Mr. Speaker, I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your ascension to the chair. I also congratulate the others sharing the chair with you. We only demand of you perfection; nothing more, nothing less. I do not think that will be too hard a bill to fill. If that were not enough, perhaps we would also suggest that you could be an agent for some change in the House while you are at it.
This is my first intervention in the 37th parliament. I thank the people of the constituency of Wetaskiwin for yet another tremendous vote of confidence bestowed on me on November 27 during the federal election. I give a special thanks to my wife Dianne. As all members of the House know, their duties here also affect family members. certainly my wife Dianne has been a great supporter. I also thank our daughters Michelle and Dalene and our son-in-law Andy for their continued support.
I also mention the people on my campaign team who worked so hard in winter weather to get me re-elected. In particular, my campaign manager Janet Moseson did a marvellous job of working with a less than perfect product, myself. My official agent Gerald Grant has done a stellar job of looking after the finances, and his wife Averil Grant looked after the constituency office during a very busy time, and did it single-handedly. I thank all of them for their help, and the result is that I am back in the House of Commons for my third term.
Throughout the campaign I promised the voters of Wetaskiwin that I would bring their message to Ottawa. It would not be the other way around, that I would never bring Ottawa's message to them. I would be their servant.
My constituents have asked me to bring a message to the government and to the Prime Minister. Part of that message is that they want the government to be fiscally accountable and responsible. They want the government to treat all Canadians equally regardless of where they live or who they support.
My constituents do not want and certainly do not need the Prime Minister's tough love. They want and deserve respect from the Prime Minister and his government. Last week's throne speech was not a great start. It had even more platitudes than previous speeches from the throne. It was notable in that it had very little to say and it was notable in what it did not say.
When the government came into power in 1993 the national debt and deficit had reached astronomical proportions. A responsible government would have made tough decisions to cut wasteful and unnecessary spending in order to get things back on track. Not these Liberals. Instead, they kept their patronage ridden, make work projects, and they balanced the budget by raising taxes and offloading expenses on to the provinces and municipalities.
The throne speech promised that the government would fund improvements to municipal water and waste water systems through the federal-provincial-municipal Canada infrastructure program. That is the same promise that we heard in red book one. Instead, millions of dollars were squandered on questionable infrastructure spending.
In the 35th parliament the government announced the $6 billion infrastructure program. Here are some of the examples of what the government thinks are infrastructure and how that money was spent, and I beg to differ with it. There were bowling alley renovations in Ontario. There were a $24 million tennis stadium and a $14.4 million circus training centre in Montreal. There were a fountain in Shawinigan and golf courses in Atlantic Canada. Hardly any of that in the wildest imagination is infrastructure.
It appears that municipal sewage and water treatment infrastructure was not a high priority for the Liberal government as bowling alleys or golf courses. In the short term, make work projects designed to provide Liberal backbenchers with photo ops better describe it. The main reason to invest in infrastructure should be to make sure that the economy remains competitive and buoyant.
If a municipality, a province or a country cannot offer clean water, a reliable transportation system and affordable housing, businesses will locate somewhere else. If the British Columbia companies participating in the upcoming team Canada trade mission to China win large contracts, they will be faced with the problems of how to get their products to port because of deteriorating, congested road networks.
If Canadian companies cannot get their products to market, they will simply lose those contracts. Workers will have to be laid off and there will be a deteriorating effect on the economy. The government will then have fewer tax dollars to collect from those people.
Canadians, whether they live in the west, the east, the centre or the north, expect the government to provide core services. They pay enough taxes to justify these expectations. Before the government embarks on another potentially frivolous infrastructure plan, it should recognize what was wrong with the first two and steer clear of culture and social infrastructure components that led to many boondoggles.
Existing physical infrastructure has long been one of the areas consistently neglected by the government. An infrastructure program should embody economic efficiency and be a patronage free zone. By the end of the program in 1999, the Liberals' inefficient manner of allocating taxpayer dollars was obvious.
They left the private sector out of the picture in helping to identify, finance and administer the projects. Unless the neglect is followed up by an innovative way of finding new areas of financing, Canada's infrastructure will continue to deteriorate to the point where governments will be required to spend more money for improvements. As a matter of fact, improvements might not do it. They might have to completely rebuild the infrastructure.
Treasury Board claims that the program was not renewed in 1999 because the economy was booming. That brings us to where we are today: another red book and another throne speech promising to fix Canada's roads and sewers.
This time the government is still promising $2.6 billion, as announced in the February budget, for new physical infrastructure. Is it any wonder that westerners are skeptical and nearly shut out the Liberals in the last election?
If the economy is booming and Canada does not need another infrastructure program, we have to wonder why the government is renewing this program. Perhaps it has something to do with bringing goodies to certain regions of the country. For instance, Quebec got $515 million in federal contributions while Alberta got only $171 million. This is not regional fairness. Albertans have heard the same storyline over and over.
Yesterday the auditor general noted that Canadians get upset and angry when they see their tax dollars wasted. We cannot blame them. They expect the government to take the same care of and have the same prudence with their money as they themselves must.
I would like to point out that my former colleague in the House, the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, Lee Morrison, authored a private member's bill that would have dedicated revenues from fuel taxes for repair of our crumbling highways. Our Trans-Canada Highway is a shame, a disaster, and I think his idea is one that is well worth exploring.
I want to conclude by saying that if the Prime Minister doubts what I am saying, he can visit the great riding of Wetaskiwin. We would be glad to have people meet with him and give him this exact message.
The other message the people of Wetaskiwin want me to deliver to this place today is that they want to see a country in which their children and grandchildren are treated with respect, have unlimited opportunity and have a government they can respect.