Debates of March 17th, 2003

The Budget

[Yolande Thibeault, Liberal, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague opposite for this question. I listened to his remarks, and I can assure hon. members that in my riding, for example—to speak of a place I know well—nearly $7 million was invested, resulting in more than 20 initiatives. A dozen beds were added in a shelter for the homeless; apartments were provided for former residents of psychiatric institutions who need a transition period; Repas du Passant is another initiative in my riding to feed people living on the street. About 15 such projects are underway in my riding.

Allow me to share a little anecdote. Three or four weeks ago, the labour minister said to me, “You have been lucky, Yolande; there are several projects in your riding.” My reply was, “That is one way of looking at it, Madam Minister, but, in fact, this shows how great the needs are in my riding, and across Canada”.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the hon. member who expressed great concern about the plight of the homeless and the increasing numbers of homeless people in Canada as well as the increasing pain and suffering to which they have been subjected.

I have no doubt that the member is very concerned about that. However, the reality is that the budget introduced by her government, while acknowledging that there are at least 100,000 homeless people in Canada today--a massive increase over anything we have experienced before--only offers in total 2,500 homes.

Can she shed some light on why the government turned its back on the very comprehensive proposal for the 1% solution put forward after a great deal of consultation among groups committed to affordable housing, groups working with the homeless, and non-profit and cooperative housing?

[Yolande Thibeault, Liberal, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague opposite is referring to a situation that may be different from that of the homeless. She is talking about affordable housing and social housing.

This year, the government chose to add funding. Naturally, for the working poor, it will not be enough. It will never be enough. But if we look at what the government is doing for the homeless, in social housing and in other areas, I think that this budget is doing a great deal for our less fortunate fellow citizens.

[Howard Hilstrom, Canadian Alliance, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, today we return to debate the federal budget. This is the Prime Minister's swan song budget, which is the best way I could describe it. It is not the budget that is needed for Canada because the priorities are all wrong, and as a result, I do not support it. As I said earlier to the member from Prince Edward Island, many farmers across the country do not support it.

I only have a limited time of 10 minutes for my speech, so I will touch on the main topics of agriculture, health care and, of course, the firearms registry.

Priority spending by the government is the problem and the Firearms Act is the best representation of the mammoth waste of money. A billion dollars has been spent so far with more being spent every day and this budget will continue to support that.

City people and non gun owners should be opposed to the registration of all the rifles and shotguns in the country because it is such a mammoth waste of time. There are so many priorities that need to be dealt with in the cities, that even they need to be against this waste of money. It is the duty of every Canadian, and in particular every firearm owner, to oppose this firearms policy and this bill that was formerly known as Bill C-68 and the continued funding for it. We heard points of order in the House this morning about how the government allegedly continues to deceive not only the House but also Canadians in general.

I do not know if the justice minister is listening to my speech this morning. I hope that he has some staff members listening to it.

In the farming and ranching communities we use firearms, rifles and shotguns on a regular basis. Farmers also have a hard time making a net profit and here we have the government imposing all these additional costs on them with no benefit to them.

The government calls it user fees, but in fact firearm owners are not the users. The government thinks it is going to control crime, which it will not of course, but that is who the real user is, supposedly the Canadian general public.

Therefore, I have to stand here and tell the justice minister that along with tens of thousands of Canadians across the country who are firearms owners, I will never register a rifle or shotgun. We need them in our ranching operations, but this mammoth waste of money and the infringement on individual rights in the country has to stop someplace. This is the time for all of us in Canada to take a stand and see the end of the firearms registry. The mismanagement and waste continues to grow. The government continues to fund it out of this budget.

In the town of Beausejour, in my area, there are not enough police resources to fight crime. What the town of Beausejour had to do was take its bylaw enforcement officers off their regular duties of enforcing bylaws during the day and put them on night shifts to do the work of police officers who were not available. That is real crime control, not registering the rifles and shotguns of duck hunters, farmers and ranchers like myself.

There is very limited money to combat child pornography in Toronto and Montreal. Can members imagine how many children a billion dollars would save?

What about lives? I mentioned I was going to talk a little about health care. In Manitoba last year we had three heart patients waiting for surgery. There were just not enough doctors, nurses or facilities available. They had their surgery rescheduled and rescheduled, and those people died waiting for surgery. That is a terrible shame of mammoth wealth being misused and prioritized in the wrong way.

We have spousal abuse cases. This too is a very sad commentary.

In the province of Manitoba, of course, the NDP government is unwilling to properly fund our crown attorneys. It is unwilling to do anything innovative about health care. As a result, the NDP government in Manitoba says that it will not be innovative, but that it will send heart patients down to the States, out to B.C. or wherever people are innovative, to get their treatment and it will pay for it, but that there is no chance that it will change the health care system. The NDP government in Manitoba only deserves a little bit of blame for that. The federal government deserves a lot of blame for insisting that provinces cannot innovate with the mammoth amount of health care money that is going in there.

It is St. Patrick's Day and I might look like I am mad about the budget that has come down but the truth of the matter is that I am bloody mad about the waste of money by the government. We are on the verge of trying to remove a dictator out of a country, a dictator who is tremendously sadistic and kills his own people. Of course I am talking about Saddam Hussein. The world has always had to stand up to cold-blooded killers and people who attack the innocent, the unarmed and the people who cannot defend themselves. That is what Saddam Hussein is doing to his own people, whereas our budget on military matters is very limited. The budget throws in a little bit more money to it but it is so limited that it will just keep the armed forced going in their current situation with no real improvements.

Here again, priority of spending, back to the firearms registry. This is how the firearms registry is working. This is a letter from a constituent:

I would like to take this time to let you know what my experience with the firearm registration has been like. I had seven firearms to register. I was going to be ahead of the game when registering my firearms so I sent in ALL my information for my firearms via mail using the old application forms. In April 2002 I received my registration cards. I took a quick look at the registration cards and placed them in my desk and did not look at them till just the other day, February 23, 2003. Well to my surprise there were only five firearms accounted for!

I then proceeded to re-submit the information for the firearms that were missing via the website. As I took a closer look at the registration cards I noticed that one of the guns registered on my licence was not even one of my firearms! So now FOUR of my firearms are not registered. I sent in the information for these firearms through the website and sent an e-mail explaining what happened.

