Mr. Speaker, obviously, the hon. member heard my speech, but he did not understand it.
He claims that I said that the government's budget does not include tax cuts. He is surprised that I would make such a statement. I did not say that the budget does not include tax cuts and I ask the member to listen to my reply, because it might help him not only hear it, but also understand it.
I never claimed that the budget does not include tax cuts. I simply said that, based on the public's expectations, these tax cuts were inadequate.
It is a fact that the indexing of tax tables is not a tax cut. This only means that taxes will not increase next year, as they otherwise would have with non-indexation. This is, for all intents and purposes, much more a freeze than a cut. In the long term, it obviously means savings for taxpayers, but it is not a tax cut.
Also, the reduction of the 5% surtax will benefit the rich much more than the middle class and the poor, who have been the primary targets of the Liberals' initiatives to put their fiscal house in order, since 1994.
The member asked where the money would come from. He seemed to be implying that I was proposing an increase in spending. I want to make it clear to him that I never suggested investing $1 billion annually in a shipbuilding policy. What I said is that the municipalities and the provinces were asking for annual investments of about $1 billion, over a 15 year period, in infrastructures. The government is obviously not meeting these expectations.
Part of this money could have been used in conjunction with a policy on shipbuilding, a policy on the shipbuilding industry, as all the premiers requested.
I come back to the member's question about where the money will come from. I say quite simply to our Liberal friends that they should not fall back into their bad old habit of sprinkling their generosity about here and there, they should focus the budget on a number of priority items, such as tax reductions and transfers to the provinces.
The government has decided to invest in foundations and trusts outside parliamentary control and appoint as members of their boards individuals over whom it has good control. These trusts will intervene in the fields of education or health care or both.
Instead of millions being invested in a given trust, we see that nearly 80 of these trusts and foundations have been created since 1994. The government should stop investing millions of dollars here and there, take all this money and consolidate it in a single transfer payment to the provinces. They are best equipped to deal with the problems facing them in the fields of health care and education.