Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister said in his speech that this is a milestone. I am here to say my constituents regard this more as a stone in your shoe than a milestone budget. Millstone is another good word.
It should be a great honour to stand here today and deliver my first speech on a federal budget. I am honoured but I have serious reservations about the honour reflected in this budget.
My constituents and I certainly understand what budgets are all about, making choices. Inevitably there will be people on both sides of the debate. Some will be pleased and many will find fault no matter what you do.
I would like to sympathize with the government on that point but I cannot because what we see in this budget is that it has have made no tough choices at all.
The Liberals claim their approach is balanced but I think the more accurate term for them would be indecisive or unimaginative. What we see here is a major disappointment, a huge flop and a missed opportunity that Canadians will continue to pay for, for decades.
Canadians made it clear in our prebudget deliberations that the tax burden on them and their economy was excessive. That tax burden drags on job creation. We see that reflected in our permanent persistently high unemployment figures.
Not only has the finance minister ignored the opportunity to create real sustainable jobs, but these policies continue to penalize the unemployed. Thousands find themselves ineligible for benefits or have had their benefits cut to minimal levels while the finance minister shovels billions of dollars into an EI surplus fund. He announced nickel and dime cuts to premiums late last year but continues to operate that EI fund as a cash cow rather than the insurance program it was intended to be. I do not find much honour in that.
The minister's colleagues will quickly point out that there is money in the budget for job creation but experience with government shows these programs are at best short term fixes with excessive bureaucratic costs that still leave not thousands, not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of Canadians outside the targeted groups.
This is the choice they make when they try to be the magic bullet that aims itself at narrow agenda items instead of creating broad policies that treat all Canadians equally and treat the economy not as a revenue generator for government excess but as the public trust that belongs to all its citizens and their descendants.
We have seen programs across the political spectrum that reflect the choices the Liberals have made to be always the party of the special interest groups as opposed to being the party of the whole Canadian community. We see them choose to base their programs on race, language, gender or regionalism rather than on creating equal opportunity for everybody.
A government must create an environment where people are not set at each other's throats in a competition for rights and benefits that excludes their neighbours. We on this side of the House know there are localized or specific problems that must be addressed by directing programs but too often these directions are given by the special interest and lobby groups with agendas that do not reflect the values held by the majority of Canadians.
The finance minister said that the time has passed when a government could be all things to all people. By having so many priorities it in fact has none. The finance minister was trying to paint the budget as a point in the nation's history when we would turn from the irresponsible, misdirected, wasteful spending of the past and open a new chapter where every tax dollar would be spent in such a way that it would always reflect focus and balance. I am not saying these buzzwords are meaningless, but I am saying that the actions of the government drain them of any real meaning.
The finance minister rejected the notion that the treasury could afford broad based tax relief. He rejected the advice of many finance committee witnesses who said that decisive debt reduction was not only prudent but would pay large dividends almost immediately for all Canadians and their descendants. Instead he made the choice to be many things to many people. In the process he rejected the values of Canadians by ignoring the polls that said people wanted debt reduction and tax relief most of all.
The minister left many important things out of the budget. There is no mention of the crisis in agriculture or transportation on the prairies, no mention of crisis in the east and west coast fisheries, no mention of the tax burden carried by our small business owners who are the real job creators in the economy. He says to them that they will have to wait, but can they afford to wait for this tax relief?
We can afford $600 million for an office of official languages. We apparently cannot afford to attack the debt, but we can afford to subsidize our own heritage to the tune of $440 million per year. I am not saying that there are not worthy causes in there somewhere but these expenditures are never questioned. Would Canadians abandon their own culture or a second language if these things were not subsidized? I think the evidence would point to the contrary. The evidence suggests that the majority of Canadians being compassionate and reasonable will do many things on their own without being bribed with their own money.
What are the Liberals afraid of? The budget shows what they are afraid of. They are afraid that if they give Canadians the freedom to make their own choices they will choose to support common values; they will strengthen their families, contribute to their communities and naturally gather into a strong country with a shared vision of our future.
By failing to make any courageous choices, the government has not changed anything from the previous three decades of its irresponsible predecessors. Canadians will continue to finance massive programs. They will continue to spend 30 cents of every dollar on nothing more than interest on the national debt. They will continue to hear from Ottawa that bureaucrats know better than they do how to run their own lives. I see nothing honourable in that.