Bill C-48 (Historical)

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

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

An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me just say that to build oneself up by dragging someone else down is not parliamentary. It is not parliamentary language that the member used and I will not comment further.

He referred several times to propping up a government. We have made it very clear that we are in a minority situation. It is the first time since Joe Clark in 1979. We cannot govern a minority government as if we had a majority. It means collaboration and cooperation among all parties. At least the NDP had the good sense to sit down and talk about responsible changes.

The member talked about how important it was to pay down the debt and yet I cannot think of one member over there who has not spoken at the prior stage, at report stage, and at his stage who has not said that the existence of a surplus means that we are overtaxing and that we have to lower taxes. They cannot have it both ways and be fiscally responsible.

If he feels this strongly, why is it that the Conservative Party voted in favour of the budget implementation bill, Bill C-43, but is now turning around and going to vote against Bill C-48 which represents a 1% increase in annual spending? Why does he want to topple the government and send Parliament into an election. Why is there so much outrage at 1%? It makes no sense. The Conservatives want it both ways but they cannot have it both ways.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Yes, a very desperate party doing desperate things.

I just want to pick up on the comments made by my colleagues who suggested that the Liberal Party always does what is in the best interests of Canadians, particularly when it comes to health care. It is something I just cannot leave alone because I am very passionate about protecting our health care system. I understand that Canadians are very concerned about it. Many people are dying while they are on wait lists for health services that they cannot get.

A year ago during the election campaign, we laid out our platform before the Canadian people. It is not about the opposition trying to take down a government that is in power. It is about laying an alternative before the people of Canada so they have the opportunity to discern what is in their best interests. We laid out our health care platform during the election campaign. We indicated the number of dollars that would be needed for health care in the next number of years to sustain it in the short term. Our plan was to make sure that would take place.

The Liberal government did exactly the same thing. The Liberals accused us of having too rich a budget, that we could not afford it, that it was going to break the bank and there was no way in the world that Canada could afford the number of dollars the Conservative Party had suggested. It is interesting. Just think about this. The election was in June and by September we had the 2004 accord. The first ministers sat down with the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister said, “We are going to fix health care for a generation”.

There was no possible way that was going to happen, and it certainly did not. Nonetheless the numbers, the dollar figures that came out of that, which we hear the Liberal government bragging about intently, were not the numbers on which the Liberals went to Canadians last June to ask for a mandate to support health care. The dollar numbers that were actually agreed on were in fact almost identical to the numbers in our budget, which were double the amount of dollars for health care.

We understand that health care is a priority. We understand that people are dying on wait lists. What we cannot understand is a government that over the last decade has pulled $25 billion out of health care.

When the Liberals cooked up a deal with the NDP in order to stay in power, it is interesting that the NDP did not recognize the importance of health care and tried to come up with a way of fixing it, not just for the next decade but for the generation beyond the next 10 years.

The real challenge in health care is not whether it should be a more private or a more public health care. The real challenge is how to sustain it over the next 30 to 40 years as the baby boomer bubble hits our system and, at the same time, understand that when the demand on health care and the amount of money that will have to be put into it will be coming at a time when we will have a diminishing number of taxpayers paying for the service. Therefore we have a significant problem.

We do not have time to play politics with health care any more, as has been happening over the last decade under the Liberal government. It is unbelievable that we see that kind of dishonesty in health care and that kind of dishonesty in budgeting. It is an abomination and it is something that Canadians really have to discern.

I do not think Canadians will be fooled by the government. I do not think they will be fooled by the display of what went on to get Bill C-48 here this evening. They understand that this is a desperate government propped up by a party that has never had an opportunity to do anything and probably never will. The NDP members had an opportunity to stay true to their conscience. They say they are the great defenders of democracy and yet we see what they did. They threw democracy in the air for $4.6 billion. It is an unbelievable situation.

Why I have spent most of my time so far talking about Bill C-48 is because Bill C-48 is not the real issue. The real issue is how we could treat democracy in such a pathetic way and cook up a deal in a hotel room by desperate people trying to stay in power. It is not about Canadians and it is not about the $4.6 billion because after the $4.6 billion what did we see? We saw $26 billion being applied to try to buy off the Canadian public prior to what the Liberals thought was going to be an election.

The Liberals tried to buy off Quebec. They bought off the NDP. They tried to buy off the Canadian electorate. If that was not bad enough, they had to try to buy opposition votes because they needed a few more and they were able to do that by offering and giving power. They not only offer dollars but they offer power.

We ask ourselves why Canadians are so cynical about this place and how politics have deteriorated in this country. I say to everyone in the House that we had better soberly understand and think about what we are trying to do here and who we are trying to support. It is not each other nor is it our parties. It is the people of Canada. Too many times the members of the House forget that. We do it in a matter of days around here. It seems to be a very easy thing to fall into that trap. I think we need to understand that.

Let us look at Bill C-48 and discern what Bill C-48 is actually saying. It talks about $4.6 billion but the dollars are not well planned out and there are no accountability measures. What happens to that money?

The ad scam, one of the reasons that we are here, is a perfect example of what happens. Money was misappropriated and it went to places that it should not have gone to, propping up the Liberal government. We have seen other examples of it with the gun registry. The Liberal government made a promise that Canadians would only pay $2 million for that registry and it is now closer to $2 billion. Submarines are another example of the inappropriate use of money. We have seen HRDC and Shawinigan. We could just go on and on.

We could go into each one of those in detail and perhaps we should just to remind the Canadian public how badly the Liberal government treats the Canadian purse when it starts doing these one-offs without any accountability measures. If we want to add some confidence of the Canadian public in this House that has to stop.

This House has a long history of serving the country, which is one of the greatest countries in the world, but it should not be one of the greatest, it should be the greatest. No country in the world has the amount of resources and wealth that Canada has with a population of 32 million. We should be leading the nation in every sector and in every way. We should be an example of how a country should be run. In some ways we do it in spite of the government because we have lots to be proud of, but we could be so much more and so much better. It is a shame that we have to run a government the way we have and the way we are doing it under this piece of legislation.

What we are talking about here is money. Let us look at some of the priorities of the NDP when it was prepared to sell its soul. The number one issue in my riding and from coast to coast is agriculture. I do not know where the NDP votes are really coming from or why it is not thinking of the Canadian people, but the number one issue in my riding is agriculture. The BSE issue has hit them in a way that has never hit the agriculture industry before.

In my riding it is doubly bad because there were two years of drought and grasshopper problems and on top of that they have now had two years of the BSE crisis. Farmers are in suicidal situations. Many of them are visiting my office and many of them are calling. It is an unbelievable situation in agriculture and the NDP cooks up what it says is a deal of a lifetime and forgets to even think about what is actually happening with the number one issue in the country with regard to a serious crisis situation.

The Liberal government has also failed the agricultural community. In budget after budget we have seen its priorities and the message it is sending to the farmers and producers is that they should get out of agriculture. That has to stop. We do not understand just how serious a situation it is and how important it is to be able to support it.

We all realized that this was a cooked up budget for all the wrong reasons but it was there. What were we going to do about it? When it got into committee we tried to address some of the concerns. We wanted to put some sanity around it. We tried to put a plan in place so that the government would at least be responsible enough, even though it was going to spend the money, to ensure the money would be applied in an appropriate way. That sounded reasonable to me and it makes no sense whatsoever why the Liberals failed to do that.

When it comes to accountability for that money, there needs to be a plan and some accountability measures around it or we will see the same kind of misuse of funds that we have seen in many of these other programs.

