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

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, to respond directly to my colleague's comments, he mentioned that the Conservatives support good, quality education so I am at a loss as to why they would not support the additional dollars the NDP has ensured in Bill C-48. They were not in Bill C-43, the budget that the Conservatives were willing to go along with. They are in Bill C-48, yet the Conservatives are talking about not supporting it. That is speaking on two sides, and I imagine we will see both coming out in the pamphlets that the Conservatives will send around in the next little while.

In the member's last statements, he talked about supporting the environment. Again, on the road to improving support for environmental initiatives, it is in the NDP budget, Bill C-48. It is there. It hit that right on the mark. He talked about the need for affordable housing. That is in the NDP budget, Bill C-48.

I am really at a loss as to what the problem is that the Conservatives have with this budget other than the fact that corporations may not get $4.6 billion in tax cuts, the corporations that the Conservatives are here to represent rather than representing all the people of Canada. Tax breaks for small and medium sized business are still in the budget. That was part of the deal as well. Those members can talk about them not being there all they want, but the reality is that they are still there.

If the Liberals can come up with another $4.6 billion for tax cuts, we will deal with that next time around, but what we are saying is that if they can give this $4.6 billion after already giving billions of dollars in tax cuts in the last number of years, they can give back to Canadians. Why are the Conservatives against dollars going back to ordinary Canadians?

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise and speak in the House with you in the chair, Sir. I was going to say with you, Mr. Speaker, ruling the roost, but I am not sure it would be a compliment, although hopefully it will give me a couple of marks that I can use later.

We are here today debating Bill C-48. This is a budget bill that was put together for the prime purpose of keeping the present government in power. It was a $4.6 billion deal between the NDP and the Liberals to get NDP support to prop up the Liberal government.

This was at a time when not only were the Liberals buying a party, and they did buy a whole party through this process, but they were starting to try to buy individual members in the House. I think that goes a long way toward explaining why there is so much cynicism in the country. When Canadians sit back and look at some of the action the government has taken on just to stay where it is, it appalls them.

I have a couple of issues to start with and then I would like to get into what my party and I think about where the country should be and what kind of country it could be if it were properly managed.

What we have now is a $4.6 billion budget bill that is two pages long and does not have the programs or the regulations to back up spending that money. The authorization is given to cabinet to “develop and implement” the programs, as it is stated in the bill, and to pay out the funds as it sees fit.

Does that not remind us somewhat of what happened with ad scam? Money was thrown around, hundreds of millions of dollars of our money, without proper authority and without the proper regulations, checks and balances in place to make sure it was being spent properly.

Here we have $4.6 billion that will be dispensed through the authorization of the cabinet without any documentation to back it up or to bring to the House so Canadians can have a look at how it is going to be spent and if it is going to be spent wisely. That in and of itself is a huge problem.

When we look for some of the things that are not in Bill C-48, as many of my colleagues have alluded to, it is quite alarming. In the NDP priorities that were part of the deal made with the Liberals, things were left out and forgotten. We could go on about agriculture and a few other things, but we will move on.

Before I get into it too deeply, I would like to thank the members of the Conservative Party who sat on the finance committee. As we know, there were many late nights with long hours and pretty intense debate. I remember one night being here until almost midnight when the finance committee was in a parallel sitting to the House to deal with this bill.

The members for Medicine Hat, Portage—Lisgar, Peace River and others who sit on that committee did a tremendous job of trying to hold the government to account and also of bringing forward good, solid amendments. Had those amendments been accepted, we would be able to move forward. The government completed rejected most of those issues.

As it ended up, the bill that came back to the House was a title with nothing below it because we could not agree on any of it. We are very concerned, as most Canadians are, that this money is going to be spent and spent in a way that is not open to public scrutiny and could be mismanaged.

We as the Conservative Party stand and criticize the government to hold it to account, which is part of our mandate, but our other mandate is to have alternatives to what the government is doing and to have our own vision of where Canada should go.

This country is blessed with natural resources and an expanse that should allow every citizen of Canada a good life and an ability to work, to feed their families, to plan and save for the future, and to have the wherewithal to educate their children. These are the issues that most families talk about when they come to talk to me.

They would like to see some substantive tax breaks for families so they can decide. We can get into the child care situation the government is promoting, in which it is going to create many day care spaces, not worrying about people who work shift work and not worrying about people in rural areas. That will be for just certain aspects of society.

We in the Conservative Party are saying that all families should be given a tax break so they can make the decisions and have a choice as to how they raise their own children. Most parents, when it comes right down to it, would prefer to raise their own children, but most families are now are two income families. Both parents work because it takes six months out of every year just to pay their tax bill.

Parents have to work half their lives just to pay taxes. That is the reason they have to work. If we were able to restructure the tax system and leave the money in the pockets of parents, they would have choices as to how their children should be cared for and they would have a few bucks to save for their future, their retirement and their children's educations.

A lot of Canadians will never realize the hope and dream of owning a home because they do not have the funds left over at the end of the month to put toward a mortgage. We have to change that. Everybody should have the opportunity to have affordable housing. That is right in the Conservatives platform. We support Canadians having affordable homes.

As for this idea that we have to take the money away from all Canadians so we can direct it back to them, should we not leave it with them and let them make the decisions on how they are going to spend their funds? Does that not add up?

There is a regional disparity in Canada. There is this financial imbalance we talk about. This is another thing that we as a nation need to be addressing. We need to make sure that all areas of Canada have the opportunity for economic growth and stability. With that comes the opportunity for citizens to enjoy a good quality of career, to own their own home and to have peace of mind knowing that they have been able to put a few bucks away to educate their children or for their own retirement.

When people are empowered in that way, when they make those decisions for themselves, it also blends into creating a society that looks more toward itself to solve its problems than anywhere else. That is where people should be looking, but we have to give them the means to work through those problems. I think that if we levelled out the economic situation across this country and gave everybody that hand up instead of a handout, that is the way to improve things.

