Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.
With the fiscal capacity that the government has, the budget was an opportunity to invest. It was also a time to invest because, of course, for 13 years we experienced the rather penurious actions of the previous Liberal government toward the people of Canada. While it reduced the fiscal deficit, it increased the human deficit in Canada.
Toward the end of their time, the Liberals softened, but not completely. I know that in 2005 the New Democratic Party had to fight very hard in that budget to ensure the Liberals did not get away with another tax cut for corporations and that they invested that money in people. That was very good and that is working.
Even within this budget and within Parliament today, the two parties of the right, because that is what they really are, are living off the good avails of the New Democratic Party and the work that it did in 2005. They are dining out on it. We do not want to forsake them of a good meal but they should remember who the cooks were.
In this budget, instead of investing more in the needs of Canadians, the Conservative government decided to squander another $7 billion in corporate tax cuts and to keep the subsidies to oil and gas companies. Even with that, it is currently running a bigger budget surplus than the Liberals did.
Just into this fiscal year, it is $2 billion ahead of its estimates. What did it turn around and do? It announced a billion dollars in cuts to programs that were in place all over the country, this little bit of money that was handed out under the Liberals in a variety of very serious areas, such as literacy, women, museums and health. The Conservatives must have sat in their caucuses and decided on how many programs they could cut a few dollars from and make them work even less than the Liberals did.
I want to talk about the tobacco control program that was cut for aboriginal people. In the Northwest Territories, prior to 2000 we had a smoking rate of 45% in our population. Over the last four years we have managed to bring that down to less 35%. That is a direct and positive result of our Government of the Northwest Territories putting money into it. The federal government also put money into the program because, of course, half our population is aboriginal.
We had the very successful butthead program in the schools which discouraged every child from taking up cigarette smoking. That is gone now. There was no consultation and no recognition of the importance of these programs. I am sure the territorial government will try to do something to replace it, but that is a loss.
The sale of tobacco in Canada contributes $8.8 billion in taxes to federal, provincial and territorial governments. It is very important that we reinvest in the opportunities to reduce tobacco use. Just because we are on the dole with tobacco taxes does not mean that we should ignore our responsibility.
I now want to talk about the corporate tax cuts that the Conservatives have proposed.
Across the country, corporate taxes in provincial hands have been spiralling downward. Provinces have to compete with each other for corporations to establish offices in their jurisdictions and pay their corporate taxes in those jurisdictions. The provinces are in a race to provide the lowest corporate tax rate to attract the companies to do this. Private individuals, of course, cannot afford to relocate just simply to get a lower personal income tax rate, but corporations can manage this quite well.
The responsibility for an across the board corporate tax rate lies with the federal government. In reality the federal government is the best agency to collect corporate taxes and should be the agency to collect those taxes, but over the time of the Liberals and the Conservatives, we have seen this denigrated to such a great degree.
We see the Conservative budget as crafted to meet the needs of the oil patch, not working Canadians. There are a few crumbs for working Canadians and everyone appreciates those. However, it is only a sleight of hand to take attention away from the billions in tax giveaways to big corporations, particularly oil companies, making obscene profits on the backs of hard-working Canadians and on the backs of our grandchildren as well, who will not have the share of the non-renewable resources that we are giving up now.
In the natural resources committee meeting earlier this week, we had presentations from CERI, the Canadian Energy Research Institute, which indicated that by 2020, if the expansion of the oil sands has taken place as outlined and if the cost of oil is $40 U.S. a barrel, which is $62 today, oil companies will make approximately $1 trillion by 2020 from the oil sands, on an investment of $100 billion.
The government's share of this will be less than 15%. We will see the escape of enormous amounts of resources and dollars out of our country and out of the hands of Canadians who need them so much. We need a government and a budget that speaks to the future of our natural resources, and that is quite clearly the case.
Another study was done recently in my territory by an independent group on the Mackenzie gas project, a project that Imperial Oil has indicated is marginally economic. Its study shows, and this was verified by economists and was done by an economist at Pacific Analytics out of Victoria, B.C., that the after-tax rate of return on this project will exceed 25%, and the oil companies are calling this a marginal project in Canada.
The project will deal in the hundreds of billions of dollars, with rates of return of this magnitude, yet they will be subjected to the lowest royalties and corporate taxes. All of this comes down very favourably for them. What does it do for Canadians, for our children and our grandchildren as we move along and require dollars for infrastructure and other things? It does nothing; it is squandered. This is why it is so important that we understand how our tax system works and that we stand up for Canadians.
We did not see this in the budget here and that is a shame. It is a crying shame that we do not see a move to ensure that the resources of our country serve the people of our country.