The first change we requested was to clause 2 and accountability was in clause 3. In clause 1 we wanted to make sure the government did not forget that it had a $500 billion debt load. We wanted the government to understand that the debt had to be dealt with or we would be dealing with some serious problems down the road because the economy does not usually go straight up. It usually has some bumps along the way. A good, prudent manager would understand that something like that would happen.

Not only that, a good, prudent manager would have a slush fund, which we have. It is a $4 billion slush fund. However the NDP deal took half of that away and now the slush fund is only $2 billion. We are sitting on dangerous ground and we are being asked to come into this House and support it. We are asked to come in here and debate it in the wee hours of the evening and try to come up with a reason why we should support a budget that would do this to the tax purse of the Canadian public. There is no reason that I can think of and it is an absolutely unbelievable thing.

Not only did this cooked up deal take the $4.6 billion out of it but it also tried to eliminate the tax reductions. We know that if the government can apply $26 billion to it, it also has extra money.

In closing, I would like to move:

That the motion be amended by adding:

And the committee report back no later than December 16, 2005.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the constituents of Yellowhead with regard to this piece of legislation, if we can call it that. Before we can get into a serious dialogue with regard to this two page $4.6 billion disaster, we have to understand exactly how we got to the point where late on a June evening we are speaking to a piece of legislation that was brought forward in such an unorthodox way.

I listened intently to my colleagues from the other parties speak to this legislation. I do not for one minute believe the reason we are talking about it today is the $4.6 billion or all of the noble things the bill is supposed to provide to the Canadian people. This 400 word document was cooked up in a backroom of some hotel in Toronto by a labour party organization, a desperate Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP. We have to examine what really went on and why it came forward in the first place.

It certainly was not a noble plan that was decided upon because of astute people thinking this was the appropriate thing to do. It was actually a sellout by a desperate Prime Minister who would do almost anything to stay in power because of the scandal his government was caught in. Not only is it the scandal of the decade, but I believe it will go down as the worst thing in Canadian history that we have seen in the House.

It has created a considerable amount of cynicism among the people in my riding and across the country. They see what is going on in this place and ask if that is what federal politics and the federal government have really boiled down to. Has it gotten to the point where it is all about cooking up a backroom deal to try to save one's political hide and stay in power illegitimately?

That is really what this $4.6 billion is all about. That is what the deal was all about. It was the price the NDP charged the Liberal Party for garnering the NDP's 19 votes to support a corrupt government and allow it to stay in power.

If that were not bad enough, the government over the last decade did the same sort of thing for the province of Quebec. It tried to prop up the Liberal Party of Canada illegitimately through the abomination of the ad scam. The Gomery inquiry has allowed Canadians to examine very clearly and understand in a more fulsome way than ever before just how terrible it was, what went on behind the scenes and the amount of corruption involved. Millions of dollars were being passed around in brown envelopes to try to prop up the Liberal Party. That scandal makes the Watergate scandal in the United States a few decades ago look like child's play. Canadians look at this and become very cynical.

It is amazing when one sees what is actually happening in Quebec. No wonder the Liberal Party has absolutely tanked in the province of Quebec. The writers of soap operas would have to work overtime to keep up with the drama that this place has provided for the people of Quebec as they watch the amount of corruption. Sex, war and violence make for a good soap opera and it seems we have had that here in the last few months. That absolutely has to stop. It is almost at the point where members of Parliament on this side when they go home on weekends have to take multiple showers just to clean the sleaze off from what we see in the House.

I put my name on a ballot to try to garner the support and trust of the people in my constituency of Yellowhead. I took that on as a very important and honoured position. I have come to the House to represent them in way which allows them to hold their heads high.

I think each member needs to understand that we are here not because of our self-interest but because of the interests of the people we represent. Too many members forget that too quickly after an election. We had an election a year ago. We have seen what it will take for a party to try to stay in power. I find it absolutely amazing when I see that happen.

Let us get on to the actual piece of legislation. Before we get to Bill C-48, we have to talk about its precursor, which is Bill C-43, and understand how it came about.

Bill C-43 is the biggest spending budget we have seen in a decade. An amazing amount of dollars is in Bill C-43. When the budget was first handed down, it went through a process as normal budgets do. There was a lot of consultation, a lot of input. In a minority government it is very important that the government sit down and talk to all parties intently to have their input into the budget. Bill C-43 had a fair amount of that, more than we have seen in other budgets. The House can understand that because it is a minority government and we need to respect that.

When Bill C-43 came forward, although not everything was in the best interests of Canadians, we thought there was certainly enough there that was better than we had seen before. There were some things that needed to be changed in committee. We sat on our hands for the first vote to get the bill into committee so we could address some of the serious problems.

We certainly needed to deal with the CEPA amendments. We certainly needed to deal with making sure that the budget represented the population and that it was in the best interests of all Canadians.

We have to understand what the finance minister said about the budget . He said that we could not run this country by one-offs, that we could not just cherry-pick and apply money illegitimately, without a plan or a purpose and without full consultation. What we saw coming out of this budget was exactly that because the government not only tried to stay in power illegitimately after the NDP budget, which is Bill C-48, but it tried to stay in power through Bill C-43.

[Marc Godbout, Liberal, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, I am trying hard to understand. I have done a number of analyses and I do not understand their reluctance to approve this budget. It is beyond the scope of my imagination. As we say in English, it flies in the face of logic.

This NDP budget, Bill C-48, I would say to my eminent NDP colleague is still quite Liberal. All of these priorities had been identified in the throne speech. Canadians had asked us—asked all the parties—to make this government work.

There is no doubt that we listened to what the NDP told us, but we had no objection to investing in the four areas Bill C-48 identified as additional investments. Of these four categories, I give Canadians' priorities special attention.

However, what surprises me—as I told you as well—is that their own premier, Mr. Charest, is asking them to pass the budget. Now I do not understand. I am wracking my brain trying to figure out why they are not celebrating all over Quebec. Well, they are pessimists. Their role is to separate Quebec from Canada. It is not to see the good things Canada does, such as support Quebeckers.

I cannot therefore tell my colleague exactly what is going on in the heads of my Bloc colleagues. First, I am not a Quebecker, then I am certainly not a representative of that political party. They will have to be asked themselves. From what they say, no doubt, they are having a hard time admitting that this Liberal government is addressing the needs of Canadians and Quebeckers.

[Marc Godbout, Liberal, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that I agree 100% with the response by my NDP colleague. The Bloc Québécois should be applauding Bill C-48. It should be rejoicing. Their own premier is asking them to support the budget. The Bloc says it represents Quebec but perhaps it should listen to its constituents.

The fiscal imbalance is being discussed to death. A transfer of $1.3 billion from federal gas taxes was just announced. The Bloc should be applauding this. I do not understand why it is not happy. Does it simply prefer to hear bad news?

We are talking about the fiscal imbalance, but they voted against the Canada Economic Development Agency for the Regions of Quebec. I have trouble understanding their pessimism and negativity. At some point, the Bloc members should start representing the interests of Quebeckers as they say they do. Quebec needs to be un-Blocked and, to some extent, given the representation it deserves.

Based on their comments, it is my opinion that they do not knowingly represent the interests of Quebeckers and certainly not the interests of Canadians.

[Marc Godbout, Liberal, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the member and representative for the riding of Ottawa—Orléans, it is a privilege and an honour for me to address Bill C-48 this evening, on behalf of my fellow citizens.

This bill will allow us to make new investments that will add even more to a budget which, in everyone's opinion, is a strong, balanced and responsible budget. It has been called visionary. Indeed, this is a budget that provides a direction to Canadians for the next 10 years.

