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

[James Rajotte, Conservative, Edmonton—Leduc, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak tonight to Bill C-48, the second budget bill produced by the government, the Liberal-NDP budget.

It probably will come as no surprise to anyone to find out that I am strongly opposing the legislation for various reasons, which I would like to lay out before the House.

It should be noted that what the government has done to the budgetary process in Canada has basically thrown every parliamentary tradition surrounding budgets out the window. The Liberals have taken every fiscal framework in this country and thrown it out the window.

In the last election the finance minister from Regina stood up and said that there was no way we could afford these Conservative promises because we only had a $1.9 billion surplus. Months later, it turned out that the forecast was actually a $9.1 billion surplus. Obviously the government was not revealing the accurate figures.

In that respect it is nice to know that people like the member for Peace River, vice-chair of the finance committee, has actually rectified this by having some independent experts provide some forecasting so we can have some confidence in the numbers the government is producing.

It is so amazing to see a government in which a Prime Minister, without even phoning or consulting his own finance minister, meets with the leader of the NDP and Buzz Hargrove in a hotel room and rewrites his own budget that he presented in the House on February 23. The finance minister found out later on that the Prime Minister had completely rewritten the budget.

Imagine if the former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, had done that to the present Prime Minister when he was finance minister. This is a man who was ready to resign over the fact that his friends at Earnscliffe were not getting enough contracts. Imagine what he would have done if the prime minister at that time had changed his own budget.

It is unprecedented for a government to introduce a budget, saying that it is the budgetary document that has been worked on for a year, and then, a month later, say that it made a big mistake and that $4.5 billion of tax cuts will be taken out and put back in another budget.

As the member for Peace River pointed out, the Prime Minister stood in the House and said that we could not tinker with the budget because it was perfect and it was the ultimate document, but then a month later he stands in the House and says that it was a $4.6 billion budget but, “oops, I missed the $4.6 billion. We will put it into a new piece of legislation”.

That brings me to my second point. This legislation is the worst legislation I have ever seen and that has probably been produced in the history of this country. It contains no fiscal framework whatsoever.

Just for the reference of members, the 431 page budget plan 2005 lays out a lot of specifics as to where money goes. We could debate the specifics all we wanted. Then the government introduced Bill C-43, the budget implementation bill. Again we could debate the pros and cons of the legislation

Let me read some specifics: Increase the amount that Canadians can earn tax free; increase the annual limits on contributions to tax deferred retirement savings plans; extend the scientific research and education tax incentives; amend part 6 of the Excise Tax Act. Another good one is that part 2 amends the air travellers' security charge to reduce the air travellers' security charge for domestic air travel to $5 for one way travel and to $10 for round trip travel, for transport air travel to $8.50 and for other international air travel to $17, applicable to air travel purchased on or after March 1, 2005.

Why am I saying this? It is because this is how we introduce a piece of legislation. We can debate it, but all Canadians know that if they go to the website and pick up Bill C-43 they can see where their money is going. They either like it or they do not and they can debate it.

Bill C-48, with $4.5 billion on two pages, is the most ridiculous piece of legislation ever introduced. This is what it says, “This enactment authorizes the Minister of Finance to make certain payments”. That provides a lot of solace to those taxpayers working till June to fund the government. He will make certain payments. What will he fund? He will fund things for students. What will he fund for students? I do not know. The Liberals do not know. They will just fund things for students. They will go to universities across the country telling students that they will not have to pay as much for education. How will the Liberals do that? They do not know but they will do it because they will ensure there is a contingency fund of a few billion dollars.

They are going to fund foreign aid with $500 million. Where is that going to go? It does not say. This piece of legislation, at the very least, after they threw out the entire budgetary process of the Parliament of Canada and the Government of Canada, ought to have stated exactly where the $500 million would be going so we could have actually debated something, rather than debating a nothing piece of legislation.

I encourage all Canadians watching the debate to go to the parliamentary website or pick up Bill C-48 and read what an absolute farce it actually is.

Thirdly, the bill is fiscally irresponsible. The Government of Canada has been on a spending spree like no other in our history. From 1999 to this fiscal year, we have seen a 44.3% increase in spending that is unsustainable in the long term. It has completely forgotten about the debt. We have a $500 billion debt in this country. We have debt payment charges on a yearly basis of about $35 billion to $40 billion. I believe it is the largest outlay every year by the Government of Canada from a fiscal sense and the government is not even addressing that.

What that means is that the government is basically mortgaging our children's future to pay for present programs. That is fundamentally wrong and it is unjust to future generations of Canadians. The debt ought to receive the proper attention. We need a true debt retirement program over a 20 year period.

Another point is that this does not respect taxpayer dollars. It is very easy for MPs, especially on the left side of the spectrum, to stand up and say that we should spend more and more and that there are wonderful areas that need to be addressed. In fact, as members of Parliament we could all stand and say that this is a very good initiative so we should spend more on it.

However the counterbalance to that is that we in the House do not produce this money. We do not generate the wealth. We do not generate the jobs that generate the wealth across the country. It is Canadians working hard until June. Canadians work until June to fund the government's activities and yet it seems so little in the House do we hear from the other side any recognition of the fact that very moderate Canadians of modest means work until June to actually fund the activities that we fund.

It is very easy to spend other people's money. This is very sensitive to me. I want to indicate that I was raised in a very middle class home by two parents who were school teachers. They never made more than $65,000 per year, most of the time on one income, whether it was my mother or father working. They raised four kids and were paying 40% of their income in taxes and paying more and more in taxes and user fees each year. That is where the money is coming from.

All the NDP talks about is corporate tax cuts. Fine, let us not debate that right now, let us debate the fact that we are taking money out of the pockets of average Canadians who cannot afford the little things in life that they would like some money to actually afford, whether it is for music lessons or a two week holiday that year. What the government and the NDP is doing is taking money away.

