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

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member clearly demonstrates his desire to focus on a few key areas, but I would like to remind him that there are always competing priorities with limited resources. The government, the Liberal Party under the leadership of the Prime Minister and the finance minister have clearly shown the ability to balance all these priorities.

Everything cannot be a crisis. Everything cannot be important. The member must recognize and appreciate the fact that the commitments we have talked about with respect to this particular budget, Bill C-48, and building on government priorities of affordable housing, post-secondary education, the environment and foreign aid, were all important components in our base budget. Many people understand that and that is why the Conservative Party supported us initially. I do not know what it will be doing tomorrow or the day after that.

These are areas of common concern. We must be mindful of the fact that we need to balance the budget. We must be mindful of the fact that we cannot continue to spend money at a pace which will put us in a financial situation where we will bring about a deficit.

Again, it is about competing priorities. It is about the fact that not everything is considered a crisis, but about making sound investments in key common areas.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member highlights a very key issue about the notion of how a minority Parliament is supposed to work. It is very straightforward. We do not have the majority of seats in the House so we have an obligation to work with other parties. Are we going to work with the separatists? Probably not, because they want to destroy this country.

We tried to work with the Conservatives but they just do not see how our social agenda works in making investments in these key areas. One moment they are supporting us and the next moment they abstain. Somehow their legs give out and they do not support us. A few weeks later they come to the realization that the budget is a good one and they are in trouble now because we have further strengthened the budget with our NDP friends and all of a sudden they are getting nervous again and they flip-flop. They support Bill C-43 but have an issue with Bill C-48.

I think the Conservatives deserve the term flip-flop but we have clearly demonstrated our ability to work with other parties in ensuring we strengthen the social foundation in this country and to ensuring we make sound investments in certain key areas, the areas I spoke to in my presentation, such as affordable housing. I do not see how they can have any problems with that.

Another area is post-secondary education. If I recall, some member said that their children were currently students. I know they make reasonable amounts of money as members of Parliament, but that is still a sound investment in post-secondary education. We are also investing in the environment and in foreign aid.

Those are all key area in which we have made investments and I am proud that we worked with the NDP. I hope the budget will go through but we are not flip-flopping. It is unfortunate that the Conservatives are not supporting the budget.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my colleague on his presentation today.

I found one aspect of his speech especially interesting. It was when he said that the people of Canada had chosen a minority government, that is, a government that turned out to be a minority because of its representation here in this House. Of course, the public does not choose the government directly, but elects a number of members of each party, which then determines the distribution of the members in the House.

That said, my colleague and I will agree that the public decided this Parliament should function. The ballot was not marked, “We do not want this Parliament to function”. So the public gave all parliamentarians, collectively, the mandate to get Parliament to work.

In his presentation, my colleague has just pointed out that an integral part of the mandate is to negotiate with the other political parties in this House to ensure good governance of the country. Does he not agree with me that Bill C-48 is in a way evidence of this desire to have Parliament work and in the best interests of Canadians?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I consider myself very fortunate to be given an opportunity to speak to Bill C-48, a very important bill building on government priorities.

I have had an opportunity to listen to some of the comments made by members of the opposition. There has been a great deal of rhetoric and a lot of partisan comments have been made. We need to deal with some of the facts. How did we get to this particular point? How did we get to this point in the House of Commons where we can debate a budget bill that would allow the government to spend billions of dollars on social programs?

I think it is important to acknowledge the hard work of the government after it inherited billions of dollars worth of deficit in the early nineties. This government reduced the deficit. It then went above and beyond that and started to reduce the debt. We have saved about $66 billion or about $3 billion worth of interest payments and savings on an annual basis.

Above and beyond that, the government conducted a recent internal expenditure review which was in the 2005 budget. That is also the foundation of this budget bill. We saved $11 billion over a five year period on that as well. The government has saved billions of dollars which has enabled it to now make investments.

The backdrop of this particular debate has to do with the economy. The opposition talks about productivity and about having sound fiscal management in place. It talks about the importance of being accountable to taxpayers. Let us look at the economic story here and deal with some of the facts.

Canada led the G-7 nations in average annual growth in employment from 1997 and 2004 at 2.2%. The Canadian unemployment rate is currently at 6.8%. In the month of May, not too long ago, the government, through its policies and its initiatives, helped generate 35,000 new jobs for Canadians from coast to coast. That was a tremendous achievement.