A large number of us, and a majority of Canadians, firmly believe in this budget. Given the initiatives included in the original budget to promote, among other things, more affordable child care services, a stronger economy, the protection of our environment, thriving cities and communities, there is no doubt in my mind that this is definitely a budget prepared with the priorities of Canadians in mind.

We are in the process of accomplishing great things which, in turn, will make Canada a stronger nation.

However, no one ever said that this was a perfect budget. Of course, we in this House are always striving for perfection. There is an old saying in French which says that what is good always strives for the better. So, there was room for improvement. I myself was the first one to deplore, here in this House, that the original budget did not give the pressing needs of official language communities and post-secondary education, for example, the attention that these issues deserve.

I was more than pleased when we recently announced a further investment which included $1.6 billion for affordable housing and $1.5 billion to enhance access to post-secondary education and support training. As a former assistant deputy minister of education in Ontario, I applaud that investment in knowledge economy.

There is an extra $900 million for the environment, including assisting public transit and a low income housing energy retrofit program, and $500 million in foreign aid.

These new measures flow from our throne speech and budget 2005, and as the Minister of Finance previously said, they build on our government's effort to increase federal financial support for the priorities of Canadians in key areas but in a fiscally responsible manner.

The opposition members have been critical of these spending announcements, and especially of our deal with the NDP saying that it is fiscally irresponsible. I do not understand that because the funding for those initiatives stems directly from the budget which the opposition indicated it supported the day it was introduced. These initiatives have been announced because of sound fiscal management of the Liberal government. This is why we are able to invest further dollars in the priorities of Canadians without going into deficit.

The government has never strayed from its stance of fiscal prudence. In fact, new spending in recent announcements totals $9 billion spread over five years. The fact is that most of the past week's announcements have already been announced or accounted for in budget 2005 and are obviously not new spending. They are also contingent upon maintaining budgetary surpluses over that period.

The Prime Minister has been clear on this. The budget deal with the NDP represents an overall increase in spending of about 1% and it has been explicitly declared that we will not return to a deficit.

I want, instead, to come back to the investments set out in Bill C-48: $1.6 billion for affordable housing. More specifically, this agreement provides $602 million over the next four years to increase affordable housing units in Ontario alone.

This is clearly a giant step, because it will enable us to provide more affordable housing in communities throughout Ontario. Thousands of people, particularly those with mental health problems, victims of domestic violence and low-income families, will have a real place to call home as a result. It is very hard for me to understand why the opposition would oppose investments for such vulnerable individuals.

In more concrete terms, some 20,000 Ontario households will benefit from this agreement, including 5,000 low-income households that will benefit from subsidized housing.

The Liberal government currently spends approximately $2 billion per year, through CMHC, to fund 636,000 affordable housing units. By 2006-07, we will have invested an additional $2 billion to fight homelessness and increase the number of affordable housing units.

And what about the $1.5 billion to improve access to post-secondary education and training? As I mentioned, as a former educator, I was admittedly delighted to hear this news. As I said earlier, I have been fighting for a long time for this level of government to play a greater role. I have always believed that success starts with learning and innovation. Access to quality education is therefore vital to Canada's future, prosperity, competitiveness and productivity.

Furthermore, I applaud the fact that Bill C-48 will allocate another $900 million for the environment, including assistance for public transit and a low income housing energy retrofit program, making this budget an even greener budget.

The preservation of our environment is an important issue for all of us. I can say without a doubt that public transportation is an issue that especially concerns the people of Ottawa--Orléans and the National Capital Region. Indeed, we are avidly awaiting the completion of the north-south O-Train transit system corridor, and finally, we hope, the beginning of the next phase that would interest me as the representative for Ottawa--Orléans, the east-west corridor, hopefully in a few years from now, stemming from these investments.

The Government of Canada will provide public transit investment of up to $800 million over the next two years. These funds are in addition to the $5 billion over five years in gas tax money announced last February.

As we know, the Liberal government is strongly committed to supporting public transit infrastructure. This investment will thus further help cities and communities to meet the growing demand for better public transit while also enhancing the new deals for the ability of cities and communities to address national environmental objectives.

Indeed, these funds will enable cities and communities to immediately increase their infrastructure and public transit capacities, reduce congestion and limit air pollution and greenhouse gases.

In closing, I also want to mention that our government is committed, with Bill C-48, to injecting $500 million into foreign aid. Of that amount, several million dollars, roughly $198 million, will be used to fund peace initiatives and international humanitarian relief efforts in the Sudan.

Last week, I had the opportunity to welcome Senator Roméo Dallaire to my riding. He was supporting an initiative by the Jeanne Sauvé school to sponsor a school in the Sudan in order to support that community during this difficult time.

For the people of Ottawa—Orléans, this additional aid to developing countries is certainly a positive measure.

To conclude, I want to reiterate that we have here a very important bill that, in my opinion, has to be passed in its entirety. It would be too bad, if not shameful, to obstruct measures for further completing and improving a budget whose importance and fiscal discipline was something all Canadians could agree on.

The behaviour of the official opposition and, in some ways, of the Bloc, especially in committee, is deplorable. Their tactics and hard line attitude have done nothing to improve the lot of Canadians. It is clear that in their quest for power they are prepared to go as far as putting their own interests before the interests of the people they claim to represent.

Bill C-48 reflects not only the Liberal government's determination to keep its promises and maintain a balanced budget, but also its openness and willingness to adopt new measures that will contribute to the well-being of Canadian and international communities.

As the member of Parliament for Ottawa—Orléans, I can never say enough about how proud I am and how privileged I feel to represent and serve my constituents. Under the leadership of our Prime Minister, we are more dedicated than ever to the improvement of the well-being of all Canadians. I strongly believe that this bill represents a further step in the right direction. Therefore, it has my full support. I sincerely hope that reason will prevail and that this budget will be unanimously approved by all parties.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Is that not interesting? The member from Churchill is suggesting that it is not our money. He is right. It is not our money. We are looking at the fact that this is the money of Canadians. This is money that ought to be invested in projects and programs that help Canadians. It is neither our money nor is it the money of corporations. An expenditure on a tax cut is revenue lost.

Let us understand one thing. This is about choices. Now the Conservatives choose always to give corporate tax cuts, no matter how much corporations today are floating in profits. It is an obsession with them.

We, on this side of the House, believe that this is the time to give Canadians a break. Who has borne the burden of the kind of agenda we have had from the Liberals over the last 10 to 12 years? It has been the average Canadian. It is Canadians who had to bear the brunt of the cutbacks of the Liberals, starting in 1993, when the Liberal government, following on the heels and the patterns of the Mulroney Conservatives, decided to rip the heck out of our social programs. It took $6.8 billion out of our social programs, out of health and education. It took the biggest cut out of our social programs in the history of our country. Canadians had to tighten their belts. They were told that when good time came they would get their share.

What happened in 1997 when we were out of the darkness, as the Liberals would like to suggest, when we had a balanced budget and we started to see surpluses? Who got the money then? It was corporations. There was $100 billion in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and nothing for ordinary Canadians.

There was no big restoration of programs that were so desperately needed. There was no big break for workers across the country and their families. It was the corporations that reaped the benefits of that kind of growth in our economy. Therefore, Canadians were told again to wait, that they would get their turn once the government got through this and the corporations got their tax cut. Once there was more surplus, they will get their share.

What happened then? We have $80 billion in surplus dollars over five budgets. Where did it go? It went to the new target of the Liberals, supported by the Conservatives, and that was to ensure that the debt to GDP ratio was down past 25%. Never mind if Canadians have a leaky roof, never mind if their kids are sick and cannot get the help they need, never mind if there is not enough food to go around, never mind if their sons and daughters cannot go to university as long as those corporations get their way yet again.

