Madam Speaker, as I did in the earlier debate, I wish my colleagues a happy new year, yourself included.
We are at the start of a very interesting time in the life of the Parliament of Canada. I know I speak for colleagues at this end of the House when I say that we come back to this place after a time to reflect and re-energize ourselves to do the work that Canadians expect us to do in this Parliament. Canadians expect us to work on their behalf to ensure that they are not taken for granted and that their concerns are not denied the kind of attention that they require.
I start off this debate on the pre-budget consultation process with a note about the significance of this moment in the life of our Parliament. We are at a time when many of the stars are lining up that point us in one direction, to act on behalf of Canadians, to once and for all address the priorities of Canadians and to stop denying them the programs and services they need to be productive members of our Canadian society and thereby help to grow our economy.
We have heard many conflicting visions in the debate today. The job of Parliament is to sort out the appropriate path for Canadians, to balance the competing demands and to ensure we have the recipe for redressing wrongs and for putting Canada back on a solid footing.
Based on some of the speeches to date, one would think that everything is great, our economy is growing, the situation is rosy, the government is on the right track and all we have to do in this Parliament is figure out how we can stay on that path.
I appreciated the presentation by the chair of the finance committee who outlined a document that was the end product of a considerable amount of time and effort on the part of the finance committee. I think all members on the finance committee want to congratulate the Canadians who took the time to come forward, and to thank all those organizations that ensured we heard their views on the budget situation in Canada. There were some 200 individuals and organizations that made an effort to come forward and speak their mind and give us advice.
The question today concerns whether that advice is reflected in the committee report. Will this advice, once and for all, be taken seriously by the government of the day and not be ignored, as has been the case over the past decade of Liberal budgets?
With all due respect to the chair of the finance committee, it is obvious that the report does not reflect the sum total of presentations before our committee, nor does it reflect the majority of views on that committee.
It is very interesting that we have attached to this report, not three dissenting opinions but four; a Liberal dissenting opinion included. This is almost unheard of. It is very seldom that Liberal members or members on the government side feel that they have to issue a minority report because they do not agree with the overall conclusions of the committee's process.
I think that says more about the lack of unity on the part of Liberal members than anything else. It also says that the committee reflected more of the Conservative agenda than it did the will of Canadians. The Liberals on the committee were clearly reacting in their minority report to an overemphasis on tax cuts and on competitive economic circumstance, vis-à-vis the United States, and on levelling the playing field without due regard for the needs and concerns of ordinary working Canadians.
Therefore by no means can we take for certain that the report tabled by the chair of the finance committee reflects the views of Canadians, which is precisely why the New Democratic Party chose to issue a dissenting opinion. We chose to reflect what we see as the dire and pressing concerns of Canadians from one end of the country to the other.
We start by taking umbrage with statements as enunciated in the report suggesting that all is fine with the Canadian economy; that the Canadian economy is strong and growing; that businesses are striving but in need of greater concessions on the part of the government; that the debt to GDP ratio as set out by the Liberal government of 25% in less than 10 years is appropriate; that we accept without debate a $3 billion contingency fund and another $1 billion prudence fund despite all the furor around the government's inaccurate budget forecasting resulting in billions of surplus dollars that were not forecasted and end up automatically going against the debt without any consideration for the priorities of Canadians and the will of Parliament.
We come before the House today to try to paint the picture of Canadians as we see them and as we hear on a day to day basis about their particular concerns and issues. Life is not all rosy in this country. We may be a wealthy nation and our economy today may be on stable footing but not all Canadians are benefiting from this supposed healthy economy.
Surely one measures a healthy economy by the way we treat and help all citizens of this land without regard for region, sex or race. Surely the measure of any government budget is how it responds to the most vulnerable in our society, not by ignoring the reality of so many Canadians who struggle on a day to day basis, who have job insecurity, who may not be able to provide for their families as they would like and who subsist on a regular basis without the means to ensure good quality of family and community living. Surely it is our job as parliamentarians to reflect that reality and to then prescribe actions and recommendations to address those concerns and significant problems.
As I said at the outset, we have a golden opportunity in Parliament. We are in a situation where the government has finally publicly acknowledged a significant surplus, contrary to the last 10 years where there was an attempt to low ball the surplus and therefore not put it before Canadians and ensure that we addressed their priority concerns.
For once the government has stood up and acknowledged it had a problem, and has announced an $8 billion surplus for this year. We hear now that it is also a low estimate of the actual surplus. We are no doubt looking at something more in the neighbourhood of $10 billion, $11 billion or $12 billion. We have a huge surplus that gives us an opportunity to address the priorities of Canadians in an open and transparent way.
We also have a minority Parliament which gives us the opportunity to create a minority budget. I do not need to remind the House how frustrated we are in the House with Liberal majority budgets but one might have a sense of what Canadians feel about Liberal majority budgets, Canadians who are fed up, frustrated and angry about Liberal broken promises; Canadians who are fed up, frustrated and angry about a continued fetish and focus with artificial debt reduction targets and tax breaks for the corporate sector and wealthy in this country without due regard for the struggle that many Canadians face on a day to day basis.
