Bill C-30 (Historical)

Budget Implementation Act, 2004

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 23, 2004

Criminal Code

[Vic Toews, Canadian Alliance, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my comments to this very important bill. The stated purpose of the bill is to modernize the mental disorder provisions of the Criminal Code to make it both fairer and efficient while preserving the overall framework of these provisions.

In June 2002 the standing committee tabled its report, calling for legislative reforms and looking at Department of Justice consultations on the mental disorder provisions of the Criminal Code. The extensive committee review that was conducted was as a result of the statutory requirement under Bill C-30, which had been introduced in 1991, after many years of consultation.

The report that was put forward in 2002 was approved by all parties. In fact the results of this review is an important example of how committees, when they are focused on the issue rather than politics, can work in a cooperative fashion. This report is a demonstration of that.

Bill C-30 had a significant reform provision relating to persons not considered criminally responsible. That bill replaced references to terms such as “natural imbecility” or “disease of the mind” with the term “mental disorder”. It extended its application to cover summary convictions for less serious offences as well. Instead of being found not guilty by reason of insanity, an accused could now be held not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder.

Such a finding no longer resulted in an automatic period in custody. That automatic period of custody was found to be unconstitutional in the Swain decision in 1991. Instead the court could choose an appropriate disposition or indeed defer the decision to a review board.

Furthermore, under that provision, the courts and the review boards were obliged to impose the least restrictive disposition necessary having regard to the goal of public safety, the mental condition of the accused and the goal of his or her reintegration into society.

Bill C-30 came into force in February 1992. The proclamation was delayed for three major initiatives. First was the capping provision that was referred to earlier. Second was the dangerously mental disordered accused provisions that would allow the courts to extend the cap to a life term. The third was the hospital orders provisions for convicted offenders who at the time of sentencing were in need of treatment for a mental disorder.

This bill takes into account the recommendations of the justice committee of June 2002. Bill C-29 addresses six key areas. These are all issues that were thoroughly considered by the committee. I understand that these are not necessarily exactly the way the committee has recommended them and that is why the committee will no doubt examine very carefully what has been put into the bill.

However, indeed the amendments address six key areas: first, the expansion of the review board powers; second, permitting the court to order a stay of proceedings for permanently unfit accused; third, allowing victim impact statements to be read; fourth, the repeal of unproclaimed provisions; fifth, streamlining of transfer provisions between provinces; and sixth, the expansion of police powers to enforce dispositions and assessment orders.

A couple of concerns have been raised with respect to some of these key areas, for example, the allowing of victim impact statements to be read.

In the case of a criminal trial where a person has been found guilty the concerns of the victim of course are very relevant. They are necessary in the sentencing provision to determine whether the impact on the victim should also be reflected in the sentencing.

Here we are dealing with a substantively different situation because we are not looking at the guilty mind of an accused. We are dealing with a mentally disordered person. We therefore have to be careful how we use these victim impact statements in this context. I think it is important for victims to have a voice but we have to remember that this does not form exactly the same role that it does in a criminal trial where a criminal may not express any regret after having been convicted and it is important for the victim to have his or her say in that context.

The streamlining of the transfer provisions between provinces is another issue. It is important that there be the appropriate consent of the jurisdiction to which the individual is being transferred. I understand the bill attempts to ensure that there is the appropriate consent in that context.

The repeal of the unproclaimed capping provisions and the like are important. Why were concerns raised over these sentencing provisions? They were raised because it seemed that where a person was found mentally disordered, the period of incarceration could be a lot longer than a comparable sentence in the criminal courts. Somehow there was a suggestion that maybe it would be unfair to have a mentally disordered person subject to a longer period of custody than someone who had been in fact convicted of a criminal offence.

Here again is the difference in the intent. With the criminal conviction, obviously punishment is a key goal of the criminal justice system, as well as rehabilitation. When we talk in the mentally disordered context, we are not talking punishment. We are not talking about rehabilitation in the same way where there is a cognitive element in terms of rehabilitating an accused. In the mentally disordered context we are trying to deal with the health of the individual. Therefore if it takes longer to help the person, so be it. The capping provision is simply not appropriate.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Winko decision that a potentially indefinite period of supervision of a mentally disordered person was not unconstitutional since it was not for the purposes of punishment. However there is the review process that provides a mentally disordered person with some safeguards.

On the issue of the stay of proceedings for the permanently unfit accused, there is some concern related to how the safety of the public can be guaranteed. I look forward to that particular discussion at the committee, because even if the person is not personally responsible for his or her actions because of the mental disorder, there is still an onus on society to ensure that the individual does not cause further damage to his or her fellow citizens.

As I indicated, the objectives of the bill are generally consistent with the recommendations of the June 2002 committee report, a report which members of both the former Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Parties approved. I look forward to having the discussion in committee.

Committees of the House

[Nick Discepola, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Finance, concerning Bill C-30, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 23, 2004, as agreed on Tuesday, April 27, 2004, and to report it with amendments.

Budget Implementation Act, 2004

[The Deputy Speaker]

It being 5:30 p.m. the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the previous question at the second reading stage of Bill C-30.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

[Werner Schmidt, Canadian Alliance, Kelowna, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to address you, sitting so finely in the chair, and to congratulate you on your elevation to that post in this august House.

I want to address three parts of Bill C-30, the budget implementation act that was presented some time ago, and I hope to get through all three parts. The first part concerns the budget generally. The second part concerns the equalization formula. The third part concerns the secret reserve.

First, with regard to the budget generally. Paul Martin and Ralph Goodale have taken government spending and taxing--

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

Madam Speaker, I want to confirm that this is a debate on Bill C-30, the budget implementation bill. I did not hear anything about the budget in the last speech. Every once in a while the hon. member should actually read the budget. It would probably be of some assistance to him.

I am going to narrow my remarks to annex 3 of the budget, which I again recommend to hon. members just in case they are interested in what is in the budget.

This is the seventh year in a row that the Government of Canada has posted a surplus, which is the first time since Confederation. It is quite a remarkable financial achievement given the difficulties that we had last year. That has been said quite a number of times. What might not be known is that, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, Canada is projected to be the only G-7 country which will record a surplus in both 2004 and 2005.

It is also interesting to note that Canada has had the largest improvement in its budgetary situation among G-7 countries since 1992. That was just about a year before this government took over from the predecessors of the Alliance-Reform-Conservative, et cetera. That was the hole from which we had to dig ourselves out. If we are benchmarking, that is probably an appropriate place to start.

Over that period of time, the other governments, following the lead of the Government of Canada, started to realize that this debt situation could not continue. Therefore, over this period of time, Canada's total government sector debt--by that I mean the provincial and federal governments--has declined to an estimated 35% of gross domestic product, which is a remarkable turnaround, given that we were probably at that time about the second highest in the G-7 nations in terms of indebtedness.

In 2002-03 we posted a $7 billion surplus, much to the chagrin of my colleagues in the far end of the chamber. That was somewhere in the order of .06% of the overall gross domestic product. That contrasts quite favourably with our colleagues to the south and the co-religionists of members opposite.

The U.S. balance fell further into deficit in the same period of time to $375 billion or 3.5% of GDP. Actually, the story is somewhat worse than that because the Americans count their deficit by mixing their pension plan surplus money into the actual government revenues. Therefore, there is a better deficit picture in the United States than the way we project it here in Canada. We separate out the surplus that we have in the Canada and Quebec pension plans and keep them separate and apart from the actual government revenues. That in effect makes a substantial difference.

This year the government projects through its budget a surplus of $1.9 billion. Whether it turns out to be more than that or less than that we actually will not know until July or August of this year. Nevertheless, at this point that is what we are projecting, which is approximately 1% of the entire revenues of the government.

I hear members from the far end of the chamber from time to time say that the house is leaking and all we are doing is paying the mortgage. The mortgage is about 20% of the government's revenues. That is about $37 billion, just to pay the interest on the mortgage. The hon. members to the left on this factor say we cannot pay down any principal. Well, the principal payment in this particular year as projected in the budget is 1% of the entire revenues of the government. They say that is a horrible thing. Surely we should not pay down 1% on our debt. So I do not understand the thinking there.

As a result of continued surpluses at the federal level and the deterioration of U.S. finances, the federal debt to GDP ratio is expected to fall below the U.S. figure for the first time in quite a while, actually since 1977-78.

That is almost 30 years in which the Americans have had a better debt to GDP ratio than we had. This past fiscal year is the first year that we will have a better debt to GDP ratio than our colleagues to the south.

Members will be interested in some of the material that is contained in annex 3.

