Debates of May 18th, 2005

Budget Implementation Act, 2005

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Madam Speaker, first I would like to acknowledge the remarks made by the member. I think he again speaks to the major theme in the budget and of this government.

As I said, these were tough decisions, which we made to eliminate the deficit and put ourselves in the position where we have surpluses. Making these investments in the areas of post-secondary education, health care and the cities is a sound thing to do. Also worth noting is that we also have a plan in place to make sure that we continue to reduce our debt, to make sure that we have a plan in place in which we reach the goal of 25% of debt to GDP ratio.

I think that again shows the balance. It speaks to our track record when it comes to balancing the books and it speaks to the Prime Minister's track record. If the opposition has an issue with that, so be it, but I think Canadians really value this and they expect this from the Liberal Party.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Madam Speaker, I want to remind the member that tax freedom day in Canada is now July 4, I think, so most Canadians work the first half of the year just to pay the government bills that the government is imposing on them. All this new extra spending, this $22 billion plus the $4.6 billion the government has agreed to with the NDP, is just going to lengthen out the year so that there is less change in people's pockets, less money to spend in their own community and to invest in other things in this society. It is just more government.

I have a specific question. It has been asked today and we have not received an answer yet. I am sure the member will give me an answer. A fair number of Canadians have decided that the best care for their children is for them to stay at home and take care of those kids during their younger years. Could the member tell me specifically how the NDP-Liberal alliance program will address and provide benefits to those people who decide to stay at home and raise their kids?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Madam Speaker, the question has two components. One had to do with taxation and the notion of taxation with respect to the government. The other had to do with the track record of the government when it comes to tax reduction.

It has been brought to my attention that the government has reduced taxes approximately 21% for individuals since it has been in power and 27% collectively for families.

With respect to child care, I can only speak for the constituents of Mississauga--Brampton South. When I knocked on doors and met with families, young couples with children, they truly valued the program that we had put in place. My job as an elected member of Parliament for Mississauga--Brampton South is to reflect the views and concerns of my constituents who do appreciate, value and want the government program when it comes to child care.

[The Acting Speaker (Hon. Jean Augustine)]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for South Surrey--White Rock--Cloverdale, Air-India; the hon. member for Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke, the Environment; the hon. member for Langley, the Environment.

[Paul Forseth, Conservative, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-43 is an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 23, 2005. However I am critical of it because, in the usual Liberal fashion, parts of it sound good but it falls short of the goodness it could have been.

For example, right off the top, printed in the summary of the bill is the following:

Part 1 amends the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Application Rules to

(a) increase the amount that Canadians can earn tax free...

That sounds good but when the calculation is done, the average person would benefit from that provision by about $16 for the whole year, about the cost of taking the kids to McDonald's once. The Liberals give the kids a happy meal and in exchange they want to be kept in power and thanked for their benevolence to us all.

In this bill we are rightly concerned with the Liberal approach to this country's finances: spending without a plan; the Kyoto measures in Bill C-43; the wasteful potentials in Bill C-48, which is about the misguided and hurtful NDP; and the $25 billion in spending announcements in the last few weeks. This irresponsible fiscal approach will hurt families, children, seniors, government workers and new Canadians.

However there are some initiatives in Bill C-43 which Conservatives support and will implement if we form the government, such as the Atlantic accord, better tax relief, gas tax money for municipalities, RRSP initiatives, increases to seniors' pensions, et cetera.

However this bill must be looked at in the context of the overall Liberal-NDP budget. The Liberals have mixed some policies of going in the right direction with initiatives that would prove hurtful to the well-being of Canadians.

Then along comes Bill C-48, the Liberal-NDP deal, that undermines Bill C-43. It should be apparent to all who follow these things that the government is now ruining the country's finances with runaway spending commitments without real implementation or monitoring plans. It is sad to observe that the Liberals are spending billions in an effort to buy votes.

First, they bought 19 NDP votes for $4.5 billion. Now the Prime Minister is travelling the country trying to buy votes of sectors of Canadians by making huge promises. He then attaches a threat that the power hungry Conservatives want to take away this Liberal joy. This Liberal vote buying spree is nothing more than an attempt to distract from its ad scam, which itself is a vote buying scandal worth about $250 million.