Part of the deal the NDP made with the Liberals is really amazing. It cost them $4.6 billion to buy an entire party on the premise that the Liberals would get support in the House. There still were not enough votes to ensure the Liberals' success, so they had to try to buy off more people in the House. They were successful in some cases and unsuccessful in others. Part of the deal was that the NDP wanted the tax cuts taken out of the budget, so the Liberals said they would do it, they would take them out of the budget and then bring them back in another way.

Therefore, not only did they spend $4.6 billion to buy some votes that were not enough to sustain them in the House, they reneged on the part of the deal regarding tax breaks, because those tax breaks are still going through and the NDP is still in the House to prop up the Liberals. It is almost as ridiculous as some of the backbench Liberals who are so opposed to Bill C-38 and are continually propping their government up long enough so they can pass Bill C-38. Some of these people will need to answer to their own constituents.

I would like to get into some of the party policy that Conservatives think needs to be implemented in this country to keep it strong and viable, to make it an even greater country than it is, to make it as great as it should be. As I say, I am from Alberta, and Albertans are blessed with resources, many of which are as yet untapped. We have oil, coal, farmland and forests. Everything is there.

I suppose that those of us living in Alberta have an advantage due to that, but because of the way this country is structured and because of the willingness to share shown by provinces that have more than others, we should be making sure it is done in a way such that the people who do not have as much are brought up to the same standard.

We believe that in order to have a strong economy and maintain good health, Canada must have strong, coordinated and achievable environmental policies. A Conservative government believes that responsible exploration and development, conservation and renewal of our environment are vital to our continued well-being as a nation and as individuals.

Being from Alberta, I say that because of the oil and gas exploration and the many things that go on there. At the same time that we explore and develop those very necessary resources, we have to be conscious of the environment. It is a proven fact that when the economy is going well, the most attention is given to the safeguarding of the environment.

In many of the classes in which I speak, like most of the members here who do the same when they go around to schools, I note that the environment is a key issue to the young people in our country. Good for them, I say. I am not so proud of what my generation has done to the environment, but the next generation is going to be prepared to fix it. We have to ensure that the tools are there to do it. Responsible development and responsible exploration, with an eye on both, and being able to facilitate that while protecting the environment, is part of what needs to be done and it is part of what we believe in.

[Bradley Trost, Conservative, Saskatoon—Humboldt, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to the bill. To give a little history of where I am coming from and what I am speaking to in this bill, I will go back to the original budget bill because, as has been well established, this is budget bill part two.

On the morning right before the finance minister brought forward the bill, I had an S. O. 31 member's statement about what the priorities were for people in my constituency, what the people of my province cared about. I want to revisit that.

In that statement I talked about my good friend, Andrew Duff, a farmer who works on a feedlot in eastern Saskatchewan. I talked about some of his priorities for his family. I want to go through a few of them again.

One of his priorities was tax cuts. He is on a farm and makes no money, yet he still pays taxes, some of which admittedly are provincial and municipal, but largely because of the unequal equalization, those taxes are difficult to lower. Other taxes are through his job, such as his EI premiums, which are applied in Saskatchewan. As a farmer he is ineligible for unemployment, so that is nothing more than a payroll tax. Of course there is the fuel tax, the inputs on his fertilizer for his grains and so forth.

One of his priorities was to have a tax cut so that he could afford the farm, something which is being productive and supplying jobs for other people through his purchases in the community.

Another of his priorities was a real and sustainable plan for agriculture. We held our noses the other day when we voted for the other piece of legislation that really did not do anything for agriculture. We did that because of the dire straits of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, a province which has been shortchanged repeatedly by the federal government. That province needed help and needed the prosperity from its own natural resources returned to it, as it rightfully should be. We in this party, even though we knew that there were large elements of the larger budget bill that were not good, reached out to help a part of the country receive its rightful due.

There was nothing in that plan for agriculture. There is nothing in this part two of the plan for agriculture. I am not talking about announcements of money, because as has been proven, announcements of money often are not delivered. What is needed is real substance, a real plan to be delivered.

Finally, the third thing my friend and his family would need, and which is true for many young families in rural Saskatchewan, is the child tax credit, something that could help them raise their families. My friend and his wife come from a dairy farm. The children are a part of the farm. They work. They cannot just run to and from town to an organized government day care centre. It is impractical. It costs more for them to drive in, drop the children off and then come back to work. It just cannot be. The only way they are going to get any help is if there is a direct child tax credit given to them. In the original budget and in this new piece of legislation that we are debating, it is not there. The priorities of Canadians from my riding and of Saskatchewan residents in general were not brought forward.

Another reason I am unhappy, displeased and opposed to this legislation is the lack of accountability. This point was brought up, quite succinctly I might say, by some members during the debate last night. A major priority and the main purpose of Parliament, of the people's representatives, is to hold the government to account for the spending of the dollars.

That is what all the battles were about. When we go back into British parliamentary history, in dealing with the problems of the funding, the king would not recall Parliament because he did not like Parliament's views, but he was forced to because Parliament ended up controlling the spending. We have seen the English civil war, various reforms, Gladstone and Disraeli, et cetera, as history has gone forward. Accountability is something of extreme priority that we must hold to.

One thing that is most disturbing about this current piece of legislation that we are debating is there is no plan and no real guidelines. As has been stated, that is true for the previous legislation. That is the justification and rationale used by some members who have been saying during the debate that there has been other inept, ridiculous, poorly thought out legislation which I and my hon. friends in the Conservative Party held our noses and supported, so why not support all future legislation that is poorly thought out and poorly planned?

We are sometimes forced to support things for the greater good. This legislation has absolutely no greater good to it. There is no accountability. The point has been raised over and over again that when we read the substance of the bill, it is very sketchy. There is nothing there.

I remind my hon. friends in the NDP that if they really believe in the deal they got, perhaps they should take a look at past history. Whenever the Liberals have promised something, it has taken anywhere from five to 15 years to deliver that promise.

I remember the great campaign when the Liberals promised to take apart the GST. They promised over and over again to do it. A former member from Hamilton ended up having to resign her seat. In the end the promise that was said over and over again was not delivered.

There must be accountability. It is the primary purpose of Parliament. We look at past follies, and it has been said that a member from Saskatchewan will bring this up every time, but it affects so many people in our province. Firearms, rifles and shotguns are the tools that we use on our farms. They are used by hunters and for recreation; they are part of our culture.