As I said, Canada was the only G-7 country to record a surplus in 2003 out of all the OECD countries. Canada's surplus for 2003 is estimated to be 1% of GDP, compared to an average deficit among OECD countries of somewhere in the order of 4.7%.

Let me just emphasize that because 4.7% is the average of what an OECD country will be having as a deficit, where Canada will be in a slight surplus, in spite of all the difficulties that we had in this past fiscal year. Those fiscal difficulties that we had with SARS, mad cow and all those other plagues and pestilences, as the minister has described, will be rippling through our 2004-05 fiscal year. We just do not recover from hydro blackouts and expect to instantaneously replace the loss on the gross domestic product.

Turning to the third chart that is in the annex, Canada's total government sector financial balance has improved when it recorded a 9.1% deficit of GDP, almost double the G-7 average. In other words, in 1992 we were 9.1% of GDP in a deficit position--one of the worst countries in the G-7.

We have already improved by being in the seventh year of consecutive surplus. From 1992, in other words the last period of time in which a conservative form of government was running the government of Canada, to 2003, Canada's total financial balance registered a turnaround of 10 percentage points. Before 1992-93, we were way below the G-7 average and making a real hash out of things. With a lot of hard work on the part of this government and on the part of Canadians, we have now turned it around to have the best financial situation of all the G-7 countries in the world.

The previous speaker talked about government spending and that we are just like drunken sailors. Unfortunately for him, the facts are somewhat different. When his previous incarnation of a political party ran the shop, Canada was in a bit of a mess. On a national accounts basis, our total government spending was well above the average for the OECD and the G-7. Since then, we have experienced sharp reductions in program spending and between 1992 and 2003, Canada's total government spending program, as a share of GDP, is estimated to have been reduced by 9.2%, which is a far greater reduction than any other country. So, between the Conservatives of 1992 and the Liberals of 2003, the difference is a reduction in actual program spending net of debt, I am not including debt in this, of 9.2%.

When we add the actual significant differences in debt, we were actually paying 28¢ out of every dollar on debt. We paid out $37 billion this year. We have actually taken that figure from 28% down to just a touch under 20%.

This is a remarkable story. It shows that, contrary to the nonsense we hear out of the other side, Canada is arguably the best managed country in the world. Frankly, if there is going to be an election, I am happy to go to the people of Canada on that record.

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on behalf of the constituents of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on Bill C-30, the budget implementation act, 2004. This omnibus bill would put into law several measures in the March 2004 budget.

Last month's budget failed to deliver money for our hospitals. It did nothing to reduce spiralling tuition fees. It ignored the pressing needs of the Canadian armed forces. It neglected to put money back into the pockets of Canadian taxpayers.

Under the Liberals, spending has increased by $41 billion over the past seven years. Over the next two years spending is set to rise by another $13 billion, but almost none of the government's multibillion dollar spending will do anything to alleviate child poverty. It will not do much to improve health care, build new roads, help public transit or create jobs. Hospital waiting lines will continue to get longer. Students will continue to plunge deeper into debt. Our soldiers will be stretched as thinly as ever before.

The Liberals use weasel words like “prudence” and “accountability”, but waste and scandal more accurately describe their spending record. When the current Prime Minister was the finance minister we witnessed the billion dollar HRDC boondoggle, $100 million in GST fraud, a $1 billion cost overrun on the gun registry, the theft of $160 million from the defence department, not to mention the sponsorship scandal and the hundreds of millions of dollars given to Liberal friendly advertising agencies. Quite frankly, this is money that would be better off in the pockets of hardworking Canadians.

The aim of the equalization program is to shift resources from the have provinces to the have not provinces to ensure a reasonably similar level of service for health care and education across the country. Eight provinces receive about $10 billion annually. The amount is determined by a very complex formula which measures the ability of each province to raise revenue. B.C. receives about $440 million since it became a have not province under this government's watch.

Bill C-30 renews the equalization program for five years, to March 31, 2009. At their annual conference, all 10 premiers called on the federal government to calculate its standard for equalization by averaging the fiscal capacity of all 10 provinces.

The Liberals refused and instead unilaterally introduced their own changes for a new formula. It changes the way some revenue sources in the formula are measured, resulting in payment increases of about $265 million per year. It also introduces a three year moving average to the way the formula is calculated to smooth out year to year fluctuations in payment levels.

The budget announced a payment to the provinces of $300 million to support a national immunization strategy and $100 million to help improve public health facilities. The budget stated that this would be booked to fiscal year 2003-04 but that payment would be made over three years.

Bill C-30 also authorizes payments to a trust for these purposes but does not specify when they are to be made. Nor does the legislation specify the amounts to be paid to individual provinces.

The budget announced that a further $100 million would be provided to Canada Health Infoway Inc. While the budget said that the payment was to help the provinces invest in hardware and software for public health surveillance, Bill C-30 gave no direction as to its use. This brings the total funds advanced to the foundation to $1.2 billion, including its initial endowment of $500 million announced in September 2000 and $600 million announced in the 2003 budget.

In her April 2002 report, “Placing the Public's Money Beyond Parliament's Reach”, the Auditor General raised concerns about this foundation's accountability structure. Transferring money to funds and foundations so that it may be spent in future budget years was a popular way of doing business when the Prime Minister headed the finance department.

The Auditor General found that from 1996-97 to 2000-01 the government paid $7.1 billion through transfers to nine foundations to achieve various policy objectives of the government. The government treated the $7.1 billion in transfers to foundations as an expenditure, but as of March 31, 2001 almost the entire amount was still in the bank accounts and other investments of the foundations. Very little of it had actually been received by the ultimate intended recipients. The Auditor General concluded that “the $7.1 billion, or most of it, is not really an expenditure of the government”.

The recording of these transfers as expenditures enabled the government to report a lower annual surplus. It was hiding money. This is completely cooking the books.

I remember in the public accounts committee at that time discovering that the government was hiding money in a foundation which was not even in existence as of that date. The foundation came into existence a year later, but the government hid money to pay to that foundation which did not even exist. If a businessman were to follow this practice in his business, I would bet he would be in jail.

Why was the Prime Minister, who was the finance minister at that time, allowed to cook the books? The Auditor General took a strong step. The Auditor General refused to sign off on the government books. What the government did was completely, in my judgment, illegal and a violation of generally accepted accounting principles and should not be allowed to be done by the government.

The federal government also talked about employment insurance. The EI fund is a real scandal in Ottawa. The surplus of employment insurance overpayments has reached about $44 billion and another $3 billion surplus is expected. That surplus is not supposed to exist. This money belongs to employees and employers. The government does not need to accumulate money to the tune of a $47 billion surplus. The Auditor General and the chief actuary of the EI fund have said that it should not be more than $15 billion. The government is abusing its accounting powers and manipulating generally accepted accounting principles just to benefit the government and its Liberal friends.

On another issue, in Surrey at least 44% of what we pay for gasoline is the taxes on gasoline which the Prime Minister has been talking about. Last year the tax bite for B.C. totalled over $1.1 billion. In return the government transferred only $37 million to the province for infrastructure improvements, which is a paltry return of just over 3%. In contrast, the United States gives 95% of the money for infrastructure development projects. In Canada, it is about 3%, which is laughable. The government is carrying all that money into the general revenue, which is a complete black hole.

Discretionary spending increased a whopping 15% this budget year and the government wants overall spending to grow by another 8.8% over the next two years. Truth and transparency in fiscal policy is what we were promised, but we do not see it.

My time has expired, so in conclusion, I would like to say that the sponsorship program referred to by the environment minister's staff as a Liberal slush fund, and likely the unity fund as well, also known as the honey pot, funnelled money into Liberal ridings. We saw the same thing with the transitional jobs fund.

The rot extends far beyond a mere $100 million skimmed by a few advertising firms. It is the whole system of discretionary spending that we are concerned with that is corrupt and corrupting the system. It depletes the treasury, distorts the economy, incites envy, encourages special pleading, and rewards friends of the government.

With the tax filing deadline looming, Canadians should pay close attention to what the government is doing with their money. The Liberals are furiously spending in their bid for re-election and that is not acceptable.

[The Speaker]

The House will now proceed to the deferred recorded division on the amendment to the motion for second reading of Bill C-30.

Business of the House

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, discussions have taken place between all the parties and I believe that if you were to seek it you would find consent for the following motion:

That the recorded divisions scheduled today at 3:00 p.m. be taken in the following order: first, referral to committee before second reading of Bill C-25; second, the amendment to second reading of Bill C-30, and third, second reading of Bill C-246.

Budget Implementation Act, 2004

[Sébastien Gagnon, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean—Saguenay, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address Bill C-30, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 23, 2004. This legislation seeks to bring about the legislative changes that are necessary to implement several measures announced in the budget speech.

