Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Labrador.
There are two very curious aspects to the budget and some have just been referred to recently by my hon. colleague from Scarborough. The first is a total confusion between what I would understand to be a true Conservative philosophy of libertarian laissez faire, small government versus, in the same budget, social engineering, economic meddling administrative burdening and inefficient fiddling.
The second further fundamental confusion is about the very purposes of society itself, the functions of a state and the limitations of individual actions in effecting change.
Let us begin with the inherent contradiction of the budget. On the one hand, we are told that the purpose of tax cuts is to put more money in the hands of citizens and businesses, to increase freedom of choice for citizens and businesses and to reduce the heavy hand of the state in making social and economic choices.
On the other hand, there are many examples in the budget of tax policy where the state is clearly, as my colleague from Scarborough said, acting as a nanny, a know-it-all, a bossy-boots and an unrepentant, economic dirigiste.
A real expert on everything.
Let us take the case of children and families, as the hon. member for Peace River has just done. On the one hand, we are told that the $1,200 taxable annual child allowance for children under six is all about freedom of choice for families in making child care arrangements, although of course parents do not have to spend a cent on child care to get the money.
How many times have we heard the words, “There are millions of experts whose names are mom and dad” in justifying parental freedom of choice? But wait, the government is also providing a $500 tax credit to cover registration fees for children's sports. What if mom and dad would prefer piano lessons, dance lessons or art classes for their children? Nope, father knows best.
The bossy-boots federal government is now dictating to parents which extracurricular activities are worthy for their children and which are not. What happened to freedom of choice? How come mom and dad are experts in child care but raving incompetents when it comes to after school activities? If the government can give $1,200 without condition, why can it not give another $500 for children under 16 years of age without conditions and let parents decide how to use the money? Why create an additional paper burden with proof of payment for swimming lessons?
Beyond this selective social engineering, this “we know best what's best, we know what is best for families when it comes to sports”, a similar attitude prevails in singling out certain economic sectors for special treatment. We just have to look at the fiddling around in selected industries, such as jewellery, wine produced by small vintners and beer produced by small brewers. Since when, under classic conservative philosophy, is it the duty of the state to micromanage microbreweries? When did the state decide that small vintners are better than big vintners?
Todd Hirsch, economist for the Canada West Foundation, said that the budget neither reduces the size of government nor simplifies the tax system, nor represents a return to more sound economics, criticism echoed by John Williamson of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
If the budget is full of inconsistencies from a classical conservative point of view, it also fails the second test: understanding the respective roles of the individual citizen and of the state in the modern world.
Let us examine three cases, two of which we have previously considered. Child care and early learning is a good example. The national child care and early learning strategy of the previous Liberal government had the ambition of creating a major social system, like the public education system or the public health system. A government cannot create a major social system with tax breaks for individuals alone. It is the role of government, for example, to build and run hospitals, to build and run public schools and to build and run early childhood learning and care systems for those who need it. There is only true choice when the public system is available. No one would talk about choice in education if public education were not available as well as private or charter schools.
My second example is the $500 credit for costs related to physical activities for children.
Children may have the best equipment available but without an arena, a park, a community centre or a public swimming pool they cannot engage in their activity. Once again, there are no options for taking the place of the government when it comes time to provide public infrastructure.
This is why, during the last election campaign, the Liberals promised to create a $350 million fund in order to generate a total investment of over $1 billion, including the contributions of municipal and provincial partners, to put in place the Community, Sport and Recreation Infrastructure Fund.
My final example is public transit. The Liberal approach was to use three separate funds: a renewed strategic infrastructure fund; continuing gas tax money; and a special two year $800 million transit fund to build new public transit systems. This budget reduces the total of those commitments to building public transit and substitutes a tax credit for transit passes. A tax credit for transit passes, as transit operators have noted, do not build new subway lines or purchase new buses. It creates greater demand on existing systems, but builds no new capacity.
Once again, favouring individual transit users is not a substitute for direct government intervention in favouring and building new capacity for public transit.
There we have it, a budget which is schizophrenic, which speaks in one breath of putting money back in the pockets of taxpayers and giving them freedom of choice and in the next, starts bossing them about, dictating choices to parents and singling out certain industries for special treatment over others.
Finally, it is a budget which fails to understand that there are some things which individual taxpayers cannot do and which society and governments must do, such as building public transit systems, building public recreation facilities and building a public system of child care and early learning.