Mr. Speaker, I will begin by congratulating my colleague from Medicine Hat. He has done a fine job as the finance critic for the Conservative Party stickhandling through some very substantive issues. I will not comment on his skating skills, but his stickhandling on this particular subject has been tremendous. I am honoured to share my time with him.
As well, I would point out that the leader of the Conservative Party gave a very compelling critique of this budget pointing out its shortcomings, but at the same time recognizing that this is really a page out of the Conservative platform, albeit it does not go far enough. It does not move in a direction quickly enough as we would like to have seen.
It is symbolic of the fact that the Liberal government and the finance minister in particular have recognized the wisdom of the Conservative plan from the last election and have literally pulled much of the initiatives from the pages of that platform. The measures that we see in the budget just take some of the highlights of the Conservative plan.
The Liberals obviously look at the necessity of giving our military more in the way of equipment, more in the way of personnel, a pay raise for those hard-working men and women in uniform, yet much of this is going to be delayed.
In fact, I would describe this budget in many ways as a post-dated cheque. We are not going to see the actual impact of many of these initiatives for years to come, upwards of eight years, five years in many cases. Although the figures themselves seem enormous, when we start to delve into the detail, we find that much of this money will not be delivered on time and perhaps not at all.
What we see with the Liberal government is that much of the commitment goes beyond its mandate. It goes beyond the mandate of any government when it starts promising that these things are going to happen five years down the road. With the volatility of a minority government, it goes beyond arrogance to suggest that the Liberals can make these commitments with any surety.
The tax relief first and foremost that my colleague referred to is certainly meagre. He talks about it being a couple of cups of coffee at Tim Hortons; I would describe it more as a couple of happy meals, but people are not going to be very happy when they actually look at what their take home savings will be.