Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on behalf of the constituents of Newton--North Delta to participate in the debate on Bill C-48, an act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments.
The proposed legislation would enact the $4.6 billion deal struck by the Liberal government with the NDP to make payments in 2005-06 and 2006-07 from surplus moneys exceeding $2 billion to fund environmental initiatives, including public transit and an energy efficient retrofit program for low income housing; training programs and enhanced access to post-secondary education to benefit, among others, aboriginal Canadians; affordable housing, including housing for aboriginal Canadians; and foreign aid.
I am opposed to Bill C-48 for a couple of reasons. First, I oppose the bill for the politics behind it. This is a $4.6 billion deal using taxpayers money to keep a corrupt party afloat in government.
The Liberals and the NDP have joined together and written a fiscal plan on the back of an envelope. The only motivation behind the deal is an attempt for political survival by the desperate and corrupt Liberal government. This is a recipe for economic disaster.
Second, it takes government spending to a new dangerous level. There are any number of worthy ways in which to spend taxpayers' hard-earned money, some under federal jurisdiction, some under provincial jurisdiction and some under municipal jurisdiction.
The government cannot seem to decide what its priorities should be and as a result is throwing money around regardless of jurisdiction. This is not in the best interest of Canadians and must be strongly opposed by all those who wish to preserve the fiscal integrity of the federal government.
Even before this budget side deal, the government was ramping up spending. I have said it before and I will say it again. This year's budget demonstrates that tax and spend Liberals are back with a vengeance. If there was any doubt about the truth of this statement, it has been washed away by the Liberal-NDP budget and the tidal wave of new spending announcements that cabinet ministers have been making on a daily basis for the last month.
A Prime Minister who made his reputation by taking tough fiscal decisions, whether by choice or, more likely, as a result of pressure from the reform party and later the Canadian Alliance, has now revealed his true colours.
He is a tax and spend Liberal, the likes of whom this country has not seen since the darkest days of Liberal excesses in the 1970s and early 1980s. It was runaway spending under Prime Minister Trudeau that took this country to the brink of bankruptcy. At the rate the government is spending taxpayer money, Canadians will again find themselves in the poor house.
Last year the finance minister promised to demonstrate unequivocally the principles of financial responsibility and integrity. He promised Canadians to better control spending, which is another broken promise by the government, another promise made but again not kept, even before the budget side deal and the billions in additional spending promises of the last month the government was proposing.
Last year the finance minister projected program spending at $148 billion for 2004-05 but he ended up going $10 billion over the budget. As a result, in the last fiscal year we witnessed a spending increase of $17 billion over the previous year. So much for controlling spending. At 12%, this is the largest single spending increase in over 20 years and the fourth largest in the last four decades.
Since 2000, program spending soared by 44% and judging from what we have witnessed in recent weeks, Canadians should hang onto their seats because they have not seen anything yet. I could almost forgive this runaway spending if there was some demonstrable evidence that Canadians' lives were improving as a result, but that is not the case.
My constituents in Newton--North Delta are at pains to see how all this spending has made any difference. Despite billions of dollars being spent, child poverty continues to grow, health care further deteriorates, roads and bridges remain congested, public transit cries for funding, and there continues to be a strong demand for good, well paying jobs. After all of the government's spending, hospital waiting lines will continue to get worse, students will continue to plunge deeper into debt, and our soldiers will be stretched as thinly as ever.
People in my riding depend upon Surrey Memorial Hospital for their health care. Our community is fast outgrowing its hospital in the community. The hospital, built in the 1970s to accommodate 50,000 patients a year, now handles between 70,000 and 72,000 patients annually and has the busiest emergency ward in western Canada. Surrey Memorial Hospital's facilities now cope with the demands placed upon it by our community's soaring population. There have been recurring complaints about waiting times, a lack of beds, insufficient staff, sanitary conditions, and questionable procedures at the hospital's crowded emergency room.
The root cause of the problems we now face goes back to the Prime Minister and the cuts he made to the CHST in the mid-1990s when he was finance minister. These cuts left successive B.C. governments to find extra billions of dollars for health care. The new money for health care in this year's budget will not provide Surrey Memorial Hospital with the money it needs and of course there is nothing in Bill C-48 to help that.
The health care agreement, which the Prime Minister hyped as a fix for a generation, will only allow B.C. to increase health expenditures by 3% annually over the next six years. Not only will this amount not fix health care, it will not even cover the rising costs resulting from inflation and population growth, while the dollar figure spread out over such an extended period amounts to little more than a band-aid solution to our critically ill health care system.
Bill C-48 is heavy on the public purse but light on details. It commits to hundreds of millions of dollars under broad areas without any concrete plans as to how that money would be spent. The Liberal-NDP deal, which is reflected in this bill, has been denounced by business groups, particularly the small businesses that favour allocating this federal surplus to debt reduction and tax relief over additional spending.
This bill is a reflection of the new federal budget, an NDP budget, one that the Liberals had amended after they said it could not be done. The Liberals are willing to spend billions of taxpayers' dollars to fund their addiction to power. This is a direct result of the loss of their moral authority to govern. Not only should this bill not be passed, but the finance minister should resign for tabling it. Clearly, the NDP leader has more influence on the budgetary framework than the Prime Minister's own finance minister.
A Conservative government believes that responsible exploration, development, conservation and renewal of our environment is vital to our continued growth. The Conservative Party also believes that all Canadians should have a reasonable opportunity to own their own homes and have access to safe and affordable housing. The Conservative Party believes in greater accessibility to education by eliminating as many barriers to post-secondary education as possible.
The Conservative Party is committed to strengthening Canada's record in foreign aid. A Conservative government would reduce business taxes. Reducing taxes would encourage foreign and domestic businesses to invest in Canada. I believe that a Conservative government could manage the finances better than this budget. Therefore, I will oppose it because I cannot support it.