Today at work I started to think about this and wondered if my firearms were registered to someone else. Well I guess time will only tell.

I'm the type of guy who will usually not voice his concern. This takes the cake. We trust that competent people are in charge of this whole gun registry. My application is proof positive that this is not the case.

I was a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for 30 years. I am telling the government and Canadians that the firearms registry of rifles and shotguns will not work. It will not reduce crime and it will continue to waste money forever and ever if the government continues to support it.

I am really disappointed in the Canadian Police Association executive, not the policemen on the street, but the Canadian Police Association executive. It will be coming to Ottawa in the next few days to tell us all how the government should continue to spend billions of dollars on the firearms registry when in fact it knows that in the big cities of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary, police are trying to fight child pornography and child prostitution on our streets. That is the kind of crime that needs to be fought, not the registration of rifles and shotguns by farmers, ranchers and average Canadians.

My final comments on this to the justice minister and to the whole budget process is that I will not register my rifles and shotguns under this system.

[Paddy Torsney, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that a member of Parliament, who has pledged allegiance to the Queen and Her heirs, who comes here to pass legislation and who is responsible for invoking the laws of this country, would stand here in the House and say that he will disregard a law that has been rightfully passed by this country; a law that has passed through Parliament and through the Senate.

I wonder if the member for Selkirk--Interlake, as a former police officer and as a member of Parliament, would stand in his place and identify which other laws he will choose not to obey so that members of his constituency and all Canadians can get a full understanding of how it works when a law-abiding citizen chooses some laws to obey in spite of the fact that the majority of the population supports gun control, a majority of the members of the House passed the legislation and that in fact it is an important tool for police officers right across this country to deny access to guns.

How much money would he place on each of the lives that have been saved because guns have been held back from people who should not have them?

[Howard Hilstrom, Canadian Alliance, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the current justice minister. The current justice minister on the other side of the House is not even willing to prosecute cases for non-registration of firearms. He has said that very clearly.

I would like to remind the Liberal member that the people of Nunavut do not have to register their firearms. They have a court injunction saying that they do not have to register. The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations will not register. The Métis of Manitoba will not register.

She is trying to apply this kind of legislation on some kind of grand social engineering scheme to try to get rid of firearms from every law-abiding citizen, while the criminals will continue to have firearms and shoot and cause mayhem in downtown Toronto. This registration will do nothing to stop crime.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, although I agree with the sentiment about the gun registry and the fact that I personally believe that it is a colossal waste of money for the Canadian taxpayer, I would recommend to the hon. member that as a representative and a member of Parliament for his riding he should not break any laws or advise anyone that he will.

We have to uphold the laws whether we like them or not. I understand his frustration. The people in my riding are adamantly opposed to the gun registry as he is but I cannot stand in the House and I would recommend that he not do it as well.

Being a former member of the fisheries committee, he knows very well the issues of the coast guard. The hon. member from Prince Edward Island said that he was very pleased that $74 million would be applied to the coast guard over two years, but the reality is that will buy one coast guard icebreaker. We need more resources and I would like the hon. member to comment on the lack of resources for our coast guard in this budget.

[Howard Hilstrom, Canadian Alliance, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as a member of Parliament I will do everything in my power, both as a member of Parliament and as a citizen of this country, to change laws that are wrong and that waste our national resources. If members do not think this has been done around the world, and I certainly do not put myself in this category, but people have opposed oppressive regimes all through history; Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, all these people, when they identify a big wrong, they go against it. I am saying that Canadians should be against this waste of priorities.

The members over on the Liberal side laugh about deaths from heart attacks that could have been prevented with simple surgery. They laugh about child pornography. That member happens to be a female member from the Liberal side of the House. I do not know if she has any children or not, but the fact is that we have a duty and a responsibility to protect our children and using the money for firearm registry of law-abiding citizens instead of protecting children is wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Odina Desrochers, Bloc, Lotbinière—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques. So, I will have ten minutes to try to get through the February budget.

To start, I would like to say that I will be talking about four sectors that are very important to my riding of Lotbinière—L'Érable: employment insurance, softwood lumber, gasoline and agriculture.

Take employment insurance. For a long time, the opposition parties have unanimously condemned the Employment Insurance Fund surpluses. Several billion dollars were taken from the workers and employers.

It was hoped that, in last month's budget, the Minister of Finance would have announced changes to help the workers frequently penalized by this system. It was hoped that there would have been a real move toward change and a more flexible Employment Insurance Act, but this was not the case.

All that we learn is that, in 2005, we should be getting proposals for change. Consultations must be held. What consultations? We do not know when they will start nor end. All we know is that, in the meantime, the current Minister of Human Resources Development is going to continue to use the legislation rushed through at the end of the 1997-2000 legislature. This legislation allows the minister to set the employment insurance premium rate.

But, in the meantime, the workers continue once again to suffer from this unfair legislation. It has become a hidden tax on employment. Often, to people in my riding, and even those elsewhere who have never earned a million or a billion dollars, such amounts are just numbers bandied about by politicians.

When people talk about hours and when they come to my office because they have lost their job, and I tell them they are not entitled to employment insurance because they are short 12 hours, they have no choice but to draw social security. That is quite telling. It happens every day. This is something we see regularly.

We can see how this legislation, which ought to be offering assistance to the unemployed, is badly drafted and penalizes many.

I would like to talk about the softwood lumber crisis. There is a lot of softwood lumber in my riding of Lotbinière—L'Érable. In recent months, we have seen companies shut down, either logging businesses or sawmills.

There have been job cuts. One might have expected the Government of Canada, with its surplus, to invest some of it until the World Trade Organization decision was reached. This government, and the Americans even more so, are letting things drag on. When the WTO does intervene, it may be too late. Our industry already has problems.

The member across the way says that millions of dollars have been devoted to softwood lumber, which is true. But right now, there is a shortage of money. Workers have had money made available to them, but nothing yet has been made available to the companies. Even if the Canadian government has made a small effort, much remains to be done to save the jobs of those working in the softwood lumber industry.

