Debates of June 16th, 2005

An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Dewdney—Alouette, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what surprises me so much is that the member actually kept a straight face when she asked that question. That is pure nonsense if the Liberals expect Canadians to believe that somehow they just forgot to put this in the bill and that this is just an extension or something. That is nonsense. Frankly, the history lesson was about as useful.

I am proud to be part of a party that has evolved over the years and has struggled to maintain its connection with Canadian values rather than that party that somehow sits over there sanctimoniously believing that it rules by divine right.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pay tribute to my colleague who very efficiently, eloquently and in a matter of fact drove home just how important it is to have a sincere and honest budget. If I might just throw another word out to build upon that statement of clarity, I would refer to a budget as a plan.

A wise man once told me many years ago, when I was just in my infancy starting out in the business world, “Young man, in order to be successful in life, whether it is personal life, political life, business life, you have to plan your work and then work your plan”.

Simply, and sadly, Bill C-48 is proof that the government does not have a plan. That is just a tragedy. How can it bring forward $4.6 billion in spending, put it on a pair of pages, and suggest to the Canadian public that it is something that can not only be digested but utilized to the benefit of all Canadians? Honestly, it is an insult to Canadians.

My children and I can go out and pick up a mortgage on a home and we can sign a few documents; it might be four, five, six, seven or eight pages. We can go out and buy a car or a piece of furniture and sign a document that is one or two pages. Heavens, we can even go and rent a video and maybe fill out a one page document. Yet we are asked to accept $4.6 billion worth of absolute spending and we have a two page document. That is $2.3 billion per page.

It almost defies belief. I find it incredible that anybody in this country could say a government is bearing responsibility for $2.3 billion worth of spending and that it can just take one page like this and say that this is what it is all about. We are doing this for Canadians. All the benefits are one page and they are worth $2.3 billion.

That is a sad example of leadership. It is a sad example of a government that, honestly, is simply rudderless. It is obviously an example of a government that is so desperate to cling to power that it will sell its soul for simply the price of a piece of paper and the price of promises that everybody knows will not be met.

I do not think there is a person in this world who does not want Canada to achieve its rightful place in this world. With the resources we have, the manpower, the people and the talent, the geography, the nature, and the history of this country, there is no reason this country should not be number one, literally, in every dramatic portion of this world. Every member and, I would certainly hope, all my colleagues in this House would share that.

The sad reality is that we are not going in the right direction. Our health care system, which used to be number two or number three, is now sitting around 12th, 13th or whatever. Our economic prosperity, relative to G-8 countries, is advancing in the negative capacity. This is not the direction this country needs to go. That is not the direction that I want to--

[An hon. member]

Ask one of your kids.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Yes, my kids matter a lot. Every kid matters in this country. It all matters. Unless we have the ability and the dedication, and the commitment to bring forth a better future for our children, we are just absolving ourselves of our responsibilities.

In order to do that, that takes taxation and that takes dollars. However, we cannot overtax our citizens. We cannot kill the goose that lays the golden egg and then spend that money in a haphazard manner. That money is just too hard to come by. I cannot imagine what $1,000 or $2,000 per individual for a family would mean in a tax cut. I know it would mean a lot to people in my riding.

Maybe there are some ridings here that are extremely wealthy, but I have a lot of people who work very hard for a living and $1,000 or $2,000 means a lot to them. Instead, that kind of money is being taken away from them and is being spent on this NDP initiative, simply so the government can retain power.

To further illustrate my point I must compare the first budget, Bill C-43, with the NDP budget, Bill C-48. On February 23 I sent out a press release stating that the original budget had certain measures which I could support. There were many opposition concerns such as health care, defence, tax cuts and seniors. Though I did not agree with them all, I took them under consideration. They certainly did not please me totally, but I could live with some of them. I could find a reasonable compromise that made sense to some people. To me it was not worthy of an election, but was worthy of trying to find a way to make this minority Parliament work.

I was disappointed, of course, in the lack of funding for agriculture. In my riding and in many others across this country, rural communities felt as though they were simply left out. I noted that most of the money, the $10 billion or $12 billion, that should have been allocated or promised to some extent for child care, the gas tax transfer or climate change was delayed in the original budget until the end of the decade. The promises made, in other words, before the actual life of the government were back loaded. Of course, this was without any feasible plan for when the implementation date would be.

Nonetheless, I have never spoken on the record against the first budget and I continue to support it today. I did this in part because there was a semblance of a plan. I certainly did not approve of it totally, but there was a semblance of plan, at least a minor direction, perhaps a 10% indication of where this country should go. Now what do we have? We have a second budget of $4.6 billion that the government has tabled with increased spending and literally no consideration.

A lot of people ask about the amount of money? We talk about thousands, millions, hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. The government said $4.6 billion is not much money. Let me tell everyone what it is. Let us put it in the context of even 25% or less of that, $1 billion. What is $1 billion to the people in my riding? That is $1,000 million. Whether it is Foxboro, Bloomfield, Marmora or Wellington, I could give every family in those ridings $1 million and still have $100 million left over. That is the kind of money we are talking about. That is unbelievable.

We lose the total concept of how much money this is and what it means to the everyday citizen when we throw billions around here. We are talking $2.3 billion per year and $4.6 billion over a couple of years or three or four or five. Who knows? What is the plan? Buzz Hargrove and the member for Toronto—Danforth writing a deal on the back of a napkin in a motel room is how we come up with $4.6 billion. I cannot believe that.

The sad thing for my NDP colleagues sitting at the other end is that they have taken this and said, “Look at what we have here. We have negotiated $4.6 billion for our constituents”. I say to myself that they have been had. I say to my NDP members that I hope they have the courage to go to their constituents and tell them that they are not going to see any of that money or will have the opportunity of seeing any of that money.