We ought to rephrase the way we actually talk about taxes in the country. We are not taking taxes. We are taking people's life energy because what they are doing each and every day is getting up, going to work for 8 to 12 hours a day, pouring their life energy into something. What the government does, without respect for any of that hard work, is it takes away that life energy and spends it indiscriminately, wastes it on all sorts of programs, whether it is Kyoto, the firearms registry or whatever one wants to say.

That is why the whole paradigm, the whole shift needs to occur. We cannot just say that money grows on trees and that we will spend it in whatever way we please. We actually have to start realizing that taxpayers are working hard to produce this money and we should treat that money as funds in trust. This is not our money to spend. It is money to divert to the priorities of Canadians but at the same time we must have respect for the fact that they work until June for the government to even fund all these activities. It is fundamentally wrong and it needs to change but it will only change as a result of a Conservative government in Canada.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has laid out a very strong case for why Bill C-48 is actually a recipe for disaster. As I travel around my riding and indeed across the country, I hear the same things, that it will be just like the agricultural program known as CAIS, the gun registry and the sponsorship scandal. When we look at Bill C-48 and the fact that there are $4.5 billion with no details, I wonder whether the member would not agree that this is simply another recipe for disaster for the Canadian taxpayer.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-48 is heavy on the public purse and very light on details. I have to say that is the whole problem. It is very hard to believe that the money will flow.

Regarding the member's point about what happened a decade ago, the current government has been in power for over a decade. When we look at the health care question and what the member is talking about in terms of going to see his doctor, I can say that balancing the budget over a decade ago was on the backs of the health care system in every province. As a result, we now have very long waiting lists. People are waiting in lines for tests. We have a real problem in health care.

It has been very puzzling as to why any party would ever prop up a government that has shown this kind of fiscal irresponsibility.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it has been interesting to be in the House to listen to New Democrats talk about fiscal prudence. I am trying not to laugh because I remember the Rob Rae days in the province of Ontario where I could not visit my doctor some days because there was no money to support doctors. There were deficits in the billions of dollars.

On the issue of fiscal prudence, in the last election I remember a Conservative platform that had deep tax relief, plus further investments in necessary programs. We were loudly criticized over there as being fiscally reckless and having a $40 billion black hole. It is interesting that the $40 billion black hole forms the basis of surplus projections that the NDP keeps talking about in this room available for Bill C-48.

Looking back, there have been $90 billion in surpluses since 1997. They were actually larger than that because there was a lot of year end spending to whittle it down so that taxpayers would not get sticker shock.

As the NDP crows that this is fiscally responsible, that it will be great and it will get what it wants, are the Liberals likely to fritter away the money before it ever gets to them? Are they actually going to get anything in the end even though they are up here crowing about it? It has supported a corrupt government but will get nothing in the end.

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

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member makes her argument based upon corruption, waste and mismanagement. I do not know how many times she repeated that phrase, but apparently the Government of Canada is corrupt for the purposes of Bill C-48. However, for the purposes of Bill C-43, it is not corrupt and her party supports it.

The hon. member and her party cannot have it both ways. Either the Government of Canada is in fact corrupt for Bill C-43 and Bill C-48, or it is not corrupt at all. Why did the hon. member vote in favour of Bill C-43 which apparently keeps a corrupt government in power?

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure tonight to put some comments on the record because I have sat here all afternoon listening to speeches from members opposite. The creative ways I have heard of balancing budgets and providing programs for Canadians have left me a little puzzled as to the reality of Bill C-48.

The Conservative Party of Canada believes that every person in this country has a right to the highest standard of living possible. Every Canadian in our country should proudly have a job. Every Canadian should have a future and a vision for their families. When we talk to families, what do they want? They want violin lessons. They want hockey lessons. They want to go on family vacations. They want to have opportunities.

If we look at the stats, particularly among women, the small business entrepreneurs in our nation are growing at a great rate. It has been one of our greatest contributions to our nation's economy.

It is about giving families the ability to have the post-secondary education of their choice, to go to summer camps, and to develop their lives in the direction that they so choose. It is about giving Canadians a choice, a choice to live the way they want to live in the highest possible standard. It is imperative to talk about the differences between what our party stands for and what the members opposite stand for.

At this point in time there is such a blurred line between the Liberals and the NDP that they have become almost like one party. Ordinarily speaking, when we come to the House of Commons, the government in power puts forth a budget and we vote on it, and we put our points across. There has been the most unusual experience of the Liberals and the NDP getting together to put forth a quick put-together budget that has a horrendous amount of promises in it with no plan behind it. When ones spends these horrendous amounts of dollars, there has to be a plan attached to it.

There is one thing that also occurred to me as I was listening to the speeches. In our democratic society, we stand for democracy. That means that Canadians have a right to vote for whomever they want to be in government. There was nothing before the last election to suggest that Canadians voted for the Liberals and the NDP to run the finances of this country. This country was very afraid to put things out because there was a lot of fearmongering before the election and the fearmongering was all based upon the scandal and what would happen with the Gomery commission.

Just to review, the Gomery commission was shut down, just left there and neglected until after the election. I can see now that the present government did that for a very good reason. If that kind of information had come out about the scandal and about the misuse of dollars, about how bags of money were handed to Liberal friends, about how taxpayer money was spent on the last Liberal election, the Liberals would never have been elected.

In retrospect, it was probably a very clever, though devious, political move to push that election forward before the Gomery report was allowed to come out and actually addressed what was happening in Canada.

It is very unusual that another party would prop up a government that has a proven scandal. To this extent, it is the greatest scandal that our country has ever experienced at this high level of government. We have the NDP shoring up the government. It is agreeing with it.

