Mr. Speaker, this speech is well timed, because I know now that the Raptors game is over. Canadians will now be able to switch their dials back to CPAC and watch this, so I appreciate that. I am very pleased about the Raptors' success this evening. I have been a long-term fan. For two weeks, I have been following the games and I am sure that devotion is going to mean a lot for my continuing visits to the ridings of the members across the way in the greater Toronto area.
We are talking today about the budget implementation act and I want to frame this by talking about what I think is on a lot of Canadians' minds when they look at the budget. They are asking themselves how they can get ahead. Frankly, a lot of Canadians are struggling to get ahead. They might be getting by, but not getting ahead. When I think about getting ahead, I think about my paternal grandfather. He just passed away a couple of weeks ago and it was great to hear some of the stories shared at his funeral. My grandfather came here as an immigrant from Malta with not very much money. If there was someone who could get ahead, who could make a looney go a little further, it was my grandfather.
I remember one story he told us. He came from Malta right after the Second World War. Malta was heavily bombed by the German Air Force during the Second World War. When he bought his first car, he saw the ad in the paper, the guy came over and they negotiated a price of $300 for the car. The guy thought he recognized my grandfather's accent and asked where he was from. My grandfather answered that he was from the island of Malta. It turned out the guy he was talking to had served in the German Air Force and the guy said he had dropped so many bombs on that country. They talked back and forth a little and at the end of the day, my grandfather gave him $200. When the guy said he thought they had agreed to $300, my grandfather said that was a discount for all the bombs he had dropped on his country, and the guy took the money and left. That was the immigrant experience for so many people who came then and come now and need to use every advantage they can get just to get ahead.
I look at the economic reality that the government is presiding over and it is one in which it is harder and harder for Canadians to get ahead, so I want to contrast the economic vision we see from the government and the alternative vision of the Conservatives.
The government's approach, which we have heard in the speeches that were given tonight, is that if someone has a problem, the government has a program for that. If people are struggling with accessing the Internet, the government will have an access-the-Internet program. If people want new tires, the government will have a new tires program. There is a program for every problem. Of course, every time there is a new program, there are people to administer the evaluation and delivery of those funds. Thus, in the name of providing help to the specific issues people face, and I do not doubt that many members of the government are sincere in their intentions, the effect of it is the piling on of expenditure and bureaucracy and on the other end of it, it is taxes. Taxing people more and more is like trying to lift people up in the bucket they are standing in.
The government purports to want to be more generous, but generous with whose money? The effect of its constant growth in program spending, with more bureaucracy and more administration, is that people have to pay more taxes. Not only do they have to pay more taxes today, but they feel a great deal of uncertainty about the taxes they will have to pay in the future. We know, and we have seen it before, that when governments run unplanned, uncontrolled deficits, that leads to higher taxes, as surely as night follows day. The government is already imposing higher taxes on Canadians as a result of its inability to control spending and people are worried that if that spending does not get under control, we are going to see higher taxes in the future.
My friend from Winnipeg North spoke a lot tonight about his favourite politician: Doug Ford. I would like to take us back to how Ontario got the challenges that it faces. I will share a little about my own province as well. In Ontario, there were successive Liberal governments under Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne. They did not believe that the budget ever had to be balanced, so it seemed, although at least they had a theoretical target for balancing the budget, which the federal government does not even have. They wanted to convince people that the party could just go on forever. Now Liberals are looking at the situation and asking why spending could not just increase forever right now.
We have to understand how we got here. The fiscal challenges that Ontario experienced were created by multiple terms of reckless spending. I believe that we can avoid that at the federal level. I believe that we can prevent this Prime Minister from doing to Canada what Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne did to Ontario. I believe we can avoid that kind of a situation.
I think we can effectively manage spending and reduce taxes at the same time, while continuing to invest. However, I think it is important that we act now by replacing the Liberal government with a government that actually understands the importance of balance and prudence in our spending.
I heard the member for Mississauga—Erin Mills talk about the U of T Mississauga in her riding. I have been to that university. Actually, I spoke at a number of events at that beautiful university in her riding. One of the big issues on the minds of students at that university, and other universities, is how they will have to pay back, over the long term, the deficits, the debts that are being accumulated today.
Young people are aware of this. I have young children. I have three young children and one more on the way. My children should not have to pay, in their future, for the things that I got to enjoy today.
The government talks about all these areas in which it is spending more. However, it is going to cost the future. It is going to cost our children and our grandchildren. I asked the new member for Outremont if the budget should ever be balanced, if there is a point at which she thinks the budget would be balanced. She told us that in the current conditions, it makes sense to be “investing”, which for the Liberals is a code word for “spending more than we have”. If the conditions are always, in their view, such that we should be spending more than we have, then eventually the Liberals are going to run out of other people's money. Eventually the rubber is going to hit the road.
Where does this thinking come from? How do they come to the place of just not understanding this basic reality of the rubber hitting the road, not understanding the reality that my grandfather understood? My grandfather understood, intuitively, when he negotiated a reduction in the price of his car that every dollar matters, every dollar counts. However, we have a government led by a Prime Minister who has never had to make those tough choices in his own life. Therefore, he does not recognize or appreciate the importance of being prudent in his spending decisions.
We see these concerns that everyday people are facing in terms of the uncertainty that comes from high deficits and high taxes. They are looking at their futures and they are saying, “Okay, the government might be promising to spend more in this area, this area and that area, but in the long run, how can be confident that those investments will continue into the future if they are not made from a balanced budget position?”
