Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party will vote against this bill for one very simple reason: we have lost all confidence in this government not only for economic reasons, but also because of its budget and other budget statements.
I would like to take my time to go through the history of the budgetary actions of the government over the last year, which have led, in large measure, the Liberal Party to lose confidence in the government. The reason for this loss of confidence involves three aspects of the budgetary performance of the government: first, incompetence; second, dishonesty; and third, a distinct lack of concern for the most vulnerable in Canadian society.
Let us go back to last November. Do members remember when the Conservatives were still telling everybody that things were just fine, that perhaps we would have a technical recession. They tabled an economic update that contained no help for Canadians and it attacked pay equity for women, rather than providing any stimulative measures for the economy. It was an update the ripped back pay increases for the RCMP, which the government had given it just before the election.
The transport minister reminded us in the House yesterday when he stated, “we were the last ones to deal with this global economic downturn”. He is absolutely right. Last November, most other countries had already passed budgets to give fiscal stimulus to their economies. At that very moment, the government was doing the opposite. It was offering cutbacks in that November economic statement, probably at the moment when the recession was at its most severe. That is grossly incompetent.
The statement is also dishonest. We will recall that the government, at that time, said that we had nothing but surpluses. Not an economist in the land believed that statement, with the possible exception of the Prime Minister. These fictitious surpluses were created partly by cutting government spending at the height of the recession, partly by fictitious non-existent asset sales, which padded the revenue of the government in a manner that was totally against accounting rules. The proof that those asset sales were fraudulent is the fact that in the last budget the government removed them. The government admitted that they should not have been there in the first place.
The November economic statement containing fraudulent surpluses, cuts to government spending at the most inappropriate time, at the depth of a recession, was so bad that it caused three formerly warring parties, the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberal Party, to unite as one and to threaten to topple the government. It was only for that reason that two months later, in January, the government, under threat of death, was forced to bring in a relatively decent budget.
Had the Conservatives been a majority government, had they not been forced under threat of execution to do this, we would have been left with that November economic statement, with its cuts to government spending at a time of recession. They had no choice. They brought in a budget that was semi-decent, in our opinion. It provided a certain amount of fiscal stimulus through infrastructure and other measures and the Liberal Party supported it. We felt it was in the national interest to get that money out the door as quickly as possible to save or create as many jobs as possible.
However, that budget failed in the execution. We supported it because we wanted to get the money out the door, to save and create jobs. We now know that the money failed to get out the door.
The government uses weasel words like “commitments” or “announcements”, but what really matters is money out the door, people employed, shovels in the ground, construction workers on sites. This is where the government has utterly failed to execute its budget.
Our information from surveys from many mayors across the country is that only 12% of those funds have actually resulted in jobs being saved or created. If only for that reason, we cannot support the government and its budget anymore. We supported it on the condition that it execute it but it failed to execute it and, therefore, has rightly lost the confidence of the official opposition.
Now we come to the third report card, the one the Prime Minister unveiled this past Monday. We were hoping the government would at least provide Canadians with a glimpse of how much of the stimulus money had been spent and how far along infrastructure projects were. Instead, we got nothing. It is not as though the government does not have this information.
This is where I come to the dishonesty and lack of transparency. The infrastructure stimulus fund requires all organizations that receive funding to provide the Conservatives with quarterly reports that outline just how far along their projects are and just how much money they have spent. It is item number 10 in the program's guideline.
The government has all this information at its fingertips and could easily make this information public. However, it is deliberately choosing to hide it. Why would that be? The only plausible conclusion that can be drawn is that it is ashamed of the results. Why else would it have those results in its possession and refuse to give them to Canadians? It must be that it is ashamed of the results. It does not want Canadians to see that after talking about all these billions of dollars in projects, the Government of Canada has barely sent out any actual money.
Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer, an officer the government is doing its best to destroy, has been told that this information is for Conservative eyes only and that he will not be allowed to have a peek. The saddest part is that this information would not be hard to provide.
Let us consider what is happening south of the border. President Obama also asked each funding recipient to provide similar quarterly reports about how projects are progressing and how much money has been received. The difference in the United States is that on October 15, President Obama will be posting all these reports on recovery.gov so that Americans can actually see how their stimulus plan is working. Canadians will not be so fortunate under their overcontrolling and anti-transparent Prime Minister.
I cannot understand why Americans deserve to get the real facts from their government in terms of money out the door and jobs created and Canadians do not. Are we second-class to the Americans? Is that the view of the government? I do not understand why the government cannot at least provide the same information to Canadians that the U.S. government is providing to Americans.
The message is clear. The Conservatives know full well that they have failed to get the job done and they are simply trying to hide that fact from the very Canadians that they have failed.
The Prime Minister himself summed up that failure when he unveiled the third budget card last week. In his assessment of how well his stimulus package has worked, he said, “Far too many Canadians are still out of work. Too many families are suffering hardship”.
We happen to agree with the Prime Minister on this one. Far too many Canadians are still out of work and far too many families are suffering. The Conservatives have failed to get shovels in the ground, failed to create jobs and failed to protect Canadians, which is why we no longer support this budget.
While it may have had potential in January when we voted for it, the incompetent implementation of the budget is one of the many factors that has caused us to lose confidence in the government.
I will end with one other example of dishonesty. The government has said over and over again that it will not raise taxes in its quest to balance the budget some years from now. Do the members on the opposite side not understand that an employment insurance premium is a payroll tax? I used to teach economics 100 and the dullest student would grasp that point after about one week in class. An employment insurance premium is a payroll tax. How many times does one need to say this before those people across the aisle get the point?
The finance minister said directly in his report that employment insurance premiums would go up over the next five years. An employment insurance premium is a payroll tax, which means taxes will go up over the next five years and, indeed, C.D. Howe suggests that they will go up substantially, like 35% or 40%. I have asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer to give us more precise information on the degree to which the Conservatives are raising payroll taxes, employment insurance premiums.
I do not understand why the Conservatives cannot just admit the obvious. They are raising taxes. They have said so themselves.
I wonder if the finance minister, at his next opportunity, could acknowledge the point that an employment insurance premium is a payroll tax and that the Conservatives will be raising those payroll taxes by 30% to 40% in the coming years?