Mr. Speaker, as the matter stands now, without the legislation, the surplus would go to the accumulated debt. That is where it is going now.
The problem is that whether there is a surplus or not, it is determined by government spending, pre-election spending, or pre-year end spending where the government ensures that it has used up that money in one fashion or another. That is where the problem lies.
This piece of legislation is simply window dressing for an election. It is window dressing because in true transparency, the government never said without question that it would apply a third here, a third there and another third there. The government has reserved some for itself. As we have said, first of all, the government has to cover Bill C-48 and there is no question about that.
One of the questions that was asked was, what happens if there is a special obligation, such as the offshore accord and so on? The response was that “all spending obligations will be taken into account before determining the surplus for a specific year in accordance with standard accounting practices, and that the amount available for additional expenditure initiatives will therefore be computed after taking into account year end adjustments”.
That alone is sufficient to drive through a two tonne farm truck without any difficulty. It is a loophole.
Then we have another aspect in respect to tax relief. Where does the government think the money comes from? The money comes from the backs of ordinary Canadians, from resource revenues and from the GST. This is not the government's money. The government has not given it back. The money has been put on the tail end if there is a surplus. After all of the loopholes, there might be a tax reduction. It is right in the minister's own documentation that he released after the bill, which says:
--to make the tax relief permanent, subject to the Minister of Finance’s assessment that the fiscal impact in following years is affordable.
We know what the minister has done. He said there could only be a technical change to the budget that came down in February. I say that $2.5 billion is not a technical change. It is a substantive change.
This minister, who is from Saskatchewan, should be addressing the situation in Saskatchewan and he is not, to his embarrassment. It has been changed because it was politically feasible to do so, and to say that this is clear and transparent is not so. It is not.