I will let my colleague say more about gas, but what explanation can there be for the fact that, in a certain village in my riding, one person owns two gas stations selling two different brands of gas?

Last week, someone who had saved his receipts showed me that, within 30 seconds of each other, the two different gas stations, representing two independent oil companies not associated with each other, raised their price at the pump.

Do you not feel that this smacks of collusion? We are working hard to get to the bottom of this. Here in Quebec, in Canada, we have the refiner, the distributor and then the retailer at the pump. Often the oil company controls all three levels, that is it refines, distributes and then sells to the customer.

I have always said that, when a service station closes down and a self-serve gas bar opens, that is because the oil company is operating it. My colleague will certain address this further in his speech. I do, however, have convincing evidence that, definitely, the oil companies talk to each other when there is any question of raising gas prices.

Price hikes have happened far faster. As soon as the price per barrel goes up on the international level. the oil companies react the very next day. So, as one would expect, it is always the customer who loses in this game.

Now, turning to agriculture, we would have hoped to see in the budget the funding La Financière agricole du Québec needs, that is $100 million, to maintain farm support programs in Quebec.

Once again, because of its obsession with national standards, the Canadian government is blocking the process whereby an agreement could be reached between the federal government and Quebec. And who is, once again, penalized and forced to make difficult choices? The organizations in Quebec, or the Quebec government. Yet this system worked very well up until June 2002, when all the ministers got together in Toronto to renew an agreement that was working very well; that is when the current Minister of Agriculture imposed national standards. We believe that agriculture must be treated on a sectoral basis. For instance, agriculture in Quebec is completely different from agriculture in the rest of Canada. I would have hoped the Minister of Agriculture would have lent an understanding ear and maintained the traditional way of dealing with people in Quebec.

Let us take a look at supply management. We have yet to be given formal guarantees that supply management will remain as is at the WTO.

Two weeks ago, I met with representatives of the Syndicat des producteurs laitiers du Québec in my area. The butter and milk blends transported into Quebec across the border have an impact amounting to $30 million annually. This is $30 million that is not available to dairy producers in Quebec. This means that these products that make their way into Canada because of a lack of leadership at our borders result in a loss of income for our dairy producers in Quebec.

Again, when we raise this issue, we are told that we must be careful because it is part of overall discussions. I cannot help but wonder, however. We have documents showing that the majority of these products are coming from New Zealand, Great Britain and Mexico, with only 0.5% coming from the United States. This means that countries go through the U.S., knowing they will have no problem getting their products into Canada because our borders are sieves. That hurts the economy.

I am calling on the federal government to show more leadership in protecting and helping dairy producers in Quebec.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to speak at this stage in the debate, following the excellent speech given by my colleague, the member for Lotbinière—L'Érable.

I have a fairly simple question for him. He spoke at length about employment insurance. Indeed, one would have expected that the government would have decided by now to set up an independent EI fund, but instead we have been given a bit of a smokescreen. Seasonal workers are once again being forgotten—these are workers who, regardless of economic activity, work during certain seasons. The name says it all, they work in seasonal industries.

I would like it if my colleague could elaborate on this, to try to convince this government to take action to help these people, who, after all, are the ones who contributed the most to the fight against the deficit.

[Odina Desrochers, Bloc, Lotbinière—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my answer to that is that, indeed, we were hoping that the budget would outline an overhaul of the Employment Insurance Act, so as to take into account the reality of seasonal work. Unfortunately, such was not the case.

What we have seen is that the wall to wall approach, in other words, one national policy that applies from coast to coast, does not take into consideration regional concerns, nor does it take into account the specific circumstances in my riding or the riding of my colleague.

Some people work in tourism, farming, fishing or in forestry. When winter rolls around, unfortunately these jobs no longer exist. We refer to people in these jobs as seasonal workers.

If we really want the Employment Insurance Act to be fair for all workers, the next legislation will have to take this into account. However, what I did learn in reading the budget is that, first, we do not know when these consultations will start, nor when they will end. All that we know is that there may be a new Employment Insurance Act that would come into force in 2005.

In the meantime, what happens to these workers? They continue to contribute money that they should be able to draw on. This money is piling up by the billions and is being used to pay down the national debt.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister, who brought down the budget recently, said that the shipbuilding industry in Canada and Quebec was a sunset industry. We, of course, oppose that. One of his colleagues was very forceful in Bill C-213 to revive the shipbuilding industry in the country with the proper incentives from government and industry.

Could the hon. colleague from the Bloc comment on why this budget is so severely lacking in a shipbuilding policy for our regions in Canada.

[Odina Desrochers, Bloc, Lotbinière—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is not hard to understand. It is because this government is not aware of the very significant regional economies.

For instance, in the riding of Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, if we had not received help from the Government of Quebec, Davie Shipbuilding might have shut down. Since 1993 when the Liberal government came into power we have witnessed the gutting of an industry that was once the pride of this country. This industry has been let down. I doubt the current member for LaSalle—Émard got involved because he was in a slight conflict of interest, even though he has decided to pass on his company to his three sons.

In conclusion, once again the Liberal government is out of touch with reality. I would like to see the negotiations from now on in the former finance minister's family where the three children will have to ask the ethics counsellor if they can talk to their own father about Canada Steamship Lines. What a joke.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to comment on two specific points in this debate on the budget.

The Minister of Finance included a contingency reserve in his budget. I have a suggestion for him that I think most people would support.

I suggest that the government respond to the current unreasonable prices of gas and heating oil with a $130 credit per household. That would ease the pressure on consumers and families without unduly straining their budget.

The government should welcome this measure since it implemented a similar one in the fall of 2000 a few months before the last election when it paid $125 to individuals and $250 to couples to offset the cost of heating.

Of course when the government took this step in 2000, it was in a big hurry because the election was coming up. It went for a program that sent cheques to people who were dead or in prison even though they did not necessarily have any heating bills to pay. At the end of the day, this program did not seem to be a very good one.

The principle is that money which the federal government collected in taxes was returned to consumers, to citizens, so that they could pay their bills. I think that all members should vote in favour of this bill.

The Bloc Quebecois is proposing $130 for each of the 11.5 million households in Canada, for a total expenditure of $1.5 billion. This is approximately the same amount the federal government remitted two years ago.

