Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Kings—Hants.
Here we are, 364 days after the industry committee tabled its report in the House with 22 separate recommendations, all put forward by the manufacturing sector itself, and what action have we seen from the government? Actually, we have seen it implement one-half of one of the 22 recommendations.
Industries told committee members that the government should modify the capital cost allowance to allow for a direct two year writeoff of machinery and equipment and that this should be made available to them for five years. The members of the committee, understanding the planning horizon that many of these industries need to make large capital acquisitions, recommended this sensible approach to the government.
The finance minister, though, thought he knew better than industry. He felt that his years as a lawyer and a politician had taught him more about the needs of manufacturers than manufacturers themselves. As a result, he only provided this benefit for two years instead of the five that the manufacturers had requested. Let us look at the results of this brilliant insight by the Minister of Finance.
In January 2007, the Conference Board of Canada's business confidence survey indicated that 56% of business leaders thought it was a good time to undertake investment expenditures. Just last week, that is, a year after the fruits of the labour of the finance minister should have become evident, it released its winter 2008 business confidence survey and only 46% of business leaders felt the way they had last year. On top of that, business confidence has hit a nine year low in this country. That is lower than it was in the aftermath of 9/11 and lower than it was at the time of the SARS difficulties, hardly a vote of confidence in the economic policies of the Minister of Finance.
That brings us to today. As I mentioned, it is one year less a day since my colleagues in the industry committee tabled this fine report. For 364 days now, the government has let the report sit on a shelf collecting dust while it runs around the country telling Canadians that everything is just fine. However, a quick look at Statistics Canada's monthly employment surveys will tell a very different story from the rosy picture the government is trying to paint.
Since this report was tabled, 135,000 manufacturing jobs have simply vanished, gone up in smoke. That is a big number and it is important because each one of those 135,000 jobs represents a Canadian who is a breadwinner for his or her family, people who have to make mortgage payments, buy groceries and make sure their kids get to hockey practice.
Back in November, the Liberal members of the finance committee secured a series of meetings to hear from representatives of sectors like tourism, forestry, retail and manufacturing. These meetings actually led the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup to table the motion that we are debating today.
During the course of those meetings, Jim Stanford, chief economist of the Canadian Auto Workers, told the committee that unless the government began to get engaged, the manufacturing sector could easily lose 300,000 more jobs in the next two to four years, but the government has shown no sign whatsoever that it will engage on this subject of such importance to all Canadians.
I believe this neglect of the manufacturing sector and this neglect of the unanimous industry report by the government illustrates the two fundamental differences between Conservatives and Liberals when it comes to economic policy. Let me list those two differences.
First, Liberals are the party of fiscal prudence and Conservatives are not. Second, Liberals believe in an active but prudent approach to economic policies and Conservatives believe in a combination of laissez-faire and “I don't care”. Let me go through each of those two positions.
In terms of fiscal prudence, any objective observer of history, north and south of the border, will have noticed that Conservatives and republicans are the parties that run big fat deficits. Look at Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Look at George W. Bush today. Look at Brian Mulroney, who left, in 1993, a $42 billion deficit for the Liberals to clean up. Look at the former premier of Ontario, Ernie Eves, along with his three colleagues who are currently members of this cabinet, who ran an election in the year 2003 on a balanced budget they said. Except when Dalton McGuinty got in, he called in the auditors and, lo and behold, there was a big, ugly, fat $5.8 billion Conservative deficit for Dalton McGuinty to clean up. These are historical facts. I might add that Bill Clinton, a democrat, ran uninterrupted surpluses.
So, the general moral of the story is that Conservatives and republicans ran big, huge deficits, and leave that mess for succeeding Liberal and democratic governments to clean up.
My second point is that Liberals are fiscally prudent. Conservatives are not. Liberals believe in an active but fiscally prudent government. We would not sit by wearing our laissez-faire spectacles or our “I don't care” attitude and simply watch as hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs go down the drain. We would take an active approach. The proof of that is that our leader, Stéphane Dion, has recently announced two--