Debates of March 20th, 2007

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a specific question concerning the infrastructure at the Windsor-Detroit corridor, which is actually in the budget. I saw a notation in the budget that in 2007, $400 million will be set aside for the connecting road that will be required to get to the new border crossing.

The concern I have is that it is only in for the 2007 year and this infrastructure piece will be required at a much more significant cost if it is to have tunnelling and other types of environmental important work that is necessary to meet the needs of the municipality and also the proficiency of the amount of traffic that goes along this trade route.

Why did this not get multi-year funding similar to the project team, for example, which received three years of multi-year funding to actually oversee this? Is that because the government will not fund this in the future? Why was it not provided the multi-year funding that, for example, the Pacific Gateway got or, similarly, the other plans in the budget that gave them multi-year funding? Why is it excluded for this particular project?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Windsor West has, a number of times, made significant interventions in terms of the challenges that are faced in that area. I will just refer to the Ambassador Bridge. The amount of trade that goes across the border from Detroit to Windsor is more than the entire trade the United States does with the nation of Japan. It is a huge amount. That is just on that bridge.

He is talking about other corridor infrastructure areas. We are committed there in a multi-year way. As the member for Windsor West knows, there are some decisions still yet to made that require local input in terms of where some infrastructure may be going. There are questions relating to the added crossing and the pre-clearance facilities. Some of those need to be settled at the local level and passed on to the provincial and federal levels. We will look at those. However, there is a multi-year commitment and we will identify it year to year as it moves along.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Acadie—Bathurst.

I am delighted to participate in this debate today, both as the NDP critic for seniors and pensions, but more importantly, as the member of Parliament for Hamilton Mountain.

During the last two weeks that the House was not sitting, I spent every day talking to people at their doors and in my community office, meeting with groups and attending community functions. Everywhere the message was the same. People are increasingly recognizing the existence of a prosperity gap in Canada. They do not feel that they are benefiting from the economic growth they keep hearing about, and they are right. The numbers back them up.

Not only is there a growing gap between the rich and the poor, there is also an alarming erosion of economic security for middle class Canadians. I stood in the House yesterday, before the budget was tabled, and relayed what ordinary Hamiltonians told me that their priorities were for achieving some fairness. Now that we have the budget in hand, I would like to evaluate it in that context.

Did the budget close the prosperity gap for people on Hamilton Mountain who are working hard and playing by the rules but who are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet? Let us look at each of the items I raised yesterday in turn.

I spoke about the desire among my constituents to see some significant property tax relief through federal investments in urban infrastructure. In a community where our aging infrastructure is leading to regular flooding, poorly maintained roads and constant struggles to expand public transit while keeping fares down, Hamiltonians had hoped for a serious investment in our city. Ratepayers cannot afford to shoulder the additional burden of these essential investments solely on their property taxes.

These are precisely the hard-working families that the government says that it wants to support, but instead of making the infrastructure investments that would relieve our local tax burden, the infrastructure spending that the budget actually entails is money that will flow to the provinces, not directly to the municipalities, and it must be spent on public-private partnerships.

For anyone not familiar with the significance of the P3 stipulation, let me just remind them of Highway 407 where a public asset was turned into a toll road to satisfy the voracious revenue appetite of the private sector. That arrangement is costing Hamiltonians dearly and the last thing we need are more such infrastructure investments that end up costing us over and over again.

On public transit, the budget is virtually silent. There is absolutely no new dedicated money for transit. In short, the most basic needs of our municipality have gone unmet.

Second, I called yesterday for a manufacturing sector strategy. Hamilton has lost thousands of decent paying jobs as a result of restructuring and plant closures. Not only is the budget silent on strategic investments to Canada's industrial heartland, but it ignores the plight of displaced workers as well.

This budget offers no support to older and laid off workers. It is silent on employment insurance. It fails to protect the wages and pensions of workers in cases of commercial bankruptcies. To add insult to injury, it keeps in place almost $9 billion in corporate tax cuts over the next four years. Clearly, this budget was written more for those at the boardroom table than for hard-working families around the kitchen table.

Equally galling is the fact that this budget fails to address the needs of transient workers. We have significant labour shortages in parts of our country with decent paying jobs beckoning workers from other regions but this budget does nothing to remove the barriers to accessing those jobs.

