Leon Benoit

[Government Contracts, April 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister keeps proving that Canadians simply cannot trust him. He said that he cancelled this contract seven months ago because it was not tendered properly, but here we are seven months later and Royal LePage keeps getting paid.

Does the Prime Minister honestly expect Canadians to believe that he has cancelled the contract when the company he gave the contract to is still getting paid?

[Government Contracts, April 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, over seven months ago, the government cancelled the $1 billion contract with Royal LePage. That relocation contract was one of the biggest contracts ever awarded. Today, despite the fact the government cancelled that contract, its friends over at Royal LePage are still getting paid. Again, it seems to be who one knows in the PMO.

Why is the company still getting paid seven months after the contract was cancelled?

[Petitions, April 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is from people from across the country. The petitioners note that the Canadian Airborne Regiment was disbanded for political reasons, and it was a great source of pride for men and women serving in the army and across the forces generally. They ask Parliament to fully reinstate the Canadian Airborne Regiment, with the name.

[Petitions, April 1st, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to present two groups of petitions today. The first group is on an issue that has proven to be probably the most important in my constituency, and that is the issue of Parliament protecting the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. The petitioners also ask that the issue not be left to the courts, that it be left in the hands of their elected officials.

[The Budget, March 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the member has made an excellent point. The leader of the new Conservative Party on many occasions has pointed out that our troops are most concerned about not having the proper equipment and having to go overseas on deployments too often. Their families are suffering. Those are the kinds of things they are concerned about.

This tax break is important and it is a good start, but the way it has been done is so messed up. Soldiers are arguing. They are divided about which groups should get it and which groups should not. The government should not do things like that. It should plan it through, think about it and then put it in place. It should make it fair so that it covers all of our troops overseas.

[The Budget, March 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the member always has a very good question. It is the kind of question we have come to expect from this member.

The question is, how can Canadians trust the government on this issue. They cannot. We have been pointing out this particular issue for years now and the government has been trying to bury things by trying to cover them up.

Today, again, we saw the Prime Minister trying to cover up information and trying to keep information from the public accounts committee which is examining this issue. The Liberals have put off their public inquiry until who knows when, at least until the summer, until after the election, and they think Canadians are going to be stupid enough to vote for them again when they pull that kind of a stunt.

The fact is that this corruption has been there for a long time. There is scandal after scandal after scandal. We have had the HRDC scandal, the gun registry scandal, and now we have the sponsorship scandal, ad scam. In the military, we find out, unbelievably, that out of a $160 million contract, $80 million has just disappeared. The Liberals are trying to blame the company involved. They are trying to blame Hewlett-Packard, but the blame rests right with the government.

Political interference is what causes these scandals and until the Liberals will acknowledge that and come up with a plan to really deal with that, we are going to end up with the same problems.

[The Budget, March 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, if the question is about the seniors in my riding, I met with a group of them just last week when I was in the constituency. They expressed some very serious concerns. If they were looking to the federal government, and what the federal government has done for them, it would be a very short list.

They made it clear to me that there are two types of issues. There is the pension issue itself. They have lost ground when it comes to pensions, their buying power, what they can do with and how they get along on their pensions. I want to make it clear that seniors in my part of the country, like seniors all across this country, do not want a lot. They do not want to take money from young people who are paying income tax. That is not what they want. However, they do want an acceptable standard of living. They are losing ground on that account and in many cases they simply do not have that anymore.

They said their housing costs are going up. If they live in their own homes, there is the cost of various types of inputs: heating fuel, electricity and income tax. Even seniors who make just $10,000 a year still pay income tax. That is unbelievable. They ask if the income tax could be reduced? That is the same complaint we hear with other groups of people.

Really, what seniors are saying is that they do not want to be the forgotten group. They are making up a lot larger percentage of the population all the time. They know that causes some problems; however, they just want some foresight from government in dealing with some of these issues. They want some planning and they are not seeing it, and they are concerned because of that.

[The Budget, March 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to participate in the budget debate. I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Peace River.

I do not want to get into an awful lot of detail tonight because I think it is more important to look at the broad picture. That is what is really important, how the various issues that the government has addressed in the budget actually impact Canadians across the country.

I give the government members full credit for one thing and that is being masters of spin. They can take something that really does not amount to a lot and make it sound like a lot.

I want to look at half a dozen things that are most important to Canadians, look at what the government said, and then look at the reality of these things. I think that is what really counts. I have had the media ask me on many occasions, since the budget was brought down last week, what I think about the education component, the health component or this or that. I told them it was no use getting into the detail because I have done that for 10 years. I found that what the government said and what has actually been delivered were two entirely different things. That is what I will talk about today.

The budget was no doubt, as the media portrayed, a clean up of the corrupt government. The Prime Minister and the finance minister are trying to portray it as a new government just because they have a new leader. They are saying they will clean up all the corruption that they were involved in as the finance minister and public works minister, the two key portfolios that were supposed to be guarding taxpayers' dollars.

