Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the report stage debate on Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget.
What concerns me a great deal about the budget is its forecast. As recently as two days ago, the finance minister stood in this House and told us that he stood by the government's forecast for GDP growth this year of 1.7%. Never mind that exports are falling and manufacturing jobs are disappearing daily and never mind that the Bank of Canada revised, dramatically downwards, its own forecast. The finance minister is just going to bury his head in the sand and pretend the economy is doing just fine.
The finance minister is no Pierre Trudeau but he does have one thing in common with Pierre Trudeau. In 1972 some members may remember that Pierre Trudeau ran an election campaign on the theme “The Land is Strong” but he did not do that well. Now, the finance minister, in a similar vein, is saying that we should not worry because the economy is sound and the fundamentals are sound.
That does not surprise me because the finance minister is a person who is out of touch with Canadians. I imagine he could attend a news conference about a factory closure, puff up his chest and say that the Canadian economy is strong without batting an eye.
The problem is that while the finance minister can repeat that the economy is strong a thousand times, it just does not make it true.
Do members know what happened this morning? Statistics Canada released a growth estimate for the first quarter of 2008 which shows that the Canadian economy shrank by 0.3%. This is the first time we have had a quarter of negative growth in Canada since, I believe, five years ago during the SARS crisis.
We have the finance minister saying that the economy is strong and that we should not worry, but we get numbers showing that for the first time in five years, in the first quarter of this year, the Canadian economy shrank.
Do members know what else is interesting about that? The U.S. economy, in the first quarter, grew. The Canadian economy shrank by 0.3%, while the U.S. economy expanded by 0.9%. What does that do to the finance minister's story that his policies are so wonderful and his stewardship is so great that Canada is doing so much better than the United States? It is simply not true according to the numbers we saw this morning.
Indeed, Canada ought to be doing better and, in some respects, Canada is doing better. We have a large resource sector and oil prices are very high. We have people who are somewhat less risk-taking in the financial sector than down south. We do not have the subprime mortgage crisis. We should be doing better, and we are, in some respects, doing better, and yet the news this morning that the Canadian economy has shrank while the U.S. economy has expanded, sends a message to the finance minister--