Madam Speaker, I would like to pick up for a second on the whole question of surpluses. I cannot believe there is anyone left in the country who is going to buy into any of the predictions by the Liberal Party. It is a little joke that the Liberals have on Canadians, if it were not so tragic in terms of overtaxation. The same nonsense goes on every year. The Liberals predicted $1.9 billion and then lo and behold in the hallways they stumbled over another $7 billion. I never believed any of that nonsense.
During the election the Liberals said that the numbers did not add up, that the Bank of Montreal was overpredicting the surplus. I never bought into it. If they think they fooled some of their constituents, I do not think they will be able to do it again. I think it has been shown what they truly are. This whole business of trying to fool Canadians and continue to overtax them is something Canadians have had enough of. All their projections we take with a grain of salt, as do most Canadians. Canadians are not buying into it.
There are a couple of other things I do not think Canadians are going to buy into. We hear announcement after announcement. For example, the Liberal day care policy has been a part of every election campaign for the last 12 years. The Liberals keep making the announcement and no one ever sees a dime from these announcements.
It is like the announcement on the gas tax rebate for the cities. A couple of years ago the current Prime Minister was in Winnipeg speaking to a gathering of municipal politicians. He made this grand announcement, that the Liberals were going to move forward on the gas tax rebate for municipalities. For heaven's sake, that was over two years ago and the municipalities are still waiting for it.
Now the Liberals have taken it to a new level. Part of the logic of the Liberals must be that if they make the announcement enough times then somehow it has happened. On the weekend, I heard the Prime Minister say on a couple of these things, “Promises kept”.
Good heavens above, the municipalities are still waiting for their cheques. I say to him, skip the announcement. How many times is he going to announce some of these things? Could he please send the cheques? That is what the cities want.
The Liberals have taken it to another level. They do not just keep announcing it. Now they say that the promises have been kept. The hon. members across heard all that and they must have been chuckling to themselves. It is a whole new spin on the idea of government announcements.
The budget is not all bad. There are some positive things in it. Interestingly enough, a number of the positive things in the budget came from members of the Conservative Party.
The member for Prince George--Peace River, my seatmate the House leader for the Conservative Party, should take a great deal of pride and satisfaction that his proposal for a new non-refundable $10,000 credit for expenses that couples incur in child adoption was in the budget. He should be very proud of that. I was pleased to see that in the budget.
I flipped through the budget. I looked for things like expenditures on border security and infrastructure and I see references to those. The government acknowledges that it has a responsibility in the whole question of border security.
I was asked by the local press in my riding whether $400 million was enough. It is enough when the job is done efficiently and the borders operate in an effective manner, when goods and services move across Canada's borders and at the same time Canada's security is maintained. Whatever that amount is, is what the country must commit itself to. I am pleased that there are references to that in the budget.
There is one thing I did not see in the budget and it is a glaring oversight. This was raised by one of my colleagues after he heard the budget speech and had a chance to look at the budget. He thinks there is a misprint in the budget. He asked where the chapter is on agriculture. That is a good question. Where is the chapter on agriculture?
I looked at the budget plan 2005 because I thought it must be there somewhere. One has to look real hard. It is hard to find because it does not get its own chapter and there is very little provided. It covers a couple of pages and is very inadequate.
The budget talks about the Canadian agricultural income stabilization program, a program that is of interest to the farmers in my area. The government talks about good intentions, that the government will work with its provincial partners, that it realizes there is a problem. That is an announcement that the Liberals want to do something about it. We had a debate on this issue about a month ago. I say to the government to get on with it. If the government realizes there is a problem with the program, it should get going and do something about it.
What disappointed me the most is the whole issue with respect to the federal excise tax as it applies to the wine industry and small breweries. It had been recommended to the government that it reduce or eliminate that tax. There was considerable hope within those industries. It would make a big difference to them. It would affect the smaller wineries and breweries. The federal government's budget does not sink or swim, the finances of the country do not depend on the relatively small amount of money collected from that tax. Representatives of the wine industry were optimistic that something would be done. I was very disappointed to read on page 158:
With respect to beer and wine, the Committee acknowledged that limited fiscal resources narrow the range of tax relief that can be funded. The recommendations with respect to beer and wine will remain under consideration.
Is that not wonderful. It is under consideration. That is a real shame. I ask the government even at this point to please bring in something, a separate bill. It would be of tremendous help to those industries that are so important to the country. I know the members of my party would welcome and support that.
The Minister of Transport has to be a very disappointed individual. I believe his comments that he would like to see airport rents reduced. It is false economy to try to make our airports as expensive as possible because the costs are passed on to the travelling public. It makes air transport, which is critical for the country's transportation infrastructure, more expensive. I know the minister joins with me and other members of the transport committee and the transport critic in saying it would have been wonderful to see that.
The Minister of Finance will say that these things are under consideration, but that is like a lot of other things. Everything is under consideration and we only get announcements. When does it finally happen? The Minister of Transport must be very disappointed about that.
Quite frankly, I was initially encouraged by comments with respect to defence spending. Defence has been terribly underfunded by the present government. The Liberals have continued this pattern for their 11 and one-half years in office. It is wrong. It is a bad idea. It hurts Canada. When there was all the foofaraw in the Minister of Finance's speech about all this money for defence, I was very pleased.
I went to the budget plan and again, this is not something cooked up by the Conservative Party or other opposition parties; the government puts these things out. If we flip to page 222, we will see defence funding. The fascinating thing is the category “New medium capacity helicopters, logistics trucks, utility aircraft and JTF2 facility”, all great things for Canada's military. Is this not a great idea? As we say in the legal profession, never mind the big print, always look for the small print. What does the government plan to spend on those categories for fiscal year 2005-06? Zero. What about next year, 2006-07? Zero. Like so much of the budget, it is all back-end loaded.
The government cannot get straight how much money it has to spend for the present year. It cannot seem to come up with the right numbers to predict the present year's surplus, so try and figure out how good its predictions are for what it will do in 2007, 2008 and 2009. That is in the area of fiscal never-never land for the government. It is very disappointing.