Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the point of the problems I have with this budget. It is the question of the government's priorities and the choices the government has made.
The night this budget was presented, the member for Wild Rose made a very interesting comment. As soon as the speech was completed, he called over to the Minister of Finance and said, “I think there is a misprint in the copy I have. The chapter on agriculture seems to be missing. I cannot find it”. The member remembers saying that. I did the same thing.
Agriculture is absolutely vital. It is important to this country. Much of the tender fruit industry and the grape and wine industry in this country is centred in my part of Canada. Of course I looked for assistance in the budget, or a demonstration that the government knows about and wants to support these industries. I will tell members that we had to look real hard to find any reference to agriculture. I was very disappointed.
Again I will come back to this about the Government of Canada and the choices it makes and its way of doing business. I was in Winnipeg a couple of years ago and heard the Prime Minister, then the finance minster, start talking about giving gas taxes to the municipalities. I was a municipal politician at the time. I had no reason to doubt the sincerity of the then finance minister. I told my colleagues, “Gee, I think we are going to be getting some of that gas tax in the municipalities. This will be of interest.”
The spring becomes the summer, the summer becomes the fall, we are into the winter again and there is talk that it is coming. Then we are into an election. There has been an announcement and “gas tax to the municipalities” is part of the election. The election comes and goes, the summer becomes the fall, the fall becomes the winter again and the cheque is never in the mail.
That is the problem with this government. The announcement comes and then we wait. It is like the constituent who came up to me and said, “I'm voting Liberal this time because I think they are going to legalize marijuana”. I said, “Well, jeepers, you'll get to vote for them all your life, I guess, because that's a promise they make every election”.
I disagree with that promise, but the Liberals just keep making it and it dies on every order paper. It gets buried somewhere.
The same promises go on and on. In the end, just like the municipalities waiting for their cheque for the gas tax, those promises just do not quite make it. I would guess that we will probably be hearing another announcement with respect to this.
That is not the way government should be done in this country. We should make commitments to people and then follow through on those commitments in a timely manner.