Mr. Speaker, it is nice to respond to the budget. In all fairness, there has been a lot of good publicity on the budget and most of us would accept that fact although we may disagree with some of the headlines. There has been some analytical appraisal of the budget and not all of it has been favourable. Despite the optics, this budget is going to have a very short shelf life and the reason has been articulated in the House more than once this morning.
When I look at the budget, at the numbers and at how it was presented by the finance minister, I cannot help but think of Mark Twain who coined the expression “lies, damned lies and statistics”. I am much too polite to use the word “lie” in this House when it comes to the budget but I would suggest that the minister is using a lot of creative accounting to come up with the numbers. No one here knows what the real numbers are.
Not one member on either side of the House can tell us how the surplus in the EI account works into the budget numbers. No one knows and if they do know they are not going to tell us. If they did, I think it would expose the finance minister for what he is, someone who is capable of balancing the budget on the backs of the unemployed. The number we often hear is $20 billion which has been taken out of the hides of the employers and the employees and used to help creatively balance his books.
There is a lot of doubt in the minds of ordinary Canadians as to what the minister has really done in the last six budgets he has brought into this House. I agree with the member next to me that a lot of the policies this very government fought against are the ones that are delivering the numbers the Liberals brag about.
We mentioned specifically the free trade agreement. We mention the GST from time to time on this side of the House. It is rolling in revenues of about $20 billion this year compared with about $12 billion the day it was brought in. That is about $20 billion the minister would not have to play with if he had lived up to the 1993 red book promise to rid this country of that hated GST. He can roll around in the luxury of having it there but he has not had to pay the political price for introducing it.
Is that not the Liberal way? Mr. Speaker, I see you nodding in agreement. There is at least one person in this House who is agreeing with me. You were there and you fought that election. You know on the basis of how you fought. That is even a bigger nod, Mr. Speaker. Thank you for that honesty.
This has been called the health budget. We have to be careful what the Liberals call it. I think this same minister called a budget he introduced a couple of years ago the youth budget. Immediately after he introduced the so-called youth budget, 12,000 young Canadians filed for bankruptcy because of their inability to pay off their student loans. Thousands are leaving this country to seek employment.
I do not think the minister can take too much satisfaction from the thematic approach to budget making. Goodness knows what is going to happen to those people who depend on health care services, given the track record of this minister.
The theme is health care. The Liberals are bragging about putting $11.5 billion in. You are right, Mr. Speaker, they are putting it in or we are being led to believe they are. But the timing is the thing, is it not?
The first chunk of change to go in is going into what is called a third party fund. Mr. Speaker, have you ever heard of that type of fund before? It is a clever word game, a third party fund is being created. It will be a $3.5 billion fund but no one is going to draw down any money this year. It will be next year and the year after.
I agree with the member from Manitoba in that I think it is going to coincide with the finance minister's leadership bid. I should not mention the dirty word leadership in here but that is exactly what he has done. He is very clever. The timing will work out perfectly for the finance minister.
Sadly, this is like giving the arsonist credit for burning down your house and then building you a one room shanty. That is exactly what the finance minister has done. He took the torch to health care five years ago. And torched it he did. He immediately extracted almost $6 billion out of health care. He put back $11.5 billion after extracting $6 billion in health care alone and he took $17 billion from the social transfers. If we follow his scenario to its logical conclusion, in the year 2004, we will be into the next millennium if we make it that far, and health care spending will be back to the very same level that we had in 1995.
In Atlantic Canada we call that backward speaking. That is absolutely bizarre. He is taking credit for inventing health care when he is the man who single-handedly wrecked health care. Now the Liberals are standing up and bragging about it.
Back in all the provinces where the hurt was really inflicted, back in New Brunswick and every other province, including his friend Roy's whom he likes to brag about in the House, they are questioning what they are going to do with this money. The feeling is that this infusion of $11.5 billion is going to be used by the provinces to eradicate debt that this character imposed upon them. There will be no change in patient care.
I am speaking about the shelf life of this budget. There will be no changes in terms of rural doctors and services for rural Canadians for years to come. There will be no change in waiting lines or in emergency wards. People are still going to be waiting. They still will not receive the care they should be receiving.
In fact, when money is taken out at the rate the minister has taken it out of health care, it takes more to bring it back to where it was. An analogy would be a house with a leaking roof. If we let the roof leak, the problem gets worse and instead of just having to fix the roof, we would have to fix the rafters, the floor joists and the floors. We are talking about maintenance. They have not had the money to sustain the system over the years. Now we are going to have to wait until the year 2004 before we are back to the level we had in 1995.
Would it take a rocket scientist to figure this guy out? No it would not. It would take an ordinary citizen to look at the numbers, if they were provided. Unfortunately the minister does not disclose the real numbers because he is devious. He is the Houdini of finance. I suggest that he go back to the provinces and teach those finance ministers the magic in his numbers. I go back to the old Mark Twain expression “lies, damned lies and statistics”. This minister fits into the very first category mentioned.