Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise to comment on the government's budget. It is a budget which I see as a missed opportunity, a shallow budget and it does not deal with the issues.
However, let us deal with the positives. In most things there are positives and negatives. The positives will be brief. This is the first balanced budget in 28 years, something we can all celebrate and be proud of.
The next question, after a balanced budget, we have to ask ourselves is what are we going to do with the surplus, if there is any, and how are we going to go in the years ahead.
I want to inform the House that I did a poll in December and received just short of 2,500 responses. An overwhelming number of people from Saanich—Gulf Islands responded to the poll.
One of the questions I asked was what we should be doing with any future surpluses. I asked is our spending just right, do we need tax relief, do we need debt reduction, what should the priorities be.
I want to inform the House that 95% of the 2,500 respondents from Saanich—Gulf Islands stated very clearly that the priorities have to be lower taxes and debt reduction. This government does not have it yet.
Now we are going to the downside of the budget. It was actually 2,491 respondents who replied to the survey. What we have, and it scares me, is a bunch of ministers who are now lined up at the Prime Minister's door with their Christmas wish lists, and this government has just gone into a spending binge like it has never seen money before. That really scares me.
What we saw in this new budget is $11 billion for spending over the next three years. There are a number of my colleagues around me from British Columbia. If anybody can talk about high taxes in this country, British Columbians can. They are crippling the economy. The British Columbia economy will, out of all the provinces in this country, have the best economic growth. Why? We are one of the highest taxed provinces.
That has to start out of this House. This House has to lower the taxes. The government has a priority. What have we seen? Not lower taxes, but this is the very government that has brought tax increases which caused the downturn in the recession of British Columbia.
We have seen the single largest tax increase, the Canada pension plan increase. This government is proud of it. It is one tax increase after another. Yet we see the minister stand up, very proud of his so-called tax reductions, but they are insignificant. Those members stand up and go on and on. We have the new millennium fund. They talk about that providing an education for students, giving them opportunities.
If the so-called slush fund of the Prime Minister is dissected and if we ask what it will do for students, we will see that it will help a handful of them. A whopping 6% of all the students are going to see one dime of that money. The other 94% will not see five cents worth of it. The government has not addressed any of the real problems at all.
The other factor the government did not address is the debt. We know we need tax relief. Canadians are telling us loud and clear that we still have a massive debt in this country.
This government since 1993 has added $75 billion to this debt. Every Canadian taxpayer's first $3,200 goes to pay interest on the debt. That does not talk about paying down the debt. It the first $3,200 that people send into this House right here. There is something wrong and this government has to make it a priority.
There is no money allocated to debt reduction. We have seen the Prime Minister say we will put $3 billion into this new fund and after three years we will decide if we want to put it on the debt.
The government has no vision. It has no plan. It does not know which programs and how long the wish lists are of its ministers. It wants to make sure it has enough money in this little fund to accommodate all the wish lists first. Then, and it is a big if, it is a maybe, like everything with this government, it will tell us if it will put anything on debt reduction.
I do not have a full 10 minutes since I spoke for a few minutes last time, therefore I will go right to the back end. This is what disturbs me the most regarding this budget.
We have heard the word discrimination used in this House. If we want to talk about discrimination, here is a budget that is discriminatory. It really troubles me.
This government has not only failed to address the importance of parents who choose to stay home to raise their children and the value they bring into society, but it is discriminating against them, which is worse.
The government has increased the limits for child care expense deductions to $7,000 for children under age 7 and to $4,000 for children ages 7 to 16. These deductions are only available to people if they are working. When a person chooses to stay home and care for their families, it is in my view probably the single most important role we have in our society today, and this government puts zero importance on that. It is an absolute disgrace.
The Liberals should be ashamed of themselves. They can sit over there and hang their heads, which they should. They not only failed to address the important role stay at home parents play in society today, but they made it worse for them.
There are so many areas in our tax act which could allow one parent who recognizes the importance, value and contribution this makes to our society to stay at home. I have had many personal experiences of these things happening in society. When these people apply for a bank loan they are asked what they do. They say, for example, “I am just a housewife”.
We have a responsibility in this House to change this and make it a priority. However, there is absolutely nothing in this budget which does that. I think this is an absolute disgrace. The government should scrap the refundable child care tax credit and make it available to all families' children whether the parent is working or not. Maybe that stay at home parent, who has been working a lot more hours than anyone who goes out into the workforce, wants a day to themselves and be able to put their children in child care. Maybe they would like one day a week to do something. But they do not get that chance. If someone is working the government will pay for day care but it will not look after the child care expenses for the stay at home mom.
We often talk about crime, which is a serious problem. My hon. colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca introduced a private member's motion a few weeks ago concerning crime prevention as opposed to crime management. I suggest that this goes to the very root cause of some of our societal problems. We need to have people who place importance on the value of raising children in the home.
I appreciate that not all parents can do that. It is very expensive in our society today and many families are forced to have two incomes to survive. However, they at least should not be discriminated against. They should be able to choose. They have enough of a challenge living on one income. We should at least give equal benefit to those parents who choose to work.
There are a number of issues in this budget but I would like to remind the government that its number one priority is the taxpayers and it is high time it gave them some of the dividend that is due to them.
I saw many media reports that stated the Minister of Finance has finally balanced the budget. Imagine that, the finance minister has balanced the budget. I think he is sadly mistaken. It is the Canadian taxpayer who has balanced the budget. I suggest the finance minister was probably clueless about this. Six months ago he was telling us that he had a $17 billion deficit. That was when the election was called. The minister did not know what was going on and that was his best guess.
If the truth be known, this government has raised taxes which are, ironically, all sneaky and hidden taxes. The Liberals stand up and say they have no real tax increases. However, we have gone through the list and there are 34 or 35 of these sneaky hidden tax increases. I have just been advised that there are 37 sneaky and hidden tax increases. This government should be ashamed of itself. It is time it paid that dividend back to the Canadian taxpayers and then put some on the debt, which is what is going to kick start this economy. It is not the minister's wish list lined up at the Prime Minister's door waiting to spend this great big pot of money that they can hardly wait to get their sticky fingers on.
I take interest in the fact that the members on this side of the House are listening. Hopefully they will take this message back to their caucus and rethink this one.
Mr. Speaker, I have just been advised that I was supposed to announce that I was splitting my time. I did announce it at the beginning of my speech, just before the break. I spoke for three minutes and I understood I had seven minutes to complete my speech. There was some confusion.