

Let us talk about infrastructure. The mayor of the city of Calgary has been writing to us for a long time about the gas tax. This was an issue in Calgary that I talked about when I ran to become a member a year ago. Many years ago we pointed out how much tax the government was taking. Why was the government not returning the tax dollars back to the cities.

We have been talking about this for a long time. As a matter of fact, I remember having taken part in a demonstration in Calgary to point this out. Lo and behold, today, after the Prime Minister made his deal, he says that this is the most important thing.

If the Conservative Party were talking about that deal, why would we not fulfill that deal? As our leader and finance critic have said, we know where to invest in this country. We have presented a plan on where we have to invest in this country, and that plan is a sound, responsible plan.

There are certain things with which we do not agree. The example is in Bill C-48, the deal that the Liberals made with the NDP to stop corporate tax cuts and, as the NDP likes to say, to make investment in some social areas.

We recognize there is a need for investment in social areas, but not to the extent the NDP expects. The NDP thinks that business is some kind of entity which has a bottomless pit where it can always go and grab money. We have to present a responsible economic environment and we have to see it that way.

Business is already talking about the need for tax cuts as well as for individuals. Money in the pocket of a Canadian business is better spent than money in the pocket of a government run by the Liberals, which we note from the Gomery inquiry that is going on and what the Liberals were doing with the money that they were taking from Canadian taxpayers.

The Conservative Party platform will address the issues. It is wrong for Liberal Party members to stand up and say that if they are defeated tomorrow, all these promises will stop.

The Atlantic accord was signed with the provinces and it is part of Bill C-43. We said we could support that, but it must be changed. Of course, the government did not want to change it. It wanted the whole thing. There are provisions which we cannot support. The government knew that. We said that if it removed the Atlantic accord from the budget, to ensure that it passed, we would expedite it. We believe that the Atlantic accord was and is important for that province and that region.

However, the spin doctors on the Liberal side of course are saying that if the budget is defeated, the Atlantic accord would go. Let us put it another way. We have said that we will support the Atlantic accord. What would it take if, say, tomorrow the government goes and a Conservative government is returned after an election? It would only be 37 days. We would put the Atlantic accord before Parliament and pass it as quickly as possible, so the benefits would go to that region. We know it is an important benefit for that region.

In conclusion, the Conservative Party has a plan. The Liberals say that if they are defeated tomorrow on the budget, all of these implementations will not take place. I want to say that the Conservative Party has a plan and Canadians do not have to buy that kind of propaganda and spin doctoring from the Liberals.

[Paul Forseth, Conservative, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-43 is an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 23, 2005. However I am critical of it because, in the usual Liberal fashion, parts of it sound good but it falls short of the goodness it could have been.

For example, right off the top, printed in the summary of the bill is the following:

Part 1 amends the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Application Rules to

(a) increase the amount that Canadians can earn tax free...

That sounds good but when the calculation is done, the average person would benefit from that provision by about $16 for the whole year, about the cost of taking the kids to McDonald's once. The Liberals give the kids a happy meal and in exchange they want to be kept in power and thanked for their benevolence to us all.

In this bill we are rightly concerned with the Liberal approach to this country's finances: spending without a plan; the Kyoto measures in Bill C-43; the wasteful potentials in Bill C-48, which is about the misguided and hurtful NDP; and the $25 billion in spending announcements in the last few weeks. This irresponsible fiscal approach will hurt families, children, seniors, government workers and new Canadians.

However there are some initiatives in Bill C-43 which Conservatives support and will implement if we form the government, such as the Atlantic accord, better tax relief, gas tax money for municipalities, RRSP initiatives, increases to seniors' pensions, et cetera.

However this bill must be looked at in the context of the overall Liberal-NDP budget. The Liberals have mixed some policies of going in the right direction with initiatives that would prove hurtful to the well-being of Canadians.

Then along comes Bill C-48, the Liberal-NDP deal, that undermines Bill C-43. It should be apparent to all who follow these things that the government is now ruining the country's finances with runaway spending commitments without real implementation or monitoring plans. It is sad to observe that the Liberals are spending billions in an effort to buy votes.

First, they bought 19 NDP votes for $4.5 billion. Now the Prime Minister is travelling the country trying to buy votes of sectors of Canadians by making huge promises. He then attaches a threat that the power hungry Conservatives want to take away this Liberal joy. This Liberal vote buying spree is nothing more than an attempt to distract from its ad scam, which itself is a vote buying scandal worth about $250 million.