This is particularly true for workers in the building trades who often go to job sites for a limited amount of time until a project is complete. The building trades have been lobbying for over 30 years to be able to deduct their accommodation and meal expenses from their income taxes when they work at a job site that is more than 80 kilometres away from their homes. They and I had hoped that this issue would be addressed in this budget.

I have a private member's bill, Bill C-390, on the floor of this House that would do precisely that. I had indicated to the Minister of Finance that I would be happy to see progress on this issue regardless of whether it was through the passage of my bill or through a government initiative. In the end, the government sat on its hands. Again, it could not help but add insult to injury by increasing the meal allowance for long haul truckers from 50% to 80%.

All the building trades have asked for is a little bit of fairness. The government's inaction comes as a slap in the face.

The third issue my constituents raised with me was the gouging that has been happening at the pumps. For people who require a vehicle to get to and from work each and every day, nothing has had a more direct inflationary impact on their household budgets than the price of gasoline.

Where is the federal watchdog to ensure that hard-working families are not being hosed? Where is the relief? Instead, ordinary Canadians learned yesterday that they do not rate. Instead of helping them make ends meet, the government continued its billion dollar subsidies to the oil and gas industries for the next three years, with a complete phase-out not even in the picture until five years after that.

Again, the rich are getting richer while hard-working Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. The budget did nothing to close the prosperity gap.

What about those who are living at or near the poverty line? Yesterday's budget created the working income tax benefit, purportedly to help the lowest income earner. In fact, it does nothing to help those who are making the minimum wage. While serious initiatives to help the most vulnerable in our communities are always welcome, the government should have sent a resounding message that in a country as wealthy as Canada it is completely unacceptable that someone who is working 40 hours a week at minimum wage is still living below the poverty line.

In the absence of showing a willingness to move toward a living wage by setting the federal minimum wage at $10 immediately, the budget has done little to close the prosperity gap.

I also called yesterday for investments in post-secondary education. Again, the government would want hard-working Canadians to believe that it has moved aggressively on this file but let us take a closer look. These investments create scholarships for graduate students, but do nothing for those who are working on their first degree. These are precisely the students who are weighing whether they can afford to get the education they need to participate in the knowledge based economy against a potential average student debt of more than $24,000.

A budget that does not address student debt and student loans does nothing to enhance access to post-secondary education for children in modest and middle income families.

With respect to yet another key priority for residents on Hamilton Mountain, it is good to see that the government is at least taking baby steps forward with respect to the environment. However, it is obvious that the government has not spent a great deal of time thinking about this issue and is offering little more than the symbolic gesture that the Liberal leader gave Canadians when he named his dog Kyoto. There is no serious commitment in the budget to the Kyoto accord, to mandatory fuel efficiency standards or short, medium and long term targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The following is perhaps the biggest missed opportunity in the budget. The Conservatives are offering a $2,000 tax credit on the purchase of green cars, but sadly the vast majority of these vehicles are being built in Japan and in the United States. Indirectly they are subsidizing foreign car manufacturers. Instead what they should have been doing is investing in the environment and in Canadian jobs by supporting the production of green cars right here in Canada, but nowhere in the budget do we find an auto sector strategy.

Moreover, the carbon tax that is going to be imposed on vehicles that are not fuel efficient is going to impact the very middle class families that the government says it wants to help. Parents who are driving their kids to hockey, soccer and baseball games are buying the minivans. Neither the $310 child tax credit nor the $500 children's fitness tax credit will compensate for the up to $4,000 surtax on their minivans.

I have one last point on the environment. I was pleased to see the cleanup of Hamilton Harbour get at least a cursory mention in the budget, but an $11 million allocation for cleaning up contaminated sediment in Hamilton Harbour as well as the Niagara River, the Detroit River, St. Marys River, Thunder Bay, Peninsula Harbour, St. Clair River and Bay of Quinte is clearly wholly inadequate. The city of Hamilton alone had asked the federal government to contribute $30 million toward the cleanup of Randle Reef.

Equally inadequate is the government's investment in health care. While some new initiatives are being funded, the top of mind concerns of families in Hamilton are not being addressed. There is no mention in the budget of training and hiring new health care professionals to deal with the doctor shortage. There is no investment in pharmacare to help people with their drug costs. There is no investments in home care to allow seniors to live independently in their own homes longer and to take some of the burden off their children who all too often are becoming primary caregivers by default. There is no investment in long term care despite the fact that many acute care beds in our hospitals are tied up needlessly because chronic care beds are not available.

