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--