We have heard nothing but innuendo, false statements and irresponsible actions on the part of the Conservatives day in and day out in this debate. They have not presented Canadians with the facts. They have not emphasized the issues in terms of tax breaks for corporations going up, profits going up and investment going down. They have not said anything about the possibility of creating jobs by investing in areas that both help Canadians, create jobs and grow the economy.

Let us remember that business claims, just like the Conservative claims throughout this whole budget debate, about how this NDP deal will damage business investment and destroy jobs are so overblown that they stretch the limits of credulity.

We have heard from the Conservative friends, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, that says, “My goodness, the sky is falling”. We have heard from the C.D. Howe Institute, “My goodness, how irresponsible can they get”. We have heard from some of the big banks, “This is terrible”. However, they do not want to mention those corporations and businesses that are responsible citizens in our country and that believe very strongly in the need to invest in the economy.

I want to mention a couple of them. I want to mention the statement we received from Husky Injection Molding Systems. The CEO said:

I commend the Prime Minister for continuing to demonstrate fiscal prudence while at the same time embracing sound social policy. The social policy acceleration announced by the Prime Minister and Mr. Layton yesterday should be viewed as an investment in our future, our children's future and the future of our country.

That is just one example. Let me mention another one from the former chief economist of the RBC Dominion Securities and Richardson Greenshields who said:

The Conservatives are in need of an issue. To pull out of the nose dive caused by the [taping] fiasco and the questions around [their leader's] judgment, the Conservatives have decided to set their sights on Bill C-48, the budget deal the NDP leader, [the member for Toronto--Danforth] struck with the Liberal government in April.

He goes on to say:

Competitiveness is driven by many other factors. Better transit leading to fewer smog days; affordable housing for better, safer neighbourhoods; quality, accessible post-secondary education to create a world class workforce; publicly delivered health care which gives Canadian businesses an edge over regional competitors like the United States. These are the key elements of a progressive, 21st century economy.

That is what we aim to do with Bill C-48. We aim to create an economy that includes everyone. We aim to create an economy that is based on the values of human decency and compassion. We aim to strive for the highest ideals which say that there should be no difference between the son of a banker having a better chance going to university than the daughter of a plumber.

We say that every life has value and without those values and going the way that the Conservatives suggest, we end up in nothing more than a ruthless jungle. We are talking about the Conservatives' politics of the jungle. There is no sensitivity to the needs of individuals or recognition of the struggles that families face.

Therefore, we have suggested that there ought to be an investment in education so everyone has a chance to benefit from higher education and training to get those good jobs. We say there should be money in housing so people do not have to worry about whether they have a roof over their head, whether their basement is filled with water or whether there are leaks happening.

People should be able to breath the air without needing a puffer because of the smog in our cities. There should be some decent public transit in this day and age to help deal with our commitment to Kyoto. Canada, the wealthy nation that it is, has an obligation to the world as well by sharing some of our wealth with those people who earn $1 or $2 a year in other parts of the world.

I urge members to stop the games, get on with making Parliament work, and bring home this budget for Canadians.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a great pleasure to speak tonight on third reading of Bill C-48, the better balanced budget sponsored by the NDP. I cannot begin to say how much joy we at this end of the House feel for the contribution we have made to this country. I cannot begin to say how fulfilling it is to know that we have been able to play a small part in making this Parliament work.

Before I go any further in expressing my jubilation and excitement about this moment in our history, let me express a frustration that I think all Canadians must be feeling tonight, that is, just when Canadians thought we were this close to accomplishing something great, to finally getting the budget through, to seeing some investments made in critical areas, the Conservatives come along with yet another obstructive tactic. It is not just the occasional obstruction we are seeing from the Conservatives, but aggressive, perpetual, impolite and almost disgusting obstructionist tactics.

Here we are, having gone through all kinds of antics and tactics, patiently waiting while the Conservatives played their games, and tonight at third reading, the final stage of the bill, the Conservatives come along with another delaying tactic, with another motion to send the budget back to committee. That is an absolutely irresponsible action on the part of the Conservative Party.

Let me say, though, that in case those members think those kinds of tactics will get them anywhere, we are determined to stay here as long as it takes. Perhaps the members across the way would like to listen to this, because it is important. We are telling those members that we are prepared to stay for as long as it takes to accomplish something for Canadians, to deliver the budget bill for Canadians.

We know we are going to go through a lot of hardships and heartache by being here. I see that the member for Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam is getting a little agitated already by my comments. I hope he settles down and listens for a few minutes.

Let me say for all of us that staying here longer than normal and staying here for an unspecified amount of time is obviously going to mean some hardship and heartache for people in the House, for members of Parliament, and for those who serve us and their families. Many of us have graduations to attend that are important for our constituents. Some of us have graduations for our children. Some of us will have to forgo a very important opportunity in the interest of putting the public good ahead of our own personal interests.

On that score, I want to pay a special tribute to my son Nick, my special son Nick, who is no doubt watching tonight and who is going to graduate in a couple of days. I want to say that I hope he appreciates what his mom is doing and that he understands the kind of work we are doing in this place.

I want to take a moment to pay tribute to all of those people who have made it possible for us to be here. We so seldom express our thanks to the table officers, the Sergeant-at-Arms, the pages, the security folks, the translators, the interpreters, the Hansard staff, and the food services, everyone who makes it possible for us to be here well into the wee hours of the morning each and every night. I think it is important that we acknowledge the hard work and the contribution made by so many who help us here in this place.

I also want to convey my special thanks to those who serve the finance committee. We went through a very difficult process because of the Conservatives' tactics and the games they were playing. I want to pay tribute to the parliamentary staff and the clerk of that committee, Mr. Richard Dupuis, who in fact, as members will know, suffered a great injustice from the Conservatives, who decided a couple of weeks ago to publicly disparage the work of the clerk of this committee.

The member for Medicine Hat was quoted in the Ottawa Citizen for suggesting that the clerk was not doing his job and was doing jiggery-pokery. Despite the fact that the committee went over in great detail how exemplary that person did his job and how meticulous he was in ensuring that witnesses were called, the Conservatives, and particularly the member for Medicine Hat, did not have the decency to publicly apologize and that is a shame.

Now I want to talk about this historic moment. This is truly a moment of which we are very proud. It is a time when we have achieved something by co-operating, by making a minority Parliament work. It is something that seems to be anathema to the Conservatives who do not seem to get what it means to work out something when there is the possibility of cooperation. It seems to me they do not have any semblance of an idea of two parties sitting down, finding something in common and working out an arrangement. They seem to think this is nothing but a secret deal that is bad for everybody.

They cannot understand that Canadians want us to co-operate. They want us to work together, they want to make Parliament work and they appreciate what we have been able to do in this Parliament.

This is the first time in the history of the CCF-NDP that we have been able to bring in an NDP budget. It took a great deal of commitment and hard work on the part of the party's leader, the member for Toronto—Danforth. It took a great deal on the part of our House leader, the member for Vancouver East. It took a great deal of commitment and teamwork on the part of everyone in the NDP caucus.

I again hear the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam suggesting that it is not really such a big deal, it only accounts for 2% of the GDP. Is that not interesting? The Conservatives want it both ways. One minute they say that we have engaged in a wasteful expenditure and that we are bringing this planet to its end and this country to its knees because of this huge budget bill. Now the member is saying that it is only 2%.

In fact, it is 1.15% of GDP. The member makes our case. We have been responsible in this process. We have brought forward a balanced budget. We have ensured that it will not at any time lead to a deficit. We have ensured that there is a surplus. We have ensured there is $2 billion for the debt. That is responsible fiscal planning. That is a responsible parliamentary exercise.

