This backward budget really reflects the backward Liberal promises that it contains.
The government projected another $2 billion on Kyoto. It is probably the same as the gun registry. Where is that money going? What are we going to get for it? Has a cost benefit analysis been done? No. We have asked for a cost benefit analysis. The minister who is now replying to me was one of those people who should have done the cost benefit analysis on the gun registry before she handed it over to the next justice minister and before he handed it over to the Solicitor General. That cost benefit analysis should be done.
Are taxpayers getting value for their money? Absolutely not, because that study which I have asked for has never been relayed to Parliament. In fact when the Auditor General brought her report out on December 3 last year, she clearly said that Parliament has been kept in the dark. That is one of the ways it has been kept in the dark . Where is the cost benefit analysis? It has never been given to Parliament. We do not know if there are any benefits at all and whether they are cost effective in saving lives and reducing crime. But I digress.
The Canadian Alliance also believes, and I really want to underline this one, that the child care options should be given to parents and not to bureaucrats. Every parent in this country deserves the opportunity to choose the kind of child care he or she wants. By limiting their choices the government is doing a disservice to parents.
One program which I think has become a symbol of what is wrong with government in this country is the whole gun registry program, or as the Liberals like to paint it, gun control. I challenge Canadians to scratch below the surface on issues. If they scratched below the surface on this issue, they would realize that the gun registry has nothing to do with gun control, yet the government is asking for more and more money. The projected cost by the end of next year that the government admits to is $1.07 billion. It is unbelievable.
Last week the government released a report on priorities and spending on the gun registry program. The government filled in a few of the blanks in this report, but there were 105 blanks where it did not know what the costs were.
It is unforgiveable that a government would table its spending priorities and leave all of those blanks. I call it shooting blanks. In effect the government is keeping Parliament in the dark. It is firing a bunch of missiles across here, asking Canadians to believe this is gun control when in fact it is not.
What could the government do with $1 billion? I was listening to my colleague a few minutes ago talking about how many MRIs could be bought. MRIs in our medical clinics would really help preserve people's lives and help improve the health of this country. That is not being provided.
The government could get 238 MRIs fully installed, staffed and running for that kind of money. If those MRIs were spread out across the country we would have something that is cost effective. That is why a cost benefit analysis is so important and needs to be done. It has not been done.
When former Bill C-68 was introduced the government was spending $16 million a year on cancer research. Think of the number of lives that could be saved if $1 billion was put into cancer research. That is why a cost benefit analysis is needed.
The Liberals will always come up with the mantra that if it saves one life, it is worth it. How many lives are being lost because of the misplaced spending priorities of the government? It is unforgiveable that it would go down this road and not examine what could be better done with that money.
The Liberals are great at creating impressions. I believe this is what the budget was all about. I believe that the gun registry was simply creating an impression. Why? To get votes. The Liberals were playing politics with taxpayers' hard-earned money, creating impressions that they are somehow improving public safety, creating the impression in the budget that somehow they are improving the lot of Canadians.
If Canadians scratched below the surface, and I challenge them to do that, they would find that the opposite was true, that the Liberals are taking the hard-earned money away from Canadians and putting it into funds that really do not accomplish anything in a material way.
My colleague talked about the amount of money that is collected through gasoline taxes, almost $5 billion a year. The government talks about its infrastructure project. If we actually scratched below the surface on that, we would see it is just a helter-skelter spending of money here, there and everywhere with no focused direction in getting our products to market and ensuring that it is helping the Canadian economy. If that was the government's purpose it would use that $5 billion to improve the highways in this country, to put in place those things in our transportation system that will be effective and truly help Canadians.
I have to touch on one other thing. It is unforgiveable and borders on a crime for the government to not pay down the debt when we have the opportunity to do so.