Mr. Speaker, I would like to indicate at the outset that I intend to divide my time with the NDP finance critic, the hon. member for Regina--Qu'Appelle.
I listened very carefully to the budget address yesterday delivered by the finance minister. In that budget address he congratulated himself on the clear-eyed vision contained in the budget. I believe those were the words. I would suggest that the finance minister needs to make an urgent appointment with an optician, an optometrist or an ophthalmologist.
Let us hope that in the process he will discover one of the really short-sighted measures or shortcomings in the budget, which is to give the kind of resources to our health care system and recognize what an important part of the definition of security this is for the average Canadian.
The finance minister also made it clear that the central purpose of the budget was to make Canadians safer and to ensure that Canadians had greater security. I am compelled to say that, even in terms of the definition given by the government, the stated purpose and principal objective of the budget, it has failed miserably. It has failed miserably because its definition of security is so narrow that it excludes a great many of the priorities that Canadians would list if we asked them what things they wanted their government to accept some responsibility for to create greater security.
The budget in many ways is a fraud, a deception. It really is a bogus budget because it conveniently ignores many commitments already made by the Liberal government. It actually ignores a number of things contained in its own red book. There is nothing new about that. It completely ignores previous commitments made but not budgeted in previous budgets. It is very evident that it absolutely dismisses and discards a number of priorities, which the government stated when it brought forth its most recent Speech from the Throne. There are many I could list but I will just give two examples.
One is increasing the security and helping to lift out of poverty first nations people in the country. Second, whatever happened to the commitment to climate change? There was absolute silence in this budget about taking any proactive measures or leadership to finally live up to our Kyoto commitments. Security, at its most basic, is about Canadians having the opportunity to breathe clean air and drink safe water. On those issues the government virtually was silent in the budget introduced yesterday.
What is in the budget? The budget contains a lot of measures that are regurgitated, repeated and recycled from previous budgets, in fact measures that are already implemented and in the financial stream. When we set aside all the measures that fall into that category, what we have essentially is $1.5 billion in the budget that could be described as a genuine allocation of resources to deal with Canadians' priority concerns about security and a mere $1.5 billion that could be described as genuinely stimulative of the economy.
It is absolutely true that there are some measures to deal with airport security and some measures to reinvest in policing and border controls, but let us be very clear that that is only one kind of security, physical security which is important, and we support those measures.
However let us also not forget, even though the government would conveniently like to forget and hope Canadians forget, that what is largely required in this area is to reinvest and reinstate dollars to provide for adequate RCMP and other policing, to rehire immigration and customs officials and others who actually lost their jobs because the government decided that public sector jobs did not matter and that public services were not what Canadians wanted. Thank goodness the government has finally recognized it and is responding to the urgings we have made again and again,
Congratulations for this belated revelation on the part of the government. We welcome its conversion to the view of the majority of Canadians that public services do matter, not just in a crisis, not just in the aftermath of something as horrifying as what happened on September 11, but day in and day out, year in and year out.
What about the security provided by our military? It is true there are some measures in this budget that address the chronic underfunding of our military in a number of important areas. However when we take account of the $510 million already committed in Operation Apollo, what is left is less than $1 billion allocated to the military over the next five years. This is unbelievable.
I come from Halifax. I have a lot of families in my riding, as do my colleagues from Dartmouth and Sackville--Musquodoboit Valley--Eastern Shore, which I think is the longest name of any riding in the country. Does anyone know what those families think of when they think of security? They think of their loved ones, their mothers or fathers, who are committed to military duty for the country and who stand up for Canadians. They think of their loved ones when their jobs require them to fly in a Sea King helicopter, and they are racked with fear and insecurity about the possibility that the Sea King will crash.
My colleague, the NDP defence critic, and I just did a quick calculation of the budget figures. We have concluded that, based on the allocation of dollars in this budget over the next five years for Canada's military, we could purchase one and a half new helicopters in each of the next five years. That is what we have. That is without beginning to address what is needed in the way of more resources for recruitment, for training and for adequately paying military personnel. A great many of those families are not only racked with the insecurity of what it means to have loved ones go off into a military combat arena, they are racked with the insecurity of families who are not even adequately paid and have inadequate shelter.
Security is a dual concept. Clearly, there is the physical security, but there is also the economic and social security, security for the poor, particularly the children, the homeless, the unemployed, low income families and small farmers, who are going through a serious crisis these days. There is the security of Canadians who have to live through the recession.
The finance minister has tried to create the impression that this is a stimulative budget, that it will address many of the economic and social concerns in the country and at the same time give the kind of stimulus that is necessary to ensure that Canada does not tip into a recession.
There is very little basis for confidence that the budget will avert the recession that is surely coming down the road. Today's analysis of the budget makes it very clear that this is not a stimulative budget. It would have required an investment of $9 billion to $10 billion on top of the security provisions that were clearly going to be part of the budget. When we strip away all those already announced, already implemented provisions, the stimulus is approximately $1.5 billion.
I do not know whether Avery Shenfeld, senior economist with the CIBC world markets, was among the 100 economists who said in advance, through the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, that we needed an investment of $10 billion to avert a recession. However, he said in Globe and Mail today said:
“Consumers won't see any immediate income boost or incentive to spend”.On the spending side, the economic activity generated by the government's program will be a long time coming.
If we are going to find ourselves in a recession in the next year or so, it will be a made by Martin recession, one that--