We have not heard anything positive from those folks, not a word about what they would have done. They are crying crocodile tears because they did nothing. This budget bill may not be perfect, we may not have covered every area that was in need and we may not have been able to respond to every Canadian's demand, but we did something. That something is better than the nothing the Conservatives brought to the table.

One of the great sins in our society today is the sin of omission. The Conservatives have committed the sin of omission by not acting, by sitting back and acting like back-seat drivers. That is what they are, noisy, back-seat drivers. They are not in the driving seat. They are sitting there yapping because they could not do anything. They would not do anything and did not do anything for Canadians.

Let us not forget what this is all about and what it means. Let us deal with some of the nonsense, myths and silly ideas that the folks over there have been suggesting day in and day out in these debates.

Let us keep in mind, while we are talking about the games that were played, that members of the finance committee heard nothing but obstruction and filibustering by the Conservatives, the same as they are doing in the House. We saw nothing but an attempt by the Conservatives to block genuine witnesses from making their views known to the committee. We sat through hours of embarrassing interventions by the Conservatives who chose to interrupt every witness on a point of order because they did not have the decency or the courtesy to let those witnesses speak

It is about time that those games ended. It is about time that the Conservatives realize they ought to get back to work and start working on behalf of Canadians.

Let us go back to February 23 for a little history on the budget. Let us go back to that moment when the Minister of Finance tabled his budget.

Members will recall that some of us in the House were shocked at some of the additions and omissions in that budget. We were as shocked in the New Democratic Party as the business community was to see that there was another corporate tax reduction. They did not expect it. We certainly did not expect it. We believed the Prime Minister when he said in the election that there would be no new tax cuts until the Liberals had done their responsible restoration of funds for programs that had been cut.

We took a close look at the budget and realized not only was there another $4.6 billion for corporate tax cuts, but there was nothing in the budget for education, nothing for housing, very little for the environment and public transit and insufficient amounts for international aid.

There were other areas of gaps and needs that we were not able to negotiate. However, we managed to address four important areas for Canadians.

What has been so ironic in this debate or so hard to understand is that the Conservatives will stand in the House and criticize us for doing this. Yet they also stand and say that we did not include agriculture, or we did not include potholes, or we did not include highways or we did not include the military, a whole list of things. They did not have the nerve to suggest one thing themselves. They did not put one idea on the table. They did not try to negotiate anything with the government. Yet they have the nerve and the audacity to criticize us for trying something that is making a difference for Canadians and is appreciated and welcomed by them.

The Conservatives would like us to believe that there is something horrible about taking another corporate tax cut, scrapping it and investing that money in areas that mean a lot to Canadians.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we did not join with the Conservatives. We do not in fact support Bill C-48, but that is, in the main, for our own reasons. Presenting things this way is just a rhetorical device. It is as if I said the Liberals and the NDP were identical. Mind you, Trudeau always said that the New Democrats were Liberals in a hurry. I am beginning to believe it now.

That is not the issue. Behind this operation, the NDP, unfortunately, has supported a corrupt party and government. I will say that I am feeling rather uncomfortable for the NDP, which was party to an operation that prevented the people of Canada and Quebec from punishing this government. There is no alliance with the Conservatives. It is nothing like that.

I think the NDP made a grave mistake by enabling this government to survive for a few months, because it will be just for a few months. They should have gone to the public following the revelations of the Gomery commission. Moreover, no thought was given to the unemployed. There is nothing on employment insurance and nothing on the fiscal imbalance.

As I mentioned at the outset, they traded substance for shadows—certainty for uncertainty. We will have no part of that.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question. When we read the bill we see that there are a great many “ifs” and “maybes”. First, there needs to be a $2 billion surplus every year. We know there will be one since the Minister of Finance has constantly underestimated the surpluses.

Nonetheless, if the Liberals did not want to give the money because it did not suit them to do so for one reason or another, they could change their mind—we know what they are like. That said, if they just spent money on other programs they could end up with a $2 billion surplus without having to say a word about keeping their promises.

The Comptroller General was asked whether this bill was binding. The answer was no. It is a line of credit the federal government has opened to spend the maximum in every sector. Take international aid for example. The maximum is $500 million. There is no guarantee this money will be spent.

I think we should have had—in fact this was suggested in the Standing Committee on Finance—a much more cohesive bill. The haste of drafting Bill C-48 just to form a political alliance is probably what made it so vague. It leaves the Liberal Party of Canada and current government with a lot of elbow room.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague, whom I like very much as a person, has asked a number of questions. I will not unfortunately be able to answer them all.

As far as the sponsorships are concerned, there is no common thread between what went on here in Ottawa with the Liberal Party of Canada, and what went on in Quebec with Oxygène 9 and Mr. Baril. Immediately he felt there was a hint of conflict of interest, he resigned. Here, the government had to be harassed.

Even back in the 2000 election campaign we were speaking out about some practices by this government. We could not imagine that this scandal had roots so deep.

The Gomery inquiry was struck in response to pressure by the opposition parties and public opinion. This government has never done a thing without being pressured to do so.

It is a totally different situation in Quebec, for both the Parti Québecois and the Quebec Liberal Party. For example, at the first hint of problems with Jean Brault's contributions to the Parti Québecois, a trust fund was created. Here the government had to be harassed for a month, or a month and a half, until it admitted it no longer had any choice. And then it took a while before the money got transferred.

These are not in any way similar situations. Observers were not at all taken in. There was a whole mechanism in place here. I am not saying it was all the Liberal Party of Canada, or all the government, but there was a real system set up to funnel money indirectly to the Liberal Party of Canada. I am not in any way saying that this was the intent of the sponsorship program. Its primary objective, in reality, was to buy the souls of Quebeckers, and opinion polls show that it failed to do that.

As far as Bill C-48 is concerned, Quebec Premier Charest is certainly playing a totally legitimate game in trying to help out his Ottawa brethren, and to sing the praises of the Liberal Party of Canada in a lead-up to the election. Nevertheless, according to the polls, declared votes in their favour are at around 20% or 22%. I do not think that this will be a major advantage for the Liberal Party of Canada in the next election.

There is a lot more I could say, but no more time, so I will take my seat.

[Claude Drouin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Rural Communities)]

Mr. Speaker, the only sham tonight is listening to the Bloc Québécois, which claims to defend the interests of Quebeckers and repeats that it will vote against Bill C-48. The premier of Quebec, like most of the mayors in Quebec, is asking the Bloc members to support this bill in order to obtain the money the Government of Canada has promised, thanks to an agreement with the NDP, a party that wanted to work in the interest of Quebeckers and Canadians, unlike the Bloc members.

My colleague alluded to a number of points. I want to respond to some of them. He spoke a great deal about sponsorships. I want to ask him what he thinks of what happened in Quebec, particularly with regard to Oxygène 9 and the resignation of Mr. Baril as a minister. A few months later, the Quebec government made him a vice-president of Hydro-Québec in Chile, without investigating or assigning blame, by claiming its innocence.

Here, we created the Gomery commission of inquiry. Four people are currently facing criminal charges, one of whom has already pleaded guilty. We have launched legal proceedings against 20 individuals and businesses for a total of $44 million. We amended the Election Act's provisions on the funding of political parties. We re-established auditors for each department, to ensure that departmental expenditures comply with Treasury Board guidelines.

Those are the measures we have taken as a responsible government. We have not tried to hide; we have acted. There was a problem: some people took advantage of a flaw in the system. We are aware of the problem and we want to fix it.

