Mr. Speaker, I will recap briefly for those who missed the brilliance of my remarks earlier. I said I suppose I should consider myself lucky to be speaking to the budget bill. Many of my colleagues will not have that opportunity because the Liberal government once again has shut down debate on an omnibus bill. This one has more than 540 pages. Once again the Liberals are breaking another one of their election promises.
The first issue that I raised was with respect to infrastructure. The government promised to spend infrastructure money in municipalities. Currently, the Liberals have not even spent 40% of the money that was promised and they took $15 billion away from municipalities to create the infrastructure bank.
I gave some specific examples from my riding. Members will recall that $10 million was spent to build an ice rink here on Parliament Hill. To spend that same $10 million in my riding, the government could have provided $6 million for the oversize load corridor to create 3,000 well-paying jobs, $2 million to restore a border crossing that would allow trade with the United States of America, and $2 million for rural Internet to completely fill the gap that exists with high-speed Internet in my riding.
I find it hard to believe that the government is committed to spending infrastructure money when there are projects like the ones in my riding that are so good and have such great outcomes that are not supported. I can only assume that partisan politics are at play here and not any kind of reason or logic.
I did not see anything in the budget for seniors. Fifty per cent of the people in my riding are over the age of 55. Many of them have difficulty affording to live. The government has come forward with a totally inadequate response to help seniors in my riding and the rest of the country.
As the shadow health minister, obviously I have some comments about the health content in the budget. I am really disturbed to see that the words “palliative care” were removed entirely from the budget.
My private member's bill on palliative care received unanimous support of the House. The government pledged $6 billion over 10 years for home care and palliative care, and I think mental health was another $5 billion. Now we find it is only home care and mental health that will receive any money. Where did the money for palliative care go, especially since my bill has been passed into law? By June 11, the government has to meet with the provinces to determine the services that will be provided, the levels of training for the different service providers, and come up with a consistent plan so all Canadians can get access to palliative care. I have heard no mention of that. There is no money at all for that in the budget. That is concerning to me.
There is a huge amount of money being spent to legalize marijuana. There is $800 million in the budget to legalize marijuana. This may seem a bit hypocritical, because on the one hand in the budget there is $80 million to get people to stop smoking tobacco, but on the other hand, there is $800 million to get them to start smoking marijuana. Something is wrong with that.
The other thing that is really wrong is that only a fraction of the money the government is spending to legalize marijuana is being spent to address the opioid crisis in this country. Thousands of people are dying every year and the government's response has been totally inadequate in order to stem the flow of deaths from opioids. For the families who have lost somebody to this opioid crisis, it is insulting to see the government spending more money to legalize the smoking of marijuana than to address the deaths that are happening from the opioid crisis.
Mental health is a crisis in this country. The government has pledged $4 million in the budget going forward every year for dementia. Four hundred thousand people in Canada suffer from dementia. This is a totally inadequate response to the huge problem that exists.
Our colleague from Prince George brought forward a private member's bill on PTSD and it was unanimously supported. However, when we look at the budget, we see a very small amount, $10 million, for PTSD and only for public safety officers. What about first responders? What about all of the problems we are seeing among our veterans? This is an inadequate response to be sure.
When it comes to mental health, we see the priority has been put on spending $20 million on mental health for inmates. I would say that inmates certainly need just as much mental health care as others, but when we do not have it in the rest of the country, why is that a priority? It just does not seem to be the right priority.
Meanwhile, the government is spending a lot of time and energy on doing things like working on the food guide. The Liberals have been consulting and consulting, but there is nothing coming forward with it.
The Liberals are implementing a new program to change how the PMPRB approves and prices drugs to make the process even longer. All the stakeholders and people who have been commenting are saying that this is going to be a problem. Not only is it going to eliminate the clinical trials that are being done in Canada, but it will actually prevent Canadians from having access to the new drugs that are being developed.
When I look at this budget, it seems to me that the government has its priorities wrong. It is spending an inadequate amount of money to address crises that exist. Of course when it comes to my riding, I cannot see at all that the government is keeping any of the promises that it was elected on, such as to spend money, to go slightly into deficit, and to build infrastructure in municipalities. Certainly that is not happening in my riding.
I want to finish by saying that I was disheartened to hear that instead of the $6-billion deficit the government intended to run this year, it is now going to be $22 billion. Never has a government spent so much to accomplish so little.