The Canada-U.S. gap in terms of the unemployment rate was at five percentage points in 1996 when we inherited the deficit and the fiscal problem from the Conservative government and it is now down to 1.5%.

Canada's average productivity performance has improved significantly in recent years. Overall, from 1997 to 2004 the average business sector labour productivity growth was 2.1% per year, up from 1.2% from 1990 and 199696.

Those are some of the economic indicators as to where we are headed as a nation. Where do we come from and how did we get to this particular moment in time where we are in a sound financial position to make investments?

The opposition continuously asks us what government is all about, where we are headed and what we want to accomplish. We are a party that is socially very progressive, although I do not want to get into social issues, we also are financially very sound. We have the trust of the Canadian public. Which party reduced the deficit? It was our party. Which party helped reduce the debt? It was our party.

We are now in a position to invest in key initiatives. We took it upon ourselves to work with the NDP and come up with a deal to further enhance areas of common interest. It was not a new budget. It did not come out of the blue. It was based on common ground. This new deal focused on areas where both parties could work together to make sound investments. It amounted to a $4.5 billion investment four key areas: affordable housing, post-secondary education, the environment and foreign aid.

I just do not understand what the opposition members are concerned about. Are they concerned about affordable housing? People in Mississauga--Brampton South and in other parts of the country need affordable housing.

Are they concerned about post-secondary education? Not too long ago I did my under-grad at York University and my MB at the University of Windsor. I recall the increasing tuition fees so I know firsthand that we have an obligation to students.

Are the opposition members concerned about the environment? We have heard about the smog in Toronto and other parts of the country. The environment is an important issue so I do not see what the problem is from the opposition side.

Is the opposition concerned about foreign aid? Even today the opposition talked about the 0.7% for foreign aid. The only way we can get there is by investing so we invested in those areas.

What does $4.5 billion amount to? Those members make it seem like we are out of control and our expenses are out of control but that is not the case. The $4.6 billion will come out of the anticipated surpluses. How do we generate those surpluses? Some economists think we are too conservative. They believe that in our approach we are too cautious in that we do not want deficits. They are exactly right, of course we do not want deficits.

We were the government that came into power and eliminated deficits. Therefore it is based on our methodology and on the way we calculate our budgets that we come up with these surpluses.

By the way, the $4.6 billion amounts to approximately 1% of our base budget over a two year period because we spend approximately $200 billion on an annual basis. I cannot understand why the opposition would lose sleep over 1%.

On top of that, we have made a commitment to further reduce the debt by $4 billion over a two year period.

As I have said before, in the four areas in which we will be investing money, $1.6 billion of the $4.6 billion amount will go toward affordable housing. It will definitely help a lot of low income families in my riding who are having difficulties. My colleagues in the past have talked about some of the initiatives that we are taking. This is a sound investment above and beyond what the government has committed in the budget already.

It will also be investing in post-secondary education. Not in my riding per se but in a riding nearby is the Erindale campus for the University of Toronto where I meet many of the students. Some of them even help me out during my campaign. It is just ridiculous the amount of debt they have after they complete their studies at post-secondary institutions, especially the students attending the University of Toronto. For them this bill will be a huge relief.

We talk about the fact that youth are not engaged in politics. This is an issue that speaks to youth concerns. This is a concern that they have and the fact that we are making a sound investment speaks to the fact that we are listening to them.

Then there is the environment. We are spending about $900 million in that area and the focus is on public transit. I know in the riding of Mississauga—Brampton South that is very important. The fact is that the region is growing at a very fast pace. When we look at it on an annual basis, we have 240,000 immigrants that come to this country and close to 100,000 choose to call Toronto, or the GTA, their home. Naturally that has caused the growth in that area. We need to make sound investments in transit so people have a viable alternative as opposed to driving their car and that definitely has an impact on our environment.

I recall a couple of weeks ago a few constituents came to my office. They said that they had come from countries abroad and they were talking specifically about India. They were astonished about the fact that we care about the environment, that we invest money in the environment, that it is a priority of ours and it speaks to the kind of country we have built. They were very proud of that fact because of where they came from. They came from a large urban centre. One person was describing a particular instance of going out wearing a white T-shirt. He said that after a couple of hours he came back and his T-shirt was dark black. That is the kind of environmental concerns they have in other countries.

Therefore the environment should be a priority and I am glad we are spending $900 million in that area as well.