The seniors whose tax dollars built our health care system deserve to have it be there for them at a time in their lives when they need it most. The same is true with respect to their retirement income. The budget is a disgrace when it comes to its treatment of seniors. It brags about the fact that it allows seniors to work longer when in reality most seniors only continue to work because they cannot afford to retire. In Hamilton 25% of seniors live in poverty and 36% of single women over the age of 75 live in poverty, none of whom I might point out can benefit from pension splitting because they either never had or no longer have a partner or a spouse.

Announcing through the budget that seniors should now count themselves lucky because the government will allow them to be Wal-Mart greeters is hardly a strategy for allowing seniors to retire with the dignity and respect they deserve.

Seniors had hoped for increases to the OAS and GIS. They had hoped that the tax rate for the lowest income bracket would be dropped from 15.5% to 15%, where it was before the budget of the Conservatives of last year. They had hoped for new affordable housing and expanded public transit. They had hoped to reimbursed for all the full amount that the government shortchanged them as a result of Statistic Canada's mistake in calculating the consumer price index. None of these things were delivered in the budget.

By definition, seniors cannot wait forever. For a government that supported my seniors charter in June last year, it has shown itself contemptuous of both the will of the House and the very real needs of seniors.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Order, please. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Foreign Affairs; the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, Wage Earner Protection Program Act.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was somewhat disappointed, not only with the approach of the hon. member but with the approach of the leader of the NDP.

This morning the leader of the NDP was interviewed on national television about the budget. He was asked the question, “What things do you support?”. He would not answer. He was asked again, “What in the budget could you support?” He refused to answer. He simply bridged out of the question.

That is my frustration. I had assumed we were going to have a robust and also a fulsome, forthright and honest debate on the issue. Perhaps I was expecting too much.

I will simply reiterate the question I asked her leader this morning. I am looking at the budget highlights. I am looking at a working income tax credit of $1,000 to help the working poor over the welfare wall. I am looking at extra support for parents of disabled children so they can set up something like an RESP. There is a $2,000 family tax credit for each child under the age of 18. I am looking at some extra support for seniors such as increasing the RRSP age to 71 from 69.

Which of the items that I have enumerated would the hon. member cut from the budget, since she does not support it?

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I make absolutely no apologies for standing up for the interests of my constituents in the riding of Hamilton Mountain. I am relaying to the House what I have heard on every doorstep.

I appreciate the member may think that allowing for the creation of RRSPs and greater contributions or enhanced contributions under RESPs may be his vision of how people can get their way out of poverty. The reality is those who are most in need do not have money left over at the end of the month to invest in RRSPs. Those are the people for whom we are fighting. That is why we cannot support the budget.

Disproportionately corporate tax benefits total up to $9 billion. Those who are most vulnerable in my community will receive nothing. I did not say the budget had no baby steps forward. I said, on balance, the budget does very little to close the prosperity gap. That is what we are fighting for in the House. That is why we cannot support the budget.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on Halloween, the government announced that it was going to tax income trusts. About two and a half million Canadians who had those investments found that about $25 billion of their retirement nest eggs were wiped out in just two days.

The New Democratic Party knows that most of these people are seniors, people who had put away for their retirement. They took one of the biggest hits in the history of Canada in terms of their investment value for retirement purposes.

The NDP voted in favour of taxing income trusts and the ways and means motion. They debated in the House and supported the taxation of seniors, wiping out $25 billion worth of investment income. It is in this budget as well.

Could the member explain how she is so concerned about seniors and the gap between the rich and poor when what her party has supported all along is to ensure that seniors are worse off now because of its position on the taxation of income trusts?

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, let me point out yet again that the vast majority of seniors who the member just described as poor are not investing in income trusts. Nonetheless, I think the question he asked is an important one.

We have been advocating, long before I got to the House, that when the income trusts were created, we needed accountability and transparency. I agree with the member that the Prime Minister perhaps misled Canadians inadvertently by suggesting that income trusts would be safe under his administration.

