Mr. Speaker, since March 19, when the budget was first presented, the Liberal Party has been very clear with Canadians about why we oppose it.
We look at this mixture of electoral posturing and bad public policy and see Canadians left behind and entire regions of our country forgotten. For some reason, the Prime Minister thought that dividing Canadians would unite his ambition and political fortunes.
Over the last months, Canadians have told him and this party that they have other ideas. Just as troubling as the government's political approach to governing is its inability to coherently implement its agenda.
With all of the flip-flops and the disconnections between the Prime Minister and his front bench ministers, the so-called further clarifications, Canadians are right to be asking themselves whether the government has the ability to formulate a plan and to competently manage one of the largest and most complex economies in the world.
The most recent example of the government's naiveté on financial matters was the announcement by the Minister of Finance that the government had reversed its policy on income deductibility. For weeks and weeks the Liberal Party told the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance that their decision to revoke interest deductibility for Canadian multinational corporations made our business leaders less able to compete. As a party, we repeatedly said that was simply not the way to manage our economy in the context of gruelling international competitive forces.
Though he failed to consult any stakeholders before bringing down his budget on this specific point, we are pleased to see that the Minister of Finance has listened to our position on this matter and for once chose reason over ideology.
I would hope that the minister will take our advice and also look at debt dumping. The double-dipping he has sought to curtail is still taking place as foreign companies, and with affiliates, are permitted to borrow Canadian dollars and invest them in their home countries and do so without paying Canadian corporate taxes.
A further question of competence arises with the issue where Canadians from coast to coast are concerned about the government's total flip-flop on income trusts. As he surely remembers, the Prime Minister campaigned in the last election as the defender of income trusts and investments of Canadians. He took advantage of trumped up gossip against the Liberal government and promised Canadians that his government would preserve their financial security. What a surprise we were all in for when the Conservatives abruptly altered their course and completely changed that position.
In one day, $25 billion of Canadians' investments were wiped out. Since then, the Liberal Party has proposed a reasonable 10% tax on income trusts as opposed to the punitive 31.5% tax levied by the government. This is fair-minded public policy and, frankly, would have avoided the financial disaster that was brought upon many Canadians who were moving into retirement years or were in fact retired. Canadians retired based on the Prime Minister's promise that he would not change his position on the income trusts and he broke that trust and that promise.
Canadian tax policy is just one area of financial policy that the Conservative government has been unable to effectively manage. The federal government's relationships with the cities is another black hole of public policy.
The Prime Minister's only announcement since he has been elected, which addresses the issue of cities, is the transit strategy, and that is perhaps the most blatant example of the Conservative government taking credit for successful Liberal programs and initiatives.
In March the Prime Minister announced funding for a variety of transit projects in the GTA totalling $927 million. However, this money was Liberal government money that was set aside as funding for infrastructure spending in 2006-07 and 2007-08 that until now had not been used by the Conservative government.
Furthermore, just last week the Prime Minister spoke to the Canadian Federation of Municipalities convention and called the government's investment in Canadian cities “historic”. What he failed to mention was that the programs he touted were put in place by the past Liberal government. When is the Conservative government going to show some leadership on this file? As Canada is fast becoming an urban country, what the assembled delegates in Calgary were waiting to hear from the Prime Minister was a plan to provide cities with stable, predictable and long term funding.
As part of our new deal for cities, the Liberal government made a five year, $5 billion commitment to directly fund cities, including $20 billion for 2010-11, but the government has been silent on whether it intends to make this annual contribution permanent.
Cities can no longer depend solely on property taxes for revenue generation. What they need is a commitment from the federal government. They can no longer be treated as creatures of the province. With their ever increasing range of responsibilities and services, cities require some indication that the federal government is interested in ensuring their success.
Clearly, the Conservatives are ignoring the plight of our Canadian cities and communities. How many desperate calls are going to have to be made from mayors across Canada before the government realizes that cities and communities are the drivers of our economy? When will the government wake up and see the need to deal with cities directly to address these issues?
Perhaps the strongest reason to oppose this budget and its implementation is the crassly political way the Conservative government has favoured one region of Canada over the other. The Prime Minister came to office advocating a new approach to federalism. The numbers speak for themselves. Quebec received a 29% increase, or $698 million in equalization. New Brunswick, my home province, received a mere meanspirited 1.8%. Atlantic Canada received only 4% of all new money spent on equalization. Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia received zero increases in payments.
For a second straight year, ACOA, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, has failed to receive mention in the budget or the Speech from the Throne.
The Prime Minister memorably attributes a culture of defeat to the Maritime region. His budget seems designed to give his claims a ring of truth.
The sad reality is that when we listen to Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert, or Progressive Conservative Atlantic Premier Rodney MacDonald, or Progressive Conservative Premier Danny Williams, we get the message loud and clear: Canadians who need the most support have been left out of this budget.
The Conservative government has simply shown that it does not have the right plan to run the country nor the competence to implement the meanspirited and narrow-minded policy proposals it has put forward. With this budget, the Prime Minister has failed to address the concerns of Canadian industry, sold out investors, picked winners in the equalization sweepstakes, ignored Canadian cities, and punished Canadians who need the most help.
The Liberal Party cannot support the passage—