Mr. Speaker, I rise today as the final speaker on the bill, which has plodded along through the process in the House. I thought I would recap for members of the House how we have gotten to where we are today, describe what the process has been throughout, and then conclude by making a few comments about the bill itself.
The bill was concocted without the input of Canadians. Typically, in a budget process, Canadians are consulted about what they would like in the budget, but we had a situation, after the October 19 campaign, where, I would say, due to the ineptness of the government in early December, the government House leader was unable to strike a finance committee. We all knew who was on the finance committee, but unfortunately, the government could not get the committee struck in early December. Therefore, members of the finance committee sat around for about six weeks without actually consulting Canadians.
By the time the government managed to get approval to strike the finance committee, the committee heard some 92 witnesses over a period of about a week or a week and a half. However, we also knew in early February when we heard those witnesses that the budget had probably already gone or was very close to heading to the printer.
One thing this budget has clearly lacked is the input of everyday Canadians through consultation. With all due respect, I think the finance minister had a great deal of difficulty pulling together this budget, because he was hamstrung with the fact that so many promises had been made in the campaign. He was stuck with trying to put together a budget based on a bunch of promises in which, quite frankly, the dollars did not add up.
It also included a number of broken promises. A promise was given in the election campaign, whereby the Liberal leader of the day, now the Prime Minister, promised that the budget would have no more than a $10-billion deficit. We all know that promise was broken very quickly. We are not sure yet if $30 billion is the final number for the deficit. During the short period of time since the budget was introduced, as an example, there was a horrible situation in Alberta with the fires. As a result of that, the federal government is going to be on the hook for some significant costs associated with the wildfires in Alberta, so I think the deficit could go well past the $30 billion.
While it was not a broken promise, it was a promise that I personally would have liked to see the finance minister break, and that was the ill-conceived decision to reverse former finance minister Flaherty's decision to increase, some 10 years into the future, the eligibility age for OAS to 67 from 65. This particular decision was not based on any particular science or data, which, of course, the Liberal government keeps saying it prides itself on. It was based on a back-of-the-napkin campaign promise made by the Prime Minister and it is one that I wish the federal government had not followed through on.
As I said earlier, this is a budget that I do not believe the Minister of Finance felt good about presenting. I know how that feels, as someone who has had to present a budget based on some campaign promises made simply to get elected.
I see the benches of the government are starting to fill up as is the press gallery. I do not think they are filling up to listen to my speech, so I will sit down and let the House proceed on to the business of the day.