Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the very exciting and prominent new member of the House of Commons, the member for Edmonton—Spruce Grove.
In my four minutes I would like to refer to a Toronto story. I know the Toronto Star is hardly a bastion of conservatism, but it has an article that says, “PM's spending spree smacks of desperation”. It certainly does, but it also should strike fear into the hearts of anyone who understands fundamental money management.
We are talking about $1.25 billion a day for the last three weeks that has been committed by the government opposite in contravention of the most fundamental principles of money management, without due regard for the process of evaluation, and without a plan. The Liberals are so desperate for ideas over there that they have gone to the NDP for help. It is pathetic. If Canadians wanted an NDP budget, they would have elected more than 19 members of Parliament for that party. They did not.
An article in the Globe and Mail today was entitled “Liberal spending blitz hits $19.5 billion”. It said:
Toronto-Dominion Bank chief economist Don Drummond said he believes the Liberals are obliged to table an economic update to tell Canadians how all this new spending fits in the fiscal plan.
It went on:
To tell you the truth, I would think everybody's sort of lost track.
The fact of the matter is that the government is desperate. It is corrupt. It is indecent and dangerous. It is selling this country's fiscal future down the river as it will do anything to cling to power. It is trying to cover up a vote buying scandal with another vote buying scandal. It is trying to buy its way out of trouble. One thing is absolutely for certain, Canadians are on to it. Canadians understand what got the Liberal Party into this mess and Canadians are not interested in being bought by their own money.
Here is another comment from another article today. This is interesting. This is from Michael Murphy, senior vice-president of policy for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He said:
The government has clearly made a decision to spend its way to the next election. They've now basically said: “To heck with that budget, here's new stuff”.
It's back to the future for the Liberals. This is what got us into the massive deficit financing of the past, the whole principle of concentrating benefits, making promise after promise regardless of the legitimacy of the spending or regardless and disrespectful of a plan of any kind.
They threw it around in a one and a half page bill that the NDP members sold themselves out for. We knew that the NDP members would prostitute themselves, but they did it cheaply in this case because this is a one and a half page bill with no commitments on the part of the government other than to do orders in council in broad general categories.
For example, the Liberals claimed to care about aboriginal housing. They are going to address aboriginal housing, but without a plan, how can they possibly do that?