The gun registry is perhaps the largest fiasco and the most ill thought out, ill conceived, unaccountable policy ever presented in the history of this country. It has cost $2 billion to register duck hunters. They are not the people who use handguns. Handguns have been taken care of since 1935. The gun registry was another one of those Liberal plans with no accountability. The Liberals just went out there and did what they wanted to do without thinking about it.

I want to briefly touch on some of the macroeconomic effects of reckless spending. This was demonstrated in the previous coalition between the NDP and the Liberals in the 1970s. I know the criticism will come that there were other reasons for the wild and reckless spending and the way interest rates got out of control. Fiscal prudence and accountability are important in all that we do.

One of the major concerns I have about reckless out of control spending is higher interest rates. It is fairly well known that when there are unproductive, irresponsible fiscal pressures on the demand side, the pressures then lead to higher rates of inflation.

The Bank of Canada has wisely followed a strict monetary policy. This is something which was not done and was part of the problem in previous eras, the lack of a conservative monetary policy. The Bank of Canada responds by hiking interest rates to crack down on inflation.

I want to ask everyone who reads these words or who is watching on television or any member listening in the House to think what higher interest rates will do for small businessmen and for home owners with mortgages. For example, if a carpenter is watching, he or she should think of how it will impact on his or her job in the future. Continued reckless spending by the NDP-Liberal coalition will help to kill that job.

Most people who own a home in Saskatoon, in my riding, in Burlington or anywhere have a mortgage. Young families have mortgages. I myself recently took out a mortgage when I purchased my first home. I am not looking forward to the macroeconomic disaster that the government's reckless spending is going to create.

I want to give some positive suggestions to the government so that the Liberals in the future have some positive ideas. I listed my priorities earlier, but let me state one of them again. I mentioned a cut to EI. This is a cut to what is essentially a payroll tax. I have particular personal empathy with this one because I worked in a bakery at minimum wage for a year prior to going to university.

I worked at the bakery with people who had been there for 10 or 12 years and who were ineligible, because of the vagaries of the system, to collect employment insurance. Yet year after year they were paying higher premiums than they deserved to pay. This is a job killer. Nothing stops small business from hiring more employees than pressures on the payroll and higher costs.

I know the government thinks our unemployment rate of 6.8% is wonderful. Any politician south of the border with such a rate would be defeated. Our unemployment rate needs to go down. There needs to be continuous pressure. This is only one item. There are many other things the government could do to have productivity and an agenda that actually creates growth for the country, instead of merely looking around to redistribute the wealth with no plan, no thought and no wisdom.

The priorities the government has brought forward are not the priorities of the constituents of Saskatoon--Humboldt. They are not the things I stand for. That is why I will be voting against Bill C-48.

[John Cummins, Conservative, Delta—Richmond East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this morning we are here discussing important policy issues in Bill C-48. Our party has been sharply critical of this bill. As we have seen in the past, the Liberals' approach to spending without a plan is a recipe for disaster. I think that goes without saying. It goes without saying when we manage our households and it goes without saying when managing the economy of the country. It is widely accepted that the only reason the Liberals agreed to this bill was to save their political skin. There has been much made of that in the last day or so and I am sure there will be much made of it in the days to come.

All that being said, I want to use my time this morning to lay out a larger concern. I will be more specific in my concern in dealing with the Liberal approach to the economy. I want to talk in particular about the government's approach to managing the fishery. This is an important budget item. It is one which I think if the government was going to make an addition to its budget, it is an issue that the Liberals should have addressed.

I want to talk about the government's failure to include in its budget adequate resources to deal with the fishery on the Fraser River. The Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans has done a couple of excellent reports on this issue in the last couple of years. It has given the government good advice which has been ignored. The committee has spoken of the problems that are being faced with the harvest on the Fraser River this year, in particular the restrictions that will be put on the harvest of Fraser River sockeye because of concerns for the sockeye coming into Cultus Lake.

The 2005 sockeye fishery on the Fraser River should be a boon to the economy of British Columbia. There are about 12 million sockeye expected to return to the river, compared to about five million that came back last year. The harvest should have been substantial.

In fact, if we look back at the harvest rates on this particular run in the 1990s, there was a commercial harvest of around eight million fish on the Fraser River. This year the projection is a harvest of only 1.4 million sockeye. This is only a modest increase over the 1.3 million harvested last year, with a return of less than half the size.

The question is why. Again, it is government inaction on a very important issue. The government has a constitutional obligation to protect wild fish and their habitat. It should be an integral part of the government's budget, yet in this particular instance the government is ignoring the problems.

Cultus Lake sockeye have a very serious problem when it comes to survival. There is no question about that. The survival of these fish is not one that stems from overharvesting by the commercial or sports fishermen, or in fact by native fishermen. The problem comes from the lake itself and problems within the lake.

For example, there is a problem with northern pikeminnows in that lake. In an October 2004 document that I received under access to information, the department makes it very clear when it talks about predator removal. The department says:

Adult northern pikeminnows are abundant in Cultus Lake and are predators of salmon fry. The removal of adult pikeminnows from Cultus Lake has been conducted on two separate occasions in the past. An evaluation of this previous work indicates that the removal of predators can increase survival of sockeye fry.

We know that survival of these fish can occur if we deal with the predator problem. The question is why are we not? Improvement is significant. It is estimated that there are about 40,000 northern pikeminnows in the lake that eat the sockeye fry. It is estimated that each sockeye that returns to Cultus Lake lays about 3,500 eggs. After the eggs hatch the following spring, the fish will spend a year in the lake. That is the time that the northern pike do great damage to the Cultus run.

It is suggested that if we reduce the pikeminnow population by 80%, it would give a jump start on the Cultus Lake sockeye run because the smolts from the 350 to 500 fish that do return would have a far greater chance of survival. There are about 425 sockeye with 3,500 eggs each. If the survival rate was increased by only 1%, it would mean an additional 14,875 sockeye would survive. That is exponentially larger than the 80 fish or so that the department hopes to get back to the lake by almost shutting down the sockeye fishery in the Fraser River this year.

