Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise in the House today on behalf of all the residents of my riding who have reached out to my office and spoken to me personally about their dissatisfaction with the first budget of the Liberal government.
Following the release of the budget, my office sent out surveys to every household and business in my riding, asking whether they supported the out-of-control spending of the Liberal government. Out of the responses I have received, over 90% of my constituents do not support these ballooning deficits and unnecessary spending.
Canadians know best, that we need to live within our means and take out loans or increase spending only in urgent situations. There will always be emergencies that require extraordinary measures such as major roof repairs, new pump in a rural water system or the replacement of a car that died without warning.
While most Canadians would agree that these might be good reasons to borrow, I doubt that many would consider it good money management to take out a new loan to pave the driveway or buy a new flat screen TV, especially if already paying down a hefty mortgage.
Along with many members on this side of the House, this is my first budget while sitting in opposition. I am not impressed that the government has already started to tear down the hard work that our Conservative government did to build a strong economy that Canada enjoyed. Nor are my constituents impressed.
The Liberals talk about slow growth in the past. They fail to recognize that Canada led the G7 in economic growth through some of the most challenging times the world has seen since the Great Depression. The current government will not even admit that we left it with a surplus of over $7 billion. The Department of Finance, the parliamentary budget officer, and experts across Canada repeatedly remind the Liberals that they are wrong, but they simply continue to ignore the facts.
This is important because the almost $30 billion the Liberals have decided to borrow is borrowed not out of necessity, but out of a desire to take the hard-earned money made by Canadians and spend it on pet projects for special interest groups. They have ensured that they can continue this out-of-control spending by including in their omnibus budget bill a clause that repeals our balanced budget legislation.
This balanced budget legislation, passed by the previous Parliament, would force future governments to restrict spending so we would not be borrowing on the backs of our future generations and we could incrementally pay down our national debt. However, the Liberals are now removing the hope we had of reducing our debt. Instead, they plan to increase it by another $119 billion.
Many of us in the House have been blessed with children and some of us even with grandchildren. I am blessed with nine grandchildren, but these out-of-control spending budgets accumulated over time will gravely affect them. I want to ensure that the Liberals know that there will be consequences to their poor decisions today.
If we consider just debt charges alone over the course of the government's mandate, interest charges alone increase by almost $10 billion. This is money that could be spent on more important infrastructure projects or increased health transfers. It could also be spent on funding a small business tax cut, or fulfilling the Liberal's promise to increase home care spending and invest in palliative care. Yet there is not one dollar earmarked in this budget for palliative care or increased home care.
Over the next five years, the interest costs alone rise from $25.7 billion to $35.5 billion. That is an increase of almost $10 billion just to pay interest on the increased national debt.
The three topics that have been brought to my attention most often by my constituents are: first, the Liberals' broken promise to lower small business tax rate; second, giving hard-working farmers a cold shoulder; and third, no money given toward increasing access to palliative care for Canadians.
First are the Liberals' broken promises to small businesses. Waterloo region is home to thousands of small businesses and they were all excited to hear that every party in the campaign was going to lower the small business tax rate to 9%. Unfortunately, this promise, like many other promises made by the Liberals, was completely broken in their very first budget.
On top of that, the Minister of Small Business and Tourism, from the Waterloo region herself, has been defending this broken promise throughout the region and across Canada for the past number of weeks. The finance department has estimated that this broken promise will cost the small business sector $2.2 billion over four years.
It is clear that when it really comes down to it, the Liberals fail to understand the crucial role that small business has to play in Canada. One has to wonder if the entire Liberal government agrees with the Prime Minister who stated publicly that small businesses were just “tax havens” for the wealthy.
The Prime Minister really is out of touch with Canadians. We know that roughly two-thirds of small and medium-sized business owners fall directly into the middle class. Employers are about four times more likely to be earning less than $40,000 than they are to be earning more than $250,000.
On top of the broken promise of lowering the tax rate for small business owners, small business owners know that we do not keep on spending money we do not have and are very worried about the direction the government is going.
Speaking on behalf of these small business owners, the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Dan Kelly, says:
Small business owners across the country are deeply troubled by the ballooning deficit. What was proposed to Canadians as a short-term $10-billion deficit plan to invest in critical infrastructure is now $29 billion with no plan to get back to balance...Small business owners know that today’s deficits are tomorrow’s taxes.
Second, the budget is a complete disaster for all the farmers in my riding.
Growing up on a farm myself, I have a pretty good idea of the amount of work that these men and women put in every day to feed their families and thousands of other families across Canada. We should be supporting these people. However, the budget completely forgets about them. In fact, the only support for the agriculture industry in Canada is extra funding for bureaucrats in Ottawa, none for moms and dads who are up before the sun rises and finish work well after the sun sets.
In my riding, where there are over 1,200 farms, approximately 1,400 in all of Waterloo region accounting for $473 million in gross receipts in 2010, farmers are professionals. They want to meet their social obligations in protecting the environment, in protecting the health of their animals, and in providing the best quality products for their families, for their communities, and for the world.
The Canadian agriculture and agri-food sectors account for more than $100 billion in economic activity every year and employ more than two million Canadians. The importance of agriculture to our national interests cannot be overstated. In fact, one in eight jobs in Canada depends upon agriculture, those in primary agriculture, food processing, horticulture, and farm markets.
Under the previous Conservative government, farming families saw their taxes drop to the lowest level in 50 years and farmers gained access to more international markets than ever. However, today, with this budget, Canadian farm families are being left behind. The Liberals are borrowing $30 billion to spend in other sectors. The Liberal government must make our farm families a priority.
Third is the government's failure to meet its commitment to increasing home care and palliative care.
As we in this chamber are considering Bill C-14, it is now more important than ever that the government make good on its promise to increase funding for home care and palliative care services. I have said it many times already during second reading of Bill C-14, but let me repeat it. Without proper palliative care options to give Canadians considering assisted suicide, they are not making a fully informed decision. We have all failed in protecting vulnerable Canadians.
Therefore, I would suggest that the Liberal government make four changes to the budget immediately, as it would be in the best interests of all Canadians.
First, the government needs to limit the size of its deficit and re-implement the balanced budget legislation that our government introduced. It needs to start realizing the money it is spending is not its money to spend without reserve, but is taxpayer money and belongs to taxpayers.
Second, the government should make good on its promise to lower the small business tax rate. This would be one of the single-best methods to help out the middle class and to grow our economy. These businesses would be able to expand, innovate and hire more workers, immediately helping our economy.
Third, the Liberals should rekindle their relationship with Canadian farmers and immediately include measures in the budget that would lower taxes for these hard-working Canadians who are the heart of our country.
Last, the Liberal government needs to provide funding for home and palliative care across Canada. Over 70% of Canadians who need this form of care do not have access to it. This is something that absolutely needs to be changed. Now, more than ever, we need to protect and care for the most vulnerable among us.