It has been suggested that nothing has been done with regard to EI. In fact, an additional $300 million was announced, but the Bloc does not want to support Bill C-48. However, it has a lot to say about what happened with the gun registry and EI. The $1 billion he mentioned is really $80,000. I invite the member for Joliette to table the documents to support his claims. In reality, the inquiry concluded that $80,000 was missing.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am extremely pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-48.

As some already know, I am a teacher by profession. I was an economics professor—and will be again once we achieve sovereignty in Quebec—at the Maisonneuve college, where I am still employed. I am sure that Bill C-48 will make for an extremely interesting case study when I go back to teaching at the end of my political career.

Bill C-48 is a unique case politically, economically, and financially speaking and the Bloc Québécois is opposed to it on all those levels.

Politically speaking, look at the situation we were in a few weeks ago when the minority government was looking for support just to survive. Bill C-48 did not come out of the goodness of the Liberals' hearts. They were in political hot water and this is what they came up with to survive politically. Bill C-48 is the product of this government's corruption. Let us not forget that.

Without Bill C-48, this government probably would have fallen and an election would already have been held in which the people of Quebec and Canada could have punished this government.

In case anyone thinks this is not a government on probation, some of whose representatives have been accused of dirty deeds, L. Ian MacDonald, who is not a sovereignist, I am sure we agree, wrote an article in Policy Options on the Gomery inquiry. I will read an excerpt. It is a summary of his article that I invite everyone to read:

As explosive as the auditor general’s report on the sponsorship scandal was, it did not, and could not, follow those funds, as Sheila Fraser said, “once they left the government.” It was left to Justice John Gomery to follow the money, not so much through a bureaucratic maze as down a political trail that led to the advertising agencies in Montreal and back to the Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec). In 128 days of public hearings, Gomery took some 25,000 pages of testimony, some of it stories of cash payments in envelopes right out the movies. Gomery’s findings will be out in November and his recommendations in December. Has the cost been worth it? The only benchmark is what we know now that we didn't know before Gomery. The answer is plenty.

It is very clear in what political context Bill C-48 was created. They tried to win an artificial majority in order to continue governing.

Unfortunately, I must say that the NDP, a party that I respect a great deal, has fallen right into the trap. On my way here, I thought about what I had learned in college. The NDP had the wool pulled over its eyes, to use one expression to describe this situation. We have others: it took the bait; it was fooled by smoke and mirrors; in short, it grasped at a shadow and lost the substance.

Politically speaking, I am quite concerned when a party of honesty and integrity, such as the NDP, is taken in by the Liberal Party of Canada, which is a corrupt party. As I mentioned, the Gomery commission and a number of observers seem to support that argument. The truth will come out once Justice Gomery's report has been tabled.

Politically speaking, this is an absolute farce. Nothing in Bill C-48 is truly progressive. Its only purpose is to buy peace for several months so the Liberal Party can continue to govern.

Economically and financially, we have the example of the $500 million for foreign aid. Obviously, there will always be support for increasing development aid.

So, this allows the Liberal Government of Canada to say that it has invested $500 million—how extraordinary—but that it will make no commitment whatsoever to 0.7% of GDP for official development assistance.

Again this week, the Minister of International Cooperation said that the government was making a moral commitment to reach this goal, but that there was no timeline, calendar or plan. So, the government is telling us that there is $500 million in Bill C-48, that this is wonderful, and that this absolves us of any commitment to provide official development assistance.

There is $1.5 billion for post-secondary education. Obviously, this is an astronomical sum. However, when we do not know how this $1.5 billion will be spent or what percentage will go to which expenditures, this may be a recipe for disaster.

I myself attended a meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance, two weeks ago Monday. University association representatives came to tell us that a balance is essential. If everything is invested in improving access to a university education, then the universities cannot accept additional students, because they do not have the professors, labs or infrastructure they would need.

Adding this $1.5 billion may therefore seem to be a good thing, but it is more likely to cause problems than to bring solutions, particularly since there is no government commitment to renewed funding. Teachers will be hired, laboratories opened perhaps, and then everything will have to be closed down again because there is not enough money to fund it all.

I will remind hon. members that there was a strike in Quebec a few years ago, one the Liberal government of Quebec of the day considered illegal. At that time I was secretary general of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux. We were hit with a fine of several million dollars. Of course, in order to look good and seem progressive, the government said that the money from these fines would be made available to community groups and charitable organizations. The Montreal United Way recommended that these groups turn it down. Why so? Because, when money becomes available for one year, permanent staff is hired, additional services provided, and then the next year there is no more money, staff can no longer be paid nor services delivered, but the demand created is still there.

In Bill C-48, as in the entire approach of the federal government and of the Liberal Party of Canada, there is always that philosophy of creating a need, funding it initially, and then pulling out later, leaving Quebec and the provinces holding the bag.

We have seen this with social housing. There again—I am forced to say this—the $1.6 billion for social housing is of course welcome, but if the federal Liberal government pulls out the following year, does not maintain its investments, and announces no continued funding for social housing, Quebec will find itself back in exactly the same position as now. I am sure that is the situation in other provinces as well. There is social housing but not the funds to maintain it properly.

So a need is created and then the ball ends up back in the provinces' court—and in Quebec's especially. I must point out that Quebec has kept its commitments as far as social housing is concerned. Moreover, the Front d'action populaire en réaménagement urbain has said so on numerous occasions. Consequently, the problem is still there. This does, of course, seem to be a most acceptable measure, even praiseworthy in principle, but in reality, it creates problems.

In this regard, we would have thought it more likely the Liberal government would commit to investing 1% of its public spending annually on social housing, as the NDP has asked—I imagine—along with the Bloc. However, this is not the case. The government provides one breath of fresh air, which will then suffocate social housing. It is extremely disturbing.

In terms of the environment, $900 million is an extraordinary amount, to be sure. It does not prevent the plan announced by the Minister of the Environment in response to the Kyoto protocol from being not only too weak to be carried out but destined for polluters who pay nothing for their pollution.

Accordingly, it guarantees a policy, which is, in our opinion in Bloc Québécois—and that of our critic for this matter—damaging to Quebec. The government is favouring the petroleum industry and once again making the people who have made an effort, especially the manufacturing sector in Quebec, pay for the reduction in greenhouse gases.

Looking at all that, I think it began with the best of intentions. However, the political, economic and financial results are catastrophic and do not resolve the underlying problems. The fiscal imbalance must not be forgotten. And there is nothing in this bill for EI.

It is not the fault of the NDP. I do not want to throw stones at them for that, but it does enable the federal Liberal government to say that it has a very good bill to resolve a stack of social issues, and that employment insurance will be for later. It will not be for later. We know that very well. Since 2000, government members and ministers have promised EI reforms we have yet to see.

I recall clearly—and I repeat this often, because I want everyone to remember—that, in 2000, the member for Bourassa and other Liberal government ministers of the time promised reforms to construction workers in Jonquière or Chicoutimi. Furthermore, during the televised debate in the last election, the Prime Minister himself promised reforms. However, nothing has happened since then.

Some $46 billion or $47 billion was diverted. Obviously $4.5 billion is nothing to sneeze at. However, $46 billion or $47 billion has been misappropriated. This gives an idea of the scale involved. We cannot settle for this, especially if we consider ourselves progressive.

So we must continue to put pressure on this minority government. Furthermore, EI should be a priority.

We must not forget the gun registry scandal either. Apparently, $1.7 billion was spent. Most of us agree with the principle; the gun registry is essential. However, we were told that it would cost $2 million, not the almost $2 billion it has cost to date. This is mind-boggling. Obviously some people profited from it. This is another scandal.

This reminds us, obviously, of the sponsorship scandal. I will say no more about it. I think that we have made up our minds about that scandal.

