I would like to provide a little context for the proposal before you. The best way to do so is to distance ourselves from the wording. I will come back to it later on to explain the technical reason for the amendment. I am now speaking more generally.
Yesterday, the Minister of Finance appeared before this committee. He tried to put a really big one over on us. He claimed that there was an increase in government expenditures of over 3.4 %, that is to say that we are in the process of spending 3.4 % of our gross domestic product in order to stimulate the Canadian economy. He said this was in order to align ourselves with the G-7 and the G-20. If that were true, it would indeed be the case and we would be in the process of aligning ourselves with the groups in question. There is a French expression to describe this. In English, it is something else. In French, we would call this freeloading.
The Minister of Finance is trying to benefit from the work that is being done in other jurisdictions around the world at this time. In fact, when he tables these figures in order to explain the percentage of GDP that is currently being spent to stimulate the Canadian economy, he includes things over which he has absolutely no control, and which are in the end artificial.
Let's look at the facts. Here, we are beginning with clauses that refer to Treasury Board rules, and the minister has already announced that this will mean that the provinces and municipalities will be obliged to make investments equal to those of the federal government in order to benefit from these initiatives. We see the gimmick. He takes a very significant sum of money as a baseline—tens of billions of dollars—and then he says that this money will be spent to stimulate the Canadian economy. However, it is conditional. It is contingent upon the provinces, who often do not have the money to do so, or the municipalities, who in certain cases do not even have the right do deal with the federal government, contributing matching funds.
We will therefore move, over the course of the morning, a series of amendments to ensure that the municipalities in particular, and the provinces will be able to benefit from real a economic stimulus without being forced to contribute matching funds by the federal government.
That is why you were obliged to state that this amendment was in order: we are not asking for more to be spent than was provided for in the budget. We are staying within the set amounts, but we say that we must stop claiming that an equal amount will be added to this sum at the provincial or municipal level. That is a fiction; stop it. Take this money that is in your budgets and ensure that it will flow and be spent quickly.
I come back to what my colleague Mr. Menzies was saying earlier when he stated that this must happen quickly.
If my colleague Mr. Menzies is sincere in his wish to see this spending take place, he's going to vote in favour of this amendment, Mr. Chairman.
From Mr. Flaherty's speech yesterday, it's clear what the government is doing. This fiction of over 3% GDP spending to stimulate the economy is just that; it's an intellectual fraud perpetrated on the population, because the sums they put up, the $10 billion or so in infrastructure and other spending they refer to, is conditional upon the municipalities or provinces ponying up a similar amount. That's why the amendment here is being declared receivable. We're not asking the federal government to spend a dime more than what's been provided for in the budget. What we are saying is that the money can flow.
Everybody has used the new buzzword “shovel-ready”. None of these guys has ever held a shovel, but that doesn't matter; it has to be shovel ready. You can see them out there with their bulldozers.
Those projects can indeed start being built, and the construction can begin, if this money doesn't have strings attached. Right now it's pure fiction. They're assuming that provinces or municipalities are going to spend money they don't have. What is provided for in the budget is money the federal government does have, and we want that money to flow. We want it to go to infrastructure and other programs where it can count.
The amendment being proposed by the New Democratic Party to section 300 is to replace the line in section 300 that provides that the Treasury Board will set conditions. We're going to add this: “except those requiring contributions from other levels of government”.
We keep with the same amount, in this case $2 billion, to provide funding for infrastructure projects primarily related to infrastructure rehabilitation. This is one of the first amounts, a specific $2 billion for infrastructure rehabilitation, and the NDP is proposing we take away the strings the government has attached so the money will actually be spent.
The Liberal Party has pointed out and has done the research to prove that in the past year money that was targeted for infrastructure spending in Canada was not spent. In fact, only 4% of targeted infrastructure money actually made it out the door. That, of course, is a problem of competence in public administration, but it's beyond that. It's an indication of the fact that these are just numbers on a piece of paper if we keep strings attached to them.
What we're trying to do, Mr. Chairman, is to make sure that what everybody seems to agree on, that the economy needs to be maintained, that stimulus spending is part of the solution, actually occurs.
The Conservatives are playing sleight of hand here. This is a shell game. They're saying they're putting $2 billion on the table, but the provinces and municipalities are going to have to pony up and that's going to be a condition of getting access to the money. It's never going to make it out the door. The provinces and municipalities don't have that money, but they have the projects, the so-called shovel-ready projects.
As for the projects ready to be built yesterday, we had the Canadian Urban Transit Association here in committee. They provided us with a very long list of projects ready to go in cities across Canada. It's an important area in which to be spending. Here we're talking about infrastructure rehabilitation. A lot of things can be done with that as well, Mr. Chairman, but the money will not flow, the projects will not be built, and more importantly, Canada will simply be slipstreaming. It will simply be following in the wake of the current being produced by the other economies that are actually spending the 2% to 3% of GDP to stimulate their economies. This is what the Conservatives are actually up to. There's no real intention on the part of the Conservatives to spend this money because this type of condition they're putting in ensures that it will be like a lot of their other promises in the past; it's not going to happen.
I'm thrilled to know that for once the Liberals are actually going to vote for something, because of course having done the excellent work they did last week--and I find it's important in politics to be able to recognize when something is done well by another party--the Liberals actually did something well. They did their homework, they crunched the numbers, and they were able to prove that 96% of the money that was promised last year was never spent. I'm sure, Mr. Chairman, this time the Liberals, having done that homework, having proved that the Conservatives can't be trusted when they put up numbers on infrastructure spending, are actually going to, for once, find their spinal column and vote for something. In this case, it's not for a single penny more of expenditure so they can be relieved. It can't be considered a confidence motion because we're not requiring the government to spend another penny.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I suspect that if they don't vote for this, Mr. Chairman, the Liberals will be proving that they actually fear fear itself, because there is no logical fear here. I know how afraid they are of being wiped out by the NDP in the next general election. That's why they won't be calling it any time soon or they won't be joining with us in defeating the government any time soon. Whether or not that election ever comes before Michael Ignatieff becomes eligible for his pension...no, he'll never become eligible for his pension. He's never worked in Canada, but that's an aside. Let's just say that, sticking with the subject of clause 300, the Liberals finally have a golden opportunity to show that they have principles, that they didn't do all this for their own self-interest, that their voting 53 times in the House with the Conservatives is now over. On an issue where they've done their homework, where they've proven that the Conservatives can't be trusted and that we're doing something to make sure the money actually flows to the provinces and to the municipalities on infrastructure, we're convinced, Mr. Chairman, that the Liberals are finally going to find their hands, the ones they have been sitting on for three and a half years throughout the Dion-Ignatieff reign. They're finally going to follow Mr. McCallum's leadership and they're going to vote to make sure the money flows.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.