Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the federal budget and the impact of this budget not just on Atlantic Canada but on New Brunswick.
This federal budget, as many colleagues in the House know, is a major disappointment. Over and over again, the Prime Minister spoke about this budget representing his Canada. As a member of Parliament from New Brunswick, I can tell members that this budget does not look anything like the Canada I know and love.
The Prime Minister promised New Brunswickers and Canadians that he would fix the equalization program and respect the Atlantic accords. He has done just the opposite.
While Quebec received an increase of 29%, or $698 million in the next fiscal year, New Brunswick's share grew by a meanspirited 1.8%, and Atlantic Canada receives little more than 4% of this new money. New Brunswick's finance minister, Victor Boudreau, has stated this about the Conservative budget:
If [this budget] was to fix the fiscal imbalance, as far as New Brunswick is concerned, I wouldn't give it a passing mark.
Glaringly, this demonstrates that the Prime Minister does not care about Atlantic Canada and builds on his reputation as a divider pitting one region of the country against another. The Conservative government has squandered a golden opportunity to show Canadians that leadership is representing the rich and the poor, the east and the west, big cities and small towns. It has failed miserably.
Let us ask Premier Danny Williams of Newfoundland and Labrador. What did he have to say about this budget? He said:
Fairness...is about keeping your word. Fairness is about making a commitment and making a promise to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and Saskatchewan and living up to that promise. If your government doesn't keep this promise to us, then how can the people of Canada in any province rely on any promises or commitments that you make to them in the future? And I would caution the people of Canada on a go-forward basis.
Let us ask Premier Rodney MacDonald of Nova Scotia or perhaps Premier Lorne Calvert of Saskatchewan why they are so outraged that this budget has divided Canadians.
One of the first things the Prime Minister did upon taking office was to increase income taxes for those in the lowest income tax brackets, hurting working New Brunswick families. The lowest income tax rate was raised from 15% in 2005 to 15.5% in 2007, hurting those who need it most.
Despite the spin of the Conservative government, this budget does nothing to fix this situation. The fact remains that tax relief for hard-working New Brunswickers averages a mere $80 per taxpayer and the tax hikes imposed by the Prime Minister cancel out the benefit of the new child tax credit, which does little for poor parents who pay little or no income tax.
John Williamson is someone whose name should be very familiar to some of the members opposite. He is president of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and has said this about this Conservative budget:
The fellow working the line or anyone or anyone with a salary income and no children will receive no tax relief. That's disappointing. Ottawa is running huge surpluses. This is a good time to cut the rates for all taxpayers up and down the economic ladder. Government decided to broadly target, for example, seniors, not tax relief, in this document for all taxpayers.
When it comes to child care, the Conservative government has not created one single child care space despite promising to create 125,000 new spaces over the next five years. This promise was not worth the paper it was written on.
What is worse is that the so-called universal child care benefit is fully taxable. This is the Prime Minister's sleight of hand: giving parents $100 and taking back $99.
The Liberal government signed an early learning and child care agreement with the previous Liberal social development minister, the member for York Centre, and then premier Bernard Lord. That would have invested $146 million in our province of New Brunswick for New Brunswick kids. This would have created real and lasting child care spaces.
However, we do not have to ask the politicians about it. We can ask front line workers like the YM-YWCA's child advocate Janet Towers, who promotes child care and early learning to keep our New Brunswick children globally competitive. The Prime Minister killed this deal and took this money away from the province.
Budget 2007 allocates $6 million in child care funding for New Brunswick, with no money trickling to Saint John, New Brunswick. This will do nothing to create child care spaces.
The Prime Minister's approach to child care is to offer tax credits, not child care, and that is not our Canada. Never has a government done so little, with so much, for average working Canadians.
Just last year the previous Liberal government left a $13 billion surplus. Yet rather than investing in affordable housing, which was not in this budget, rather than investing in tax breaks for seniors, which was not in this budget, and rather than investing in literacy, which was not in this budget, the Prime Minister chose to make drastic ideological program cuts.
The Conservative government has not allocated any new money for affordable housing. This has huge implications for Saint John, New Brunswick, which has some of the oldest housing stock in Canada.
