Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to rise again in this House on behalf of the people of Chilliwack—Hope to speak to this budget.
Before I begin, I would like to add my voice, my thoughts and prayers, and those of my wife Lisa, to the people of Fort McMurray, and now northern B.C., as well, near Fort St. John, who are facing the threat of wildfire. We want to once again give our thanks to the first responders who are putting themselves in harm's way to protect property and people. Our thoughts are with them.
Contrary to what we have heard from the Liberal Party today, this budget is bad news for families, small businesses, long-term growth and prosperity, and it is bad for accountability and transparency.
All one has to do is to look at the summary of this bill. If we are being honest, this is an omnibus bill. It includes multiple changes to different pieces of legislation, something which the Liberals and the NDP railed against in the previous government. They always opposed these omnibus bills. This is 176 pages of omnibus legislation that is being changed here today.
It is not good news for Canadians. Again, if we look at the summary, we can see that what the Liberals are proposing to do with the budget is to eliminate the education tax credit and the textbook tax credit. This is bad news for the students in Chilliwack—Hope. We have one of the best universities in British Columbia, the University of the Fraser Valley. It received strategic investments from our Conservative government through the knowledge infrastructure program. It is a great institution and is the first choice for many students who are going to high school in my riding and want to stay near home. It is a great place to go to school. However, now it will be more expensive for families to put their kids through school. They will receive less support with the elimination of the textbook tax credit and the education tax credit.
The greatest betrayal by the Liberal Party in this budget is with respect to small businesses. The member for Sarnia—Lambton asked my colleague who just spoke about the plan for job growth in this budget. We know that governments do not create jobs. It is the small and medium-sized businesses in this country that create jobs.
What has the Liberal government done with this budget and with its broken promise to small business? It has made it harder for those small businesses, those job creators, to hire more people. It has eliminated the hiring credit for small businesses. The Liberals went from business to business and door to door, and promised Canadians they would be lowering the small business tax rate from 10.5% to 9%. They broke that promise in their first budget. What will that do? The parliamentary budget officer made it clear. He said that it will cost small businesses in my riding, in the province of British Columbia and right across the country, over $2.2 billion over the course of this mandate. The government is taking money out of the pockets of small business owners, and we know why. We heard it during the campaign, and we heard it again from the Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Tourism this week.
The Liberals believe that small business owners are simply tax avoiders and that they are using their small businesses to avoid paying their fair share. That is an insult to the small business owners in my riding. It is an insult to the small business owners right across this country who work so hard, day in and day out, to put food on the table for their families and to hire other people so they can do the same. They have betrayed small businesses in my riding. Quite frankly, after campaigning for 78 days and promising otherwise, they should be ashamed of that betrayal.
This budget creates more difficulty for families. The Liberals are eliminating the children's art tax credit and the children's fitness tax credit. We know that there is an issue with children needing to be more active. When we were in government, we encouraged Canadian children to be more active, by helping their families put them into sports and programs where they would work up a sweat. That tax credit encouraged families to register their kids in sports, swimming lessons, soccer, and hockey. Now that help has been taken away.
Regarding the arts tax credit, in my riding many families have put their children into dance lessons, piano lessons, things that enrich their lives and make a more well-rounded child. We rewarded that by giving Canadians a little help when they put their families in those sorts of programs. Now the Liberals are taking that away.
As my colleague before me mentioned, the Liberals talked about their tax program in the campaign. The Liberal Party promised Canadians that their tax changes would be revenue neutral, and that has proven to be absolutely false. It is just $3 billion off revenue neutral, so it is close if we think of $3 billion as being close, but of course the cost to the Treasury, which means to taxpayers, is $3 billion higher than the Liberal Party said.
The Liberals have raised taxes on high-income earners, which is what they decided to do. However, they said it would benefit middle-class Canadians. It benefits people with incomes between $45,000 and $200,000 the most. It benefits the rich, as they like to call them, the wealthy 1% the most. It does nothing for the majority of households in my riding with incomes of under $45,000 a year, so how is that helping all Canadians? In fact, it is not. It is leaving out the most vulnerable Canadians with this tax cut. It is a shame, because that is not what the Liberals promised Canadians. That is another broken promise.
Another broken promise in the budget is the promise that the government would be accountable and transparent with its budgeting. The parliamentary budget officer once again has proved that is another broken promise. He said the Liberals were hiding information from Canadians, creating their own economic growth projections, and exaggerating job growth expectations. In fact, he said their job creation numbers, if not completely fabricated, were certainly manipulated to the tune of 40% inflation. The Liberals said they would create 100,000 jobs with the budget, and again I would say it is businesses, not government, that create jobs. However, their job projection numbers were off by 40,000, 40% just pulled out of the air.
For a time, the Liberals refused to give this House five-year financial data. They said they would be open and transparent, and in fact the parliamentary budget officer had to force them to give five-year numbers, which is the standard for all governments across multiple parties for the last decade, so they are not more transparent and open.
I want to talk about that on another issue. One of the budget items I supported was the funding for first nations education. We tried that in the last Parliament. I was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs. We brought forward a bill that would have provided $1.9 billion. It would have changed aboriginal education right across the country.
Our bill included provisions for transparency, accountability to taxpayers, accountability to parents, and accountability to the students in first nations schools. I watched the current Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs help to defeat that bill and help to run off National Chief Shawn Atleo, because he wanted to make a difference for indigenous youth in this country.
The government will not enforce the First Nations Financial Transparency Act. It has not had the courage to bring forward a bill to repeal that act, but it is simply not enforcing first nations accountability and transparency any longer. That is a mistake, and once again, it is another broken promise about transparency and accountability.
This is bad for families, bad for taxpayers, and bad for accountability. I would encourage all members of the House to vote against it.