Shutting that fishery down is going to mean a loss to the economy of British Columbia up to probably $75 million. The question is, why is the government not taking some action? Why are there not budget considerations given to removing these predators from the lake?

The fishing industry has proposed that it would go into the lake and seine these northern pike. It has been done before, as was mentioned in the government document that I quoted from. It has been done before very effectively. The only reason it was not continued was that the government balked at spending $15,000 in wages for the fishermen who were doing it. For $15,000 in wages it said it was not going to continue the program and yet the cost to the British Columbia economy is in the tens of millions of dollars.

That is the kind of planning that the government undertakes. That is why I think we should all be concerned about it. There are other problems on the lake as well. There is an Asian milfoil problem. The government, again in the October 2004 document that I received under access to information, talked about it:

Habitat restoration work involves the removal of Eurasian Watermilfoil (a common yarrow plant that provides habitat for sockeye predators) in Cultus Lake. Milfoil removal has been conducted in the past, mainly as a control for “exotic weeds”. Milfoil is an invasive species and its removal would have a dual benefit: expose juvenile pikeminnows to predation by adult pikeminnows and to clear milfoil from prime salmon spawning habitat.

Again, there is a program that the government should be undertaking to save these fish. As well, Cultus Lake is a very busy lake. It is within an hour and a half or two hour drive of downtown Vancouver. With a population of a couple of million, an awful lot of those folks will spend a good part of a day or days in the summer enjoying Cultus Lake. There is heavy recreational boater use. There are summer vacation homes and permanent residences. Each of these factors adds to the level of pollutants in the lake and makes it more difficult for the fish to survive.

When we talk about the budget and the additions that the government put in Bill C-48, it is all very well and good. Some of the additions are meant to help people who are not in a position to help themselves, and yet that is exactly what I am talking about. The expenditure of a few dollars would be of great help to the fishermen in British Columbia.

There is one last item that I want to mention about the management of the fishery. It has to do with the snow crab quota for fishermen in eastern Nova Scotia.

I talked last night with Josephine Kennedy, a snow crab representative. She told me that the government was to cut the quota for snow crab by about 60%, from 16,000 pounds. This will have a huge impact on the economy. All of this without any consultation.

Whether it is budget implementation or whether it is management of the fishery, these are things on which the government falls down. The minister refused to talk to those folks about the issue. The government has refused to have an appropriate discussion with fishermen on Cultus Lake. All of that is hurtful.

I hope that the government will take some action to address these issues.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I may be young at 34 but I remember the red book in 1993 and the election campaign that year. The Liberals came to power. Nobody was talking about tax relief, paying down the debt, or any of those types of things. In fact, the red book was a recipe for handing over one's chequebook. There was more and more spending.

But surprise, there was a protest party out west, one of the legacy parties of this Conservative Party. It elected a surprising number of members of Parliament. They came to Ottawa and pushed for things such as eliminating the deficit, zero in three, I think it was back then. There were some surprising ideas that interestingly enough were not in the red book.

Where did the current conditions for today's economy come from? They did not come from ideas from that bench. They came from the official opposition. They came from the Conservative Party's fighting to put the fiscal house in order.

Bill C-48 on the other hand, to get back to the debate at hand, is a recipe for returning to deficits. Combine this with some of the Liberals' other $26 billion in spending promises since the Prime Minister showed up on national television to beg for his political life. They have a $10 billion per year unfunded liability for a national day care system. Put this all together and it is a recipe for higher taxes, program cuts or borrowing the money to pay for them. That is fiscal irresponsibility.

The Liberals have allowed the NDP in because the government needed to be propped up. This is the way the Liberals do it. It is a recipe for deficit spending. It is irresponsible and I look forward to opposing it.

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

Eighth? I am sorry. It is the eighth consecutive balanced budget. I was underestimating how good we are.

We have this budget bill, Bill C-48, which will assist those who are less well off in our society.

The hon. member across has said, in a kind of Hobbesian state of nature way of looking at things, to just reduce taxes and let people fend for themselves, presumably where life will be brutish and short, as Thomas Hobbes used to say, and that will fix everything.

I do not agree with that way of looking at it and I do not believe Canadians do either. We are here for the greater good as well as ourselves individually.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me just end my remarks with the NDP logic and what it looks like. That logic says to get rid of tax relief for auto companies, to hurt the quality of life for Canadians by passing Bill C-48, and to hope there is enough money left over after Liberal year end spending sprees to try to replace the quality of life the NDP hurt in the first place.

It is no wonder that the NDP has never formed a government in Canada. It is not likely to do so. We all remember Bob Rae. Canadians will come to their senses, too, when it comes time for the next election.

To sum up, Bill C-48 is a bad deal cut on the back of a napkin. That is not sound fiscal management. It defies the budgetary processes of the House for thorough prebudget hearings and everything else. A couple of people met in a hotel room to prop up a government; this is how they do fiscal management here in Canada. It is a bad deal. I look forward to voting against it.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

There is incivility on that side of the House. That is quite the hypocrisy coming from the New Democrats.

We want to pay off debt so we can relieve generations to come of crippling bills. The New Democrats want to send a major $500 billion bill to my children and my children's children rather than paying off the national debt.

We want an arrangement whereby we have real jobs here in Canada, not overseas in China. We in the Conservative Party of Canada are fighting for auto workers, for family farmers and for others who deserve to work here in Canada.

Bill C-48 is a wolf in sheep's clothing. The New Democrats are peddling paradise while they are flouting the open and transparent budgetary processes of the House. They are peddling paradise using deceptive reasoning.

I want to probe a couple of the arguments that the NDP has been putting forth in favour of Bill C-48. The first is that the New Democrats are simply taking the tax cuts for corporations like Ford, General Motors and Chrysler and reallocating them to other areas, to what they call their priorities. This is not actually true. This is not a simple reallocation within the same fiscal year.

Bill C-43 offers corporate tax relief. It is a guaranteed budget expenditure, so it is accounted for in a particular year's fiscal arrangement. Bill C-48, the NDP's budget wish list, is a conditional expenditure that triggers only beyond a $2 billion surplus. It does so no sooner than 18 months from now.