They have made a false promise to their ridings because they know that money is not going to go there. It is another promise that will be broken, just as we have seen promise after promise. The government on the other side of the House lives on promises and does not deliver.

I was sitting in the House when the finance minister said that we had reached our limit. He said the cupboard was bare, in essence. He indicated that we had a budget projected at $1.9 billion but that there was no money left for any other programs. He said that we had reached our limit and that we should not even talk about other considerations that might be of interest in the rest of the House.

Of course with the possibility of an election, the government felt threatened so it wrote down another $4.6 billion on the back of a napkin in a motel room. And whoops, all of a sudden there is a $9.1 billion surplus. Where did that mysteriously come from? How can Canadians have any respect for this institution when the government cannot count? It is either that, or it deliberately misleads the House and all of Canada.

The spending the government has taken on in the last number of years is criminal. In a time of fiscal restraint in order to balance the books, supposedly, how do the Liberals spend 44.3% of an increase in six years? What document did they present to the House that suggested we would do that?

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Madam Speaker, I hope that the hon. member fully recognizes that the additional spending under Bill C-48 deals with surplus money that will be above $2 billion. He spoke of who might be against this bill.

Over a million families are involved in post-secondary education. There are 600 or more native communities across the country. Nearly 60% of Canadians live in the large cities that need public transit. What constituency does he speak for when he talks about people being opposed to Bill C-48? What do his constituents think?

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to have the opportunity to clarify a point that I do consider rather important. Perhaps the member has not listened to me and another 30 of my colleagues tonight who have mentioned how important it is to spend wisely.

There is no doubt that there is not one member of the House who would not like to be able to walk up to every citizen in this country and ask, “What do you want? What are your needs? Here it is”. That is what the hon. member is basically suggesting. Quite frankly we have to make tough decisions. Those decisions are how to spend the money wisely so all Canadians benefit and the government can deliver equitable arrangements.

The government promises $4.6 billion or $9 billion or $2 billion and says it is not sure how it is going to spend the money or how much it is going to spend and it does not know whom it is going to spend it on. If we are going to spend $900 million on transit or $1.6 billion on homelessness, exactly how many spaces and where? In other words, should the government not come up with a plan to decide what it needs to spend the money on before it designates where the money is going to go? It is the same as giving candy to a baby and then asking if the baby would like it. In other words show me one municipality or one province that would not gladly take any money offered.

It is the same with the Prime Minister's commitment to solve health care: $41 billion for a decade and our entire health care woes will be over. Liberals say the provinces will get the money some day, well after the next election when the Liberals will not have to deliver on their promise. That $41 billion worth of promises has not solved the health care dilemma. We have to identify what the problems are, put a cost to them and then allot the funds, not do it bass-ackwards which is what the member is suggesting.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Madam Speaker, my question for my hon. colleague for whom I have great respect is quite simple.

The Liberals talk about a day care plan. I am quite confused about what their plan is because at one moment their spokesperson from Alberta said that they would spend more than the governing party. Then they said, “No, our plan is really to give money to families to look after their own children”. Either way, it is a debatable point and we can have those discussions in the future.

As those members applaud themselves, which is good because no one else will, my challenge to the member is, exactly what is the plan? How much money would the Conservatives give each family for day care? How much money would the member propose to give each family?

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Madam Speaker, I can say what I would not do. What I would not do is sit here and listen to the minister suggest that he is going to put $5 billion out for a child care program, but he does not know if that is the final number. It might be $10 billion or $12 billion. How long will that last for? The minister is basically saying, “Here is the money but I am not sure how we are going to spend it”. Once again, it requires a very serious plan, a budget, an understanding of where we need to go and what we need to do.

I can assure the House that the Conservative plan is a balanced plan. It is a plan that recognizes the rights of parents to have a sense of direction and control, that the benefit to their children will be within their control and not simply at an institution over which they have no control.

[Charlie Penson, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am sorry to disappoint the members on the other side. They are not going to hear a speech that they have heard before, but it is going to be one that reminds them that there have been some strange twists and turns from the Prime Minister who has completed the cycle with Bill C-48. He has absolutely completed the cycle. His reputation is now in tatters.

He is the man who was the white knight as the finance minister who had this big reputation for balancing the books, although when we look at it closely we know what it was. It was balancing the books on the backs of the provinces and the municipalities, cutbacks in health care funding, cutbacks to the municipalities. That is how he balanced the books. Nonetheless he had this reputation as the big white knight. Where is his reputation these days? It is in tatters. In fact his reputation and his character are being called into question.

I brought over some reading material for this evening and I happened to look at Paul Wells' page.

I want to note, Madam Speaker, that we are hearing a lot of heckling from the other side but those members do not have the courage to get up. They are to embarrassed to get up and debate the bill. They can only resort to is heckling. I do not blame them for being embarrassed about this bill.

This shady deal with the NDP was done in a no-tell motel, and I am not sure who actually rented the room. Did Paul stay in the car and Jack rent the room, or was it the other way around? Basil Hargrove was in an adjoining room hollering through the door once in a while, giving advice, and Ralph was on a 1-900 tie-in from Regina. If I were the finance minister I would resign. I would be too embarrassed to continue on after that.

What did Paul Wells have to say about the Prime Minister? In Macleans the headline reads, “Behold the irrelevant Prime Minister”. He stated:

And while the Prime Minister's expressive eyes sometimes betray exasperation at the failure of the world to see things the way he sees them, they show no hint of self-doubt as he strolls into each new minefield armed with the tool kit of a demagogue.

