Mr. Speaker, this first decade of the 21st century has the potential to be a decade of destiny for Canada. This decade Canada still has the opportunity to be seen around the world as a most favoured nation and to live up to the words of our national anthem which stir us to be strong and free. For this to happen we need a government that is truly for the people. The Liberal government has shown that it is not. We need a government that is less concerned with perpetuating its own power and more concerned with perpetuating a future and a hope for its citizens.
I reluctantly agree with those economists who point out that the last decade of Liberal rule where perpetuation of political power was the main focus has resulted in the ship of state drifting aimlessly without direction through a decade of drift. We need a ship of state that is guided by a compass of integrity, charted by policies that are built on proven principles and steered by the hands of elected representatives who stand and speak and act on behalf of the citizens who sent them there.
That type of government can truly lead this nation into its decade of destiny. It can truly clear the way for its citizens, families and communities to become all that they hope and dream to be.
When we were growing up, we all wondered what Canada and the world would be like in the year 2000. As a matter of fact, Arthur C. Clarke with his visions of commercial space travel and intelligent talking computers gave us another date to ponder and it was the year 2001. Instead of a vision for the future, the government has given us budget 2001, a disappointment that is mired in the tired old tax and spend Liberal ideas of the past.
The budget continues the waste and the mismanagement that have plagued the government for the last eight years. In fact, someone said that if the budget were a movie, it would be called, with apologies to Arthur C. Clarke, “2001: A Waste Odyssey”. It has been an odyssey of waste. The budget shows no regrets after the unprecedented waste and mismanagement of taxpayers’ dollars that were exposed in the HRDC grant scandal and just last week in the latest and most damning auditor general's report that many of us have seen.
The budget represents another wasted opportunity, a chance to get the fundamentals of our economy right rather than focusing on the pet schemes of Liberal leadership candidates.
Waste and mismanagement have truly become the trademark of this government. The latest auditor general report, has, in our opinion, shown the present Liberal government to be the worst manager of the public finances in this country's history. That is why we all had hoped to see the government cut out waste and put its money into priority sectors. Yesterday, the Liberals clearly refused to do so.
The wasteful spending of the past few years has continued. More than that the floodgates have been opened once again for spending growth in non-priority areas, far above the rate of inflation and far above the rate of population growth. In fact, year over year spending is up by a record and an astonishing 9.3% this year. These are spending increases that we have not seen since the Prime Minister was the finance minister back in the late 1970s.
The Liberals are increasing their spending by 9.3% for this year alone, while the economy is growing at a mere 1.1%. They decided to increase spending and taxes, but they did not give one penny for health or to reduce the debt and taxes.
There is not a single dollar of spending cuts in the budget. New pet projects are being financed by spending new taxpayers’ dollars, not taking money from low and falling priorities. That is the way the Liberals should have done it. They missed a great opportunity.
The key needs for new resources for defence and security simply have not been addressed adequately. Even the shocking events of September 11 could not spur the government to provide more than just token sums for national defence. In fact once we set aside the leverage and the funding provided for Operation Apollo and a small grab bag of special anti-terrorism measures, there is absolutely nothing left for the base budget of national defence.
Just last week the auditor general reported that defence needs $1.3 billion per year just to keep replacing and servicing its current dilapidated equipment, let alone taking on the new roles that the ongoing war on terrorism may require. The bottom line is this: for every dollar that our military so badly needed and asked for, the Liberals coughed up a measly 15 cents. The Liberals have decided that Canada will simply be a passenger on the next NATO train, just along for the ride, not pulling any freight and not carrying its weight.
The Canadian Alliance has a message for our armed forces: They did not quit fighting for our freedoms in the last century. We will not quit fighting for them in this century.
There is not enough tax relief in the budget. In fact there is an increase in job-killing payroll taxes at the very moment that the economy is going into a recession. The bottom line is that next year, hard-working Canadians will take home $150 less on their paycheques because of the mismanagement of the government. That is not acceptable.
Payroll taxes are undoubtedly the most destructive for job creation. Yet, the Liberals chose to increase these taxes by an average of over $150 per worker.
As we move forward into the new century, Canadians deserve a decade of destiny to build a competitive, knowledge based economy with sound economic fundamentals, capable of taking on the world and leading the world. We can do it, but it will take a different type of government to get us there.
Instead, we have a lethargic Liberal government. We are on a course to another decade of drift, just like the 1990s when real income stagnated, our dollar declined to record lows and our competitiveness and productivity lagged far behind that of the United States and other industrialized countries.
I want to address four areas separately: first, the continued waste and mismanagement of government spending and the misplaced spending priorities in this new, non-security spending undertaken in this budget; second, the completely inadequate response to defence and security needs, especially in the Department of National Defence, in this new budget; third, the failure to provide any tax relief, while in fact job killing payroll taxes will be going up in the teeth of the Liberal recession; and fourth, the broader failure to get the fundamentals right and lay the ground for a decade of economic destiny.
Instead, we are continuing the policies that led to this decade of drift and decline in the 1990s. I particularly want to discuss the failure of the government to define a vision for the future, the future of our most important economic relationship, and that is our continental partnership with the United States.
As I said at the outset, the overriding problem with this budget is out of control spending, out of control waste. The government has shown time and time again that it cannot manage the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars that it spends already. In fact, the auditor general's report last week exposed the government as possibly the worst money manager in Canadian history.
The Prime Minister stood up earlier and said that he was not a visionary, and we agree with that, but he said some time ago that he was a good manager. The auditor general disagrees with that. Why, then, should we believe that the government can manage the tens of billions more that it proposes to spend in this budget?