A national crisis could emerge. There would go the surplus and the NDP's Bill C-48. We could have downturns in the economy, which could eat up that fiscal room. We could have further provincial demands that need to be satisfied.

Corporations like General Motors, Chrysler and Ford need guaranteed relief to keep jobs here in Canada. They need to know that a guaranteed expenditure is coming to help them so they can plan to stay here and keep jobs in Canada. The NDP is promising, with smoke and mirrors, something that may not even come true.

The NDP will argue that there is plenty of fiscal room and says not to worry about it. The NDP also wants a child care system that would cost $10 billion a year more than the Liberals are currently funding in Bill C-43. That will mean a disappearance of any fiscal room and more. That will necessitate increased taxes, and there may be program cuts from health care and education in order to reallocate money to this national day care.

Or there may be deficit spending. We had plenty of that in Ontario. We remember Bob Rae. We certainly remember the $11 billion deficits that were run in the province. We remember Rae days, on which people could not visit their doctor because the doctor's office was closed that day. Why? There was no money for the doctor to get paid that day. That is what we remember about New Democratic fiscal prudence, or what they like to call fiscal prudence.

This means that maybe child care is on the mantel, to be chopped off. Maybe child care will not be pursued. Where are the dollars going to come from? Will they go to fund Bill C-48? Will they go to fund national day care? They cannot do both with the same fiscal surplus.

Let us look back in time. We have had $90 billion in unplanned surpluses since 1997. The actual surpluses were astoundingly higher, but the Liberal government made an art of end of the year, empty the cupboard, politically driven spending sprees to shrink surpluses so Canadians would not be so alarmed by their size.

I see a train wreck coming for the New Democrats, who actually think they may get something with Bill C-48. They are not likely going to see a dime go to funding their priorities when their Liberal cousins empty the cupboard by year's end. They have been duped. Either that or they are trying to dupe Canadians into believing that something will be there. They know it will not be. The NDP has been keeping the Liberals afloat and the NDP gets nothing. That is a raw deal and those members do not even see it coming.

Let us talk about corporate tax cuts for a moment. The NDP has been claiming that corporate tax cuts simply benefit the rich while claiming that New Democrats are helping regular Canadians.

First, the Conservative Party believes in tax relief, not simply tax cuts. Canadian families,along with corporations having trouble competing because of the high dollar and other reasons, need relief now, and not just a simple one time tax cut. They need sustained relief in taxation. Real people struggle every week to make ends meet. They deserve tax relief.

Second, tax relief for corporations actually benefits Canadians in the workforce. I am Parliament's first auto worker. Let us talk about auto workers for a moment. Having our dollar going up in Canada is hurting our exports. Canadian auto companies' productivity is being hurt. Their ability to compete globally from here in Ontario is being hurt.

Massive layoffs have begun in the United States. We have seen layoffs in my community of Windsor and in the communities in the riding of Essex. We have seen them across Ontario. This is happening not just with Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, but with our parts makers and parts suppliers and our tool, mould and die sector, which has had a 38% attrition rate in Essex county in the last decade under the Liberal watch. Those jobs have gone to foreign labour markets such as China and the United States.

Buzz Hargrove, a friend of the New Democrats, the one who actually helped them cut this backroom deal, says that these layoffs are coming to Canada soon with the trickle-down from the 25,000 layoffs that GM has announced in the United States. The NDP wants to get rid of tax relief for Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler right at a time when they are losing the ability to keep auto workers employed here in Ontario. Those are Canadian families at risk of losing their jobs right at a time when that party, which says it likes to fight for auto workers, is getting rid of that tax relief.

Every auto job supports six other jobs. Five hundred thousand regular Canadians lose their jobs when auto jobs head to cheaper foreign labour markets like China or to lower tax jurisdictions such as Georgia, Alabama or South Carolina.

No, tax relief benefits real Canadians on main streets, not just in urban centres but in rural towns, villages and hamlets. The NDP just does not get it. It is no wonder that the first auto worker in Parliament elected by regular Canadians is a Conservative from Essex and is not from the NDP, the CCF, the Liberals or anybody else.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in debate on Bill C-48 to talk about the Conservative Party of Canada and about me as a Conservative member of Parliament and a new member of Parliament, and how we are here to build a better Canada. I have a tangible investment in future generations. I have four kids. My oldest turned eight only three days ago.

We are interested in building a better Canada with an improved quality of life within a better fiscal arrangement, not with boondoggle mismanagement the way things have been done for 12 years on that side of the House, and not with sponsorship scandals where hard-earned tax dollars are skimmed to fund Liberal Party election campaigns in Quebec. Neither do we want deals on the back of a napkin, those sorts of poor fiscal arrangements.

What we are looking for in the Conservative Party of Canada is lowering taxes to increase freedom for families so they can pursue priorities in their lives, so they can put their kids into soccer classes, so they can do the things they want to enjoy life. We stand for paying off the debt--

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Madam Speaker, let us recall that Bill C-48 comes at the expense of tax relief for corporations such as Ford, Chrysler and General Motors.

In my community of Windsor, Ontario, in the first quarter of 2005 we are down 6,000 jobs and unemployment is up to 9.4%. Many of these jobs were in the auto parts sector that supply our major OEMs, such as Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler. The tax relief for these corporations is very important to preserve jobs here in Canada, high paying jobs that support a quality of life through charitable giving and tax dollars.

Would my hon. colleague comment on why the NDP is abandoning auto workers at this particular time by getting rid of corporate tax cuts that would have helped Ford, Chrysler and General Motors stay in Canada?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, my colleague has worked very hard on this particular issue and, as usual, his diligence has paid off in that much of his digging has uncovered the government's secret plan to close many of these experimental research farms which do, as he said, provide vital research and vital information to farmers who are combating many challenging times in terms of plague and viruses affecting animals. We have seen the effects that can result from terrible afflictions, such as BSE, and the impact they have on the entire agriculture sector. However it goes beyond that. All resource sectors were ignored in this particular add on budget on the part of the NDP and the Liberals.

Agriculture, a vital sector of our economy that provides food and that provides so much in terms of employment, lifestyle and a basic way of life for Canadians, has been completely ignored in the priorities set out in Bill C-48.

