Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-60 today. I have a very difficult time supporting the bill for a wide variety of excellent reasons.
One of the things I have noted about the government, more so than any other government I have had the opportunity to serve in opposition to over the last 20-plus years, is that this government sees the value of political spin like no other. It has no hesitation whatsoever in using taxpayer dollars to get that spin out there. We see that with member after member on the government benches talking from the speaking notes of the Prime Minister's Office.
Listening to some of the speeches, I often wonder if it could have been a speech from the opposition benches, which could have been used against the government, especially when it starts to talk about being financially responsible, because this has not been a government that has been financially responsible with taxpayers' dollars. A good example of that, and tying into the spin, is the economic action plan. I would classify it as a dud, and I have had the opportunity to do that before. It just does not have the impact that the Government of Canada should have, given the millions and billions of dollars that are being spent.
If we were to canvas Canadians I think we would find that they are starting to get a little upset with the government and the amount of tax dollars it is spending promoting the budget. The number of commercials is unbelievable. Whether on NHL playoffs or whatever, the commercials are there. In print and on television, the government has a message and it wants to sell that message. It will not spare a dime of taxpayer dollars doing that. Whatever it takes, it is prepared to saturate with that message.
What I would like to do is just focus a little attention on the bigger picture, the reality of the Conservative-Reform government that Canadians have had to witness over the last number of years.
Let us look at many of the speeches in which the Conservatives talk about the banking industry. They love to assume the credit for the banking industry and how solid the Canadian banks are today. Not only do they crow inside the House; they do it outside the House and even internationally. The reality is that it was Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, as the minister of finance, who resisted the changes that were taking place around the world regarding deregulating the banking industry and allowing banks to merge and become even larger. It was the government during the 90s that ensured we have one of the best banking industry today, and many would argue that it is the best.
It had nothing to do with this Prime Minister. He cannot take any credit. One of his actions was that his government went ahead and increased mortgages from 25 years to 40 years. Of course, it flip-flopped on that one after it realized it had made a mistake. The Conservatives have not done anything really to solidify the banking industry.
Let us look at the credit that would be taken away from our credit unions. For many of these credit unions, which provide competition to our banks and provide excellent consumer services, particularly in our rural regions from coast to coast to coast, millions of dollars would be taken away in the form of tax credits and so forth. Those have gone a long way in the survival of our credit unions, allowing them to grow and provide that competition. In Winnipeg's north end, we have only had a credit union, and it has actually expanded. That has been the impact they have had on that particular industry.
If we talk about budget surpluses and deficits, historically, Conservatives have not done well in terms of having surplus budgets.
We know that for a fact. The reality with this particular government is that when it took office, it inherited a multi-billion dollar surplus. Before the recession even took place, it turned that surplus into a deficit situation. The Conservative government has presented a deficit ever since then.
The government knows that Canadians recognize that at times the books have to be balanced. What does the government say? It says that it is going to balance them in 2015-16. That is after the next federal election.
Why should we believe that? Why should Canadians believe that Conservatives even have the ability to balance the books when they have been such a disaster in terms of their predictions in dealing with balancing the books. They have failed miserably. They inherited this wonderful trade surplus, which brought in hundreds of millions of additional dollars to Canada and which created tens of thousands of jobs.
That surplus turned into a multi-billion deficit. That is the record of this particular Conservative-Reform government we have today.
Speaker after speaker likes to get up and talk about taxes. They like to give the impression that the Conservatives know how to give tax breaks. In the last three or four year, in the last three or four budgets that have been presented by the government, we have actually seen net tax increases, each one tens of millions of dollars.
This is not a government that is friendly to the taxpayer or, in particular, to the middle class of Canada. Some of the taxes that the Conservatives have put into place make us want to give our head a shake and wonder where the compassion is. We have raised these issues in question period.
Imagine now that people want to go to a hospital and visit someone. The government came up with an interesting tax; it is going to tax parking at the parkade or at the meters. We have a new parking tax that is being implemented by the government.
What about victims of crime who require certain medical tests that might be necessary or that would provide peace of mind, if in fact they were able to get the medical tests that they believe are necessary for them? We are talking about victims of crime. The government has found a new way of taxing those victims of crime, for mental services, as an example.
The Conservatives have well over 1,000 new tariff increases. The bottom line is that they can talk all they want; they can say that they are going to cut taxes or that their government believes in cutting taxes, but in reality that is just not true.
There have been net tax increases in the last four budgets. The middle class is being hit hard by the government. People who are 35 to 55, who have a quality job but find themselves unemployed for whatever reason, have to try to find employment, which is hard for this age group, especially if it comes to trying to get a job of some sort of equivalent pay to what they were receiving before. What in this budget allows those individuals to feel optimistic?
We can kind of get a sense of the mentality of the government towards labour by looking at the temporary foreign worker program, a program that traditionally has been exceptionally successful, under Liberal administrations, and that has derived many benefits for all residents of Canada. It illustrates the need and the way in which the government has made a mess of things.
I look forward to any potential questions.