Rick Borotsik

[Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Act, February 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Conservative Party will be voting no to the motion.

[First Nations Fiscal and Statistical Management Act, February 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Conservative Party will vote no to this motion.

[Canada Pension Plan, February 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the members of the Progressive Conservative Party vote yes on this motion.

[Specific Claims Resolution Act, February 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Conservative Party will be voting no to this motion.

[The Budget, February 25th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question from my new best friend. I would certainly like to say that the Progressive Conservative Party has put a policy forward with that very issue. There should be, as there should be in infrastructure, an ongoing understanding as to how many dollars are there for what length of time.

We are saying that debt reduction should be a line item in the budget. The government has failed to do in that this budget year and it has put everything into general revenues to be expended. There should be a line item there and a long term plan. It should be a 20 year or 25 year plan. We did not get this debt in one day and we will not get rid of the debt in one day. We need a long term, well thought out, fiscal plan that says how the debt will be reduced over the next 20 years. We would like to have that line item in the budget where there always will be debt reduction.

Forget the possibility of $3 billion going into debt reduction from a contingency plan. The Liberals will spend the money and they will not put into debt reduction.

[The Budget, February 25th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I do not think the hon. member's government has anything to say with respect to provincial-federal co-operation. His government and his Prime Minister know not of any co-operative federalism. If anything, they seem to want to push programs down the throats of provincial governments, inclusive of health care, inclusive of education and now inclusive of infrastructure.

I should tell the hon. member, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, that the $100 million in this budget year for infrastructure for municipalities is nothing but tokenism. The Liberals say that they have the programs and the vision with respect to infrastructure in this country. That is absolutely not true because $100 million in this next budget year and $150 million in the following budget year for Canada is absolutely deplorable. What happens in the third year of the budget? Does that mean the new leader of the Liberal Party will simply walk away from the commitment of infrastructure? I would much rather see the long term financing program.

The member had one good thing to say. There should be a long term funding program. However the Liberals should put the numbers in place. They should not leave a dark hole with about $2.75 billion that nobody knows how it will be expended. Will it be expended in those areas where there are Liberal contractors and Liberal partisanship? Is that where it will be expended? Show me where it will be put in the municipalities where it is really meant to be. What the member just said right now is completely deplorable.

[The Budget, February 25th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am sharing my time with the member for Cumberland--Colchester.

I am pleased to speak to a very important facet of what we do in the House of Commons and that obviously is putting budget numbers together to take us into the next budget year and in this particular case, into the next 10 budget years. I do not see any expenditures here that are not extended for a period of time upward of three to ten years.

There is no question that the budget is simply a matter of spend, spend, spend. It goes back to a Trudeau era budget where the Liberals found their left-leaning ideology and decided that instead of taking a focused approach with respect to the Canadian public's money, to shotgun this thing and try to hit just about every possible area of their desires. It goes back quite frankly to the 1993 red book. The Liberals were not able to put in place a very good financial situation.

The first thing that should be done in a budget of this nature when there is a potential for a surplus is to retire the debt. A relative of mine who is a farmer sometimes asks for my counsel as to what he should do when he has a little spare money left over, which in farming nowadays is almost nonexistent. My comment to him is very simple. The best investment anyone can make, and that includes governments, is to retire debt. If people retire their debt and can remove that yoke of debt from around their necks, then they have the ability to put in place the types of programs that the Liberals have identified in this budget.

The Liberals have not done either. They certainly have not retired the debt, and they have not received the benefits of retiring that debt to put it back into programs. They have effectively budgeted for zero surplus going into the next budget year. That must be the legacy the Prime Minister has been looking for. It does not matter whether there is a surplus or whether the debt is retired, it is simply a position put forward by the Prime Minister. It is a matter of spending money willy-nilly so the Prime Minister can walk away from the House with what he thinks is his legacy.

There are a number of areas that have not been dealt with terribly well in the budget. I mentioned debt reduction and the accumulation of surplus. I would be remiss if I did not mention agriculture.

It was mentioned earlier today in some of the questions and comments that the agricultural section of the budget was very small. There was one particular clause. All it did was reinforce and re-announce the APF program in agriculture with dollars already in place over the past number of years and simply extended six years into the future. It allows for $1.1 billion for a range of particular agricultural programs. However it does not speak to trade injury, which has been brought to the attention of the House and brought to the minister's attention in the past, caused by Americans and Europeans in particular. It does not take into consideration the huge discrepancy between the safety net programs of Europeans and Americans and that proposed under the APF for Canadian agriculture.

I have one quote from the president of the Keystone Agricultural Producers of Manitoba. It speaks to the whole section on agriculture:

At best, this is an agriculture maintenance budget with very few announcements to help agriculture move ahead.

As we know, in agriculture particularly, moving ahead is what we have to do. Unfortunately, the budget does not speak to that.