Originally, our side of the House supported Bill C-43. It was simple. On our side we saw some aspects of the budget bill that we could live with. We did not like everything, but we thought of Canadians. We were thinking about the fact that Canadians did not want an election. We were trying to be considerate. We were trying to work together and then all of a sudden in the dark of night in a hotel room in Toronto, there was another deal done. All of a sudden there was another budget bill to deal with.

It is difficult to support this kind of underhanded manoeuvring by the Liberals and the NDP. We thought we had one corrupt party in Canada, but now we have two. We cannot shore up this kind of thing in spite of the fact that originally we had the full intention of shoring up the government for as long as we possibly could for the good of Canadians, so that no Canadian family had to go into another election.

We not only have the budget, but we have another issue as well. There is legislation that is absolutely irresponsible, and totally injurious to the population. The redefinition of marriage is one of those issues. There is no need for this bill. In a conversation the other night with some of my constituents, one of my constituents said that this bill had been presented for one reason and that was to deflect the attention off what was happening with this horrendous scandal, and it certainly did that.

We have had great debates here because we on this side believe that the definition of marriage is the union of a man and a woman with equal rights given to same sex couples. Every same sex couple in the nation has the choice to live the way that they want with all the benefits. This is the democratic choice. In a democratic country people have the right to choose who they want to live with, how they want to live within the parameters of the law, and what church to go to or not to go to. There are certain things, as long as the laws are abided by, that people in our nation can do.

What the NDP and the Liberals are also doing is shoring up the decriminalization of marijuana. This legislation that is coming forth is nothing short of appalling. We are talking about the budget, we are talking about corruption, we are talking about this irresponsible legislation, and people across our nation are totally flabbergasted by the lack of responsible government, the lack of democratic government, and the sort of godfather type of thing that says that the government will do business the way it wants to do business, whether Canadians like it or not.

The problem is that this is all done with taxpayers' money. When there is a tax and spend government, like the Liberal-NDP alliance, with no plan in place as to how that money will be spent, we have a horrendous problem in this country. Families need to grow, and families need to make decisions about their own spending, but in the House of Commons, the Liberals and the NDP are taking control of Canadian families.

We heard it across the way in terms of the national day care program. On this side of the House we believe that families should have a choice of whether they want to send their children to day care, whether they want to have their children at home, or whatever they want to do. That should be out of government hands.

On this side of the House we have tried to put forth a very responsible policy that allows families to make their choices. Today, standing in the House of Commons, I am appalled at what has happened here with the NDP members hitching their wagon to the corrupt Liberal government and not only liking it, but promoting it and putting all their wrath on members of the Conservative Party of Canada because they want to rule. I ask, what backroom deal was done to make this happen?

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-48, which in this corner of the House we refer to as the NDP's better balanced budget bill. I want to stress that we take the balanced part of that short title very seriously.

Nothing in this budget bill, proposed by the NDP, will do anything to further the federal deficit in Canada. In fact, we are very committed to the balanced budget aspect of the legislation. We will not see a deficit resulting out of the investments proposed in the legislation, and that is the NDP way.

We have a strong tradition through our provincial governments and through other municipal governments of maintaining balanced budgets and caring about deficit financing. We do not go that way and that is our history, unlike in the federal House where years of Conservative and Liberal deficits have put us in the debt position we are in today. That is not the NDP legacy in Canada. We are not prepared to go that route with this legislation either.

In my own community of Burnaby, the NDP municipal party, the Burnaby Citizens Association, has been in power for almost two decades. It has maintained that tradition of no deficits in that period as well. In Burnaby we are known for our record of responsible financial leadership. That is what the people of Burnaby have come to expect from New Democrats and that is what they continue to get, even with the legislation before us.

This money will come from surpluses. Last year we saw a predicted surplus of $1.9 billion turn out to be a surplus of $9.1 billion. Given that kind of surplus and given that kind of inaccuracy in prediction of the surplus, I am very confident that the financing in the bill will go ahead without any problems.

Where we make ground on this was to remove from the corporate tax cuts to large corporation that were proposed in the government's original budget bill. No one was expecting those. The Liberals did not campaign on that. No one was promised those in the last federal election. Canadians did not vote for those billions of dollars of corporate tax cuts in the last election. Therefore, that is something easily removed from this budget.

We know as well that corporate profits are away up in Canada in the past year. Even in this current quarter, they are up significantly, 10%, 15% over last year. Last year they did pretty well. Some analysts have said that the large corporations in Canada are awash in cash. Clearly, another large billion dollar corporate tax cut is not necessary in Canada.

We recognize the importance of small and medium business to Canada. That is why those corporations and corporate interests are not affected by this tax cut. We are saying that the large profitable corporations are in good shape and they do not need this extra corporate tax cut.

Where will we spend this extra $4.6 billion in investment? On the issues that the NDP campaigned on in the last election and on which I campaigned in Burnaby—Douglas.

Bill C-48 proposes to invest $1.6 billion toward increasing affordable housing for Canadians, including aboriginal Canadians. That was an area of almost complete deficiency in the original Liberal government budget. When the budget came down from the finance minister, the New Democrats were shocked to see nothing for affordable housing.

In a community such as mine, affordable housing is an absolutely crucial way of addressing issues of poverty. It is a way of addressing issues of health in my community. The fact that there was nothing in the Liberal budget was a huge deficiency.

I am glad that our leader seized the opportunity to seek some improvements to the Liberal budget to get that included.

There was nothing in the original Liberal budget for post-secondary education except debt forgiveness should a person die. The only way a student could get assistance was to pass away. That is slim comfort I am sure to the students who are in massive debt and who have faced tuition increases of 160% over the last 10 years. We are glad that we have managed to secure $1.5 billion in additional funding for post-secondary education and training to cover that deficiency which existed in the original Liberal budget.

There is also $900 million for the environment, including an extra one cent per litre in the gas tax over the next couple of years. That money will go to public transit and an energy retrofit program for low income housing.