That is what it is. We saw it in the election campaign, demonizing, misrepresenting, and now the Prime Minister's reputation is completely in tatters.

Canadians are disappointed. I remind the House that only 18 months ago he was the finance minister, the man who had completed a successful campaign to push out a sitting prime minister. After 12 years he pushed out Mr. Chrétien and the big story was he was going to sweep the country with 250 seats. He was going to take seats in Alberta, including my riding, and seats all over the country. Fast forward to the election on June 28, and it was a minority government. He blew it. In his efforts to unseat Mr. Chrétien and in the election campaign, he exposed himself as a weak Prime Minister, a man who will do any deal to survive. That is not what Canadians expect. They want leadership.

With a minority government after a nasty campaign, what did he do? The first deal he did was in the throne speech. He had to do a deal with the opposition parties to have lower taxes for Canadians. It did not take long to get rid of that promise however, once he got through that crisis.

Then the budget was delivered on February 23. The finance minister stood in the House and said that it could not be tinkered with and could not be cherry-picked. All of a sudden, a month and a half later, look what happened. The finance minister really should resign because he has been put out to pasture. The Prime Minister has undermined his own finance minister. He basically did not even include him in the discussions that were going on, except for that 1-900 tie-in. The Prime Minister has undercut his own finance minister. When things really got tough, he did the deal with the NDP.

It is absolutely shameful. It is the kind of deal we saw in the sixties and it is even worse. The deal in the 1960s put us in massive debt. We are still paying $35 billion a year interest charges as a result of that.

The deal with the NDP was not the end of it. Then the Prime Minister had to do the Kyoto amendment. Therefore, the budget implementation bill was a different bill than the budget itself. Then all of a sudden there was the NDP deal, where he had to line up 19 members at $240 million a member. That was the cost of that deal.

That was not enough. Then the Prime Minister had to do a deal with the member for Newmarket—Aurora, who was fast-tracked to the front of the line. I wonder about the backbenchers over there. Some people have waited a lot of years to be in cabinet. He has shown he will do any deal.

Contact was made with the member for Newton—North Delta. We have the tapes. We know exactly what was going on there. He was trying to purchase another member.

Fiscal responsibility? I do not think so. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Chief Executives, Don Drummond, the CFIB, the IMF and the OECD have all condemned the way the Prime Minister has operated. What did the Economist call him? It is disgraceful. Our international reputation is being besmirched because the Prime Minister will do anything to hang on to power.

This has shown me that we have a Prime Minister who is weak. He will do any deal to stay in power. He is desperate. He is clinging to power by his fingernails.

We have a $4.6 billion deal with the NDP and what is next when the budget is over, when the Liberals finally get this passed? Will the NDP raise the price again? Another $6 billion for the NDP? He is a weak Prime Minister. His character is being greatly destroyed in this whole process.

History will not judge the Prime Minister well. He has ruined his reputation in his desperation to hang on to power. It is shameful. Canadians are disappointed.

I was on the prebudget consultations across the country. My colleague from Portage was on that committee as well. We heard from hundreds of Canadians and organizations about what they wanted. Then we had the budget. The finance minister said nothing could be changed. Some of those priorities were in there. What happened? The Liberals did the deal with the NDP. What does that say to the people in those prebudget hearings? Should we even have them next year if this government is in power? It was a slap in the face to all those people who came to make representations in prebudget consultations. The Liberals are willing to do a deal with the NDP in a back room in a cheap motel. It is shameful.

I wonder how many people will come to the prebudget hearings next year when they know the government, because of its desperate needs, will do anything to hang on to power? What use is it to make a representation to the finance committee when the Liberals undercut it, the way they did with the NDP?

I do not think the NDP members deserve much better than what I am saying about the Prime Minister. This is shameful. That is not what Canadians elected them to do, to use blackmail, do this deal and keep the government in power. It cost $240 million per NDP vote. That is what the cost has been.

I heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance say earlier that Liberals members did not like what happened, but this was the cost of staying in power. If that is the cost of staying in power, surely they should have a bit of pride and say they are not willing to do any deal to hang on to power.

I would like the finance minister to explain why he is still finance minister, quite frankly. He should resign because he has been embarrassed by his own Prime Minister.

[Marlene Catterall, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Madam Speaker, there happens to be three of us in the House tonight who remember the last time we had a Conservative government and a Conservative budget. The member for Sudbury and the member for Hamilton Mountain are here. We sat through five years of Conservative budgets.

It is no wonder that the members opposite can get up and talk as they have tonight. They do not remember five years of budgets when we went deeper and deeper in debt, when programs got cut, when interest payments kept going up, when the Prime Minister of Canada, a man called Brian Mulroney, was in Washington and New York talking to Americans, telling them this country was going bankrupt. He was right. This country was on the verge of bankruptcy and only a Liberal finance minister, the current Prime Minister, saved it from bankruptcy.

The Conservatives over there and Canadians should remember what the last Conservative government did to our country.

[Charlie Penson, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Madam Speaker, this is ironic. The arrangement with the NDP-Liberal coalition today is the exact same thing that put this country on the road to ruin and caused the massive start of the deficit financing back in the 1960s under the last NDP-Liberal coalition. This is the same kind of coalition that grew the size of government.

In 1965 we had about the same level of government in Canada as in the United States. About 30% of our GDP was taken up by government. Then we had the Liberal-NDP coalition. What happened? The size of the United States government was 29%. The size of our government grew to 42%.

That is what happened. The government grew the size of useless government. The Liberals deficit financed under Pierre Trudeau and the Liberal coalition with David Lewis. That socialism was a runaway disaster and the Conservative government of the day was left to pay a massive amount of interest payments of over $40 billion a year. No wonder the debt grew during the time to which the member is referring.

