Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in support of the motion by the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor. It is a great motion that illustrates very well the concerns that we have in Atlantic Canada.
Canadian seniors particularly saw $25 billion to $30 billion being ripped off from their savings by a broken promise on income trusts. Atlantic Canadians are seeing hundreds of millions, if not billions, more being stolen from their provincial treasuries by breaking this promise on the Atlantic accord.
It is a calculated manoeuvre that comes out of a sense of entitlement by the leader of the Conservative Party, an entitlement to be Prime Minister in a government that would have a majority so that he could bring forward an agenda that would be much more right wing than anything we have seen in decades in this country. That is what he is attempting here. If he wanted to build a nation rather than a majority, he would be looking at assisting the weakest so that they could meet their potential and bring the country up in all regions.
He could have looked at lowering taxes for those with a lower income, lowering the taxes that he increased in the last budget. He could have increased the child tax benefit, helping all Canadians of low and modest income. He could have assisted single seniors, who are among the hardest hit in our country, from the rising cost of fuel and other problems that make the basic cost of living go up quite a lot. He could have assisted on child poverty. There are still a million children living in poverty.
Next year he intends in his budget, according to past promises, to reduce the GST again by another per cent, which would be roughly $6 billion. That would bring a million children out of poverty, but there is none of that.
He could have assisted students, but when he sees the plight of the students, it is a little like Marie Antoinette before the French revolution who said, “Let them eat cake”. Now the minister says “Let them buy steaks”.
Some investments and calculations are based on “who we can get to vote for us”. There is a ring around Toronto where people are quite affluent and another ring of people around Montreal, so he goes after those people. As for the rest of the country, it does not matter too much. Alberta will do fine. It gets some money. Provinces such as Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and British Columbia get zero, not one penny more.
The Prime Minister has often said that Atlantic Canada has a culture of defeatism. He wants to make sure that by doing this, we are completely defeated.
The Atlantic accord was a hard fought victory for Atlantic Canada. A lot of people carried a lot of weight. Dr. Hamm is to be commended on the work he did. The then minister, the member for Halifax West, the members from Newfoundland, all the Atlantic caucus worked with the government. We could not always get what we wanted. It took a long time. It was a battle of many years, but finally we did get it. Premier Williams of Newfoundland joined that battle. He did a lot of work on it.
The situation at that time was that the offshore revenues would go to the federal government. The federal government would return 100% of those revenues to the provincial governments, but a large part of that would be calculated against equalization. The ability of the provinces to use these resources, which are finite in nature and very expensive to extract, was quite limited in improving their overall economy.
Those provinces made the argument successfully that they should get all of those revenues and that they should be able to invest that in their provinces and that it should not be calculated against future considerations, changes in equalization programs or anything else. It should be above and beyond what they would normally get.
In the last budget by the Liberal government there was an increase in equalization and it did not reduce the money for the accord. There was no question of making choices. The money was above and beyond. The provinces had the right to expect that it would be like that in the future.
What do we see this year? We have a province like Nova Scotia with a lot of requirements for highway infrastructure, for investments in education, health care, social services, productivity, research and development, the modern economy. It was hoping that equalization would give it a few dollars more.
They knew that the Prime Minister would be putting a lot of money in the equalization formula to appease those votes he is trying to get in the more populous provinces so they could expect to get that money by election day. “No, Russian roulette is what you are going to have to play, Williams; Russian roulette, MacDonald. You choose now. Take a few dollars more this year and forgo billions of dollars for your province in the future years”.
That is a very difficult situation. It is a very difficult thing for those premiers to do, to look at the natural heritage, that oil and gas that is in the ground that can buy their citizens a better future, and say that has to be traded away against a few dollars now. We know that is what he wants them to do. We saw it in his budget last year where he said in his budget that he did not like the offshore agreement that had been negotiated, so he found a way to get rid of it.
Whom do we have to defend Atlantic Canada? The Minister of Fisheries, who as a Progressive Conservative and as a Conservative was very adamant on fighting for it. He was very adamant that it had to be 100%. Now I hear him say that the premier of Newfoundland is lying. I think he thinks that a few flights in the Challenger jet gives them much better capacity to analyze the fiscal capacity of Newfoundland than anybody else can, but that cannot be done from St. John's. One has to come to Ottawa. One has to sit next to the Prime Minister a few days and then one can do that.
He did not get in the budget what he had promised us. Money for small craft harbours, when he was on the fisheries committee he always talked about more money for small craft harbours. We did not see that. There was a reduction to the tune of some $30 million annually. Custodial management was not mentioned. We have not seen that anywhere and he remains an apologist.
While in opposition, the member for Central Nova was a fierce fighter for the rights of Nova Scotia and now he is a lapdog for the Prime Minister. He watches our money, the money for which the premiers fought so hard, being taken away, being eroded by force. I am forced to make a very difficult decision. I would like to be at Tim Hortons in Pictou if he dares to go back there. I would assume that the coffee and the reception would be very cool. He may need the company of Condoleezza Rice as somebody to sit with him.
I listened to the Minister of Finance when he was reading his budget speech. He said that the long days of bickering between the federal and provincial governments were over. I have not heard a quote like that since I read about Neville Chamberlain talking about peace in our times right before the second world war.
Now the premiers are speaking out. Rodney MacDonald, the premier of Nova Scotia, does not attack the Prime Minister very easily. He was the only cabinet minister in the John Hamm government to get on the leadership team of the Prime Minister when he was seeking the leadership. He has been very loyal to him. He was one of the three co-chairs in Nova Scotia of his campaign. He was very mad about the way they were being played, like a fiddle I think is the way that it was mentioned in a Nova Scotia newspaper.
Jane Purves, chief of staff to the premier of Nova Scotia during the time of John Hamm, a cabinet minister herself, minister of education, knows how difficult it is to make ends meet in the Nova Scotia budget. She was planning to run in Halifax for the Conservatives and today she is not so sure. I was reading those things. I do not know that she wants to go around defending the budget. What she and the premier, and Liberal MPs and MLAs had for many years argued and fought for and finally got, with one stroke of a pen the premier and the minister of finance of Nova Scotia were put in a position where they have to play Russian roulette, a few dollars more this year and maybe billions of dollars less.
If there is no oil and gas industry, it is an easy decision. If there is no expansion, if the second field or future fields do not go on stream, take the money, get the new equalization money. But if it happens in the future, it could be the wrong decision, like premier Buchanan made in his agreements with a Conservative government previously.
I think the minister of finance was Greg Kerr. He ran against me last time and will run again. He will be much more happy because this is his type of management. This is a type of management that, under his tutelage, got Nova Scotia a billion dollars in debt, and it is a small province.
Premier Hamm and a lot of other people worked hard with the former prime minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard to get the Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Canada accord which gives opportunity and hope. The Conservatives want to see defeat for Atlantic Canadians.