Mr. Speaker, I am happy to have this opportunity to join the debate on this critically important budget bill because in my view Canada is at a crossroads. We are at a fork in the road where as a nation we have a critically important choice to make. In fact, years from now people will look back at this date of May 19, 2005 as a crossroads date for the nationstate of Canada and the direction we want to go.
I am proud and honoured to be here as a member of Parliament for the riding of Winnipeg Centre, and equally honoured to follow my colleague from Sault Ste. Marie who just enlightened and focused the House better than I have heard before on the issues that are really important to Canadians. In our small corner of the House of Commons, in this little area that is relegated to the New Democratic Party, great wisdom and great contributions flow.
In my opinion we need more New Democrats in Parliament. It is an observation that I have to make because this budget bill is an example of what good things happen when the NDP forces the Liberals to act like Liberals.
Many people voted for the Liberal Party thinking that they would get a liberal agenda. They got suckered, frankly. It is like a big hook in their mouth being led down the garden path because we have seen what 10 years of majority Liberal government looks like. It looks a lot like a Conservative government.
In fact, our current Prime Minister, when he was the finance minister, was the most right wing finance minister we have ever seen. He took us places that the Conservative Party did not dare to go. If we thought that neo-conservatism was limited to Margaret Thatcher, Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan, no, neo-conservatism had an anchor in this country with our current Prime Minister. He is the champion of neo-conservatism.
As fate would have it, in the last federal election, we found ourselves in the happy circumstance where more New Democrats came to Ottawa, New Democrats with some influence and with some ideas. They had a novel idea to spend some of this incredible surplus on people. What a thought. Instead of paying a tithe to Bay Street, instead of squandering it on more corporate tax cuts for people that are showing record profits already, let us spend some money on people for a change. Is that so radical a concept? Is that so strange? Can people not get minds around the idea that maybe it is our turn to have some of our tax dollars spent on our needs?
For heaven's sake, this is what we are proposing. We were all asked to tighten our belts for 10 years of austerity. The current Prime Minister, when he was finance minister, said we were left with this unbelievable deficit left by the Conservatives, the most wasteful, spendthrift government in Canadian history. It jacked up the operating deficit to $42 billion a year and jacked up the debt to $500 billion from $125 billion. That was the Conservative legacy. Not that I am any great fan of the Liberal Party, but it inherited a disaster. When he was finance minister, the Prime Minister inherited a disaster left in the wake of the most wasteful government in Canadian history, the Conservative government under Brian Mulroney.
We were asked to tighten our belts. We were told to suck it up. There was no more money for health care and no more money for education and training. But ironically, there seemed to be lots of money to give to Bay Street in terms of corporate tax cuts. In three successive budgets the Liberals lowered taxes. They reduced services to us, took our tax money, denied us benefits, and gave it to Bay Street. That was their political philosophy. It seems absurd, but that is what they did.
Now we have reached a point of time in our history where we are saying enough is enough. We were asked to tighten our belts and do without at a period of time when Bay Street was showing record profits quarter after quarter through the whole 1990s. When there was not enough money for a single thing for us, there seemed to be lots of money for Bay Street. Now we are saying to turn that faucet back on a little bit, not excessively. The spending proposals negotiated by the NDP do not even get us back to the level of spending on social programs that we were at in 1993 when the Liberals took over. It only returns some modicum of balance. It is not over the top. It is not excessive. It is giving us back some of our money. What is wrong with that?
I cannot understand this party that sells itself as the grassroots party and the party of ordinary Canadians. In the west at least, that is how it would like to promote itself. Why is it a supplicant to Bay Street? Why is it a corporate shill instead of a champion for ordinary Canadians? That is what I find bizarre to understand.
We are trying to advocate, on behalf of the average family, that a little bit more money be put into affordable housing because there are communities, frankly, in Canada today where the average working family cannot even aspire to own their own home. That is wrong in a country as wealthy as Canada.
We have communities in Canada today where both members of the family have to work just to keep their heads above water. The husband and wife have to work these days, but they cannot find child care that they can trust, where they can feel safe leaving their children. That is wrong in a country as wealthy as Canada.
I wish I had time to ask my colleague from Sault Ste. Marie some more questions because early childhood development is the single most important investment we can make. Those years between zero and five are when a child's future is determined. That is when his or her destiny is shaped. If children are in substandard, inadequate, warehouse-style, big-box day cares, they are not going to flourish and reach their full potential. We know that for a fact. This is not a left-wing prospect. This is not some fabrication by the pinkos down at this end of the House.
Charles Coffey, former vice-president of the Royal Bank of Canada, a darling of Bay Street, has written perhaps the most definitive policy paper on early childhood development, flagging this as an urgent issue for Canada to spend some money on.
We are faced with these record budget surpluses every year and the NDP, using what influence it has, manages to negotiate into that budget some spending for ordinary Canadians. What is wrong with that? How can anybody vote against that? They would have to be out of their minds.
How do they go back to their constituents and explain that. I see some Conservative MPs from Manitoba right here right now. I have in fact done the number crunching on the $4.6 billion that the NDP negotiated as a part of this budget. The $80 million will come to Manitoba for affordable housing and $65 million will come to Manitoba for post-secondary education tuition. How could that be a bad thing? Were we not sent here to bring home the bacon? Is it not our job to try and wrestle a bit of money out of Ottawa and bring it back to our constituencies? That is what we have done.
We have used the little political influence that we have down at this end of the House to negotiate something good for Canadians and now the Conservatives are threatening to vote against it. They are the ones who are going to have a tough time on the doorstep because I am going to remind people every time I go to a doorstep in the province of Manitoba that the Conservatives were opposed to bringing back $80 million for affordable housing in the province of Manitoba.
I see members who represent rural ridings in Manitoba saying that none of that money will go to their ridings. That is not true. In fact, members do not know that for a fact. They are inventing this because they are ideologically opposed to spending taxpayer money on taxpayers. They would rather give it to Bay Street. This is what is frustrating to me.
I am glad I had the opportunity to share some of my views with these people because I am astounded by their naivety and their inability to count, for one thing. Maybe if they cannot count that high, they should take their shoes off because if they have to count higher than 10, they seem unable to do that because the Conservatives were bad money managers.
The Conservatives, throughout history, have driven deficits through the ceiling. Here are some good examples. Saskatchewan and Grant Devine had seven deficit budgets in a row, whereas Allan Blakeney had nine balanced budgets in a row. The NDP knows how to balance the books, these guys do not.