Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the budget brought forth by the government.
Once again the finance minister and his spin doctors are using five year projections to exaggerate his changes and to sell benefits to Canadians. It is too bad the government cannot be straight with the public over just what the budget will or will not do for the citizens of this country.
With a little more integrity and honesty the government would have to inform the Canadian taxpayer that the announced tax cuts for this year will already have been eaten up by recent increases in the price of fuel to operate our motor vehicles. After all, the tax cuts amount to about $10 a week and we have all seen how much we now have to pay each time we pull up to the pumps.
With a little more clarity the government would tell Canadians that the increase to the Canada pension plan premiums on January 1, 2000 was one of the largest tax grabs in the history of this country. The government sings the praises of its $10 per week tax cut, but says very little about the $8 a week tax increase to cover its mismanagement of the Canada pension plan.
With a little more sincerity the government would inform Canadians that it has done little if anything proactively to address the $576 billion debt. The government keeps putting off the reduction of the debt for some rainy day far into the future. The finance minister has survived this albatross around our necks solely because of the pace of the economy. Should the economy ever slow down or even recede, we will be in big trouble for not paying our bills when we had surplus capability. It is unfortunate when we have a Prime Minister and a finance minister who put off this problem until some time when they are no longer around to tackle the consequences of their inaction.
As I say, the spin doctors have worked overtime to sell this budget but Canadians are not buying. It is no wonder politicians are ranked so unfavourably by citizens. Even the government after years of good fortune and years of fancy bookkeeping now admits that our revenues are greater than our expenditures.
I mentioned the fancy bookkeeping or creative accounting and bring up the millennium scholarship fund as just one example. It is still a wonder how the country's chief accountant was able to write off a future year's expenditures in his current financial year. At least we now have a balanced budget even in the eyes of the finance minister and his strange accounting practices.
With a balanced budget the surtax should have been eliminated. After all, its only reason for being was to address the deficit. The deficit has been eliminated but the surtax remains and will only be finally removed sometime in the future. This reminds me of the GST. The government makes promises but fails to fulfil them.
I fully appreciate that the budget process is primarily about the money held by the government on behalf of its citizens. Maybe the government should recognize this fact occasionally. It seems to think the money belongs to it, the Liberal Party. Not too long ago the Minister of Veterans Affairs had the temerity to imply that the tax department was a Liberal Party institution. I always assumed that government departments were supposed to operate independently of the political arm of government. Perhaps he let the cat out of the bag as to the real truth in Ottawa. I would hate to think so as Canadians already have enough reasons to despise the tax collector.
Getting back to the budget and the money process, the Minister of Finance spends a great deal of time allocating money to this department and that department, but he does not spend a great deal of time ensuring the problems are corrected or that ministers are efficient and effective with their allotments. There appears to be little concern when the Minister of Human Resources Development admits to billions of tax dollars having been expended with hardly any checks and balances to ensure that we obtained value for the money invested. It appears the government views the taxpayer as a bottomless pit as the finance minister added to the problem in this budget by giving HRD more money to waste. As the saying goes, only in Canada you say. HRD should have been dramatically reduced in funding instead of being rewarded. It is a disgrace.
Let us break our budgetary process into very simple terms. Over the next five years the Minister of Finance projects he will have in excess of $119 billion from his excessive taxation policies. We all know how conservative the minister becomes when he projects his revenues. There is at least $119 billion that taxpayers are being forced to pay in excess of what this money grabbing government needs to operate. This includes the billions of dollars that are mismanaged, written off as bad debts and spent like the proverbial drunken sailor. There will be $119 billion of excess taxation over the next five years.
This $119 billion includes the $5 billion per year the finance minister continues to overtax through the employment insurance fund. There is a surplus of $30 billion in the fund but the government continues to overcharge workers in order to fund pet projects. The minister likes to point out cuts to employee and employer contributions over the past number of years. The simple fact is that there is an enormous surplus and there is absolutely no valid reason to continue to overtax workers.
The minister should be absolutely ashamed of his actions. He overtaxes citizens to the tune of $119 billion and then tries to buy them off by giving back a few tax breaks. The rest is used to perpetuate the Liberal legacy of spend, spend, spend. And we wonder why we are $576 billion in debt. And we wonder why we are facing a brain drain.
As an aside, I note that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have been noticeably quiet lately about the brain drain. Last year they said there was no such thing. They appear to have finally clued in.
Speaking of being clued in, where was the government prior to the budget? In the budget there was very little for health care. Now the Liberals seem to understand that health care is the highest priority among Canadians. The provinces are in desperate situations and have been demanding to meet with the Prime Minister.
Two tier health programs are now once again threatening our universal health care system. What strikes me as very questionable is that the health minister says that he wants to consult the provinces and additional financial resources are available. If more funds are available, why were they not included within the budget just a few weeks ago? A national plan seems to be seriously lacking.
In essence the government deserves very little praise for its accomplishments over the past seven years. Yes, when it took power in 1993, it faced a very shaky financial picture. Canadians were grossly overtaxed, government was far too big and we were in a deficit position as the revenues were less than the expenditures. The government likes to blame the Mulroney government for all our financial ills, but I seem to recall that it was the Trudeau Liberal government that started us on this downward spiral that will take generations to rectify.
Through a little bit of cost cutting but primarily through a significant change in world economic growth and significant tax increases to an already overburdened taxpayer, this country was able to balance the budget. Canadians owe very little to the Liberal government for our present economic outlook. The deficit was conquered solely on the backs of Canadian taxpayers.
I would like to go on especially on such an important topic as the budget but my time is limited. I would like to mention the new money provided to the RCMP and I would like to talk about border security problems. In both cases the government has put more money to the problems.
The government created the financial disaster within the RCMP when it gave members a long overdue raise in salary but then forced the organization to fund the raise from its existing budget. This resulted in the closing of the training academy and resulted in shortages to the extent that the RCMP had difficulty in putting fuel into its vehicles and even into buying tires for its cars.
As to the border security problems, money is not the sole solution.
Unfortunately, the government has no other solutions to the problems of the country. There is no plan. There is no vision. We continue to ride on the seat of our pants and hope that the problems are solved by themselves. Canadians expect much more. The government has gotten very old and very tired.