Madam Speaker, I rise on behalf of the people of Surrey Central to voice our views on the budget. Six provinces already have balanced budget legislation in place but this government does not. Balanced budgets should be mandatory for every government by legislation.
It is not the pen of the finance minister filled with the black ink given to him by the Prime Minister but the Canadian taxpayers who have made the balanced budget. Seventy per cent of the deficit was eliminated by the increase in tax revenues. Canadians now pay 56% more tax than the average of the G-7 countries and 23% more tax than the average of the OECD countries.
Since it took office, this government has increased taxes 37 times and has squeezed every dollar from the taxpayers. It has squeezed $48 billion worth of revenue from taxpayers and has added $83 billion to the huge debt that now stands at $583 billion. This has been accumulated by the mismanagement and lack of vision of this Liberal government and previous Tory governments one after the other.
On average Canadian families pay $6,000 per year just to pay the interest payment of $45 billion on the debt. A third of each dollar goes to service the debt. A newborn baby is not assured of good health care, education, a job or a pension. That newborn baby is assured of one thing, a $20,000 debt. That is shameful in this country.
This government has made no real effort to give tax relief to taxpayers or to lay out a plan to pay the huge debt. It is this debt and the high tax rate that discourage domestic and foreign investment in Canada. The debt and the high tax rate stagnate job creation in Canada. The debt and tax rate hinder economic growth in Canada. The debt and the high tax rate cause the brain drain in Canada.
Budget day was a martyrdom day for this country. The Liberal finance minister has sacrificed the future prosperity of Canadian taxpayers. He has made martyrs out of Canadian taxpayers. If a budget is balanced by increasing tax revenue alone, it could have been done 25 years ago. Where was this Prime Minister who was then finance minister in the Liberal government? Where was that bottle of black ink 25 years ago if he wanted to balance the budget? It has not reduced federal spending at all. It has not pursued the elimination of waste in the government. This government has all kinds of credit cards and cheque books even for future generations and is issuing one cheque after the other.
In this budget the government has already announced 17 new spending initiatives worth $11 billion. This shows that the government completely lacks vision and accountability.
The other day the Leader of the Opposition and other colleagues gave many examples of irresponsible spending by this government. Let me turn for a minute to my critic role. This budget adds $90 million to foreign aid this year and $50 million to it next year, while foreign aid donated by other countries around the world has decreased. The private sector investment is increasing.
By throwing out more money, this government is rewarding the CIDA minister for her failures, inefficiencies and mismanagement. The CIDA minister has said before the committee on foreign affairs and international trade “the cuts in the budget have made us work smarter”. What a funny quote. Why could her ministry not work smarter before the cuts were made?
On the other side, on page 29 of red book II it promised that 50% of a surplus would be used to reduce the debt and the other 50% would be used to address social and economic needs through program expenditures. But this government, like its GST promise, its jobs, jobs, jobs promise, and like 136 other promises, has again betrayed the trust of Canadians. We know that Canadians will not forget this great betrayal by this government.
Two economists from the major banks are saying that the government is understating its surplus by $5 billion to $6 billion this year and $9 billion to $10 billion next year. This government should not play political football with the future of Canadians.
I am also a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. We have been very disappointed with what we have learned about the political mismanagement by the Liberals of federal government affairs which were brought, one after the other, before the committee. According to the Auditor General of Canada, the Liberals have overstated the 1996-97 federal deficit by $800 million. How? It has paid the $800 million to a dummy organization which did not even exist in that fiscal year. What a shame. That $800 million was paid to a company that did not even exist in that fiscal year.
I have another example. The auditor general insists that the Liberals eliminate their $20 billion gap between their estimates and the actual liabilities of the federal government's employee pensions. The auditor general made it very clear that the $20 billion figure was based on a political decision and not on an accounting decision. The Liberals are using creative accounting practices, something no small or medium size business could ever use.
The auditor general has scolded the Liberals for not following the generally accepted accounting principles or the public sector accounting auditing board guidelines. If it is not a cooking of the books what is it? They should not follow the laws of the cooks but the laws of the books.
The government should be credible, honest, clear, straightforward and accountable to Canadians. It must maintain transparent accounts. This is not leadership by example. How can Canadians trust this finance minister regarding what he calls a balanced budget? Why does this minister use a surplus to play politics with?
Rather than caring about the future of Canadians, I think this budget looks like a shell game. Canadians cannot be fooled by this shell game.
A few years ago in Canada on average one parent used to work and the other parent took care of the children and the family at home. Nowadays and for some time both parents work and the average family makes less money. Parents get less time to spend with their children.
When those children go to school they have to struggle to get quality education with the competition and it being so expensive. They go to schools which are famous for drugs, gangs and crime. When they graduate they have to struggle to get jobs. There is 18% unemployment rate for youth. When they get jobs they go on the same vicious cycle of paying taxes and in the end when the time comes for retirement the situation is terrible. There may be no money left for their pension.
The system is unfair and the government lacks accountability. The government lacks vision. Every corner of our lives is mismanaged by big government. It may be the Young Offenders Act. It may be victim rights. It may be the multilateral agreement on investment. Whatever we talk about, the government is famous for mismanagement.