Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Durham.
Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour and privilege to stand to speak to the budget. As this is approximately the seventeenth or eighteenth budget that I have debated, I will give my perspective on all the years that I have been in this House talking about budgets.
First let me say that on the other side, there are a considerable number of new members of Parliament. I welcome them all into this House. I am sure they will have a great time in this House over the next four years. We will debate many issues, many of which we will agree on and many of which we will not.
For the new members of Parliament, let me give them a little history. I came here about 18 years ago. From that time, until October last year, every government had been fighting to balance the books. The previous Liberal government, under this Prime Minister's father, created huge deficits, and every government, including the Liberal government that preceded us, fought to balance the budget, to bring the books back into shape. We can all remember that the former prime minister, when he was the finance minister, cut transfers to the provinces to balance the budget, which no province has forgotten.
Under the leadership of former prime minister Harper and finance ministers Jim Flaherty and Joe Oliver, we worked very hard to bring the finances back into shape.
During the recession of 2008, when I travelled all over the world, wherever I went, I was asked all the time how Canada had not suffered from the world recession. It was because the policies we had were sound. We were not recklessly spending the money that we now see the present government doing in the budget of 2016.
Budget 2016 is the first budget in the 18 years that I have been here where there is absolutely no control on spending, no control on any kind of transparency or accountability for Canadian tax dollars. What we have in this budget is a deficit. It started with a $10-billion deficit. Now it is a $30-billion deficit, with no plan as to when we are going to pay it. As it continues with the unplanned expenditures, we do not know where this deficit is going to end up.
In 2008, when the world faced a recession, the G20 countries came out with spending on infrastructure to stimulate the economy. At that time, the Conservative government also went into deficit.
For the present government to now say that it is bringing in infrastructure spending and all these things is something that the world economy has done. However, we are done with the plan, a plan to bring back and balance our books.
The present government, despite the fact there it is very clear that when we left government there was a surplus, tends to mislead Canadians. It misled Canadians by saying that there will only be a deficit of $10 billion. It is misleading again to say there was a deficit when it came into power. It is utter nonsense.
During the period that we were the government, I remember very clearly taking control of our expenses. We gave the departments and everybody an opportunity to see how they would reduce expenses to make it balance. That allowed us to cut taxes. We moved the taxes from early July to the middle of June for Canadian taxpayers. We reduced the GST to 5%. Now, with all this massive spending by the government, many people are asking whether the GST is going to go up. “Are they going to raise the GST?” It is a question that many Canadians are asking. Based on the past experience of the Liberals, we cannot trust what they are saying. It may go up.
Of course, we are facing a crisis right now of low oil prices, but everybody tries to say it is a regionalized issue in Alberta or Newfoundland. Today budgets are being presented both in Newfoundland and in Alberta. In all of them, they are talking about massive deficits. The oil prices are world-controlled, but let us make it very clear that everyone benefits from the energy industry. It is not only the few provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, or Newfoundland; it is everyone, including Ontario, and most importantly Quebec.
Because everybody benefits, it is important that this energy sector now be given assistance, as we did when the automobile industry was under pressure. We came out with a program to help the auto industry in Ontario. It is the same thing, and today the energy sector requires assistance.
However, what do we have to do? It is very simple. We need to move our oil resources to tidewater, as everybody keeps saying. What is interesting is that the NDP government in Alberta has recognized that this is a vital thing for the economy of the country. The Alberta government is changing its tune and saying it needs pipelines to take oil to tidewater.
The latest opinion poll shows that most Canadians agree that pipelines are the safest way to take oil. What do we get from the other side? We get nothing. We get statements saying that they know it has to go there, and yes they will do all this. They put in all these rules and regulations that can delay for years and years the project of making pipelines.
The rhetoric that the other side is giving is that the current government streamlined the environmental regulatory process so that it would be a balanced process, not a process taken over by special interest groups, which the government seems to be representing all the time. We need to have the pipelines and the natural resources that this country is blessed with go to foreign markets. That is the key element of where prosperity would fly all across Canada for more jobs. Yes, we have infrastructure in the budget. We did that too, but there is no plan on that side. The parliamentary secretary was just talking about it.
Canadians are extremely worried by this huge spending budget of 2016. They do not know where it will lead them. I can say that all of us will have to pay for this deficit. As I have said, in the last 20 years we have been fighting to ensure that the overspending of the previous Liberal government was brought under control. The generations to come will be paying for the current government. It is not going to pay. It is the generations to come that will be paying. Our young children will be paying for all of this deficit.
There are some economists talking about this being a good thing, but I know from history that all economists have different views. However, the simple, straightforward logic that everybody knows and that everybody's parents and grandparents taught them is to live within our means. That is what the current government should be doing, and not spending money as if it is somebody else's money.
I will conclude by saying this to the Liberal government: respect the taxpayers' dollars.