It has all come down to the axiom that a vote for the Liberals outside of Quebec is a vote for separation inside Quebec. Voting for the scandal ridden Liberals sends the wrong message to Quebecers who do not like corruption in their name. In view of their sense of being insulted, sadly, Quebecers are choosing the separation option. The Liberals have been creating separatists and this budget bill is part of it.

Canada could have more and better paying jobs and a much higher standard of living but Ottawa taxes too much, spends too much and winds up still owing too much.

Since 1999-2000, program spending has gone up 44%, a compound annual growth of 7.6% when the economy itself managed to grow only 31.6%. That record is a fundamental flaw in Liberal management which will come to haunt our country if continued. It is not surprising that there is so much waste in the government.

Often the government responds to problems with a knee-jerk way of throwing money at a problem. It does not know what to do but it sounds good if money is sent along the way. The Liberals confuse spending money with getting results and value.

Throwing money at the firearms registry, for example, is their way of dealing with the criminal misuse of firearms and the gunplay on our streets and it reveals the general unprofessional approach of Liberal administration.

The gun registry was to cost $2 million. Media reports now say that the actual cost is about $2 billion and the program does not work. One can imagine the community benefit if Alan Rock had taken my advice in the beginning when I told him, in very strong terms in a consultation meeting I had with him, that I would rather have the registry money assigned to various crime prevention and community protection measures than waste it in the registry. Time has shown that I was right and he and his many advisors were wrong, very wrong.

In Quebec, the 1995 referendum was a scare for the nation. The Liberals responded by throwing money at it but without a real plan or a system of accountability. The result was the sponsorship scandal where $250 million were wasted, $100 million probably illegally funnelled to Liberal friends in the Liberal Party. It had the opposite effect of the intended purpose. In fact, it reinvigorated Quebec separation.

Between 2003-04 and 2004-05, the Liberals could not help themselves: program spending skyrocketed by 11.9% and per capita program spending by the federal government has reached its highest point in over a decade and is scheduled to go even higher in the future. However increases in real government spending do not equate to solving problems or getting better results.

Imagine if some of that money was left with families, in the form of lower taxes. The multiplier effect of that would bring more jobs and eventually greater tax revenue for health care and education. An administered tax dollar is an inefficient dollar for our general welfare, in comparison to the same dollar that was never taken from the taxpayer in the first place.

Of course, we need public services and it is for that reason that compassionate Conservatives are so concerned about wise fiscal management, for without care there will not be the revenue available to pay for the social programs that we want.

The NDP-Liberal finance bills have it all backwards and that is why NDP spending on services beyond the capacity of the economy puts into play a doomsday financial problem, when the predicted job losses surely will come and the welfare rolls will skyrocket. The heartless social consequences of NDP thinking and economics hurts people.

I believe it is more compassionate and wise to ensure that we have more people working than just getting by on a meagre public subsidy. A growing sound economy is the most compassionate thing a government can provide so that we are able to help those who cannot help themselves. In the long term, it is a truism that NDP socialism hurts people.

Recently, while government spending went up, according to Statistics Canada, Canadian families saw their after tax income stall in 2002 and in the fall of 2003.

Under pressure from the NDP to remove the tax relief for business, the finance minister told the House that his budget could not be “stripped away piece by piece”. However, within days, without telling his minister, the Prime Minister tried to cover up his sponsorship vote buying scandal by buying the votes of the NDP.

The $4.6 billion, now Bill C-48, will be allocated through order in council in 2005-06 and 2006-07 to programs for the environment, housing and post-secondary education. However the money will not flow unless there is a surplus of $2 billion in those years, and that will not be known for 2005-06 until the books close in August, 2006. That means that the money will not flow for at least 18 months. If it ever does flow at all, it will be at the discretion of the cabinet which again has not designated a plan or even stated a purpose for the money.

What we see is a familiar pattern of vague objectives, deception even of their own NDP partners and no concrete plans.

The Liberals and the NDP are falsely giving the impression that money for the budget initiatives will flow immediately after the Thursday vote. Following regular parliamentary protocol, the bill is closer to its beginning stage and needs to go through many steps and many more months of study before the money would flow.

Last year's budget implementation bill just passed the Senate this last month, a year late.

The bottom line is that the Liberals are corrupt. They are trying to distract the vote buying scandal of the sponsorship program by buying NDP votes and now the public's votes.

In most Canadian families, both parents need to work just for one to pay the taxes. We must never forget that a dollar left in the hands of a worker, homemaker, small businessperson or entrepreneur is more beneficial to the economy than a dollar taken into the hands of a government bureaucrat or politician.