It has all come down to the axiom that a vote for the Liberals outside of Quebec is a vote for separation inside Quebec. Voting for the scandal ridden Liberals sends the wrong message to Quebecers who do not like corruption in their name. In view of their sense of being insulted, sadly, Quebecers are choosing the separation option. The Liberals have been creating separatists and this budget bill is part of it.

Canada could have more and better paying jobs and a much higher standard of living but Ottawa taxes too much, spends too much and winds up still owing too much.

Since 1999-2000, program spending has gone up 44%, a compound annual growth of 7.6% when the economy itself managed to grow only 31.6%. That record is a fundamental flaw in Liberal management which will come to haunt our country if continued. It is not surprising that there is so much waste in the government.

Often the government responds to problems with a knee-jerk way of throwing money at a problem. It does not know what to do but it sounds good if money is sent along the way. The Liberals confuse spending money with getting results and value.

Throwing money at the firearms registry, for example, is their way of dealing with the criminal misuse of firearms and the gunplay on our streets and it reveals the general unprofessional approach of Liberal administration.

The gun registry was to cost $2 million. Media reports now say that the actual cost is about $2 billion and the program does not work. One can imagine the community benefit if Alan Rock had taken my advice in the beginning when I told him, in very strong terms in a consultation meeting I had with him, that I would rather have the registry money assigned to various crime prevention and community protection measures than waste it in the registry. Time has shown that I was right and he and his many advisors were wrong, very wrong.

In Quebec, the 1995 referendum was a scare for the nation. The Liberals responded by throwing money at it but without a real plan or a system of accountability. The result was the sponsorship scandal where $250 million were wasted, $100 million probably illegally funnelled to Liberal friends in the Liberal Party. It had the opposite effect of the intended purpose. In fact, it reinvigorated Quebec separation.

Between 2003-04 and 2004-05, the Liberals could not help themselves: program spending skyrocketed by 11.9% and per capita program spending by the federal government has reached its highest point in over a decade and is scheduled to go even higher in the future. However increases in real government spending do not equate to solving problems or getting better results.

Imagine if some of that money was left with families, in the form of lower taxes. The multiplier effect of that would bring more jobs and eventually greater tax revenue for health care and education. An administered tax dollar is an inefficient dollar for our general welfare, in comparison to the same dollar that was never taken from the taxpayer in the first place.

Of course, we need public services and it is for that reason that compassionate Conservatives are so concerned about wise fiscal management, for without care there will not be the revenue available to pay for the social programs that we want.

The NDP-Liberal finance bills have it all backwards and that is why NDP spending on services beyond the capacity of the economy puts into play a doomsday financial problem, when the predicted job losses surely will come and the welfare rolls will skyrocket. The heartless social consequences of NDP thinking and economics hurts people.

I believe it is more compassionate and wise to ensure that we have more people working than just getting by on a meagre public subsidy. A growing sound economy is the most compassionate thing a government can provide so that we are able to help those who cannot help themselves. In the long term, it is a truism that NDP socialism hurts people.

Recently, while government spending went up, according to Statistics Canada, Canadian families saw their after tax income stall in 2002 and in the fall of 2003.

Under pressure from the NDP to remove the tax relief for business, the finance minister told the House that his budget could not be “stripped away piece by piece”. However, within days, without telling his minister, the Prime Minister tried to cover up his sponsorship vote buying scandal by buying the votes of the NDP.

The $4.6 billion, now Bill C-48, will be allocated through order in council in 2005-06 and 2006-07 to programs for the environment, housing and post-secondary education. However the money will not flow unless there is a surplus of $2 billion in those years, and that will not be known for 2005-06 until the books close in August, 2006. That means that the money will not flow for at least 18 months. If it ever does flow at all, it will be at the discretion of the cabinet which again has not designated a plan or even stated a purpose for the money.

What we see is a familiar pattern of vague objectives, deception even of their own NDP partners and no concrete plans.

The Liberals and the NDP are falsely giving the impression that money for the budget initiatives will flow immediately after the Thursday vote. Following regular parliamentary protocol, the bill is closer to its beginning stage and needs to go through many steps and many more months of study before the money would flow.

Last year's budget implementation bill just passed the Senate this last month, a year late.

The bottom line is that the Liberals are corrupt. They are trying to distract the vote buying scandal of the sponsorship program by buying NDP votes and now the public's votes.