The great advantage of a balanced budget situation is that when spending decisions are made in the context of a balanced budget, people can have confidence that those investments will stay in place. However, we have seen, consistently, how when one does not spend within their means, eventually the rubber is going to have to hit the road.
In addition to this, while the situation we have is creating economic uncertainty for individuals, it is also creating some level of economic uncertainty in our business environment. We want to aspire to be the sort of country where entrepreneurs succeed by having their own ideas, not by their ingenuity at filling out grant applications, not by their ability to hire well-connected lobbyists and to justify their desire for more money in terms of whatever the government's priorities of the day are. I think we want to be the kind of country where people succeed on the basis of their ingenuity, acting independently from government, where government establishes the framework, the infrastructure that allows them to succeed, but then they are making those investments on their own.
In the past, the Conservative government was able to facilitate entrepreneurs' success by lowering business taxes. We saw that when we lowered business taxes, there was an increase in business tax revenue. The government was taking in more money from business taxes because the government was creating the conditions in which businesses were making greater investments.
Some politicians in this place want to raise business taxes. The government would like us to forget that when the Liberals first came into office, they tried to raise small business taxes. In fact, they did, but then they unraised them in response to subsequent criticism, and trumpeted that as some kind of great success.
It seems like yesterday when the Liberals told us that the fact that they had appointed a minister for seniors showed how committed they were to seniors. The member for Edmonton Mill Woods, whose riding I look forward to visiting this Saturday, is applauding that. He may have forgotten that there was a minister of seniors throughout the tenure of the previous Conservative government. The minister of seniors position was then removed at the beginning of the Liberal mandate, but then in the final year they had this great idea of appointing a minister of seniors, and that demonstrated their commitment to seniors.
The member for Edmonton Mill Woods is applauding. I have to say that I am looking forward to having the great Tim Uppal back in the House of Commons. I know he is going to do a great job for the constituents of Edmonton Mill Woods. He is probably out door-knocking right now. It is not too late in Alberta to be doing that. Probably while he is doing that, he is talking about things like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48, which the member for Edmonton Mill Woods voted in favour of.
This is maybe a good point in which to transition to talk a little about the Alberta economy, because in Alberta we see continual attacks on our economy coming from the current government. We see legislation put forward that even the Alberta NDP saw problems with. We see bills that essentially would make it impossible for new pipeline infrastructure to ever proceed in the future. We see so many efforts from the government to block the development of the natural resource economy in Alberta, and that is a particular source of concern and anxiety in the greater Sherwood Park area in which I live.
What is the alternative to this vision that the government has put forward? It is an alternative Conservative government that lives within its means, that understands the importance of balancing budgets over the medium term and believes in cutting taxes.
I will respond to some of the comments that the member for Winnipeg North made about the Doug Harper or the Stephen Ford government that he was talking about. What he said was that deficits were run during the period of the previous government, which is true. We had a Liberal opposition that was calling for us to spend so much more, but we made the decision to have timely, targeted and temporary deficits in a time of economic recession that were focused on significant infrastructure investments, such as building up our university campuses and building up our roads. They were actual infrastructure investments, and we had a clearer, tighter, well-defined definition of infrastructure. These were investments that genuinely stimulated our economy, and we returned Canada to a balanced budget before the next election. Members across the way will say an “alleged” balanced budget, which was told to us by the alleged Parliamentary Budget Officer.
I know that the members across the way are worried that they will not get their questions and comments in. They do not have to worry. I will be back here tomorrow morning, and I look forward to the questions that the members are going to ask.
However, all of the spending commitments that were made by the Conservatives were within the framework of a balanced budget plan, which means that Canadians could have confidence in them. When we raised the guaranteed income supplement, when we introduced the universal child care benefit, which the Liberals have since renamed, when we supported families, when we brought in income splitting for parents with children, which the current government took away, and when we offered these forms of vital support, Canadians could have confidence that those investments were going to stay in place.
Where did this way of thinking come from? Our leader understands what it means to live within a budget. That is his experience and the experience of his family. He understands what everyday families are going through in struggling to get ahead.
I also want to comment on the government's immigration policy, because there is discussion of immigration in the budget. The government's immigration policy is very clearly not as advertised.
With respect to the issue of illegal immigration into Canada, we have had an epidemic of illegal immigration under the current government. For a long time, it tried to demonize the opposition for even raising this concern. Then, the government's bright idea was to appoint a minister responsible for the border who is not actually responsible for the Canada Border Services Agency. Finally, with this budget, it brought forward measures that attempted to respond to the issue. However, the government has not taken any action on the need to renegotiate the safe third country agreement, for instance, or on the need to change the tone.
Where do I hear most about these problems in our immigration system? I hear about them in my riding, to be sure, but I hear a lot about them in ridings like Edmonton Mill Woods, Winnipeg North, York Centre and Etobicoke—Lakeshore. People there are very concerned about these issues, because they know the costs and the challenges of coming to Canada the right way. They do not believe it is right when people can take advantage of the fact that they are in the United States and can walk into Canada. It is not fair to those in China, India, the Philippines or other parts of the world who are trying to come to Canada the right way and cannot just walk across the border. That is why we need to renegotiate the safe third country agreement.
I look forward to continuing the debate.