The difference is that we propose that this money be remitted through energy companies and suppliers, which could issue people a credit on their bills. When we get our electricity bills, we would see a $130 credit, which would offset the impact of the increase. That way, cheques would not be sent to people who should not get one.

I think that the Bloc Quebecois has made a constructive proposal while waiting for a resolution in the debate on gasoline prices. For the past year, the situation has been horrible and has meant an average increase, from February 26, 2002, to February 18, 2003, of 33% in the price of gasoline in Canada.

This increase is not the result of an increase in taxes. That is barely 7%. Most taxes are flat taxes per litre of gasoline sold. For example, the federal excise tax is 10¢ per litre of gasoline sold. Therefore, this tax does not have an escalating effect. The same is true for the provincial taxes.

There is one federal tax that really should be eliminated; I am talking about the 1.5¢ per litre tax that was implemented to fight the deficit. For over five years, Canada has not run a deficit, but the federal government continues to pocket this money. I think that this tax needs to be eliminated, but we must, at the same time, ensure that this money finds its way back to the consumers and not to the oil and gas companies.

In fact, currently, although there has been a 7% increase in tax revenue over a one-year period with a total increase of 33% in the price of gasoline, the oil and gas companies have pocketed 94% more in profits in related to refining. They have gone from 5.1¢ per litre to 9.9¢ per litre. This is an increase of nearly 100%. With a 94% increase, it is as if profits related to refining had doubled. The gas and oil companies have yet to explain this.

There was also a 58% increase in the price of crude. We are going to look into this issue. Obviously the Iraqi crisis is being blamed, but it is an anticipated crisis that does not exist yet, speculation. It is not that there is less oil available even today at the moment of truth. It has not come to that yet.

This has to be examined in greater depth. In the long term, what is needed are corrective measures that would give the Competition Bureau more power or lead to a change in the organization and structure of the gasoline market.

We certainly have to ensure that there will be true competition. As it stands now, there is an appearance of collusion in the gasoline market.

The oil and gas companies should contribute to the work done in committee so that we can get to the bottom of this issue, shed light on it and propose the necessary corrections to avoid the situation we have been in for several years, or at least since I have been a member of parliament. Every two years there is a sudden price increase that usually follows an international crisis. We are given an explanation for the price increase, but the price never goes back down. When the crisis has passed, the inflated price becomes the new floor, creating the potential for even greater profits during the next crisis.

I think the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology should do something about this. The committee unanimously supported the motion that I moved to invite oil companies and specialists. I hope that the minister is also heard by the committee as soon as possible so that at the end of this session, the beginning of June at the latest, we have solid recommendations and that measures to correct this situation can be adopted in this House.

Obviously, this situation impacts on the price of gasoline for car owners. We are talking about truckers, taxi drivers, maple sugar producers. It is maple sugar season in my area. A lot of the sap boilers are oil-fired. People were surprised to have to pay 65¢ a litre this year when it was around 40¢ last year, which means it cuts quite deeply into the profit syrup producers need to make to provide for their families.

The price hikes have considerable negative impact. It affects truckers of course. Independent truckers came up to me during my tour to tell me, “I don't have any automatic indexation clause”. In any case, those who do end up having the consumer pay for it.

Taxis do not have automatic indexing. They have to go to the Quebec Commission des transports for an authorization every year. So they are the ones absorbing the present price hike.

Is there not some way to find a means of helping them? There is a provincial tax credit of $500 in Quebec to help. When taxi drivers have an income of $26,000, they can get a $500 tax credit, but not at the federal level. Could there not be something similar put in place federally?

Then, of course, there is heating oil. I feel this is even more serious, because we are talking about the need to heat one's home. People are coming to our riding offices, or to consumer assistance organizations, for help in trying to balance impossible budgets. They had not planned for such a price hike; it was unpredictable and often it has now become impossible for them to make ends meet.

I am calling upon the federal government to realize what this means, to make use of its contingency reserve. I am also calling upon the Minister of Finance to make some announcement that will make it possible to achieve these results now, and not to wait for the next election campaign. Now is the time people need the money.

Once the government has taken this short term measure, our role as parliamentarians will be to ensure that members of the Standing Committee on Industry, Sciences and Technology take the measures necessary to put an end to the current appearance of collusion when it comes to the prices of heating oil and gasoline.

The proposed $130 credit would be for everyone, regardless of whether they use oil or gas or electricity for heating, to ensure that there is not unfair competition between one energy source and another. Besides, in practice, when the price of any one energy source goes up, the others follow. That is why this measure seems so appropriate to us.

Switching gears now, in the budget—and I will close on this—it was announced that a technical advisory committee would be struck to study the disability tax credit. At present, this tax credit has had a very negative impact on people with celiac disease. The government does not want to recognize their eligibility for this tax credit. However, a judge has ruled that they should be eligible.

Rather than accepting the ruling and applying it, the federal government has tried to deny that celiac sufferers have a major disability. I think everyone knows that celiacs cannot eat any foods that contain gluten. This leads to significant additional expenses. I feel that we should have gone further in the budget and authorized applying the credit to people with celiac disease.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's comments with regard to the issue of gasoline. As the hon. member knows, constitutionally the issue of competition falls within the jurisdiction of the Government of Canada and through the Competition Bureau. Where there have been specific complaints brought forward to the Competition Bureau, they have been acted upon. There have been a number of successful prosecutions over the years.

On the issue of pricing of gasoline, I refer the hon. member to the Constitution and the fact that it is a provincial jurisdiction. If he wants to talk to his colleagues in Quebec City, the Government of Quebec has the power as every other province has to put a freeze on pricing. In fact the government in March of 2000 forwarded a letter to all provinces suggesting that the government would suspend its portion of the GST on gasoline if the provinces would follow suit. Regrettably only one province bothered to reply.

Therefore on that issue, although we certainly understand the issue the member has raised, it really is provincial.

On the celiac issue, I point out as well that the government is taking specific action with regard to that. The member I know has had a long interest in this and again I refer him to the consultations and the legislation which will go before the committee in a few weeks.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my hon. colleague that what is at issue is not retail sales. It has been clearly established that it is not at the level of retail sales that undue profits are made. The retailers on street corners in our communities are not the ones raking in undue profits.