In most Canadian families, both parents need to work just for one to pay the taxes. We must never forget that a dollar left in the hands of a worker, homemaker, small businessperson or entrepreneur is more beneficial to the economy than a dollar taken into the hands of a government bureaucrat or politician.

The Conservative Party wants to clean up government. It looks like the finances of the Liberals say they want to clean out government.

Consequently, from a financial administrative perspective, we need an election because the Liberals are corrupt and they are ruining the country's finances. The government has lost the moral authority to govern, has not secured the legal financial authority to govern and, by ignoring Parliament, has become illegitimate.

What Canadians have seen in the last few weeks is truly unprecedented: a government already steeped in corruption attempting to cover-up one vote buying scandal by looting the treasury regardless of the long term consequences for average Canadians.

Canada cannot afford the unholy collusion of the Liberal-NDP financial deal.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have to profess a certain amount of confusion after listening to the hon. member across. The notion that the government, in a minority situation, should not work with other parties and that somehow it is a bad idea that we would reach across the aisle and try to work on our common priorities with other priorities, I would suggest to the hon. member is the very purpose of a minority government and is exactly what we are supposed to be doing.

While the Conservatives, in collusion with the separatists, work so hard to obstruct Parliament and stop business, maybe they should take an example from members on this side of the House who are trying to work with one of the opposition parties to find common ground, to make a better country and to make this Parliament work.

Canadians overwhelmingly do not want an election. We heard the leader of the official opposition say that he would take the time in April to listen to constituents and what they had to say. Why will he not listen to Canadians? Why will he not listen to the overwhelming number of Canadians from all different political stripes, to Conservative premiers and to New Democratic premiers who say that we should pass this budget?

[Paul Forseth, Conservative, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, I think it is the Liberals who do not want an election. What they have done is most unseemly. They have made all kinds of unrealistic promises and then attached a threat. We have tried to respond to that in the media by saying that any signed contract that has the name of Canada behind it will be honoured by us.

We need an election. The member does not understand the concept of responsible government. He does not understand that a government must have the ongoing confidence of the House. He does not understand that when the government loses the votes that it did, it is required to put a simple straightforward confidence motion before the House immediately. The government has failed to do that. That is my point about the illegitimacy of the government.

The role of Parliament is to approve budgets. Governments may propose budgets, but Parliament as an independent entity must finally vote on the appropriation. What we intend to do here is to vote for the appropriations that are realistic. The government should have negotiated with the Conservatives, the official opposition. It should not have gone to the NDP.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Madam Speaker, I take exception to the comments made by the member, in particular his comments that NDP plans are not good for Canadians or for the economy. I only have to point to health care which has been identified by numerous studies as one of the most competitive planks in our economic package. It was first introduced by Tommy Douglas in Saskatchewan and then by the NDP here in the House of Commons. I also want to talk about the new NASA program that we hope will take hold in Canada.

I also want to speak for a brief minute about the Conservative approach to that particular challenge in our country and to quote Gordon Cleveland Michael Krashinsky who said:

The Conservatives are on the horns of a dilemma here.... That's why they will recycle their $2,000 tax deduction for all families with children (about $600-$800 per child for the typical family). However, no one is going to be convinced that this relatively puny tax break will make a difference.

The reality the [Conservatives] face is that paying parents to stay at home is costly -- much more expensive than good quality learning and care....

Unless unacceptably large amounts of public money are devoted to paying parents, only a small number will take up the option....

To encourage many employed parents to stay at home, you would have to pay them at least the rate of maternity and parental benefits, currently 55 per cent of their regular pay, up to $413 per week. Maternity and parental benefits, which cover the first year of a child's life, now cost about $2.7 billion a year. Multiply that by six...[and you're up to] $16 billion per year.

Maternity and parental benefits cover only about 60 per cent of all parents with newborns. To cover all families, it would cost about $27 billion per year.

This is the cost of the child care program that the Conservatives are talking about. If we add that to the cost to the economy when all those parents come out of the workforce because they cannot find affordable child care, we are talking about another cost of $83 billion per year. If we add $83 billion and $27 billion we are talking about some pretty significant money. That is the cost to this country of the Conservatives' child care program.

The program that the Liberals and the NDP want to introduce at 1% of GDP would max out at $10 billion a year, which would give a return of two dollars for every dollar, $20 billion back into the economy.

