Madam Speaker, I am pleased to follow my colleague, who is no doubt one of the hardest working members of Parliament and an advocate for his constituents.
A number of important points about this budget have been brought forward already. I would like to highlight two of the mains reasons why I support the budget.
First, it is a transition budget. It recognizes that last year we were in the midst of one of the worst global financial crises the world has ever seen. Across the border in the United States, banks were failing and the markets crashed. When Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers went under, it ignited a financial panic that we had not seen since Black Monday.
It is important to remember how bad it actually was. Even though our banks were strong, the Canadian economy was hit. Retirement savings plummeted, exports fell and Canadians lost their jobs. The first year of our economic action plan focused on holding the line, ensuring our banks did not collapse, holding back job losses and stabilizing the economy. I am proud that it worked.
Our infrastructure spending was rolled out in record time, creating jobs at a time when they were needed the most. Our tax cuts, such as the home renovation tax credit, encouraged ordinary Canadians to help stimulate the economy, while improving their homes. Now it is time to get Canadians back on their feet, to create new jobs and to get the economy growing again. This budget shifts the focus from crisis management to economic growth.
Economists across the country have made it clear that although the worst is over, the economy is still fragile. One of our priorities is to help the unemployed. The work-sharing program was a massive success, saving thousands of jobs across the country. In my riding, companies like Horton CBI and Advanced Engineering Products Ltd. have used this program. This program saved 166 jobs in my riding alone. It was an important part of our economic action plan, and my constituents very strongly support the extra 26 weeks as proposed in this budget.
As I mentioned earlier, I believe the focus on job creation in the budget is a key reason for supporting it. Infrastructure is one of the best ways to help the economy. Not only creates jobs, but it leaves a legacy for decades to come. I am sure many of my colleagues know of projects in their own ridings that are improving roads, improving universities and building community buildings.
In the city of Fort Saskatchewan in my riding, Highway 15 is a major route and is receiving a major upgrade. This is creating local jobs and boosting the regional economy. It will also make transportation more efficient and help my constituents by making their commute faster and safer.
However, it is not just building roads. In Sherwood Park, Millennium Place, a multi-use recreational facility, is an important part of our community that brings us together as families, friends and neighbours. It is being upgraded through Canada's economic action plan. Millennium Place received much needed funding to add an additional leisure ice centre and a new refrigeration room. This funding will go a long way to improving opportunities for minor ice hockey organizations in my riding as well as providing additional wellness and recreational skating opportunities for our residents.
The infrastructure programs have been a major success, creating over 135,000 jobs in the first year alone. Now we need to finish the job and the funding in this budget will do that. By the time the second year of the economic action plan is finished, the economy will be fully recovered and the infrastructure stimulus will be winding down.
That brings me to my second reason to support this budget. As a Conservative, I believe in small government, lower taxes and living within our means. Governments sometimes have to go into deficit, but only in times of crisis or serious recessions. This is why it is important that our spending is temporary.
When we started the economic action plan, we said it would cover over two years and we meant it. Unlike the opposition, we are not going to raise taxes. Once upon a time when governments needed money for their projects of the day, they would just hike taxes on Canadians yet again. The era of tax and spend government is over. We will not take more money out of the pockets of Canadians. As Conservatives, we believe Canadians should keep more of the money that they earn and they should decide how and where to spend it.
This government will not slash health care funding like the Liberals did. Passing the burden on to Canadians just is not responsible. Instead, we have a plan to balance the budget that is responsible. I have already mentioned that the stimulus spending was temporary, so the first step is to start at home.
We are freezing the salaries of members of Parliament and ministers because it is not right to give raises to politicians when we are making cuts elsewhere.
Then we are going to cut the extra boards of directors, commissioners and other appointed positions that crop up around governments. There are hundreds of them and many are not delivering any value to taxpayers. The budget will start with 245 positions, and I hope we will find more. We will take a long hard look for the loopholes and pointless spending. This means actually taking time and effort to go through the books.
As Conservatives, we are very aware that even when governments are well meaning, a lot of the time they end up wasting money. One example of this is the medical tax credit. It is an important program, but for some reason it also gives tax breaks for Botox and teeth whitening. Now maybe some people feel that facelifts are a human right, but I am pretty sure Canadians do not want to spend millions of dollars subsidizing Botox treatments. We are going to stop it. There are more of these frivolous money wasters and loopholes and we are going to find them and eliminate them.
Finally, we are putting a cap on spending. Department operational budgets, salaries, programs and overhead, is going to be held steady. This is much more important than it seems at first glance. After all, we have a tendency to think that our own projects are the most important, that they should be bigger and deserve more funding. It is just human nature. However, the end result is that it is very hard to stop government spending from rising. My colleagues on the Liberal side, who have been in government, understand this very well.
Our solution is that if government departments want to spend more on programs, they have to find savings elsewhere in cutting their overhead, in becoming more efficient. To spend more in one area, departments will have to save somewhere else. We have a very dedicated and talented civil service and I am confident it will find ways to deliver programs for less now that we are setting up a system that encourages saving money rather than spending more. This is a responsible approach to cutting the deficit without slashing transfers to provinces, which would affect health care, seniors and education.
During my extensive consultations over the past few months, I have met with chambers in both of my communities, small businesses and constituents to hear their thoughts. Throughout my conversations, the same themes emerged. Creating jobs and proposing a responsible plan to deal with the deficit were most important to my constituents. This is why Canadians support the budget. I encourage my colleagues on the other side of the House to also support this budget.