Again, we know that the Liberal commitment on the environment was not what it should have been in the last budget. The Liberal commitment on Kyoto is lacking. This goes toward improving that commitment and improving public transit in our cities. We know that public transit is a significant way of reducing smog. We know it reduces congestion. We have traffic problems in a community like Burnaby. Lots of commuters transit through Burnaby to get to the downtown core of the city of Vancouver. Increased public transit will go a long way to solving those problems.

Also there is about a $500 million increase in foreign aid to help push us toward the target of 0.7% of GDP for foreign aid. We know how crucial it is to help our neighbours and our brothers and sisters around the world with some of the very severe problems of poverty and with development.

That is a commitment the Liberals made. They needed an extra push and we are happy to have provided it.

Housing is a crucial issue in my riding. The high cost of housing on the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and poverty in my community are also an important issues. Almost 27% of people in Burnaby--Douglas, which is a fairly well-to-do, middle class, suburban community, live in poverty. It was a surprise to many of the folks living in Burnaby because it is so well hidden. These folks live in substandard housing and pay far too high a percentage of their income for it. That means they have to cut back on other things like food and other requirements for healthy living.

We need affordable housing in Burnaby--Douglas. We know that Burnaby--Douglas many years ago did very well with the cooperative housing program, which was a significant boon to our community. It set up some very interesting and successful communities where people of mixed incomes lived very well together, communities like the Norman Bethune Co-op. The co-op is almost 30 years old and is in danger of collapse. It cannot get the assistance it needs from the federal government to do the repairs that are necessary to its aging building.

There are problems with the mortgage and there is no help from CMHC which seems more intent on acting like a major financial institution rather than an institution dealing with housing concerns. These people are struggling to maintain their community and a very successful small co-op in my riding. They are getting very little help from the federal government.

I hope some of this money will go to alleviate problems for co-ops, problems like those of the Norman Bethune Co-op. If we could free up and shake loose some of the huge amount of money that CMHC has socked away, we could put it back into solving some of the problems of housing and co-ops, like Norman Bethune.

I have also been contacted by the McLaren Housing Society and JoAnne Fahr, the executive director. She talks about the housing problems that are faced by many people living with HIV in the Lower Mainland. I just want to quote from her note. It says:

Please understand that here in the Lower Mainland I have a wait list of 250 HIV+ men, women and children in critical need of adequate, affordable and safe housing. This wait list has grown by 50% in my three years on the job. Many of these folks are living in deplorable conditions having to share filthy bathrooms and having no kitchen facilities in which to cook nutritious meals, so important to their health. McLaren Housing Society was Canada's first housing program for people coping with HIV and began in 1987. Since then it has grown from one 5 bedroom house to multiple programs which currently has enough funding for 94 clients. Still, 250 people wait. And I have to tell them to continue waiting whilst they impose on friends and family or worse, couch surf, live in a vehicle or in the worst Downtown Eastside hotels you can imagine.

You can assist in this basic determinant of health by recognizing how important social housing is and applying money to this critical shortage. Please put housing first. We should not have a homelessness issue in Canada.

I am happy the NDP has fought hard to see there is something in this year's budget for affordable housing to assist people like the people that Ms. Fahr describes, who are living with HIV and who require decent housing, and to assist them not only in living a happy and productive life but also in living a healthy life.

A recent survey indicated that homelessness had tripled in my riding of Burnaby—Douglas. That is just not acceptable in a society like ours.

I am proud that this budget has increased investments in post-secondary education. Simon Fraser University and the B.C. Institute of Technology are in my riding. and students need that kind of support to pursue the education that will help them be successful and productive in their careers.

I am glad that the NDP negotiated, fought hard and worked hard to seek improvements to the Liberal budget. I look forward to voting in favour of this important bill in the very near future.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to speak on Bill C-48, a budget bill that was introduced by the Liberal government.

What is important about Bill C-48 is the backroom deal that was made by the NDP and Liberals for the government to stay in power. Originally, Bill C-43, the budget bill, had a lot of sense to it, but when the Liberal government felt threatened it suddenly made a deal with the NDP in Bill C-48, which committed $4.6 billion extra as demanded by the NDP.

Without thinking, without consultation and without any kind of plan, the deal with struck. Now we have a bill before the House that has an additional $4.6 billion for expenditures. It is causing concern across the country because we do not know how the money is going to be spent.

Of course there are vague ideas such as housing, foreign aid and things like that, but there is absolutely no concrete plan because this was struck very quickly. Neither did the NDP members ever have an idea about what they wanted to spend the money on, but because there was an opportunity presented to them they signed a deal and said they wanted $4.6 billion to be spent on certain areas, which they identified.

Now Canadians are stuck with it. Today we are debating the bill. It is not possible under any circumstances for any person who is fiscally responsible to support the bill, because this bill, in its generalities, is just about spending money.

Of course one of the areas that has been targeted is foreign aid, which the NDP keeps thinking is its domain. I have been in Parliament for almost eight years and have constantly heard from the NDP that it wants to increase the foreign aid budget to 0.07%, because this was a figure that was pulled out of the air and now the United Nations is committed to it. I think that is a substantial sum of money.

But the dynamics have changed. I come from the continent of Africa, which has been a recipient of the largest amount foreign aid for years and years and I have seen the effects when foreign aid is given without a plan and how it becomes a completely ineffective tool of development. Today, Africa and Latin America have not--and I repeat, have not--borne any fruit from the money that has been poured into these countries with good intentions. Today Africa has the highest levels of HIV and poverty. It has an education system and a health care system that are collapsing. So does Latin America.

People have the idea that if we throw money at this, which is what this budget is all about and what the NDP came up with, for some reason or somehow the extra money will solve the problem and we do not need to have a plan.

