Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and debate the budget implementation act.
I want to begin by pointing out that the world is a dangerous place. The world has always been a dangerous place, but that was really brought home to us on September 11, 2001. At that time, I think a lot of people understood for the first time that just because we are in North America it does not mean we are immune from a lot of the conflicts that regularly afflict a lot of the world.
For a lot of the time we have taken our security for granted. I think we saw that reflected in how we planned our finances. We did not spend a lot of money on security. We did not spend a lot of money, certainly in Canada, on our military. That is a well known fact. All of that changed as of September 11, 2001, but although a lot of people recognized that we had to change how we look at things, the government did not recognize it.
For a number of months here, we have been debating the issue of going to war with Iraq. It has been debated for a long time. Last fall, Colin Powell, Secretary of State of the United States, went to the UN and talked about it. Despite that fact, despite the lingering effect of September 11, 2001, the subsequent war in Afghanistan and terrorist attacks around the world, the government, in these very uncertain times, brought forward a budget that looks like a budget one would plan if one knew the future was going to be completely rosy.
What do most people do in uncertain times? We know what they do. They frankly assess their finances. They have a hard look at their finances and say that they have to be honest with themselves about the situation they are in, that they have to take a look at what they owe and at what their equity is and make some judgments based on that. They look at their spending patterns and ask what spending they could do without. If the future is uncertain, they ask, “What can I do without?” Then they cut that spending and take the benefit of that cut and put it toward paying down debt, for instance. That is what prudent people do in times of uncertainty.
What did the government do? Did it do any of those things? No.
What did the finance minister announce in the budget? He said, “We are going to take a look at spending and we are going to cut wasteful spending”. Did the government do it? No. There is not one dollar mentioned in the budget in an area where it has decided it is going to trim spending, not one place, not one dollar. In a time of uncertainty, the government did not say, “This is something we can do without. We have to sustain the programs that are important to people, so we will take money from this and put it to that”.
Did it have a plan to pay down debt like an average person would have? No. What do the budget documents say? They forecast zero debt repayment over the next three years.
What did the government do? It decided it would crank up spending by an incredible amount. Spending will go up by $17.7 billion over the next three years. That is in new initiatives. That does not include spending that was already slated to rise over the next three years. That is $17.7 billion in new spending and $2.3 billion in tax cuts. In other words, 88% of surpluses from this point forward, over the next three years, will go toward increased spending, with 12% to reducing taxes and none to paying down debt.
Maybe some people would be okay with that if the debt were $50 billion or $100 billion, or maybe even $200 billion or $300 billion, but it is $500 billion-plus. Twenty-one cents of every tax dollar goes to pay interest on the debt. Twenty-one cents. And at a time of economic uncertainty, we should be prudent. We should be paying down debt, not cranking up spending, not bringing in all kinds of new programs. That is imprudent. It imperils the future of Canadians.
Rather obviously, that is something the government does not care about very much. Other colleagues have already talked about the government's imprudence in how it deals with our largest trading partner.
By the way, just so we are clear on this, I do not advocate that we should take a position in favour of our allies going to Iraq on the basis of our trade ties with them. I think we should do that because it is the right thing to do, but I do want to point out that it has a profound economic impact as well.
When a country trades to the degree that we trade with the United States and when a government is completely unaware of the program of anti-American slandering that the government has done against our American colleagues and unaware of the consequences of that, it is irresponsible. This government has been completely irresponsible when it comes to this issue, to the point where normally benign people are infuriated and writing e-mails and sending letters asking, “What's going on?”
Many of us have American family. I am one of them. I have many relatives in the United States. Like a lot of families, my family came from Norway, went through Minnesota and the Dakotas, spending about a generation there, and then came up to Alberta at the turn of the century. I have a lot of cousins in the United States. It is a very common story in my part of the world. My friend who just spoke has a wife who is an American. It is a very common thing.
When the government turns around and slanders the Americans, our best friends, our best allies, our biggest trading partner, it cannot help but have an impact. If members across the way say that they have not heard from constituents who have told them that they were not allowed to gas up in the United States, that people would not take their VISA cards, that people have cancelled orders because they are Canadian, if they do not admit that, then they are not telling the truth, because it is happening.
This is such a vital economic tie that we cannot afford to let that happen. It is irresponsible of the government to carry on this campaign of slandering and slurs. It does so and it just does not seem to end. The Prime Minister should take the responsibility. He has had many chances to stand up publicly and not just half-heartedly apologize but to take his government to task and tell people that if it happens again they are out of caucus. That is what should happen, because the stakes are too high.
I get tired of this. People do not understand the impact it is having on the lives of ordinary Canadians. I have never been more disappointed in this government in the nine and a half years I have been here and that is saying a lot, because I have been deeply disappointed in this government at many points in the past, but as for the level of disrespect, I do not even know how to say it. The superlatives escape me. I have used them all up, so I do not have any more to express my disappointment in how the government has acted. I see a member across the way who has been engaged in this somewhat and I am just going to get more worked up.
Suffice it to say that members across the way have an obligation to bite their tongues when they know that the economic future of Canadians is at stake. If they do not like the war, that is one thing. We respect that and they can debate it in a respectful way, but to run down the President of the United States and run down Americans in general is not acceptable. It is not acceptable and I want to see it end.
There are so many things I could talk about, but I suspect my time is coming to an end. I will simply wrap up by stating that the government has been imprudent in many ways. It has driven up spending at a time of economic uncertainty caused by war, by a sluggish domestic economy in the United States and by other problems such as SARS, which is another thing. The government has been driving up spending and on the other hand it is doing its best to undermine our closest economic relationship, our relationship with the United States, which is responsible for 87% of all of our trade. From here on in, let us hope that members across the way get the message that they have to be prudent, not only in how they spend but in how they treat our best friends in the world.