Mr. Speaker, it is certainly budget day here on the Hill.
Less than an hour ago we were discussing last year's budget and the dollars that have been pre-booked into this year. It is kind of like closing the chicken coop after the fox has already been there. We have less than two weeks in this fiscal year as far as Revenue Canada is concerned to implement the additions and complications that were added to Revenue Canada from last year's budget. People are already filling out their tax forms under those rules and regulations and we have not even passed them in this House yet. It kind of makes us wonder why we are here.
As to this year's budget, it is Bill C-71, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled on February 16, 1999. However, thanks to the way this finance minister has taken to spinning these books, we actually end up talking about money spent last year, this year and into the future, and other money Canadians will not see for two, three or five years.
It is too bad that while the Liberals are bragging about how well they listen to Canadians in their across Canada tours, the public does not seem terribly interested in keeping tabs on where their tax dollars go. They know they go to Ottawa and then they just disappear.
This system of prebudget and post-legislating has become so convoluted and complex that average Canadians do not have a hope of unravelling it before the next election. Unfortunately it may take a slowdown in the global economy to accomplish this unravelling and really bring out the problems, but by then we will all be struggling to survive the past six years of so-called Liberal prudence.
I will refer to some specifics of this myth of prudence. We all know that in theory the finance minister is only projecting two years into the future with each budget. The problem is that some of his spending is still tripping out of the treasury five years from now, the so-called health care budget.
We have seen the millennium scholarship fund from last year get deducted from the 1998 budget as a $2.5 billion forwarded expense. No one else in Canada can have that option. We are not allowed to forward budget like that. It may have helped to alleviate some of the problems on Canadian farms if they were allowed to do that. It is not $2.5 billion in reality. It is a series of charges handed out from the year 2000 and on that will only go to a handful of Canadians, in the face of opposition from Quebec and other provinces and most of the student groups we listened to.
It is not wanted out there and it is not needed since there are hundreds of scholarships and bursaries already out there from the private sector and other places. Why not top these up at a charge of $350 million per year only in the year the expense occurs? Why do we have to forward it into more and more years and book that $2.5 billion out of the so-called surplus? I guess no one else can get their fingers on it that way.
It is not prudent to give away taxpayers' money against their wishes in a way that brings disrepute on the nation's finances. So much for listening to Canadians. Do not for once think that financial experts from around the world are not looking over the shoulder of this government. We see that in our stock market rises and falls.
There have been compliments for Canada's sacrifices to get back on a balanced budget. That strong economy and those sacrifices belong to the Canadian taxpayer, not to this Liberal government. It may take the credit but it did not do the job. The minister has rightfully thanked the taxpayer for doing some of that but not all.
There is obviously a deep-seated nervousness about where the Liberals will go with this large gift of money that has been handed to them. The dollar reflects this. It is positively anemic. International organizations continue to warn us that our productivity, that great buzzword we are hearing kicked about, and our technological expertise are slipping badly.
Canadians who require years of training at public expense head for greener pastures because the government is too busy having a wild spending spree and thinking ahead as to what it can spend that found money on. The government is too busy to notice that the money it is throwing out the window has to be generated by its taxpaying citizens and businesses in the first place. So much for listening to Canadians.
I would like to remind the House what Dr. Prudence prescribed for this country in 1997. The projection for 1998-99 was for revenues of $144 billion. The next year it was revised upward to $151 billion, found cash. Now we are led to believe that in fact it may exceed $156 billion; just missed the target by $12 billion, luckily to the plus side.
Those extra dollars were generated by Canadians. Where do they end up? Back in the hands of the original owners? No, not a chance. The Liberal government finds ways to spend it faster and faster. When the government discovered that its so-called prudent projections were out of whack, it does not announce a more prudent retirement of the debt and it does not announce a more prudent reduction in how much of taxpayers' money it will skim off. Instead the government announces it will prudently spend everything it has and more.
In an article in the February 24 Financial Post William Watson directs our attention to table 3.4 on page 57 of the budget documents. This trained and respected economist says that before 1998 drew to a close, the government had $11.7 billion of extra taxpayers' money it had not spent yet. Great idea. What are we going to do with it now? Typically it lists a series of items that magically added up to $11.7 billion and declared a balance. Great accounting. Mr. Watson called it disgusting and I am inclined to agree with him.
The lesson we learned from this is simple. Given money, the Liberals will spend it for us. It would never occur to them to let Canadians keep it in the first place. The Liberals have another trick that they hope nobody will ever catch on to. They have a habit of making virtue out of vice and spinning themselves as the heroes of fiscal prudence.
Originally the government cut $21 billion out of social transfers over the last five years. Now the government is talking about putting $11.5 billion back into health care. Billions. Big numbers. Let us break that down. As my esteemed colleague from Elk Island pointed out, if we divide that amount by the five years it covers, we end up with a lot lower number, $2.5 billion. That hardly makes a dent. It is the same cost as the millennium scholarship fund going back to a health care system that is in crisis across the country.
I had a discussion with Dr. Hal Baldwin from Saskatoon a short time ago. He is the treasurer of the Canadian Medical Association. He said that it is not just money that was ripped out of health care across this country, the heart and soul was taken out as well. We have not just taken the money out, we have taken the care out of health care.
These people are working handcuffed. The nurses association is on strike right now in Saskatchewan. It is not just money they are talking about. Their hands are tied when it comes to caring for people, really caring, and putting that back into health care.
We have a $900 million farm aid package that is supposed to impact my province of Saskatchewan. It has had years and years of drought situations and people with no net income for three and four years. Do these people qualify for any of this aid? Not on your life. There is no part in the equation for a zero, zero, zero balance. That is unfortunate.
The minister of agriculture was asked the other day by my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake how many applications the department had received and how much money had actually gone out of this $900 million. The minister talked about 11,000 applications being mailed into Saskatchewan. Well that is notable but there are almost 60,000 farmers in Saskatchewan. We have less than one-fifth who have actually applied because they know they do not qualify. They have a little off farm income and some custom work. They have some livestock.
This program really goes nowhere. It is a great PR exercise but it is just like the whole budget. It is all puff and mirrors. There is no substance here at all.
