Mr. Speaker, for those who may remember, we were talking about the budget and some significant investments that the federal government had been making to move a number of very important things forward. It all contributes to economic activity, but it is important to realize that what the government has been doing so far, budget 2016 and budget 2017, is more than a stimulus program. The investments we are making in infrastructure, jobs training, innovation, and early learning and child care are about building a solid foundation for a prosperous economy, one that offers a fair share and a fair shake to all Canadians willing to step forward to invest some hope and hard work for a real change in their lives.
Listening to Canadians and evidence-based decision-making are blazing a new path for the country in a fairly uncertain world right now. This recognizes that while the previous government's ideology may have been well-intentioned, it simply did not deliver the results the majority of Canadians wanted.
Speaking of results, I want to save some time to talk about the issue of deficits, because they keep coming up.
The previous government sought to balance its last budget at all costs, this, after racking up over $150 billion in accumulated deficits over 10 years. What a cost it was. If it did indeed balance the budget, it was thanks in part to service cuts and lapsed funding that fluffed up the bottom line as ministries and programs did not actually spend the money the Conservatives committed.
A balanced budget at all costs, but who paid? Our veterans certainly did when front-line staff was cut back and service offices were closed. So did unemployed young people and our disabled Canadians when tens of millions of dollars in promised funding went unspent. So did Albertans, when Mr. Harper's government had no response for them in 2014 and 2015 as falling oil prices foretold tough times ahead. All Canadian taxpayers certainly did when over 60 of the Canada Revenue Agency's most senior auditors were let go to cut costs. They are the ones who could have tracked down many millions of dollars in taxes avoided by wealthy families, which may now be helping even more wealthy families avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
The Conservatives believed so much in the virtue of a balanced budget, at all cost, that they tried to close the gap for 2015-16 with the fire sale disposal of the General Motors shares they purchased during the economic collapse of 2007-08.
The Globe and Mail reported that this badly timed sale, done to balance the budget, resulted in as much as a $3.5 billion loss off the original purchase price. All Canadians took it in the neck for that one.
As I mentioned, lapsed funding, the underspending of government budget commitments, also padded the Tories' bottom line.
Of course, every government, every year, sees lapsed funding, but as The Canadian Press reported in December 2014, the Conservatives gamed the system deliberately, with rewards for managers who underspent their budgets.
The balanced budget bragging rights the previous government pursued, at all cost, was the old bait and switch, a carnival side show or a shell game.
To be sure, as we look at budget 2017 and the critically important work it does to build on budget 2016, there are financial deficits. However, Canadians understood during the last election campaign that those deficits were an investment, that deficits would lead to something our country sorely needed. They can see today that there are dividends of many kinds being delivered.
I think it occurs to people, when we think about it, that there is more than one kind of deficit. There were times in the decade prior to budget 2016 that Canada experienced many deficits, deficits in dollars, to be sure, but also deficits of compassion, imagination, vision, and optimism.
Budget 2017 is delivering a surplus on all those accounts. The kind of Canada we are supporting will have the equity, the economy, and the future that will ultimately deliver the kind of genuinely balanced budget we have not seen since the days of Chrétien and Martin.
I was a teenager when Canada celebrated its Centennial. I remember, with great fondness, the incredible energy, enthusiasm, and pride that swept from coast to coast to coast. We owe it to today's teenagers, to everybody, in fact, to recreate that experience. What a better time than now, our 150th birthday, and what a better way than with the direction and future laid out for our country in the federal budget before us today.