Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Richmond.
The budget is not just a financial statement; it is at its core a statement about values, principles and priorities. It is not just an accounting exercise but an expression of our identity of who we are and what we aspire to be.
In that context, this budget, while containing a number of commendable features, is disappointing overall in the values it reflects and represents, and in the principles and priorities it espouses. It would not speak, for example, to my constituency which is a kind of rainbow constituency in that regard.
For example, in the matter of tax policy, the income tax for the poor and the vulnerable will go up while the GST, of which we just spoke, which disproportionately benefits the wealthy will go down. This is a tax policy that has not only been uniformly critiqued by most economists in this country but which constitutes an inverse value choice for an equitable tax policy.
In the matter of aboriginal people, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, the government has not only substantially reduced the $5 billion necessary for their needs but has scrapped the framework agreements including the historic Kelowna accord which is at the core of having an aboriginal justice agenda.
In the matter of women's rights and gender equity which should be a priority for our agenda, a budget should reflect that as a matter of principle of policy. The government appears to have done away with the principle of mainstreaming gender-based analysis throughout the budget. Otherwise the lowest income mothers of young children would not be getting much less the $1,200 because the supplement is clawed back, let alone the other fallout with respect to issues of concern to women such as a central social services assistance, legal aid, anti-violence measures and the plight of aboriginal women.
In the matter of environmental protection which is inextricably bound up with our economy, our health, and indeed our planetary survival, the budget tends to marginalize and minimize the protection of the environment as a matter of principle and priority.
However, I want to focus on two priorities, two value choices in the budget which are wrong-headed as a matter of policy and disturbing as a matter of principle. The first wrong-headed policy choice, which is even suspect as a matter of law, is the commitment to more prisons and more prisoners at a time when crime rates are declining and have been falling for some time.
Indeed, the first expression of this commitment came in the budget speech of finance minister James Flaherty, when he announced that: “We are setting aside funds--