Mr. Speaker, I certainly am pleased to rise and speak in this prebudget debate. In beginning my presentation, I would like to talk a bit about the truth of the prebudget consultations, in which I was involved for the fourth time in my nine years in Parliament. The member for Hillsborough also was involved . In fact, I honestly think that a lot of people have a misconception about the prebudget consultations.
With all due respect to the chairman of the finance committee, who I believe is doing an admiral job and who really has her heart in it, and to many members of the finance committee who have travelled around the country trying to do their jobs, the sad fact is that, like so many other reports and so many other bits of input that committees give to cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister, the prebudget report is quite irrelevant. The dirty truth is that the government agenda has already been carved in stone before the prebudget committee hearings even get off the ground.
It is a sham on the part of the government. It sends members of Parliament across the country year after year, season after season, in this case prebudget after prebudget, to get input from the Canadian people, which is put in the form of a report, along with the minority reports, and the government has no intention of following up on anything that has been presented.
In the four years I have spent on the finance committee, and if I had about an hour, I could list all the things that the finance committee has recommended to the government as priority items and upon which the government still has not acted.
This budget could better be described as a fudge it considering how the government has been manipulating the taxpayers' dollars in the way it spends money, in the way it hides money, in the way it misrepresents its programs and in the sheer incompetence of some ministers and their departments as they are handling taxpayer money.
This party, since it came here and before it came here, believed that a government had the responsibility to regard taxpayer dollars as a sacred trust. The terms Liberal and sacred taxpayer dollars is certainly a conflict in terms.
When we talk about this budget, the promises of the government and the way it sometimes tugs at people's heartstrings when it talks about Canadian values and wanting to reflect what it is doing, Canadians are asking themselves the question, who in their right mind in this country, given the performance of the government since 1993, not even in particular to this last year where we have uncovered billions of dollars in mismanagement, waste and downright stupidity, can really trust the Liberal government?
Can we trust any more that it is telling us the truth? Can we trust that it will use our tax dollars in a prudent fashion? Can we trust that it will understand what the priorities of Canadians really are?
Can we trust it to follow its own agenda, notwithstanding what the Canadian people hold as priorities, and regard the priorities of Canadians as something that is foreign to an agenda that is already set and carved in stone? Yes, we can trust it to do that.
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Edmonton--Strathcona.
The member for Hillsborough just mentioned the finance minister. By the way, Mr. Speaker, I have not seen the former finance minister lately. Is he still in the country? Oh, that is right, we are talking about Kyoto these days and this is a period of no commitment for the member for LaSalle--Émard.
The member for Hillsborough asked if anyone remembered the former finance minister's promise of $100 billion in tax cuts. The key word there is promise. We would have believed that statement if he had put it on the table the day he made the statement in the form of a cashable refund cheque to Canadians. One year between budget to budget is a lifetime for the Liberal government and things can change as the mood changes across the way. We have seen that often enough.
Let me say what the member for Hillsborough maybe should have said. Does anybody in the House remember the former finance minister promising $100 billion in tax cuts? The member should have carried on by saying “which followed six years of massive tax increases in over 60 areas of taxation, including bracket creep, CPP premium increases and withholding cuts that would have been responsible, such as in the EI program”.
When the member for Hillsborough and other Liberals talk about how great they were to balance the budget, we must not forget that they balanced the budget through increased taxation and through inflated EI premiums in which they built a surplus of some $35 billion or $40 billion. It would not take a rocket scientist, much less a Liberal, to balance a budget if they could simply pull a golden lever and have cash come out every time it was needed.
The government put the Canadian taxpayer in a vice and every time it needed money to balance its budget, it pulled a lever and squeezed the last drop of income out of the Canadian taxpayer.
Back in 1993 one parent from a single income family would stay at home to look after the kids because that was their choice. Through increased taxation, that choice was taken away from thousands upon thousands of Canadian families because of the insatiable appetite of the Liberal government to squeeze the last tax dollar out of Canadians.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, because you were here when it was debated time and again, from 1993 until 2000 disposable family income shrank dramatically and disposable income for single working Canadians shrank dramatically. What was the benefit of that? It did not benefit Canadians who wanted to provide the basics of life for their families, such as food, clothing, and maybe in a good year put a down payment on a new car or do some renovations. There was no benefit to the Canadian taxpayer.
The government benefited because it was able to wring the last tax dollar out of the Canadian taxpayer in order to satisfy, not only its sort of sneaky way of balancing its budget, but also to spend money yearly on new programs. The government had to get its money from someplace and it received it from the Canadian taxpayer. That is sad but true.
While we debate the prebudget report the prebudget committee consultations could at best be called “a dog and pony show” because the government's agenda for tax and spin had already been carved in stone. Yes, there would be a few crumbs thrown on the side to pacify some but the thing was a sham and the government knows it.