Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the member for Central Nova.
It is my pleasure to rise and address budget 2005. At the outset I want to note a glaring omission, especially considering it was coming from a finance minister who makes his home in Regina, Saskatchewan.
I am talking about the fact that in the very long budget speech he did not even take note of the crisis on Canadian farms today; I see a friend of mine from the Regina area back here. Out on the farm today, it is a disaster. Farm incomes have been negative for a number of years. In 2003 we had negative farm incomes for the first time since the Great Depression. Today grain and oilseed prices are worse, if anything. They have fallen through the floor and of course we are still suffering with the mad cow crisis.
There was no mention of this farm disaster in the budget. There was certainly no help. The only thing in there was a reference to the cash deposit that producers must make to the CAIS program. In fact, a few weeks ago we moved a motion in this place, and had it passed, it would have eliminated the cash deposit. That did find its way into the budget document.
So again the Conservative Party is pushing the agenda on standing up for the Canadian farm. I am very disappointed that the finance minister, who is from Regina, did not even take note of the disaster on Canadian farms today.
First and foremost, budget 2005 really was an admission that the Conservative Party was right. In the last election campaign, the Conservative Party campaigned on a platform of tax relief and of increases in spending for the Canadian military. The government told Canadians that if we went down that road it would hurt Canada. It said that would drive Canada into deficit. We proposed spending over $50 billion on those initiatives.
A few months later, we have a Liberal government back in power proposing to spend over $50 billion on similar initiatives. But guess what? Now it will not drive Canada into deficit because now it is the Liberals doing it. Apparently somehow that makes a difference in how much money we have. I just want to point to that duplicity. It was completely dishonest. Unfortunately they got away with it, but I hope that Canadians will note what they have done and be mindful of that as we approach another election.
We have some criticism of this budget. I know people have pointed to the fact that we have said we will not bring down the government on this budget. It is true. We will not. We will not bring down the government because we think it has made some positive steps in certain areas. We are happy to see that. Again, it is an acknowledgement that the Conservative Party was correct on these things.
We do not think it went far enough and fast enough in some areas, there is no question about it. I will talk about that in a moment, but it is also true that the Conservative Party is here to serve Canada and we want to make this minority Parliament work. We think we can twist some arms to get the government to do some positive things.
We have already done that. We recently passed a motion that really has forced the government to have independent forecasters come in, look at the books of the government and determine how large surpluses will be down the road so the government cannot again play games with these surpluses. It is trying to play games, but now we have an independent set of numbers and can say, “Wait a minute, we can see that government is lowballing the size of the surplus”. It is doing that actually; it is lowballing the size of the surplus going into next year and the years after, next year by $4 billion alone. That is why we are arguing it could do more, but I want to set that aside for a moment.
We are here to serve the public. Canada does not want an election today. That is very clear. We understand that. We are willing to try to make this Parliament work, but having said that, we are also going to twist Liberal arms to make sure that it works not for the Liberal Party but for Canadians.
We have criticisms. I have touched on a couple of them already. One of the criticisms we have is on the huge increase in the cost of the bureaucracy over the last number of years.
Since 1997 the cost of the bureaucracy in Canada has gone up 77%. Despite that, the government, even though it has lots of money for its own boondoggles and lots of money for the cost of the bureaucracy, gave a very begrudging tax cut to low income Canadians. When it comes to ensuring that people at the low end of the income scale have a few more dollars in their pockets, the government provides them with a $16 tax break on their tax bill next year. I could spend that $16 in a parking meter. That is $1.25 a month. That is like a down payment on a large coffee at Tim Hortons. That is clearly inadequate; in fact, it is an insult. The government has to refocus and start to treat Canadians with a little respect.
Over the last dozen years Canadians have seen their take home pay frozen. They have seen no rise at all in their take home pay. Don Drummond, former deputy minister of finance and now chief economist at the TD Bank, has said over and over again that Canadians must have a national pay raise. The only way that can happen is if the government changes its priorities. It has to ensure that some of the surplus it generates is turned back to Canadians in the form of lower taxes. That must happen for the working poor and for middle income Canadians who often feel as if they are left out. They need to get that break.
We in the Conservative Party think that many of these measures are too little too late. I would say the same thing about national defence.
When the government announced its spending on national defence, it simply reannounced a number of things it had already announced, things like spending on medium range helicopters. The government made these announcements before, but they were put in the budget to make it sound like it is a great big number.
Of course we appreciate the spending on defence, and of course it should be there, but let us not pretend it is more than it really is. That is what the government does every time. It reannounces old spending and does it over a multi-year period so it sounds like a great big number, but when it is spread out over five years it is a lot less impressive. We need to keep that in mind.
There are many things the government still has to do. Some of these contributions are welcome, but as our defence critic pointed out, there is still not enough money for maintenance of existing equipment. There will be some purchases of new equipment, which is welcome, but there is not even enough money for the maintenance of existing equipment.
The government has to do a lot more when it comes to ensuring that we look after the Canadian military. They are the people who defend us, the people whom we count upon to be our face in the world when they go on peacekeeping missions and when they deliver disaster relief as they did during the tsunami crisis in southeast Asia.
The Conservative Party has many other concerns with respect to this budget. One of the big concerns I have as finance critic is the government has announced a number of measures where it has committed huge amounts of money, such as $5 billion for child care and $5 billion for climate change initiatives, but there are no plans attached to them.
I get worried when the government oversees big pools of money and there are no plans as to how the money will be distributed to meet certain objectives that are in the public interest. That looks like a boondoggle in the making to me. The child care and climate change initiatives are going to cost $10 billion. We should all be sore afraid.
The Auditor General condemned the government for setting up foundations where Parliament had no oversight, where there were no performance audits. It looks like the exact same thing with those two programs in particular. We are concerned about that as well.
My leader has said and I am saying that we will not defeat the government on this budget. We want to work with this minority Parliament in the interests of Canada. We know it has only been eight months since the last election. We have already had three elections in eight months in my part of the world in Alberta. I do not think Canadians want to have a fourth.
We will also hold the government to account. We will try to amend pieces of legislation that deal with some of these specific measures as they come through the House and committee to improve them. That is our role as the official opposition. We are here to work for Canadians.