Then I recall coming here in 1993 when the Prime Minister, the then finance minister, continued to run up that debt. He did not stop it. He ran it up another $85 billion. In fact, our current debt today is still not down to the level when he took power in 1993.

[Brian Pallister, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, let us for a second consider the perspectives of other Canadians, in particular our friends in the journalistic community.

For example, here is one from the Sun Media, “Martin's Folly an Elaborate Hoax?”

This is the bill that political hucksters built, at worst an act of fiscal recklessness that should make even Liberals blush

Here is another. It is from that moderate financial evaluator and think tank, The Fraser Institute. It says:

By increasing government spending at unsustainable rates and expanding the public sector it seems clear that the federal government has not learned the painful lessons of the 1980s and 90s...

That is a good one.

Here is one more. This is from the StarPhoenix in Saskatoon. I think Saskatchewan used to have a couple of Liberal MPs. It says here. This is from Nancy Hughes Anthony, the President and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. She says:

--we're squandering our resources--and putting in place multi-year commitments--while the demographics tell us that there are going to be fewer taxpayers to pay for all this, it just doesn't make any sense...I don't think it's sustainable.

I guess my question for my colleague from Peace River who has done a heck of a job on the finance committee and has been a wonderful member of Parliament is this. In the budget book it talks a lot about the demographics of Canada and its aging workforce and population. I think Japan may be the only other country in the world which faces a greater challenge with an aging population. Does he think this shows any foresight for our future as a country?

[Charlie Penson, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

Madam Speaker, the government is really shrugging off its responsibility to Canadians. The member talks about our aging society and the change in the demographics. This type of irresponsible spending with no planning does not do the kind of service that we need to do for Canadians for planning into the future.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to have this opportunity to speak tonight and address the House on Bill C-48, the NDP budget. Certainly, that is exactly what it is.

Canadian people have never elected an NDP government and maybe there is a reason for that. In Ontario they did it once and people across the entire province of Ontario say they will never do it again. Why? Uncontrolled spending is a recipe for disaster. In fact, it brought Ontario to its knees. The Bob Rae government proved to Ontarians that the NDP way of taxing and spending was not the way to go. People are worried at this point that the same thing is happening at the federal level now.

Every weekend that I go back to my riding of Simcoe--Grey I hear this from someone. Last year during the federal election the Canadian people did not vote for an NDP government. There was no mandate given for dramatic spending increases. In fact, the irony today is the Liberals said that our spending commitments were not doable. Now they blew our spending projections out of the water. I am not surprised. Liberals have never seen a problem of which they did not think they could not spend their way out.

Who does not want more money for health care, education and the environment? In fact, these are Conservative priorities. Who does not want a better car, nicer clothes or a bigger house? It is fine to want those things, but who will pay for them? If one is from the left side of the spectrum, they will probably say “the government”, as if the government were some lifeless entity, a big public piggy bank that could be dipped into at will.

The government is not supposed to be like this. At least politicians are supposed to act with integrity and should try to govern with integrity. A government should represent its people and not the friends of the Liberal Party. A government has no money of its own, only the people do. All that it has to spend is our money.

Conservatives believe that if we want a higher standard of living, where there is better health care, a better house, whether we want our children to go to a better school or buy them better clothes, we should be trying to create more wealth, a more prosperous society, so we can afford the things we want in life. History shows us that every time the NDP props up a Liberal government, spending goes through the roof. The long term effects are eventually the economy will slow down and the interest rates will start to rise. It happened 20-plus years ago and now we see history repeating itself.

Here is a bit of background. The facts are absolutely astounding. Did the members know that Canadians have seen their real take home pay only increase by 3.6% over the past 15 years? For the average guy on the street who is earning $35,000 a year, that works out to be $1.60 a week. I do not know what I would do with all that cash.

However, it is important to point out that since 1996 and 1997, government revenues have soared by 40%. Therefore, we wonder why Canadians have been falling behind over the past 12 years. We wonder why take home pay does not seem to go as far as it used to. That is because higher spending is always followed by higher taxes. Why? Because spending without a plan is a recipe for disaster and that is what this budget proposes. There are a whole bunch of promises of new spending but it is awfully short on specifics.

Maybe I was a little unfair to the NDP a few moments ago. There are quite a few examples where the Liberals have cooked up a new spending program without a proper plan. How about the gun registry? They promised it would cost a few million and now it is close to $2 billion. How about the HRDC boondoggle? There is another billion and still counting. The bureaucracy has no idea where that money has gone. Of course, there is the sponsorship scandal. Who knows how many millions that will be in the big black hole. Although again, maybe I have been a little unfair. As the testimony at the Gomery inquiry has clearly shown, the Liberals certainly had a plan for the sponsorship cash, and it was not Canadian priorities.

Who would have thought the former finance minister's own staff members would be on the receiving end of a cash under the table economy? However, as the whole world knows now, that is how the Liberals do business. They have been in power for so long that they have grown accustomed to spending taxpayer money without a second thought. It is like they have this sense of entitlement to the pocketbooks of ordinary Canadians.

How else can they explain the $4.6 billion difference between Bill C-43 and Bill C-48?

After the finance minister introduced his budget and the NDP started making demands for more money, what did he say? He said:

You can’t go on stripping away piece by piece by piece of the budget…. You can’t, after the fact, begin to cherry pick: ‘We’ll throw that out and we’ll put that in, we’ll stir this around and mix it all up again.’ That’s not the way you maintain a coherent fiscal framework. If you engage in that exercise, it is an absolute, sure formula for the creation of a deficit.

