Mr. Speaker, two events since summer have changed the course of our country. The first was the terrorist attack in September. The second was the gradual onset of what the Minister of Industry last week correctly called a recession in Canada.
The budget tabled yesterday, and a budget widely and deliberately leaked before parliament saw it, should have dealt with both security and prosperity. The budget is a disappointment on both counts. It does precious little to address security and it does nothing at all to encourage the prosperity of Canadians.
This is only a half budget. It is a short term limited response to security and terrorism. It is not a full and honest budget which would set a course for the future. The minister's own officials told the Ottawa Citizen that “There could be another budget in early summer”. This constitutes an utter abandonment of the kind of reliable budget cycle that Canadians could count on.
At the very least, the fact that another budget is already anticipated a few months down the road indicates the government's inability to develop a strong action plan to avoid recession. At worst, that is sowing fear and uncertainty.
Does the finance minister have anything to hide from us? What bad news dos he have in store for us come next spring or next summer? We know the government has stopped paying back the debt. The minister has admitted that debt repayment will be zero dollar in 2002, zero dollar in 2004 and zero dollar even in 2006.
The deficit forecasts are highly suspect. They are achieved by fancy accounting. For example, the government claims to be giving a tax break to small and medium size corporations. It is not a break; it is a deferral.
Those corporations would pay their $2 billion in taxes six months later. Why is that? The only way the government could avoid showing a deficit next year was to shuffle that $2 billion of tax take into next year's revenues. Otherwise the government would show a deficit next year. This is hocus-pocus. This is not fiscal planning.
A major purpose of a budget is to provide certainty to individuals, families and businesses that must plan their own finances. Canadians can draw no certainty from a budget whose timeframe in the minister's own words is only “the year ahead”.
The minister claims to be prudent. Yet the budget shows reckless disregard for a budget's central purpose of providing context and direction for the decisions which individuals, families, workers, taxpayers and investors must make.
The Finance Minister proposes a budget which truly speaks to the type of government this is. It contains no real action plan for the future, nor any true solution to the problems in areas such as health and agriculture or on the issue of taxation reform.
Apart from repeating measures already announced in previous budgets, which is another trademark of this government, one would believe, by reading the minister's speech, that those problems do not deserve the attention of decision makers.
The most ironic line in the budget is when the minister solemnly states:
Let there be no doubt that the plan which brought these benefits will see us through the current downturn.
Two events brought Canada the fiscal windfall of the last few years. They had nothing at all to do with the Liberal government. The first was the economic boom in the United States. Economists and economic policy commentators agree that the second set of decisive factors was free trade and the GST which the government did everything it could to stop.
The government has no economic plan. It never had one. It rode high in the good times and it stands forever accused of having wasted that period of growth when Canada had the fiscal room to take the initiatives that would have kept us among the economic leaders of the world. However this emperor has no clothes.
This is a government that takes no initiatives. There has been no significant economic initiative taken by the government since NAFTA. There is no plan to see us through the recession, which ministers admit exists but which the federal budget, the economic planning document for Canada, fails to mention.
Those are not the hallmarks of an honest budget. This is either a con game or Liberal arrogance at its worst. In either event it breaks trust with the people of Canada.
How can the minister expect our fellow citizens to be able to plan their financial future and that of their businesses and families if he is unable to propose an action plan which has more than a few months span?
The budget is decisive proof of the arrogance of a government too long in office. It is clear that the minister's leadership aspirations matter more to him and influenced the budget more than his responsibility as the economic leader of the government.
The minister needed cash. The auditor general identified 16 different ministries with wasteful spending that cried out for attention. The minister ignored the auditor general and the waste. He refused to cut the spending of ministers whose votes he needs and wants in the Liberal leadership campaign. To make matters worse, the minister buckled when the Prime Minister insisted that other leadership candidates be given tiny trophies from the treasury.