Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Surrey Central.
It is interesting that the member across the way just finished talking about this tax relief for business in regard to the EI premiums. I can tell the hon. member that I was in business for over 25 years as a small businessman and I never hired one single person because there was some money available from the government. I hired additional people because I thought that my business could improve and make money by having more staff. So these government programs that the hon. member is talking about really are not a big incentive for businesses to expand. I want her to know that, particularly in the small business sector where the small businessman has to be very cautious in his approach to expanding, and I have that experience.
I am pleased to speak to the budget today. I have done a reasonable amount of travelling in my life in Canada, in the U.S. and in some other countries of the world. What struck me when I was travelling outside of Canada was how people from some other parts of the world believe that Canada is a caring country, a country that looks after its citizens.
Today, across the House, is a government that claims to have the best interests of Canadians at heart. In the last few months I have talked to Canadians from all parts of Canada, all walks of life, all sectors of employment and I have noticed one thing, and that is that they simply do not buy this line about a caring Liberal government.
After decades of massive overspending, helped on by their brothers and sisters in the Tory party, massive debt, the highest tax rate among industrialized countries in the world, after seeing education costs skyrocket, after massive tax hikes that the Canadian people have endured, after watching our health care system crumble like ancient ruins, after all this there is no way that this government can sell this idea that they care about the citizens of this country. This budget will simply harden and strengthen this opinion that they are not the caring government that they claim to be.
Let me start at an obvious point: our children. A caring party would see children as the key to Canada's future. It would want to make sure that they get the very best start in life possible. A caring party would make the families of these children the highest priority in a budget, but the Liberal budget does not do this.
For instance, the increase in the child tax benefit will not replace the billions of dollars in cuts to health care and education that families are having to face now. It will not even begin to lift our poor families out of poverty because the increase in benefits, as small as they are, will be taken back through increased taxes.
For example, the 15% in income for a $21,000 income a year two child family is taken back by their income tax burden, up 15% since 1992. The increases in the child care expense deduction will not help families much either, especially—and these were overlooked—single income families where one parent chooses to stay home to look after the children. This government treats single income stay at home parents as second class families in this country. The official opposition, the Reform Party, would end this discrimination by extending the child care deduction to all parents, including stay at home parents. In short, Reformers would make staying at home to raise children a choice, not a sacrifice. That is what Canadians want more. They want to have choices and they want the freedom and the tools to do it. Reformers would also increase the spousal amount from $5,380 to $7,900, levelling the playing field for all parents, all families.
Our policies in the Reform Party put families first because they deserve to be first, and certainly they should be first in a budget by this so-called caring Liberal government. But these things are not in this government's budget.
Children grow up fast. The first thing you know, they are off to college and university. Does the Liberal budget help a young Canadian currently with a $25,000 student loan debt? If the student is maybe one of the lucky 6% to get the maximum each year from the Prime Minister's personal trophy, the millennium fund, their outstanding debt would go down to $10,000. At first glance that looks good.
That is fine until they go out and get a job and they are finished university. If they happen to be making the average industrial wage of $36,900, then whatever help they may have got through the millennium fund is quickly eaten up by the tax burden they are going to have to endure as soon as they start working.
Students do get a little tax relief on the debt, but it is quickly eaten up because over the next 12 years they would pay a 73% CPP tax increase, they would pay every cent and more back to the government that they ever got from the millennium fund and they would still have the leftover portion of the student loan.
What we are talking about here is sleight of hand budgeting by the Liberal Party. On one hand the government gives to students and on the other hand it takes it back. That is what this budget represents. What we have here when you do all the math is a zero net benefit to our Canadian students.
Looked at this way, the millennium fund is sleight of hand funding for students. It helps only about 6% and it leaves the current students with heavy debt loads simply out in the cold.
The official opposition has a lot more compassion for the younger generation than this so-called caring Liberal government. As a start, we would restore health care and education funding by putting $4 billion back into it, not the $1.5 billion that the Liberals have so generously said they were going to. We would put $4 billion back into it.
This will do a lot more for the students and the Canadians worrying about their health care than the millennium fund or the small amount of the $7 billion that the Liberals have cut from health care and education in the last three years.
Canadians wanted a budget that has some compassion for the seniors in our country. When it comes to overspending, patronage or pork-barrelling, these Liberal governments can never be accused of dragging their feet, but somehow they missed the seniors.
This budget offers no benefits for Canada's seniors. Two years ago the Liberals announced the new seniors benefit proposals. Two years later, now, seniors are still waiting to find out what it is all about. Two years later, seniors are still wondering how it is going to affect their retirement plans. When the seniors benefit kicks in, if it does, seniors will be looking at it, wondering what it has been all about because there has been precious little released on it.
They do not know how to plan for their retirement appropriately to work into the new seniors benefits because they do not know what is in store for them. They are angry and afraid. For instance, this great benefit will not even begin to help the poorest seniors. It will provide them with a scant 17 cents a day in increased benefits and that is not enough to buy a cup of coffee in this country.
At the same time, this being zero help to the poor seniors, the benefit discriminates against the middle income and upper income seniors by taxing back up to 75% of their personal retirement savings that they have sacrificed and put away so they can be secure in their retirement.
What it means is that the poorest seniors will not benefit and the seniors who make sacrifices in their working career will be penalized for doing so.
So this is the heart of the matter. Canadians expected a budget that would respect the challenges and the sacrifices they have made in their lives. They wanted a budget that tells them that the government appreciates the challenges they face and thanks them for the sacrifices they make; for the young boy up on his father's shoulders looking around believing every dream was possible; for the students up late at night studying, trying to make their dreams possible; for the mid-career Canadians hoping for their dream of a secure retirement; for the seniors who have had their dream of retirement with dignity shattered. Where in the budget are the dreams of Canadians? There are no dreams, only nightmares.
There are high taxation levels, promises of debt reduction that have been broken and increased spending programs that give ample evidence that the tax and spend days of the Liberals are back again. The only thing that happened was that Canadians woke up to the reality that this Liberal government is not the caring government it claims to be.