Do the members across the way remember all this?

What did the Prime Minister do a few weeks later when it looked like his government was going to fall? He started to cherry-pick and he picked pounds of cherries. He was willing to do anything to cling to power: toss out some corporate tax cuts, jack up spending by about $5 billion, and voila, they had a new budget.

What does it say for the democratic process of our country when a finance minister goes through months of budget consultations with various stakeholders, speaking with experts, speaking to those who defend our social programs, deciding on what is best for the country, all of the stakeholders, and then his boss gets together with the leader of the NDP and after an hour in a hotel room somewhere in Toronto, he has a completely different budget and he expects us to support it?

All anyone needs to write a budget in Canada is a hotel room, a couple of napkins and a calculator. If that is all it takes, I think just about anybody can do a budget. In fact I know I would like a new pair of shoes, anybody else? What does that say about our country and about the state of affairs here in Canada?

The truth is that most Canadians do have to write a budget and, most important , they have to stick to it because if they do not they are on their own. They cannot raise taxes or increase their income by snapping their fingers, and they cannot borrow unlimited sums of money. However governments can and that is what the government will be doing shortly if it follows through on Bill C-48.

Let us remember what the finance minister said last April:

If you engage in that exercise, it is an absolute, sure formula for the creation of a deficit.

What makes this budget even worse is that there is no plan for spending all these billions. The Auditor General has raised some serious concerns about the ability of certain departments to deliver programs effectively, and it just so happens that the departments with which the Auditor General is concerned are the same departments the Liberals and the NDP want to give more money to in this bill. I have been raising this issue where the Department of International Cooperation is concerned.

The leader of the NDP stands and says that he has delivered more money for, fill in the blank, the environment, education, health care, which again, I remind members, are all Conservative priorities. However the leader of the NDP seems to be making promises with this money and is providing details but I am not exactly sure where he is getting these details from because they are nowhere to be found in the budget bill.

He says all of this, though, all the while knowing that none of it is true. He knows that there is not a specific plan for spending any of this money and he knows that the fine print says that the Liberals will only do it if there is a big enough surplus, and, goodness knows, we have no idea what the finances actually look like in this country.

He also knows that the Liberals play the shell game when it comes to projecting our surpluses. They could stash more billions in those foundations they set up, the same foundations that are not accountable to Parliament or the Auditor General ,and we might never know anything about. I think there is $9 billion in these foundations so far. That is no way to run a country.

People live happier and more productive lives if they are able to fulfill their own destinies and their own targets. One of the biggest problems with Liberals is that they think they know how to spend my money and our money better than we do. The Liberals keep telling Canadians what their priorities are. They keep telling Canadians what they want instead of actually listening to what Canadian are telling them that they need.

We should allow Canadians to keep more of their hard-earned money. The goal of our party is that Canadians have the highest standard of living in the world.

If you want to find a job there should be lots of them and good paying ones. Our goal is that every region of Canada will be prosperous and self-sufficient. Conservatives want Canada to be the economic envy of the world. Every parent--

[The Acting Speaker (Hon. Jean Augustine)]

I am sorry to interrupt the member but I would encourage the member in further speeches to please address the Chair.

The hon. member for Halton for a question or a comment.

[Gary Carr, Liberal, Halton, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is amazing to hear the Conservatives talk about deficits when Brian Mulroney left a deficit of $42 billion when he left the government. What the government said was that it was the fault of the previous government. They are blaming Sir John A. Macdonald and it was Wilfrid Laurier's fault.

The current Prime Minister, when he was minister of finance, did not blame the previous governments. He rolled up his sleeves, got down to business and we have had eight straight balanced budgets in the country. That is the first time it has happened since Confederation.

As the House knows, all of the G-7 countries, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, have deficits. Canada is the only G-7 country that has a balanced budget. When the member's Conservative government left in 1993, it took 36¢ on the dollar, not to pay for health care, good roads or anything else, but to pay the interest on the debt costs alone after Brian Mulroney's economic mismanagement of the country.

I know the members opposite in the Reform Party were upset with Brian Mulroney, which is why they started the Reform Party. I know most of the members over there are from the Reform Party but could someone please tell me why the last Conservative government in the country left us with a $42 billion debt? That record is a disgrace.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member opposite seems to forget what Trudeau did for this country as well and it was not very positive. He left us in a very sad state of affairs.

I would like to point out for the member opposite that Mulroney was reduced to two seats. It was justified and rightfully so. However the Liberal government will be reduced to two seats as well. Because of its corrupt behaviour, Canadians will hold them to account as well.

[Myron Thompson, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have a very short question. I want the Liberals to be able to ask more questions because the member knows how to handle those people.

In regard to the agreement on Bill C-48, when the finance minister, Buzz Hargrove of the NDP, under the guidance of the higher finance minister, the leader of the NDP, this agreement was reached on the save our bacon napkin and I wonder if the member would agree with me.

I believe with all my heart that it is a good thing for the NDP that it has a big guy from Winnipeg who is in their caucus because it is going to take a big guy to pull the knife out when those guys double cross them. Does she believe that the NDP believe that this corrupt, dishonest bunch of bandits will really back up what they say?

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Madam Speaker, to answer the hon. member's question, no I do not believe for a second that the Liberals will follow through on their promise because with the Liberals a promise made is always a promise broken.

If I could just go back to the other member's comments earlier talking about what has happened. They talk about having surplus year after year and balanced budgets. We look at the province of Ontario and all the provinces across the country that are all starving and begging for dollars to come back to their provinces. It is the trickle down effect. It comes down to the municipalities. In fact, there is not one municipality in riding of Simcoe—Grey that has not contemplated or raised taxes already because they are starving for dollars. This is the result of the federal Liberal government taking the money away from the provinces which in turn take it away from the municipalities.

