Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to speak in favour of this excellent budget.
I believe this truly is an excellent budget. It is a fine example of promises made and promises kept. During the election campaign, the government made promises with respect to the environment, national defence, child care and various other things. In the budget, we kept those promises, we did what we promised to do.
I thought it might be useful in my 10 minutes to focus less on the excellent expenditures of the budget and more on the way in which these expenditures were financed. In my role as chair of the expenditure review committee, we were charged to find $12 billion over five years to help finance the commitments of the government. While we had a number of years in which to find the $12 billion, in the end, over the space of some six to eight months, we found $11 billion, so there is now $1 billion left to go.
I would say there are two reasons why this was an important initiative. First, we needed the money. We had made the commitments in our electoral platform, had costed those commitments and found that we were $12 billion short in terms of the fiscal framework. The Prime Minister and the government made the commitment that we would pay for all these commitments but that $12 billion over five years would be financed through reallocation. In order to deliver on the commitments, we needed to find that money and we succeeded in doing so.
I might point out that $11 billion is a lot of money. Eleven billion dollars is equal to 40% of the total new departmental initiatives in the budget, which are all the initiatives other than the transfers to provinces or individuals. It was important in terms of delivering on the commitments of the government to find this money.
The second reason I think is more fundamental. The second reason involves the sound stewardship of taxpayer money and it involves what one might call a second cultural shift in the way in which Ottawa does business.
I would remind hon. members that 10 years ago this country was mired in a $42 billion deficit and the Wall Street Journal was saying that Canada was approaching third world status. At that time, under the leadership of the Prime Minister and the previous prime minister, tough decisions were made to turn that deficit into a surplus. I think at the time, 10 years ago, few believed that the government would turn that deficit into surplus. Little did they know that not only have we now become the only G-7 country to balance the budget but we have done it for seven years in a row.
These decisions were extremely difficult. All Canadians paid to get from a deficit into a surplus. The point I am making is that this was a true cultural shift. Whereas in 1993 few believed that we could get into surplus, today it is difficult to find anybody in Ottawa who thinks we should go back into deficit. The ultimate proof of that is that even the NDP professes today to believe in balanced budgets. If that has sunk into the NDP, it surely is a general proposition accepted by all. I do not necessarily believe that but the culture of surpluses is so strong that the NDP at least is obliged to pretend that it believes in surpluses.
The second cultural shift is that our Prime Minister said that being in the black was essential but that it was not enough. We have to go to that second level where it will become a culture of Ottawa to not only balance the books but to ensure that every taxpayer dollar is well spent. That implies a culture of reallocation so that each and every year the government examines all of its expenditures with a view to reducing those items that are inefficient, or that have become low priority, and to shift those resources into the high priorities of that day.
That is precisely what was the spirit and the philosophy behind expenditure review. We found $11 billion in lower priority expenditure areas, areas in which we could reduce expenditures to reduce inefficiency.
We had all of that money to deliver in the budget, whether it was for the environment, for national defence, for child care, or for the new deal for cities. It is an excellent example of the first phase of the second cultural shift in Ottawa where we move to a philosophy of reallocation each and every year as stewards of taxpayers' money. There is proof that we are serious in this regard.
Many people have asked me why in the world we would carry out this reallocation exercise when we have such a big surplus. They said that they thought that this kind of thing was only done in a fiscal crisis, such as when we inherited the Conservative deficit in 1993. No, we are not doing this because there is a fiscal crisis. Thanks to the fantastic work of our Prime Minister in getting rid of the deficit, we have no fiscal crisis at all. We are one of the few countries that has balanced its books. There is no fiscal crisis in the land.
The objective of the exercise is not to deal with a fiscal crisis. The objective is to deliver good government and good stewardship of taxpayers' money to the people of Canada. That is why the government found $11 billion in relatively low priority areas and shifted that money to areas that Canadians really care about, such as the environment, child care, health care and national defence. We were able to reduce spending in areas that were less essential and deliver the money to areas where Canadians wanted it put.
We are on the way to a second cultural shift in this country. The first cultural shift was the brave and courageous actions taken by the Prime Minister when he was finance minister to eliminate the deficit and move to a culture of surpluses. This is a culture that is so embedded that even the NDP accepts it, at least on paper.
We have moved from that first cultural shift to the second cultural shift. Each and every year the government, on behalf of taxpayers, will seek to spend more wisely. It will find areas which could be dealt with more efficiently and break down the silos which occur in any large organization. In that way funds will be available to be put precisely where Canadians want them to be spent.
While the finance minister's job was to deliver the funds, my job was to collect part of the funds necessary for this exercise. It was a very positive exercise because we needed the money, and also because we demonstrated to Canadians our sound stewardship of their money. Having moved from the Prime Minister's successful efforts to eliminate the deficit, we have now moved to the second stage where each and every dollar will be reallocated and wisely spent.