Spending in this fiscal year, at $130.5 billion, is up more than $11 billion from last year's budget. That is a 9.3% increase. The year before, without the factor of September 11, spending was $111.8 billion, so spending has increased in a mere two years by a staggering 16.7% at a time when inflation has been practically non-existent. That is unacceptable.
We have not seen these types of year to year increases, as I have said, since the Prime Minister was finance minister. As recently as the November 1999 fiscal update just over two years ago, the government was calling for only $118 billion. In budget 2000 that was increased to $121.5 billion. In the 2000 so-called mini budget, the projection jumped again to $124 billion. Today the government believes that it will be able to hold the line at $130 billion and a 9.3% increase. It has never held the line yet. Our fear is that it will not hold the line on this budget.
Regrettably, the media reports that the Prime Minister had taken over control of writing the budget himself seem to have been correct. The finance minister obviously rolled over and played dead and allowed the Prime Minister to write this budget, but just because the finance minister rolled over and played dead does not absolve him of responsibility. He is still an accomplice in this act.
Since the October 2000 finance statement, up to and including the new spending yesterday, the government is promising $10.4 billion in new spending over the next three years. This budget was supposed to be a national security budget. I want to give the government half a point for spin, because it got some of that spin out there. The problem is, this is only a token toward security: less than 40% of this huge budget and its increase goes toward national security. The government has learned a little trick. It takes its spending announcements, expands them out over five years and puts that figure up there. It makes it look like a big dollar item.
That is misleading to the people of Canada. Here we have less than 40% of the new money going toward defence and security measures, and no money, not one cent, going to increase Canada's ailing health care system. Even though it is still $400 million short of the 1994 levels when the Liberal government started ripping the funding away from provinces for health care, the government could not in this budget find one extra dime for health care. That is unacceptable.
Sixty per cent of the new spending will go to the pet projects of an out of control Liberal cabinet. The heritage minister has been given new money for the CBC and television producers.
There is $185 million for new projects in Indian affairs. We agree with special funding for fetal alcohol syndrome, but it defies imagination that out of that $7 billion in the Indian affairs department the government could not reallocate one dime of spending to put toward fetal alcohol syndrome. It had to be new money, in the government's view.
There is $500 million for foreign aid in Africa, but no new commitment to guidelines on how it will be spent or whether or not it will go to corrupt leaders or to starving children. It is a half a billion dollar commitment with virtually no guidelines on how the money will be fired out the window.
The health minister got more money for his pet health care research foundation, but no new money to support the provinces for actually providing health care services to Canadians.
The industry minister did manage to get some money for his online initiatives, although thankfully his full-fledged, broadband boondoggle seems to have had its wings clipped. It is incredible that the government could not find one dime for an increase in health care to the provinces but eventually will commit over $100 million for high speech chat lines for Canadians who already, on their own initiative, lead the world in personal computer use and in Internet use. Already we lead the world without the help of the government. Now there is no money for health care but Canadians will be able to hit those chat lines faster and tell citizens around the world that they cannot get money for their hip replacements or for cancer research.
These misplaced priorities give us great cause for concern and disappointment in terms of the priorities of the government.
In the future, when we look back at this budget, we will see that the Liberals missed a unique opportunity to put their priorities in order. The Liberals decided to throw millions and even billions in non priority areas, while ignoring vital ones.
For example, the CBC will receive $60 million. Then there is $500 million for Africa, more than half a billion dollars for Heritage Canada, but not one penny for health and hospitals, for taxpayers, or to reduce the debt.
Worse still, if any unforeseen event happens, Canada will again have a deficit, because the Liberals chose to eliminate their cushion. The $4 billion that are usually set aside for fiscal prudence have disappeared.
As pointed out in an editorial published in today's La Presse :
And so it is that during a period of deep economic uncertainty, when such reserves would be more appropriate than ever, there are no longer any.
It is understandable that from time to time a government wants to take on new initiatives and highlight new priorities, but the government has failed abysmally and completely to follow the advice of many economic experts and the House of Commons finance committee to find new priorities from reductions in low and falling priorities.
The House of Commons finance committee recommended that the government fund its security measures and other spending priorities by reviewing existing spending and seeing where there was room for reductions. The committee called on the government to use the same test it used in the 1994-95 program review exercise to determine whether existing spending was on track.
The tests from the last program review exercise are worth mentioning. Here are some tests of government spending which the government apparently looked at six or seven years ago. It has refused to look at them since.
The government should ask these questions: Is the program a matter of genuine public interest? Is the program a legitimate and necessary role for government? Is it a federal responsibility? Could the activity be transferred to the private or voluntary sector? Can the objectives of the program be achieved more efficiently? Can we afford the program in the current fiscal framework?
Even in 1994-95 the government did not live up to any of those tests. It went through the motions of asking the questions. This time it did not even go through the motions.
The program review criteria are good ones. The government should continually reassess its program priorities to see if its spending is on the right track. The government continues to ask us for suggestions. There are some suggestions in terms of evaluating program spending. The finance committee recommended:
--that the government follow the Program Review process while maintaining a balanced budget in the face of new priority spending.
It quoted from David Paterson of the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance. He told the committee:
Increased spending on security is essential, but we believe it can be offset by reduced spending on less important programs. New initiatives can be postponed until a budget surplus has been restored to a more adequate level.
That was sound advice. It is unfortunate that the government did not listen to its own committee.