The reality is seniors made investments based on that campaign promise and then he broke that promise. That is why seniors have lost money in income trusts. Those investments probably should not have been made. They should not have taken him at his word during the election campaign.

Our position has been absolutely consistent. We need accountability and transparency. We are dealing with the retirement incomes of seniors. They deserve to be protected and they deserve the protection of the House.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the discussion on the budget.

The Conservatives wonder why we cannot support the budget. They say that it is a budget for the middle class, for workers, for everyone. Yet, when we look at the Conservative budget that was presented yesterday, there is absolutely nothing for affordable housing. There is absolutely nothing to reduce poverty in Canada.

We realize today that there is still poverty in Canada. The Conservatives cannot say that there is not a problem. Transfers to the provinces can help people on welfare. There are single people who are living on $268 a month. For example, in New Brunswick, a person with a disability receives $468 a month. How can a disabled person live on an amount like that?

Under the Conservative budget they are ready to give $9 billion in tax reductions to big corporations. Oil companies are among those large corporations. How many Canadians are happy to know each day, as they put gas in their vehicle, that gas costs them more than $1 a litre? Oil companies will again be able to save money on their taxes while the people who are putting gas in their vehicles are paying high prices. That is taxpayer money.

The Conservative government allocated $8 billion for post-secondary education. Students asked for $2.2 billion in support. Since 1991-92, the cost to students has risen by 153%. Last week, I was in Fredericton and I met with the post-secondary students association, which asked us to support their demands.

The government claims that it is paying down debt and balancing the budget, but in reality it has shifted the debt to future generations. They say they want to pay off the debt so that future generations are not stuck with it. But what is the government doing? It has downloaded it to the students. However, those students are not just anyone; they are not strangers. They are our children. These are the young people who will be the leaders of our country one day. They are the ones who will be working to build up our country. And, what are we doing? We are paralyzing them financially. This budget will not help them because their costs will increase.

In addition, there is absolutely nothing for a home care program, nothing for long-term care. One of our colleagues said earlier in the House that hospital beds are filled with people who have long-term illnesses and who could be in nursing homes. But there is no money in the budget for that, absolutely no money for that.

The Conservative government says that thanks to income tax reductions, young people will be able to claim up to $310 per year. It will amount to about $310. They can claim $2,000, which will mean an income tax reduction of $310.

We are talking about $310 per year for child care. This is an area in which the government has slashed spending. We had asked for a national child care program, because at present it can cost parents as much as $500 or $600 a month. In Quebec, it may be $35 a week, but look at what is happening in the other provinces in the country. This government is the one that slashed funding, that refused to create national child care centres. Talk to those people to see whether they agree.

As for increasing the minimum wage to $10 as proposed, this is about working people, about poverty. Some people have to have three jobs to get by, because they are working for minimum wage at $6 or $7 an hour.

There would be something in this budget if the government were proposing a bill to raise the minimum wage.

In terms of the economic development of Atlantic Canada and the ACOA, there is absolutely no surplus to help small and medium-sized businesses to establish and create jobs in Atlantic Canada, for example, as is the case in northern Ontario or western Canada. There is absolutely nothing to help rural regions. There is nothing for anyone but the big companies: $9 billion.

I cannot avoid talking about the $51 billion surplus in the EI fund when there is absolutely nothing for working people in Canada who are losing their jobs and absolutely nothing to change the system under which only 32% of women and 38% of men are eligible for employment insurance. There is a $51 billion surplus.

There is a surprise that I cannot avoid talking about. I was disappointed to learn that the Bloc Québécois was going to support this, when there is absolutely nothing in it for workers who have lost their jobs, and absolutely nothing for employment insurance.

I recall Bill C-48, which the NDP had negotiated with the minority Liberal government. We had agreement for $4.6 billion: $1.6 billion was allocated to post-secondary education; $1.5 billion was allocated to affordable housing; $900 million was earmarked for infrastructure in cities and municipalities; $500 million was being given to countries in need; and $100 million was to be used to protect employees' wages in bankruptcies.

The Bloc Québécois voted against Bill C-48, which was good for ordinary people. Today, it is going to vote with the Conservatives, when there is no change to employment insurance. This is the second time that the Bloc members have told us that we are the ones who have abandoned working men and women. They have had two opportunities to do the right thing, but they voted with a right-wing government that is not committed to helping working men and women or to social programs.

