Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Guelph.
I think there are four reasons why this is a bad budget. It is a dishonest budget. It is a visionless budget. It is a fiscally irresponsible budget and it is a meanspirited budget cunningly crafted to appeal to the Conservative base. Let me go through each of those four points.
The parliamentary secretary referred to Liberal vague plans to cut income tax. These were not vague plans. They were on the actual income tax forms that each and every Canadian filled out in the past year. In discussions with department officials and even with the Minister of Finance in front of the committee, all have acknowledged that the income tax that Canadians actually paid at the lowest rate is going up. It is not going down.
It is true that the legislated rate is coming down, but it is also true that Canadians outside of Ottawa do not care whether it is a legislated rate or a rate passed by a ways and means motion. What they care about is the rate they actually pay. Everybody agrees that this rate has gone up as a consequence of the budget and not down.
As economist Dale Orr pointed out, there are certain consequences or corollaries following from that. First, a large number of Canadians have seen a reduction in their take home pay. That simply flows from the fact that the income tax rate at the lowest level has gone up. Second, the basic personal amount has gone down, not up, as a consequence of which 200,000 Canadians have been added to the tax rolls as a consequence of this budget. Third and finally, when we make the correction between up and down, we find that the actual income tax relief provided by the budget is only 5% of what the budget claims.
These are huge errors in presenting the budget, which entirely mislead Canadians. It is extremely important that the record be corrected. Indeed, Canadians will discover this when they see their paycheques in July or whenever the budget comes into effect. They will make the unpleasant discovery that in many cases they are actually paying more income tax, rather than less.
The budget is dishonest in a number of other ways. Finance officials confirmed that as a consequence of the budget the government saves approximately $5 billion in terms of aboriginals. That is to say, the amount which the Liberals had committed to Kelowna is not committed any more. That is a factual numerical way to say that Kelowna is indeed truly dead as a consequence of the budget and the government.
The budget is dishonest in a very fundamental way. It is also visionless. I believe that the fundamental question facing any finance minister of Canada in the year 2006 is this. How will this country of some 30 million people continue to thrive and prosper in a world of waking Goliaths like China, India, and traditional Goliaths like Europe and the United States? How will this country compete, thrive and prosper?
The budget says absolutely nothing on this subject, which has to be central to any responsible budget, especially that of a new government. I think there are two general overall ingredients in order to answer this question. One is competitive taxes and the other is actions in a lot of other different areas, which I will come to. The government is, essentially, absolutely dead wrong on its tax policies.
There is not an expert in the country or the world who believes that in order to become competitive, the best thing a country should do is to reduce its consumption taxes. The only economist in the land who might subscribe to that view is the Prime Minister of this country, but he lets his politics consistently get ahead of his economics.
There is unanimity among economists that if people want a competitive, thriving country, they have to be competitive in their income taxes and business taxes, but the worst thing is to reduce consumption taxes, which give nothing at all in terms of competitiveness and future prosperity.
Another thing on which I believe the experts are agreed is that we want broad-based tax relief. We do not want to micromanage who gets benefits and who does not get benefits. We do not want to pretend we are a social engineering government that believes the government knows best how each and every Canadian should spend their money: yes to sports, no to music.
That is another area in which this budget makes a mistake. There are tiny little tax credits here and there that some receive and others do not. Why not broad-based tax relief to benefit all Canadians and let Canadian families make their own decisions as to how to spend their money?
The third point is that this budget is in the long Conservative tradition of fiscal irresponsibility. From Diefenbaker, with his seven consecutive deficits, to Mulroney, who left a $42 billion deficit to be cleaned up by an incoming Liberal government, to Mike Harris.
This is an interesting case because three senior government ministers were key architects of the Mike Harris government. Not only did he fire 10,000 civil servants, fire 8,000 nurses, some of whom had to be hired back because he had made a mistake but close 30 hospitals. One would think with all this slash and burn at least the Conservatives could balance their books. But no, they did not. They claimed to. But then when the Ontario Liberal government came in and called in the auditors, it turned out they had a deficit of $5.6 billion. So from Diefenbaker, to Mulroney, to Harris, and looking south of the border, the biggest deficits are with Reagan and Bush, not with Clinton, who ran surpluses.
The government is following in that long irresponsible tradition. It is not in deficit yet. We left so much money that not even a Conservative government could go into deficit immediately. That would be very difficult. However, the Conservatives are skating very dangerously close to the edge.
They have abandoned that cushion which we call prudence, so that should there be a downturn or a negative shock somewhere, the finances of the nation will be cushioned against a return to deficit. They totally got rid of that. They think it is unnecessary. They have budgeted very small surpluses. They speak disparagingly about debt reduction as if it is excess taxation rather than paying down debt to the benefit of future generations. But they do not care about future generations because future generations will not vote in the next election.
So this, in addition to being a dishonest and visionless budget, it is a fiscally irresponsible budget in that long Conservative tradition which brings this country dangerously close to returning to deficits, to undoing the Chrétien legacy, the Martin legacy, and the Liberal legacy of getting us out of deficits, becoming the envy of the world, and paying down our debt. That was the engine of the strong growth that Canada has had in recent years and the government, with its fiscal irresponsibility, has put that at risk.
My last reason for opposing this budget, the fourth and final reason, is that it is a meanspirited budget. If a person is a disadvantaged Canadian or a vulnerable Canadian or a lower income Canadian, chances are this budget passes him or her over. If a person is a well-heeled Canadian, a traditional Conservative-supporting Canadian, chances are this budget treats him or her very well. And this we see again and again and again. We see this in the treatment of aboriginal people.
Arguably, there is no group in the whole country that has suffered more in terms of low living standards, poor health outcomes, and all of these major difficulties and yet, the government simply abandons Canada's aboriginal people. After years of work, we achieved unanimity with premiers, with aboriginal leaders, and with the federal government to make a real beginning to closing the gap between aboriginals and other Canadians.
The government is $5 billion richer as a consequence of not proceeding with Kelowna and notwithstanding the sanctimonious comments of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The government is not doing anything. It has pulled out. It has pulled the rug from under Canada's least privileged group.
The budget is meanspirited with regard to aboriginals, farmers, Canada's regions, the north and particularly the environment. Those are all big losers in this meanspirited budget, this dishonest budget that--