The fourth plank in this agreement that we had with the NDP is foreign aid. We will be investing $500 million in foreign aid.

As I have said before, the government has a responsibility and a role to play not only in domestic affairs but a role to play abroad as well. We have an obligation to those countries that need our assistance and to those people who rely on us for assistance.

I think $500 million in foreign aid is a sound investment. It is something that speaks to again the type of country we are. We are the country that our former prime minister, Mr. Pearson, helped to build and develop our role in the world. That tradition has continued for many years and is resonating with our current Prime Minister as well. He has had the ability to travel abroad.

I have had the privilege of travelling abroad as well with the Prime Minister to Southeast Asia during the tsunami disaster and the fact that it devastated the lives of so many people. Many people lost their homes, many were displaced and many needed aid and assistance.

Because we are a privileged country and a country that is in a sound fiscal management position where we have millions if not billions of dollars in surplus, we have a responsibility. Again, this speaks to the Prime Minister's commitment.

Today we are here debating not about the budget but we are debating the kind of country we want to build. An additional $4.6 billion investment into the economy and into social infrastructure is very important.

Through this budget, the government will be investing in key areas and those key areas have been further enhanced by our coalition with the NDP to get the budget through. It was not a sign of desperation. It was a sign of our philosophy and our commitment to the Canadian people.

We are part of a minority Parliament because people wanted us to work with opposition members. They wanted us to work with other parties so we made a deal with the NDP. Where did we make it? We made a deal on education. I do not see what is wrong with that. We made a deal on the environment and we strengthened our role in the world. I am very proud of that and I stand by the budget.

I again want to commend the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance for their hard work in putting together this budget.

[Gary Lunn, Conservative, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my constituents, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-48. This is the NDP-Liberal budget that was concocted in a hotel room in Toronto. We understand Mr. Hargrove had a lot to do with it. I do want to get to the substance of the budget and why we oppose it.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from the member for Halifax on the issue of whether or not real housing has been created under the federal government's affordable housing program.

I would like to point out that the original affordable housing program required that the federal government actually negotiate and sign agreements with the individual provincial governments. Those governments in many cases had their own programs and might have been better placed to determine where the needs were within their provinces. It also required matching funds from the provincial governments. There were situations where certain provincial governments were either not interested or were unable to match the funds.

Under Bill C-48 there is no requirement for matching funds.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

The member opposite says saving our own skin. It has nothing to do with saving our own skin.

It has to do with building on Bill C-43, the government's February-March budget, which already had increased investments in these four areas of affordable housing, post-secondary education, the environment and foreign aid.

With the assistance of the NDP, to ensure that we continue to build on and improve the social foundations here in Canada in these four crucial areas, Bill C-48 was given birth. It was not a painful birth. Most women who have been through childbirth would say that it was a relatively easy birth, because it built on values that the Liberal Party of Canada holds dear, that the Liberal government holds dear.

I want to speak on two specific areas. I wish to speak on the affordable housing initiative and the increased investment into that and on the environment.

Why would I want to speak on those two issues? My riding of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, which, since the electoral boundaries reform, also includes what is the city of Dorval, includes some areas which have been deemed in the province of Quebec to be the highest poverty areas, the areas with the highest level of dropouts and the greatest need for social housing and affordable housing.

I can give one concrete example that is helping several hundred families in NDG, families that would not have had access to social and affordable housing had it not been for this government's reinvestment and re-engagement in affordable housing and social housing and with the homelessness initiative. I want to talk about the Benny Farm veterans housing.

Benny Farm, to many across Canada, is very familiar. It was veterans housing that was built after World War II to house veterans and their families. Over the years, we have had fewer veterans to live in that housing. The housing, which was owned and run by CMHC, was beginning to fall into disrepair because investments were not being made in upkeep and buildings were being left vacant and actually becoming derelict.

Back in the 1980s, CMHC began a whole process. It wanted to get a zoning bylaw to literally demolish all of the buildings to build high-rises, to sell the land to private developers for luxurious apartments and condominiums. Ordinary citizens in NDG and across Montreal protested and were successful in blocking that kind of development for over a decade.

My predecessor, who represented the NDG part of this riding, the Hon. Warren Allmand, was part of that citizen engagement to try to get the federal government to go back into affordable housing, to go back into social housing and ensure that people in Montreal would have a venue where they could actually live, work and raise their families and not have buildings falling down.

