Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak against Bill C-36, the budget implementation act. I would like to start by giving the House a few reasons for my rejection and my constituents' rejection of the budget implementation act.
The first thing of course is that budgets are more than just numbers. A federal budget is about people and it is an opportunity for the government to express the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the people of Canada through an annual budget.
The budget this year has some hopes, dreams and aspirations in it. Unfortunately it covers only those dreams and hopes of two people, the finance minister who has dreams, hopes and aspirations of being the prime Minister one day, and the Prime Minister who is developing this millennium scholarship fund so that he will never be forgotten in Canadian history.
We can say with certainty that this Prime Minister and this government will never be forgotten by this Canadian public ever for what they have done to the Canadian people when it comes to the dreams, the hopes and the aspirations of those Canadians.
There are several problems and many things wrong with this budget. One problem that was identified by the Reform Party and also by Canadians overwhelmingly is that there is no plan to pay the debt down.
This is a huge problem for Canadians and for any federal government because it takes a huge portion of the federal budget to service that debt.
That is why that is such a problem. That money for servicing the debt could be put into transfers to the provinces for health care, education and programs that really make a difference to Canadians. This government has failed Canadians in that regard.
I conducted a survey in my riding. Ninety-four per cent of those in my riding responded in favour of debt reduction. They said that 20% to 50% of any budget surpluses should be directed in this area. This budget fails to address that issue.
The second point is there is no net tax relief measures in the budget. The Liberals will boast that Canadians will be better off after the budget. That is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. I have heard it said that to cook a frog put the frog in the pot, put it on the stove and slowly turn up the heat. Before you know it the frog will not jump out of the water. He will just sit there and get cooked. That is what this government is doing with this budget. It is cooking Canadians to the point where we cannot stand the amount of taxes in this country. I will get into that a little later in my remarks today.
The constituents of Okanagan—Coquihalla value some of the programs they get from government. They want a strong health care system. They want a system that will ensure that they can get a decent education. They want a government that will provide vital services like national defence, foreign affairs and a criminal justice system that actually works for law abiding citizens. These are the types of programs for which Canadians are proud to say they pay taxes, for those programs that mean so much to all of us.
What the hardworking people in my riding do not want to see is their tax dollars being wasted on programs that are not essential. The best example of this is the interest we have to pay on the debt as a result of Liberal and Conservative governments time after time living far too high on the hog.
Taxpayers are paying about $45 billion a year just to pay the interest on our national debt. The average taxpayer pays over $21,000 in federal taxes. Roughly one-third of that goes to paying the interest on the debt.
The people of British Columbia in particular are feeling more than a little abused as a result of the taxes they pay. B.C. today has the highest taxes in all of North America. The average family income in British Columbia is approximately $58,000 a year. The average tax bill for those families is approximately $29,000 a year. That is an overwhelming amount of tax for one family to have to pay. While all Canadians need tax relief, it is needed nowhere more than in my province of British Columbia.
The hardworking people in my riding are tired of seeing their tax dollars flow to Ottawa and never return. This government continues to take but puts little back into the province of B.C. Last year transfers from the federal government accounted for only 7.9% of the provincial revenues. That is the lowest in the country.
Other provinces receive much higher amounts from the federal government. For example, 43% of Newfoundland's provincial budget comes from the federal government. For New Brunswick that figure is 45.5%. For Quebec 17.6% comes from federal coffers. The Canadian average is 16.9%. For British Columbians it is at 9.7%. Once again the rest of the country gets the gold and we know xactly what B.C. gets.
This government continues to take from B.C. and does not give back. I will give members an example. Fruit growers in my riding have experienced this firsthand. In 1997 orchardists in the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys were devastated by the worst hail storm in 100 years and other severe weather related disasters. Fruit growers sought immediate assistance under the Agricultural Marketing Programs Act, to no avail.
The minister of agriculture blamed the banks when in fact the orchardists and the people of British Columbia knew it was not a problem with the banks, it was a problem with the federal Liberal government.
In contrast, it took less than one month for the maple syrup producers affected by the ice storm to begin receiving compensation. In fact, a new program called the ice storm recovery program was designed to provide an additional $50 million for part time farmers, specifically meeting the conditions of these producers.
B.C. fruit growers, on the other hand, waited almost a year and are still waiting while the producers in central Canada wait less than a month. Where is the fairness? Where is the equality in a system like that?
Another problem in my riding and in British Columbia is in the softwood lumber industry. The industry is in serious difficulty because of the federal Liberal government's mishandling of the export quota system. In 1995 the Liberals struck a softwood lumber deal with the Americans. They say they made the deal to ensure fair treatment of our lumber products being exported to the U.S.
What the Liberals actually did was put themselves of telling every Canadian lumber firm, no matter how big or how small, how much lumber they can export to the U.S. As a result of this bureaucratic nightmare it has cost my province and my riding jobs in that softwood lumber industry. That is not good enough from this government and we want to change that.
I see my time is running out. There are so many things that are wrong with the government's handling of the budget but I will not have time to address them all. However, I would like to close with the millennium scholarship fund.
The focus of the budget should have been debt reduction and on tax relief. The constituents of my riding said so and Canadians from coast to coast said so. Instead, the focus has been on new spending in a sphere of provincial jurisdiction, the $2.5 billion scholarship fund.
Perhaps the biggest flaw in the new millennium scholarship fund is its abuse of the Constitution. The government continues to abuse its constitutional spending power by spending without consultation and without co-operation in the provincial areas of jurisdiction.
I started off this afternoon saying that budgets are about people and should be about people, about dreams, about hopes and about aspirations. They should be about a government that has a vision that is going to carry us into a new era in the year 2000. However, this budget fails to do that. This budget should have been about young people who are looking for their first job, about young people and young families who want to buy their first homes, about single mothers who are trying to make end meets and for the future of Canada.
I would argue that the government has let those people down. That is why I am proud to stand opposed to the budget implementation act, Bill C-36.