I would like the member to explain that to us and to help me understand why his program is so much better for the people of Canada than the one we are suggesting.

[Paul Forseth, Conservative, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, the gentleman is confused. Unfortunately he continues to live and breathe this socialist literature which is full of myths.

The Conservative plan needs to be carefully explained and tested at the ballot box. The socialists always come up with these hare-brained ideas but they would never dare put those individual programs to the test at the ballot box.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Madam Speaker, like all the members, I had the opportunity to spend the past several weekends, including Mother's Day, in my riding. I realized that people were concerned about the political situation in Canada. They told me over and over that the last thing they wanted was go to the polls. They feel that now is not the time for an election.

These people have hopes and dreams. Many of them support budget 2005. They believe it addresses many of their hopes and needs. Health care in Canada, including the application of the Canada Health Act, the issue of doctors, hospitals, nurses and home care, remains their number one concern. The last thing they are asking for is an election.

A year ago the Canadian public elected a minority government. It was a message. I do not think the public got together and decided to elect a minority government so that this or that would happen. Everyone votes individually. But the result is that we have a minority government and our responsibility is to make it work, so there are some negotiations and some discussions.

We presented a budget. The opposition agreed very quickly that it was a good budget. We put some elements in it that opposition members can support, some that we can support, and elements that we can support jointly. We have an amendment to the budget, a second bill, after discussions with the New Democrats that looks at questions that have always been Liberal priorities, always been part of the Liberal agenda, that we said we would accomplish over five years. We advanced those issues.

At the current time people in my riding, among other things, are speaking generally about parliamentary civility, which is something that is of great concern because it casts shadows on members of all parties. When Canadian voters tell me that they do not like their children watching question period because they do not want them to emulate the behaviour, it is very serious. I hope the debate will not degrade to that. I hope civility will be maintained in the House. We have seen it this week, after what happened last week, and I think we are all much improved for that.

People in my riding of southwestern Nova Scotia have told me that they do not want an election. Like all Canadians, like all members of the House, like all members on this side, they are not happy about the sponsorship debacle. They are not happy about what they hear and about the activities that have happened. They want to make sure, as I do, that those who are responsible face the full consequences of the law, but they want to know, as I do, exactly what happened. They want to know from Justice Gomery, from the court; they want things to follow their course. They recognize that if we watch the testimony on TV, we see people contradicting one another. We know things happened that were not right. What the public wants to know is, is this an ongoing matter? Has it been fixed? How do we ensure that this does not happen in the future, and who was responsible? There are many tracks to find that out.

I participated last year on the public accounts committee. We heard from many people. We heard from the Auditor General who told us of the years that these problems existed. That was in the past, some four or five years ago. We also heard from the internal auditors of the government who had been assigned to look at this issue. They assured us that changes had been made to take care of it.

I am comfortable. While opposition members will use the word “corrupt” about this government, they are misleading Canadians. They are knowingly doing that, but they know that no shadow has been cast on any member of the current government.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Why didn't the Prime Minister apologize to Parliament?

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, those members cast aspersions. They raise the Prime Minister's name. What did the Prime Minister do when he came into office? He referred this matter to the public accounts committee.

The first thing he did was ask the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to consider this information in order to fully understand what had happened. He gave the committee access to all the departmental documents so it could identify the problems and shortcomings of the current system and determine what the minister and deputy minister had been responsible for, in order to ensure those mistakes are not repeated.

He hired a special counsel and said, “Retrieve the money. Go back, find out if there was money that was illegally paid out, money for which there was no valid work done and retrieve it”. There are now $41 million worth of lawsuits. He appointed the Gomery commission. He cancelled the program. He testified, as did the former prime minister. He was the first prime minister to do that since Sir John A. Macdonald.

If the Prime Minister had any responsibility in it, I could not believe that he would put those things in place. It would be beyond belief that he would put those things in place. He put those things in place because he wants to get to the truth.

He supplied 12 million pages of documentation to the Gomery commission. Investments of $60 million to $70 million, some say $72 million, have been made for the Gomery commission's work. There are forensic auditors, accountants and lawyers. There are teams of experts who are going through the documentation. They will see through the fog of the testimony. People, some under criminal charges, are contradicting one another in their testimony. The Gomery commission will see through that fog and will give us an answer.

