Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate on severing the Atlantic accords from Bill C-43, which would not be very wise thing to do. That is why I am happy to contribute to the discussion today.
Members of the Conservative Party, who used to be members of the Alliance Party or the Reform Party before the merger, often stood up in this place when it came to votes and their whip would say that members would be voting this way or that way unless otherwise advised by their constituents.
The Conservative Party, or its predecessors the Alliance and the Reform, prides itself on being close to the people. Last week we were told that those members were going to listen to what their constituents had to say. I have to conclude that they are not very good listeners.
I have talked to many Canadians in eastern Canada, western Canada, Atlantic Canada, northern Canada and elsewhere. With the exception of a few, they all agreed that the vote last week was a momentous vote. A lot of people watched it. Hundreds of people were waiting for us to exit the chamber. They were interested in the results of that historic vote in which the Speaker broke the tie.
What I heard from my constituents and from people across Canada was that a lot of time was taken away from the business of the House to focus on that confidence vote. We have had the vote and most Canadians now want us to get down to the business of governing and to make this Parliament work.
Conservative members pride themselves on being close to the ground. That may be true in some parts of Alberta and some parts of western Canada. However, with all due respect, when the election happens, it will be decided essentially in Ontario and Quebec, and that will not go down very well with members on the other side of the House. Those members should call up their friends in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada to find out what they think. I think they would find that Canadians do not want an election right now. Those members are not listening. They do not have their ears to the ground. Some friends of mine who are more conservative in their way of thinking do not want an election now.
We are prepared to have an election. My colleagues and I are ready. We can go any time. I do not get obsessed with polling results and I am sure my colleagues on this side of the House do not get obsessed with polling results either, but if we look at the results we would find our party is doing quite well in the polls, especially in Ontario. The reason for that is obvious. People in Ontario are not attracted to the policies of the Conservative Party and they are not engaged with the leader of that party.
These are truisms. I am not saying something to incite people. Anyone who does not know that Canadians do not want an election, that they are not attracted to the policies of the Conservative Party and that they are not getting a lot of resonance from the leader of the Conservative Party must have their head buried in the ground.
Canadians know we had a confidence vote last week and what a shambles it was. They turned on their televisions and saw members running back and forth, not getting down to the business they were elected to do, to serve in the Parliament of Canada, to make Parliament work. Canadians want us to get down to work.
I naively thought that when I came back to Ottawa after the week break, we would actually deal with the budget. The budget has some amazing elements to it, and it is supported by Canadians. In fact, it was supported by the Conservative Party until those members started to read every morning in the National Post about the day to day testimony at the Gomery inquiry and then they would bring it to the floor of the House.
People watched that on television and said it was not very nice. Of course it was not nice and that is why the Prime Minister called for the Gomery inquiry, so that he could get to the bottom of it, hold people accountable, and make the policy changes required.
Suddenly, the Conservatives found that when all these issues were on the floor of the House of Commons and people were watching them on television, they were going up in the polls somewhat. Is that not interesting? They said, “Let's have an election now because we might be able to win”, forgetting the fact that Canadians said that they wanted to make this minority Parliament work. It is tougher to get things done in minority parliaments, but they can work. In fact, I and many members have seen it happen.
The justice committee dealt with a bill that focused on DNA. That is why this bill should not be split because the committee system is working very well. We passed a bill dealing with DNA. We all put a little water in our wine and got unanimous consent in the House to speed it through the Senate. This Parliament can work if we put our minds to it, but it is not working because of these reckless motions that focus on partisan interests in Atlantic Canada.
The Conservative Party is very nervous about losing the support of its Atlantic caucus members. Conservatives say it will be a great idea to split the bill because then they could fast track the Atlantic accord through the House of Commons and the Senate. I ask everyone, what would that accomplish? We would end up with part of a budget bill and the key elements of Bill C-43, of which the Atlantic accord is a very important part of course, but there are other very important parts to Bill C-43.
My colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, highlighted some of them, but I would like to come back to them because they are very important. There is one part of Bill C-43 that I would like to see fast tracked. Maybe we could bring a motion to fast track the excise tax moving to cities and communities.
I live in the city of Toronto. My colleague, the Minister of State for Infrastructure and Communities, has basically put this together. We can move what I believe to be $200 million per year, once fully implemented, to the city of Toronto. It could use that money to fight crime, to build infrastructure and public transit, and to have cleaner water and air. We could use that money. In fact, that is step two of what has already been done. The government wisely eliminated the GST for municipalities. For the city of Toronto, that meant another $55 million a year it could use to deal with the issues facing large cities.
I would like to hive off that part of the budget. I am sure members would like to carve out other parts of the budget and fast track them too. Pretty soon 90% of the bill would be fast tracked. Then it would not be fast tracked anymore, it would be slow tracked because there are too many parts of the bill being fast tracked. This is a slippery slope.
Any member of the House who has been here long enough knows that one does not start splitting bills for the convenience of some members of the Atlantic caucus of the Conservative Party. The Conservatives want to split it so they can speak to their constituents in Atlantic Canada. It has nothing to do with what is good for Canada. It has nothing to do with the benefits of the budget bill, which are so important for Canadians.
I would also like to see the budget pass because there is a large investment in national defence. As part of this budget, there is $1 billion that will go into our national security agenda. We often hear members opposite talk about our borders, security and terrorists. Now is the time to put their money where they mouths are and pass this bill. Let us pass this bill today, never mind fast tracking.