The Conservatives cut the court challenges program on September 25, 2006; they cut funding to Status of Women, and they cut funding for literacy programs.

Today the Bloc is going to support a government that made all these cuts and has done absolutely nothing, as I said, for working people and employment insurance. The Bloc accused us of being in bed with the Conservatives. I would say that they are in the hot tub with the Conservatives and having a fine old time. It is a disgrace.

Some say today that the Conservatives gave Jean Charest money for the elections in Quebec, where there will be a tax cut. Jean Charest announced it on television. There will be a $700 million tax cut. But when people go to the hospital in Quebec, they are stuck in the hallways because there are no available beds and services.

Mario Dumont said that he wanted to privatize health care in Quebec. Is that what he will do with the billions of dollars being sent to Quebec? We hope not.

We could have had programs to help Quebec and all the provinces in Canada. I do not know what has become of the Bloc members when they unite with a right-wing government that is the furthest to the right we have ever seen and that makes cuts in ways we have never seen before.

I saw it happen. I was in the House yesterday. When it became apparent that the Bloc would support the Conservatives, almost all the Bloc members were virtually hiding their heads beneath their desks. They were so ashamed. I know them well, my friends in the Bloc, I know them very well and I know that they are uncomfortable. They do not feel very good. They feel terrible.

This all needs to be seen in context. Why should we not support the Conservative budget? Because there is nothing for the middle class, nothing for seniors and nothing for people who are ill here in Canada. That is why we will not be supporting the Conservative budget.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is right in his general assessment that there really is nothing for certain classes of Canadians. If we look at the budget item by item, it is the people in Canada who have the least in terms of economic wealth who get nothing. They are the poor in our country. They are the seniors who are the most vulnerable. They are families with children who earn less than $36,000. As for pension splitting for seniors, if a senior's pension is less than $36,800, he or she is already at the lowest marginal tax rate and therefore it does not benefit the senior.

We could look at this item by item and say that this budget really targets and focuses in on those who can afford to pay some tax. It does not help the poor. It does not help seniors who are vulnerable and cannot help themselves. It does not help the unemployed. It does not help stimulate the economy. It does not help make Canada a better place. There is no vision.

I wonder if the member could suggest to us, however, why his party still supported the taxation of seniors who invested in income trusts to the extent that income trust investors collectively lost about $25 billion because the NDP supported the government in the taxation of income trusts and a very serious broken promise.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member has addressed the question to me. I would like to address a question to him. Why did the Liberals bring in the loophole for business that created this mess that people got into? That is what happened. The Liberals created that mess. They brought in a loophole for their friends.

Let us not forget that the Liberals had a minister of finance who for many years did not even pay his taxes to our country. That is the type of government we had for 13 years. I wish I could have raised the question with the member instead of him raising it with me, because the Liberals created the problem.

We have had people coming to us and saying that maybe they were wrongly advised about not leaving their money there. As one person said, “I left the money there, it kind of calmed down, and I got my money back”. As for ordinary people, that is not what hurt the most, like the member is talking about. The Liberals created that mess. It was during the election of 2006 that it came out what they had done. They created it and they cannot blame the NDP for saying that we do not want those types of loopholes for businesses in our country.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague a question. For all the years that I have been in the House, he takes the opportunity to go to a recurrent theme, which is employment insurance. In his particular area, I know, micro business and the opportunity for seasonal employees to start their own businesses is a very attractive inducement.

There is nothing as a strategy, which would look at areas like his constituency, his region and his province, that is an inducement to workers to work through co-ops or the tax system, and they are continuously taxed at a higher level with respect to employment insurance. I wonder if he would like to expand on that, because there is a huge absence in this budget of anything that would come close to meeting the needs of workers in his particular area.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the member on one thing: They are not taxed. The businesses are not taxed.

Businesses have a responsibility when they hire people. If they cannot keep them 12 months a year, they have a responsibility to pay into a program to make sure that if employees get laid off and no longer have a job they will be given the opportunity to get a job for their families. It is not just for businesses to make money. The working people, who help them do business and get rich, get nothing if they lose their jobs. This program belongs to the workers and the companies.