Even this week Mr. Lewis was crying that there needs to be 0.07%. What I do not understand about the 0.07% issue is how the money is going to be spent for these people. As a former critic of international development, I have gone round the world. I have been to Europe and I have seen the foreign aid budget for Ireland and for the Netherlands and the foreign aid budgets for all these countries that are pouring in more and more money, but for what and how are we going to use it?

Let me give a small example. When the tsunami disaster took place, the world responded with generosity. Suddenly there was all that money coming in, but there was no plan for how to spend it. The money was there, but how would we spend this money? That today is the issue of foreign aid.

The finance ministers at the G-8 have just wiped out the debts of all these poor countries. I do not see anything wrong with that because those countries were being burdened by their debts. They could not spend money on education and social services that were required in their countries because they were paying this heavy debt. There was no tangible economic benefit received for the money that had been borrowed because nobody was interested in seeing how development took place in these countries.

Now we have the same scenario. We have cleaned up the debt. Fine, but what have we really done? We have changed the fundamentals. Let me explain. Yesterday, even the World Bank president admitted there was a serious flaw. Unless we correct the fundamental flaws that cause poverty in these countries, we can throw as much money as we want at them but nothing much will happen. Let us talk about these fundamental flaws that are causing concern around the world.

Trade barriers to these countries are the largest impediments to development. Farmers in these countries cannot sell their products to us at all because we put artificial barriers on them. The subsidies that we give out, the thousands and thousands of dollars to agriculture, are hurting all those farmers in those countries. If they cannot sell their products, they will remain beggars. We come along and throw a couple of dollars at them and call it foreign aid, but it does not work. That is a fundamental flaw. We need to change that. The WTO is saying that change is required if we want to take Africa and Latin America out of poverty. That is one of the critical factors.

Another factor is good governance, responsible governance. NEPAD has come into place in Africa to provide good governance to Africans. That is fine. One can understand that we would support NEPAD. If Africans can police themselves well and bring in good governance, we would be happy with that, but the case of Zimbabwe shows that NEPAD has a serious flaw. No one is holding Mr. Mugabe accountable for the simple reason that Mr. Mugabe fought for independence in that country when it was under white rule. Out of courtesy to him and out of courtesy for that war that he fought in the bush, nobody is willing to hold him accountable despite the fact that every factor indicates that Zimbabwe is going down.

How could we expect that these kinds of people will be brought to justice? Mr. Mugabe did his job but it was time for him to move on and he did not. These examples keep going on and on. It does not take long for countries that are not sound to fall down. We need to stand behind the African countries and tell them they have to have those institutions. We need to support those institutions.

Only recently, CIDA narrowed its focus to 25 countries. Prior to that we were in 106 countries giving a few dollars and doing what? I do not understand what we were doing. Today my colleague questioned the Minister of International Cooperation as to why we give aid to China. China itself is giving foreign aid to other countries and Canada gives foreign aid to China. Somebody needs to knock their heads here. In answer to our questions we hear, “No, we do not give aid to China. We give it to the other institutions to help them”. They have the money for their institutions to move forward. WTO negotiator John Weekes is working to help China in the WTO.

I could go on and on about foreign aid. It is difficult to support this budget because there is no plan. There is no plan on how we want to spend this thing out here. Hopefully, somebody will hold the government accountable because these are Canadian taxpayers' dollars that we are talking about.

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

[Garry Breitkreuz, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to add my voice in objection to the NDP budget Bill C-48. I want to begin by saying that we as Conservatives believe that our goal should be to give Canadians the highest standard of living possible. In fact, we should aim to have the highest standard of living in the world and this budget flies in the face of that goal.

We as Conservatives would like everyone in this country who wants to have a job to be able to find one. We would like every region of the country to be treated equally. I will come back to that point. That is an essential point that we need to look at in evaluating this budget: treating every region of the country equally. We as Conservatives want economic growth and opportunities to be available to all people in this country. That is our aim. When we form government, every budget will meet that goal.

Every mom and dad under a Conservative government would know that at the end of the day their children will be able to fulfill their goals, live out their dreams, get an education, get good paying jobs, start a family, buy a home, save for their retirement, enjoy a vacation and start a business if they wish.

Our goal should be to tax families as little as possible. That is the opposite of what is happening with this NDP budget. Our goal should be to tax families as little as possible so that they can afford the day care of their choosing. If one parent wants to stay home and take care of the kids, we want that parent to have the option of doing so because taxes would be low enough for that to be affordable.

On a personal note, I got into politics to try to turn things around in this country. I saw how our country was going into decline because of what was happening here in Ottawa with regard to the policies. I want my children and grandchildren to have better lives. That is where I am coming from in evaluating this budget. I want my children to be able to live in freedom and security.

I look at what is happening in the community of Springside, the larger community of Yorkton in which I live and in Melville. Neighbours of mine see things constantly in decline. Agriculture is in crisis. There is absolutely nothing in this budget that addresses the concerns of rural Canadians.

My friends and neighbours are in waiting lines for health care. The NDP claims to be concerned about health care in this country. There is nothing in this budget that really addresses that issue.

The NDP, in writing a budget, is going to bring this country to its knees. Look at what happened when it was in government in Ontario. Look at what happened when it was in government in B.C. Look at what is happening as it is in government in Saskatchewan. My home province of Saskatchewan should be at least as well off as Alberta. It has every advantage, but it has had a government that has been choking the province to death. Now the same mentality is being displayed in this budget. We do not need this. This is exactly the opposite direction in which we should be heading.

The key point I want to make in my speech today is that this budget is dragging on rural Canada and western Canada. It is giving a disproportionate amount of money to large cities. It is not treating all areas of this country equally.

An example was given, and somebody did that math, that a large city with 20% of the population gets 50% of the money in this budget. Rural cities, towns and municipalities get proportionately less in this budget than large cities because of what has been put forward here, but rural areas face the same challenges as the cities.

