Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today to the implementation of parts of the budget and to the proposed amendment, which we oppose for many reasons.
Basically, I would like to talk about the budgets over the last six years and to what I feel budgets are supposed to do.
For about 30 years, I have always felt that budgets were supposed to be drawn on a priority basis. We were supposed to collect the money through revenue sources and then determine how to spend the money in a manner that would be beneficial to Canadians across the land. It is not how we spend this money to benefit a few here or a few there, but how we spend the money where Canadians will receive the best benefit possible from the revenue collected, keeping in mind that we must determine what some of these priorities are.
I will come up with a list of priorities by saying we should add health care to that particular list. It certainly plays a major role in the lives of most Canadians. We all want to be healthy. We all want to have access to maintain that health.
Education certainly has to be high on the priority list. It is something that will benefit all Canada. The better educated our youth are and the more we offer in opportunities for education, the benefits will be felt throughout the country for the good of all Canadians.
One of the most elemental duties of the House of Commons or a government is to make legislation that will provide for the protection and safety of the lives and property of its citizens. This is pretty elemental and should be a high priority.
When we have a military unit, the primary purpose forever being in existence for defence is to protect the sovereignty of a nation and to be ready to go to arms if ever necessary to do that.
Then we have our industries which we want to make sure provide good jobs that will make our communities feel much better in their standards of living and the lifestyles that we would all like to be accustomed to.
If we take a look at the industries around, we recognize agriculture as being the number one industry in the nation. It has to be looked after, as most Canadians agree, because it is very beneficial to keep a vibrant industrial base going in this land, particularly at the agricultural level.
If we looked around the nation, we would see people who are in genuine need. We would see the poverty and say “we must address this”. There is no reason why we should live in the greatest country in the world and still have poverty to the extent that it is in many places, particularly on native reserves.
On the reserves I have visited, I have seen the conditions that our native friends are living in, the grassroots people who are fighting hard for some accountability and for a lifestyle that their children can grow up in and enjoy, that can give them some hope, education and opportunity for their futures. Instead, we see people living in squalor and committing suicide. We are doing a very poor job. This should be a high priority.
What about the environment? There is nothing better than to live in the greatest country in the world and have an environment that is liveable, with water that is safe to drink and air that is good to breath. We have to work on all those things. Those are the kinds of things that I believe a budget should be addressing.
Unfortunately, over the last 30 years, I have seen a deterioration in these priorities, particularly over the last six years. This federal Liberal government took around $20 billion in transfer payments from the provinces. Instead of looking at the public accounts and finding out where the billions of dollars were being spent, and not necessarily for the good of all Canadians, it cut immediately from the priority lists. This was done to the point where we now have a health care system with line-ups and people suffering because they cannot get the treatment they need. I have a family member who will not get an urgent operation until August.
People begin to point at the provinces and say “Shame on, you, Mike Harris, Ralph Klein and all the provincial premiers, for having done this”. Nobody remembers that it was this Liberal government that cut those transfers and put the pressure on the provinces to do something as a result of a decision made here and one that was not beneficial to the Canadian people.
We hear about all the difficulties in the education programs being delivered in our primary, elementary and secondary schools and what they are causing.
Because of the depletion in the police forces, they are no longer able to do the job. The RCMP, where a number of officers are needed in the field, no longer have the staff available because their numbers have been decreased.
Here we are on the verge of a war and we have a military unit that is not properly equipped. It is outdated. That needs to be reinforced and helped. It is a priority.
We have an agricultural industry that is nearly collapsing in the west in particular, but in other parts of the country as well. There were people who suffered last summer. We have debated in here on how to deal with it and we have done that dismally.
We hear of 1.5 million children living in poverty in this land. I heard that in 1993 when I came here. Nothing has been happening there.
Every day we get reports. Recently, we received one from the auditor general stating how deplorable it was the way the government deals with aboriginal people on reserves. It stated that there was no excuse for them having to live under the conditions they do and that we are not doing a good job.
What I am saying is that we are drawing up budgets that attack the very things that ought to be priority while we continue to fund special interests and give away free flags because it is such a wonderful thing to do.
We strike all kinds of weird committees. When I look at the public accounts, I cannot help but wonder why we spend thousands of dollars for a committee to figure out what kind of recipes we can use blueberries in.
There is one committee that always rips me up, I guess because of my age. When we put together a committee to study seniors and sexuality and spend thousands of dollars for this committee to do that, it makes absolutely no sense.
We give grants to big business. Since when was a government ever supposed to be in the business of supplying money to the private sector big business companies in order for them to survive and thrive? I always thought that in an entrepreneurship one invests and takes one's chances. If one does a good job in management, it will work.
CIDA comes up with all kinds of projects. It just amazes me when I look at public accounts and see where we spend the money.
Multiculturalism. It is a wonderful thing that we have multicultural people in our country. In the beautiful community of Strathmore, Alberta, they put on a program once every year, which I attend at a cost of $25. I was more than pleased to put up my money.
Fourteen nations were recognized in the community the last time I was there. Many have different cultural backgrounds and different roots. They put on illustrations of food from the old country. They put on arts and entertainment to show us what kind of a background they come from. They all had a great weekend working together and doing this. These people were from all walks of life and from all backgrounds. It was a great weekend and we all paid for it ourselves. We paid admission and it went well.
After it was all done, each one of the participants congratulated each other, patted each other on the back and said “Well done”. They went back into their communities and became Canadians. They are Canadians.
We spend thousands and millions of dollars because we, the government, have to promote this or that. It is time that we started lining up these priorities. If we did that, and if we remembered what this country is all about, then we could take a look at these budgets and not only address these priorities, but also provide the kinds of tax cuts that the Canadian people deserve.
We are completely out of proportion with the rest of the world in taxing our people, and it has got to stop. We have to start putting budgets together that implement addressing priorities. We must stop the foolish spending that the government is so capable of doing and start today to look after the needs of Canadians.