The problem is that the government had a $51 billion surplus. It was during the time the Liberals were in power, starting in 1996. There was a $51 billion surplus on the backs of the workers and business people. Jobs were not created through ACOA. That is the problem with this budget. There is no extra money for ACOA to help businesses create jobs. That is where the problem is in this budget. There is nothing for the Atlantic provinces so it can create those jobs.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Eglinton—Lawrence.

The Conservative budget has failed Canada's most vulnerable people. Those who need government most have once again been ignored by the Conservative government. Instead of reaching out to ordinary, hard-working Canadians, the government has only reached out to the CEOs sitting around boardroom tables.

Instead of reaching out to those who are homeless, or instead of investing in affordable housing or post-secondary education, or ensuring that poverty among first nations would be eliminated, the Conservatives chose to ignore and sideline them.

This was supposed to be a budget, from what I recollect of what the Prime Minister said, that would be discussed around kitchen tables. After reading the budget, one really wonders what kitchen table this Prime Minister was sitting at, because this is a budget in which there seem to be more losers than winners. It is a budget in which the rich will only get richer and the poor only poorer.

Perhaps the chief economist at RBC Financial, Craig Wright, best summed up this budget when he said:

It's a minority government budget. It's about politics more than it's about policy: a little bit for everyone, not enough for anyone.

It is evident from this quote that this budget was not looking at Canada's future. This is a budget that is a step backward, a step backward for the children of Canada, for the most vulnerable of Canada, for our first nations communities, for the homeless, and for those who really needed the government most.

Let me talk about child care. The Conservatives have spoken quite often about choice in child care, but what choice has a Conservative government really given hard-working Canadian parents when they have failed to deliver a single child care space?

The $250 million that has been given to the provinces and territories is really a mere drop in the bucket compared to the $1.2 billion that would have been invested by the previous Liberal government. One needs to ask oneself, does this Conservative government really believe in early learning and childhood development?

We have seen over the last 24 hours that child care advocacy groups across the country are saying that the Conservative plan has offered little money or absolutely no money and no accountability to ensure that child care spaces are going to be created.

We all recollect the 2006 campaign when the Conservatives promised the creation of 125,000 child care spaces over five years. Now, as we take a look 14 months later, we see that not one child care space has been created.

Canadian families have very quickly realized that this was yet another Conservative promise made and another Conservative promise broken. Unfortunately, this time, that broken promise has impacted thousands and thousands of Canadian children across the country.

If we take a look at this particular budget, we see that the government talks about creating 25,000 new child care spaces. Twenty-five thousand actually sounds like a large number, but one only has to take a look at a few examples.

We can take a look at the city of Ottawa, which actually has a centralized child care waiting list. Parents across the country and parents living in Ottawa can actually add their child's name to one particular city list to ensure that it appears on a central list. As for this list, in Ottawa alone, the number of children waiting for a child care space is 10,000. There are 10,000 children in Ottawa waiting for a child care space. This is for only one city in Canada.

What about some of the other cities that are even more populated than Ottawa? What about Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary or Winnipeg? I know that in my own riding of Brampton—Springdale, which has one of the fastest growing cities in the country, the list of child care spaces is growing longer and longer. Children in my riding of Brampton--Springdale are waiting.

The government has simply acted as an ATM machine. It has thrown money at families by giving them $100 a month and now it is throwing money at the provinces and territories. The only thing that is evident while the government acts as an ATM machine is that there has not been an action plan. There has been no leadership to ensure that we deliver the child care spaces that children and Canadian families so desperately need.

Many child care advocacy groups and many Canadian families talk about the fact that when the Liberals were in government they actually sat down with the provinces and territories and came up with a $5 billion investment in an early learning and childhood development plan to ensure there would be quality, universality, accessibility and a developmental component so that our children, the future leaders of our country, would get the very best.

What did the Conservatives promise? They gave $100 a month that is actually taxable. Now that Canadian parents and families are filling out their tax forms, they realize they actually have to give money back to the government. The $100 a month was really about $66 a month for some families. This is absolutely no choice because where can any Canadian family or parent find child care at $66 a month?

The only choice that Canadian parents and families have been left with is that they can either stay at home or pay for child care out of their pocket, but the problem and the dilemma there is that there are no child care spaces. It is quite clear from this budget that the promise to Canadian families and parents for child care and the delivery of child care spaces was actually a smokescreen.