The Conservative Party wants to clean up government. It looks like the finances of the Liberals say they want to clean out government.

Consequently, from a financial administrative perspective, we need an election because the Liberals are corrupt and they are ruining the country's finances. The government has lost the moral authority to govern, has not secured the legal financial authority to govern and, by ignoring Parliament, has become illegitimate.

What Canadians have seen in the last few weeks is truly unprecedented: a government already steeped in corruption attempting to cover-up one vote buying scandal by looting the treasury regardless of the long term consequences for average Canadians.

Canada cannot afford the unholy collusion of the Liberal-NDP financial deal.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Madam Speaker, as I rise to speak on the budget bill I wish to congratulate Carole James, who is the leader of the B.C. New Democratic Party, for her tremendous breakthrough yesterday with over 40% of the vote in British Columbia. I would also like to congratulate the new member of the legislative assembly for New Westminster, Mr. Chuck Puchmayr and the new member of the legislative assembly for Burnaby-Edmonds, Mr. Raj Chouhan, for their clear victories in that election yesterday.

I mention my communities because the context of this budget discussion is extremely important. When we arrived on the Hill last fall, we were dealing with a series of crises that have not been addressed for over a decade. We are talking about a crisis in homelessness where there are increasing numbers of homeless across the country. In my region of the lower mainland we have tripled the number of homeless at a time when we are reaping record corporate profits.

We have an increase in child poverty. As we saw last fall, we are now looking at over 1.1 million poor children in Canada which should be a source of national shame.

When we talk about the education system, I met, when I knocked on over 6,000 doors in the election campaign last year, dozens of young people who could not go into post-secondary education because of tuition fee increases. Not being able to go into post-secondary education is not just something that affects those families, it affects the entire community. It affects the entire nation when young people cannot go on to post-secondary studies because they are cut off. Increasingly post-secondary studies are for the wealthy.

We have also seen the environment deteriorating. There was a the Kyoto plan to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 20%. We have actually seen an increase of 20% in greenhouse gas emissions.

That is the context in the community for the budget bill that was originally presented earlier this spring. This budget bill as we all know, presented as one of its foremost planks corporate tax cuts of $4.6 billion. We had just gone through an election campaign and there had been promises made and commitments made as they had been in previous elections by the Liberal Party, and indeed by the Conservative Party, to address some of these issues.

One of the fundamental aspects of the bill was corporate tax cuts of $4.6 billion and to my surprise, we saw the Conservative opposition actually supporting this kind of budget mismanagement. Some $4.6 billion shovelled out the door to the corporate sector that is currently experiencing record profits and the Conservatives did not say a single word.

That is the context for the NDP budget amendment, Bill C-48, which now makes Bill C-43 much more responsive to what we are actually seeing in communities across the country. I understand the Conservative opposition is going to oppose this because the Leader of the Opposition actually stated a couple of weeks ago he did not want to listen to what the MPs were hearing from their ridings and the public. Indeed, he said he would disregard those comments when it came to forcing an election.

However, in reality Canadians have had over the past 10 to 12 years a deterioration in their quality of life. The original budget did not address in a meaningful way all of those substantive issues that needed to be addressed.

The NDP pushed the Liberal government and negotiated effectively with it in order to bring in budget amendments that finally dealt with those issues. There is $1.6 billion in investment to finally start dealing with the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis that is growing, particularly in British Columbia. It was an issue in the provincial campaign and led to the substantial breakthrough that I mentioned earlier.

There is $1.5 billion to deal with the post-secondary education crisis to finally start lowering tuition fees, so that more young people and more adults can access training, post-secondary education, and those things that should be a right of all Canadians, and also in that way contribute to our economy and communities.

There is $900 million for the environment, finally providing back to cities support for rapid transit which is something extremely important if we are going to deal with the environmental crises and the environmental issues that we face.

At a time when we must be seeking more stability around this planet, there is $500 million in foreign aid, so that Canada starts to meet its commitment for foreign aid to address the appalling poverty that people around the world and that children around the world are facing.

We know that today, in this 24 hour period, 29,000 children will die of starvation and disease. These are preventable deaths, but they die these horrible deaths in part because there is not sufficient foreign aid to address the grinding and horrible poverty in which they live. The NDP budget amendment, Bill C-48, that now takes Bill C-43 and makes it a better balanced budget, addresses that in talking about $500 million in foreign aid.

