Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today to this budget bill. Bill C-15 is very important to Canadians, but unfortunately, time allocation was imposed by the Liberals.
My eyes have been tested and I am red-green colour-blind, but I have been in Parliament for over 10 years, and I think I have become red-blue colour-blind, because I see the same things happening over and over again. It is difficult for me to try to make sense of all this.
Hon. members are heckling again, as usual, but that is okay. I know they do not like to hear any criticisms or complaints, despite the sunny ways and despite the ability to have a moment in the House. That is fine, I will give them that, but the reality is that every member will not have the opportunity to participate because of closure that was put on the debate.
When the Liberals were on this side, they would attack the government over and over about the use of closure. There were over 100 closure motions by the Conservatives. Lo and behold, the Liberals got the ring, put it on real quick, and sure enough, down came the hammer of closure of debate on a number of things, including this budget bill. We are talking about $200 billion; no problem. The Liberals do not want to hear from members of their own backbench. In fact, most of them actually will not be speaking. It is too bad.
I am sure their constituents would like to know how important this budget is to their ridings, all the popular things, the things they believe in. Members could talk about it, but apparently, they are not allowed. Closure has been put on it. It is unfortunate. I do not know whether it is because they cannot test their mettle in this place. Maybe they are afraid that the public will understand what is taking place as we move away from the so-called new Parliament that we were supposed to have, to the same old system.
It is interesting that the Liberals defend their use of closure by using the bar of the previous government. I can say that bar is much lower than this one here. That bar is so low there is no way anyone could limbo under it at any point in time. That is no defence. Promises were made and parliamentarians, including some of the Liberal members, want to engage in conversation about issues, whether at committee or in the chamber.
The industry committee does a very good job of having that healthy debate. Witnesses have appeared at committee, people from different departments and ministers, and now there is a new study with regard to manufacturing challenges in our country. That has been done very much in a positive manner. People expressed different opinions, but it was done with respect. There is a set of rules in that committee. We do not see committees closing down debate right now, but unfortunately, that is what is happening here.
There was a time when budgets would pass, but that stopped and became much more evident during the Paul Martin administration. That was the beginning of the era of slipping different pieces of legislation into the overall budget. In the United States, they call them riders, the things that tag along to get a particular budget or other legislation passed. They will attach all kinds of things for their ridings or areas to get it done.
What we have here is critical to democracy and was spoken about many times right here in the last Parliament about how it undermined legislation, democratic reform, the ability for members to have a place to state their cases for their constituents. This is supposed to be a country united, not divided by these tactics. We have lost that.
Here is the problem that we faced with the previous administration regarding some of the processes that it followed. Guess where they are? A lot of those things are in the Supreme Court. A lot of the issues get through here. They do not go to committee for vetting. There are no suggestions, whether the government likes them or not, and then they decide whether to move on, but at least they have had a chance to think about it.
I remember the days when we would find many technical and other errors in bills that even if we did not agree 100% with the bill, the bill was carried at the end of the day, through democracy. It was not held up because we did not do our business.
That is what we have in this bill, between the banking information that is going on, retroactive legislation going back in time to change things, and other areas that are affected significantly.
We look at that, and we have some very serious issues that are taking place in this House. One of ours is veterans. I was particularly perturbed by the finance minister this morning alleging that we did not support veterans because we did not actually support the budget bill.
I rose in this House to challenge that assertion because every single member, whether we like something or not, stands up for our veterans and their perspective. They fought for that. They are people like Earl Scofield, who has passed away. He was one of my heroes and mentors. He was an aboriginal senator. He flew 17 missions in the tail turret. They called him “Boots” Scofield because one time when they were taking off, they hit the trees and crash-landed. He woke up, ran from the plane, and then realized he did not have his boots on anymore. That is what he was known as. Guess what? He believed in his democratic rights and he was at the NDP founding convention because he believed in different things.
Many other people from my community have gone to war, to Afghanistan most recently, but all the way back to the War of 1812. We have personally been touched by this ourselves.
I reject at all times the insinuation, especially from a senior Liberal cabinet minister, that we do not support our veterans whether we are NDP, Liberal, or Conservative, just because we disagree on an issue. That is not going to be the case on our watch here. Our veterans are offended when they are put in that perspective.
This budget bill is going to cause a lot of significant problems.
I want to touch on a couple of things that are dear to my local community. The first is, most importantly, what we see taking place with the Gordie Howe International Bridge. It was in Conservative budgets previously. They are now approximately six months behind in the request for proposals for the consortiums that would build the bridge. They are blaming incompetence, mismanagement, and all those things, but at the same time, they are now the decision-makers. I am really concerned what message is being sent to industry and others about Canadian manufacturing, agriculture, and other types of investments that are very important to the busiest border crossing in North America. Basically, in my riding, 35% of our daily trade with the United States takes place every single day along two kilometres of our border. Very often Parliament has been united in getting this new border facility done, but we have not seen advancement for the RFPs.
We fought a lot for innovation, especially for manufacturing and other types of work. AUTO21 is one of those things. It is a network for excellence. It is being sunsetted and is not going to get the funding, despite bringing in over $1 billion of value-added revenue for innovation and financing from other institutions and also jobs for Canadians. Basically, from 2001 to 2015, it has received funding of around $81 million but received about $70 million in actual net benefit derivatives directly attributed to it, plus $1 billion for the secondary work that is done. What has it done? Two thousand four hundred student researchers are trained. There are some 685 industry and public sector partners, 500 researchers across Canada, 200 research and technology transfer projects. Some 48 academic institutions evolved. There have been 6,700 publications and reports, 320 patents, licences, and commercialization agreements, and $141 million invested in auto research alone from this institution.
Unfortunately, AUTO21 is being run into the ground because of an ideology set up by a previous administration which said that after 14 years and despite all of the building, it is done.