The issue is the following. The Competition Bureau should have been asked to conduct an investigation that is absolutely necessary to shed light on the current situation, but was not because of the industry minister's inaction. In the House, the minister refused to give the Competition Bureau the mandate to look into the matter. It was then that the members of the Standing Committee on Industry from all parties, including the Liberal majority, decided to conduct studies, to summon oil companies and to ensure that a debate take place and that we get to the bottom of this. The members of the committee were therefore very critical of the minister's inaction.

Regarding celiac disease, I am pleased with what my colleague has announced. Concerns remain, however. These people were been burned when the government introduced a draft bill whereby they would no longer eligible to a tax credit. Since then, they have been living in uncertainty.

To make me aware of their plight, they invited me to a luncheon in my riding. I had the opportunity to see what they are going through. I do wish the federal government would introduce, as soon as possible, a bill making them fully eligible for the disability tax credit. Our society cannot afford to do less.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my question for the hon. member from the Bloc is this. At the end of this month the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans will make a decision about the cod fishery off Quebec, in Newfoundland and in the gulf. If he makes a decision, which I believe he will, to shut it down completely, close to 15,000 people, which includes fishermen and their families, in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador and other areas who make their livelihood off the groundfish for the cod stocks will be literally out of work and probably out of the fishing industry on a permanent basis.

I would like the hon. member's comments as to why the budget is so inadequate when it comes to DFO budget increases for science. The science division within DFO has been cut drastically and is continuing to be cut, yet the budget has neglected that issue completely.

Could he explain why that is?

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for this very relevant question. In fact, one of the worst scores given the federal government in the past 15 to 20 years has been in fisheries management.

This may be the most concrete example of a government which is out of touch with the public, which has mismanaged these resources, and which is taking a piecemeal approach. For a few years now—and this is important—the government has been focussing on the new economy, new technologies, investing in these sectors and trying to show that Canada is a leader.

However, at the same time, it is as if it had stopped fighting and given up on our significant natural resources, such as the forests and particularly the fisheries, which were once a source of pride throughout Canada, on both coasts. Today, it is taking a piecemeal approach to management, and making decisions for the short term. Communities have been left to fend for themselves. The government should be very harshly judged for this.

It is incomprehensible that the federal government has not aggressively tackled this issue in the current budget. Let us hope that the members' action will produce results.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this budget is a very promising document, full of optimism and promise for the future. The government should be very proud of it because it tells a story of sound financial management over the past few years. However it is completely silent on one of the most important issues of the day; and that is what will happen if there is an attack on Iraq? In the time allotted to me, I propose to examine the implications to Canada's financial future in the short term and in the long term if the United States and Britain undertake a unilateral attack on Iraq.

I point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that the budget before us tells a story of debt reduction of some $46 billion over the last five years, the creation over the last year of more than 560,000 new jobs in the economy, and economic growth of 4%, and all this in a context where other countries in the world, both the G-7 and OECD countries, all are performing less well, including the United States. If all things were equal, what we would see is continued growth in Canada, continued erosion of the debt and continued growth in the economy, while occurs in the United States the opposite phenomena occurs. The United States is now looking at an increased deficit in addition to debt of some $100 billion plus.

That is good performance in the context of a world economy that is weak. However what will happen to world economy if there is an attack on Iraq? It will be a different ball game. The people who will be hurt the most will be our American friends. I will give some examples at the very outset.

We know that a war in Iraq will create a reaction in the world. First of all, there will be a security reaction. I think the National Post had a story the other day in which the U.S. airline industry predicted a loss of 70,000 jobs and a loss of $4 billion each quarter should the United States and its ally Britain unilaterally attack Iraq. We can understand why this is so because the public perceives the airline industry and airliners themselves as extremely vulnerable to retaliatory attacks by terrorists.

For example, there was the incident in Kenya in which two surface to air missiles were fired at an Israeli airliner rising from the airport. That sent an enormous chill through the airline industry around the world. All that has to happen is for one airliner to be shot down under those circumstances and it would be total devastation worldwide in the airline industry; the American airline industry and Canada's as well.

We already have a situation where Air Canada, our carrier, is facing a $300 million loss in the first quarter and expects to have continued losses of about $300 million to $500 million in succeeding quarters. Air Canada admits quite freely that the reason why it is facing these losses, which could devastate the company and lead to bankruptcy, is because of insecurity worldwide with respect to air travellers being fearful of not the takeover of an aircraft but fearful of an attack on an aircraft.

Then there are other problems. Of course airports are centres of international communication where a lot of people congregate. People worldwide will appreciate that represents a significant hazard that no amount of security in the world could solve. We can see right there that there is a problem.

Associated with that is the insurance industry. I am speaking of the American insurance industry, the Canadian insurance industry, Lloyds of London, all these organizations that insure various kinds of corporations and various kinds of enterprises in the world. They are facing an incredible disaster should there be a unilateral attack on Iraq and should there be terrorist retaliation worldwide. We are not talking about al-Qaeda. We are talking about the release of all kinds of individuals out there who may be disgruntled for whatever reason, whether it is religious, ethical or otherwise. The focus of their anger will be on American interests both abroad and, to some degree, at home.

This will create incredible insecurity. Insurance companies will have to escalate their rates or else they will have to stop insuring companies. There is a company in my riding that handles hazardous material. It has always been able to get insurance. It had to pay for it, but it could get it. It no longer can because of the nature of the substances that it carries. Now it is going to be forced out of business because without insurance it cannot operate. That is another example and that could be billions of dollars of loss in the American economy.

Think of tourism and what has happened to tourism already, Mr. Speaker. Whether it is the Caribbean, South America, the Far East, the Middle East, or wherever we go we will find that tourism basically has evaporated. Again it is because of the fear that has been generated by the prospect of retaliation if there is a unilateral attack on Iraq.

This costs companies in the United States and Canada, and very sadly, it costs countries terribly in the world, particularly in the third world because there are many small countries that rely principally on tourism. They have lost that tourism. Look at what has happened in Indonesia with the bombing of the night club in Bali.