This morning, I was on the highway, on my way here, and I was wondering what I would tell my constituents who are listening to my speech today on the budget. I am afraid I will disappoint them. For one thing, these people, who are paying 50% of their taxes to Ottawa, expect some tangible content in the budget, and particularly some concrete measures from the government. Today, I am sorry to have to tell them that there is not much for our riding, or for Quebeckers, in this budget.

This weekend, I attended a nice event in Jonquière, a brunch where a number of people had gathered to provide help and financial support to the poor in our society.

Many people asked me what was in the budget for workers in the softwood lumber industry, for the unemployed and for those young people who want to stay in our region instead of leaving to settle in large urban centres. Again, I had no choice but to tell them the truth, namely that there are not many concrete measures in the budget to allow my beautiful region to create opportunities for the future. This would require some leverage, but such leverage is non-existent.

Health is a fundamental concern in my region, and that includes everyone, every class of citizens, every individual, regardless of their age.

Currently, Ottawa is only contributing 14.7% of the total costs. With the $2 billion that it is investing, its contribution will stand at 16%. Ten years ago, before the Liberals took office, the federal government's contribution represented 25%.

What has happened is that in recent years they have cut back on health transfer payments to Quebec. They have impoverished the province, which must now deal with its lack of money. Instead of reducing their contribution, I think it would be necessary to increase it, in order to continue to provide the public with health care and ensure a decent quality of life and a decent level of care.

Instead, what they are doing is interfering directly in Quebec's fields of jurisdiction, and I am not the only saying this. The provincial Liberals all agree that, in fact, the federal government is determined to interfere in Quebec's jurisdiction. Why? Here in Ottawa, they have a huge surplus, but it is Quebec that needs the money. Rather than being stubborn or creating all sorts of more or less effective schemes, let them take the money and give it to Quebec, which will know how to use it.

In our beautiful region there are three main economic sectors, forestry, farming and aluminum. Two of the most important of these are affected. Not only are they seriously affected, but some families are being driven into poverty.

Let us take the softwood lumber crisis as an example. This is a major industry in our region. The region most affected by the softwood lumber crisis is ours: 2,948 jobs are directly affected by the crisis right now. Ironically, the minister, accompanied by my colleague the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, talked about 200 jobs. He said that the Bloc MPs make the problem look worse than it really is. That is too bad, but right now 2,948 forestry workers are directly affected by this crisis.

Instead of trying to minimize this crisis, the government should be coming up with concrete solutions. I met with representatives of the forestry industry. What they want are loan guarantees that would enable them to replace their equipment in order to move from a primary manufacturing stage to a different mode such as an entrepreneurial one, using various materials, for example in secondary and tertiary manufacturing.

In addition, we must not forget that those affected the most are the plant workers. Today, these workers cannot survive from one season to the next because they find themselves without work and without employment insurance. They no longer have the money to feed their families.

The employment insurance criteria also need to be adjusted to allow these workers to benefit from the important leverage that employment insurance represents.

There is also agriculture. Over the past year in particular, there have been serious problems. Hon. members will recall the closure of the Chambord plant. Capital investment was shifted to other regions in Quebec. Many farms went up for sale when farmers reviewed their accounts and saw that their income had dropped dramatically. And just recently, the mad cow crisis hit a large number of farmers in our region hard.

Once again, in the budget speech, the federal government boasted about having allocated nearly $1 billion for the mad cow crisis. Do you know how much money was allocated for farmers in Quebec? Roughly $50 million, which is totally inadequate and does not meet industry needs.

There was no mention—I pointed this out a few moments ago—of employment insurance. This is an important lever. Over the past few years, nearly $50 billion, some $46 billion was accumulated in the fund. What happened to this money? It was withdrawn and put directly towards the debt. In his speech, the Minister of Finance bragged about Canada being one of the leading G-8 nations because it has paid down its debt more quickly.

While the government wants to project a good image internationally, there are workers who are unemployed and a region that does not have all the necessary financial means that should be available to it.

Let us look at a few examples concerning seasonal workers. In my riding the reality is that blueberries do not grow when it is 25 degrees below zero. Construction work comes to a halt as well at that temperature in our region. It is not the workers who are seasonal, but the work, the industry that is seasonal. The workers need a lever that will provide relief and allow them to make it from one season to the next.

What does this mean? It would give our region the ability to continue to pursue an industry. The federal government is telling us to forget about our blueberries and find other work elsewhere or find another industry. That is not realistic. We need a lever that would help us become economically stable.

Here are some other examples. The number of hours of work required in the case of students was increased from 425 to 900 hours. Back home, the major problem is that young people are leaving the region. They are leaving to settle in large centres and find work. The Liberal federal government has an important tool, but it is not using it in the community.

We could simply take this number of hours, allow students to qualify—by doing seasonal work—and thus ensure that they have a decent income until they gain experience and make a contribution to the economic development of our region. At some point, this work will become permanent.

It is the same thing with entrepreneurship. More effective measures would allow entrepreneurs to create seasonal work and promoters to develop tourism initiatives that would also allow communities to develop a year round economy.

The overall impression is that there are many disappointments in this budget for my fellow citizens. This is a budget that missed the target. It could have been receptive to the needs of small regions. This is a budget designed for large urban centres such as Montreal, Quebec City and others.

Once again, there is little in it that deals directly or concretely with the softwood lumber industry. What is there in the budget for employment insurance? Absolutely nothing. So, I have no choice but to tell my fellow citizens that the budget is once again a huge disappointment. Voters will remember that during the next election campaign.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak in this debate, since it gives me another opportunity to express the concerns of the people in my riding.

This eight-part bill would amend a number of existing statutes, such as the Canada Pension Plan and the Income Tax Act. Many of these measures are particularly bad, and my Bloc Quebecois colleagues have already pointed them out to the House.

Today I would like to voice the concerns of the agricultural producers in my riding, the riding of Drummond, located in the Centre-du-Québec region.

Last week in my office, I received a delegation of cash crop farmers from the Centre-du-Québec. During that meeting, they told me about the unfair trading practices they are currently suffering and the impact on them of the federal government's withdrawal. And yet in the Speech from the Throne, the Prime Minister boasted, and I quote:

The Government is dedicated to Canada’s farm economy and to taking the steps necessary to safeguard access to international markets and to ensure that farmers are not left to bear alone the consequences of circumstances beyond their control.

The government is a long way from making its words reality. There was nothing in the budget to support this intention and, consequently, nothing concrete in Bill C-30.

When I met with farmers from my region they reiterated that grain producers in Quebec and Canada are in a very difficult, not to say impossible situation. Why? Because the price of grain remains ridiculously low. They are unable to cover their production costs, which continue to increase. Add to that the interventions by the U.S. and European governments, which have been subsidizing their farmers for several years.

How has Canada reacted? During the past 10 years that the Liberals have been in power, during which the current Prime Minister was finance minister, Canada has increasingly failed to stand behind its farmers. That is the case for grain producers. Hon. members might be surprised to learn that funding for the agri-food sector in the federal budget went from 3.9% in 1991-92 to 1.6% in 2001-02, while Quebec grain producers posted negative net incomes.

The Liberals will probably respond by saying that transitional measures were implemented, but these are clearly inadequate.

The reality is that the federal government, and this Liberal government in particular—whether that of the former prime minister or the current Prime Minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard—has abandoned farmers.

The transitional measures totalled some $600 million in 2001-02 but no more than $250 million in 2003. Grain producers in Canada and Quebec expected the government to provide its share of support: $1.3 billion for the grain sector alone. The budget implementation bill falls short of their expectations because it offers nothing.

Meanwhile, the United States and Europe heavily subsidize their farmers. Here, it is frightening how our farmers are being abandoned by the federal government.

I can already hear the reaction from the Liberals and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, who will brag about their farm income stabilization program. Allow me to say that in a letter dated April 15, 2004, Mr. Werner Schur, president of the Syndicat des producteurs de grandes cultures commerciales du Centre-du-Québec, which is my region, said that the latest program created to support farmers will instead impoverish large-scale farms in Quebec and Canada.

The budget and its implementation bill could have provided an opportunity to meet the needs of the cash crop producers. The grain and oilseed producers wanted to see some leadership from the federal government. This was a missed opportunity.

Every year, may I remind you, foreign subsidies result in a drop of more than $1.3 billion in income for Quebec and Canadian grain and oilseed producers. When will we see some policies to lessen the impact of this foreign interference on world markets?

