Mr. Speaker, again, I will ask the member for Halifax and the rest of her colleagues to give me the same respect I gave her when I sat here and listened to her speech.
The budget is one page long in English and in French and spends $4.6 billion. The last time we saw that type of vague legislation was with the gun registry and the sponsorship scandal. Of course, no one knew the details of that. Spending went completely out of control. There was no accountability. There were no checks. For the NDP members to actually believe that this will happen is incredible. I understand that all of a sudden they have become a player in Parliament with their new-found friends the Liberals, but I absolutely 100% have to oppose the way this happened.
We could look at some of the substance in it. Let me just talk about the Liberal record on the environment. Kyoto was signed almost 10 years ago and CO
2
gases are going up. There are more problems with smog in our major urban centres today than ever before. Show me the results of what the government has done in 10 years on the environment. It is zero. It is not there, and it wants us to give it a $4.6 billion blank cheque supposedly to spend on the environment.
Show me a specific program, specific legislation where we can measure and see tangible results. That is something I would be willing to support. However, the blank cheques that the NDP wants to give to the government, I do not think so.
On training programs, I want to remind the members opposite that it was the Conservative Party, on an amendment to the throne speech, that said we needed to reduce EI premiums to improve employment for Canadians. The EI surplus is $46 billion. We do not need new money. Maybe we need some honest accounting on the money that is there and ensure that it gets to the workers.
There is a lot we can do, but the NDP budget is not one of them. I go back to British Columbia, when we had eight years the NDP in power. Our economy went into the ground. We sat with deficits year after year.
The Minister of Health, who is a senior member of cabinet, had his hand in building the fast ferries. A half a billion dollars of hard earned taxpayer dollars was shovelled away. It was gone; it evaporated.
That is the type of things we will see out of this budget. There are no specifics, no programs. The Liberals spent $4.6 billion in 400 words. Are they completely naive to think that there will be an ounce of accountability, considering this government's record?
I fully support going to the wall on this legislation, opposing it at every opportunity we can. We have a constitutional responsibility to hold the government to account. That is what we are doing. The legislation is so fundamentally flawed. It was introduced for the most callous reasons, to prop up a government so it could cling to power.
The short answer is that the NDP members were bought for $4.6 billion. They sold their souls. All of a sudden they think they are the new found friends of the Liberal Party
I look forward to the campaign at some point in time. I understand maybe it will be later this year, maybe it will be early next year. The Prime Minister said that it would be within 30 days of Justice Gomery's report. If the Prime Minister wants to have an election on this budget, then let us have one. The NDP and the Liberals can get together at the press conferences and defend their collective budgets. They are fundamentally flawed.
Where are the details on housing? What can we expect? Let us give these Liberals a blank cheque to spend $4.6 billion. What do we think that they would give the Canadian people?
How about seeing some specifics on tax reductions? How about making it more affordable for first home buyers to get into the market so people can succeed. How about putting in money for co-ops and other types of housing programs. There are no substantive details in this budget. It is 400 words for $4.6 billion.
One has to be crazy to support a budget that is this vague, not to mention how it was concocted, in a hotel room with Buzz Hargrove in Toronto to dream up a $4.6 billion deal. The backbenchers of the Liberal Party did not get that much say in their own budget.
Take the Minister of Finance at his word “no, we cannot cherry pick or no, we cannot change it”. If this were really the intention of the Liberals, why was it not in the first budget? It was not there because they do not believe it. It was not there because they have no intentions of dealing with it.
Just look at the facts as to how this thing came to light. Look at what is in it. It is an absolute joke. In eight years as a member of Parliament, I have never seen anything in my life that is so pathetic. It is ridiculous to take $4.6 billion on one piece of paper and want us to embrace it. They have to be kidding.
We will fight for every single Canadian across the country to ensure that their hard earned tax dollars are spent wisely and in an accountable way. We will challenge the government. I am willing to debate the government on this legislation any day. I will go toe to toe with any Liberal in any election, and for that matter the Liberals new found friends in the NDP. They can have their coalition, they can have the new Minister of Health from British Columbia because they are all cut from the same cloth and Canadians deserve a hell of a lot better.