Mr. Speaker, we have a number of very serious concerns relating to the budgeting process and the budgeting track upon which the government is now set.
When the budget itself was first introduced the record shows very clearly that we took a look at it and made a decision at that point because it contained some things which we felt would be positive, some things that we as opposition members had suggested, that we would not go for a non-confidence motion at that point on the budget as presented.
Things have changed radically since the Prime Minister introduced that budget and he has now embarked on a process that is ad hoc, add on and ad absurdum. It goes to the point of absurdity. No plan is in place. Nothing is more dangerous than a Liberal with a bunch of money in one hand and no plan in the other. That is a recipe for disaster.
We have seen that constantly in fund after fund. Whether we are talking about the billion dollar boondoggle at HRDC or the horrendous $2 billion disaster in the gun registry, it does not matter. Whatever the Liberals get their hands on, if there is not a strict regime overlaying the dollars in their hands, we have a run-away wreck.
Certainly we are seeing that, without a doubt, in the sponsorship scandal. We have also seen it reflected in report after report from our various auditors general. The question that they ask more often than not of the Liberal government, not just our present Auditor General but a former one, is: who is minding the store? The Liberals are out of control when it comes to spending. They panic when it comes to possibly losing a vote here and there and, in this particular budget process, it is very important to acknowledge what the Prime Minister has done.
In abject fear of losing any kind of vote in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister has taken $4.6 billion and he hopes he has purchased 19 NDP votes. That is about $3.5 billion more expensive than what the Liberals were doing with the sponsorship plan in trying to buy a few more votes than that in Quebec. That will go down in history as the most expensive vote buying plan ever seen in a democracy anywhere.
There are serious problems with the approach that the Liberals are taking. What they should have done is they should have brought in three separate bills so that we in the House could have analyzed one in a proper and mature fashion and done it in a way that would have given confidence to Canadians, that Canadians in different parts of the country with different issues and concerns would know and have a sense that we are looking at their concerns.
One part of this particular budgetary approach should have looked at the Atlantic accord separately. Clearly, the Kyoto measures should have required a separate look and separate distinction, and it should have included traditional budget measures.
With regard to Kyoto, all of us want clean air and clean water for ourselves, for our children and for our grandchildren for hundreds of years to come, and there are ways that can be assured even in the budget.
For close to 10 years we have asked the Liberals to please bring forward a plan so we can understand how the Kyoto measures are to be enacted and arrived at. There never has been a plan, just grandiose verbosity and suggestions that ultimately it would be very expensive.
When it comes to Kyoto, the argument is not the environment or jobs. In fact, there is a way to approach this in which we can ensure the integrity and the purity of our environment and also maintain economic strength in our country. Therefore we continue to press the government on what exactly the plan is relating to Kyoto.
We finally got a plan several days ago. Bringing it down to its core elements, the Liberals' approach to Kyoto is this: take taxpayer money, which they do very well, and give it to jurisdictions such as China, which is not a part of Kyoto and is operating in a substandard way in terms of the environment, pay communist China with Canadian taxpayers' money to continue to subvert the Kyoto process, and at the same time allow Canadian companies to deliver substandard regulatory processes themselves.
That is not the way to show respect for the environment or respect for taxpayers. In fact, the government's plan on Kyoto rewards pollution pirates in other countries with Canadian taxpayer dollars. That is not the way to do it. This should have come in separately so that we could have had a full discussion on it.
As far as the Atlantic accord is concerned, again it is this whole notion of extortion that the federal Liberals seem to embrace when it comes to taxpayer dollars. They take money from taxpayers and then use subtle forms of extortion to give them back a bit so that we as taxpayers then shiver in concern that we might not have our basic needs met and are forced to think about voting for the federal Liberals just to get back a tiny portion of what they extorted from us.
Certainly this is what the federal Liberals are doing to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, in effect holding them hostage by linking the Atlantic accord provisions in such a way as to say that if their flawed budget process and bill do not pass, the people in Atlantic Canada will suffer. Members can get out a thesaurus if they like; there are other words for that approach, but I am sticking to the word extortion, that is, using fear to extract dollars from people for a particular goal. That is not the way to respect and to show respect for Atlantic Canadians.
This budget process upon which the Liberals have now embarked should have entailed a separate approach to the Atlantic accord. Why would they not do that? Why would they not bring the Atlantic accord here?
This is why I think they would not do it. The Liberals do not want Atlantic Canadians to see that in fact it is Conservative members of this caucus who have articulated the strengths of and the things that are necessary in the Atlantic accord, which we have said we will support. The Conservative members have been very clear about that. They will support absolutely the provisions of the Atlantic accord, because most of them are ideas which those Conservative MPs from Atlantic Canada, from Newfoundland and Labrador and from Nova Scotia and other areas brought forward.
It is those MPs who brought forward these notions about how to make Atlantic Canada strong and prosperous. I think the federal Liberals do not want that exposed. As they usually do, they take our good ideas, dress them up just a little differently, call them their own and then tell people to vote for our ideas dressed in their clothing.
The Atlantic accord provisions should have been brought in separately.
Then, in terms of the budget process itself, it was fascinating in the last election to watch where the Liberals, true to form, campaigned against many of the things that we wanted to see and which they said would never work. Then, when they did their nightly polling--because a Liberal cannot go to bed at night without polling to see if he or she should be sleeping or not--they thought, “Oh my goodness. These things the Conservatives are proposing would be good for Canadians and Canadians like them”.
So now they are coming back and again taking our ideas and putting them in their budget, or trying to, with half steps and half measures. They are trying to pretend, with some mediocre and substandard tax cuts, that they actually care about hard-working people. It is a tremendous camouflage, like a wolf in sheep's clothing, and unfortunately some Canadians may be misguided by it.
I will bring my remarks to a conclusion by saying that when the budget first came in, we did not oppose it. Now the Liberals have drastically and in a panic changed it and that is a recipe for financial disaster. The present Prime Minister, the former finance minister, likes to rest on what is now an increasingly shaky legacy of having dealt with the deficit 10 years ago. He dealt with the deficit by slashing health care by 36% overnight. That is mainly how he did it, but now he is abandoning even that notion of some kind of fiscal restraint.
He has thrown everything to the wind in this budget process and has come up with $4.6 billion to buy 19 votes. That is not the way to handle the taxpayer money of this country. These notions that I talked about, these three separate areas, should be brought in here separately so that each could be debated and supported on its own measures. That would be true fiscal accountability for the people of Canada.