Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand in the House today to convey a few of my thoughts about the federal budget, but more importantly to convey the feelings of the residents of Calgary Signal Hill. I am also delighted to be sharing my time today with the member of Parliament for Calgary Nose Hill.
I am privileged to represent a riding where about half of my constituents used to either rely directly or indirectly on the energy sector for their livelihood. As has been stated many times, inside and outside of the House over the past six months, our energy industry has not had such a dramatic downturn in close to 30 years.
When I was door knocking last fall, about on every street I would run in to at least one person who was unemployed as a result of the downturn. If that election were taking place today, I am sure that number would be more like two or three people on every street. In almost all instances, these were highly educated and highly trained men and women, many with young families. Many have moved into my riding over the past number of years from other provinces and from other countries. They did so with high hopes and high expectations for the future.
“Hope” is a word that members will hear me refer to on many occasions in my few minutes this afternoon. It is a word that is important to the folks I just talked about, the next generation of CEOs, community leaders, and probably some political leaders. They were not expecting the budget to solve the current economic conditions, but they were looking for hope. The budget failed badly in that respect.
The budget leaves each and every Canadian deeper in debt. It means more money for their children to eventually pay back, and there is a strong likelihood of higher taxes in the future. This is especially disappointing because many Canadians, including a lot more than I thought in my riding, voted for this Prime Minister because he seemed to be giving them hope. Instead, it has been one broken promise after another, and the budget is more of the same.
Instead of a $10-billion deficit as promised, this budget deficit is much higher, in fact three times higher. It is three times higher, not in a recession but in a growing economy. While Alberta is clearly in a recession, the overall Canadian economy is growing. However, the government is proposing to plunge our country a further $150 billion into debt over the next five years. Even worse, there is no plan to get out of debt.
How can my constituents have any hope for their future? What could the budget have looked at that would have given some hope to my constituents? The government could have said, as an example, that all efforts will be made to get out of the way and let the private sector create jobs for the future. It is a simple statement, one that would have cost nothing, but it would have provided some hope. Instead, we have more regulations and more spending on government programs.
We hear time and again from the government that running a huge deficit is necessary to creating jobs by investing in infrastructure spending. Now on the surface I could support those types of expenditures, but I want to break those numbers down a bit.
The budget provides $10 billion over the next two years for infrastructure. When that money is spread across the country on a per capita basis, that means about $1 billion for our province over the next two years. In contrast, the infrastructure budget of the Province of Alberta over the last half dozen years has averaged $5 billion annually, almost 10 times what this federal budget is going spend to in Alberta on infrastructure. I have heard members across the way talk about it creating thousands and thousands of jobs. I think they are going to be in for a big surprise.
Second, the government could have said it made a mistake by extending the timeline for a decision on pipelines and LNG projects. It was going to speed up the process so that a project that was approved by the National Energy Board would receive immediate cabinet go-ahead. If the government had said that in this budget, my constituents would have felt some hope.
We all know that immediate approval of a pipeline will not put constituents back to work in the short term, but there were some temporary measures that could have been included in the budget. Let me give an example. While the government is throwing around billions of dollars, it could have thrown a little toward an environmental clean-up initiative in western Canada for abandoned oil well sites.
The Prime Minister committed $2.5 billion to a UN fund that will not create a single job in Canada. An environmental cleanup of oil well projects would have not only been a good environmental initiative, it would have been good for job creation.
I want to briefly touch on the middle-class tax cut, which we hear a lot about, and the math is not difficult. We can do it without a calculator.
By the government's own admission, the average annual benefit to a middle-income couple—let us call them Kevin and Kelly—would be about $540. Stop and think about that for a minute. Three hundred and sixty-five divided into $540 works out to an extra $1.25 a day. Kevin and Kelly could not even go to Tim Hortons and buy a coffee for that price.
I will conclude by saying that it was two years ago that I decided to return to public life. The Alberta economy was booming. We had a stable government in Alberta that was balancing the books and a solid Conservative government in Ottawa that was headed for a surplus after steering this country through one of the worst global recessions in 50 years. Optimism was everywhere.
Today as I stand here, however, as the representative for Calgary Signal Hill, many of my constituents have been laid off, and fear and pessimism have replaced hope and optimism. As I stand in my place in the House to respond to the budget, an NDP finance minister is standing up at the same time in the Alberta legislature and presenting a budget with the largest deficit in the province's history, some $10 billion. How things have changed. However, I remain an optimist and believe that the economic situation in Alberta will improve, because Albertans are a creative and entrepreneurial bunch.
There has never been a time in history when my constituents have had so little faith in their governments, both in Ottawa and in Edmonton. However, I am confident it is going to get better, and that alone gives me some hope.