Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak on this NDP motion, which as my colleague indicated, the Liberal Party will support.
The basic point is that it is the responsibility of a government to lead, and it is especially the responsibility of a government to lead when economic times become tough and uncertain. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason to delay the budget in the way the government has. Indeed, the tougher the economic times, the sooner Canadians want to see resolute action and a concrete plan from the government.
It is not at all clear from an economic point of view what the government will gain from delay. Members can correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think anybody on the planet predicted that oil prices would suddenly collapse from over $100 a barrel to less than $50. This was not foreseen by anyone, to my knowledge. Therefore, if that collapse in oil prices was not foreseen by anyone, why should we believe anyone who claims to know the pace at which oil prices will recover, if indeed they will recover? For all we know, oil prices could drop even lower.
Simply to wait to buy time, because in waiting a month or two one thinks one will have a better idea of what oil prices will do in the future, I think is a fool's game. It is just an excuse for the government not having a plan. The Conservatives did not know what to do, and so rather than present a concrete plan based on the most defensible assumptions they could make in an uncertain world, they just decided to delay. In so doing, they increased the uncertainty felt by Canadians in this time of uncertainty.
I think that is indeed an irresponsible move. Whether the Conservatives present the budget in February, March, April, or May, the world is and will remain a place of uncertainty. Nobody will know, whatever the month of the budget presentation, exactly or even approximately what oil prices or other things will be in a year, two years, or three years from now.
However, the function of the government, the function of a budget, is to present a credible plan. It is to make assumptions as required on these things that cannot be known and to forge ahead with a plan. I think the Conservative government's inaction in presenting its budget shows a lack of a plan, a lack of an idea of where it thinks the economy will go.
I think the Conservatives only had one plan, and that plan was based on oil at $100 a barrel. Their plan was based on Canada being an energy superpower. However, when that plan collapsed with the price of oil around the world, the government did not have a plan B. It has no alternative plan, and so the Conservatives are delaying and figuring out what to do.
In the meantime, the Conservatives operate on the fly. One of their most senior ministers—if not the most senior minister and certainly the one who is talked about most to become the next leader of the party over there—has said that they would have to make cuts in the near future in order to balance the books, and then he was promptly contradicted. I think that dissension at the highest levels about the budget, which is the most important document for the government in the whole year, is another sign of disarray and disorganization on the part of the government.
The budget is important and there is no reason to delay it. The fact that the government has not presented it and has said it plans to wait a few months is not good for Canadians. This shows a lack of leadership, because in two or three months' time, we will not know any more than we do now about what will become of our economy or the price of oil on world markets. Furthermore, the government already announced its tax measures without even knowing what the budget will be. That was also a mistake.
The fact that the government announced this income-splitting measure some time ago and all of a sudden maybe does not have the money to do it is another sign of incompetence and irresponsibility on its part.
We on this side do not object to the income-splitting plan just because it was incompetently announced before the facts were on the table, but we also object to it because we think substantively it is a bad move. Yes, middle-class families are struggling and they do require measures to support them going forward, and that is the cornerstone of the policy of the Liberal Party. However, the solution to the woes and the challenges and the difficulties of middle-class Canadians is not to present a tax cut that would benefit only 15% of Canadian households.
The C.D. Howe Institute, which is hardly a socialist, left-leaning institute, has come down strongly against this policy, pointing out that only 15% of Canadian households would receive anything at all and those that would receive the lion's share of the benefits are high-income households with children, such as the families of the Prime Minister and the leader of the third party, the Liberal Party. Their families would receive the $2,000 maximum benefit, and yet they are not the ones evidently in greatest need. This is a wrong-headed policy. It would be a wrong-headed policy even in the best of economic times, but it is doubly a wrong-headed policy when it is presented at these times of great economic uncertainty.
We support the NDP motion in the sense that it is a by-product. Our primary concern is not the NDP motion but the lack of responsibility, the lack of leadership, displayed by the Conservative government in deferring the budget in uncertain times. It is precisely when times are uncertain that Canadians need their government to step up to the plate and present a clear plan to go forward under these difficult circumstances in which we live.