They are expected to provide the same services as large cities are providing, but with much less. Very often those services cost more in rural areas. What is going to happen? This is going to create even more of a disparity between our rural and urban areas in Canada. This is unfair. That is why this budget is unacceptable.

I challenge the residents of this country to take a look at this budget and determine whether, if we had taken the money the Conservatives proposed in the last election and put it into infrastructure, we would not be a lot better off right now. There is no doubt in my mind that the answer would be yes. Yes, under a Conservative government we would be much better off.

We do not have the fair treatment for rural areas and families with children that we should have in a budget. One example that just jumps out at me is that the government is creating 120,000 day care spots. The Liberals do not know what the cost is going to be, but they say that this is what they are going to do. We have six million children in Canada. Let us look at the disparity, the unequal treatment, in just that budget item proposal for a big cross-Canada day care system. People in rural areas will get virtually no benefit out of this child care scheme.

I am frustrated when I look at the philosophy behind this. We as Conservatives feel very strongly that we have to start cleaning up government, as one of my colleagues has said, but instead we have the Liberals and the NDP with the opposite mentality.

I remember reading a quotation from former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in about 1984. He said, when he was voted out of office, that it was okay, they had “left the cupboard bare”; they had cleaned everything out and they would let the Conservatives take care of the mess.

This is the Liberal-NDP attitude: bankrupt the government so that when we as Conservatives come in we will have a huge problem in that we will have difficulty making ends meet. I do not appreciate having that problem. I have to strongly oppose a budget that is going to make this happen.

When times are good we should be paying down our debt, not spending money on open-ended programs. I wish I could disseminate this budget, although it is really not a budget. If we take a look at what the government and the NDP are calling a budget, it is the most pathetic thing we could ever imagine. As we read through it, we see that it states:

--make payments out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund up to the amount that is the difference between the amount that would, but for those payments, be the annual surplus...

There is no determined amount. It is like a slush fund. The government will spend “up to” this amount of money.

The Liberals and the NDP have four items in the budget itself. Those items are so brief that they are just a few lines. It says they are going to make “payments” for the environment. They are going to make payments for training programs and post-secondary education for aboriginal Canadians. They are going to provide affordable housing, including housing for aboriginal Canadians. They are going to put in more for foreign aid. That is the budget. That is it. That is the whole deal. I need more time to explain to Canadians how empty and bare this is.

As we go on, we see that it provides for the governor in council to make all of the decisions. The next line states “develop and implement programs”. That is creating more bureaucracy. It states “make a grant or contribution or any other payment”. Those are code words for slush fund. I ask Canadians to just look at this budget. I cannot believe that we are being asked to swallow a budget like this.

It goes on to say that that more crown corporations are going to be created. We should be moving in the opposite direction.

I beg Canadians to take a look at this empty budget. I cannot believe that we are asking people to approve this. The NDP members are always saying that we must make Parliament work. That is their mantra. Do we know what this budget does? It actually provides for bypassing Parliament.

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Speaker, earlier today the House, with the support of the Conservative Party , the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party, passed Bill C-43 dealing with approximately $180 billion of program spending. We are now dealing with Bill C-48 which is an additional $2.25 billion per year over the next year with the clear caveat that the government will not go into a deficit.

The bill was referred to a committee. I would have thought that if there were any concerns, problems or difficulties the committee would have worked on the bill, improved it, enhanced it and set it back to the House. However, the Conservative Party in its alliance with the Bloc Québécois voted all the paragraphs down.

Given the relatively small amount of money we are talking about in Bill C-48, why was it not dealt with at the committee level? Was this action at the committee controlled by the Bloc Québécois?

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise at report stage to address Bill C-48, an act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments.

This bill is somewhat historic. This is the first federal-NDP budget in three decades. Of course our Conservative Party cannot support this NDP budget. Canadians did not vote for an NDP budget. They did not send the 289 MPs who are not NDP members of Parliament to Ottawa to vote for this. Even the Liberal MPs across the way who are now supporting this bill are not doing so for the right reasons.

If the kind of irresponsible and reckless spending contained in Bill C-48 were a good idea, then that spending would have been included in the budget original, but it is not.

Liberal MPs are now indistinguishable from their NDP coalition partners on matters of financial policy.

Let us all recognize Bill C-48 for what it is. It is a brazen and desperate attempt to hold onto power by a regime that has been exposed as corrupt, arrogant and untrustworthy. NDP MPs have paid a price to gain their budget. Because they have actively maintained this corrupt regime in power, they are now tarred with the same brush.

However, Bill C-48 is also something else. It represents higher taxes, a return to deficit spending and a deepening of the national debt that we had recently begun to get under some control. That kind of fiscal irresponsibility and recklessness has real consequences for working families and taxpayers across Canada. Ultimately, the ability of the government to spend money depends exclusively on taking money away from the average Canadian. For some folks, it means the loss of music lessons or sports camps for their kids. For others, they may have to cancel their vacation, the one that they were looking forward to all year long. Some Canadians are going to have to work that many more hours to pay this tax bill, but those hours are hours not spent with family and friends, enjoying life.

We have a very different vision of Canada. We believe in fair taxation, individual responsibility and limited government. We recognize that government is not always the best institution to address and solve every societal problem.

For example, in my riding of south Surrey--White Rock--Cloverdale, we have a private organization called the Peace Arch Community Services, or PACS. PACS helps thousands of people in my community every year, with everything from helping the unemployed find a job or helping the hungry with food to counselling for those addicted to drugs and alcohol.

PACS does receive grants from various levels of government to help provide some of these services, but it also raises a significant portion of its funding privately. Indeed, there is great support for PACS in my community, and that is amply demonstrated by the generosity of those who fund it.

