Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's speech and I recorded words like: “It is scandalous. It is illogical. It is a joke. It is a farce”. I stopped writing after that. It is hard to enter into a reasoned debate when pejorative language such as that is used.
Apparently, it is a joke for the Government of Canada to set aside contingency moneys in the order of $4 million, whether they are contingency, reserves or prudence money. That is apparently a joke.
It was a bit of a joke this year when Canada was faced with quite a number of contingencies for which reserves are set aside, such as SARS, hurricanes out on the east coast, mad cow disease, and blackouts in Ontario.
These scandalous jokes cost Canada $25 billion in terms of economic activity. That is lost economic activity which cannot be recouped. Not only did it affect the fiscal year 2003-04, it will affect fiscal year 2004-05. Apparently, it is just foolishness to set aside moneys such as this.
I point out that the tabling of the $1.9 billion surplus for this year was severely curtailed because in the previous day the Government of Canada put aside $1 billion for one of those very contingencies, namely, mad cow disease.
I fail to understand how the hon. member can think that this exercise in putting together a budget where we actually set up reserves, contingencies and prudence moneys is a joke, illogical or scandalous.
I fail to understand how the hon. member can say that this is an election budget. Canadians are well beyond the notion that we can induce them to vote for us with their own money.
It seems somewhat passingly strange that we are in the fifth year of a tax reduction program and the minister chose not to speak about that during his speech. This was a $100 billion program, 75% to personal and 25% on the corporate side. We are in the tail end of that program and that was not even emphasized. Generally, if we want to secure votes, we would emphasize the tax cutting aspects of our budget. Again, I fail to understand how this is scandalous, illogical or a joke.
The minister announced that this was the seventh balanced budget in a row, the first time since Confederation. We are the only nation of the G-7 countries that is in surplus.
Our net financial liabilities, in terms of GDP to debt, have gone from something in the order of 68% to 42%, which was the number that was booked yesterday. We are set on a path to go down to 25% over the next 10 years. I fail to understand how this is illogical or scandalous. This is arguably one of the best managed countries in the world, if not the best managed, in terms of its fiscal picture.
The hon. member goes on at great length about the so-called fiscal imbalance. The fiscal imbalance in 2002-03 is something for another question.
I put it to the hon. member, how can he argue that this is scandalous, illogical, a joke, or a farce, when we have had all of these things happen to us in this past year and yet, we still maintained a modest surplus after all of those contingencies?