Quite frankly, all the members over there should be ashamed of themselves.

Let us take a look at our health care system. The Liberals took out $25 billion from the health care budget and now the Supreme Court ruling has proven what Conservatives have been saying all along. We knew this was going to happen and the Liberals completely ignored what we had to say and decided to start spewing out rhetoric suggesting that we were the ones who were encouraging it. The Liberals were encouraging a private health system all along. In fact, the Prime Minister goes to the most exclusive private health care clinic in the country. Can anyone believe it?

My constituents back in Simcoe—Grey are shocked and appalled. They cannot believe this. I am here to say that the Conservatives have the best plan for the country.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy, NB]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here tonight with my colleagues to debate this important measure that we have seen.

I think this goes to the root of what separates the Liberals and the Liberals' way of thinking from the Conservatives. What we have seen over the last several months is nothing short, in my opinion, of disgusting. We have seen a Prime Minister who is willing to sink to any depth to hold on to power, and this bill, I guess, is the most expensive example of what he is willing to do.

We all know that the Prime Minister has been referred to as Mr. Dithers. We all know that a Liberal promise made as of late has been a Liberal promise broken. We see a Prime Minister who, for one vote, is willing to send our troops into danger. We see a Prime Minister who is willing to go to any depth to bribe members to become a part of his caucus to sustain his party.

Having been here for a year now and having worked with my colleagues on this side of the House, my colleagues and I are here to make Canada a better place. We are here to represent our constituents. I believe there are probably some members on the other side who feel the same way. However what we have seen is that the Prime Minister is willing to do anything he can to hold on to power.

The one thing the Liberals have been unable to do over their entire term is to manage Canadians' money and to give an accurate accounting of taxpayer dollars. As I was saying, that goes to the root.

Conservatives believe that taxpayer money should be treated with respect. Liberals treat taxpayer money as if it were their own to do with as they like, such as spend it on their friends or further their own personal gains. However we believe, to the contrary, that taxpayer money should be treated with respect.

I want to speak a bit about the taxpayers in my riding of Fundy Royal. In my riding of Fundy Royal, individuals and families work very hard for their money. I mentioned the difference in philosophy between Liberals and Conservatives. We believe that Canadians know best how to spend their money.

I deal with people every day in my constituency who are struggling with student loans, who are struggling with health concerns and people who are perhaps working two jobs and struggling to make ends meet. We have farming families and families where maybe both parents are working or one parent is working two jobs or working night shifts to provide for their families. What did the Liberal budget offer them?

I want to remind members here of a couple of facts. First, when the Liberal budget, Bill C-43, was first proposed, the finance minister suggested that it was a tight budget, that there was no wiggle room, that it could not be amended and that to do so would be endangering the country's finances.

What did the Liberals offer in that budget? What did they offer by way of relief to some of the individuals I am talking about? I remind members that I believe and members on this side of the House believe that Canadians know better how to spend their own money than the Liberal government does. It has been proven time and time again.

We have heard references today to the millions of dollars worth of waste. We voted the other night on the gun registry. It is typical Liberal accounting and forecasting when Liberals try to sell a program to Canadians and declare it will cost $2 million. We find out a few years later that it is only 1,000 times over budget.

The budget talked about the proposal from that side for institutionalized day care where all of our children would be raised by the minister and in his image, so that we have little cookie cutter kids with Liberal philosophies rather than parents being able to raise their children the way they see fit. The Liberals have a one size fits all, Big Brother knows best mentality, and the idea that Canadians can be bribed with some grand scheme. An illustration of a grand scheme is the $5 billion which all the forecasters and experts in the field will tell us is a drop in the bucket and will not accomplish what the Liberals say it will. Nonetheless, that is what has been offered.

We were told there was no room for error in the budget, no room to amend. What did we offer hardworking Canadian families and individuals? We offered them a tax cut of $16 a year. What type of impact is that going to have on the average Canadian's life? How is that going to benefit an individual Canadian?

It may perhaps pay for one cup of medium double-double coffee a month. That would be the only benefit to be gained by the Liberal tax cut. The government's method of helping Canadians is to, on one hand, start this grand program and, on the other, offer nothing by way of real relief to Canadian families.

What did the Liberals offer Canadian seniors? After five years those on old age security, individuals on a modest, fixed income were offered $32 a month. A senior has to live another five years to get the full benefit of that. Of course, that was also indexed. Basically, Canadians, seniors, young people, students and farmers were offered nothing in the Liberal budget.

Then, as we know, the Liberals fell on hard times and they had to get into bed, so to speak, with their NDP counterparts. On one piece of paper they concocted this agreement, whereby we would spend an extra $4.6 billion of Canadians' money.

We have to put that into perspective because that side loves to throw out these billion dollar figures as if they are nothing. They talk about $1 billion the way some Canadians might talk about buying a package of gum. The amount of $4.6 billion is approximately the entire annual budget of the province where I am from, the province of New Brunswick. That is what New Brunswick pays for all of its roads, health care, and everything that the provincial government provides. My provincial government and provincial governments across the country are strapped for cash. We know there is a fiscal imbalance. We know that municipalities are struggling to make ends meet.

We must remember the history of the finance minister. On one hand, he says there is no room to move and on the other hand, unbeknownst to him, this deal is signed for $4.6 billion.

