Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Simcoe North.
In the few minutes allotted to me I would like to address some of the broad stroke issues of the budget and then I will talk a little bit about what we are doing in an increased way related to my portfolio of safety and security.
I would also like to talk a little bit about what is going on in my constituency in terms of how the constituency is benefiting from the building Canada fund which gives significant dollars to infrastructure.
There has been some debate and I heard some concern brought forward by members of the opposition about the responsible way in which this government is paying down debt. It is something we need to reflect on for a moment because if we do not deal with debt, the interest payments increase, in fact they start to compound and as interest payments increase and a government is compelled to make those payments, in fact the government loses the fiscal capacity to be able to spend its scarce taxpayer dollars on other things of importance like essential services.
That is why, when we look at the record of debt in Canada over the last 50 years, we can see under the reign of Pierre Trudeau how the really grotesque uptake of debt started to skyrocket to levels unheard of certainly in Canadian history and really unheard of in much of the democratic world post-second world war.
We cannot blame it all on Mr. Trudeau because subsequent governments followed this fanciful dream that the way to get out of debt was to keep on borrowing. Now, none of us tell our kids that and hopefully we try not to practise that in our own finances. It is rather deplorable when a government would think that the way to get out of debt would be to just keep on borrowing.
That trend continued until the early nineties when it took the International Monetary Fund to blow the whistle on Canada. That was a very embarrassing moment for us as Canadians as we realized that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were reflecting on Canada's ratio of debt to gross domestic product, and it was saying Canada was in a very fragile financial moment. The fiscal record of the nation was at stake.
That is what happens when debt is ignored. That philosophical approach to economic issues was advocated by, among other people, the economist John Maynard Keynes. He was a strong proponent of this spend and tax cycle and trying to put on the brakes, put on the gas, as they used to call it, and try to govern the economy that way.
He was asked by an astute observer at one point, “As debt increases, do you not hit a point where in the long run, an economy is no longer able to sustain itself?” Keynes replied that in the long run, we will all be dead. That was the economic depth of his answer.
I may be, in the shorter run, but my kids and grandkids will not be. I do not like the fact that he and others in government can shrug that off. I do not like the fact that my kids and grandkids would be paying and having to finance his dreams which probably did not come to fruition because the economic world of many countries largely abandoned that ridiculous approach that we can get out of debt by continuing to go into debt.
That is why we have a Minister of Finance and a government that believes we have to aggressively pay down debt. As we do that, we reduce those interest payments every year. We free up money to spend on essential services. We made a commitment that we are not going to take the interest savings and just spend those.
As a matter of fact, we are going to return those in the form of tax savings. That is the second part of the budget I want to talk about. Since we have formed the government, we have reduced taxes in over 60 different areas including the GST.
This combination of a commitment to reduce debt and reduce taxes sends a robust signal to the marketplace, both within Canada and abroad where people are wondering if they should be investing in their businesses here, or should they be looking to jurisdictions that are less taxed and less indebted. Those twin signals of reducing debt and reducing taxes build confidence in people who are investing whether it is a small business, medium sized business, or large business.
Also, as international fund managers look around the world at signals from economies where there can be some sense of longevity in terms of prosperity and opportunity, those kinds of signals will attract investment dollars, which attracts jobs, and we wind up with the combined effect of lowering people's taxes. We then have more people paying taxes because more people are working, but they are all paying at a lower rate. That is the way to keep an economy rejuvenated.
This is a very solid process that the Minister of Finance is advocating and has put before us today. I hope members of the opposition would begin to clear away some of the fog they have on this issue of paying down debt and reducing taxes and see that those two factors have a rejuvenating effect, not just on the economy but on individuals who sense that hard work, incentive and investment can pay off for them.
In the area of safety and security, under areas of my portfolio, we have made significant increases in some key areas. When we look at investment in one area, we need to send signals that we have a secure nation, and we do, and we have a nation that will work other nations to deal with criminal elements, risks of terrorism and natural disasters.
This is why we have made investments in some key areas at the border. We want to ensure traffic flowing across our borders, low risk travel and cargo, can move more rapidly. We also want to ensure that our border officers and others are equipped not just with the latest technology, but with the latest training to intercept goods, which could be contraband, dangerous or illegal, and also individuals who could be a threat to our country.
This is why the budget makes significant increases in those areas at our borders, with our integrated border teams that work with officers on the other side of the border and a $430 million investment in technology to provide the technological means.
We have made investments related to all trucking companies. We will ask for this within five years, but it is a process that has begun. All trucking companies will forward, by electronic manifest, the contents of their cargoes. They will forward that information to the borders even before they arrive. Therefore, the threat and risk assessments are done before the trucks arrive and the low risk ones can move through more quickly. Others identified as being possibly at risk can be sent to a secondary station and have a more thorough inspection.
We have increased the former budget by $161 million with a commitment to see 1,000 more RCMP officers on the street. We announced in this budget $400 million to provinces, on a per capita basis, so they can hire more municipal officers.
At the local level, we heard the announcement by the president of the Federation of Municipalities that the budget was good for cities and communities across the country because of the infrastructure fund. This is the largest ever infrastructure fund set aside for that purpose in Canadian history. A significant portion of that will go to the province of British Columbia, which I am honoured to represent, as well as the constituency of Okanagan—Coquihalla.
People like Mayor Graham Reid in Peachland, Mayor Gregory in Summerland, the newly elected mayor of the new municipality on the west side, Mayor Neis, and the mayor of Oliver have all experienced the results already of those infrastructure dollars. I have been able to work with other planners and elected people to see infrastructure increase because of dollars that flow to vital areas like water treatment, road construction, the very basic things people look for to make their constituencies strong and give them some predictability for the future.
Again, I remind members to think about the broad brush elements. We are reducing debt and taxes. I have not addressed many areas covered in the budget, but we are able to address those areas. We are able to put $1 billion into a community development trust for communities when their traditional areas of industry are hit. We can do all those things and meet the needs of students and others because we have taken a prudent approach to the fiscal management of our nation.