In regard to the member's question, the government and the minister from the area have been completely disingenuous in suggesting that closing the experimental farm in Kentville was just an off the cuff suggestion from the department. This was a concrete plan to withdraw funding and to eventually close the research station in Kentville, just as my colleague has seen in his own riding with the Nappan Experimental Farm. Commitments were made, then commitments were withdrawn and that facility is slated to close. That is very disingenuous to Canadians and the agriculture sector that relies heavily on that facility for the important research that it needs.

It is like withdrawing money from education or health care. Agriculture is a stable part of the economy of Nova Scotia as it is throughout the country. However the government seems to be blind in its misspent priorities and its complete adherence to the one priority, which is to cling to power at all costs. The Liberals will make whatever deal they have to make with the NDP or others to cling to power at all costs in order to preserve a hold over the partisanship that allows them to make appointments and control the industries and the ministries.

The government is out of step with Canadians, out of step in its priorities and is certainly letting Canadians down, particularly in our area when it withdraws funding from important research centres like the one my colleague has mentioned.

[Bill Casey, Conservative, North Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, I want to ask the very distinguished member for Central Nova a couple of questions about agriculture and what impact Bill C-48 would have on it.

There is not a word about agriculture in Bill C-48. It has not been mentioned at a time when farmers are hurting the most. In the province of Nova Scotia, in which the member and I share ridings, farmers are the part of our society who are hurting the most and facing the most challenges. Some of them are faced with losing their farms, losing their incomes, losing their profession and losing their homes, and yet there is not a word in Bill C-48 about agriculture.

To make it worse, it has been announced that the Nappan Experimental Farm in my area, which farmers depend on for science and research on our unique soils and terrain, et cetera, will be closed. We have also learned that the government is planning to close the experimental farm in Kentville.

I wonder if the member could speak a bit to that and tell us what he thinks should be in Bill C-48 to help farmers and to help agriculture.

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to take part in the debate that really boils down to what could only be described as a prop up NDP add-on budget to the Minister of Finance's original plans which included none of the back of the napkin spending spree that is outlined in this particular document.

The legislation was not dreamed up in the staid boardrooms of the finance department. It was cooked up in a hotel room between the Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP, high on his own new found power as a king maker.

In contrast, my colleague, the member of Parliament for Medicine Hat, has presented Canadians with an eloquently outlined and hopeful vision of how the Conservative Party would move Canada's finances forward. It would include a competitive and productive effort to bring Canada forward, striving for national potential with an invigorated, motivated youth who would have a place to work and participate in the economy, and having programs that were compassionate, forward looking and focussed on prosperity. As my colleague from Medicine Hat has said many times, a prosperous nation is a country that can generate wealth that can then be a generous nation.

We want to provide citizens with a better quality of life and Canadians should look to their government to be able to help them in that regard, to find a job anywhere in the country, and find a job in their home town should they stay and be with their families. What is more fundamental than being with your loved ones?

We want every young Canadian to have the ability to go to university without graduating with a huge debt that is the equivalent of a mortgage. We should be the most educated and most forward looking intellectual country in the world. We have the capacity to achieve that goal.

We want Canadians to be able to start a business if they want, to prosper in their communities, and to participate fully in the economy. Canadians want to succeed and Conservatives want to help them do just that because success should be celebrated. Holding Canadians back is what is happening under the current regime. It is holding Canadians back because of repressive and regressive tax structures. There are punishing payroll taxes. Having the basic personal exemption raised would remove many Canadians from the tax rolls altogether.

We want people to have quality health care. We want Canadians to have the assurances that they will be comfortable and taken care of in their retirement. Nobody is more responsible for the abysmal failure of our health care system than the current Prime Minister. In his capacity as finance minister, he presided over the country's finances for over 10 years, was responsible for brutal cuts that drastically led to the deterioration of health care in Canada.

Canadians want to have the ability to work within this current process. They want to work under the Canada Health Act but they clearly need to move in a direction of innovation. There clearly has to be greater input from the health care providers, the provinces and from those on the front lines of health care delivery.

We want to ensure that the tax structure is fair. Tax relief is very much about improving competition, improving the job market, and improving the ability of companies to employ thousands of Canadians. That was a priority because it appeared in the first budget, but this add-on budget very much neglects that element of the economy. We have too many hardworking, overtaxed Canadians who again are being held back.

Bill C-48 is but one page. It contains three clauses. It would spend $4.6 billion without any plan or detail. It would be an abysmal and irresponsible free-for-all spending orgy, like the sponsorship program, the long gun registry, and like the irresponsible and unaccountable spending in the HRDC department.

Bill C-48 is not a firm commitment. It will not even take effect for a year and a half if, I am quick to add, there is a surplus. It is a pie in the sky throne speech promissory note that will not take effect for at least a year and a half. The NDP clearly tried to exact as much as it possibly could from the government in its negotiations to prop it up. The NDP budget is something that will promote irresponsible spending without a plan.

Conservatives are behind the goals presented in the bill. We are behind better education, cleaning up our environment and ensuring adequate housing. We support helping poor nations as part of our commitment to the betterment of the global village. In terms of foreign aid as a percentage of our GDP, that is part of our platform for the coming election.

Let us not forget that it was a Conservative prime minister who was recently voted the greenest prime minister ever in the history of Canada by the Sierra Club and Elizabeth May.

As I said before, what we are opposed to is spending without a plan. This is what led to the problems we have seen in many of the programs that have gone out of control. We oppose raising expectations of individuals who assume naturally that a government would not make these commitments without having a concrete plan behind it.

Bill C-48 is a case in point. It is costly, insubstantial and it is a throwaway commitment that likely will never be met. The promises contained in the bill will only happen if there is a surplus.

Like the mythical story of Jack and the Magic Beans , I think the NDP is left with nothing more than a handful of beans, anything but a concrete commitment in terms of budgetary items.

Is there any possibility that the surplus will not be there and not be adequate to cover these expenditures? Well, time will tell. We are living in volatile times and the economy can take downturns, as we have seen, God forbid. We know the Liberals cannot resist this type of spending though. It burns holes in their pockets.

