Mr. Speaker, we are on the eve of a confidence vote that is going to take place tomorrow on the budget. This budget seems to have become one of the main issues now facing Canadians with respect to the continuation of the Liberal government. The Liberal government has been going around the country touting that if the government were to fall, there would be major and severe impacts because of the promises it made in the budget it tabled in February 2005.
Today we are speaking on Bill C-43, a budget implementation bill which followed the budget and of course tomorrow we will be speaking on Bill C-48, the other budget implementation bill. We will have votes on both Bill C-43 and Bill C-48.
As we rise in the House to speak to these main issues all we hear from the Liberal government side are all the expenditures that have been promised to everybody in the budget. Should the budget not pass and should the government fall, the Liberals say there is going to be a major impact, as if everything is going to come to a stop. They talk as if the Conservative Party does not have a plan, as if the Conservative Party members would suddenly close their eyes and not do something about faults in the Canadian economy addressed by the budget.
I have stood in the House many times in the past eight years to speak about budgets which contained many of the issues that the government is now saying it will implement. We talked about the gas tax, about royalties to the provinces, infrastructure, raising money for seniors living on fixed incomes, and tax relief for individuals and businesses.
The Conservative Party members have been standing up in the House and pinpointing all those issues. We know that the current Prime Minister, who was the finance minister for eight years, has been talking about surpluses and surpluses, and how he brought the books under control. Let me ask this question. Where do surpluses come from? Obviously, there was something wrong in the way that they were being forecast or Canadians were being taxed and were not being told the truth. They were being taxed and we did not need their money. They should have reduced taxes a long time ago and not announced surpluses over that eight year period.
Today, on the eve of this vote, the Prime Minister is signing and writing cheques all over the country because he says these are moneys that are needed. Obviously, the government did not address this before, and now it has become so urgent. We are talking as if the whole structure of the country will come to a stop if the government falls. No, the Conservative Party is saying that if it forms the government, it has a fiscally responsible platform that talks about where investment would be made in the Canadian economy, starting with tax breaks and infrastructure.
As a matter of fact, the leader of the Conservative Party just met with the Liberal leader of Ontario and told him that the Conservatives would honour whatever has been signed. The Canadian public should not expect that there would be no money to address many of their concerns and issues that we have talked about if the government falls.
Let us talk about infrastructure. The mayor of the city of Calgary has been writing to us for a long time about the gas tax. This was an issue in Calgary that I talked about when I ran to become a member a year ago. Many years ago we pointed out how much tax the government was taking. Why was the government not returning the tax dollars back to the cities.
We have been talking about this for a long time. As a matter of fact, I remember having taken part in a demonstration in Calgary to point this out. Lo and behold, today, after the Prime Minister made his deal, he says that this is the most important thing.
If the Conservative Party were talking about that deal, why would we not fulfill that deal? As our leader and finance critic have said, we know where to invest in this country. We have presented a plan on where we have to invest in this country, and that plan is a sound, responsible plan.
There are certain things with which we do not agree. The example is in Bill C-48, the deal that the Liberals made with the NDP to stop corporate tax cuts and, as the NDP likes to say, to make investment in some social areas.
We recognize there is a need for investment in social areas, but not to the extent the NDP expects. The NDP thinks that business is some kind of entity which has a bottomless pit where it can always go and grab money. We have to present a responsible economic environment and we have to see it that way.
Business is already talking about the need for tax cuts as well as for individuals. Money in the pocket of a Canadian business is better spent than money in the pocket of a government run by the Liberals, which we note from the Gomery inquiry that is going on and what the Liberals were doing with the money that they were taking from Canadian taxpayers.
The Conservative Party platform will address the issues. It is wrong for Liberal Party members to stand up and say that if they are defeated tomorrow, all these promises will stop.
The Atlantic accord was signed with the provinces and it is part of Bill C-43. We said we could support that, but it must be changed. Of course, the government did not want to change it. It wanted the whole thing. There are provisions which we cannot support. The government knew that. We said that if it removed the Atlantic accord from the budget, to ensure that it passed, we would expedite it. We believe that the Atlantic accord was and is important for that province and that region.
However, the spin doctors on the Liberal side of course are saying that if the budget is defeated, the Atlantic accord would go. Let us put it another way. We have said that we will support the Atlantic accord. What would it take if, say, tomorrow the government goes and a Conservative government is returned after an election? It would only be 37 days. We would put the Atlantic accord before Parliament and pass it as quickly as possible, so the benefits would go to that region. We know it is an important benefit for that region.
In conclusion, the Conservative Party has a plan. The Liberals say that if they are defeated tomorrow on the budget, all of these implementations will not take place. I want to say that the Conservative Party has a plan and Canadians do not have to buy that kind of propaganda and spin doctoring from the Liberals.