Of course PACS is just one of many private organizations, from service clubs to faith-based organizations to community groups, that provide or fund services in the community to help the weak and the vulnerable in society.

My fear is that as the government ratchets up the spending and takes even more money from people's discretionary income, there will be less left in people's pockets to give to groups like PACS that is making a real difference in the lives of Canadians.

Our Conservative vision includes a significant tax reduction that would allow Canadians greater freedom to support such worthy causes. I have no doubt they will. I am excited about the possibilities for our great land if Canadians are given such freedoms.

We had some votes late Tuesday evening of this past week where a couple of facts became apparent.

The first is that our Conservative Party is keeping its commitment to work constructively within this minority Parliament. As an example, we supported Bill C-43 at report stage, despite our misgivings about several elements in the main budget. We want to make this Parliament work and our actions speak louder than mere words.

The second and unmistakable fact is the failure of the Liberals to pay anything more than lip service to making this Parliament work. We continue to see arrogance in action as the Liberals reject reasoned amendments put forward by my party to bring the budget and its spending in line with the commitments the government made in its throne speech.

I want to review some of those commitments. They were proposed by our party and endorsed by the Liberals in a vote in the House. We called upon the government to do the following: to ensure that the employment insurance fund would only be used for the benefit of workers instead of balancing the federal budget; to reduce taxes for low and modest income Canadians; to tell the truth in government budget forecasting; to make the electoral system more fair; and to give Parliament a real voice on key foreign and defence policy issues such as missile defence.

As we examine these points in order, we can see from this budget legislation that the Liberals have repeatedly broken their promises to Parliament and to Canadians.

EI premiums have not been lowered to the level where revenues are commensurate with expenditures. Instead, the government continues to run a huge EI surplus to help it balance the budget. This is doubly strange because in the years that the Prime Minister was finance minister, he explicitly stated that payroll taxes killed jobs. It is true that payroll taxes kill jobs and excessive Liberal payroll taxes under the Prime Minister have certainly killed tens of thousands of jobs. Promise made, promise broken.

The Liberals committed to reduce taxes for low and modest income Canadians. In fact the measly tax reduction offered by the Liberals works out to one cup of coffee a month or just $1.33 starting next year. That rises to $8 a month for an individual by the fourth year of the budget. How generous. By comparison, during the last election, the Conservative Party offered the average taxpayer savings of $1,000 annually by the fourth year.

The Liberals committed to reduce taxes, yet their pennies a day tax reduction is virtually meaningless for most working families struggling with rent or a mortgage or buying school supplies or clothes or food. One might also consider the fact that the government has done nothing to reduce the high cost of gasoline, a large component of which is federal taxes. Again, promise made, promise broken.

As for truth in budget forecasting, we have already seen backtracking on this commitment. We can easily add up the more than $26 billion in additional new spending commitments the government has made since introducing the budget in February. Nearly $5 billion of that total, contained in the legislation we are debating now, was to obtain the common support of the NDP. That works out to about $260 million per vote if we add it up and divide by the number of MPs in the NDP. Yet we have the spectacle of the government standing in the House day after day in question period denying that its spending spree is going to send us back into deficits and debt.

Business groups agree that the government has been less than forthcoming with the truth in budget forecasting. According to Nancy Hughes Anthony, President of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce:

Without a fiscal update, we are flying blind when it comes to Canada’s finances with only vague assurances from the government that it will be able to balance budgets in the future....Until Canadians are given all the facts and figures, we have every right to fear that we are flirting with future budget deficits given the government’s excessive spending.

Promise made, promise broken.

As for making the electoral system more fair, there are 57 different bills the government has introduced, including the bill we are debating today, yet not one of them addresses electoral reform. Promise made, promise broken.

The government promised to give Parliament a real voice on key foreign and defence policy issues such as missile defence. Yet earlier this year Parliament was totally excluded by the Prime Minister when he unilaterally decided to opt out of the U.S. missile defence system. Once again, promise made, promise broken.

In that same throne speech the government claimed “parents must have real choices” when it came to child care. Where is the choice? The fact is the government continues to discriminate against single income families in the tax code. It simply does not value the work of the parent who stays at home. If parents are to have real choices, it is critical to reduce taxes for all families with young children.

In our amendments to the other budget bill a couple of days ago, we gave the government the opportunity to meet its promise to give parents a greater choice in child care and it chose to vote against its own promise.

As we have seen with other Liberal promises, the throne speech amounted to all talk and no action. In this budget, once again it is promise made, promise broken. The Liberals have proven themselves untrustworthy promise breakers. Soon they will have to provide an accounting to the Canadian people for this.

In the meantime I will conclude my speech where I began, and that is to say that we cannot support this NDP budget implementation bill, Bill C-48.

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Speaker, I am curious about the member's definition of fiscally irresponsible. We are dealing with Bill C-48 and talking about $4.5 billion over two years for public transit, access to post-secondary education and affordable housing, with the clear caveat that we are not going into deficit.

However, when the party of the member opposite was last in power, the annual deficit was not $4.4 billion. It was $43 billion. Interest rates were 11%, unemployment was around 10% or 11% and the country was basically bankrupt.

My question for the member opposite is this. What is the basis and rationale for calling this small bill, a bill with this relatively small amount of money, fiscally irresponsible and the results of the last Conservative government, when the annual deficit was $43 billion, as being fiscally responsible? I am having difficulty with coming to a conclusion as to how the member can call one responsible and one irresponsible.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I oppose Bill C-48, the NDP-Liberal budget, because it is fiscally irresponsible and creates a danger to the federation. It creates fiscal arrangements that are a tangled web and lays some very dangerous markers down for future years.

