Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to the budget implementation act and talk about the end of fiscal prudence in Canada as we know it.
We are looking at a budget this time around that talks about big deficits, a deficit of over $30 billion has been suggested. This is in light of the fact that the previous government, during one of the worst economic recessions in history, was able to go from being in deficit back to surplus positions, not one year but two years, and ahead of the schedule that was previously planned.
As we know, the Department of Finance is reporting that up until the end of February 2016, there is a $7.5 billion surplus on the books of the Government of Canada. Yet the Liberal government is projecting a deficit of over $5 billion by the end of March. Is this March madness? What are the Liberals spending the money on? We are talking about rolling dollars out the door faster than we can throw spaghetti at the wall. Those guys are really moving pretty damned fast to spend money.
We have to look at this in context. This is the biggest budget in Canadian history at $311 billion. It is by far the most spending we have ever seen on things that are not necessarily important to Canadians. It is also the most revenue the government has ever taken in at over $282 billion. If we compare that to when the Conservative Party was in government, revenues and expenditures somewhere around $250 billion. Therefore, we are talking about huge increases in revenues and even faster growth in spending by the Liberal government.
This will result in more taxation. Through this budget, taxes will rise over the next five years. From personal income tax and corporate income tax, we will generate another $5 billion, so that is more money coming out of the pockets of taxpayers. Every time we increase taxes, we stymie growth.
The people of my riding of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman are extremely disappointed with the budget. Small business operators, the mom and pop stores up and down the main streets of the over 70 communities in my riding, are the ones who are paying the price.
First, they had a guarantee from the previous government that the small business tax rates would move down to 9%. Now they have now been frozen at 10.5%. They were counting on this money to grow their businesses and hire more people.
As well, the Liberals took away the small business hiring tax credit. The ability to employ people in our rural communities has dissipated because of the callous move by the Liberals and the way they are treating small business operators.
We need to remember that over 90% of businesses in Canada are small business operators, and they employ two-thirds of all Canadians. If we do not support them, we will not get the opportunity to have a prosperous economy.
I want to talk about agriculture, but unfortunately there was absolutely nothing in the budget for agriculture. We did not see any move forward in trying to improve research opportunities, a commitment to conclude the trade agreements that our previous government started in Europe and the states. I know our farmers are also small business operators. A lot of them have incorporated to take advantage of these small business tax rates. According to the Liberals, they will not get the benefit from it the way they would have if it had been a Conservative government.
Families in my riding are extremely disappointed. These people really relied on things like family income splitting. They loved having the educational tax credit. They loved having the family tax credits for sports and arts. Those families that have their kids enrolled in hockey, in soccer, in music, in dance will no longer have the generous tax credits they enjoyed under the Conservative government. All that is washed away and their net take home has been diminished.
People in my riding are very disappointed that the Liberals are removing the balanced budget legislation. This is necessary to compel the government to try to balance the books and to ensure that it looks out for not just its own interests but the interests of future generations that will have to pay off this national debt that the government continues to accumulate. We know we have to do the right things to encourage growth, and that means we need to have balanced books. If we are to have preferential tax rates, preferential exchange rates, and preferential lending rates, we need a solid financial picture from the federal government.
I remember when Pierre Elliott Trudeau was prime minister. We saw interest rates in our country skyrocket. I know this for a fact because I bought my first section of farmland in 1984 and my interest rates were 21.5% because of the incredible high debt load that the government of the day had undertaken and the lack of confidence the financial institutions and the world economy had in Canada. We had high tax rates and terrible exchange rates. I fear the current Liberal government may go down that path again, which really would not help us stimulate our economy, create jobs, and have economic prosperity.
In my role as the official opposition critic for defence, I want to touch on the $3.7 billion cuts to the Department of National Defence. This was the only department that did not see an increase to it budget. I love this quote from David Perry who is with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. He said, “This budget reminds me of that episode of Oprah where everybody in the audience got a car...Everyone got a car here except the Department of Defence”. Everybody seems to have a net increase in spending across the board, except the Department of National Defence. This is why we cannot have budgets that are not balanced. Ultimately people love to cut national defence projects.