My constituents are telling me, “Let us wait for that. We do not want an election now. There are no problems now. The program does not exist. It was fixed four years ago. No one in the current government is being questioned, so let us go forward”.

What do they want to go forward on? The Atlantic accord is one element. Some members of the opposition will suggest that we should move the Atlantic accord aside and vote only on that. I support the Atlantic accord, but I also support ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. I also support parents and children and the child care proposals.

I also support the military and the defence investments. At the base in Greenwood, $50 million in capital works is going on now. It is a strategic base. Much of that investment is of economic importance to the country and to my community, of military strategic importance. We have investment in the military on many sides. One is a linking with foreign policy, a foreign policy review, a military review, making sure that we are doing what we should be doing.

We are making sure that the military has the equipment. We have the new Cormorant helicopters doing search and rescue. Another procurement process is going on for search and rescue fixed wing aircraft. Much of the other equipment is being replaced and modernized.

There is training for the military that will be needed for the future, that will support our foreign policy, our partnerships with the United States, with NATO, with NORAD, and all the others. We have to make sure that we do that properly.

Another thing we recognize is that we need to recruit in the military. That is very difficult in this context, so we look at what the impediments are. One of them I assume is that after 20 or 25 years, when people leave the military in the prime of their lives, they may not necessarily have the right training for the workplace. They may be suffering from some illness or from disabilities that make them not as employable. What did the government do? It came out with the veterans charter. I do thank all parties for having supported that, and the other house for having moved it so quickly. The veterans charter takes care of our fighting men and women, our service people, after they leave the military. It was a responsible thing that we did.

I remember fighting the election a year ago and my opponent, a good man, was quoting from the policy manual saying that what we needed in the military was an aircraft carrier on each coast. The military never asked for that. It was not tied to any of our policies. This is what I was hearing in seven or eight debates. Then there was a correction that it was not an aircraft carrier, it was for helicopters. A 12-year-old boy corrected him, telling him that helicopters were aircraft.

In my riding they also want money for child care.

I only have a minute left and there is so much more to say. There are many aspirations: the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, money for seniors, defence, child care, so many aspirations in the community that it is important for us to get the budget through.

With the additional work we did with the NDP, the most important thing to me is helping students with their tuition costs, reducing their debt load, making sure that students go to the schools and take the courses of their choice, not based on what they can afford but based on their capacities, their dreams and their aspirations. That will continue to build a great country.

I hope all members of all parties will support the budget.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, since this is about the budget I have a very simple question, but I will give a quick preamble.

It has been two and a half years since the government came to Windsor and announced $150 million for the border infrastructure fund to make improvements to the corridor and there is still no pavement between Windsor and Detroit. The third crossing will cost some $300 million to $400 million, and at least hundreds of millions of dollars more for pavement to link highways to the third crossing, yet there is only $50 million left in this budget.

Why are there no additional dollars in Bill C-43 to solve the problem at the Windsor-Detroit border? Does the government not care about the people of Essex and Windsor?

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it has been a big priority of the government to ensure that we have safe border crossings and that we encourage trade with all countries, particularly, our neighbours to the south and largest trading partner.

Since the 9/11 terrorist act, we have invested billions of dollars in security, including some money for border crossings and improvements as well as new technology. We are leading the way internationally. We still have some challenges. We must continue to work with the provinces and cities in certain instances.

I do not know of all the complexities of Windsor, but I understand it is not unanimous in that community as to where and how, but there is debate and there are discussions with the provincial government.

I am seeing some positive activities in the Atlantic at the Holton and Callous crossings. We are making the investments necessary to continue to ensure that trade. I am sure we will be doing that across the country to ensure that we continue to foster the biggest trading partnership and relationship in the world.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my hon. colleague one simple question.

I listened very carefully, during the preamble to his speech, when he referred to the sponsorship scandal, the Gomery commission, everything that happened, the inquiry, the Prime Minister and so on.

What is his interpretation of the announcement the hon. Minister of Transport made a few minutes ago about the creation of a trust into which $750,000 of the alleged dirty money will be deposited, in order to—perhaps, eventually—repay the money, received inappropriately during the sponsorship scandal?

I want to know why this is being done now at the 11th hour, when we have been calling for this for more than six months now? How does he explain this?