It is true that perhaps here in Canada there will be some small gain for tourism because Americans have to go somewhere. We could see some benefit, but this is not a benefit that we as Canadians want. We do not want this kind of benefit at this price, particularly because it is going to devastate the travel industry in the United States as well. How many billions of dollars is that going to cost the American economy?

Worst of all is the fact that we can expect a massive backlash against all things culturally American throughout the world. Already there is a systematic boycott in much of the Muslim world against American-made soft drinks, both Coca-Cola and Pepsi. This is significant for two reasons. The followers of Islam do not partake of alcoholic beverages so soft drinks are extremely important culturally in any Muslim country in the world.

Naturally the best technology, the best flavours, and the best soft drinks in the world are the ones that we too acknowledge are the best drinks in the world. They are mostly the ones that originally were invented and manufactured by the Americans: Coca-Cola, Pepsi and related products. We can travel anywhere in the Far East, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt or anywhere and we will see these products everywhere. They are manufactured under licence in these countries. These products are going to disappear from the shelves.

You may think the comparison to soft drink companies is trivial, Mr. Speaker, but it is not trivial. They are worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the American economy and they will lose that market abroad.

Even worse than that is what happened just after September 11, with the sabre rattling on Iraq and the problem with respect to Israel and Palestine. There have been various tries at boycotts in Muslim nations against U.S. products. If the Americans and the British do attack Iraq without the backing of the UN Security Council, I think it is very clear from what we are reading about world opinion that the majority of people around the world would regard that as an unjust war, an unjust attack. The negative reaction to American interests abroad will be incredibly profound. It will have an enormous negative impact on the American economy.

If the American economy is affected negatively, we can be certain that the Canadian economy will be affected very negatively. What will it mean to have had surpluses of several billions of dollars? Those surpluses will disappear when we as Canadians attempt to bail out Air Canada and attempt to meet the shortfalls of revenues that we may experience.

Think of how huge, if we extrapolate that, that problem will be in the United States. We will see a situation where pharmaceutical companies will have problems selling products abroad, any kind of American manufactured goods, and not just in Muslim worlds. There could be a reaction throughout Europe and China. This possibility of going to war in Iraq without the moral authority of the UN Security Council has the potential of catastrophic economic consequences against the United States. It is not a matter of just being short term; it could be long term. As a matter of fact, it is likely to be long term.

There will be some quick hurts. We will likely see the complete paralysis of the American airline industry. That will be counterbalanced by a surge in government spending on U.S. defence products and security products. There will be job creation at airports. As we increase security, there will be increased police forces and that kind of thing. But adding money to the military, adding money to the police and security officials, does not create wealth. Actually, it creates liability.

If the Americans, and they are apparently on the eve of doing so, go into Iraq without the support of the UN Security Council the economic consequences to the United States will be devastating. I think we can easily predict the outcome. Americans will not be able to travel abroad and successfully invest abroad. They will be forced back into the western hemisphere.

Now, of course, we have the free trade zone of the Americas. I think we can make a confident prediction that the Americans will centre their economic and political power in the western hemisphere, and leave the rest of the world to the other interests. We can see what will happen.

The countries that will benefit most from the Americans being forced economically out of the rest of the world will be China, on the one hand, which will come to dominate Southeast Asia, and Europe, on the other hand, particularly France and Germany, which will come to dominate western Europe. Even Russia stands to gain. If American products are forced out of competition worldwide because of worldwide boycotts or worldwide resistance to the sale of their products, if American investors are not encouraged abroad, then European, Russian and Chinese businessmen will fill the void.

What we are looking at, I think, is a fundamental and overwhelming change in the way the world will be 10 or 20 years from now. We will have fortress western hemisphere dominated by the United States and two other zones dominated by western Europe and China.

China, with a billion people, is the sleeping giant economically. More than that, it is a people who have a long culture of enterprise, business, and commercial risk taking. The language of commerce in Southeast Asia is not Japanese. It is not English; it is Chinese. Certainly, if Indonesia and Malaysia, and that whole archipelago out there, reject American products and investors, China will be in there to fill the void.

I really do believe that this move that is being contemplated by the United States--no matter what the reason, no matter what the justification for the reason in the eyes of the White House or in the eyes of the British Prime Minister--is going to cost their countries enormously. Just speaking of Britain, it will be excluded from Europe. Its ability to have a say in Europe will be compromised. Its ability to sell its products will be compromised. Do we think the Commonwealth will make much difference to the United Kingdom after it takes a stand on the attack on Iraq that is completely contrary to the position taken by all members of the Commonwealth? I do not think so.

I do not want to sound terribly bleak, but I do believe that what we are looking at now is the precipice of a fundamental change in global dynamics. It is just not the fact that we will be losing the United Nations as a significant voice. This will be creating a climate of rivalry which our children, and perhaps our grandchildren, will pay for because we will create three great zones of power: the western hemisphere, under the United States; western Europe, under the Europeans; and Southeast Asia, under China.

That is not the vision of the world that we saw at the end of the second world war when the United Nations was established. The United Nations was all about the people of the world trying to seek solutions to the conflicts and problems of the world collectively. Now we will have the kind of global super powers that will perhaps be more dangerous and difficult to deal with than when it was simply the Communist block versus the western nations.

There are so few benefits in this. Even the fact that the dollar is strengthening is not a benefit for Canada. We notice that on the market the dollar has been climbing and we must understand the only reason the Canadian dollar has been climbing over the past few weeks is because investors around the world have become more and more uncertain about the economic future of the United States, and so the U.S. dollar has been weakening. We have actually been climbing at the expense of the American dollar. This is actually a bad thing for us because as the Canadian dollar rises it becomes more and more difficult for us to trade with our only really significant trading partner, which is the United States.

So, we are intimately tied to what the Americans are proposing with respect to the invasion of Iraq. I wish the White House would listen to its friends because we as a government, as members in the House--most of us at any rate--have appealed to the Americans to be cautious, to listen to world opinion, to support the United Nations, and to not go down a unilateral course that would only bring, I think, despair, want and hunger on much of the world.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments. He obviously has grave concerns about the future of our planet let alone anything else. However, I want to remind him that Air Canada was in serious financial trouble long before September 11. In fact, one of the things I like to say is that what Air Canada and Nova Scotia have in common is they both have a $12 billion debt.

