Mr. Speaker, I look forward to completing an analysis of the budget. We are able to do that after several months of looking it over and seeing the impact on the Canadian economy and the issues that were touched on in the budget.
It is interesting to note that the budget has completely failed to address the issue of the dollar. The dollar has hit a record low. The budget has not dealt with the mismanagement of taxpayer funds. It has not addressed the concerns of the military. It has failed to mention agriculture in a meaningful way. It has completely ignored the health care crisis. The budget is a failure. It was and is a failure.
I will rattle off some quotes from the leader of the coalition that sits on this side of House about the budget. I would especially ask the members of the official opposition to compare them with their own position, which I think is very similar to the one I campaigned on in the last federal election.
On debt repayment, the quote is:
We must pay down our national mortgage. There should be a scheduled debt reduction plan that would force the government to pay down our debt.
I like that. I campaigned on that. It is a good policy.
On waste and mismanagement, the quote is:
The Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Human Resources Development are allowed to keep on wasting millions of dollars in their grants and contributions programs despite the clear and repeated criticisms of the auditor general.
In other words, they have ignored the auditor general. They continue to ignore the auditor general. The advice from the new AG is the same as the advice from the last AG, which is for the Liberals to get their act together over there. Learn how to spend our dollars properly. Quit wasting government money, which is tax dollars that come out of the hard-earned paycheques of Canadians. They should get with a system over there that looks after the waste concerns and addresses the auditor general's consistent demands.
On national defence, the quote from the member for Calgary Centre is:
As part of the much vaunted security package, the budget gives the Department of National Defence $629 million over five years for the Canadian forces. However, the department's own business plan states that it is $1.3 billion short per year to fulfill the tasks already assigned to it.
The government adds more new tasks than money. Absolutely we have to rebuild the military. I totally agree with that statement. It is consistent with what I campaigned on. It is consistent with what the official opposition has said. I believe that it is the right way to go.
On health care:
The same goes for health care financing. The budget contains no new initiative for this issue of such great concern to Canadians.
Of course it is of great concern. We see problems from coast to coast. In fact, because of the abdication of leadership by the federal Liberal government, the provinces now are getting together. They are putting together plans. They are going it alone because of the lack of leadership and the lack of funding, the lack of direction, the lack of focus, the lack of concern for the number one issue in the country which is health care.
Even with the money in this budget, the health care funding package is less than when the government took office. Eight and one-half years later, it is still inadequate. Instead of transferring the money from wasteful spending over to the health care package, the government is happy to let it go. It sifts like sand through the Liberals' hands to be spent on every project under the sun including the ministers' pet projects.
On tax relief, in the analysis by the member for Calgary Centre, the right hon. former prime minister says that tax levels are too high. By the time we add the CPP premiums and the EI premiums, there is no tax break in the budget. In fact, the only major tax breaks are re-announcements of old tax breaks. Even they show that there is no real tax relief in the overall package. We are paying more taxes. Our tax as a percentage of our gross income continues to go up and the government seems unconcerned.
The position of the coalition on this side of the House is that EI premiums are too high. They are too high and the benefits do not match the amount of money going into the program. In other words, EI's own auditor says there is too much money in the package. We are being taxed at too high a rate. That money should either be reduced or given back to the workers in the form of benefits, one or the other. It is an insurance program. It belongs to the workers. Lower the premiums or allow people to draw on them, but the government does neither.
We could go on with other things we have in common, things that are not addressed in the budget but are firm policy commitments on this side of the House and on which there is a lot of agreement.
We are seeing again the fiasco of the government's handling of Bill C-68 and the amount of wasted money. Our coalition and the official opposition say to repeal it because it is not doing the job of increasing safety. It is increasing our tax load. Hundreds of millions of dollars that should go toward preventing crime and addressing the concerns of crime and violence against women instead are used in a registry.
We now see that the administration of the registry is being handed over to the private sector. I can hardly wait for the contract on that. No doubt some longtime associate of someone over there will be very happy to see it.
The point I am trying to make is that there is a broad consensus in a good part of the country that things need to change. There is a consensus on this side of the House that things need to change.
During the Alliance leadership race I would invite those members to examine how much commonality we have. We can agree there are things that should change. As we have been saying for some time, why do we not find ways to work together? The government obviously does not have its act together. If we had our act together, perhaps it would listen to the collective words of all of us.