They are trying to make Canadians believe that somehow when they were in these key positions of financial responsibility, positions which were to guard taxpayers' money, that it was then. They let taxpayers' money be spent in corrupt ways on scandals and stuff, and now they are saying that they are a new gang. They are the same people, but they have reorganized the gang. They have a new leader so this is a different issue. That simply will not wash.

This is the same gang that was there before. A different leader does not change that. They are still the same corrupt group. That is a fact. They will have a hard time convincing Canadians otherwise.

In terms of the economy and fiscal responsibility, what do they say? They say they have managed the economy very well and been very frugal with taxpayers' dollars. They say they have cut spending, reduced taxation and cut the debt. Let us just look at those things.

First, in terms of fiscal responsibility, what are the facts in that area? The facts are that from this budget the Liberals are increasing spending 7.6% this year alone. That is hardly fiscal responsibility. That is more than double the inflation rate, which is completely unacceptable.

This year there will be $143 billion on program spending. When I came here a little over 10 years ago, program spending was around $100 billion. The Liberals have accelerated spending taxpayers' dollars. That is your money, Mr. Speaker, and my money and my neighbour's money. They are spending it like drunken sailors. That is not fiscal responsibility. They have not shown fiscal responsibility.

They say they have balanced the budget seven years in a row. I know that if my neighbours at home were given an unlimited pool of income, they could balance the budget every year too. If they were allowed to go to their neighbours on the block and say they needed more money because they wanted to spend more, and if they could take all they wanted, of course they would have a balanced budget, but that would not make them prudent managers of money. That is the same with the government. The Liberals are not good managers of money and what they are doing is unacceptable.

I want Canadians to think about the reality in terms of what has been said by the government versus its record. That is what is really important. The 2000 budget was what the Prime Minister, then finance minister, called his tax cut budget. He said he would make huge tax cuts that would just be unprecedented. He would reduce taxes at a remarkable rate over a five year period.

Has he delivered that? The answer is no. Canadians look at their paycheques and ask, where are those tax cuts? The government is taking more from their cheques than ever before. They are asking, where is that tax reduction that was put in place back in 2000? This is the fifth year of that five year plan. I look at my paycheque and I have more taken from my paycheque than ever before. That is the reality. The government says one thing but reality is another thing.

There is no more important issue than health care in the country. I am sure most people would agree. The government over the years has portrayed itself as the great guardian of health care and is always saying it will spend more money on health care. What is the reality? The reality is that it is spending less money on health care now than when it came into office 10 years ago when I was first elected. That is the truth.

What it says and what the truth is, is entirely different. In fact, the Prime Minister, who was finance minister through most of the 10 years, cut $25 billion in transfers to the provinces for health care and education. That is the reality. He has not even started to make that up in a meaningful way. The Liberals say all these nice things about being protectors of health care, but the reality is that they have slashed money transferred to the provinces for health care.

It is the same story with education. The Prime Minister, when he was finance minister, came out in 1998 with what he called the education budget. I have had five children in post-secondary institutions since 1998. Three are currently involved in post-secondary education. The reality of what they found out is that things are getting worse every year.

The Prime Minister, when he was finance minister, came out with this wonderful post-secondary education budget. He called it the education budget it was so good. However, student debt is increasing every single year. Tuitions are increasing every year. In fact, students are worse off than they were before that wonderful education budget. That is the reality.

Members from the other side will say that tuition is a provincial jurisdiction. It is, but the money that used to be transferred to the provinces for post-secondary education has been cut back dramatically. Where are the provinces going to get the money from? They simply cannot come up with it. This increase in cost and increase in student debt, and the fact that students have been put in a worse situation than they were when this wonderful education budget came out is a sad reality.

The few little tidbits that were thrown at students this year are simply not going to solve the problem. In education, the government makes it sound wonderful, but the reality is that students are worse off. There is a gap between what the government says and reality.

We could go into a lot of different issues on the environment. I will talk about the Sydney tar ponds. When I first came here in 1993, we were talking about the Sydney tar ponds. In the 1995 budget the government talked about cleaning up the Sydney tar ponds. It had the money in the budget to clean up the tar ponds. The money is in the budget again this year to clean up the tar ponds.

What is going on with the environment here? The government has never been serious about cleaning up the environment. That is one example we can point to that the government should have dealt with. It could have told Canadians that it had at least dealt with this one very specific and terrible situation. Here it is almost 10 years later and it is throwing money at the tar ponds, and still it has not cleaned it up. Again, what the government has said on the one hand, which sounds good when it says it, is quite different from what it has done.

It is the same with seniors. When the Prime Minister was finance minister, he was going to slash seniors' pensions. Certainly, talking to seniors now they tell me that they are worse off than they were 10 years ago. The reality of what the government says about seniors and what it has delivered is as different as night and day.

We could go right through the list. As for the military, the government slashed more than 30% in spending on the Canadian forces. It has sent our men and women into mission after mission with improper equipment. The Liberals always talk about what a wonderful job they are doing. The reality is something different. The government has a credibility gap. What it says always sounds so good, but what it delivers is something entirely different, and it is not good. Canadians can see that. The government is simply not going to fool them anymore.

[The Budget, March 29th, 2004]

Taxpayers' money.

[The Budget, March 29th, 2004]

No, stolen.