We have a chance in this Parliament to create a budget that is in line with the needs of Canadians. We expect that a Liberal minority budget will be different from a Liberal majority budget. We expect a significant shift away from that absolute preoccupation with debt reduction and artificial targets without due regard for the human deficit that is being created by that kind of preoccupation. We have absolute views that there must be a shift away from a tax reduction agenda that benefits the wealthy and corporate interests in our society.
We want to see a budget that starts to close tax loopholes for the wealthy and for the corporate sector. We want to see an end to tax havens. We want to see the government crack down on the freebies and the giveaways to the corporate sector and ensure that the investment is channelled back into this country to create jobs and opportunities for Canadians.
We expect and will use every bit of power we have in this minority Parliament to help shape a budget that is in line with the interest of Canadians.
We will be standing from this day forward, until the moment the budget is introduced before Parliament and to all Canadians expected later this month, with one message: We will not let Liberals take Canadians for granted. We expect different. We will get better.
It was interesting listening to my counterpart in the Conservative Party earlier focusing again on tax cuts and on the suggestion that if we gave a little bit more money to families in Canada today they would have the disposable income to accomplish all their goals and objectives and ensure quality of life.
I am here to say that we have been there, done that, tried it and it is not working. It is not working because we have not ensured that tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy lead to investments here in this country. It has not produced an increase in productivity and therefore an increase in opportunities for Canadians. We know there is something wrong with corporate giveaways, handouts and tax breaks. We know the vast majority of Canadians realize that the little bit of money they will get through a tax break, as has happened in the past, will not buy a health care centre, nor will it create a space that is affordable for their children at university or build a day care. They know that investing in those areas will help them to create the opportunities whereby they and their children can contribute to the economy so that we can grow a great future for Canada.
Contrary to what the Conservatives have suggested to the House, Canadians believe that the government should be investing in programs, services and social policies that help ensure everyone in this country starts on a level playing field and finds the wherewithal to contribute according to their talents and abilities.
Canadians want the government to finally take action after years of neglect and the destruction and damage to the infrastructure of this country in terms of the health programs and the universality of those programs, the state of our universities and other post-secondary education, the level of damage and disrepair in our cities and municipalities across this country, keeping in mind, as members know, we are looking at about a $60 billion infrastructure deficit today as we speak.
Nowhere are the inappropriate allocation of resources and misguided set of priorities more apparent than in the newspaper on the weekend. We read that our own Pension Investment Board feels that it has to invest billions in infrastructure projects in Europe in order to get a good rate of return to ensure the security of our pensions, and that it cannot do the same in Canada because our markets, our system, our structure are not conducive to investing in this country.
Does that not say it all about what is wrong with the path we are on? Does that not point to a solution for the future? Does that not give us a recipe for how we could actually build this country? Those pension moneys belong to Canadians who have worked all their lives to ensure that they will have security in their old age. Surely if we cannot invest that money in projects that build the economy, that strengthen communities, that eradicate poverty, that create jobs, then there is something wrong. That is why this budget is so important. It is about changing priorities and starting to invest in Canada.
It is not, as my Conservative colleagues like to suggest in terms of the New Democrats' position, about willy-nilly spending, about more money for government so we can have more money for the sake of having more money and more programs for the sake of having more programs, heck no. It is about investing money in strategic areas so that we are able to grow as a country and to build a future for our young people.
How is it possible that we could ignore something as fundamental as inaccessible education in this document? It is referenced briefly. There is another set of recommendations for band-aids to put over the problem, but there is no comprehensive strategy to deal with a fundamental serious flaw in our society today, which is that many families, and they are growing every day, cannot afford to send their children to college or university because tuition is too high and student debt is too overwhelming.
If we cannot ensure equitable access to post-secondary education, what does that say about who we are as a country? What does that say about civil society? Are we not supposed to be about ensuring some level of common access, some equality of condition, some floor through which no Canadians will fall because they do not have access to great wealth and do not have inheritances, who struggle on a day to day basis to eke out an existence? Surely the role of government and the purpose of a budget is to give a road map and create a vision to get us in that direction.
It is the same with respect to the environment. How could we in the year 2005 be so behind our commitments with respect to Kyoto? How could we be a society where we have wealth, ingenuity and great innovative solutions, and we have not been able to move our economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels and toward alternative energy programs that actually would lead to jobs, to a better quality of life, and to the sustainability of our planet?
How is it that with the latest reports in terms of progress on the environmental sustainability index Canada is now somewhere near the bottom, at 144 out of 146 countries? How is it that a country as wealthy as Canada cannot make progress on things as basic as clean air, clean water, a sustainable environment and the future for our planet?
Our job today is to make this minority Parliament work for Canadians. This means investing in those areas that will not only ensure quality of life and help rid our society of inherent inequalities, but also will actually create jobs and grow the economy and help bring down our debt.
I want to reiterate that we could achieve a 25% debt to GDP reduction if we simply invested strategically now and helped Canadians to help themselves. We could accomplish what every Canadian wants which is a future for themselves and their children.