What has been the response to these issues and the fact that the NDP has stood up on these issues that for so long have not been addressed? I would like to read into the record some of the comments. From the chair of the Canadian Urban Transit Association:

This move shows true leadership in making transit a focal point for sustainable urban development.

From the chair of the National Coalition on Housing and Homelessness:

Thank goodness reason prevailed. Canadians need to see real progress on social housing. We don't need another time out for an election. This revised budget should be passed.

From the president of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation:

With this deal, the NDP has pushed the Liberals closer to meeting Canada's international aid obligations.

From the Canadian Federation of Students:

The [Liberal-NDP] deal ensures that the funding will be available for provinces who are willing to take steps to make post-secondary education more accessible to low- and middle-income families.

From the Sierra Club of Canada:

There is no more time for politics on this issue. All parties must work together and for now that means passing the budget and getting action underway.

These are the kinds of comments that are being voiced in communities and main streets across Canada from coast to coast to coast. This budget now, because of the NDP amendment, finally addresses urgent needs that Canadians are facing.

The question we must ask ourselves is this. Given that the issues of education, homelessness, with numbers on the rise unfortunately, and the environment are being addressed, why do the Bloc Québécois members object to a measure that moves forward on things that Quebeckers need so much? Several elements of Bill C-48 are designed to improve people's the quality of life. That is not insignificant; it is important. I know that the Bloc Québécois shares these values.

This is incomprehensible to me, given that we are trying to introduce improvements. Granted, not all needs are covered. But there are only 19 NDP members. Had there been more of us, we might have been able to do more. Nevertheless, this budget is a definite improvement that will make a difference for Quebec, with $1 billion over two years. It will make a difference for Montreal and for public transit, as $20 million is earmarked for that. That is not insignificant. These are important elements.

I mentioned that, with 19 members, we had nevertheless managed to make considerable advances on issues of concern to people in the regions of Canada. We will continue to work in that fashion, to improve legislation in the House of Commons to ensure that Canadians can benefit from it.

Transfer Payments

[John McKay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, there is a very simple solution to the hon. member's inquiry, and that is on Thursday night support Bill C-43 and Bill C-48.

Budget Implementation Act

[Christian Simard, Bloc, Beauport, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bills C-43 and C-48, in short on the implementation of the budget.

A budget is a government's most important political statement. Beyond rhetoric and hollow speeches, choices are made. In its budget, this government illustrates all of its duplicity. It is a government we cannot support. We cannot place any confidence in its main political statement, born of torment, in the context of a party that gave rise to this government and that, to fund itself, resorted to vile methods. Certain members and ministers, former and current, have been involved to varying degrees in this scandal.

Here, it is a question of ethics. This budget, like the government and party that created it, is not ethical. People need to believe in values and integrity. How can anyone believe in this government?

On February 23, the government presented Bill C-43, a rather conservative budget, with a view to pleasing the Conservatives so they would stay in their seats and pass it. So, an investment of $13 billion will be made in national defence, but no provision was made for social housing, there was nothing for Quebec, nothing to resolve the fiscal imbalance, nothing for employment insurance. If they are dividing the opposition in order to rule, they are succeeding.

But that is not enough. What are they doing? They change strategy to shift slightly left. They promise bits and pieces to the left and others to the right. The government has lost its bearings, its will, its vision and its principles. It is motivated solely by the desire to remain in power and spend money as it likes. These two budgets are the stuff of future scandals and inquiries.

In fact, we cannot expect results in response to essential needs. Furthermore, it is impossible to know what this government values. Does it value the military exclusively and has it adopted almost identical values to those held by the United States, as the February 23 budget shows, or is this a mishmash of social values, like the measures the NDP threatened and begged for before offering its support to a government it has called corrupt?

This attempt, through Bill C-48, to please the NDP and purchase a kind of political virginity, to make people forget about the scandals staining this government, is evidence of its true face, its wastefulness and its lack of both rigour and will to meet the public's essential needs. Instead, it is trying to hold onto power by any means.

Even this morning's upset, when the government announced that it was changing the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development for the third time, shows just how much this government really wants to help human resources and resolve the problems with EI. In less than one year, three different ministers have headed that department. What will the new minister, know for her leftish leanings, do at Human Resources? Once again, this government has no direction or principles.

Recently, we learned of the government's interest in Darfur. Once again, it is an attempt to buy an independent member, without consulting the Organization of African Unity or even the new Senator Roméo Dallaire, who is himself criticizing the government's position on this.