There is also nothing in the budget that corrects the inequities in the employment insurance program.
This budget does little or nothing to address poverty or child poverty, which is a national disgrace, and it does not stand up for working class families. This budget does nothing for them.
This budget fails to offer new support for students. It does not put a penny in the pockets of Canada's undergraduate students. It gives graduate students a little money while the vast majority get nothing at all. That is the kind of Canada the Prime Minister wants to create with this budget.
The Conservative government's budget fails to help Canadians safeguard their environment or fight climate change. It cuts back on our commitment to renewable energy. It reduces funding to New Brunswick by one-half. Without an overall plan for the environment, we cannot meet our Kyoto commitments. That is not our Canada.
The Prime Minister's budget does not provide the long term, predictable, stable funding for cities and communities that mayors across Canada have been begging for so they can meet their basic infrastructure and transit needs. A massive infrastructure deficit remains in Canada as a result of this budget's lack of support for cities and communities.
While there is some new money in the budget for recreational infrastructure through the Canada building fund, this money is being allocated on a per capita basis, which disadvantages smaller provinces like New Brunswick. While we may have a smaller population in New Brunswick, we still have very pressing recreational infrastructure needs and a smaller tax base to fund them.
I am currently working as part of Team Saint John toward the construction of a new multiplex facility. Letters to my office, conversations with community leaders and recent town hall meetings held throughout Saint John have all confirmed that there is both a pressing need and widespread support for a multiplex project in greater Saint John.
The recreational and health needs of our children are at risk as a result of the lack of current facilities available. As greater Saint John experiences growth, it is imperative that a viable solution to the current shortage in recreational facilities be resolved so that the quality of life in our community continues to advance.
With rising levels of obesity in Canada, the government needs to ensure programs are in place that provide funding to meet the recreational needs of our cities and our communities across Canada.
The feasibility study that has been commissioned by the recreational implementation committee of the city of Saint John recommends a multiplex facility. The cost of this facility is in the neighbourhood of $34 million. I urge the government to ensure that the allocation of money for recreational infrastructure takes into consideration the unique needs and challenges of smaller provinces.
The lack of infrastructure funding in the budget puts projects like the one-mile interchange in jeopardy. We need to have this interchange in New Brunswick completed by 2010 at the latest in order for our region to better leverage investments and opportunities in our industrial parks.
This interchange will take truck traffic off Saint John streets, which is vital for our tourism industry, and will also reduce the wear and tear on our downtown community. Taking this traffic directly to the industrial areas of our city will also promote growth for the industrial parks and help support new investments in the oil refinery, the LNG project and the proposed green industrial park on Bayside Drive.
The importance and significance of this one-mile interchange cannot be overstated. With an expected $5 billion to $7 billion reinvestment in a proposed second refinery being considered in the eastern part of our city, the largest single private investment in Atlantic Canada, and an anticipated completion date of 2012, we need to ensure that this key piece of infrastructure is in place.
There is nothing in the budget on forgiving the debt on another important issue in Saint John, the Saint John Harbour bridge. The bridge was built at a cost of $18 million. It is the only federal bridge in Canada that has a toll on it. The citizens of Saint John have paid approximately $23 million toward the bridge, yet we still owe $23 million.
There is something seriously flawed with that model. It is like a mortgage that is impossible to repay, and it keeps growing. Our community has more than paid for this bridge already. We cannot be expected to continue payments in perpetuity. It is just simply not fair. It is time for the government to do the right thing and forgive the debt on the Saint John Harbour bridge.
The Prime Minister's budget breaks more promises than can be counted. He has broken promises on equalization and on child care. He has broken his promise to seniors not to tax their income trusts. He simply cannot be trusted to protect the interests of our province, our region and our country.
A leader unites a country. The Prime Minister is a divider. He has shown his true colours and his colossal and shameful abandonment of New Brunswick and all Atlantic Canada.
We work hard. We pay our taxes. We contribute to the betterment of Canada. A government cannot pick favourites. It cannot pick winners. It cannot pit one region of the country against another. It cannot force the poor to subsidize the rich. It cannot ignore the plight of working families, of children, of aboriginals and of seniors. This may be the Prime Minister's Canada, but it is not ours.