What this budget completely ignored, if I may go back to domestic issues, is our forestry workers, agricultural farm families and fishing families. Those are industries that employ literally millions of Canadians along with their families. They are suffering under the weight of the trade agreements we have come under and the protectionist policies of the United States.

I wonder if the member could comment as to why this particular budget was so severely lacking in those three major issues? I would especially like him to comment on the decision that the fisheries minister will be making. I suspect that at the end of the month he will shut down the cod fishery in the gulf and in northern Newfoundland and Labrador, effectively cutting off the livelihood of 15,000 fishermen and their families on a permanent basis.

I wonder if he could comment why the budget was so severely lacking in these specific details?

[John Bryden, Liberal, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member opposite for his comment because it fits perfectly into my earlier remarks. One of the reasons why the budget is silent on these trade issues with respect to forestry, lumber and all these issues having to do with our relationship with the United States is the Americans are now completely ignoring rational trade agreements. The Americans are overwhelmingly subsidizing their farmers, as the member opposite well knows.

The reason why we cannot address the problems of the farmers in terms of trade agreements is because the Americans are acting more and more unilaterally not only in ignoring the trade agreements but in putting unfair subsidies into their industries. It is all part of a pattern that has occurred in the last couple of years, where the U.S. administration, the White House, which is in charge of foreign policy, has set an example of unilateralism and ignoring multilateralism, refusing to consider the interests of countries other than the United States, even countries as close as Canada.

As for the cod industry, I know a little about it as well. I do believe that many of the problems that existed with the east coast fishery have been as a result of federal governments of the past putting too much subsidy into the fishermen of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to the point where the fish stocks, including the cod, have been compromised. We do know that the cod stocks dropped dramatically. It is not just cod. In the east coast fishery when the cod moratorium occurred, some of these massive operations that developed as a result of federal and provincial financing, but primarily federal financing, which put more stress on the environment than the environment could stand, has switched to other types of fish that are also under threat.

Then added to that we have the whole problem that there has been severe environmental damage done to the Grand Banks and the ocean floor around our maritime provinces not only by commercial trawlers, both domestic and foreign, but I also point out that there is some evidence that the dumping of toxic chemicals at the end of the second world war may be having an effect on the cod stocks. I applaud the government for finally showing an interest in locating these dump sites of chemical weapons. I have long had the fear that it is these chemical weapons that may have been having a very negative effect on the fisheries on the east coast.

Finally, let me simply say that when the fish are not there, governments have to do drastic things. It is an accident of confederation that it is the federal government that has the yea or nay say on what fish are collected off our coasts and not the provincial governments. I would suggest if it was a power of the provincial governments, they would do exactly the same thing.

[Roy H. Bailey, Canadian Alliance, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest, as I always do, to my hon. colleague opposite.

I heard him mention about a company not being able to get insurance because of the hazardous goods it carried. I want to develop this into a question for the hon. member because I come from a province that has about 50% of all the agricultural land in Canada. Sitting in front of me is my colleague from western Saskatchewan which has had two consecutive years of drought and what did grow, the grasshoppers ate later in the fall.

The premiums for Canada crop insurance, which the farmers have to enrol in in order to survive, went up 52% in the hopes of covering the losses. We did not hear too many complaints about that, with the exception that most of the people cannot pay the premiums and therefore, they are unable to insure isolated crops on their own farms. It seems to me with the vast amount of agricultural land across Canada that had a deficit of $.5 million, when I look at this budget I would have thought the government would have said it would do something about that. However, it did zippo because the amount of money it put in had to be divided by five.

I want to tell the hon. member that we are suffering out there and the crop insurance is not going to work because people cannot pay their premiums for total coverage.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know they are suffering out in Saskatchewan and it is a great preoccupation with all members of the House of Commons. One of the things I am very proud of is that whether we are from Saskatchewan or Ontario or New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, we are concerned about the farmers in Saskatchewan.

The problem though again is this hideous situation in the United States where it is getting so difficult to compete with our product no matter how efficiently farmed because the U.S. farmers are receiving all kinds of hidden subsidies. I cannot make an intelligent analysis or reply to the member's comment opposite. The area of crop insurance is not one in the budget that I have examined personally. As a result of the intervention I will examine it though and put it in the context of the caucus members on this side who are from rural Canada and see whether there is a better solution, because always, the budget is not cast in stone. It is a formula for trying to find a way to do the best things for all Canadians and to help those sections in the country who are most in need.

Our difficulty always is that we are a country that is so dependent upon trade abroad and being so dependent, we are dependent upon the goodwill of those we trade with. One of the hardest problems recently is that goodwill from our major trading partner has been more absent than present perhaps, in the last few years.

[Ted White, Canadian Alliance, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in rising to speak to the budget debate, I should perhaps remind the House that government budgets are about spending other people's money. It is very easy for us to forget that, especially when decisions are being made on the other side of the House about grandiose social engineering projects such as the gun registry that was mentioned by one of my colleagues earlier today.

People forget that this is about spending other people's money. Members should spend a little time thinking about the families in their ridings who are struggling to get by, to pay their mortgages, to buy their groceries and to pay all the bills while the government over there grabs so much of their paycheques to pay for things that those people do not want. It is all about spending other people's money and I will give some examples of this.

While we are busy spending other people's money, it is very easy to forget that the success that has given that side of the House so much money is not because of the Liberals' policies particularly; it is because of the governments of Ontario and Alberta, those free enterprise governments, and the initiatives they have taken to make business and the economy work well. That is who has generated the wealth for that side of the House to spend.

Not only are the Liberals spending other people's money but they are spending money that was created because of other people's efforts, not their own efforts at all.

I can give the example that as soon as politicians get into election campaigns they think it is a great idea to spend other people's money. Just yesterday or the day before, Quebec Premier Bernard Landry promised that he would force companies to make a four-day work week available to parents with young children. The pay would be commensurate with four days but he would force the companies to pay benefits equal to a five-day week.

It is so easy for politicians to stand up and pass something in a budget that dramatically affects the business community with no consideration about the hardship that it would put on companies or the people who work there.