When I was first elected in 1997, that was one of the first issues that I engaged in. I participated with the community activists and representatives of ordinary citizens in NDG in order to convince the government to transfer and sell the property to Canada Lands and to get the government to start a homelessness initiative and an affordable housing initiative. Thanks be to God, in 2000 the government made that commitment and began those investments.

As a result of that, today those buildings are in the process of being renovated. Some of the renovations have actually been completed. They have been purchased by cooperative housing. They have been purchased by organizations that work with and provide social housing for young, unmarried women or single parents who are in school but have to provide for their children. Actual families are living there besides the veterans and their relatives and the living survivors of veterans, who are living in new buildings that have been created.

Benny Farm, which has become a model of citizen engagement on the housing issue, would not have existed had it not been for the government's commitment to Canadians.

I want to thank the NDP for also having the issue of housing close to its heart, because it has helped us further our commitment in the area of affordable housing. On the issue of homelessness, that is part of affordable housing. It is part of ensuring that ordinary Canadians do not have to live on the street and that they have real solutions, durable solutions, particularly for those who suffer from mental illness.

I can give another example of an organization, this time in Lachine, which only began in 1997-98 to deal with residents who suffer from mental illness. One of the main problems we have with regard to this part of our population is that at times they are hospitalized for significant periods of time in order to follow treatment. When those individuals come out of the hospital they no longer have any housing and they end up on the street.

There is now an initiative, thanks to the homelessness initiative that the Minister of Labour and Housing, formerly the minister for housing and homelessness, was involved in. A 24 unit building is now going up in Lachine in order to ensure that residents in that borough who suffer from mental illness, and who as a result of the effects of their mental illness no longer have housing, will have housing. They will have the social services on site in order to assist them in continuing to take an active and healthy part in the ordinary life and society of that community.

The additional investment that Bill C-48 foresees for housing is extremely important. It is something that ordinary Canadians want to see. It is something that Quebeckers want to see.

The last piece that I want to address is the issue of the environment. I am so pleased that the government has ratified Kyoto, that the government has come out with its green plan, its action plan to implement Kyoto, and I am so pleased that both Bill C-43 and Bill C-48 involve billions of dollars to ensure that we meet our Kyoto protocol commitments, including investing in sustainable energy sources such as wind power.

I want to thank the members of the chamber who have been here to listen to this. I do not thank those who heckled, but I do thank those who listened attentively.

I want to thank all the members on this side of the House, which includes the Liberals and the New Democrats, for their support of Bill C-48. I admonish the Bloc members who will not be supporting Bill C-48 unless they change their minds, because there are good things for Quebeckers. Anyone who claims to have Quebec and Quebeckers' interests at heart will be supporting Bill C-48.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Canada—U.S.)]

Mr. Speaker, the questions and comments that just took place were quite interesting.

It is my honour and privilege to rise this evening to speak to Bill C-48, which I believe is a concrete example of this Liberal government's commitment to continue to invest in Canada's social foundations and the commitment of this government to make minority Parliament work.

I think it is a strong indication to all Canadians, ordinary Canadians, that the Liberal government, with the assistance of the NDP, has put the interests of ordinary Canadians before partisanship, before personal political interest, before--

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot even tell members how much I welcome that question. That is a wonderful question for us to debate here. I feel that we could actually begin to deal with the substance of Bill C-48 if we could continue down this path.

I do not believe that the Liberals can be trusted to just deliver what they have promised. God knows, there is a lot of evidence that they cannot be. But that brings us to the question of what is the responsibility of opposition members who are elected to this place.

Sometimes I think the Conservative Party has such a problem with power envy that it does not have any intention of using the official opposition numbers it has in the House and it is not prepared to understand that it is the job of members of Parliament to try to make this Parliament and government work. The way in which we are challenged and charged with making government work is to take the privilege that we have been given as members of Parliament to come here and advance the things that Canadians need.

I intend no disrespect to the Speaker's rulings when I say this, but it is pretty obvious that the opposition bench has no respect for the rule of relevancy, never mind consistency. We are debating four specific measures to do with affordable housing, accessible education and better training, cleaner air and public transit, and finally beginning to meet our commitments to overseas development assistance, something the Conservative Party has actually voted in favour of at committee level but cannot vote for here.