So this budget comes from an immoral government of cheaters. This budget is unethical, it lacks direction and tries to please everyone. It is not a respectable budget and it will not get any respect. Already, there is no respect for the agreement reached with the NDP, since the tax cuts are going ahead despite promises to the NDP.

What will happen with social housing tomorrow morning, when things calm down? The government had a $3.4 billion surplus at CMHC that will increase to $7 billion by 2008, if nothing changes. It has not done anything in the past 12 months. Now, it is promising to act, but it is resorting to blackmail. It is telling people that if they do not vote in favour of the budget on Thursday, they will get nothing.

Where is this government's heart? Where are its convictions? It is travelling around the Rockies, in the east and west, and threatening people that they will get nothing if they do not vote for the Liberal Party and the budget.

This is a government of petty shakedown artists. Do people want to stick with that, and to vote to keep them in office? One Montreal area MP has even said “Hold your noses but vote for us anyway, despite the bad smell, despite our disgusting politics”.

Even in connection with the Kyoto protocol, there is an announcement of $10 billion for the next 8 years. This is just one more scandal. They do not want to change the orientation of Canadian industry. They do not want to decrease our dependence on non-renewable energy sources.

All they want to do with this budget is to look as if they are doing so. This government is very big on empty show. This government looks pretty foolish with its two budgets heading in two different directions,desperately scrambling to hold on to power. They are like pallid vampires trying to find a vein. This is disgraceful behaviour.

The people watching us are entitled to ask questions. They need to know what is going on. Can anyone trust a government that changes its policy statements—the most important of these being the budget—as often as it changes its shirt? Can anyone trust a government that promises to do something about climate change but does nothing whatsoever to force the oil and gas industry to make changes, or to reorient any sector of our economy?

People feel that climate change is important. Yet the Kyoto protocol is not about $10 billion of baloney, of voluntary measures and the like. It is not a matter of encouraging polluters, not polluter-paid. People need to believe in values and actions, and not in announcements made just to buy some time, or in budgets created just to hold on to power, come what may.

As for this budget, and this approach to international aid, even Bono, the Prime Minister's singer friend, is ashamed to see a country as rich as ours unable to set a goal of investing 0.7% of GDP in international aid. These are also values. If there are three or four votes to be bought before Thursday, perhaps they will throw in that 0.7%, or maybe they will cut down the figure. If they want to win the vote of some ultra-rightist Conservative MP, maybe they will cut international aid.

Just how far are they prepared to go? How far are they prepared to go with concealment and corruption?

It is a government without the morality to govern or to manage public funds appropriately. It is unbelievable. It is rolling in surpluses. By giving $1.6 billion for housing without resolving the fiscal imbalance, it is creating poverty.

It does not have money to invest in the provinces, like Quebec, for education. Nor does it have money for the health care system either. It has no money to address poverty effectively and it says it will invest a little in social housing. In addition, it has not resolved anything when it comes to employment insurance.

Contradictory measures still exist. These are measures we cannot rely on and for which there is no timeframe. It is still a petty shakedown. If we read Bill C-48 carefully, we see that something might be done provided there is an adequate surplus—at most. However, tomorrow morning, they could change their minds. It all depends on what direction the wind is blowing for this party.

I predict this party will fall apart, since it no longer has morality or ethics. We cannot trust any of its policies. It does not know how to manage public funds, it is swimming in billions of dollars, it finances its friends and abandons individuals in the provinces and Quebec. It is vengeful, does not settle anything and does not even understand the concept of the fiscal imbalance.

It is a government without governance. It is a government without direction. It is a government that is headed straight for a loss. We will be able to say the government earned that loss, that it did not steal it—which may be the only thing this government will not have stolen at the end of the day.

Budget Implementation Act, 2005

[Marc Boulianne, Bloc, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am speaking today on this bill and the budget in general with great interest. The Bloc Québécois opposes this bill. Our logic is quite simple. We opposed the budget right from the start, because it is incomplete and inadequate, and it does not defend the interests of Quebeckers.

However, Bill C-43 should have been the opportunity to make significant amendments to satisfy the interests of Quebec. This was not the case. Not only did the Liberal government refuse to make the recommended changes to EI but, as my colleague from Saint-Maurice—Champlain said earlier, it also refused to correct the fiscal imbalance. It even went so far as to add things that are completely unacceptable to Quebec, such as the agreements with Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. Furthermore, it has adopted the polluter-paid principle with regard to the Kyoto protocol. Clearly, this budget does not protect Quebec.

We can name at least five reasons to vote against Bill C-43 and against all potential corrections to the budget.