I hope the Minister of Finance and his colleague, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, have taken proper notice of this situation. The producers, like myself, are waiting not just for answers but for concrete actions to remedy this situation.

In recent years, the Liberal government has been asking the public to help put public finances in order. The federal government, with its current Prime MInister, formerly finance minister, made huge slashes to the funding of a number of sectors, health among them. This disengagement was solely responsible for the strangulation of the finances of Quebec and the provinces. The present Prime Minister, none other than the father of fiscal imbalance, has but one objective: to create a single government in Ottawa, with administrative branch offices in Quebec and the rest of Canada.

Yet, at the very same time, the Liberals were shamelessly wasting taxpayer dollars on what we have brought to light: the sponsorship scandal. Not only the $100 million lost in the sponsorship scandal, but also the billion lost in the Human Resources Development scandal, and another $2 billion for the firearms registry. Over the past ten years, the Liberals have made it patently clear that they are incompetent to handle public funds properly and effectively.

The present Prime Minister can repeat all he wants that he knew nothing about the sponsorship scandal, but he cannot contradict the facts. He was there, sharing the responsibility for the poor Liberal administration, and we will keep reminding him of that all through the coming election campaign, if there is such a campaign of course. What is the Liberal leader afraid of? What are the Quebec Liberals afraid of? Does their track record embarrass them?

The Liberals have always used the same tactic: over-estimating government expenditures and under-estimating surpluses. The present Prime Minister would have done well to consult the Bloc Quebecois critics, the members for Joliette and Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, whose forecast figures have been far closer to reality.

As a result, billions of dollars went to paying down the debt while funding to Quebec and the provinces was cut. We must not forget all the intrusions by the federal government in areas outside its jurisdiction, which complicated the job of finance ministers across Canada. These intrusions and all the ad hoc interventions, through foundations set up by the Liberals, made financial planning for Quebec and the provinces extremely difficult. This cannot go on.

These are the results of ten years under the Liberals. Confirmation of this is provided by the budget implementation bill. The Liberals are unconcerned by what our constituents are experiencing. They are out of touch with the reality facing the unemployed, older workers losing their jobs, seniors who are often the most vulnerable members of our society, low income families who are unable to find appropriate housing because they lack the means, farmers abandoned to their fate who must show extraordinary creativity to weather the storm.

Since the federal government is no longer of any assistance, since it has the finance ministers of Quebec and the provinces by the throat, since it is withdrawing and running from its responsibilities, there is only one solution to ensure a sustainable future; Quebec must become a sovereign nation.

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak to the budget implementation Bill C-30.

What the hon. member on the other side just said is, shall we say, questionable. He has indicated that we on this side are always against everything the government does. As a matter of fact, we have pressed very hard over the years for balanced budgets. We were the ones who first made it politically correct to even talk about stopping the endless borrowing.

Shall we say that we should praise the government for something. I will give the Liberals a reluctant nod of approval for the fact that they actually followed our advice and stopped borrowing money in order to top up the money that they collected from taxpayers in order to provide services to Canadians. We are glad the budget is balanced, absolutely. When the member says that we always criticize everything unequivocally, that just is not accurate.

Bill C-30 would implement some of the provisions of the budget that was handed down in the House in March. Some of the provisions are worth supporting and of course some we would somewhat criticize.

One of the things the bill would do is renew the equalization plan and make a few changes to it. I am sure we cannot persuade the Liberals to do this, but I would like to urge Canadians to write, phone or e-mail their members of Parliament and ask them for a copy of Bill C-30, the beginning pages that deal with equalization. If after having read these technical changes that are being made they can make heads or tails out of it, then we should recommend them for a Governor General's award, because it is a tremendously complicated and convoluted formula.

I will not waste my limited time talking about it but it talks about formulas: .016 times X1, times Y1, where X1 is the sum of two-thirds of the national per capita equalization. It goes on and on like that for about 10 pages. It makes fascinating reading.

I remember when I was on the finance committee we asked some officials from the Department of Finance to explain how the equalization worked, whereby the government collects money from all the provinces and then some of the provinces, currently every province except Ontario and Alberta, those provinces actually get money paid to them out of this equalization formula and it comes to the billions. Quebec, for example, typically receives around $10 billion a year out of equalization.

I am in favour of the principle of equalization. It is in our Constitution and I believe it is to the benefit of every Canadian and every province that the governments in the different provinces are able to deliver to their citizens comparable levels of services at comparable levels of taxation. If that were not done, then we would see a massive migration based totally on taxes and services. In other words, if a province were not able to deliver the services of health care and education, then clearly families would migrate to the provinces that could deliver them. So it is in our best interest to make sure that those services are delivered in every province.

Furthermore, if the provinces could only do this by massively increasing their rate of taxation, then again Canadians would react by migrating. It is just a natural human thing to move to areas or jurisdictions where the tax rates are lower, especially if people could not balance their household budget because the tax bite was so large.

We have learned this directly from our Prime Minister who, instead of paying the 40% to 50% that all Canadians pay in taxes in Canada, has arranged for his businesses to pay I think around 3% in Barbados and other countries. He obviously knows what it means to move to a better jurisdiction when tax rates are too high. Unfortunately, our farmers, business people and families cannot simply move their business interests and incomes to other countries and still manage to live here and enjoy the benefits of this country.

I would like to refer also to the fact that the bill deals with a number of other issues. One that is high on my personal agenda is EI. The bill once again gives to cabinet the sole right to set EI premiums. You have no idea, Mr. Speaker, how upset I am about this.

Just about all Canadian workers, because some are not covered, including our students who work in the summer, pay into the EI fund. Every dollar that is put in is matched by $1.40 by the employer. Can the students get their money back when they go back to school in the fall? No, they cannot. They are forced to buy this insurance from which they cannot possibly benefit. It is like forcing my mother to pay car insurance when she does not have a car. She can never collect that car insurance because she does not have a car. The same thing is true for students and many other people who pay into this, but because of their circumstances are unable to collect any money.

Bill C-30 gives to cabinet the right to once again set the premium rate. We know that it has been very high compared to the actual needs. As I recall, I believe with this budget and with the anticipated rates that the government will set, that fund probably will reach about $47 billion accumulated surplus over the last six or seven years. That was never the intent of the employment insurance fund. It was to be an insurance program to help people who had a temporary loss of employment, so they would have income while they looked for another job or while they were retrained. There are so many anomalies in this.

We hear many members, especially from this side of the House, draw to the attention of the government the shortcomings of EI in actually meeting the needs of people who become unemployed. They are either ineligible, the waiting periods are too long or the amount they receive is inadequate. Yet still people have to pay.

What does the government do? It rolls that money into general revenue. As a matter if fact, one could say that all of the surpluses that the government has enjoyed have come totally and solely on the backs of the employers and employees who blatantly are being overcharged on a program that is supposed to be self-sustaining.

The chief actuary of the EI fund has consistently recommended lower rates. The government has consistently overshot that target by a large amount in order to generate this money. Then the former parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance can gloat that it has balanced budgets. It is solely and totally on the backs of the members of the working public. I believe we need to correct that anomaly and we need to correct it very quickly.

Finally, there is this issue of the municipal GST rebate. Yes, indeed, all governments are cheering this. If one stops to think about it, it is only consistent with the principle that in Canada different levels of government are not to tax each other. The federal government has been taxing municipal governments through the nose for how many years and now finally it is going to stop doing it. Will I cheer that? Yes, indeed. Do I remind the Liberals about their promise on the GST in 1993? I cannot help but do it. They said that it would be gone for everybody, but it is still here.

My time has elapsed. I appreciate the privilege of being able to address this issue.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Oak Ridges, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-30, the budget implementation bill.

I have to say that some things never change. Obviously the opposition again does not like this budget and again fails to recognize the tremendous progress the government has made, particularly in the area of managing the nation's finances. We have had seven balanced budgets or better for the first time in Canadian history. It is unheard of.

This is the only government in the western world that is paying down the national debt, which colleagues across the way have again failed to acknowledge.

The fact is that the government has made it very clear that prudent financial management is critical and we have been able to do that with seven balanced budgets or better while still investing in the social foundations of this country: investing in families, in communities and in health care while making sure that our programs are cost effective.

However we do not hear these things from opposition members because they would say that if they were in power they would do it differently. They are absolutely right that they would do it differently. They would gut social programs.

They refer back to 1993 spending levels. I would remind our colleagues in the House of the fact that one-third of government spending in 1993 was borrowed money. We are not into borrowed money. We are making sure that we have the resources to enable us to move forward on programs that are important to Canadians. I do not like hearing about the 1993 levels because clearly it is a fallacy.