Look at the federal job creation program. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was then the human resources minister. A billion dollars was spent on all sorts of projects. Exactly how that money was used was never really determined.

There is still the fiscal imbalance. We are talking about an amount between $12 billion and $14 billion for all provinces. For Quebec alone, the fiscal imbalance represents $3.5 billion. In that sense, Bill C-48 is like putting a band-aid on a cancer. The cancer should have been treated.

The Conservative Party finance critic mentioned that this bill does not contain any details and that is a shame. As I was saying earlier, in terms of post-secondary education, the choices made in budget allocation will be extremely critical in determining how useful this money is. The same is true for housing. We would have expected a little more. Perhaps they ran out of time.

I imagine the Minister of Finance must be quite shocked to see, after tabling his budget in February, that for partisan reasons his credibility is on the line. Indeed, that is what is at stake.

In February, he told us there was no surplus, but that he had a $4 billion contingency fund for emergencies and economic prudence. Now the government is making a $4.5 billion commitment over two years. It is proof—and the Bloc Québécois has denounced this many times—that they deliberately underestimate the surpluses. The finance minister's credibility will be marred for life. He knows it, too; that much is obvious. When he responds to questions on Bill C-48, he is uncomfortable and he winces. I would rather he gave a precise picture of the public finances and that we had a real debate on how to use the surpluses; not the unexpected surpluses, but the real ones.

Where should this money go? To repay the debt, as they have said for years? I want to reiterate that. That is an extremely serious thing. For years, they led us to think that the unexpected surpluses should go to repay the debt. And yet, we can see it with Bill C-48. If the government expects unexpected surpluses ahead of time, they can be allocated to some particular thing. Tens of billions of dollars are involved here. In fact, some $60 billion to $70 billion have been withdrawn from the democratic debate, from the options available to the members here in the House and to the public. It is unacceptable.

With Bill C-48, unfortunately for the Minister of Finance, they made this fact public. In other words, they underestimate the surplus so they can deduct it from the public debt. They also use trusts and foundations for this. In this way, money from the public purse is removed from the control of parliamentarians. This too is a denial of democracy and a democratic deficit, a deficit that the current Prime Minister criticized a few months back. I have to say that the more time passes, the more I realize those words must surely have been intended to convince both the members of the Liberal Party of Canada and the public that renewal was on the way. We are realizing with the Liberals that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The democratic deficit remains. The proof lies in the number of motions passed in this House without producing any effect on government action. I will give only one example, in which I am personally involved. It is the splitting of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. The Prime Minister decided the day he was sworn in to split this department. Two bills were introduced and defeated. It would seem that that changed absolutely nothing in the government's trajectory. I could mention other motions that also passed in this House, and that came to nought in terms of government action.

So Bill C-48 may be a fine gesture by the NDP, but it is a harmful one from the political point of view, because it attempts to make people forget that at least a portion of one of the parties involved, that is the Liberal Party of Canada, is corrupt. From the economic point of view, this is far from a guarantee of improved services as far as post-secondary education, provision of social housing, or the environment are concerned.

As I have said, as far as international aid is concerned, this will enable the government to wiggle out of its obligation to have a deadline and a very specific plan for achieving the 0.7% of GDP objective by 2015.

So, overall, this is a way to make people forget what is essential: this government has lost its moral credibility; it is a lame duck government, but Bill C-48 has enabled it to enter into an alliance that will keep it going another few months. We in the Bloc Québécois, like all parties in opposition, have a responsibility to keep reminding people of the essential facts, which demonstrate that this government does not deserve the support of the people of Quebec and Canada. It is regrettable that the NDP fell into the trap.

In this connection, it is my hope that within a few days, or a few hours, some people will see the light and common sense will win out. Bill C-48 is a sham, and we cannot vote in favour of a sham. What we want is some real solutions. All parties in opposition must join forces to put pressure on this corrupt government.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to address Bill C-48.

I want to say at the outset that the Conservative Party of Canada believes that Canada can do so much better than we have done up until now. We are a land that is blessed with tremendous resources. We have access to the richest market in the history of the world and yet our standard of living languishes. Too many people cannot find jobs today or, if they can find a job, they are not the types of jobs that can pay them a wage that allows them to look after their families and ensure that they can send their children off to university. We think we can do a lot better and that is why we are so opposed to Bill C-48.

We think Bill C-48 represents a government that has completely lost its vision, if it ever had any vision. We argue that there is a much better way to proceed, which I will speak to in a few minutes.

I want to say a little about Bill C-48 at the outset. We need to correct the record about some of the things that my hon. friend has said. I think he is completely misleading Canadians about how this came about, about the nature of Bill C-48 and the nature of the spending that is planned in Bill C-48.

I want to remind my friend across the way that when the budget came in back in February there were a number of things in it that our party supported and some things on which we had some concerns but on balance we found it supportable. We did want to change some things and ultimately we got some of those changes.

We received some of the tax relief that we had been seeking but it was very minimal. After we had pushed the government quite hard, Canadians will receive $16 in personal income tax relief, which, I agree, is not very much. In fact it is a lot less than the millions of dollars that Liberal friends received through the sponsorship scandal in paper bags passed across tables at restaurants and suitcases full of money, but nevertheless we felt that the government was moving a little in our direction.

One of the key elements of Bill C-43, the budget legislation that came down, was a commitment to cut the taxation on large employers. We have been pushing for this for some time because that kind of tax reduction is important to ensuring that the productivity of Canada improves. When productivity improves it means that businesses can hire more workers, they attract more investment, more jobs are created and, as a result of that, more revenue starts coming in to the government. We really pushed that and we were happy to see that the government was doing that, although it was too far down the road.

We have this big productivity challenge in front of us today and the government wants to delay bringing in this tax relief for large employers, even though we face huge challenges today from countries like China, soon India, and basically every other country in the world. We are facing some big challenges but we said that it was okay because at least the government was moving roughly in the right direction.

We had some concerns about some of the environmental provisions of the bill. Part 15 of the bill dealt with regulating large final emitters for companies that emit CO

2

. The government wanted to do that through CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. We did not like that and just about every party in the House thought that was a bad idea and argued that should not be done. However the good news is that we were able to get some amendments to Bill C-43. We got rid of the CEPA provisions. We were able to make some other changes to greenhouse gas technology funds that made sure it was a little more flexible so that businesses could use it and make it work for them.

We got some changes when it came to transparency on Bill C-43 and ultimately we did support Bill C-43, as the member knows. It is not perfect and it is a long way from perfect. It is not what a Conservative government would do. It is a tepid approach, in our view, but it is a step in the right direction and we did support it.

However, where we thought the government went way off the rails was on Bill C-48. I want to remind the parliamentary secretary that there were NDP members standing in this place until a day or two before the Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP met in a hotel room in Toronto with Buzz Hargrove, the union leader, to cut a deal that was a long way away from this place and from the scrutiny of Canadians. In fact, it was a political deal. It was cut because the government was worried that it would fall with the revelations that were coming out of the Gomery commission, revelations that shook the faith of the country in this government.

Guess what? Despite what the finance minister had been saying in this place about how what the NDP was proposing was outrageous and that “You can’t go on stripping away piece by piece by piece of the budget...You can’t...begin to cherry pick”, two days later his Prime Minister cut a deal with the leader of the NDP to save the hide of the Liberal Party. It was facing these unbelievable charges coming from executives within the Liberal Party talking about millions of dollars being passed to ad executives in suitcases and in paper bags. It was outrageous.

The NDP supported a corrupt government, the most corrupt government in the history of the country, in order to get what it wanted. That is how this all came about, in case people forget. I wanted to set the record straight.