We must also remember that in the last election my party had an accurate fiscal forecast and told Canadians what we felt the surplus would be. The government, on the other hand, has had a record of always underestimating, deliberately I suggest, telling Canadians that there would be no surplus, so that there is a little money left at the end of the year to spread around to their friends and to buy their votes. Bill C-48 is doing exactly that. It is targeting the disadvantaged and Canadians coast to coast who are in need. They are waving this in front of them when they know there is a great possibility those people will see none of this money. The finance minister said $1.9 billion would be the surplus. The actual surplus turned out to be $9.1 billion.

Therefore, I think it is certainly time that we restore fiscal accountability. I will not be supporting this budget and I cannot see why anyone else would. It is irresponsible and misleading. The ones who have been misled the most are those who sit in that corner of the House. They are not going to see this money.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Madam Speaker, I sometimes have to be amazed at what I hear in the House. The previous Conservative spokesperson talked about the NDP in Ontario. Yet she failed to mention the Conservative Government of Saskatchewan under Grant Divine who bankrupted the province and 17 of them went to jail. The member forgot to mention John Buchanan of Nova Scotia, another Conservative, who literally bankrupted the province of Nova Scotia.

She also forgot to mention that it was the Conservatives in the sixties who fought against public health care. It was Tommy Douglas, Stanley Knowles and the NDP who pushed the Liberals to bring us medicare that we are honoured to have in this country today. Now the Conservatives stand up and say they defend health care.

Then the member from New Brunswick said that we wanted to be fiscally responsible. However, I am rather confused because the Conservatives said they would honour every commitment the Liberal government has made and they would spend more. They said they would have money to give back to families for their day care plan.

The Conservatives say they are going to honour every commitment that these hated Liberals have made. I remind the member that half way through the budget speech of the finance minister their leader ran out to the cameras and said that this was a great budget and that he could support it. The Conservatives stood up today and voted for it. The member stood here and complained about everything in Bill C-43 and then stood up and voted for it, so he will have to live with that.

What is the Conservative Party's plan for day care? That party talks about a plan for day care, what is it? How many of the Liberal government commitments are the Conservatives going to honour and how much are they going to allocate per family for day care?

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy, NB]

Madam Speaker, it is funny that the member mentions day care. This national institutionalized day care program that the Liberals and the NDP are proposing is one that the Liberals have promised in every election.

Our party believes that parents are best equipped to raise their own children. Our party would provide funding to parents. They can make the important choices when it comes to child care, not some grand new bureaucracy that is only going to grow and grow, so we could produce little cookie-cutter kids as the Liberals would have us do.

We believe in individuality. We believe in supporting parents. We believe in supporting children. We would give directly to those parents so that they can make their choices. We would not tax them so much, so that at the end of the month there is nothing left. We would allow them to keep more of their hard earned money which is fair and equitable for all Canadians. We would not buy into the Liberal scheme.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member spoke about the need for helping students which is part of our program in Bill C-48. I also know that the member and his family are great supporters of foreign aid. Perhaps he could comment on that.

Back in April and early May we saw the party opposite, the Conservative Party of Canada, align with the Bloc trying to defeat our government. We had to look for friends. Perhaps he can tell the people of Canada and tell us in the House tonight why his party joined with the separatists of Quebec to try and force an election in the early spring? Why did his party do that?

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy, NB]

Madam Speaker, it is rather simple. The members opposite voted with the Bloc twice as many times as we have. We on this side of the House oppose corruption and that was illustrated by our vote.

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Edmonton—Spruce Grove, AB]

Madam Speaker, we are here tonight on this beautiful evening to debate a bill that is empty. It is empty on prudent fiscal guidelines, empty on good public policies, and most importantly, it is empty on much needed tax relief for Canadian families.

The Liberal-NDP budget contains no hope for Canadians and it contains no vision for our nation. Every day I receive calls from my constituents who are struggling to pay their bills, who are struggling to put aside money for their children's education, and who are struggling to save for their retirement.

The Conservative Party of Canada believes in policies that will enhance productivity, encourage economic growth, and build up our fiscal capacity for the next generation. We believe that every citizen in our great country should have the opportunity to live the Canadian dream. They should be able to attend a high quality post-secondary education institution. They should be able to find a good paying job and they should be able to start a family, buy a house and save for retirement.

However, they can only do that if the government does not tax too much or spend too much. Bill C-48 is a $4.6 billion deal using taxpayers' money to keep a corrupt party afloat in government. All those left out of the original budget, fishermen and farmers, seniors and softwood lumber producers, remain left out of this new deal. They have been left out in favour of spending on idealistic priorities.

The nation's largest employers who create jobs and the hardworking Canadians who drive our economy have had the door slammed in their faces by the leader of the NDP and the Prime Minister. This budget pretends to address the child care needs in this country but falls short. Rather than seizing this opportunity to address the fiscal imbalance, the NDP-Liberal alliance has felt content to leave it be.

The finance minister warned that the opposition could spark a financial crisis by tampering further with the government's main money bill, Bill C-43. He said:

You can' t go on stripping away piece by piece by piece of the budget. You can't, after the fact, begin to cherry pick: “We'll throw that out and we'll put that in, we'll stir this around and mix it all up again”. That's not the way you maintain a coherent fiscal framework. If you engage in that exercise, it is an absolute, sure formula for the creation of a deficit.

And yet, it was his own government that decided to go on cherry-picking. Here we are debating whether or not, as our finance minister has told us, to head down the road toward a sure formula for the creation of a deficit.

The Conservative Party of Canada will do everything in its power to prevent us from going down that long dark road. The Conservative Party of Canada, although we found flaws with it, did not oppose the original budget. In fact, we passed a number of amendments that made it stronger. Our party was determined to act responsibly in this situation and make Parliament work for the benefit of Canadians.

