We are going to shift things a little bit more to the accountability side. I know those members over there are going to hoot and holler about that, but that is where we have to go. We have to be far more responsible with taxpayers' money. I think this budget does that.
As I went around my riding after the election, when the great folks of Battlefords--Lloydminster saw fit to send me back here again and continue the work of the last 10 years, I was asked one question repeatedly: “What is it like to be on the government side?” I could not really answer that.
It was not until we were here in the House and starting to work on the projects we have had in our hip pockets, projects that we came here for years ago, starting to see some of those projects come to fruition and starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel, that I could answer that question. We are starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel on a lot of the different issues that drove us into this House of Commons to take part in debates like these.
I did not really get a sense of the huge undertaking that we are taking on as a government, but I started to see consistency between what the Prime Minister campaigned on, what the throne speech outlined, and now the budget. I am seeing that consistency permeating all of this and Canadians are really thrilled with that. We have cut the flowery language and the jargon, the language that always went along with the thrust and drive of political debate here in the House.
This budget document is focused, it is highlighted and it is detailed. It is a fantastic document. It is not a big document, but there is a lot of information in its few pages. Canadians took it upon themselves to have a look at it either in print or on the website and their comments were unbelievable.
When I did my press release at home about the budget, there was a young newspaper reporter who has been hit or miss with support. That is fine. He is fair. He told me it took him an extra half a day to follow up on my press release because he wanted to do a really good balanced report. In order to do his report, he talked to about 50 or 60 people on the street in the largest community in my riding. He found as broad a spectrum of individuals as possible. He talked to everybody who would answer him. He said that not one person had a bad thing to say about the budget. They saw the news releases and they said things like: “this is great for me” or “this will work great for my aunt” or “this will be great for my mom and dad in the seniors' complex”.
He had not looked in depth at the budget himself at that time, so he went home and pencilled it out. He found that for him, his wife and his two young children, this budget will save his household $2,100. That is what he explained to me. With the education his wife is undertaking and with other things, he is going to save $2,100. He was ecstatic. He said he had never seen that before.
This young man is also in the military reserves and he loves the direction we are taking by putting some power back into our military and giving them the respect they need and have always deserved. He is happy that we are giving them the equipment they need to do the job they are so proud of doing around the world and here at home.
There has been a lot of discussion about our child care plan. Of course we campaigned on that and Canadians saw fit to send us back here to implement our child care plan and do away with the Liberal one.
There was a problem with that Liberal plan, and the Liberals seem to forget this in a bit of revisionist history. They forget that they only had a one year agreement, an agreement with 10 provinces in principle, but only three had ever bought in. Yet they were planning on moving along with it. Their program addressed 7% of the need. There was no plan to create child care spaces like they rant and rave about, but our plan does create them.
There is funding in the budget so that businesses, community groups and so on can start to develop 125,000 child care spaces. That is fantastic news.
In the rural areas that I represent the $1,200 a year creates a cash flow situation. The local parents can use the institutionalized child care if they so desire, or stay home and look after their kids, or grandma, grandpa or someone else can do it. However they decide to do it, it is their choice and the cash flow is theirs. It is taxed back at the rate of the lowest income earner.
The NDP members have gone from saying families are only going to net $190 to $800 or $900. At the end of the discussion they finally got their calculators to work right. There are instances in many lower income homes where the amount will not be taxed at all. That is a wonderful thing. Some 650,000 people will be coming off the low end of the tax rolls with our tax proposals.
There has been a lot of discussion about the 1% reduction in the GST and a lot of screaming and howling from the party that was never going to implement it. Now we are taking it backwards and ratcheting it down, as we should do and can do, and they are screaming no, we have to keep it. What hypocrisy.
The great thing about the GST cut is it affects everyone. I do not care if one is a senior on a fixed income or a guy earning $100,000 and his wife earns another $100,000. It does not matter. It is going to affect everyone in the same way. Whether we rent or own our home, whether we lease or own our car, or whether we do not have a car at all and we ride the bus, there is GST on everything we eat, see and do. That tax is hidden in everything, the telephone bill, power bill, heating bill and tax notice. It does not matter what it is, there is that little gouge and screw tax on the end of it.
Taking one point off the GST is going to make a huge difference to everyone. As I said, whether one is on a fixed income or one is a huge megabuck earner, everyone is going to benefit from it. That is great. That will inject cash back into the economy which we have not seen for quite a while. We know this is so good that we are going to do it again. We are going to lower the GST by another point just as soon as we can make it financially doable.
Get used to good things from this government. Being a minority government our days might be numbered, but they are going to be good days. When people ask me what it is like to be in government, I can say that it is thrilling because we can finally deliver back to people the tax cuts and programs that people want to actually to make use of.
There is a lot of hue and cry from the NDP members. They cannot support this budget because there are tax cuts for big corporations. Of course there are and there have to be. Who do they suppose creates the union jobs and the bulk of the jobs in this country? It is business. They cut off their nose to spite their face when they say they are not going to support a budget because there are tax cuts in it. That is ridiculous. It creates a little thing called profit which lets business hire more people, or rehire them in the case of the softwood lumber industry.
This budget is a breath of fresh air. This is an economic stimulation for the country.
There is great news in the budget for agriculture. We saw a lot of things going sideways. There is $2 billion over the next two years which will go directly into agriculture. That does not rule out ad hoc payments if we have another crash and burn, but it certainly gives stability to the industry. It gets the financial sector looking more positively again at agriculture. Lines of credits are a tough thing to come by in my area of the country. We have been hard hit, but with a $2 billion injection, already the bankers are phoning me saying, “This is great. We can see when this comes in it will make a positive impact”.
We are forced to do it through the CAIS program because the provinces are not ready to let that go yet. We are buying into that warts and all, but the $2 billion will let us go back in there and cut off some of those warts. We can go back in and adjust reference margins and little things where they were jerking around the inventory values, things that will actually trigger money back out to farmers who were hard hit. We can go back retroactively to 2003 which stimulates the 2004-05 payments. Farmers are ecstatic about this. They love it and all the other little things that go along with it.
Ten minutes is just not enough time to talk about all the great things in the budget. There are super components in it for post-secondary education for young people who want to go on to university. There are tax incentives on books. We have $1 billion for infrastructure for universities because we know the kind of shape they are in after years of neglect.
We are carrying on with the infrastructure program so that our highways can be rebuilt. We have to wear seat belts in Saskatchewan just to keep us in our seats because the roads are so rough. We are going to go in and fix these things.
The Liberal government talked about it for 13 years. We have been here for four months and we are getting the job done.