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has been very clear. First, he has been saying all along that any money given illegally to the Liberal Party, any money that should not have been given, will be returned.

Now, we do not know what amounts are involved. Was money involved or not? And if so, how much? All these questions remain to be answered. Public confidence must be considered, after all. We have heard the testimony. So, in good faith, we have set up a trust account. If the amount involved is $100, the difference will come back to us. If it is $800,000, then we will put more money into the account. We have created a trust.

I sat on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, and we have heard many testimonies. We were told that, before our time, before these ad campaigns and this sponsorship program, a similar situation existed with certain government agencies in Quebec, a PQ government at the time, agencies such as the Société des alcools or Hydro-Québec.

It was later learned that agencies and companies which allegedly received contracts had made contributions. But the Liberal Party opened an investigation. We have the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

[An hon. member]

Loto-Québec was one.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Loto-Québec was another one.

We have set up the Gomery commission. We are not hiding anything. We want to get to the truth. We will make sure this never happens again and we encourage everyone to do the same.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

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.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member carefully and I want to try to address one aspect of his speech. He talked about surpluses that the government had been able to achieve, in fact eight consecutive balanced budgets with a surplus.

First, not once did the member say the word debt in his speech. I would like to explain to him, to the extent that we budget with contingencies and prudence factors, that we assume $3 billion each year for a contingency to ensure that we do not go back into deficit, and we do not want to do that.

Second, the prudence factors are there so if there is a drop or a change in interest rates or economic growth, those also will be covered.

If everything goes as planned, there should be a budget surplus of at least $5 billion. However, the surplus does not necessarily mean that we have been overtaxed. The surplus automatically goes to pay down debt. We have paid down almost $50 billion worth of debt which is a savings of almost $3 billion a year to the taxpayers of Canada. The existence of a surplus is the fact that it is paying down debt. We need to have a balanced approach to this.

That is the issue. If we are to simply say, “Let's give a tax cut to deal with the surplus”, then the member does not understand that the surplus exists for one year. A tax cut exists for every year from the year it is implemented and thereafter. With 14 million taxpayers, even a $100 change in the taxation of an individual is already $1.4 billion. Therefore, the member should be very careful about having simple solutions to complex problems.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for bringing up this issue. It is precisely that today, with a minority government, it was agreed that we needed better estimation from the finance department. The government itself agreed.

The Board of Internal Economy allowed us to have more money so we could get a better estimation than what the government was giving. In that estimation it was playing with the numbers. That is why we were seeing these surpluses.

If that was not the case, then why would the Board of Internal Economy give us extra money to have better forecasting done on the budget? It was the forecasting that the government was playing with which created the surpluses.

For the member to say that we do not understand, let them not play with the figures.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is right about one thing, that this side of the House, the government, knows how to balance books. We know how to create surpluses. We know how to pay down debt.

We know when the last Conservative government was given the opportunity to govern, it knew how to run deficits and did so for eight consecutive years. When it left, it put us into debt $42 billion each and every year.

The member said that they would agree with all the commitments plus give tax cuts. Of course we will head back into deficit again.

The hon. member said one thing that I found really ironic. He said that the Conservatives stood up for cities and communities, that they believed in cities and communities. If that is the case, why in the their last platform did they say that they would scrap three of the four infrastructure programs, which are vital to cities and communities? Why did the Conservatives in their policy convention vote against giving gas tax money directly to municipalities? If you are so for municipalities, why are you against everything they care about?

[The Deputy Speaker]

I remind the hon. member to address his comments through the chair.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has said that the Liberal government knows how to balance budgets. I would like to correct that and say the Liberals know how to overtax Canadians, which they have been doing since they have been in government.

For him to stand up and say that we did not look at our platform, that we do not understand municipalities, I do not know at which platform he was looking. However, as I said in my speech, it was about five years ago when I demonstrated with others in Calgary, saying that the gas tax should be given to the municipalities so they could address their infrastructure.

Every Conservative member has been talking about that. I do not know where the member was when we were talking about it.

Now that they have stolen that plan, they want to make it their own plan. Look at Hansard and look at the former debates. You will find out that this party talked about giving infrastructure money, gas tax money, to the municipalities.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All comments are addressed through the Chair. I am not going to answer that question, but I know the member next time will use the riding name or some third person reference.