Since 1999-2000, program spending has gone from $109.6 billion to $158.1 billion, an increase of 44.3%. In contrast, the growth in our economy has been 31.6%, a compound annual growth rate of 5.6%. The economy is not keeping pace with the government's spending practices.

I spoke earlier about the tax implications. Trade is also a big implication. The dollar and the debt to GDP ratio and the interest on our debt that remains so high. The Liberals are dealing away their problems. They are throwing money at problems hoping they will go away. That is the case with health care, with law and order and with our military. This type of approach is not in the best interests of Canadians. It is not in keeping with fiscal management. It is not in keeping with accountability in this place.

The Conservative Party has a responsibility to rigorously examine these spending practices, and that is what we are doing. Despite the massive funding that is committed in Bill C-48, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness told my colleague from Yorkton—Melville that in 2004 the Canada Firearms Centre lost track of at least 46,000 licensed gun owners. This could have drastic consequences for police officers responding to a call where they believe no gun is present.

This is the type of inefficiency and waste in these types of programs that have ballooned in its spending and they do not work in the best interests of Canadians and take money away from other priority areas where it would have a more profound impact. It is about priorities.

With respect to national unity, let us take the sponsorship program where someone paid commissions to Liberal friendly ad agencies to promote unity. It was done through such means as putting up flags and banners but the money was then funnelled back to the Liberal Party through the sponsorship program. Well, as the former prime minister said, what is a few million when it comes to saving the country? How delusional and disingenuous.

This network of kickbacks, of money laundering and now the cover-up leaves Canadians with a very sordid image of government spending. However it is the Liberal Party. It is not Quebec and it is not all bureaucrats. It is the systemic corruption that runs through the Liberal Party that spawned the sponsorship scandal. It was a taxpayer funded program that was going for partisan purposes, mainly in the province of Quebec.

Let us just imagine the taxpayer funded lawyers working for the Department of Justice arguing that the current and former prime ministers should be completely exonerated of all responsibility for this disastrous program that is under criminal investigation. What happened to the mantra of “let Mr. Justice Gomery do his work?” That of course is a thing of the past when it comes to the partisan interests forwarded by our current Prime Minister. How disingenuous.

Clause 2 of Bill C-48 also deals with money for public transit and an energy retrofit program for low income housing. It talks about enhancing access to post-secondary education to benefit, among others, aboriginal Canadians. It talks about affordable housing and increased foreign aid. Those are all laudable goals, but again, no plan and many of them fall within provincial jurisdiction.

Where is the accountability? How will we ensure that the expenditures of this money are actually committed to? The lack of a plan, the expected results and the lack of details of delivery characterize the minority government. It is similar to the institutional day care plan that was promised by the government without any details. It does not fit the diversity of the country.

Bill C-48 would authorize the establishment of an absolutely out of control type of spending that the Conservative Party cannot support, which is why moved amendments that would have improved the process. Canadians deserve better than blank cheques. In its desperate attempts to cling to power, the government appears willing to do just about anything. Canadians need a blueprint for the future, and that is what the Conservative Party would provide.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to do that. What is being done through Bill C-48 and the associated transit funding, which is supposed to be to help the environment, is it is being directed on the basis of where there is public transit already, not where there is growth, not where we need to create transit systems and not where the investment is required. It is being done on the basis of where the transit is already.

It is unbelievably paradoxical. If the purpose of government is to bring about constructive change, to help society to adapt, if we want to encourage more people to take transit, one would think that is where the investment would be put.

The concern is that sprawl is a bad thing. We want to encourage compact, urban form and development. We want to get people out of their cars and onto public transit. Where do we send the money? Not to the places where we are trying to change behaviour, but to the places where people already are riding the transit.

It is unthinkable and it is staggering. As a policy, it is utterly and completely bankrupt. It will not bring about any change whatsoever. In fact it will reinforce exactly the existing disparities in transit between the city of Toronto and all the surrounding 905 areas.

The critics and those in the Liberal government will continue to look glibly toward those who are not riding the transit which does not exist because their governments cannot afford it. Why? Because the taxpayers in that 905 area, where the member for Mississauga South is from, are forced to pay enormous taxes to the federal government. Their average family income has been falling from 2003. In that time the taxes have gone up 16% and average family income has dropped. They are being asked to pay those tax dollars yet they are not getting any money back for investment in their transit system. We are trying to make changes and they are trying to build transit.

From a perspective of anybody who is serious about changing the urban form of our communities and cities, the government is doing the investment backwards. It is particularly ironic when we consider that at the provincial level, policies have been brought in place through greenbelt legislation and otherwise which are designed to do exactly the reverse of that in order to try to put a halt to sprawl and development and to try to encourage greater transit usage. Yet the dollars that are flowing from the federal government will not do that.

To me and to anybody who is an observer of what is needed to make our cities and communities more liveable and to help the economic growth and development of that economic engine of the greater Toronto area, we see a government policy that is perverse, distorted and that will not help to achieve its results.

On the gas tax, fortunately the right thing is happening. The money is being distributed in a fair and equitable way. It is something we have called for on this side of the House for a long time. It has been three and a half years since the Prime Minister first announced he would make it happen. Finally it is beginning to happen. Is there anybody in the House who thinks that if we were not in a minority government, money would be flowing right now? I will bet there is nobody because things like child care were promised 12 years ago--

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the previous speaker for his kind words about me as a former president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. It is a good starting point for what I want to talk about, which is the stark choice that the bill gives to the people of Canada. It clearly illuminates for them, as responsible Canadians, the difference between the Liberal-NDP alliance and the Conservative Party.

In the Liberal-NDP alliance we see out of control spending. We see the elimination through this bill of any hope of any tax relief. We also see a track record of corruption and phony promises from a Prime Minister who is essentially one who likes to make phony promises.

From the Conservative Party, we see a party that is on the side of hard-working families, where fiscal responsibility counts, where we want to pay down the debt and where we want to see real results, not phony promises. We are trying to create hope for those families who are trying to achieve their dreams.

Responsible Canadians want a party that will stand up for their interests, not the interests of big governments, big bureaucrats and big programs, but for the interests of hard-working, law-abiding, tax paying, ordinary families.

