Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, the budget before us shows the real lack of vision of the Conservative government and the Liberal governments before it. They put all their eggs in one basket and missed the boat on economic diversification.
The budget before us will mostly help the wealthy. Just look at the increase in the TFSA limit, which is going from $5,500 to $10,000 a year. The vast majority of Canadians do use the TFSA, but the vast majority of people do not even reach the current ceiling of $5,500 a year. This increase will benefit only the wealthiest Canadians. Just look at income splitting. Not only does this measure benefit only the wealthiest 15%, but it is also a regressive measure that might encourage women to stay home instead of going to work because it is more advantageous to have a large difference in income. The other provinces do not have subsidized day care, so with the cost of child care for two or three kids and other related expenses, a person might come to the conclusion that it does not make sense financially to go to work unless they are able to earn a very good income. In addition to helping the wealthiest Canadians, this measure might have a regressive impact on women. I find that particularly unfortunate.
The budget also contains primarily recycled announcements, that is, funds that have already been announced. The Conservatives are leveraging them, telling people that this is new money, that it has just been released, when in fact, most of these funds have already been allocated and announced.
In cases where there is any new money, quite often those funds will not be available until 2017. Of course, everyone knows that there is a federal election in October 2015 and, in the end, there is a very good chance those funds will never be allocated.
It is a balanced budget, but at what cost? It is balanced at the expense of the contingency fund. The government is dipping into our contingency fund. We no longer have any wiggle room to deal with any emergencies that arise. Given that the government is not putting any money into fighting climate change, and that the emergencies that have come up in recent years were often related to climate change, we will probably need that money. Just think of all the flooding that has occurred at various times and how much it has cost Canadians and the Canadian economy.
The government also balanced the budget by selling its shares in General Motors and by not using the funds that had been allocated to help our regions and Canadians and returning them to the public treasury. Employment insurance surpluses now go to the treasury. At what point the budget is truly balanced and surpluses accumulated is debatable. We see that it takes financial gymnastics to arrive at this outcome. The worst part is that the budget contains absolutely nothing for rural regions like mine. They are left to their own devices once again.
We need only think of the infrastructure funds. At present, there are not even enough funds to meet the needs of even one major Canadian city. What will be left for the small municipalities like those in my riding, where there are sometimes 150 to 250 taxpayers in the entire municipality who have to try to cover the cost of renovating infrastructures that are in serious need of attention? We have community infrastructure that needs to be renovated. There are roads in our villages that need to be repaired.
Some municipalities have two or three bridges to repair. The municipality of Angliers, in my riding, has not had clean water since 2008. The water in this municipality is quite yellow. It is difficult to wash white and coloured fabrics.
Municipalities also need to maintain their sewage and water systems. Once the major cities have dipped into the community improvement fund, there will only be crumbs left for the towns and villages like mine in rural areas.
In recent years, various arms of the public service have been cut in order to reduce costs. However, this has been at the expense of rural regions like mine. Jobs at Service Canada have been eliminated and the budget for service counters at the Canada Revenue Agency and the Canadian Forces recruiting centre have been slashed.
As a result, not only are people not receiving proper services, but the hands of the public servants who work in those offices are tied. They have to tell people that they cannot give them more information and that they will have to call or visit the website. What is more, they also no longer have the right to manage the money allocated to their region themselves.
For example, with regard to the Canada summer jobs program, public servants in Laval, which is 600 kilometres away, now decide who will receiving funding in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Those decision-makers, who have likely never set foot in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, are deciding how to help our region instead of us. It is the same for many other programs. We can no longer even take care of our own regions ourselves. Programs are being managed from elsewhere. This government regularly accuses the NDP of being a centralizer, when it is certainly the most centralizing government I have ever seen.
People are having more and more trouble making ends meet. Rate increases are never compensated by an increase in benefits, however small it may be. People are paying more and more for basic necessities. They are getting ripped off with banking fees and ATM fees, and there is no one to stop that from happening. Canadians have to pay $2 to receive a paper copy of their bills and they are being told to just get them online because companies do not understand that they do not have the money to pay for an Internet connection or to buy a computer. Let us also not forget that some of these people do not even know how to use a computer. Nevertheless, they are still being told to go online to save money and get services.
What is more, over the years, the government has made cuts to community Internet access centres, which is sometimes the only way people have of accessing the Internet. Meanwhile, it is putting more and more of its services online. People in the regions are increasingly getting short shrift from this government. The Conservatives have no understanding at all of the reality of people who live in the regions.
Furthermore, we have had a housing shortage for years. This hurts our economy, since people who find work in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, for example, cannot move there because there is no housing. Not only is the government not helping the regions, but it is also sometimes hindering their economic development, which is unacceptable. This shows a lack of vision on the part of this government with respect to the economy, in particular the economy in the regions.