On this side of the House we have cut our credit card in half. We will not go on the basis of previous Conservative governments or, indeed, of previous Liberal governments. Over the last 10 or 11 years we have said that we would make sure the finances of the nation were well managed.

We are the envy of the western world. It is unheard of to have seven balanced budgets or better. We are the only G-7 country paying off its national debt.

We are also being prudent. We are making sure we have that contingency fund back. I would ask members to remember last year when we had everything from hurricanes to fires to SARS and yet we were able to respond effectively and not go back into the red. Again, that is extremely important.

We have established for the first time a target on debt reduction. Last year $3.5 billion was saved because of debt reduction. What did that mean for the average Canadian? It meant we were able to invest money in needed social programs and to respond to issues that came along, such as SARS, the forest fires in British Columbia, et cetera.

We put over $52 billion down on the national debt and we have now set a target of 25% of GDP within 10 years, which may in fact occur before that 10 years. We have made that commitment.

This government and the Prime Minister, who was able to wrestle with and eliminate the national deficit of $42.5 billion, have made that commitment. We cannot forget that it was the Prime Minister, when he was minister of finance, who said that he was going to do it and has done it. That is extremely important.

What is also important is that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has said that we are the only G-7 country that will ever be able to again balance the books and reduce the debt, not only this year but next year and the year after. Again, other countries are looking to Canada and asking how we have been able to do this so successfully. We have done it because we have listened to the needs of Canadians.

What is one of those needs? One obviously is health care. We have heard criticism from the opposition about health care. The fact is that although we are responsible for the five tenets of medicare, the implementation is done by the provinces. What has happened over the years is that we have had agreements. Last year, as members know, we had a $35.4 billion investment, again over five years. We then added this year another $2 billion. The Prime Minister has now made it very clear that incremental actions like that are not the way to go.

What has the Prime Minister said? He has said that this summer we will meet as first ministers and we will get a funding agreement for 10 years and structural change. We cannot have one without the other. We cannot continue to put money into health care without making sure that the waiting lists are reduced and that those people who need MRIs get them. We will not do that by simply giving the provinces more money without accountability.

Therefore the Prime Minister has committed the government and has committed to Canadians that we will have that in place. He has told the first ministers that it will not be over lunch or over dinner. He has asked them to bring their bags because they will be there until we get it. This is what Canadians have said they want, what we have said we will do and what we will do this summer.

This will not be an incremental change. We will make real changes that Canadians will see. They will be measured, which is absolutely critical, so that every family that has a person who is sick, who needs to have an MRI or who needs to go to an emergency facility in a hospital, those needs will be addressed properly. That is important.

On the issue of communities, let us look at the record of the government on cities, towns and villages in Canada. There has not been a government, except for this one, that has responded so strongly to that agenda. Dating back to 1993, the establishment of the national infrastructure programs over the years, the strategic infrastructure program and the fact that the government said that it would give a 10 year commitment with $1 billion as a downpayment. It was in last year's budget. This year we have reduced it down to five years because we know that municipal governments and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities have been asking for that for many years. As a former president, I can say that it was certainly welcome news that we would be addressing those issues because cities deal in 5 and 10 year capital forecasts.

We have also said that there was an unfairness in the fact that cities, towns and villages pay GST. Yes, we negotiated with the Mulroney Conservatives when they were in. They wanted us to pay 100%. We were not happy but eventually we negotiated a 57.14% rebate.

The Prime Minister has listened and now cities, towns and villages will receive 100% rebate on any purchases that involve the GST. Again, this has a significant impact. It will be $7 billion over the coming year. It is extremely important in terms of a savings. My own municipality believes that it will save between $500,000 and $1 million a year because of that.

The Prime Minister has gone further. He said that we will develop a clear, consultative role with cities, just as we do with provinces, to ensure that if there is to be federal legislation that could have an impact on our cities, which we must remember is where 80% of our population lives, we will bring them into the process and work with them.

The Prime Minister has committed a portion of the gas tax or an equivalent. We should not forget that the gas tax is not a simple issue because we need to have the provinces involved. He realizes the important role the cities play, particularly our large cities in terms of the urban agenda and of being able to promote economic growth. He also has not forgotten rural communities. This will improve the lives of all Canadians.

We have worked very effectively, whether it is on the homeless question or on the issue of dealing with infrastructure, transit or housing. We have been able to sit down and work collaboratively with the provinces and cities. That is extremely important because the Canada of 1867, where 6% of the population lived in an urban environment, is not the Canada today where 80% of the people live in urban areas. We need to address that. The government has and continues to focus on that as one of the most important issues. The budget addresses that.

I would have expected members on the other side to stand up and say that is what we need and that they support that. However, as I said at the beginning, the opposition never, no matter what budget it is, support the provisions.

It is important that we do this all within a strong fiscal framework. To have those strong fiscal anchors is absolutely imperative. No one in the House wants to work in a deficit position in their own household. I certainly do not and I know the government does not. That is so important and probably the cornerstone of any economic policy.

There are many other areas in the budget that address the needs of Canadians. We have listened very carefully to what Canadians were looking for and we responded accordingly.

Regardless of the rhetoric we hear across the way and regardless of the naysayers across the way, the fact is that again we have seven balanced budgets or better and we are the envy of the world. It is about time that side woke up and read the budget for a change instead of criticizing it.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak to Bill C-30 and talk about some of the spending issues that are involved in the bill as well as the vision that it puts forth.

I have received a number of concerns, as a member of Parliament, from my constituency as well as from several hundred Canadians who have already e-mailed, phoned, faxed or provided some documentation to me about what has been pronounced by the government.

I want to first say that there are some good provisions for some things in Bill C-30. To get up and say that absolutely all of it is bad would not be right. One of the things that I do want to point out is the fact that there would finally be the elimination of environmental fines as tax deductions or business write-offs. That is one thing that we could not believe was happening. It was causing a national embarrassment.

I was getting correspondence from American elected officials about pollution coming from the Canadian side of Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River and other areas, that spilled out from Canadian factories and other sources. At the same time, companies were able to apply for a tax deduction on that, let alone the cleanup and the effect that it was having upon our American neighbours.

It is interesting to note that the government talks about improving relations with the United States. The first thing would be for our side to stop poisoning the water and to provide all kinds of progressive steps to clean the system up in partnership. The United States has actually been far more progressive in the Great Lakes by investing in their renewal in a couple of different fashions. It has been doing it, not only through its government, but through other means, for example, Robert Kennedy Jr. and his efforts have been through the legal system in order to provide some of the improvements that have been happening.

We have actually created some of those things on our side of the jurisdiction of the Detroit River with our river keeper announcement, from the public point of view, without the assistance of the government as an initiator of the project.

We saw the budget come out with basically an ideological attempt to reduce expenditures just for the sake of scoring political points.

The government did a set up here. It wanted to appear that it was shifting to the right to deal with the Conservative agenda but what it has done since then is to go out to the public to announce different projects in the multimillions after the actual budget was released.

It is a classic attempt to try to have it both ways. Quite frankly, it has been very good at getting it both ways until now because Canadians are starting to recognize that they each have different choices about things and they should be making those choices based upon principles as opposed to wishy-washy behaviour.

We are watching the privatization of health care. The New Democratic Party is really concerned about the fact that there were no new health care transfers.

The Prime Minister had plenty of time to address this as a former minister of finance and during the time of his leadership run-up. He talked about these issues a lot of times and said that it was very much a priority, but at the same time he did not actually have an action plan in his first official budget.

That is unfortunate because we believe that the Roy Romanow solutions that were proposed should have been specifically mentioned in the budget. There should have been advancement because Canadians are looking for accountability. They are looking for a single system of medicare that is not going to introduce a level of profit that will certainly mean a loss of service for people. It will make people who are vulnerable susceptible to longer lineups.

The lineup is important to note because I know of a community that is under serviced because the infrastructure has not been provided for the medical society to provide the actual services that are necessary on the ground floor. We are not getting the specialists and we have long waiting times.

That is important to note because specialists also relate to the quality of life and the productivity of the citizens we have in our community. If people are waiting for an exponential period of time to have their knees scoped or to have some type of minor operation, it certainly is a negative derivative when we look at the economy. We have more people who are off on sick leave. We have people who can further injure themselves and we also have family situations that become more complicated.

Whereas, if the investment were there, we would see the benefit of people returning to work earlier and have a healthier environment. I think that would be more productive for our economy and our country. We also have people who need those types of services in order to stay physically active in our society. The investment of that accountability and the investment in reducing waiting times would allow them to stay active and healthy.