A senior economist from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives said:

You can easily spend in the billions creating a genuine national child-care program for kids younger than six. Splitting $250 million among all those provinces...is not going to do it.

We're missing the boat on this in a big way. Research connects early learning with all kinds of education and production benefits that spin off later on. And it allows people to show up for work if they know their children are well cared for.

It is clear throughout this Conservative budget that the government has failed Canada's most vulnerable.

We can talk about the issue of foreign credential recognition. The Conservatives promised that they would create an agency, but in this budget they have not provided the resources or the infrastructure to actually implement this agency. They have not talked about establishing this agency.

The member for Eglinton—Lawrence spent many years to ensure that when new immigrants came to our country with hopes, dreams and aspirations that their qualifications would be recognized, that they would be able to be accredited and integrated into the labour market workforce. But the Conservative government has failed to get the job done and those new Canadians still continue to wait.

We can talk about health care. The Conservatives talked about the implementation of a wait time guarantee, but it is quite unfortunate in reading the budget that health care was not one of their top priorities. Instead the Conservative government is trying to blackmail the provinces and territories into signing on by waving $612 million, but if they decline, that $612 million will go out the window.

Canadians want to ensure that they have the most effective and efficient health care system, but the government must believe in that type of system. It must invest in health care to ensure that the wait times guarantee is actually implemented. Once again the Conservative budget failed in ensuring that they would deliver quality health care for Canadians across the country.

In conclusion, it is clear that the Conservative government's budget was only good for one table around the country and that was for the CEOs who sit at the boardroom table, not for the average hard-working Canadian. The Conservatives have once again sidelined those who need the government most.

The finance minister and the Prime Minister had a real opportunity to help Canada and to ensure Canada's success in the coming years, but unfortunately they failed on all accounts. On behalf of the hard-working families in my riding of Brampton—Springdale, on behalf of students, seniors, aboriginal people and first nations, on behalf of those who are homeless in this country, there is no way that this budget deserves their full support.

[Merv Tweed, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great intensity to the member's comments. Obviously in her time spent in this Parliament she may not remember the 10 years of promises of past Liberal governments in regard to child care.

It astonishes me how quickly the Liberals can transition from a government of unkept promises to a government of critics. It continues to astonish me how quickly they can move from what they promised but were never able to deliver to being critical of a government that in a short period of time has presented two budgets to Canadians and two budgets that have moved Canadians forward in a positive way.

This budget provides a tax credit of $2,000 for every child in Canada providing up to $310 per child in tax relief and impacting more than three million Canadian families for a dollar value of $1.5 billion in tax relief. Does the member disagree with a budget that helps families in such a significant way?

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what we as Liberals disagree with is that this particular budget will not help the hard-working Canadian families that actually need it most. When the Conservatives talk about the $2,000 tax credit and they talk about the fact that some families will get back $310, when we do the math it is about 80¢ a day. We cannot even buy a cup of coffee for 80¢. The families that really need it most, the lower income families, are not going to benefit from this.

If the Conservatives really wanted to help lower income families, they would have ensured that they invested in the areas that are important to those low income families. They would have invested in the creation of child care spaces which would have ensured the empowerment of Canadian parents who want to be part of the workforce and also provide high quality child care.

I must also say it was a Liberal government that actually ensured that Canada had one of the best financial records in the G-8. It was a Liberal government that delivered a $42 billion investment in health care to ensure that we would have a wait times reduction. It was a Liberal government in consultation with the provinces and territories that invested $5 billion in early learning and childhood development to ensure that we would invest in our future: our children.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party and the member are guilty of perpetuating the myth that the institutionalized child care scheme of theirs was somehow going to be free. The Liberals have never ever attached any type of individual family cost to their scheme. They have simply laid it out among the general public as though it were going to be some freebie for parents of young children. I would love to hear what their estimate of cost per family would be for this government-run child care system of theirs.

At the same time, I would like them to tell me exactly how they would get this government-run child care system into every little rural spot of the country so that Canadian families who do not live in the big cities where the Liberals' friends are would be able to take advantage of some child care benefit that would have been offered to them by the failed Liberal government.