We are debating those four measures in Bill C-48. What I have heard from those members in just the last few hours is discussion about bracket creep, conditional sentencing, prostitution, pornography, age of sexual consent, gun registries and tax havens. I have to wonder if these members have any interest not just in making this minority Parliament work but in making government work at all.

I will go back to the question that was raised. Do I trust the Liberals to do what they say they are going to do? Not for a moment. I am here to make sure they do what they said they were going to do. That is how a democracy works and that is especially how a minority Parliament can work.

The more I listen to all the talk coming from the Conservative corner about corruption, lack of accountability and broken promises, the more I think that Canadians must actually be asking themselves what the official opposition has been doing. If there have been this many problems with the Liberals, I would say there is a pretty big indictment of the Conservatives' failure to do their job in getting the Liberals to deliver on what they have promised and to get the Liberals to be held accountable for any corrupt measures or malpractice that is going on.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I was ready to ask a question which I have been trying to do all day, but I am happy to enter the debate and then perhaps we could still have an exchange.

It was disappointing to hear the comments made by the member for Red Deer about how much his party would like to see real development of clean coal technology as part of the answer to the climate change problem that we are dealing with.

One of the things that the Liberal government did when the finance minister, now the Prime Minister, decided to swing a meat axe at public spending in general was to make the biggest cuts to environment spending in the history of this country.

The Conservative Party, and to be fair it was then the Reform Party before it became the Alliance, was absolutely silent on the decision of the government to shut down important research that was taking place at the time in Cape Breton in the coal industry. His party was silent on how to develop clean coal technology, to get it on track, and to ensure that we could both continue to use coal in a safer, cleaner way and at the same time continue to be responsible to meet our environmental commitments.

In some ways, one of the things that makes this debate hard to stomach is the fact that we hear day after day from the Conservative members of the House about the sins and omissions of the Liberal government. For the last couple of weeks since the devastating Supreme Court decision on health care, we have heard from the Conservative benches again and again that our health care system is in crisis. We have heard how we now have two tier health care alive and well and progressing. That is actually a legacy of the Liberal government and it has been brought to us compliments of the former Liberal finance minister who is now the Prime Minister.

That is in part true, but it is also true that the Conservative official opposition was front and centre, used its might and muscle to scream, yell and demand cuts in social spending. When we heard the bragging of the then finance minister that his Liberal government had reduced social spending to the lowest level since the second world war, the Conservative official opposition did not do a thing to use the opportunity that its numbers to get the government to stop taking us down the road to two tier health care. Why? Because that party, not in words but in fact, supports that direction.

Now we are dealing with the debate on Bill C-48. We have heard member after member revile the NDP caucus because we are propping up these corrupt Liberals. That is why the Conservative opposition says that it cannot support Bill C-48 because this will be propping up the corrupt Liberals.

That begs the question and sort of circumvents the question that if that is the position of the official opposition on Bill C-48, that this is nothing more than the NDP propping up corrupt Liberals, how is it that the Conservatives in about 10 seconds of hearing the Liberal budget before the amendments and the changes brought in by Bill C-48, and before the add-ons that in fact make it a better balanced and more progressive budget, could not wait to get to the microphones fast enough? The Conservative leader was out before those microphones endorsing that budget in a whipstitch. Why? It was because he liked that budget a lot. It had massive tax cuts. That was the explanation given.

How was that not propping up the corrupt Liberals when the Conservatives stood up and said that they were going to vote for that budget? How was it not seen by them as a confidence vote and that they would be somehow evasive and irresponsible about not saying that they were prepared to support this budget?

It is a little hypocritical. There is a little problem in that it is convenient to criticize the Liberal budget. I would have thought the Conservatives would have a much harder time defending Bill C-43 with their constituents than the better balanced budget that we now have as a result of Bill C-48.

I would have thought that Bill C-43 would be more difficult for the Conservatives to defend in their constituencies who sent them here. After the massive cuts that the Liberal government engaged in, particularly affordable housing, post-secondary education, environmental initiatives, public transit and international development assistance, how could the Conservative official opposition not support the program to begin restoring some of the funds to those fundamentally important initiatives?

I keep listening to hear some rationale for why the substance of Bill C-48 is unsupportable. We heard last week and we heard again earlier this week, because it is convenient politically for the Conservatives to say so, that the Liberals wear the responsibility. It is the Liberal Party's legacy for having put our public not for profit health care system into such crisis and into such jeopardy, and we need to do something about that.