The fiscal imbalance is one major reason. Even the word makes the government afraid. It cannot even say it, so it is far from recognizing it. The budget contains no additional measures to loosen the financial stranglehold on Quebec. Ottawa refuses to acknowledge this problem. Anyone who follows the political debates in Quebec City at all can see the effect of this financial stranglehold on Quebec's development and evolution. There is nothing in the budget for this.

The same goes for the agreements on health and equalization. Once again, it is clearly not enough, at the very least, to pay down the deficit.

The problem is that there is a contradiction. The federal government has the financial means to do so much more. What is lacking is the political will, or else it is acting in bad faith and directing its interests elsewhere. It has the leeway. The Liberals have enough financial leeway to do much more. Now, there is talk of $50 billion over the next three years. This is a significant amount of money that could have been distributed to the regions to resolve the fiscal imbalance or, at the very least, alleviate it.

The second reason has to do with employment insurance, a topic we constantly come back to. A subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills Development, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities called for a comprehensive reform. However, no improvement to employment insurance be can implemented immediately. The 2005 budget goes even further and prevents any improvement to the employment insurance system. That is the second reason Bill C-43, the Budget Implementation Act, 2005, or Bill C-48 resulting from the agreement reached with the NDP, cannot work.

There is a third major argument that we have always defended and will continue to defend: respect for jurisdictions. For some time now, regardless of what bill is being considered, the practice is to encroach on Quebec's powers.

On the issue of parental leave, an agreement was proposed. Simply put, Quebeckers' money would be returned to Quebec. It is like a circle. It has nothing to do with asymmetrical federalism.

The same goes for child care, as mentioned earlier. I think that, currently, five agreements have been reached. However, in Quebec, the child care agreement is still unclear. Even the Prime Minister promised to allocate federal money for child care with no strings attached. We are still waiting. Again, even though Quebec is a model in this matter, pan-Canadian standards are still applied as well as accountability. Respecting jurisdictions is a problem that is seen not just in these bills, but also in Liberal Party legislation in general.

In connection with the gasoline tax, there is another important piece of evidence involving the municipalities. It concerns the distribution among municipalities, a matter also clearly under Quebec's jurisdiction. Here again, interference is systematic.

The fourth reason concerns the Kyoto protocol. A number of people have spoken of it. It is a blank cheque for the major polluters. It is a failure of the Minister of the Environment. A voluntary approach is being proposed to the major polluters. Obviously, they will stick to that. The standards are not very strict or precise. There are a few, but they are within easy reach of these companies. This way, the objectives can be reached in part, but surely not the greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives.

Under the Kyoto protocol, the public assumes the financial burden, not the major polluters. The budget penalizes Quebec in connection with its progress, the infrastructures it has set up and the model it created under the Kyoto protocol.

Obviously, there are others. My colleague for Saint-Maurice—Champlain spoke of social housing. The federal government has totally ignored the repeated calls of the Bloc Québécois in response to social consensus in Quebec, where the needs are critical. Meanwhile, it invests, as we have mentioned several times, in sectors that are not priorities of Quebec or the people of Canada.

In terms of international aid, the government's commitment is very timid. However, it may be bumped up at some point in order to attract votes, as we saw with Darfur. It was a one time thing and served the interests of the Liberal Party.

There is no new money in the agriculture budget either. We will come back to the francophone community in Canada. Based on this bill it is impossible to say whether there has been any development in economic or infrastructure terms.

As far as Bill C-48 is concerned, a new bill has been introduced. It enables the Minister of Finance to make certain payments. This is the outcome of an agreement with the NDP on this matter, but proper scrutiny will show that the agreement in question has not been respected. We wonder how the NDP could have been so taken in, and yet still support this government. First of all, the government has not done what the NDP asked. It has not cancelled the corporate tax breaks. Second, new measures have even been presented in a new bill, which will not be effective.

Quite simply, we see this as just one more last minute addition to the true budget, which is why we were opposed to the budget. It is unacceptable to Quebeckers for the reasons I have already given: fiscal imbalance and employment insurance. They are thumbing their noses at everything Quebec has developed.

In conclusion, we will be voting against this bill, just as we voted against the federal budget in February, because once again it is ignoring the priorities of Quebeckers. We cannot therefore support this bill, and even less so its implementation. It is, in fact, obvious that this bill will have a negative effect on Quebec.

The federal government has, however, decided otherwise. It has decided to refuse to make any improvements to employment insurance and fiscal imbalance. Rest assured, we are going to vote against Bill C-43, that is, against the implementation of the budget and the budget itself.