My colleague from Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough brings up a good point. When my former colleague, Peter Mancini, was in this place he pushed very hard to reinstate the ports police, an initiative which I supported. We need him back.
However I suspect the airport surcharge will be used to offset security means in other areas. The government will make air passengers pay for that.
My Liberal colleagues across way will not put in $60 million worth of security at airports in Atlantic Canada but that is what they will take out. They will divert that money into other areas and that is offensive to the people of Atlantic Canada, especially to the people my area. I represent the Halifax airport and it is absolutely criminal for the government to do that.
The government talks about balanced budgets. If it were not for employees and employers of this country, there would be no balanced budget. The government has used the money from the EI fund to offset its other items in the budget for a long time. It is completely unacceptable that workers and small businesses have to pay for the fantasy work of the Liberal accounting spin doctors over there. That $24 surcharge is completely unacceptable. The government will not put that money back into Atlantic Canada. We are asking the government to reduce that cost.
No one is denying the fact that we have to put more money into security and that the airports are a good place to put it. On top of every other fee Canadian air travellers have to pay, it is completely unacceptable to charge them that much money. Just as unacceptable is the fact that the government has asked when airlines to lower their fees when they are struggling.
There is another point in the budget that the Liberals never mention. I and my colleague from Nova Scotia, and others probably, received over 106,000 phone calls from Canadians who received the most offensive letter I think I have ever seen from anybody in government. It is halfway down the first page of the new form they got for the disability tax credit. It is not a review. It is not to see if anyone is cheating the system. It blatantly says that if a person can go 50 metres on a flat surface with a device, they can no longer qualify for the disability tax credit. That is one of the most offensive things I think my colleagues in the Liberal Party have ever done in their history of being in government.
Can anyone imagine that? Because of new wording in that form, our amputees, our elderly and our veterans no longer qualify for the measly disability tax credit. The maximum allowable was only $1,000. In most cases in my riding, and I have had well over a couple of hundred calls on this, the average disability tax credit refund was about $450. The government is taking that money away from the amputees, the mentally challenged and the physically disabled of this country. That is one of the most offensive things I think I have ever seen from any government, let alone this Liberal government.
I encourage the government to stop that form, to drop it, to put a moratorium on it and to allow people to claim their disability tax credit. It should then work with the various organizations.
My colleague from Dartmouth has been front and centre on trying to encourage the committee and the government to stop harassing the most vulnerable in our society in order to put that money into other areas.
The government is very good at wasting our tax dollars. It spent over $1 billion on a home heating oil rebate. Seven thousand people in the United States got the rebate. Every prisoner in literally every jail cell in the country got the rebate. People who did not even buy fuel got the rebate and thousands of dead folks got the rebate. We know now that it was just a typical move for the government to spend the money and hope the election would go its way. That is unacceptable.
The Liberals spent $1.6 billion on the technology transfer programs. Again, no accountability. Only 2.5% of that money has ever been returned. The Minister of Industry called it an investment but there has been no clarification on where those taxes actually went.
The Minister of Public Works spent $500,000 on a study and nobody knows where the study is or what it is for. The money would have done a lot for the people of Canso, Nova Scotia, for example. My colleague from Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough has been fighting very hard for the people of Canso. But no, it has to go to the government's Liberal friends for a report that nobody knows anything about or even knows where it is. It is incredible.
There are concerns about the military. Everybody was telling the government to put more money into the military: the Standing Committee on Defence and Veterans Affairs; the auditor general; the Conference of Defence Associations; everybody. If there was ever a time to put more money into the military, it was then. What did the government do? It put in $1.2 billion over five years when everyone was saying that we needed a minimum $1 billion just to start. Half of that money has already been spent on Operation Apollo. The money given to the military through the budget is woefully inadequate.
I have to reiterate my opposition to this budget and our party's opposition. The $24 surcharge is far too much. The disability tax credit is an affront to the most vulnerable in our society and our military deserves a lot better than what it got from the government.