How is it not possible for this official opposition to not see that the same is true with respect to post-secondary education? The Liberal government has put our post-secondary education system into crisis with its reckless, unilateral massive cuts.

Applying the logic that governments should keep their promises, there is not one member on the Conservative benches that does not know that the Prime Minister, during the election campaign in 2004, committed to restore up to $8 billion that was gutted from our post-secondary education core funding. It was a specific commitment made to begin the restoration.

The NDP better balanced budget does not for a minute get us to the restoration of the core funding that would ensure that we could begin the rebuilding. Without the NDP investment of post-secondary education funds, that is contained in Bill C-48 that those Conservatives are going to vote against, we have only reached the level of post-secondary education core funding that was in place in 1995.

Ten years later we do not have it. However, these Conservatives cannot even bring themselves to begin the process of rebuilding the post-secondary education infrastructure, the quality of education having been significantly eroded at the same time that tuition fees have skyrocketed. They have skyrocketed because of the massive withdrawal of funds at the federal level and because of the weakening of needs based grants for students. Nobody on those benches seems prepared to acknowledge that they are about to vote against the restoration of at least $1.5 billion in funds of the $8 billion taken out.

Similarly with affordable housing. I heard several people in the rhetorical flourishes say that we need to ensure that people have affordable housing, so their families can live in comfort and dignity like the rest of us. The member for Central Nova said that as well as some others.

It is a known fact that we had in this country the best social housing program of any country in the industrial world. Canada was seen as a model. We were invited to go around the world and share that model with people. It was eliminated by the Chrétien government. The Conservative bench is not prepared to restore at least $1.6 billion toward rebuilding that affordable housing.

I look forward to debate some of the substance in the better balanced NDP budget that is contained in Bill C-48.

[Bob Mills, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I was certainly pleased to hear the member's speech. I would like to bring the member up to date on some other facts, because he gave us many facts. I will start with 12 or 14 years ago when we became involved in what are real problems for this country. That of course was the serious debt that the country was getting into.

I remind him that in 1969 we had zero debt. Under Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Chrétien, who were then the prime minister and the finance minister, it went to $18 billion by 1971. By 1984 it was up to $170 billion to $180 billion. From there it went up to $480 billion by 1993. Of course today it is at $530 billion. Basically, some $40 billion a year is spent simply on interest payments.

That is what concerned us. That is why we came here. Our philosophy was to leave money in people's pockets, let them spend it with less government, less bureaucracy. That was the philosophical reason behind why we came here.

Of course, we came to a tax and spend Liberal government and that has not changed. The fiscal recklessness of that party is only demonstrated by Bill C-48, the Buzz Hargrove budget, where $4.6 billion was spent to buy 19 votes in a hotel room in Toronto.

My constituents are seniors and low income single moms who have to pay their income tax. They are farmers who have the lowest grain prices they have had for many years. They are young farmers who are losing their farms because they cannot make their mortgage payments because of the cattle crisis. Imagine what they think about this hotel room budget drawn up on a serviette. Really it is a blank cheque.

I remind the NDP and the Liberals that is the way to get sponsorship, to get ad scam, the way to get Shawinigate, the HRDC boondoggle and the gun registry, the nine foundations where money has been socked away unaccounted for and not audited. That is how to get a blank cheque which is what we have received from this. There are few details. There is no accountability. Certainly from my perspective and from my constituents' perspective, this is a disgrace.

As far as the environment is concerned, there is $900 million budgeted and $800 million for rapid transit. Obviously we think that is a worthwhile project. We would like to see some details, however. We would like to know how that is going to be invested, how it is going to be accounted for, and how we are not going to lose it all in bureaucracy. As far as the $100 million that environment gets, again I am sure that the Liberals will find a way to dispose of that with no business plan, no vision and really no long term planning.

What else has the government done? The last speaker talked about how great we are and how we are leaders in so many areas. Let me mention a few examples, and I hope the member has his pen in hand so he can take notes on this. As the critic for the environment, I feel it is my job to read into the record some of the statistics for the member's benefit. He and I have been here quite a while now, he for much longer than I have, but he would be interested in this.

In terms of sulphur dioxide, the OECD rates us 27th in terms of our release per capita out of 28 countries. For nitrous oxide, we are 25th out of 28. For volatile organic compounds, we are 25th out of 26 analyzed. Does that possibly let the member know why we have a record number of smog days in Toronto, Ottawa and many other cities? If he looked at those figures, he would see that we are at the bottom or within one position of the bottom. For carbon monoxide, we are 26th out of 27. For greenhouse gas emissions, we are 27th out of 29. For water consumption, we are 28th out of 29.