A good example from the federal government along a similar line was increasing the maternity benefit to a year. I got lots of letters of complaint in my riding. One would think it would be the opposite but people are not stupid. They realize that if they are going to be paying for people to stay off work for a year, it will be tremendously disruptive to business and it will cost taxpayers a lot of money. But again, it is so easy to spend other people's money without giving a thought to the consequences.

I have stood in other budget speeches in this place and asked members opposite to reach into their own pockets and pay for those grandiose schemes they are so much in favour of. Why do they not ever reach into their own pockets and support these things instead of expecting the rest of us to pay for them?

Out of 10 provinces and 3 territories at the moment, only Alberta and Ontario are net contributors to the system of national transfers. I am looking at a newspaper article which mentions that the C.D. Howe Institute has repeatedly noted that for every dollar the provincial governments of these two provinces receive in Canada health and social transfer, Alberta and Ontario taxpayers pay out $1.30 in federal taxes. Where is the value for that? Meanwhile, for every dollar the Quebec government receives from Ottawa, it pays only 70¢ to Ottawa. A similar situation exists for the so-called have not province of Newfoundland and Labrador where taxpayers only pay 50¢ for every dollar they get back.

What this amounts to is the taxpayers of Alberta and Ontario, let us say families who are earning $30,000 to $40,000 a year and paying federal taxes, are actually subsidizing families in Newfoundland and Labrador who are earning $40,000 or $50,000 a year because of the massive transfers to support grandiose programs there. This is not fair.

Albertans and Ontarians, like British Columbians who until recently were also net contributors to the system, are as patriotic as anyone else but they just do not think that it is a fair system of redistributing other people's money.

At the time B.C. crossed into being a have not province, in the last couple of years, our traditional spending federal revenue status saw only about 8% of federal spending in B.C. That was despite a generation of providing 13% of the national revenue. We were providing 13% of the national revenue and, for a whole generation, we never got more than 8% of the federal spending. Now we are a have not province and we are still only receiving 86¢ for every dollar we send here. There is something terribly wrong with a system that does that.

The federal fuel taxes alone in the year 2000 in British Columbia took out $750 million from B.C. That was $750 million with not a cent spent on our highways. We can look at the terrible condition of some of the highways, including the Trans-Canada. Parts of the Trans-Canada in British Columbia are so dangerous that they are not even registered as a highway in the North American register of highways.

I was in the United States for a few days over the break. It is astounding the amount of money going into infrastructure and freeways down there. It is absolutely incredible, the freeway building that is going on. The highway system is such an important part of a country for the transport or the ease with which commerce can take place. It is just appalling to come from such a marvellously developed country into one like Canada where we see no spending on infrastructure at all, with nothing being spent on the Trans-Canada, while the federal government drags huge amounts of money out of the economies of the provinces.

Of the $5 billion-plus that the federal government drags out of fuel taxes, 100% just goes simply into general revenue. In comparison, in the United States 92% of those revenues go directly back to the states to spend on their highways and that is why they have decent highways. That is why their infrastructure has developed so well and why that country does so well.

In British Columbia, as I mentioned, we have the Trans-Canada in a terrible state. Highway 97, the major freeway in Vancouver, is not even as wide as the freeway through Ottawa because there is no money to expand it, yet we have almost four times the population. There is something wrong when this government looks after its own territory but is not interested in helping the provinces look after theirs.

Again, if that is not bad enough, as I said, the government gets into its social engineering plans using other people's money. The federal Minister of Transport right now is currently soliciting VIA Rail to reinstate its subsidized passenger rail service between Vancouver and Calgary. That was a disaster. We spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting that unprofitable line decades ago. Thank goodness it was finally canned when Rocky Mountaineer took over with a privately funded and run railway. It makes a profit. It attracts tourism to the provinces of Alberta and B.C. It is a spectacular success. Why on earth does the government want to spend other people's money creating another subsidized railroad to undermine the businesses that pay the taxes? It just does not make sense.

This budget is so full of examples like this that it is sickening. I could stand here for a whole day talking about things like the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. One of my pet hates is its $120 million a year, pretty much unaccounted for, which is spent on all sorts of queer and strange projects. That is hundreds of millions of dollars wasted. It does not produce any wealth in the country at all. Most of what the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council hands out in grants appears to go to financing vacation time for academics to travel to other countries and take photographs. It is certainly not contributing to the running of the country.

Right now in B.C., as I mentioned, we are suffering from highway problems. We have the Minister of Transport trying to undermine our private rail service. We have the federal government refusing to talk about offshore oil exploration, which could help us tremendously in getting back on track and becoming a contributing province again. Why is it that we have to fight and battle our way for every single cent out of that budget while hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, are wasted on the gun registry? It is frustrating. It is about spending other people's money. It is a terribly bad budget. If we only could get our way, we would vote it down.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's comments. He mentioned Alberta and Ontario as excellent examples of good fiscal management. I would suggest that over the years the Province of Ontario has withdrawn over a billion dollars from colleges and universities, has cut back dramatically on spending in the social field and has used federal tax dollars to supplement health care.

Last year $2.2 billion was announced, of which $2.1 billion was federal transfers. He forgot to mention that. The fact is that Ontario's cap, because of deregulation, has been a disaster. It capped hydro rates. We have gone through a very severe winter and now it is estimated that it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars because of that mismanagement by the Ontario government. It is not exactly the best example.

I am surprised that the member does not mention our good fiscal management and the fact that in terms of paying off the national debt we are now down to our lowest in many years. We are down to 44.5% of GDP from 71.5% just five and a half years ago. There is also the fact that we are making strategic investments in infrastructure. We could talk about the strategic infrastructure fund, which communities across the country can support. We now have doubled that to over $4 billion.

There is municipal infrastructure, again, with a 10 year program, which is something that for many years municipal governments across the country have asked for.

The fact is that governing is about priorities. The priorities are clear. Health care was the number one issue. I did not hear the member mention the fact that although health care is administered by the provinces, the government, again meeting collectively with its provincial colleagues, worked collaboratively in that area. I would like to know if the member does not believe that this type of investment, which I am sure is critical to constituents in his community, will affect the appropriate delivery services in terms of the changes that are needed by his constituents and others across the country.