Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to rise for the first time to address the budget. I know some of the things presently being discussed, particularly the air tax, are being talked about quite a bit. The air tax is a $2.2 billion grab. The government rammed the bill through even though I think the entire population of Canada was opposed to it as not being a good thing to do. I think there was universal opposition from every witness who appeared before the committee. However as usual the Liberals chose to go ahead and ram it through.
I would like to take a moment to ask the member from the NDP who just spoke to take the time to read the policies of the Alliance Party regarding supply management just so he can get it right. The next time he wants to speak about our policies he should know about what he talking. Apparently he does not.
When we talk about the budget today, one thing comes to mind. I remember being in charge of budgets when I was a principal of a school and in other positions. Certain amounts of money were given to us and we were accountable for it and were to spend it according to the priorities of the group. One thing we always had in place was that if it was not necessary to spend it, then it was necessary not to spend it. It is too bad the Liberal government could not adopt a policy like that because its spending spree is just phenomenal.
I do not object to some of the things the Liberals do when it comes to supporting health care by finally raising some funding for it and for education. After many years of absolutely depleting those sources to the provinces, they now are starting to put some back. That is all understandable. However they are carrying on with spending in some areas when it has been proven and well known that they are ineffective and not doing the job for which they were intended. Why do we want to continue down that path?
We know of a lot of other issues that are not even talked about in the budget that ought to be talked about seriously. For example, the largest industry in Canada is agriculture. It is not just the farms. I am talking about the spinoff businesses that benefit from agricultural work across the land. It is the major industry. Yet when we look through this thick budget, we can only find one or maybe two sentences in it that even address the issues regarding agriculture and what the government intends to do about it. It does not address what kind of policies it will implement to ensure the agriculture industry, which is our top industry across the land, irrespective of all the other great industries, will continue. It is the number one industry, the most important, and it is not even addressed.
There is nothing in the budget in regard to what we will do in the event of the disastrous situations across our land. For example, the drought in the prairie region was not addressed by the government at any stage. It did engage to some small degree to help other Canadians who were going ahead full bore ahead to try to alleviate the problems and to help some farmers in the west through the hay movement. That was the dedication of the Canadian people, not the Government of Canada. The assistance received was from a few of the members, but only working through the local people who wanted to help each other. Farmers know what it is about when it comes to helping one another and the things they need to do.
I stop to think about the constant statements from that side of the House where child protection is so important. It is the number one priority. We have to protect the children on our streets. What is the government's answer? It is an ineffective, year after year, gun registry that has had no results whatsoever in the protection of our children. However the Liberals are spending almost a billion dollars, at least they will be spending that much soon, for an ineffective measure that does nothing they claimed it would do: make our streets safer. That is just not the case.
Just as a bit of a reminder to the Liberals, criminals simply do not register their guns. I am afraid they will never talk the Hell's Angels or any other organization into registering their guns. They are not interested in those kinds of policies.
However one thing that keeps coming forward loud and clear from our police forces across the land, in terms of helping our children, is that they would like a national strategy put in place to fight child pornography. It would take some dollars to do that but it certainly would not take near the amount of money that we spent on the gun registry. If they had a portion of that money with which to build a national strategy to fight child pornography then we would see some positive effects to protect our children.
We now know for a fact, through all of the expertise of psychiatrists, psychologists and case workers in penitentiaries, that most of the people who are in the penitentiaries for sexually assaulting and abusing our children were influenced in the initial stages through child pornography, yet instead of the government proposing something in its budget specific to the purpose of protecting our children, such as a national strategy, it continually floats along the plans of the past that year after year have proven not to improve the situation.
In fact, child pornography now is a multimillion dollar industry. Is that not pathetic when one of the major industries in our country is child pornography with the funds raised through the suppliers, the producers and the dealers?
The government should put some money into the budget to help our police develop a national strategy to fight child pornography, which will contribute internationally because it is not just a Canada problem but an international problem as well. A wonderful thing would begin to happen if we all put our efforts into that basket. If we really made a concerted effort I know it would not take long before we would have some successes in protecting our children.
Our budget needs to start looking at things other than just having words. It needs to support our agricultural industry but it does not know how. It supports the safety of our children but it cannot come up with anything other than such things as a gun registry.
A very poor way of spending tax dollars is to throw money into all kinds of unnecessary programs when there are essential programs that are being totally ignored. I do not like to see my tax dollars going off into some direction that supports some idea in which I personally do not believe. We must get back to the day or to the intention of where a real democracy works, when the voice of the people of the land have an effect on what happens with the money they send in.
I do not think voices across the land are giving the government all their money so the government can have a good time spending it in any way it wishes. I also do not think Canadians are telling the government that it does not have to be accountable for the way it spends it. As the Prime Minister has said a hundred times, “just smile and be happy, everything is rosy”. Well, that is not the case for a lot of families in my riding, young families trying to maintain a job and make ends meet. They are paying power and gas bills while trying to raise a couple of kids. It is getting tough out there. The taxes are terrible and completely out of reason.
There is another shocking thing. We bring in all this money and do certain things, such as tax the gas. If I am not mistaken, a little tax was put on gasoline. It was going to help us balance our budget. Hello, earth calling the Liberals. The budget has been balanced for quite awhile. When will they take the tax off? Are they going to leave the tax on forever? It was a specific tax to help balance the budget but it is still there.
Do the Liberals love money so much that they have to jab and take everything they can from everybody across the land? Can they not, for a moment at least, get rid of the taxes that were meant for a specific purpose? Do we still need to support all these social engineering programs and other programs that they want to put into place even though Canadians do not want their money spent on them? When will the Liberals on that side of the House wake up and start listening to what Canadians are saying?
Canadians want the debt reduced. Is it not a shame that it is now 10 years later and the national debt is bigger now than it was when the government came into power in 1993? Debt reduction is essential. Let us make it a priority.
I wish the Liberals would quit Mickey Mousing around with all the social engineering and other nonsense that goes on and get down to the business of being accountable and responsible for good spending of taxpayer dollars.