The new Conservative government child care system, the universal one, on the other hand, reached out to families in every single part of the country. Whether they lived in the far Arctic or in the rural areas of British Columbia or Ontario, every single family would benefit, not like the mythical, government-run, badly explained, so-called freebie of the failed Liberal government.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

There is a half a minute to respond.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to my colleague, having talked to Canadian families and Canadian parents and mothers, giving them $100 a month that is taxable, which at the end of the day probably results in about $50 to $60 a month, is not a child care plan. That is not an investment in early learning and child care development. The government is acting as an ATM machine, because what choice is it really giving parents when there are absolutely no spaces in the country?

Whether families live--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Eglinton—Lawrence.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be part of the debate, especially after the interventions of two members on the government side a moment ago who wondered about finances and how programs are funded.

I know they share the views of all members in this place, that if there is a vision that drives the party in government, it will be expressed in the budget document. The budget document will itemize exactly what the government will do. It will give an indication of how moneys will be raised and where the moneys will be spent and who will benefit and profit.

So here it is. I am going to have a look. The Minister of Finance said, “Read the book. It is all in the book”, so let us see what is in the book.

According to the book there are going to be projected for this coming fiscal year an additional $4.4 billion in revenues. It gets better. It means that the government vision for the country is going to be predicated on that $4.4 billion. The rest does not matter because it was already there. It is money that was in the last budget. It is money that has already been raised. It is money that has already been packaged. It is money that has already been put out to Canadians as part and parcel of their experience and their commitment to government and to the growth of this country. They have increased their revenues by $4.4 billion.

It gets better. A Conservative government purports to be responsible, accountable and transparent. What is it going to do? I know you will love this statement, Mr. Speaker, and it is right here in the book. It talks about the program expenses of the government opposite, that one right over there, the one that talks about the best interests of Canadians everywhere, that one whose accountability and accounting processes are limpid, and what is it that the government is going to do? The Conservatives are going to raise an additional $4.4 billion and they are going to spend $10.6 billion. They are going to spend an additional $10.6 billion.

My colleague from Mississauga South who is an accountant will understand this. I know my accountant friend will tell me that leads to deficits and a decline in confidence in the government and the country to proceed along a sane and reasonable economic and fiscal path. It leads to increased borrowing costs everywhere. It leads to a loss of confidence by business in the country. But that is okay.

This is blarney economics on the part of the Minister of Finance who stood in the House today and said that he was a terrific guy and he could only do terrific things, that he could only do, and I think the term he used about five times was historic things. The historic thing is to return to the Conservative practice of spending more than is actually raised.

I know that my colleague from Mississauga South is waiting to see what the vision is in this book. It is in the book. The vision is there. The Minister of Finance said to read it. He is going to reduce the debt; this is from someone who is spending more than he is raising. He is going to reduce the debt by $3 billion. How does one reduce the debt by--

[An hon. member]

Read the book.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order. The hon. member for Eglinton—Lawrence sits very close to the Speaker's chair and I am still having trouble hearing him. He has about six and a half minutes left. We will allow him to finish up. Any member who wishes to ask a question or make a comment can do so at the appropriate time.

The hon. member for Eglinton--Lawrence.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the children opposite will understand that the facts speak for themselves, especially when the Minister of Finance asked us to look at this.

He is going to spend $6.6 billion more than he is actually going to raise, but he is going to reduce the debt by $3 billion. Oh my gosh, this is mathematics 101. We cannot spend more than we earn unless, of course, we borrow, but if we borrow, we run into deficit.

This is all repackaging. There is nothing really new here. There is absolutely nothing new. One would be forgiven if there were a moment of suspicion that somebody was trying to mislead the Canadian public, maybe even the House, on what this package is all about.

Here is the real book. Look at how thick it is. It is all about how those people in government are going to spend an additional $4.4 billion that they are going to raise next year. Imagine. Let us be serious. We are talking about $4.4 billion. We have heard figures thrown out here during question period today and yesterday, and over the course of debates about $30 billion in additional moneys being invested in infrastructure, about $33 billion being invested in this and that, and about billions of dollars being thrown here and there and everywhere. The book does not lie. The book says the government only has $4 billion more than it had last year.

Do members know what else the book says? I see my colleagues nodding. The book also says that the Minister of Finance misled the House when he told the House that there was a $22 billion debt paydown. Do members know why he was misleading? Misleading is an appropriate term. In 2005-06 the--