Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise on our last day of 2004 and speak to the budget implementation act. I want to talk about a few of the things that are absent from the bill.
This is my third term in the House. Ironically, year after year when we talk about prebudget consultations and when we look at budget implementation bills, it always strikes me how the government can forget about some of the most important things about which we should talk.
Let me begin with the JDS Uniphase employees. This is a file with which the government should have dealt. It is a finance item. It is a phantom tax that the government is proposing to collect of hundreds of thousands of dollars from hard- working Canadians who have never earned a dime of that money.
The irony is that I brought this matter to the attention of the current Prime Minister when he was the minister of finance. That will be four years ago this February. We had numerous meetings then. We spoke about it at great length. I met with his officials. Obviously, they acknowledged that this was not right and something needed to be done. They said that they had to look at it.
Four years later, I am still asking questions in the House of Commons. We have gone through three ministers. I am now dealing with the Minister of National Revenue. I actually believe we are likely getting closer to a solution. Today the talk began about giving credit to who solved this, and they looked at other members. Aside from that, the most important thing is we need to help these people. These people should not be dragged through the wringer for four years. They deserve help.
We talk about how we spend taxpayer dollars. It boggles the mind that the most obvious things that should be addressed are not.
Let us talk about the gun registry. At its infancy, Parliament was led to believe by the government that the total cost would be $85 million, but it would collect revenues. The net cost to the taxpayer would be exactly $2 million. The government forgot a few zeroes. It is actually close to $1.4 billion and climbing. I think the government is spending another $120 million for it.
I know there was great interest by members of the Conservative Party to cut the funding for the gun registry. I want to emphasize here that no one wants people running around on our streets with guns. However, we believe the money could be spent so much more effectively.
What have we actually received for this money? We have two million completely innocent federally licensed gun owners having to report their change of address. If people have licensed their firearms under the gun registry and then they have moved, they have 30 days to report their change of address or they could go to jail for 30 days.
Guess who does not have to report their change of address? This is all very relevant on how we spend money in the budget implementation act. There are 176,000 convicted criminals who have been prohibited from owning firearms. They do not have to report their change of address.
A person has to wonder about the government's priorities.
I look at the things that are not in the budget implementation act. There is silence. Silence is consent. When the government refuses to deal with things, we have to question why it blatantly leaves things out.
Let me also talk about a few sore spots. We hear all kinds of talk on these files, lots of pledges from the government, such as the mad cow crisis, the BSE file. The people in western Canada and across Canada are still struggling with this matter. We hear the commitments. We hear the government talk about it. Why are the hard-working owners not seeing that help?
We have the softwood lumber issue in British Columbia, from where I come. This government might as well be non-existent. According to the Liberals, the country ends at the Rocky Mountains. The government thinks the Pacific Ocean is on the other side of the mountain range and it does not know another part of Canada exists there.
Let me talk about a current matter, one since I was elected in 1997. We have heard in the House for months and months about the actions of the immigration minister. One questions how she is still in that office.
Why are we not spending resources to clean this up? Right now something like 25,000 people are making claims for refugee status in this country. We need more immigrants in this country than ever before. People from various countries are waiting in queues. They have great qualifications and want to come to this country. For those who come into our country and claim refugee status, it can take years and years to process them. Why are we not changing the laws? There are bills that could clean up this mess, but the resources are not being put into that.
I have huge problems in this area. People are coming from the United States and claiming refugee status. That is absurd. It is ridiculous. They show up in Canada and we spend millions and millions of Canadians' hard-earned dollars on systems that are obviously broken. I have not seen the immigration minister table any legislation to deal with any of these issues. It goes on year after year after year.
The refugee system was established to bring to Canada people who live under oppressive regimes or who face persecution. We as a caring and compassionate nation need to bring those people to Canada. The problem is that the government's policies, and I emphasize the word “policies”, have allowed the system to be abused so badly that when people arrive, they know they can make a claim and drag it out from two to five years. It is time the government looked at priorities and decided where we need to spend some money.
The hon. members across the aisle say they are very proud of the fact that they have eliminated the deficit. Let me say something I have advocated for a long time. I want to acknowledge a former member of Parliament, Mr. Preston Manning. He was the leader of my party when I was first elected. He talked about getting rid of the deficit long before it was popular to do so. He brought that issue to the floor in 1993. He drove the government to do it.
Unfortunately, the government has done it on the backs of hard-working Canadians. It has cut billions and billions of dollars in transfers to the provinces. We have seen taxes go up and up. We do not have a federal deficit but we have massive surpluses. In the government's own forecasting once again this year we see a $9 billion surplus. This is absolutely unacceptable. We predicted this before the election.
The government said that the Conservative Party numbers had no credibility, that we could not live up to the numbers. It turns out that our numbers were right.
The Liberals have overtaxed Canadians. Nine billion dollars is a fair chunk of change. They tax the backs of hard-working Canadians. They continue to slash money that is supposed to be transferred to the provinces. To top it all off, the Liberals go on massive spending binges to look after their friends and their own patronage programs.
Over the years we have seen the sponsorship scandal, Shawinigate, $1 billion lost at HRDC, and hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on cancellation fees on defence contracts. The Department of Public Works and Government Services is a place where there has been no accountability, as well as the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development where, with no accountability, billions and billions of dollars have been lost.
Why are we still talking about this today? Why are we not making progress in these areas? Why are there still new revelations? We are still reading headlines in the newspapers. The government claimed a year ago it wanted to come clean on these files, that it wanted to put all the information out there. We now learn through the Justice Gomery inquiry that in fact it provided very little information. The Liberals hived this off to an inquiry so it could get into an election. Now some of the facts are being revealed, far more serious than anyone had ever possibly anticipated. Documents have gone missing. Blank documents have been submitted. It is not okay.
It is time the government started looking at its priorities. It is time the government took heed of Canadians' interest on how it spends their hard-earned tax dollars. It is absolutely disgraceful when there was an opportunity to cut the funding for the firearms registry that the government said no. It is going to pour another $120 million into the firearms registry. It is incredible. The Liberals even tell us that the registry will not be fully implemented I think until 2008. It is outrageous that anybody could try to defend those types of spending programs.
The Liberals wonder why the Canadian people cringe, why at tax time they protest. We hear it all the time, “We pay our taxes but let us have some accountability on how it is spent”.
What are the Liberals doing in this budget implementation act? They are going to lower the air security tax. Imagine that. This is the other thing that they do. This is right out of this budget. They are going to lower the airport security tax.
They take a dollar from Canadians and give back a dime, and then they ask for thanks. It is an amazing concept. They come along to the taxpayers, rob them blind, give them back a little bit, and ask for a pat on the back for giving back 10¢ on the dollar. It is absolutely mind-boggling how they can get away with it.
I see some of them shaking their heads. I would be shaking my head too if I were on that side of the House. I absolutely would. We have seen it time after time. They will announce a tax cut. I have seen it in the House, and I call it the paycheque stub test. They will stand and say they are lowering taxes, yet when I talk to hard-working Canadians and they show me their paycheque stubs, they have less take home pay than the year before. They actually did not get a tax cut.
The Liberals might tinker with one tax and lower it a little, but then they will raise taxes on a number of other things. At the end of the day there is only one taxpayer, only one paycheque, and Canadians are left with less money than before the government started these programs. That is what I am talking about when I say the Liberals take a dollar and give back a dime, and then they want Canadians to thank them.
I will talk about a couple of other areas now that we are on the issue of airports.