The problems with Bill C-48 go way beyond that. I want to address some of those issues right now.

When the budget came down, the government argued that it needed to have a particular fiscal framework to ensure that we had stability down the road. It wanted to make sure that there was always enough money to ensure that the country did not go into deficit and that there was a minimal amount of money that would go toward debt repayment, which is a good idea. In fact, our party has always supported that, as did the Liberal Party until it struck its deal with the NDP.

In striking that deal, the Liberals took the minimum amount of money that would be used as a buffer to ensure that they did not go into a deficit and if it was not used it would go toward debt repayment. They took it from $4 billion and now it is down to $2 billion under Bill C-48. What does that mean? It means that the amount of money that is used to retire debt is less now, meaning that down the road we will pay more in interest. We will not have the same kind of savings that we would have had if we still had that $4 billion cushion.

I want members in the House to think about what that means. It means that for every $1 billion that we pay toward the debt, and let us assume the interest rate is at 3%, we would save $30 million a year in perpetuity from now until forever. If we were to pay down $2 billion, like the government is now proposing since it struck its deal with the NDP, that would be $60 million in perpetuity that we could be using to fund things like social programs down the road.

I see my friends in the NDP are very agitated about this but I think I am telling the truth about this. I think they are concerned that I am revealing how damaging their deal is to the social safety net of this country, which they should be concerned about because it is damaging.

My point is that the difference between $4 billion and $2 billion means tens of millions of dollars a year cannot now be used to fund social programs down the road, especially when Canadians who are starting to age today, the baby boom generation, hit their retirement years. We expect that when we hit around the year 2030 we will have double the number of seniors than we have today. What will we do then with a much smaller tax base to fund all those seniors? One thing we could do is pay down the debt so that we have more capacity down the road to fund big social programs like health care and seniors pensions.

We are making a grave error. We are making the error of political expediency. The government is selling out the country today to save its own political hide. It is putting the pensions and the health care of seniors at risk down the road. That is what this amounts to and it is reprehensible. That is what the government has done.

There are more problems with Bill C-48. One of the big problems with Bill C-48 can be seen when one picks it up. I do not have a copy of it here, but it is two pages long, a bill that is spending $4.6 billion. One would expect that when talking about amending a budget to include an expenditure of $4.6 billion, one would get a document that not only laid out exactly where the spending would occur, but what the objectives are, what the government intends to accomplish, the mechanisms it would use to accomplish the objectives, and the safeguards in place to guarantee that the money would not be misspent. That is what one would expect when talking about an expenditure of this magnitude, but that is not what we got. We got a 400 word bill. It is one of the most pathetic pieces of legislation I have ever seen in my life.

I see my NDP friend over there wagging his finger at me, criticizing me. Well, let me address one of my concerns when it comes to this issue. In this legislation the government is proposing to spend money on post-secondary education, which is laudable. We all want to do that, but we want to do it in a way we can afford so that down the road we can ensure that we can do it for all Canadians, not just in the short term for the political gain of the Liberals and the NDP.

One of the things that my friend from Portage--Lisgar raised was that in 2000 the Auditor General raised concerns about spending on post-secondary education for aboriginals. This was in the year 2000. In the fall of 2004, the Auditor General said that four years earlier her department had raised those concerns and it still had not had a response from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs about how the money was being spent. Now the government wants to spend $1.5 billion on post-secondary education, some of which would go to the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs for post-secondary education for aboriginals. The Auditor General still has not received a response, but those members do not care. They do not care that the Auditor General of Canada has grave concerns about the accountability of this money.

The NDP wants to go ahead and spend that money without having that response from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. The Liberals, of course, do not care. They never have cared about these things. That is why we have problems like the sponsorship scandal. That is why we have problems like the firearms registry.

Frankly, it is why we have problems like one of the worst scandals I think I have ever seen in Indian affairs, which was the whole issue of Davis Inlet. I know that Liberal members and certainly the NDP equate how much one spends with how much one cares. The more money one spends, the bigger one's heart. That is the view of those members. It is not about results for them; it is about how much money they spend. There is no better example that I can provide than how the government handled the problem at Davis Inlet.

I want to remind people in the House and people who are watching this today what occurred. We were all horrified as a country when we saw on television young native children staggering around under the influence of gasoline that they had been sniffing. The prime minister of the day, Jean Chrétien, was horrified. We all were. It was unbelievable that in a country that provides opportunities to so many people, those people at Davis Inlet did not have that opportunity. We saw this absolute social pathology at Davis Inlet, where so many young people basically were throwing away their lives because they were doing this. What was the government's response? The government's response was to throw bags of money at the problem.

Anyone who doubts for a second that is true only has to look at what happened to Davis Inlet after the government intervened. What happened was the government spent $360 million on Davis Inlet, a community of 900 people, which amounts to $400,000 a person. The government moved the whole community down the road, and put the people in new housing and provided new facilities for them, water and all the rest of it.

Predictably, all of the problems went with those people, because the government equates how much money it spends with how much it cares. It equates how much money it spends with getting results and the two are not necessarily connected. The Liberals had no plan on how to spend that money to ensure they got results. The result was that those 900 people took all their problems and misery with them 20 miles down the road and they are in the same position today. That is a disgrace.

We will replicate that, I am afraid, with the NDP budget Bill C-48, because the government is moving forward at lightspeed on this with no plan. There is not one detail in the bill as to how the money will be spent. It just says it will go into certain areas. The government did not list the programs. It did not lay out the objectives. We don't know precisely how much the government wants to spend in each particular area. What the Liberals want to do, and the NDP members are prepared to go along with it, is they want to give authority to the governor in council, in other words to give broad authority to cabinet, to decide how the money is spent.

The Conservative Party moved amendments asking that the government provide plans, and I do not understand why it would not agree to it, by December 31 of this year, laying out how the money would be spent. It did not seem to be a very high hurdle to jump over, but the government could not even agree to that. It would not even accept that amendment. I am horrified that the Liberals would not do that when we are talking about such a major expenditure.

I am running out of time and there are a couple of more things I want to say. There is a better approach. The better approach is to figure out what we want to achieve and make sure that we have programs in place that help people realize their dreams. A lot of times it is not the government that does it. A lot of times it is families that do it.

Let us leave that money, where we possibly can, in the pockets of families. Families know better what is right for them and their children than bureaucrats and politicians do. When there is a doubt about what to do with $4.6 billion that the government has lying around, leave it in the pockets of Canadian taxpayers. They will use it wisely.

My time is running out, so I had better get down to business and move this amendment. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following therefor:

Bill C-48, An Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments, be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Finance for the purpose of reconsidering all of its clauses with the view to incorporate recommendations regarding tighter controls on discretionary spending.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, let me point out that I am about six foot two and so far I am still standing on both hands, as is the finance minister. I do not think he is six foot two but nevertheless he is walking around quite nicely, thanks very much.

The finance minister said that in the event that this unplanned surplus legislation were to go forward, these would be the basic principles on which it would go forward.

First, there would be a significant paydown on debt. In this particular case there is at least $2 billion each year of the agreement.

Second, we would not go into deficit under any circumstances.

Third, we would continue to balance the budget and move forward on that basis.

In the event that those principles are met, then the finance minister was quite prepared to build upon the initiatives that were in previous budgets.

I put it to the hon. members opposite, which part of these four initiatives is the government not in? Is the government not in foreign aid? Already there. Is the government not in affordable housing? Already there. Is the government not into environmental issues? Already there. Is the government not into post-secondary education? Already there.

Billions and billions of dollars are already being spent. Bill C-48 falls well within the four principles that the finance minister put forward.