The Liberal-NDP alliance has produced a budget that is not on the side of ordinary hard-working Canadians but is on the side of big government. This $4.6 billion budget is part of a larger package of spending released in three weeks after April 21 of $26 billion in promises designed to keep the government in office for another few months.

What does that mean for the typical family of four in my constituency? It means $3,030. That is what they are being asked to pay to prop up the government through this budget. Even before this proposal came along, government spending was out of control. It was going up at a rate of 10% a year on the program side. Can anyone name any constituent who will tell us he or she is getting 10% more back from the government every year for his or her tax dollars? No one in my constituency is telling me that when I am in my constituency on the weekend. They are telling me that they cannot survive because the government is taking every penny and they cannot afford any more.

This is a bill where we talk about trying to work on issues such as housing and education. Let us think about what $3,030 could do in the pockets of a family to help them pay down their mortgage or pay the rent for a few months. If we really want to help people with housing we give them the money to pay their mortgage or pay their rent. We should not be taking it from them for a big brother government program.

Let us think what it could do for post-secondary education, another alleged priority in the bill. Can any member name one family that would not benefit from being able to set aside $3,030 for their children's education. If we want to see people achieve their dreams and build a brighter future, that is how they will be able to do it. It is not by having a big brother program that takes that $3,030 away from them.

Responsible Canadians know who is on their side in this struggle for the future of this country, for their finances and for their tax dollars that they want to keep.

Let us look at the other things in the bill. Funding for transit is a very good example to look at because the transit funding in the bill is flawed. My constituency of York—Simcoe is a very good example. It is in the greater Toronto area. Many Liberal members here are from the greater Toronto area. I do not hear them speaking up for their constituents for how this bill shortchanges transit in the greater Toronto area. The municipalities of the greater Toronto area, according to the last census, has experienced growth of between 10% and 23% but the city of Toronto has experienced only a 4% growth.

The population in the four regional municipalities around Toronto is greater but they are receiving a small fraction of the transit funding that Toronto already gets. Guess what? The subway transit system is well established in Toronto. Where we are trying to create a new transit system, where we are trying to encourage public transit use and where we are trying to change people's habits, the government is putting forward virtually no money. The money is sent to the wrong places if we really want to change behaviour.

Where is it sent? I guess to the places where people vote reliably Liberal, rather than to where the real interests are for society for the future if we really are serious about improving the environment and if we really are serious about encouraging transit use.

I see the member for Halton here. He represents one of those constituencies in the greater Toronto area that is being shortchanged on transit. I am waiting to hear him stand to speak on behalf of his constituents. I do not imagine it would happen.

Then we see foreign aid, another one of these areas. What do we see? We see dollars that go to China and we see lip service on human rights. It is a perfect illustration of how the government operates: phoney words, phoney promises, no real deeds, no real results.

Hundreds of millions continue to suffer under the tyranny of a government in China that we are propping up with our foreign aid dollars, a major competitor to us economically. We have been told that we are under siege by 1,000 spies. I have heard stories myself from people in business who have been on the receiving end of that industrial economic espionage. However, we are helping to fund it while people who are looking for our support for their human rights and freedom go by undefended with little more than mere lip service.

Responsible Canadians are tired of that phoney, two-faced approach to government. They want to see an approach from a party that is willing to give them real results. Responsible Canadians want real results. Responsible Canadians want a government that will stand up for freedom and human rights around the world, in a principled way, where words are matched by deeds. Is that not what it is all about, matching words with deeds? We do not see that here. What we see are more phoney promises.

We see that even in the original budget. Of all those promises that were made, the great things that were said would happen, only 5% of them were in this budget year. It has not stopped the government from taking credit for all those other things that will not come until subsequent budget years. That is another example of the disingenuousness, the phoney promises, that I think hurt the credibility of politics and government in the country and certainly of the Liberal Party.

We can take a look at some of the things that observers have said about this specific bill. I look at one from the Montreal Gazette . It states:

[The] deal to add $4.6 billion to social spending... have made it clear that those who really pay income tax are now politically powerless...The taxpayers getting soaked this way have no champions or lobbyists.

That is essentially what is going on right now when we talk about those ordinary families, the ones who are being asked to pony up $3,030 each to keep the government in power. They do not have anybody speaking for them in the government, apparently. They do not have organized special interest lobby groups. They are counting on their democratically elected representatives to speak up for them, to help them try and eke out the living, to build a better future, by being able to hang onto those dollars for their education, to pay a mortgage and to buy a house for the first time.

That is what we in the Conservative Party are seeking to do through our position on Bill C-48. That is why we have to put a stop and call to account the government for this irresponsible spending.

Here is another one from a journalist named Bruce Garvey. He is speaking of the Prime Minister. He said, “The man's shamelessness is evident as he ladles out billions in fiscal bribery; as he guts his budget”. That is what this is. It is a gutting of a budget that we were told previously could not be changed one letter, one chip or one jot or it would lead to fiscal destruction.

We had witnesses at the committee, the human resources committee, say that they could not return the $46 billion EI surplus the government stole from workers and employers over the 10 years. They could not return it over 10 years because $4.6 billion taken out of the budget for that purpose, to return it to people who paid it in the first place, would do unspeakable damage to the fiscal situation of the government.

That kind of thing was done on the back of an envelope, in a hotel room, between the leader of the NDP and the Prime Minister in order to put this bill into place. That is what the government's own representatives from the Department of Finance and Human Resources told us was fiscally reckless. We will not stand by and allow that to happen, not if we want to look out for the interest of taxpayers.

Then we can hear from the people who create jobs, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business that said

Never in our worst nightmares could we have envisioned the steady stream of ad hoc multi-billion dollar spending announcements of these past days. Such reckless, and irresponsible pre-election spending is an abrupt departure from the commitment to prudent spending, debt reduction and fiscal control...

That is exactly our concern

We have a government now that is leading us on a path to fiscal destruction. Responsible Canadians want better. Responsible Canadians want to see a government that stands up for them. Responsible Canadians want someone to help them survive, build their dreams and have a few dollars in their pockets. They do not want to pay $3,030 to prop up the government for another half dozen months.