Mr. Speaker, I am pleased, and even proud, to say that the Liberal Party will vote against this motion. At its heart, it reflects the core incompetence of the New Democratic Party on anything related to economics.
The motion reveals the New Democratic Party's fundamental incompetence when it comes to economic issues.
However, before I say any more about the NDP's economic incompetence, I would like to talk about the government's incompetence. This is important because we are living in uncertain times. In uncertain times, the people want the government to take a clear stance.
It is clear that oil prices have plummeted and economic uncertainty has increased. In such an uncertain climate, people want economic leadership from the government. They want an action plan to reassure Canadians that everything will not be for the worse. What is that plan for the government? It is to delay its budget to April or later. That is the opposite of an action plan to reassure Canadians. It is a sign that the government does not seem to know what to do, so it is punting the budget into the future.
Why? On the one hand, the minister seems to be saying that in these uncertain times we have to wait a few more months to see what will happen to oil prices, as if knowing oil prices in two months would help us know them in 12 months. No one in the world predicted oil prices would go from $100 to $50. I do not think a couple of months from now we will know a huge amount more.
On the other hand, the minister talks as if he does know everything right now. He says with certainty that the Conservatives will balance the budget. He says with certainty that they will deliver their tax cuts. If he knows all that, why delay the budget? If everything is so clear in his head, as he pretends it is, why not do the budget tomorrow and relieve the uncertainty of Canadians.
The other problem is this. Why does he use the hard-earned money of Canadians at a time of potential deficits to give $12 billion over six years in the form of income splitting that will go to a tiny minority, 15%, of households, which is geared toward higher income Canadians? It does nothing for growth and resembles the policy of the NDP, which we are discussing today.
This brings me to my core issue of NDP economic incompetence. In order to set the stage for this hypothesis, let me take a little historical step backward and look at the NDP through history.
The New Democrats like to refer to provincial NDP governments as being competent. To some extent I will grant them that point. If I think of people from the past, like Roy Romanow, Ed Schreyer, Doer, et cetera, they actually ran governments, balanced budgets and showed competent economic leadership in some cases. Some of them were so good they could have been Liberals. One of them became a Liberal.
However, it is a totally different animal when we get to the federal NDP, because it is a party that, thank goodness, has never been the government. The New Democrats are living in a kind of 1950s class warfare mentality where they are debating in Ottawa ideas that were current among the left in the 1950s and 1960s. They have a somewhat other worldly element to them, not only in economics but also wanting to get out of NATO and other silly things.
Now we have a new leader of the NDP who has decided enough of this left wing stuff, that the New Democrats will not do crazy incompetent ancient history lefty stuff, that they will move to the centre and become much more conservative, and do all these nice things for corporations. Therefore, we come to this motion and this plan.
As my colleague has pointed out, I do not think even the current leader of the NDP, who wants to be more conservative, wants to be so conservative to present a policy that economists on the left and the right agree would do nothing for growth. All it would do is give huge benefits to wealthy Canadians. That is what the left wing and right wing economists say. I am an economist. I know economists do not always agree, but when we have a lefty economist and a righty economist saying exactly the same thing, there is probably an element of truth in it.
This misguided NDP policy with which it is trying to burnish its pro-corporate credentials to Canadians has fallen flat on its face because it would do the opposite. It would do nothing to create jobs in small business and other business. It would do everything to favour high-income Canadians in tax shelters.
This speaks to two points about the NDP. The NDP tries to be more mainstream or pro-corporate, but it remains incompetent. It is not proposing anything that would actually help create jobs in the corporate world. It has been deluded by bad research into thinking that this measure, which it proposes to create jobs in the private sector, in fact would not do so. It would simply raise the incomes of the higher-income, most privileged Canadians.
In this respect, as my colleague says, it is as if we are entering into some sort of coalition behaviour between the two other parties that wish to favour the higher-income Canadians. Only the Liberal Party is left as the champion of middle-class Canadians because we will neither do income splitting, which would favour the rich. Nor will we do this stupid NDP tax cut, which would also favour the rich.
There it is on paper. Concrete measures from the Conservatives that favour higher-income Canadians and concrete measures proposed today from the NDP, which really does not understand what it is doing, that favour the rich, unknown to the NDP. In that respect, those two parties are united. The Liberal Party, alone, is fighting for middle-class Canadians. For that reason, we are very happy to oppose this ridiculous NDP motion.