Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in debate on the budget that just came down not long ago. I will also be splitting my time with the member for Selkirk—Interlake.
If I were to characterize this budget compared to any previous budget the government has brought down, I would say that this one is by far the worst budget the government has ever produced.
At a time when taxpayers are building up a massive surplus for the government, the government rather imprudently has decided, instead of paying down the debt, lowering taxes, or eliminating waste, to go on an incredible massive spending spree the likes of which we have not seen in this place since I have been here.
Not only did the government blow the surplus for this year, but it will blow it for next year, the year after, and the year after that. We are very disappointed on this side that the government has been that irresponsible with taxpayers' money.
I wanted to mention that in light of the hon. member for York South—Weston who just spoke. He spoke about how the government was making a commitment to transparency, accountability and eliminating waste.
What did the government do? Did it eliminate any waste in the budget? Did it announce any waste that it is eliminating? No. It drove spending through the roof. The government did not announce one dollar in reductions in wasteful spending, even though we all know that there are billions of dollars of waste in that government.
Let us look at the firearms registry. This is a program that was over budget by 50,000%. I know that sounds incredible and I invite people to do the math. It was supposed to cost $2 million. It will come in around a billion dollars at least. Now we are talking about the firearms registry going even higher than that. We are very discouraged with how the government treats taxpayers' dollars.
Since 1997 the government has driven spending 45% higher. It is rather obvious that the spenders on the Liberal side have taken control and they are going crazy with taxpayers' money. At the same time we still bear a debt of $536 billion. We spend about 21% of every tax dollar to pay the interest on the debt. We have many concerns with the budget.
When the hon. member talks about transparency I am concerned about the fact that the government did nothing to address the issue of trusts and private foundations. These are agencies and different bodies that the government has set up outside of the normal accounting practices of government, so that in effect it can hide surpluses and keep these bodies away from the prying eyes of the Auditor General and parliamentarians who want to bring scrutiny to this use of taxpayers' money.
The government talks about transparency and accountability on one hand, however, on the other hand it does nothing about it. It flouts the Auditor General. The government goes ahead and continues those sorts of practices.
Another thing the government has done, and again the Auditor General has been extraordinarily critical of the government on this count, relates to the child benefit. Instead of booking it as an expense which it clearly is, and not a little one because we are talking about almost $10 billion, the government books it as a tax cut. This is unbelievable.
This is not a situation where people are allowed to keep their own money. In some cases people are not paying any income tax and still receive the child benefit. It cannot be called a tax cut. The Auditor General and just about everybody who follows these things has been extraordinarily critical of the government on that count.
The government talks about transparency and accountability. What does the government do? It ignores recommendations from people such as the Auditor General and go merrily along and continue to book these things as tax cuts, when in fact they are undoubtedly a huge expenditure. On those counts we are critical.
I want to say a few words about a policy area that is of my particular interest as the critic for human resources development for the Canadian Alliance. It is something that the member for York South--Weston just spoke about a minute ago. I want to speak about child care.
I have a couple of boys, and my wife and I over the years have tried many forms of child care. When we were first married we had our oldest son in day care for a period of time. After that we had our boys staying in one case with a neighbour across the alley. She looked after our youngest boy for a long time. Our oldest boy at one time went to a friend a couple of blocks away. Of course, for a number of years my wife made the choice to stay home and look after the children herself. We have done it all. We know a little about child care from personal experience.
I do not understand why the government places absolutely no value in parental personal values and the choices that they want to make with respect to child care.
The government brought in a billion dollar program in the budget to funnel people in to its chosen form of child care, which is regulated day care. In others words, if persons choose day care they will get a tax break, but if they choose some other form of child care, like looking after children themselves or taking them to grandma or to a neighbour, they are out of luck. For some reason the government does not value the idea of choice in child care. It wants to ram everybody into its particular form of child care.
The Canadian Alliance opposes that. We say that what should happen is that all parents with children should get a child care deduction. In the 2000 election we proposed a $3,000 deduction for all families with children under the age of 16. That would mean they could take that money and use if for whatever they want. Maybe that would allow one spouse in the relationship to stay at home with the child now that they have that big tax break, or they could take that money and purchase day care with it, or they could take that money and use it to pay the neighbour across the alley to look after their children.
The government has decided that there is one way and one way only to look after children, and that is to force them into regulated day care. That is wrong.
Why does the government not respect the ability of parents to make those decisions? Why does it discriminate against single income families, people who make the decision to stay at home? Why does it force people who would make a different choice to pay taxes so that the government can then take that money and channel it into one form of child care, which is regulated day care? Some people may make that choice. I do not care. It is up to them, but let us not discriminate against people who make a different choice.
I do not know how many times in the last Parliament, when this became a big issue, we received e-mails and letters from people who said that they were sick and tired of seeing the government discriminate against a particular form of child care. Overwhelmingly this was people who were single income families, people who decided to have either mom or dad stay at home and look after the children or in some cases it was to have grandma across the way look after the children.
I am hugely critical of the government when it comes to that particular issue. I do not understand why the minister, who has never provided an explanation, has taken this hard core, uncompromising stance against single income families who make other choices. It is completely and utterly wrong.
The budget has made a number of mistakes and I have pointed to many them. We hope that the government will come to its senses and not spend away the entire surplus, not only for this year but years to come. We hope that the government will start to recognize the expertise of individual parents who know much better how to care for their own children than the hon. Minister of Human Resources Development.