Mr. Speaker, I want to make some comments with respect to the budget. It is a budget that targets individuals and is mindful not only of individuals but of families, the very foundation of our nation, and especially of young families, those who are attempting to make a start in life and contribute to our society. This is the budget that targets this group, the young growing family. And I can say that 90% of the budget targets individuals as opposed to corporations or businesses.
This weekend, I had the privilege of being in Maryfield, Saskatchewan. There I met a mom who had a child of three and was expecting another child in four weeks. This budget means $2,400 to that family in rural Maryfield, Saskatchewan, $2,400 to help them out, in an area where there are not many day care centres, but there is the struggle of farm families trying to succeed on the farm, with many working off farm to try to make ends meet.
While I was in Storthoaks, Saskatchewan, at a coffee shop, I met some moms there. Among them they had eight children under six years of age. At that table, this budget means $9,600 in assistance from the government to help these moms raise their children. This assistance is not a small matter. It is a significant matter in many rural places and in many centres that do not have day care centres.
The members opposite have been somewhat concerned about the fact that there have been significant tax breaks given as opposed to program spending; I think it is $2 in tax breaks for every dollar of spending. Somehow they take issue with that and indicate that it is moneys that are somehow owed to them; they consider it to be their money and not the taxpayers' money.
We have to keep reminding ourselves that the reason the money comes here in the first place is that it comes from ordinary Canadians, from taxpayers who are overtaxed and overburdened, taxpayers who work real hard, try to make ends meet, are on the treadmill of life working 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, and who send in thousands to this particular establishment. They are saying that they need some reprieve, some relief. It is refreshing to see the taxpayer taken into consideration to the extent that this particular budget has done it.
Many of the arguments the Liberals make are that they also had budgets wherein they made promises, but we find that most of those promises were promises into the future. Four or five years from now, that is when the big dollars were going to be spent, but there was very little in the first or second year.
Our budget provides tax relief in the first and second years, tax relief that we can see and understand. It is not a complex budget in that sense. This government makes a promise. If we were to look through our Conservative election campaign and at our platform, lo and behold, we would actually see this being translated into the budget in real ways.
How refreshing to see a headline in the paper that reads “Promises Delivered”. Promises made and kept: that is a refreshing concept in politics. It is a refreshing concept to say what we mean, mean what we say and actually act upon it in a short period of time.
This budget is not a budget that defines the Prime Minister or the government. It is a budget through which the Prime Minister and the government define the kind of Canada we want to see--