Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Central Nova for sharing his time with me. I am sure my remarks will be much less exciting than his.
It is a pleasure to rise and speak to the budget today in its final stage. The budget has been without a doubt one of the most watched pieces of legislation in Parliament.
I would like to spend some time today speaking about how the budget relates to my critic portfolio, intergovernmental affairs, and how I think it could have better reflected the priorities of Canadians.
The provinces, which are part of this great federation, grew up a very long time ago. In fact, several of them were around long before Canada came into being in 1867. Since that time, they have come to assume responsibility for the programs and services that Canadians care deeply about.
In fact, it was on February 6, 1885, that Sir John A. Macdonald aptly described the division of powers that would come to characterize our nation. He stated:
All the great questions which affect the general interests of the confederacy as a whole are confided to the federal Parliament, while the local interests and local laws of each section are preserved intact and entrusted to the care of the local bodies.
The division of powers in Canada were clearly written into the Constitution and, consequently, have become enshrined by our history. Federal-provincial fiscal arrangements play a fundamental role in the delivery of the most important priorities of Canadians: health, education and social services.
However, the Liberal approach has served to undermine the very social and political fabric of Canada, endangering future funding for social programs and, frankly, jeopardizing federalism.
The Liberals have done this by using the federal government's ever growing fiscal capacity to control and manipulate the provinces with money and conditions. They pressure the provinces into developing expensive programs, raising the expectations of Canadians and then give them only cents on the dollar to pay for them.
We have watched the government and the Prime Minister, in particular, continue the dangerous game of pitting province against province, family against family. The government does this by signing side deals that simply epitomize unequal treatment.
The Liberal's budget continues these trends. It is an archaic way to conduct intergovernmental affairs, it fails to recognize the maturity, the strength and important modern role of the provinces. Most important, it fails to contain a national vision.
The most serious way in which this budget fails the provinces is in its complete failure to address the growing fiscal imbalance between the federal government and the provincial governments. Put simply, the federal government continues to collect far more revenue than it needs to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities. The provinces, meanwhile, are feeling pressures to not raise their taxes because in the end there is only one taxpayer.
I was fortunate enough to sit on the subcommittee of the finance committee that investigated the fiscal imbalance. This was a very enlightening experience. I sincerely wish that our recommendations could have been incorporated into the budget, as I believe they would have gone a long way to making this a lasting budget.
The Conservative Party of Canada agrees with the majority report submitted by the subcommittee on fiscal imbalance, which concluded that the fiscal balance existed and was a growing problem for all orders of government.
The Conservative Party of Canada, the New Democratic Party and Bloc Québécois unanimously agreed to a number of recommendations. The Conservative Party, however, went farther in its recommendations. It believes that any proposed solutions to the fiscal imbalance and changes to the equalization formula must be made with the following principles in mind.
They must reflect leadership with a national federalist vision. They must reflect a collaboration to ensure that changes to the equalization formula or proposals to address the fiscal imbalance are done in consultation with the provinces and the municipalities. They must also reflect the right of all Canadians to quality health care, education and social services regardless of where they live. They must also reflect the equality of all provinces. They must reflect the respect for the unique needs of Quebec within a collaborative federalist framework. Last but not least, they must reflect the belief that Canada's most essential national program, equalization, should be used for what it was intended, which is neighbours helping neighbours in times of need.
These principles are not reflected in the Liberal's approach to fiscal federalism. In a rush to buy votes before the next general election, the Liberals have abandoned any commitment to multilateral negotiations, disrespect of the need for a collaborative and comprehensive approach to fiscal federalism and undermine the security of important social programs.
The Liberal solution to the fiscal imbalance continues to be to deny that it exists and a reliance on a quick fix of patchwork federalism. The Liberals have abandoned fiscal federalism in the name of political expediency by signing a series of side deals and bilateral agreements with no national vision.