For some reason the Prime Minister decided to exchange the support of 98 Conservative MPs on his budget for the lesser support of 19 NDP MPs on his new budget. That was his choice and his choice alone. The Conservative Party of Canada cannot accept this budget, this last ditch effort to save the Liberal government when it does so little to help Canadians.

Bill C-48 is a deal that was conceived behind closed doors with the federal finance minister nowhere to be seen. It is a bill that is heavy on the public purse but extremely light on transparency, details and fiscal prudence. This bill authorizes cabinet to design and implement programs under a vague policy framework and then allows cabinet to unilaterally disburse them as it sees fit. It has already been said that this plan places the cart before the horse and I could not agree more.

Canadians expect a higher standard than vague commitments and untold plans for their hard earned tax dollars. The Auditor General has raised some serious concerns about the ability of certain departments to deliver programs effectively, departments to which the Liberals want to give more money in this bill including Indian and Northern Affairs and the Canadian International Development Agency. In addition, the Auditor General's office is currently conducting an audit of the Government of Canada's climate change expenditures which will be released in 2006.

The Conservative Party of Canada recognizes that numerous Canadians are not receiving the level of assistance from the federal government that they should receive and deserve. This is a direct result of the Liberal approach to problem solving, throwing in money without an adequate plan. Throwing more money at the programs included in Bill C-48 would be unfair to our nation's hardworking families. This bill should have included safeguards that would ensure that existing money is spent effectively and that new money is not wasted.

The notion of a Liberal-NDP slush fund of $4.5 billion simply does not sit well with my constituents of Edmonton—Spruce Grove and I am certain that it does not sit well with Canadians from coast to coast.

The Conservative Party of Canada has long supported an independent budget office to ensure sound fiscal forecasting. With Bill C-48, the need for a sound fiscal forecast is more acute now than ever.

An immense $4.5 billion spending spree now rests solely on a surplus that may or may not even exist. Everyone in the House knows that the government has an abysmal record when it comes to projecting the final results of our national balance sheet, and this type of fiscal arrangement is indeed dangerous to the nation's finances.

It is somewhat ironic that the bill violates the principle held by the NDP, as presented in its prebudget report, that Parliament should have an opportunity to decide on the allocation of any public surplus. Under Bill C-48, the allocation of any surplus in fiscal years 2005-06 and 2006-07 is partly defined.

Of additional concern is the fact that the bill does nothing to help out those in desperate need of tax relief. Canadians' real take-home pay has remained stagnant for 15 years and it must be spurred on. A Canadian who earns $35,000 a year has seen his or her real take-home pay rise by only $84 over the last 15 years. That is unacceptable. This new budget should have done something to address that.

A Conservative government would implement a program of smarter spending, responsible tax levels and productivity enhancing measures that create opportunity, prosperity and compassion.

Many of the areas addressed in the bill fall under provincial jurisdiction. Issues such as post-secondary tuition and low income housing fall almost completely under provincial jurisdiction.

In previous debates in the House, I have argued that the government has used the fiscal imbalance as a means to spend money in areas of provincial jurisdiction and set provincial priorities. Bill C-48, which addresses areas that fall largely under the jurisdiction of other orders of government, for instance, tuition, public transit and affordable housing to name a few, as well as the recent deals on child care, only serve to prove my point.

I would have hoped that a party such as the NDP, which recognizes the fiscal imbalance, would have spoken up for this in the bill.

Both the Liberal and the New Democratic Parties have claimed child care as one of their top priorities, yet the deals reached between the federal government and the provinces will not begin to scratch the surface of the child care needs in this country.

The Conservative Party of Canada has already promised to put money directly into the hands of parents so they can make their own child care choices. It is particularly disheartening to see that this Liberal-NDP budget does not go further to address the concerns of parents with regard to child care.

In the words of the member for Toronto—Danforth, the NDP leader, this new budget “substantially alters the 2005 budget to reflect the priorities of Canadians”. It is difficult to believe that the hon. member knows what the priorities of Canadians are, given that in the last federal election over 84% of Canadians did not support him, his party or his agenda.

What is not difficult to believe is that the bill substantially alters the budget originally tabled in this place. The alteration of the budget is an attempt by the NDP to extort an inordinate influence on the government's budget. Canadians are not impressed.

There is nothing in the new budget about tax relief for hard-working Canadian families. There is nothing in the new budget about support for farmers or those affected by the softwood lumber dispute. There is nothing in the new budget about child care or the fiscal imbalance. There is nothing in the new budget that will fuel our economic engine for future generations.

At committee, the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition rejected Conservative efforts to restore prudent fiscal management. This would have included real solutions for Canadians, such as matrimonial property rights for aboriginal women, and ensuring accountability and transparency.

At report stage, the Conservative Party has tried once again to move amendments to make the spending in Bill C-48 more accountable to Canadians and to reflect a more prudent fiscal approach.

The Conservative amendment to clause one would raise the amount of surplus that would be set aside for debt paydown. The interest saved as a result of additional federal debt paydown is needed to prevent cuts to social programs as a result of the impending demographic crunch.

The Conservative amendment to clause number two would force the government to table a plan by the end of each year outlining how it intends to spend the money in the bill. Spending without a plan is a recipe for waste and mismanagement.

With the stroke of a pen in a downtown hotel room, both the Prime Minister and the leader of the NDP have managed to set Canada on the wrong path. This path will lead us back to the dark days of economic turmoil. Even the once powerful Liberal finance minister has admitted this much to us.

This is a budget that no longer reflects the priorities and needs of Canadians. We cannot support it. Given the circumstances, that is the only responsible thing to do.