Mr. Speaker, it is always hard to follow the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam because he does such a great job.
We have had a couple of good members of Parliament come out of that riding. There was one in between the two good ones, but we are glad to have this one here. Hopefully he will say hi to Sharon Hayes who was a colleague of ours a few years ago. I am sure she is back in the riding taking care of business.
The opportunity to rise today to speak to the budget is appreciated, but it is also troubling because the budget put forward by the Liberals asks us to trust them because they are going to clean up the mess that they have created.
I guess the question will be, when Canadians go to the polls, can we trust them or not, and can the last 10 years of abuse of our tax dollars be easily forgotten? I do not believe it can.
All we have to do is look at the track record of the Liberals. They have done a terrible job of giving Canadians value for their money. Canadians are sending more money to Ottawa but hospital waiting lists are getting longer. Students are going deeper in debt and our soldiers are being spread more thinly all the time.
The issue of student debt is one that I would like to talk about because one of the programs that was brought forward in the budget was the ability for students to incur more debt. As members of Parliament, we deal with students who are up to their eyeballs in debt, have bill collectors at their doors, and are desperate for help.
It would be better to do something at the other end and help keep the debt down before it is incurred, instead of creating a law or regulation that allows students to have more debt because they will just be in more trouble when they get out into the workforce.
However, it does not seem that there is any problem with money going to Liberal-friendly ad firms, sinkholes like the gun registry, corporate welfare, Challenger jets, grants to special interest groups, and the Governor General. These tax dollars would be far more productive if they were left in the pockets of hardworking Canadians such as homemakers, farmers, fishermen and lumberjacks.
Let us look at the issue that the lumber industry has been facing for many years now because of inaction on behalf of the government. The long drawn out process that has been going on at the World Trade Organization and NAFTA is unacceptable.
The government knew that the softwood lumber agreement was coming to an end and it should have done something before it actually failed. It has been going on two years now and some of these communities have not seen one dime of the money that was promised.
A promise made means nothing unless the goods are delivered. We have seen agricultural programs that have been put into place with one-third of what was promised. That goes into some of the issues with education. Some of the grants and programs that have been put into place have not come anywhere close to delivering the amounts to students.
The government talked about control and strengthening the controls on the purse strings. I think it is a little late, after 10 years of Liberal government, for it to say it is going to clean up its act. As of December 12, with the appointment of the new Prime Minister, it says everything is changed all of a sudden and it is going to clean up its act. I am afraid that Canadians are not going buy that and the government will have to pay the price, and it is about time.
It keeps talking about putting comptrollership back into how business is done by government. It was the government that cancelled that position in 1994. Now it is talking about bringing it back 10 years later after it squandered billions of taxpayers' dollars.
It talked about program review to root out waste and mismanagement. This is just about right out of our campaign literature. We have been saying for years that every program put forward needs to be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that it is still delivering the goods to Canadians that it was intended to do. If it is not, it should be stopped or realigned so that it can do that.
It talked about building a society or country for the 21st century; however, it is still using 19th century practices. Taxpayers' dollars are still being wasted. One has to work until June or July, as mentioned by the previous member, to pay the tax bill, and then one sees the money being wasted.
Above all, we see a Prime Minister who has his company flying a foreign flag to get around paying Canadian taxes. One thing that Canadians are proud of is the fact that they do pay their taxes and that they want them to go to something reasonable. All Canadians want to help out those who are less fortunate and to support the programs that do that. However, when they see their taxes being wasted, it does not go over very well.
One of the things we saw when the Prime Minister was on his leadership tour was his catering to the cities. He went to the cities and promised them things. Then immediately after he became Prime Minister, he reneged on them.
The government collected $7 billion last year in gas taxes. The GST rebate to municipalities is going to be $580 million. It will be $7 billion over 10 years. That was the figure used by the finance minister. That is how much the government collects in one year in gas taxes. It promised a portion of those gas taxes to the cities.
We have said that we will work with the provinces to set the system up whereby some relief would be given in the gas tax. That money would go not just to cities, but to municipalities for infrastructure. Every town, village, and municipal district in this country is hurting and needs those kinds of funds. The roads are falling apart and the people need help.
Being the critic for veterans affairs, I would like to get into some of the issues that are facing our veterans. This morning I had an opportunity to meet with a couple of groups of veterans on a couple of different issues.
One lady who came to see me was Mrs. Helen Rapp, the vice-chair of the military widows organization in Canada. She is a well informed lady who got directly to the point. She had a couple of issues that the government had failed to address. One of them was the issue of people who marry veterans over the age of 60. They do not qualify to receive the veterans' benefits upon their passing. I understand this is called the gold digger clause in the United States.
It was brought forward in legislation from 1902 and is still in place. These people have gone to the human rights commission and the Solicitor General. They have tried everything to get this reversed because it is wrong. These people marry, they get together because they love each other, and they want to support each other in their waning years. For the government to say that they do not qualify for their spouses' pension benefits if they marry veterans after the age of 60 is ridiculous. That needs to be addressed and it certainly was not addressed in the budget.
The other issue is that the survivors' benefit is now 50% and in most cases in other pension plans it is 60%. Veterans are asking that to happen and I did not see any recognition of that in the budget.
There was one item in the budget for the Juno Beach monument and that is important. We were briefed a week ago and department officials indicated how many monuments in how many countries around the world that Canada is responsible for. It is important that these monuments be maintained and properly funded. They have an appearance that Canadians and all people of the world can look at and be proud of the contribution that our fighting men and women have given to democracy and peace in the world.
I noted that some young people would go to the Vimy Ridge Memorial. They go over at a rate of pay that hardly gives them enough money to live on while they are there and that is something that needs to be addressed. Hopefully, the Minister of Veterans Affairs will pay attention to some of these issues and ensure that the monuments erected around the world in memory of our fighting men and women are properly maintained and properly funded.
There was a report that was tabled last week by the advisory committee on veterans affairs. In 2003 veterans affairs launched a service and program modernization task force. This needs to be done in the worst way.
There was another group of people who came to see me. The conditions of traditional veterans of World War I, World War II and Korean veterans are changing. They are getting older and their needs change as well, so they have to be looked at. However, we are bringing 5,000 new veterans back into society every year out of the armed forces. This is something that has to be done within veterans affairs. The whole way veterans are serviced needs to be changed and addressed.
These new problems that are arising, either with the traditional vets who are aging or the new ones coming in, must be addressed. Funding must be put in place so that it can be done.