By signing these ad hoc bilateral side deals with provinces outside of the fiscal framework of the equalization program, the Liberals are ruining equalization, what I consider to be the most essentially Canadian national program. By abusing their federal spending power, disrespecting the constitution and approaching negotiations with provinces in an unfair and inconsistent manner, the Liberals have engendered mistrust between all orders of government and turned their back on collaborative federalism.
The Liberals have pitted province against province and Canadian against Canadian by neglecting the emerging fiscal imbalance between the provinces and the municipalities and the increasing pressure on provinces and municipalities to deliver core social services. The Liberals have now set cities against provinces and mayor against premiers.
In addition, our committee heard from witnesses who argued that the equalization formula must be revisited and reformed. A number of issues must be addressed, including the impact of the floor ceiling that was stipulated in the new equalization framework, reached in October 2004, and the treatment of resource revenues in the fiscal framework of equalization must also be revisited.
From those observations, the Conservative Party of Canada, in our recommendations, believes that non-renewable natural resources revenues must be removed from the equalization formula in order to encourage the development of economic growth in the non-renewable resource sector across Canada.
Additionally, the Conservative Party of Canada believes that the federal government should take a multilateral approach in examining the horizontal fiscal imbalance and equalization framework. Building upon the framework and resources already established by the provinces, through the council of the federation, we support the development of a consultative process which also includes representatives from the federal and municipal orders of government.
Most provincial governments clearly stated that the vertical fiscal imbalance has made it increasingly difficult for the provinces to engage in long term financial planning and to guarantee essential health and social programs. The Conservative Party of Canada believes that in order to help correct the vertical fiscal imbalance, the federal government conduct an indepth review of all tax fields, federal fiscal transfer mechanisms and consider transferring an appropriate level of income tax points to the provinces.
Most important though, for the state of federalism, the Conservative Party of Canada recommends that if the federal government initiates new spending in areas of exclusive provincial or territorial constitutional jurisdiction, it should have an agreement from the majority of the provinces to proceed and that provinces should be given the right to opt out of the federal program and continue to receive federal funding so long as the province offers a similar program with similar accountability structures.
However, the budget is about more than just fiscal federalism. It is the spending plan for the actions of the federal government. We have been consistent with regard to our position on Bill C-43. In committee we were able to make it better legislation and as a result, Canadians will be better off. The Conservative Party of Canada carries the sole responsibility for making this stronger legislation and we are proud of that.
By keeping in tax relief for our nation's largest employers, we have secured Canadian jobs. By making our environmental legislation more accountable, we have helped prevent future scandals. We will always fight for a made in Canada solution to the environmental issues of our time. We led the charge to remove part 15, the CEPA provisions, from this omnibus spending bill and we attempted to ensure that the government could not purchase foreign Kyoto credits to ensure that money stayed in Canada to support our environment.
On committee, we also fought for accountability and ensured that the Liberal appointed advisory board, which is administered under the Canadian emission reductions incentive agency, will make its advice public.
Furthermore, I look forward to the future when Canadians will have a Conservative budget, a budget that contains real tax cuts for Canadian families. That was something that was truly missing from this major spending initiative. We on this side of the House will always remember, and Canadians agree with us, that without fiscal restraint the social programs we cherish cannot be maintained and sustained.
Sadly, this is not the only budget bill that we are debating in the House. When the Prime Minister struck a deathbed deal with the NDP giving away the fiscal accountability and responsibility in exchange for a few NDP votes, the House was left with two budget bills. The House and the Canadian people can be assured that we will continue to hold the Liberals accountable for their undemocratic, wasteful, out of control spending contained in Bill C-48 and the other billions of dollars of announcements since then.
We kept our word to Canadians. We helped move this budget through committee and made important amendments to make it a better budget for Canadians. It was the Liberal Party that slowed the passage of the budget by filibustering to avoid a confidence vote until it had bribed opposition members to support it.
I look forward to the budget passing so that we as a country can move forward.