In fact, by arguing that we should split this bill we have wasted maybe a week or two. We could have had this bill sent to the other place in a heartbeat if members opposite would support it. They know that. All we are doing is delaying and delaying when in fact we could meet the agenda of establishing the Atlantic accord by including it in Bill C-43 and passing it, and passing Bill C-48 expeditiously.
Let me tell members something else that I like about Bill C-43. Bill C-43 implements the Kyoto accord. It builds in a lot of market measures and incentives, so that we can actually meet these very ambitious goals that we have set. There would be a $1 billion fund, for example, for competing ideas on how to eliminate and reduce greenhouse gases. That is another part of this budget. Maybe there are some other colleagues who would like to take that part of Bill C-43 and separate it out, sever it and fast track it.
This is not the way business is done in the House of Commons. Instead of sitting here and debating severing the Atlantic accord from Bill C-43, we could actually be passing Bill C-43 and Bill C-48 and delivering all those measures.
Another issue that is very important in my riding is child care. I have a lot of, not to be sexist, female members in my riding who come to my office and say that they have a two-income family, but cannot get out and work properly because they do not have proper day care in Ontario.
We now have an agreement with Ontario which we could pass today if the members opposite had the political will, instead of trying to finesse little points here there and sever this and that. Just pass the bill. We could get on with it. We could deliver child care. We could deliver all the benefits that are embedded in this budget.
I think there is another point that is often forgotten in this House when we have these debates and that is, the underpinnings behind budget 2005. Allow me to take members through some of the context of this budget.
The first item that immediately pops out is that this is the eighth consecutive surplus that this government is delivering. Against all the industrialized economies in the world, we are considered an economic darling. The markets think we are an economic darling because of what we have done, what our finance minister did, and what this government continues to do. We have had consistent growth and we continue to have consistent growth of 3% per year, which is unsurpassed in the industrialized world.
We have unemployment down to levels of 6.8%, which is a five-year low. Could we do better? Of course we could. We could do better if we could pass this budget because there are measures in here to help Canadians get into the labour market. There are measures in this budget that would help us bring down the unemployment rate from the low level of 6.8% to even lower if these people on the other side would stop debating about severing this and that and just pass the budget.
There are a few other contextual elements that I need to speak about in terms of our fiscal progress. We have low interest rates. We have low inflation. What does that mean? That means that there are many Canadians who otherwise would not be able to purchase a home who are able to purchase a home. We see people getting out of their rental accommodation and buying homes. The construction sector is booming. That is contributing to our economic growth.
We are paying down the debt. Members opposite talk about the surpluses, how the surpluses are a bad thing, and how we have not estimated within a few hundred dollars here and there. The reality is, and we know that in this House, if the revenues are understated by, let us say, 1% a year and the expenditures are understated by 1% per year, that would create a flux of about $3 billion to $4 billion in the annual surplus. So this is not an exact science.
However, I would rather have, and I am sure that all of us would rather have, a surplus than a deficit. Is that not so? I think so. We want to have a surplus. We are consistently having surpluses. We are paying down the debt with those surpluses. The surpluses are not an end in themselves.
We are below less than 40% debt to GDP ratio which is well within the range of what is considered acceptable. In fact, we are going to go further. We are going to go to 25% debt to GDP. What does that mean? That means, for example, that today as we speak, as we take up time talking about splitting budget bills, and if members opposite are going to waste the time of the House, I am going to have my say as well, there is in excess of $3 billion a year that taxpayers in Canada are saving each and every year because of the $56 billion that we have paid down against the debt. It is in excess of $3 billion annually.
By the way, that is a permanent annuity. That is $3 billion each and every year into the future. As we pay down more debt that $3 billion will grow. What can we do with that $3 billion? We can invest in the environment, national defence, national security, health care, post-secondary education and seniors. These are the kinds of investments we are making. That is the kind of flexibility that we have when we have budgetary surpluses.
The mantra of the Conservative Party is to cut taxes. It is like a broken record. We went through this in the province of Ontario. We had Mike Harris and Ernie Eves. What did they do? They cut taxes to a point where they could not sustain the social and economic programs of the province of Ontario. Guess what. We then had a new premier and a new finance minister who came in and tried to say it was a fiscal imbalance. I think they have been listening to the Bloc Québécois on this fiscal imbalance terminology.
The current party at Queen's Park has inherited a structural deficit caused by excessive tax cuts that went beyond the fiscal capacity of the province of Ontario. What does it do? It says that it will lay that problem at the feet of the federal government.
When our government came into power in 1993, we faced a $42 billion deficit. Did we stand around and blame everyone, point fingers and say that we cannot do this, we cannot do that, it is not our fault,. and it was their fault? We did not do that, although we could have laid it at the feet of Brian Mulroney. That is what we should have done. I am sure it has come up in debate from time to time.
The point is we got on with the business of eliminating our deficit, of cutting expenditures, of dealing with the fiscal challenges that we had to face. There were no excuses and no scapegoats. We got on with the business of dealing with it head on like mature adults. That is what we are going to continue to do.
That is why when I stand up in this place to talk about severing the Atlantic accord I find myself in a childish discourse because we should be passing Bill C-43 and Bill C-48 so that Canadians can reap the benefits of the budget package which has so many benefits, some of which I have described.
I could go on and on, but I only have one minute. Therefore, I will wrap up. I would like to suggest to the House that instead of us debating these moot points, why do we not get on with the business of government, with the business of Parliament, and pass these budget bills which Canadians want.
If members opposite want an election, the Prime Minister has said they will have an election. They will have an election this year, 30 days after the Gomery inquiry reports. We will have an election.
Canadians do not want an election now. They want us to get down to the business of government and manage the affairs of the nation. For that reason and for many others I will not be supporting the motion.