Mr. Speaker, I would like to share my time with my friend and colleague, the member for Mount Royal.
In some sense, one could say that I only have three problems with this budget, which I would like to address. First of all, it makes the wrong choices. Second, it really is very weak on accountability. Third, it attempts to balance the books on the backs of the most vulnerable in society. Other than that, I suppose we could say it is okay. I would say those are three rather important points.
The budget makes the wrong choices. It lacks accountability, and the government is trying to balance its budget on the backs of society's most vulnerable.
I want to start by talking about wrong choices. The worst choice is probably the tax cuts for large corporations, which will cost the government $6 billion a year.
It is not the only bad choice. There are the untendered fighter jets. There is the billions on prisons. However, this is $6 billion per year, which is a big chunk of the money available.
We think prosperity, growth, innovation and productivity are crucial, but we do not think the best way to do that is through reducing tax on the largest companies. We think it is better to either reduce the taxes on the smaller businesses or to have incentives to invest, like a five-year period for accelerated capital cost allowance or to have incentives like a flow-through shared type of mechanism to encourage investment in green technology and high tech industries. Those are just examples which we think are much more cost efficient and cost effective in raising productivity and promoting growth, innovation and jobs than the measure the government took.
However, the net effect of this decision to proceed with tax cuts to the largest corporations is that it puts families at the back of the line. Either the families get a pittance or they have to wait who knows how many years until the books are balanced. We think since families are struggling to make ends meet, families should be at the front rather than at the back of the line, which is where they are in this budget.
Let me give a few examples. In certain cases, families get something but it is a pittance. The government spends $34 million to help students. There are about a million students in Canada, so that is $34 per student per year. It makes no difference. The government spends money to help caregivers, but the maximum credit is $300. That is not going to be a material help for a caregiver looking after his or her loved ones.
Then there are some more major measures, such as the income-splitting measure, but that comes to nothing until the books are balanced. The government claims that is after three years, four years or who knows how many years.
My point is that by doing these tax cuts for very large corporations, the government leaves families out. This is not the most effective way to stimulate growth and jobs and it has the consequence that either families get a pittance now or a bit more down the road. We think that is the wrong approach.
The second point is the lack of fiscal accountability. When we were government in 2005, we did find $11 billion over five years in savings and we booked every item in the budget, so Canadians were clear on exactly what item was being cut or saved, where it would come from and what was going to happen as a consequence of these cuts.
The problem with this budget is that Canadians do not have a clue as to where those cuts will come from. Whose ox will be gored? We know a little bit coming out. There will be lots of cuts in Newfoundland on fisheries where a bit is coming out, but there is very little information in the budget knowing which services will be cut and which people will lose their jobs.
Instead, we get what I would call weasel words. For example, we are told that the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development will have savings on the order of $500 million. That is interesting. What cuts will it get for $500 million? Here is the answer, taken straight from the budget. This is what the Conservatives are going to do: “Improve alignment of program funding with actual needs; Find efficiencies through improved procurement processes and use of technology; Improve use of internal resources and administrative efficiency; Align program activities with core mandate”.
This is a good one: “Refocus programming to benefit all Canadians”.
That is just gobbledygook. Those are weasel words. That does not tell Canadians anything at all about who is going to pay for these cuts, what services are going to be cut and who is going to lose their jobs. All we get are these weasel words and that is why I say the budget is lacking in accountability.
Third, the government is trying to balance its budget on the backs of society's most vulnerable, both in Canada and around the world. Last year's budget froze CIDA funding that included money for economic development in other parts of the world. In that budget, a quarter of the savings put towards reducing the deficit came from freezing international development funding.
In other words, a quarter from the previous year's budget of all the savings that were found were found by restraining CIDA funding. One quarter of the savings to balance Canada's books came on the backs of the poorest people in the world who received cuts in their development assistance.
I would mark the contrast between the Canadian Conservative government that got savings on the backs of the poorest people in the world and the British Conservative government that made an exemption for only two areas which were not debt cuts. The two areas that were not debt cuts were national health and international development. So, whereas the British Conservative government singled out development assistance for especially preferential treatment, the Canadian government singled out international development assistance for especially negative treatment. I think that is a prime example of balancing the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world.
This inclination to hurt the most vulnerable does not just go abroad. It is also true at home.
We heard today, in the supplementary estimates (A), that some of the money for affordable housing was being put back. However, do members know what was the one area where the cut of about $120 million was not put back at all? Housing on reserves. There is probably the area of greatest need in this country.
The Conservatives cut the money for reserves, they cut international development assistance, they provide firefighters and caregivers and music lesson goers with tax credits, but those tax credits are worth nothing if people's income is low enough that they do not pay income tax.
To conclude, the Conservatives are making the wrong choices in this budget, they are weak on accountability and they are trying to balance the budget on the backs of society's most vulnerable, both here in Canada and abroad.