I will try to go a little slower so the member can get all of this down. In terms of energy consumption, Canada is 27th out of 29. For energy efficiency, we are 28th out of 29. In terms of recycling glass and paper, we are 23rd out of 27. For hazardous waste production, we are 24th out of 27. For nuclear waste and storage, we are 28th out of 28. For consumption of ozone and ozone depleting substances, we are 13th out of 16 analyzed. For fertilizer use, we are 25th out of 28. For the volume of fish caught, kilogram per capita, we are 20th out of 28. For forest consumption in cubic metres per capita, we are 27th out of 29.

Members can see that this country is at the bottom in terms of environmental rating. That is not the kind of stewardship that I think the member would like to brag about. Obviously he decided to ignore some of those figures in his comments when he was bragging about where we were at.

Again I come back to the taxpayers who are asking, “What is happening? What is the government doing? How can it come up with a budget of $4.6 billion after it has already come out with a budget of $170 billion plus? How can it do that?” It is strictly politics. The Liberals are playing politics with our country.

Members who have travelled very much can see that when they go to other countries. They see how our influence is declining. We are not able to maintain the status we used to have largely because the government has lacked vision. It has lacked a vision of where we are going. There is no plan. There are no details. The government has no direction.

As a result, while the last speaker said that our country is a great success story, I would put forward from an environmental perspective that it is anything but that. Actually, we have a long way to go. When we talk about it, we should put some options forward.

What would the Conservatives do? I have elaborated a number of times in the House on some of the things we would deal with. We would deal with a clean air plan. That would deal with all of the products that are producing the pollution and smog that is infecting our cities and causing health problems for so many of our seniors and young people.

We would deal with the water. We would map our aquifers and deal with how our water exchange is occurring. We would plan with the provinces just how to deal with that. We would deal with the cross-border issues. Whether it is the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, Devils Lake or the Fraser Valley and the Sumas River, we would deal with those as issues and we would have a plan. The environment takes long term planning.

In terms of soil, we have contaminated sites. Just about every municipality has brownfields, such as a street corner where a service station used to be but which closed long ago. Services pass and the municipality gets no taxes from that area. If we really want to help municipalities, we can help them find solutions to clean up those brownfields.

Along with that, of course, there is conservation. There is preservation of our watersheds. That becomes most pertinent when we look at some of the flooding and so on that is occurring today.

Finally, we need to deal with energy. We need to deal with how we are going to protect our present fossil fuel industries in the long term, how we are going to develop conservation, transitional fuels, alternate energy and all those exciting areas we can get into.

Above all, it takes vision. It takes a plan. I say that Bill C-48 is an example of no plan, no direction and is considered to be totally despicable by the constituents in my riding.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I hear the hon. member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke heckling. I was writing my memoirs and reminding myself of the day that I went to make an announcement in Haley Station in her riding. The evening before, my staff gave advance information to the hon. member. Instead of respecting the usual rules of confidentiality, she leaked the whole thing to the media, trying to grab a few of the headlines, and even invented for herself some praise as to how she had influenced the process.

The story gets a little bit funnier, because a little later after the announcement was made we returned to the House and the hon. member's seatmate was standing right beside her questioning the same program that she had been praising in her own riding just a few minutes before, namely, the technology partnership program. Thus, we had an Alliance MP, now called Conservative, which is the same thing anyway, standing in the House telling the Prime Minister that, first, it was terrible that we had the technology partnership program and, second, that it assisted companies like Bombardier.

Meanwhile, the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, still wearing egg on her face from what she had just done, was sitting right beside the member and it was obviously unbeknownst to her that her colleague was criticizing the program that not only was she complimenting but was taking credit for bringing to her own constituency.

That tells us of the Conservatives' inconsistency and how they can be wrong about good Liberal programs. In that case, and it is a rare exception, the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke was right in praising the program. She was wrong in taking credit for it, of course, and we all know that, but she at least was on the right track in that regard.

In any event, let us get back to the fiscal and economic facts of Canada. It is important for us to note that under this very competent Liberal government we have had eight consecutive budgetary surpluses, reducing our federal debt by $61 billion.