I know of many seniors who have had to wait far too long to receive operations. It is unacceptable and unfair to them because their health deteriorates in the meantime. They have contributed a significant amount of money into the health care system over the years and they have certainly contributed to our economy. They have also been productive family members. To be in one's golden years and not have a required operation creates a lot of problems as it is stalled from month to month. That threatens their physical well-being as well as their mental well-being. The stress and the anguish that goes along with that is difficult as well.

I was out the other day talking with a constituent whose husband, a young worker, was waiting for a minor operation. He is now into his fourth week of waiting. He had to wait a series of days just to get an MRI done on his broken leg. If his leg is not treated properly, it could lead to a permanent injury. This is a result of long waiting lists.

A good investment for Canadians would be to have more money and accountability put back into our health care system in different ways such as those outlined by Roy Romanow. That would be a way of rebuilding this country.

I want to talk a bit about some of the things that could have been done in this budget and would have been influential in lowering the price of medications and eventually the costs associated with our health care system.

Last year, the industry committee spent a lot of time on notice of compliance, that is the evergreen that happens. Evergreening is when the 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry is extended by an automatic stay of injunction by the patent holder. This then delays the actual generic version of the drug being available on the market.

We saw delay after delay as these automatic injunctions compounded year after year. These injunctions prohibited generic companies from introducing a lower cost drug and which would have actually reduced the cost of medications in Canada. That money could then have been put back into health care and toward addressing other issues related to waiting times and services.

It has been quite amazing to see what has happened. A progressive Liberal, the member for Ajax--Pickering, sat on the committee. I give him credit for being so active on this case file. Some other sympathetic Liberals were also there. They were part of the Chrétien era, I suppose. After Chrétien resigned from his position, a new Prime Minister came in, and he has changed the committee. I am virtually the last member of that committee that is still talking about reducing the cost of medications, or at least trying to raise the issue.

It is unfortunate because a lot of time and taxpayers' dollars has been spent in having witnesses come forward and research done. A lot of time has been spent trying to get the Minister of Industry to respond. We have seen nothing yet. We are watching these studies become basically outdated. The studies that have been done are sitting on a shelf like so many other studies, even though the Romanow Commission noted that Canada should be doing something right away to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

It is also important to tie that in to the fact that we would like to see Bill C-9 passed. That bill would allow developing countries access to patent drugs, or generic versions of them, so they could address some of their horrible conditions of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS. It would also assist those developing countries in dealing with their poverty issues.

One of the things that was outright shocking in the budget that I was very disappointed about, coming from an auto town, was the fact that it did not contain an auto policy or at least some indication of what was going to happen. There was no indication in the Speech from the Throne either. I immediately asked questions about that as did my colleague from Windsor as to why the auto industry was not mentioned in the Speech from the Throne. There are one in 7.5 Canadian jobs affected by the auto industry and one in 6 in Ontario. That was left out of the Speech from the Throne which was very shocking.

Mayors of municipalities have formed a committee to talk about this. The Province of Ontario, even though it is drowning in debt and complaining about its costs, has had to come up with $500 million for an auto investment strategy because there has been no national auto policy. I want to acknowledge the fact that the government had to admit that it still has one-quarter of the border funds available.

A community like mine is waiting for announcements, waiting for those improvements like the truck ferry service, for example, that can take trucks off the city streets and move them across the border to help our economy and our trade. We want to have the grid-lock taken care of, something that can happen in a matter of months. The Liberals do not have any resources or support for that; only the projects for their friends and the lobbying that has been happening.

With that, I want to say thank you very much for the opportunity to respond to the Speech from the Throne, subsequently the budget and Bill C-30. I look forward to seeing better progress. This was disappointing to building Canada which needs to happen now as opposed to giving it away.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to enter the debate on Bill C-30.

I listened to the member for Medicine Hat and others. Normally the member for Medicine Hat, being on the finance committee and vice-chair, is quite lucid on these topics. I heard something about the budget, but I did not hear much about Bill C-30.

Bill C-30 is an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 23, 2004. It deals with a number of the very specific ways and means to implement some of the very specific recommendations in the budget. The budget is followed at a later date with the estimates, which gets into departmental spending in a very specific way. We had the debate on the budget itself not too long ago in this chamber.

I am very excited about this particular bill because it implements a number of key provisions of the budget that was tabled by the Minister of Finance on March 23. One of them is the first down payment on the cities agenda, which will cause municipalities to be exempt from the GST, effective immediately. In fact, I think it was effective last month. That is the first phase of a new deal for cities that will be a real deal. As our Prime Minister announced just last week, he is hoping, and he will strive, to have a new arrangement with the provinces, the cities and the communities by the end of this year.

What does the elimination of the GST mean for cities? That is what is being enacted in Bill C-30. For a city like Toronto, where I come from, it means another $50 million each and every year for the City of Toronto. That is a fairly tidy sum of money. What can that money be used for? It can be used for a number of different priorities at the city level. It can be used to fight crime. It can be used to better fight fires. It can be used to put up affordable housing. It can be used to invest in public transit and improve the environment in the City of Toronto. Fifty million dollars a year in perpetuity is a very good start and I know that in working with the provinces and the municipalities in the months to come, there will be another arrangement.

The Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have talked about a sharing of the excise tax on fuel. I am sure it will be something along those lines that will give more stable and secure funding for municipalities and communities. In the Province of Ontario, our municipalities, communities, and towns have been starved of funding by the former Harris and Eves government. It cut taxes, devolved responsibilities to the municipalities, the towns and the cities, but did not follow that up with the resources necessary to implement that agenda.

That is why we have to work with the provinces, the cities, the towns and communities to cut a new deal. This will be quite an earth shattering and revolutionary approach to better relations between the different orders of government.

The member for Medicine Hat seemed to forget the tax cuts that were implemented in the year 2000. There was a $100 billion tax cut, the largest tax cut in Canadian history. It is true that the last year of that package is being delivered this year. In fact, in this fiscal year, it is a $30 billion tax cut. The government will have to consider what further it does with cutting taxes.

As chair of the finance committee, we will be asking Canadians that question: What should follow the $100 billion tax cut? Should we have more tax cuts? If we do have more tax cuts, at what should they be directed? Should they be directed at reducing personal income taxes? Should they be directed at reducing corporate income taxes? Should they be directed at reducing the GST, et cetera, et cetera? That will be a very useful dialogue and debate that we will have.

Against all that, the government has a number of very serious priorities to deal with, the biggest priority being health care. That is where I found the comments of the member for Medicine Hat again slightly at variance with the reality of the situation.

In 2003 the government, along with the premiers and the territorial leaders, signed the health accord putting $35 billion into our health care system through the CHST. That was recently topped up by another $2 billion per year.

What does that mean? That means that over the next few years our contributions to the provinces and territories under the CHST will increase somewhere in the vicinity of 8% per year, when the economy is targeted to grow at around 3% or maybe 5%, somewhere in that range. That is a very sizeable contribution to health care, and that is only the start.

The Prime Minister has indicated that he will be meeting with the first ministers this summer. He has said they are not going to leave the room until they come up with a new deal on a sustainable health care system. That is vitally important.

I do not know about members opposite or Canadians in general, but when I go into an acute care hospital in my riding of Etobicoke North or into any nearby acute care hospital, I see elderly patients occupying acute care beds. Some may ask, what is the problem with that? There is no real problem in one sense. Those patients will not be put out on the street if they cannot be put into home care or put into lower cost alternative care, but why are we housing elderly patients in expensive acute care hospital beds? That might not be the best care for the patients because they may prefer to be in a slightly different environment such as their own home where they could be cared for by a nurse or by their family.

Why is it that after so many years of debate and discussion in Canada we still have this problem? We do not have the capacity in terms of long term care, extended care, home care and homemaker programs. We have been talking about this for years. Let us get on with it. Let us provide lower cost alternatives. Let us provide care levels that are appropriate for patients. While we are at it, why not deal with the huge cost pressure that is emerging, not only in terms of technology, but also in terms of prescription drugs? We need to look at this question in a much more fulsome way.

Collectively, we need to make some capital investments in capacity building. We cannot fool ourselves any longer. If we keep saying we need to have lower cost programs, then we have to build those programs. That might mean some one off spending up front. The provinces and the federal government and other orders of government need to work together to get the job done.

We have been talking for years about health education, health promotion, and lifestyle issues, but we have not been investing enough in those programs. We need to do some front end investment in those types of programs. If we do not deal with these types of issues, then we are not going to have a sustainable health care system.

A report recently came out that was commissioned by the Department of Finance. It was reassuring to some extent and indicated that the problem may not be as severe as we thought. However, the reality is that, given the demographics of our country, we do have more older people. I am going to be one of those at some point in time. In fact, some people may argue that I am one of those now. However, Canada has an aging population and we need to deal with that.