For example, Bill C-48 is full of one off deals. There are one-off deals for affordable housing, foreign aid, the environment and post-secondary education. This is not the way to approach financing the federation. This is not a way to provide long term, stable funding for program spending. This is completely irresponsible. This was a deal that was cooked up as an act of desperation and something that is going to do some serious long term damage to this country.

The other problem with this bill is that it represents one of the largest increases in government spending in the last three decades. In the last five years alone, government spending has increased 20% on a per capita basis. This too is fiscally irresponsible because it provides a risk that in future years, when the economy slows down or enters a period of either zero or even negative growth, we will face increasing difficulties in balancing our budgets.

All these problems, with the large increases in spending and the tangled web of fiscal arrangements that the government has managed to find itself in, point to the fact that the government has no focus. It has no plan for the fiscal arrangements of Confederation. Another area this budget fails to address is the needs of small town and rural Ontario. These municipalities face huge infrastructure costs.

I will give two examples in my riding of Wellington--Halton Hills. The township of Centre Wellington has a population of about 22,000. It has over 100 bridges. In that township alone, we are facing a bridge repair cost of about $15 million over the next several years. That is a huge number for a rural township with a population of only about 22,000 and an annual operating budget of about $15 million. In Halton Hills, I have been told that there is a backlog of about $57 million in roadwork and other infrastructure. That is an equally big number for a community with only about 50,000 people and with an annual operating budget of about $20 million.

While these numbers may seem small to those in this House, if one were to extrapolate them to a large city such as the city of Toronto with a population of about 2.5 million, one would get an infrastructure backlog of about $1.7 billion to $2.9 billion.

Rural communities, with their scattered populations and their huge infrastructure, face the same kinds of challenges that are faced by more densely populated areas. We in this House should not forget these rural communities that are the lifeblood of this country. However, that side of the House has forgotten rural and small town Ontario as well as rural and small town Canada.

The government's gas tax plan forgets rural communities in small towns. Under the government's plan, smaller communities will get less of the gas tax than more densely populated areas. Witness its approach to the gas tax for towns and cities. The city of Toronto, with only 20% of the population in Ontario, is getting 50% of the gas tax money. Toronto is getting $1.1 billion of the $2.2 billion in gas tax money, even though it only has one-fifth the population. Rural areas with small towns desperately need this money.

The lack of detail and action means more closed bridges, more deteriorating roads and, ultimately, higher property taxes because the money for rural townships, cities and towns must come from somewhere. It means that seniors in my riding, like Maria Kurath and Margaret Alexander in Rockwood, may have to sell their homes because they cannot afford to pay their property taxes. These are the real life stories of what happens when a government only addresses the needs of half the country.

People in Wellington—Halton Hills and across rural and southern Ontario pay just as many taxes as those in more densely populated areas. In fact, they pay more in gas taxes because of the longer distances involved in travelling these rural ridings. Yet the government is siphoning money away from these areas to more densely populated areas, despite the fact that these rural areas face the same kind of infrastructure challenges that are faced by the more densely populated areas.

The areas of Wellington County, Simcoe County, Halton region, Peel region, Dufferin County, York region, Oxford County, Brant County, Niagara region, Waterloo region and Hamilton-Wentworth, just to name a few, are being shortchanged by the government's budget .

The problem with this budget is its ad hoc asymmetrical approach to the fiscal arrangements of the federation. It has created a Canada of haves and have nots. Witness the government's approach to equalization which is an ad hoc approach with side deals for some provinces, pitting one province against another and one region against another.

Witness its approach to child care which is a two tier system, one for families who can afford to access locally licensed day care and nothing for those for whom there are simply no locally licensed day cares or who choose to stay at home. A child care system that creates only 120,000 fully subsidized spots for six million Canadian children aged 12 and under is not a universal system and is not fair.

Witness its approach to the gas tax for towns and municipalities in this budget. The city of Toronto, with only 20% of the population in Ontario, is getting 50% of the money. Toronto is getting $1.1 billion of the $2.2 billion in gas tax money even though it only has one-fifth the population. This is simply not fair. We need a fair formula for the distribution of the gas tax money based on a per capita basis. If we were to give additional moneys to public transit, and I support public transit, we should do so, but through a separate formula from general government revenues, so that small towns and rural areas in Ontario and across the country are not shortchanged.

I support more money for cities, but I do not support creating an unfair formula that leaves half the country behind. I support a fair formula so that both rural areas and cities in this country can move forward together in the 21st century.

I have ridden the TTC. I have lived and worked in the city of Toronto for many years and I appreciate the challenges the TTC faces. The government has neglected the TTC for over 10 years. Ridership is down, the number of buses on the road are down, and the number of subway trains running are down despite the fact that the city has exploded in population. The government finally reacts with an ad hoc formula that leaves half the country behind and only addresses the needs of the other half.

I reiterate the point that we need a fair formula for both cities and rural areas in this budget. We have problems addressing infrastructure in both cities and rural areas, but the government leaves half the country behind in this budget. For these reasons, I am opposed to the NDP-Liberal side deal as evidenced by Bill C-48.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member seems to have a lot of advice for the NDP on what we should have done in the negotiations and how Bill C-48 could have been so much better than the job that we did. If the opposition believes that it could do such a good job and such a better job than the NDP then why did the opposition fold the hand it held before the budget speech was even presented?

We saw the Leader of the Opposition roll in and advise the Canadian people that the Conservative Party was going to support the budget as is. Why did the opposition members not hold the government to account and have their own negotiations, and come up with the perfect budget the way the member said they could have done?

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is about time that maybe we all work together to make the government hold to what it says. One difference between Bill C-43 and Bill C-48 is that there were tax cuts in Bill C-43. They were not all exactly outlined. When would they come into effect? We are not sure, but they were at least there. The member talked earlier about companies going offshore. Why do they go offshore? They go offshore to get a better tax rate. That has been admitted in the House. Why not keep those companies here by cutting taxes?