The House would no doubt want to know how many times the previous Conservative government had a balanced budget and a budgetary surplus. How about zero for the previous Conservative government? It never had a balanced budget, not even once, let alone the repayment of old debt. More than half of the accumulated debt of this country was generated between 1984 and 1993 when I sat on the opposition benches there, watching the Conservative government of the day.

Canada was the only G-7 nation to record a surplus in 2004. You would know that, Mr. Speaker, being the independent, objective person that you are. Canada is the only G-7 country expected to remain in surplus in 2005-06, that is, with the passage of Bill C-43 and Bill C-48, we will be the only G-7 country to be in a surplus.

I remind the House of what I said a few moments ago about the Conservative years. That is the reality. They can try to spin it every which way they like, but it does not change facts.

Let me get to some other facts here. The debt to GDP ratio of this country, that is, the debt to gross domestic product ratio, is now 41%. Shortly after we took power it had risen to 68%. It went from the second highest in the G-7 to now the lowest debt to GDP ratio, thanks to the Liberal government that we have now. The hon. members across the way obviously did not know of this when they said they were against Bill C-48. Perhaps listening to these clarifications will make them change their minds.

Furthermore, there are tax cuts of $100 billion for Canadians. The Conservative members do not mention this, of course.

We could talk about corporate taxes, which are in many ways more advantageous here than in the States. The Economist says that, in terms of a political environment attractive to investment, Canada is second in the world behind Denmark and ahead of the United States. This is an achievement of our government.

The members opposite do not mention this. They might do well to listen. Better yet, I have statistics that might convince a reasonable person who thought otherwise. This might leave out some of the members opposite, as they are not always reasonable.

We have increased our commitment to health care. There is a lot of discussion about that. We made $63 billion available in support to the provinces for health care between 2000-01 and 2007-08. We provided more money for the child tax credit. We improved the Canada pension plan by investing funds and by creating the regulatory framework that everyone is familiar with.

We have invested. A little earlier today, one Conservative member was speaking about investing, a member for whom I have a lot of respect and who is usually knowledgeable on issues involving research and so on. I am sorry, but I forget the name of his riding. He talked about not investing enough in research and innovation.

I do not know how much is enough, but we have invested $13 billion in research and innovation, turning Canadian universities and research centres into world leaders, including, for instance, the synchrotron in the province of Saskatchewan, which I had the pleasure of visiting during my last days as a minister. I guess time flies; it is a year and a half now since I have had such a function.

Let us end by talking about unemployment. The Canadian economy created 35,000 jobs last month alone. There is 6.8% unemployment now in Canada, compared to 11.2% when we took power, and three million more Canadians are working today than when we were elected. I will be leaving in the next election, but I will be proud that three million more Canadians are working since I crossed from the opposite side of the floor to this one.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take just a minute to speak on Bill C-48.

Contrary to what the opposition has been claiming, this is not the budget. The budget per se of course is a document that is read in the House and tabled under a ways and means motion. We then have a list of companion bills to implement the overall thrust of the budget.

The first one, the main budget bill, was Bill C-43. It was adopted and sent to the other place. Now we have the second, the companion bill, pursuant to an agreement that was made between two parties of the House, and which I must say in my opinion improves upon the document that was there already. It delivers additional benefits to Canadians.

It does not rewrite the budget. It is not a new budget. It is nothing of the sort. That is simply nonsense. If we did all that, if it was an overall change of the kind described by the Conservatives across the way, we certainly would not be affecting only a small fraction of the budget.

Let us get a few facts straight, because we are a little short on facts today. That is mainly due to the fact that too many Conservatives have spoken and not enough Liberals. That would provide a shortage of facts. This is definitely too heavily weighted on the Conservative side.

Let me bring a few things in balance which might assist the House, hopefully convince the Conservatives of the error of their ways, and perhaps even convince them to vote for Bill C-48.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I implore the Liberals to be transparent with Canadians, to be accountable to Canadians, to be honest with Canadians when they put spending amounts forward in the form of legislation. Bill C-48 contains nothing of that. The Conservative Party and I will not vote in support of it, ever.

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are insisting that something is missing out of Bill C-48. They are insisting there is no indication in the bill as to how the money would be spent. If those members would be honest and upfront with Canadians, they would tell them the truth. The approach used in Bill C-48 is the same approach in each and every budget. It is written down in a general way where the money will go, but we do not get all the specifics.

Just for once those members should try to be honest with Canadians.