Mr. Speaker, on February 18, I asked the finance minister why he was betraying the spending promises he made during the election campaign, which are the same promises that he was explicitly instructed by the Prime Minister to keep: to lower the debt-to-GDP ratio every year and return Canada to a balanced budget in 2019. Unfortunately, he provided the House with no explanation whatsoever.
During the election, the Liberals' plans to borrow money were very specific. They asked for a mandate to borrow $10 billion this year and $25 billion in total over the course of their first mandate. Canadian voters accepted this very specific plan, and they did so under the understanding that this spending would be kept within a clear financial framework. This is very important, because as parliamentarians we must understand that Canadians do not give the finance minister a blank cheque to borrow as much money as he wants without any limits.
The Prime Minister could have asked Canadian voters for a mandate to spend whatever he thought was necessary to achieve his goals for Canada, but that is not what he did. Instead, the Prime Minister took great efforts to promise Canadians that his government would have clear financial targets and a clear plan to balance the books. The Prime Minister went further, giving the finance minister very clear instructions to deliver on those promises. He wrote in the very first point of the finance minister's mandate letter that he expects the minister to meet the government's fiscal anchors, including a balanced budget by 2019. Now we know that the Prime Minister's mandate letters are his marching orders to cabinet.
Many Canadians thought the Prime Minister was signalling that the contents of these mandate letters actually meant something, because he took the unusual step of posting them publicly on his website. The Prime Minister wrote very clearly that the Minister of Finance and the entire cabinet were supposed to achieve their goals within the framework of balancing the federal budget by 2019. However, just a few months ago, the finance minister signalled that he would ignore his mandate letter, and we began hearing rumours of massive open-ended spending. The finance minister will say that unexpected things had happened and that is why he abandoned his financial promises and ignored his mandate letter. However, does that mean that all of the Prime Minister's instructions to cabinet are conditional? If that is the case, I think this would come as a big surprise to many Canadians.
Of course, circumstances will change over a four-year government mandate, but when a Canadian reads the Prime Minister's mandate letter to his ministers, they rightfully believe that the ministers will do whatever he or she can to achieve what the Prime Minister asked of them, even when unexpected challenges arise. If that is not the case, and these mandate letters were simply an outline of things that would be nice to achieve but not truly necessary, then Canadians deserve to know that.
On February 18, I asked the following question: “Will the finance minister confirm that he will do as the Prime Minister has directed him and balance the budget in this term? If not, what was the point of the mandate letter?”
We have now seen the budget, which shows that the finance minister will fall short of the Prime Minister's expectations. His mandate letter instructed him to continue to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio throughout his mandate. His mandate letter also instructed him to meet the financial anchor of balancing the budget by 2019. Instead, he wrote a budget plan that will accomplish neither of these fundamental goals that the Prime Minister directed him to achieve.
Therefore, I will ask it again: What was the point of the finance minister's mandate letter?