Infrastructure is another deficiency in the budget. The government has indicated in the past when I have asked questions in the House that the infrastructure budget is to be acclaimed by all.

There is $3 billion for infrastructure in the budget. That in itself is a good step, but when we analyze it, we find that $2 billion of that has been allocated to special projects. In a previous life I had the opportunity to deal with special project dollars that came from the federal and provincial governments to the municipal governments, where the moneys really should be expended. Special projects have a tendency of being caught up in bureaucracy and politics. Unfortunately the dollars do not necessarily go to the right projects at the right time. That is a travesty because the country absolutely requires solid, well deserved infrastructure in order for us to continue with our economy on a positive note.

The other $1 billion is going to be over a period of 10 years. Here we go with this wonderful smoke and mirrors of the budget. We could have had $3 billion dumped into infrastructure but unfortunately in the first budget year of 2003-04 it is $100 million. The second budget year it is $150 million. I have experience with a municipal organization which says that somewhere in the neighbourhood of $50 billion is needed to put in the proper infrastructure that the country needs.

One hundred million dollars in the next budget year would fund one major sewage treatment plant in a major city. In all of Canada it would fund one. What we need is more dollars invested now as opposed to 10 years from now when the Prime Minister will not be here, and we hope beyond hope that the Liberal government will not be here.

There are other issues we have to deal with in the budget, one of them being security. There is very little, $50 million, for the next year, and $25 million in 2004-05 for a security contingency reserve.

The Canadian economy is based upon open borders. Two billion dollars a day move across the American-Canadian border so that our economy can continue with the strength it currently has in the world. Not to have addressed security issues more in this budget is a glaring omission by the government. If we cannot make sure that the border is an open border, as Canadians it is going to have a terrible effect on our economy.

Another glaring mistake in this budget was the employment insurance premium. It was 2¢, but with the smoke and mirrors of the government it says it is 12¢. It had announced a reduction in employment insurance premiums in the previous budget and that is included in this budget which means it is 12¢. The fact is that in budget 2003-04, it is a 2¢ reduction.

People in my constituency continually come to my office and say that this is not meant to be general revenues for the federal government. It is an insurance program that is meant to be an insurance program. That means it should balance itself. It should not have a $7 billion to $8 billion surplus on an annual basis so that the Prime Minister and his ministers can spend it on their little pet projects.

There are a lot of deficiencies. I cannot possibly deal with all of the deficiencies in the budget in the one minute and 24 seconds I have left. To sum it up, there is no surplus, no debt reduction, nothing for agriculture, an infrastructure program that is basically smoke and mirrors and spending in a timeframe 10 years in the future, and employment insurance that should have a much larger reduction in the premiums being paid not only by the employees but the employers, so we can get back to some semblance of what a real insurance program is.

I know the government members stand and say that they have done a wonderful job in the 2003-04 budget. What I really know is what people tell me on the streets of my city, my community and my constituency. They are saying that the government failed miserably. It has over 50 spending examples in this budget and not one dollar for debt reduction. It has over 50 spending initiatives in this budget, in a shotgun approach, and it has not focused on the real issues of the day that Canadians want the government to deal with.

Has the government dealt with health care? Yes. I did not mention that because it negotiated that prior to even the tabling of the budget. In fact the government leaked so many things about the budget prior to the budget. I know that the parliamentary secretary would like to debate with me on infrastructure, so I will have an opportunity to speak again.

[Infrastructure, February 21st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is no secret that municipalities are very disappointed with the federal government's infrastructure water torture, a drip here, a drip there. The $3 billion was announced but only $100 million in this budget year and $150 million in the next.

Unlike the federal Department of Finance, municipalities like to plan ahead. Will the finance minister please tell the House how the remaining $2.75 billion will be allocated?

[Agriculture, February 21st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food claims everybody supports his misguided agricultural policy framework and his totally inadequate business risk management program.

I have a news flash for the minister. He is living in a dream world. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the Grain Growers of Canada, the Keystone Agriculture Producers and every farmer to whom I have spoken are saying just the opposite. They are not buying what the minister is selling and they certainly do not trust the department of top heavy bureaucrats to understand the real world of agriculture.

Why is the minister so determined to bully and intimidate farmers into accepting his plan? Does he not realize that if he shoves the agriculture policy framework down farmers throats, it is destined to fail? Yet, the minister has made it clear that he is hell-bent to see the agriculture policy framework come into effect with or without farmers' support.

I have a little advice for the minister. He should stop listening to his own big city bureaucrats and start listening to farmers.

[Ethics, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the conflict of interest code that covers ministers of the Crown is conducted in secret. The Prime Minister admitted that he did not know when his former finance minister was using a loophole to meet with managers of his vast holdings. The ethics counsellor says that privacy considerations prevent him from discussing whether other ministers have used the loophole.

My question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. How do Canadians know that ministers are not participating in cabinet decisions that directly or indirectly affect their private holdings?