That is why we need to have a sustainable health care system. That is why we need to have a discussion with the premiers and the territorial leaders about how to get there. I look forward to that. That is really where we need to go. We need to provide sustainable, secure and stable health care funding to the provinces, but we cannot simply throw more money at it. We have to have a well managed system for the benefit of all Canadians.

The budget that was tabled by the Minister of Finance recently put into play more resources for public health. The member for Medicine Hat probably forgot that or maybe it was just a slip of his memory. Perhaps he is one of those individuals getting on in years as well. The government put another $400 million in new money into public health.

What will that new money do? It will provide a much more coordinated approach to the tracking and dealing with diseases such as the SARS outbreak that we had last summer. I think we handled it as well as we could but, unfortunately, there were different agencies and groups. This will bring that together in a cohesive whole, not necessarily in one building but in terms of a network and consolidating that expertise so that we are prepared for these viruses, epidemics and flus as they come into Canada. Hopefully we will not have them again but we have to be realistic and be prepared.

There also will be more money for municipalities for immunization programs, which is a very important feature.

Something often gets lost in this whole debate about our fiscal performance. We recognize that with the sponsorship program we have had some challenges that the government is dealing with. We will be centralizing and tightening up on the comptrollership function and we will be spending more money on internal audits.

When our government came into power in 1993 we had a $42 billion deficit and a lot of programs had to be cut. We tended to cut administration rather than programs. Programs affect Canadians on the front lines so we had to cut administration.

In hindsight I suppose the government might have said that maybe it had cut back too much of the administration, that maybe it should have left the comptrollership general's office there and all these accountants running around adding things up and making sure the controls were good. I suppose with the benefit of hindsight we could have done that but we wanted to make sure Canadians got the benefits of federal programs. However in this whole debate I am absolutely amazed that we take our eye off the ball and lose the big picture.

I want to remind members opposite here today of some of the big picture items. When we travel abroad and meet members of parliament from around the world, when they come here to Ottawa their first question is how we did it. They want to know how in Canada we dealt with the $42 million deficit in four years, that we are paying down debt, that we have such low interest rates and that the Canadian economy has generated so many jobs since 1993, in fact two million plus. Those are good questions which I think Canadians should be asking themselves.

The United States has had good economic performance until more recently. The economic performance in Canada has been equally strong. In fact, if we factor in job creation, there has been more job creation in Canada on a per capita basis by a long shot compared with the U.S. economy.

The U.S. economy has had some economic growth but with no jobs. In Canada we have had two million new jobs while at the same time paying $56 billion against the debt. What does that mean? It means Canadian taxpayers are saving $3 billion a year, each and every year moving forward. This is what we call an annuity. It is $3 billion into the future forever and the more we pay down we will be able to add to that.

What are the $3 billion being used for? They are being used for a variety of things. They are being used to put more money into health care, into post-secondary education and into national defence. I think my colleague, the Minister of National Defence, was very right in clarifying some of the defence expenditures over the last few years. Since December 2003 our government has put $7 billion more into our national defences.

The opposition goes on and on about $15 here or $20 there. We are talking about $7 billion into our national defence. Some of the members opposite say that was money already announced before. Well I am sorry, it is new money since December. They can talk about when it was announced, whether it was in the budget or whether it was announced again, but big deal. I think it is helpful when the Prime Minister or the Minister of National Defence visits our troops and talk about the realities.

I have been reading some of the press clippings and the troops are really excited about the new supply ships. They are also happy that we will not be taxing them when they go to dangerous areas. Not only will that be in areas like Afghanistan, it will also be areas like Bosnia and Haiti. When our troops go to those regions they will not have pay any income tax, which is a good thing.

I think the members opposite need to get their facts straight when they enter these debates.

We are debating Bill C-30 which would implement certain provisions of the budget. I am absolutely amazed that no one has talked about equalization because it is a big part of Bill C-30.

Equalization is a complicated program. What it achieves largely is to make sure that services and programs are available to Canadians in equal ways and forms no matter where they live in Canada. Therefore some of the have provinces transfer money through equalization to the so-called have nots.

There is a contentious issue. Let us take Newfoundland, for example. In the last few years we know that Newfoundland has come upon new resources in terms of its petroleum and natural gas wealth. The question on the table is that if Newfoundland is suddenly the beneficiary of new provincial revenues as a result of these newly developed resources, should it be penalized in terms of its equalization payment, which is moving money from the have provinces to the have not provinces?

That is a very fundamental question but I think that on balance we have to deal with it. I am perhaps using a poor analogy but if we are helping a family member, because that is what we are, a community, a family, and then suddenly the family member gets a job or has a new form of income, is it not realistic to say that we will reduce the amount that we were paying that family member? I think it is eminently reasonable. I suppose the debate would get into some of the details of that but I think in rough terms that is precisely the issue that some of the premiers have raised. Frankly, I think Canadians would be more inclined to agree with the government's approach on that.

The bill also entertains a number of provisions with respect to the Canada pension plan. This is an area that I find interesting and troubling in a sense. Many in my riding say that because people are getting old and the demographics are changing, the Canada pension plan will not be there for them.

I want to tell Canadians and those members in the House today that because of the actions of our government just a few years ago, where we did a complete review of the Canada pension plan with the objective of putting the plan on a sound actuarial footing, the last report by an independent actuary said that the Canada pension plan was actuarily sound until the year 2050. That was based on all the assumptions in terms of age, demographics, benefits and contributions, which is based on the package that we have implemented today.

Therefore Canadians should not be concerned about the viability of the Canada pension plan, and Bill C-30 would implement measures with respect to that.

The member also talked about high government expenditures. I think what the member for Medicine Hat perhaps forgot to point out was that we are now at a level of the lowest government expenditure in relation to GDP. In other words, if we look at federal government expenditures in relation to the size of the economy, today we are spending back to the levels of the mid-1950s.

I am sure some members in the NDP will argue that we should be spending more but I am of the school that says that we should spend when we can afford to spend. We know we have a lot of debt still to pay down and we know we have a lot of priorities. However for the member of the Conservative Party to argue that expenditure is out of hand, that is not aligned with the facts. Federal government spending, in relation to the size of the economy, is at a low; around the levels of the early 1950s. I think we should clarify that.

I certainly will be supporting Bill C-30 and I encourage my colleagues to do the same.

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and address Bill C-30. I want to start by reminding the House how hard Canadian taxpayers work to make their money. I think it is appropriate to talk about this given that we are talking about how the government spends a lot of the money that people make and work very hard for.

I want to begin by reminding the House that in the last number of years the government has driven spending to record heights. I know for a fact that we have never seen spending this high in the history of the country. Today in Canada the government spends more money per capita than it has ever spent in the history of the country. There is a tremendous amount of money that is being spent, supposedly on behalf of taxpayers.

I also want to point out that today in Canada the big problems that face this country are as big as they have ever been or, in many cases, bigger than they have ever been.

I have been here for ten years. I came here in 1993. At that time, I can tell members, the issue of health care was not nearly as big a problem as it is today. Despite the fact that this government and this Prime Minister have said that health care is his number one priority--and the government has talked about all the spending announcements it has made for health care--the problem has only become worse. Today people are waiting on waiting lists for all kinds of vital surgery and treatment. Despite the fact that the government has said this is its number one priority, the situation has only gotten worse and worse.

When I came here in 1993, the military was in a lot better shape than it is today, despite the fact that the government has said that it is a big priority. The Prime Minister made a big deal of going to speak to our troops in the last couple of weeks. His claim is that the military is a top priority for him. If that is the case, why are our troops so overstretched and under-equipped?

We must remember that he was the finance minister for nine years. He has been the Prime Minister for a number of months now, and certainly he was preparing to be prime minister for a long time, but the situation with respect to the military has only gotten worse in the decade that the Liberals have been in power.

When it comes to an issue like student debt, I can tell members that many of us in this place have children who are going to university. I have a son who is in university and many people are in the same boat. Over the last while many of us have had student organizations in our offices talking to us about the problem of student debt and the fact that not only are students going into debt, but there is just not the capacity in universities and colleges these days to accommodate all the people who want to go to university. As a result, we have universities placing very high standards on allowing people into university. A lot of people who do not have great marks cannot get in, and those from low income families probably cannot afford to get into university.

The Prime Minister has said that this is a top priority for him, but he has been here for nine years. He was here for ten years, nine of them as finance minister. Now he is the Prime Minister, but we are actually in worse shape today when it comes to the issue of accessibility to higher education than we were when the Liberals came to power ten years ago.

