Madam Speaker, I found it extremely interesting listening to the parliamentary secretary brag about a government that has cut the deficit. He forgets that the government when was elected it promised Canadians it would eliminate the GST. That is not the real reason why it paid down the deficit. It paid down the deficit by cutting the guts out of health care and the defence department. I could go on and on. That is the real reason it got the deficit down. Then the government had the GST money to play with, to spend on its Liberal programs. The government also does not talk about the fact that the debt is larger today than when it took over.
What is there to brag about? The debt is larger. The government could have used a lot of the money it spends on its wasteful programs, like the billion dollar boondoggle and the gun registry, to lower the debt, to ensure that our dollar was stronger and to ensure that Canadians did not owe so much money. That is the Liberal way.
The budget of February 18 was as close to a socialist Liberal document as the House has seen since the wild spending days of the sixties and seventies. The word “prudence” has been ripped from the Liberal vocabulary.
This was an equal opportunity budget. Every working Canadian has an equal opportunity to watch his or her hard earned dollars squandered by a lame duck Prime Minister and a wannabe Prime Minister. Every mother, father and child is equal in Liberal eyes as a potential source for the dollars needed to buy off the special interest groups or as inspiration to write reams of new legislation to control their lives.
This is a government that believes every living Canadian has an equal opportunity to be denied a higher standard of living because Liberals like to chase hare-brained schemes that cost billions of dollars more than the millions they promised.
Last week the finance minister boasted about the number of new jobs created within the Canadian economy. Liberals are always quick to claim credit for employment gains but they are painfully slow to recognize and respond to the needs of the people who are responsible for job creation. Remember that. Liberals take credit for the job creation but rarely do anything to help the real creators of jobs: Canada's living, breathing and risk taking entrepreneurs.
Let me cite figures regarding Canada's food services industry. This is an industry with annual sales of $42 billion with more than one million employees. It is the largest employer in this country. That is over 6.5% of Canada's total workforce. These are employers and employees who fund the employment insurance program, and $45 billion over recent years has been stolen from them by the Liberals.
The Liberals rattle on about a $45 billion employment insurance fund but they hide the truth from Canadians. There is no fund. There is no surplus. All that money, all $45 billion has been spent, squandered by the Liberals who all time pretended it was being banked for the employers and the employees.
Now the Liberals are promising to reduce contributions by 12¢ and that is beginning next year. That will give the Liberals a juicy $3 billion to add to their slush fund in the next 12 months. Why could it not have been now, not next year?
I have two questions. Why is it when Liberals promise to return money to the taxpayers it is never immediately? It is always next year or the year after that. Why did they not reduce employment insurance premiums immediately? It would have pumped $3 billion into the economy this year alone. That would have been $3 billion for those employees and employers, the people, the entrepreneurs and the risk takers in this country. That $3 billion, circulated among taxpayers, would help our economy a lot more than having Liberals pick it over like vultures on a carcass. We know that a lot of good and dedicated people at senior levels and middle management are as dismayed by political spending as we are.
Here is another question which has to do with the Liberal belief that equal opportunity means the working poor must feel more pain than wealthy Canadians. Why will the Liberals not adopt a yearly basic exemption which would benefit those most truly in need: low income Canadians and labour intensive businesses? A $3,000 yearly basic exemption would benefit lower income Canadians and working students who pay a higher percentage of their incomes to the system than the higher income earners. Those Canadians who would benefit from this system should know and remember that it is the Liberals who are resisting this wonderful idea.
The Liberals who are resisting are those who pretend they have the talent, compassion and vision that leadership requires. They are the ancient mariner himself, the member for LaSalle--Émard, and the present finance minister, the member for Ottawa South. Many people who are employers and employees in the food services industry in both of those ridings should remember they have no friends in the Liberal Party.
What last week's budget confirmed for thoughtful Canadians is that the Liberals will never change. They will continue to gouge all Canadians for more tax dollars because the Liberal priority is to spend.
A party that cared about the future of Canada, and not about the future of the party alone, would have brought in a budget of compassion and vision. A party that cared less about power and more about the people it purports to govern would have reversed the spending and tax cut numbers in that budget. It announced $17.4 billion in new spending over three years, but returns only $2.3 billion to the taxpayers over that same period. That tells us what the Liberal government is all about.
It would amaze and please taxpayers if just once the Liberals announced they planned to return more to taxpayers and to spend less on HRDC boondoggles, the firearms registry, or to lose less to GST fraud.
A government that cared less about power and more about its citizens would never have promised and then tried to implement a firearms registry program. This is another billion dollar scandal on top of so many that have gone on before. I mentioned the HRDC boondoggle and we are waiting with trepidation for the final cost to taxpayers of the GST fraud, but a billion dollars is not out of the question.
A government that cared about families and lower income earners would listen when the Canadian Alliance called for a reduction in the federal tax on gasoline. A government that cared would immediately implement a yearly basic exemption for lower income earners.
A government that cared would never have squandered all the billions of employment insurance money sent in by trusting and hardworking Canadians. They all believed that money was being banked for their use on a rainy day. Little did they know that the Liberals did not put one penny in the bank. They spent every last one of those pennies, some $45 billion dollars.
A government that cared about Canadians would have listened when the Canadian Alliance said there was sufficient surplus in last week's budget to allow for a reduction in the much hated goods and services tax. A party that cared about Canadians would never have lied in 1993 and promised to scrap, kill, and banish forever the Conservative goods and services tax. This was a promise made during the election, but totally ignored after the election.
A compassionate and caring government would understand that many of the people who work at lower paying jobs are not always there out of choice while others are. It would never occur to a smug Liberal finance minister that many of the people in the food services industry, for instance, are there because they are working their way through school. They do not have scholarships like the ones awarded to up and coming Liberals.
Only a Liberal could sit back smugly and say that only Liberals know best when it comes to day care and one Liberal size fits all.
Why can families not choose on their own the way they want to raise their children? For instance, a married couple employed in the food services industry with children might well be working opposing shifts so that one parent is with the children at all times. That is good parenting by any definition except the Liberal definition.
If the finance minister and the Liberals had any compassion, they would have introduced a yearly basic exemption of $3,000. That would make a small difference in the lives and well-being of that married couple employed in the food services industry. Had the government listened to the Alliance and implemented a $3,000 per child deduction, that couple would still be productive members of society and have the option of choosing what they deem best for their family and their children. We do not understand, nor do Canadians, why the Liberals believe only they and the bureaucrats know best how Canadian parents should raise their children.
Another question that must be asked is, why do Liberals keep on committing our military people to foreign assignments while letting their clothing and equipment become tattered and rusty? It is bad enough they cannot make up their minds about what to do regarding the Iraq crisis, but to treat our military the way Liberals have treated our military is beyond comprehension.
Liberals ask so much of our military personnel and yet give them so little of what they need to do the job that is asked of them. Unlike Liberals, we in the Canadian Alliance are proud of our men and women in all branches of the armed services. Like Canadians generally, our people in the armed forces deserve better.
This was not a budget for Canadians. This was a budget for the ambitious and vindictive, on one hand a finance minister's leadership agenda, and on the other hand a Prime Minister who seeks revenge. It was not a budget for future Canadians either. The debt today is higher than it was when the Liberals were elected in 1993.