Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the Minister of Finance on both his election and his appointment as minister and welcome him to the House. I was looking forward to his comments when he entered the House because one notices when the Minister of Finance arrives and we especially notice it on budget day of course.
We are all looking forward to that, but in spite of the fact that it was not budget day, we did look for some more details and there were a lot of vague generalities. We are all anxious to have more details, anything really. We hope we have some soon. There was not much unfortunately in his comments today and I guess we have noted already that the plans of the Conservative government are in fact to raise income taxes.
I really question how the government can come in here and talk about tax relief when in fact its plan is to raise income taxes. We know the government's revenues are up. The Conservatives have been left in a very good situation with the strength of the price of oil, for example, and other factors across this country. The revenues of the Government of Canada are very strong.
If it were not for the fact that over the past 13 years the Liberal government has put the finances of this country on a solid footing and left the government in a very good basis, members would not be able to talk about doing any of these things. The fact is the government is in a very good position and there is no reason, whatever it does with the GST, why it should have to actually raise income taxes for lower and middle income people as it is planning to do. It is entirely irresponsible, so I hope the minister will assure us that this will not happen.
Second, I wish to comment on the point of eliminating the child care agreements across this country. The premier of Nova Scotia and the new Premier Rodney MacDonald were here not long ago and met with the Prime Minister and talked about the importance of maintaining those agreements. I wonder what his plans are in relation to those agreements, when the Conservative premier of Nova Scotia is saying to maintain those deals. What is he planning to do? Let us hear about that.
When he talks about job training and the importance of skills, he is right. Skilled workers are incredibly important in this country. There were a couple of words in the Speech from the Throne about competitiveness and productivity, but not the word “education”, not the words “job training”. He talks about incentives, but no direct support for apprenticeships, for real training. What is the government going to do for those crucial areas? So far we are seeing nothing from the government in these crucial areas.