Mr. Speaker, my questions for the minister are about the basic honesty, or lack thereof, of the budget and about benefits being distributed evenly.
It appears to me that this is really a meanspirited budget, which plays to the Conservative base. Far from eschewing the principle of Ottawa knows best, this is a social engineering Ottawa knows best budget, which rewards those who play sports, but not those who play music. It takes money from aboriginal people. His own official confirmed the other day at committee that the budget liberates on the order of $5 billion not now going to aboriginals, the least privileged group in the country. It takes money from lower income Canadians by raising only the tax rate applied to lower incomes. It threatens to cut off the homeless, which is not surprising coming from the finance minister who wished to jail the homeless.
First, when he says the budget is even-handed, why is it that at every turn it is the least privileged Canadians who are cut, the ones who are gouged, simply because they are not likely to vote Conservative?
My second question has to do with honesty. His own budget document confirms a hike in the lowest income tax rate. A few days ago his own officials at committee confirmed that. Everybody knows that. Why can the minister not simply come clean and acknowledge, notwithstanding any other possible virtues of the budget, the basic fact that the low income personal tax rate will go up and not down?
The other thing he should acknowledge is the fact that, if we do the math, the tax relief since 1997, when the Liberals balanced the books until the new government took office, amounted to $16 billion per year. His budget has $6 billion of tax relief per year. Not only has the income tax rate gone up rather than down, but over the years of balanced budgets, our government provided a whole lot more tax relief to Canadians than did this budget.