Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of rhetoric from the Liberal side especially about balanced budgets for the last five years. If Canadians did the math they would realize that these guys have been in power for seven, going on eight years now. The first year was a little tough. A big deficit was brought forward and the Liberals had to deal with that, although they did it in certain ways we did not agree with. Then they kind of missed a few years. Probably the reason was there was no budget. A lot of us missed the chance to harangue them last year when they did not bring one down.
Since that time the loonie has basically tanked. There are a couple of quotes by the new Liberal member, the member for Richmond, which I would like to share with folks. On December 11 just after the budget came down he talked about the Liberals strangling the Canadian economy. That is his quote. He also talked about condemning Canada to a bargain basement dollar. I wonder if he still shares those ideals with folks now that he sits in that caucus. It would be very interesting to be involved in some of their caucus discussions to see if that is still the rule.
In balancing the budget, which the Liberals claim they have done, a few things stand out as glaring errors or omissions in the numbers that have kind of been fudged to make that happen. An EI surplus of almost $40 billion has disappeared. There is no money in that account. It went into general revenues. Some $30 billion has grown legs and walked away from the civil service pension plan. In that same timeframe, $25 billion has been pulled out of health care and social transfers to the provinces. Add that up and there is $95 billion of funny money creative accounting to help balance the budget.
We always have to pay the piper. Somewhere down the line we will have to put some of that money back in. Where is it going to come from? We are barely squeaking by now. We saw a surplus this year of $1.5 billion. That is not going to cover a $95 billion asset that will have to be put back at some point in the future.
In its political spin, the government branded it as a security budget. Canadians do not feel very secure with the economy in the tank like it is. The government branded it as a security budget, yet just days before the budget came down, the auditor general in her report talked about $16.5 billion of wasted, mismanaged spending in various government departments.
The auditor general pointed out that defence alone needed $2 billion to get ratcheted back up to a standard that would not leave us limping behind places like Luxembourg and other world powers such as that. The auditor general called for $2 billion. What did the government deliver? Two hundred million dollars.
It is a pittance compared to what the armed forces need, especially now that we have sent them off to Afghanistan in funny coloured uniforms, with half of their equipment stuck in Germany which cannot find its way to Afghanistan. They are borrowing rations from the Americans. They are rationing water. We are one of the richest countries in the world when it comes to clean water and our troops over there have to ration it because we cannot get their supplies to them. The government has absolutely ridiculous accounting practices. Our troops do not have stoves and they are bumming candles from the Americans to heat their borrowed food.
They have rigged up latrines out of fuel barrels, planks and tarps. It is a coed army. I am sure some of the ladies are doing an exemplary job by simply being over there. Our troops are limping along because the Liberals will not supply them with what they need to get the job done in a way which lets them hold their heads high. Our troops are doing a tremendous job.
In talking about government priorities, one of the major priorities over the last number of years has been the long gun registry. The Liberals have put between $650 million and $800 million into that bogus program, depending on whose numbers one looks at, and only $200 million into the military. They are targeting the wrong folks. Let us get the money to where it is needed. If we are going to fight a war on terrorism, let us target the terrorists, not the farmers and duck hunters.
As I said, the auditor general pointed out there is over $16.5 billion in waste and mismanagement across this great country. That is a huge statement. Not one thin dime of that was addressed in the budget. It all disappeared. There is no consensus or drive by the government to find out where that money went and whether we are getting a bang for our taxpayer dollar. The auditor general says no, that it is very questionable. Canadians are saying it is very questionable.
There is a lot of talk about the Minister of Finance forwarding the big tax program he talked about just before the fall 2000 election. People should look at their January paycheques. I looked at mine and my net pay is down. No one is going to cry for a member of parliament; we are overpaid and underworked. My paycheque is down so that tells me that all the folks whom I represent are facing the same dilemma.
With regard to the Canada pension plan, there is a 14% increase to maintain a program which has been gutted by lending money to provinces that have not paid it back.
There are huge unfunded liabilities. These are huge dollars. We are mortgaging our future on to the next generation and the generation after that. It has to stop.
When I first became involved with the Reform Party we had a saying that if we wanted to stop digging a hole, the first thing to do was to quit digging. We are digging ourselves further and further into debt. The creative accounting we see in budget after budget does nothing to address that huge hole which has been created.
There are a couple of decent things in the budget when it comes to my riding. The government announced that it is going to target fetal alcohol syndrome. That is good news and is long overdue. Let us get it done, but let us go to the source. The budget is long on dollars but short on detail. Apparently $60 million has been allocated for that but how is the government going to do it? How is it going to make the program work where it needs to work? It does not say in the budget.
The finance minister was in North Battleford the week before we came back to this place. He was harangued by the crowd about the government's lack of vision for agriculture. That is our bread and butter out there. It is everybody's bread and butter across the country. Anybody who enjoys eating has to thank a farmer somewhere along the way.
Yesterday was food freedom day. Yet it is only nine days into the year that producers themselves are paid for their hard work and their sweat equity and all the overhead costs they incur to give us the safest, most secure food supply in the world. It is just unfair.
The budget showed what the government thinks about agriculture. There is one line which talks about the long term sustainability of agriculture. There is no idea of how to do it and no dollars are allocated to it. There is no program, no plan and no strategy. There is zero, absolutely nothing.
The agriculture minister cried about the AIDA program. He said it was great, that it was going to be the answer and would do wonderful things. It was a huge disappointment.
The only thing that angers people in my part of the world more than the long gun registry is the way the government treats agriculture. A Liberal could not get elected out there. If they tied pork chops around their necks, the dogs would not even play with them. That is how bad it has become out there. People do not trust those folks at all and that is their absolute right because they see that these programs are long on rhetoric and short on substance.
The agriculture minister said that they will redo the safety nets. I started farming in 1972. I have heard that line again and again and they are still a dismal failure. There is no way that people out there are ever going to buy into that type of rhetoric.
Huge dollars, $2 billion, have been allocated to infrastructure. That is great news. The problem is the asterisk beside the figure in the budget and the little note at the bottom of the page which says it is only going to apply if there is a surplus and money to do it. Again, it is long on rhetoric and short on planning.
In the past year my own community of North Battleford suffered a severe blow with a water problem. We applied to the government for emergency funding. There is a program in place to build a new sewage facility. We cannot trigger the money to speed that up and get us over the hump when it comes to safe infrastructure, water and sewers and so on across the country. This is another huge glaring deficit.
Highway 51 is in my riding. A group in my riding formed a committee. Saskatchewan has seatbelt rules and they are a necessity for anyone who drives down that highway. People would be thrown out of their trucks if they were not wearing their seatbelts. That is how bad it has become. Small vehicles cannot drive down that road because they would disappear into the pot holes. We would drive right over top of them. Volkswagens are good because they have a nice and smooth curved roof.
It is absolutely ridiculous that these guys cannot understand that Canadians are finally catching on to their unfunded, undelivered promises. The budget is a glaring error of omission. It is long on rhetoric and short on substance.