I could go on and on about the areas where there has been an actual decline, where the ability of people to have access to government services has gone down over the last ten years. Why is that? I want to argue that it is because this Prime Minister has no vision. He has absolutely no vision when it comes to addressing the big problems that face the country today. Frankly, I think we saw that reflected in the recent budget and of course Bill C-30 has to do with implementing the particular provisions of that budget.

I will argue that the government has done a terrible job of addressing these big priorities. I want to argue that taxpayers who pay 50% of their incomes to taxes--the average family pays something like 48% of its income to taxes these days--deserve better. When taxpayers pay half of their incomes to various levels of government, including a federal government that taxes way too much, they expect to get services when they need them.

They expect their military to have proper equipment and to have enough troops to address some of the hot spots in the world that Canadians have typically addressed and to fill the role as peacekeepers that they typically have filled in the past.

They expect that when it is time for their children to go to university those children will actually be able to get in: that there will be a spot for them in university and that tuitions will not be so high that they will be in debt for the rest of their lives. This is what people expect and it is not an unrealistic expectation.

I think I have laid out what some of the problems are and now I want to talk about what the government has been doing to address these things. Has it come up with some visionary plan to address an issue like health care? No. It says it is going to do that, but down the road. It will get together with the premiers down the road, and by the way, the government says, it will probably be after an election, so we should re-elect the government and then it will address that problem.

What about the military? The government has no plan for the military. In fact, in the budget all it had was some spending for particular missions that our troops are involved in right now in Afghanistan and in Haiti, but it has no plan to address the problems of the military, even though we all know how important that is, especially these days when we are fighting a war on terror.

When it comes to the issue of student debt, I think everyone would agree it had some very impractical ideas in the budget, things that really do not come close to addressing the issues of student debt, accessibility and all the problems that face higher education today. The budget did not address those things.

What about initiatives since the budget? What kinds of initiatives has the government undertaken? We know that in the first two weeks of the fiscal year it came up with about $1 billion that it wanted to spend, basically on pork barrelling, on funnelling money into the ridings of Liberal ministers and candidates in a blatant attempt to try to buy votes. Was this for high priority things like hospital beds or more money for the military? No. In one case, it was money for an archeological dig in a Liberal minister's riding.

I am not going to argue that if we have money left over those kinds of things are not important. They are important, but we do not have money left over. We are seriously underfunding all kinds of very important things today, including, again, health care, higher education and the Canadian military.

Let us consider this. Instead of taking that $1 billion the government just spent on all kinds of pork barrelling, why not leave it in taxpayers' pockets? Why not allow the people who work so hard in supporting their families to keep more of that money?

Mr. Speaker, you have probably heard me say this before, and forgive me if I have already gone through this, but I always like to ask this question. What would people do if someone came to them and said they were going to be given $1,000, but the only proviso was that they had to spend the money in a way that would benefit their families? My question is, would they give that money to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to spend on their behalf to look after their families? It is more likely that they would say no. They would say that they know what their family's priorities are. They know that their son needs braces or they have to pay the bill to get their son into hockey, or their daughter into ballet or whatever it is, because families have a much better sense of their priorities than the government does.

Whenever the government is preparing to make a spending decision, it should ask itself, is this the best possible way to spend the money or should it be given back to taxpayers in the form of lower taxes so they can decide for themselves what their priorities are?

Today a lot of people have trouble paying medical bills. If parents have a sick child and do not have a great drug plan, they are going to be spending a tremendous amount of money out of their own pockets to look after things.

Whenever there is a question of whether this is a high priority item, why not leave that money in the pockets of taxpayers? I can guarantee the taxpayers will make better decisions about how to spend that money to benefit their families than a bureaucrat in Ottawa, or a politician. This pork-barrelling exercise of the last couple of weeks is a perfect example. We are typically seeing money going into all kinds of individual Liberal ridings to start to grease the wheels for an election campaign. Frankly, that is wrong and it should not happen. In fact not only is it wrong, it is exactly the same way Jean Chrétien used to operate.

The Prime Minister worked for 13 years to knock Jean Chrétien off and get him out of here. The expectation was he would come in and do things differently. However, he is doing things exactly the same. Jean Chrétien spent a bunch of money at the end of a fiscal year to buy a couple of Challenger jets. At the beginning of a fiscal year, this Prime Minister spends a bunch of money on things like archeological digs, because it is in a riding, or on some shelving for a library.

Again, those are well and good and they are fine things. Are they a higher priority than health care, or education or ensuring that our troops have proper equipment when they are putting their lives on the line? I do not think so. Those things are critical, and I think the Canadian public wants to see their hard-earned tax dollars go toward these vital projects.

I want to talk for a moment about the government's record when it comes to overall spending.

Right now down the hall a public accounts committee hearing is going on. To me this underlines not only how terrible the government has been when it comes to managing money, but in some case how corrupt it has been. We are in a situation where down the way we have a number of members of Parliament who right now are asking questions of executives from advertising agencies who were the recipients of $100 million in commissions for work that in many cases was never done or work that was of questionable value, to put it mildly.

I want to argue that this is a perfect example why the government cannot continue to come to the public and ask for more money. It is playing the public for suckers. It is basically saying that Canadians should give it their tax dollars and that it will take that money and line the pockets of a bunch of Liberal-friendly advertising firms. By the way, some of that money found its way back into Liberal Party coffers.

It is time for that to come to an end. When the government brings down a budget where it proposes to spend a bunch more money over and above last year, $4 billion more this year if I remember correctly, then we say no. What the government should do is go through the current envelope of spending, find where the waste and corruption are and get rid of that. Then at some point down the road, when it has gone through every department, when it has found all the waste and gets rid of the corruption, it might be justified to come to the public and say that it wants to have more money for a particular project.

Right now the whole country is watching as the advertising scandal unfolds in the room just down the hall. I think that is the most powerful possible argument there can be for not giving the government a bunch more money to spend on all kinds of projects that in many cases are simply not of very high priority. In fact in some cases they are completely wasteful and are things that the money should not be spent on at all.

It is not just the advertising scandal that saw $100 million paid out in commissions for things like delivering a cheque for public works to Canada Post. There are many other examples.

I mentioned the Challenger jets. That was $100 million situation where at the end of the fiscal year the government went mad and decided to buy a couple of jets, even though our troops in Afghanistan did not have proper equipment.

I could point to the firearms registry of $1 billion, heading for $2 billion. This is a situation where the government basically made the choice at some point that the best possible way to protect the public was to pour money into a database that would record where the shotguns of duck hunters were. It was supposed to cost $2 million. It is now on its way to $1 billion and, according to many sources, it will hit $2 billion.

I would argue that the government has made a terrible calculation when it comes to using that money to protect the public. It has not put the money where it should go in a way that will protect the public. I would argue that when money went missing in Human Resources Development, that boondoggle demonstrated that the government was not capable of managing the public's money very well. This was a situation where an internal audit showed that the government had no idea where money had gone when it came to particular grants and that kind of thing.

Has the government learned any lessons from that? No, it is doing exactly the same thing right now in spending $1 billion in the first two weeks of the fiscal year on all kinds of pork-barrelling and handing out grants to friends. That has to end and the only way that will end ultimately is not to just change chairs on the Titanic . It is to elect a new government.

I want to argue that my leader and the Conservative Party could make some positive changes. Those guys have had their chance. They have been here for 10 years and all we have seen is mismanagement, waste and in some cases, I am sad to say, outright corruption. That has to end.

That is where the new Conservative Party can make some very positive changes. We are advocating that the government be much more careful with taxpayer money and that we trim wasteful spending. We would get rid of the firearms registry. We would get rid of the huge amount of discretionary spending that is used by Liberal ministers to reward friends. All the grants and outright gifts to friends has to come to an end. Huge bureaucracies for crazy programs like the firearms registry have to come to an end.

We have to take the savings and put it into things that really do make a difference in the lives of people like cutting the waiting list for surgery, ensuring that students are not in debt up to their ears when it comes to higher education and of course properly funding our military and ensuring that it has the equipment it needs when it takes on dangerous missions around the world.

My time has just about come to an end. I will simply wrap up by asking the public to consider what we have discussed. We are in a situation where an election will be soon. The two parties will trot out their election platforms, which is fine. However, one thing we will not find on an election platform is this government talking about its records when it comes to spending. I think we will find that the Liberals will try to dodge that issue.

I move:

That the motion be amended by replacing all the words after the word “That” with:

“this House declines to give second reading to Bill C-30, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 23, 2004, since the principle of the bill fails to address the government's record of wasteful spending and does little to tackle the real priorities of Canadians”.