Mr. Speaker, one forgets after years of experience. It happens.
The point is that it is very clear that they know how to orchestrate and they know how to sell.
This weekend, the advertising started. I would defy any journalist or any analyst of those ads to tell me the information that is being conveyed. What are the facts that are being conveyed? These are not facts. This is not information. They are pure and simple travelogues, pictures of people putting things together, waterfalls falling down, ships going down a river, blah, blah, blah. It has got nothing to do with information or with facts. It is propaganda in its most classic form, and it is sell, sell, sell.
That is what the Conservatives have. They have a very tiny product to sell. It is not very good. If we actually look at it, it is less than what it appears to be. The infrastructure money is actually down, not up. Sure, they can announce it for 10 years. They say that it is a stable announcement for 10 years. They must think they are going to be in government for 10 years, but they are not. What kind of arrogance is this?
If they want to make the program sound bigger, why not make it a 20-year program or a 40-year program? Why would they be such pikers and say it is the biggest investment ever announced? Anyone can announce something and then go and take out ads for it, but what has this got to do with a real program?
It does not have much to do with a real program. There is less on infrastructure. When it comes to skills formation, the Conservatives are actually spending less. They are taking the money out of 2007 and extrapolating it into the years ahead. They say there is a crisis, and then they say that in two or three years, they will have the program in place. That is a real crisis. The crisis was so great that the Prime Minister could go and see the pandas, but he could not go and see the premiers.
We have a Prime Minister who is not too busy to go and see two pandas that are not even allowed out of quarantine, but he is too busy to see 12 premiers. He is a Prime Minister who is too preoccupied with the health of the economy to sit down and talk about it with the first ministers of the country, but he has time to visit and to welcome two pandas coming to the country.
Rather than pandering, it is time for real discussion. This is actually not a serious budget. It is not a budget that really addresses the state we are in. It is not a budget that tells the truth about how wrong the government has been about our current economic state. It is not a budget that talks about where we really are on inequality, on health care, on poverty, or on the condition of the people. It is a budget that is about selling something. It is about orchestrating something rather than doing something.
That is the reason the Liberal Party will be voting against the budget.