Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to address Bill C-52, the budget implementation act . It seems the Liberals and the NDP have been unable to imagine a better, safer and stronger Canada, which budget 2007 has asked us to aspire to be.
The constituents of Blackstrap get it. They can envision that Canada and they have embraced the budget. In fact, the budget is well received throughout Saskatchewan, where it largely is seen as a blueprint for better and more prosperous times. It has not hurt that Saskatchewan is a big winner in budget 2007. It is receiving the largest per capita gains of any province with the new fiscal balance package.
I do not believe there has ever been a better budget in Canadian history that has been subjected to such a barrage of misinformation, blatant partisan criticism and wholesale misrepresentation.
For instance, almost three months after the release of the budget, members of the opposition in the House of Commons as well as members of the Saskatchewan NDP government continue to claim that the government has failed to keep its promise to Saskatchewan to exclude non-renewable resources from the equalization formula.
That erroneous information has been repeated so often by so many politicians and written in so many political commentaries that it has been endowed with a sense of truth, but nothing could be further from the truth. The government has kept its promise. The Prime Minister has kept his promise.
Saskatchewan Conservative MPs are voting for the budget because the budget delivers for Saskatchewan. I have made my support of the budget very clear in the House, in letters to the editor and in columns published.
The budget gives us none of us any cause to worry. For those of us in Saskatchewan, the budget is about the tale of two leaders.
The first is of the Prime Minister, a visionary who had the courage to solve the fiscal imbalance and determine an equalization formula that is fair to all provinces, based on a 10 province standard.
The other is of the Premier of Saskatchewan, a standard politician who has spent $300,000 on a provincial advertising campaign called “Imagine”, but lacks the vision to see his province move beyond a have not status. He is a critic for criticism's sake. He will not embrace the future because he is too attached to the past. Partisan to the end, he will not acknowledge a promise kept by his political opponent, so he insists a different promise was made.
First, the government has kept its promise. Saskatchewan can exclude natural resources in the calculation of equalization revenues. The Finance Minister further clarified the equalization formula when he first reminded people that our government did not negotiate side deals with any individual province or territory and that we could not run the country on side deals.
Second, the federal government is currently consulting, not negotiating, with Nova Scotia about the implementation process and the benefits of budget 2007 to determine the process of maintaining our guarantee that no province will be worse off under the new system.
Our government is not in the midst of making any side deals for political expediency. Equalization has been restored to a principles based program for the first time in many years. Equalization has been restored to a truly national program. That is what all premiers asked us to do and that is what all Canadians expect us to do.
Restoring fiscal balance brings federal support for Saskatchewan to $1.4 billion in 2007-08, including over $800 million in new funding. That is more new funding on a new per capita basis than any other province.
Under the old Liberal equalization program, Saskatchewan would have received zero dollars this year. Under budget 2007's new, strengthened equalization, it will receive $226 million per year. That is more now than it had before to fund health care, education and other important public services.
It was that self-proclaimed defender of Saskatchewan, the member for Wascana and former finance minister, who began this ad hoc process of doing side deals with some provinces and not others in 2005.
To set my position straight, I always believed in a fair, principled transfer to all province. Saskatchewan never sought special treatment; just a fair deal. I believe the Prime Minister worked out a fair deal for all provinces, including Saskatchewan.
It is a sad day for Saskatchewan when the NDP premier suggests the government has not kept its word to Saskatchewan. Not only did he choose to misrepresent the situation, but he chose to wage his war in the media with sound bites, clips and one-liners that were less representative of the truth. When dealing with an issue as complex as equalization, a little more substance, time and debate is required.
At first the premier insisted that Saskatchewan had been forced to include non-renewable resources into the calculation of its equalization. Then when that was revealed to be false, he insisted that a cap on equalization dollars was never envisioned. A fiscal cap was always envisioned because the very concept of equalization implied a cap.
We cannot have equalization without a cap because the level of equalization would constantly rise and equalization receiving provinces would then develop a level of prosperity beyond that of provinces not receiving equalization. Some provinces would be more equal than others and the levels of have not provinces would exceed that of have provinces and have provinces would then expect equalization funding.
The no cap argument is absurd. Only because it remains a dominant news story and the opposition's favourite criticism of the budget, it is worth examining the history of equalization in Canada.
Canada's equalization program has been in place since the mid-1950s. It has always been and continues to be a complicated formula. While many changes have been made throughout the program's history, the basic approach involves assessing the fiscal capacity of provinces to deliver public services.
Equalization provides unconditional transfers to less well off provinces to assist them in providing services to local citizens. Checks and balances have always been built into the formula. Measuring the fiscal capacity of the provinces and ensuring the formula is figured out fairly and equally between the provinces is where the term cap originates.
Why Premier Calvert claims he is surprised about the cap is unclear. In the pre-2004 equalization formula, before the member for LaSalle—Émard's government went to its ad hoc ideal approach, there always were internal checks and balances to ensure that equalization payments did not lift have not provinces to a higher total fiscal capacity than contributing have provinces. This would not be fair.
The pre-2004 budget was based on the fiscal capacity of only four provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia. Due to its volatile economy, Alberta was taken out of the old formula to make calculations more viable. Since 2004, the federal approach to equalization was ad hoc, involving side deals for certain provinces. The provinces, collectively, with the Council of the Federation's provincial body, called for equalization review and reform.
The provinces wanted a new formula based approach, a 10 province standard and a predictability of funding. Therefore, the finance minister was not exaggerating when he described this budget as historic. Our government has taken equalization payments in a historic new direction, which includes a new formula with a principled 10 province standard. It is stable, it allows for long term planning and a seven year framework and it is exactly for what the provinces, including Saskatchewan, were calling.
However, the Saskatchewan premier seems not so much protective of equalization dollars as he is addicted to them. He is utterly afraid of his province ever achieving a have status and not requiring equalization dollars to meet priorities. He seems unable to perceive Saskatchewan growing beyond his limitations. In fact, the former Saskatchewan finance minister recently revealed his government needed equalization dollars to higher provincial civil service salaries.
No wonder the StarPhoenix in Saskatoon today reports that the highest paid Saskatchewan crown corporation executive actually lives in Vancouver. He receives an annual salary of $313,000.
What is going on in the front pages of our news in Saskatchewan has been analyzed by the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. It has examined the provincial public services across Canada and has found that many use equalization to inflate the size and wages of their public services. AIMS has found that in Saskatchewan, for every 1,000 of population, 109 are public servants. In fact, it is the highest ratio per capita in Canada. Statistics Canada says that Ontario gets by with 67 per 1,000 and Alberta with 73.
That is where the extra money is going and that is why Saskatchewan is closing schools. Rural taxes for schools are very high, and the provincial government is closing schools every week. Schools there are the heart and soul of our communities in Saskatchewan. Meanwhile its population continues to decline drastically. The leader of the Saskatchewan Party was recently quoted as saying that since 2001, Saskatchewan's population declined by 10,000 residents, the size of Weyburn, Saskatchewan.
In 2004 the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce pointed out that the labour laws did not help us either. The chamber reported in its publications that Saskatchewan's labour standards act had not been amended since 1995 and pointed to labour laws as a provincial barrier to growth.
The budget is all about fixing fundamental problems and meeting fundamental needs. Budget 2007 invests in families, seniors, small business and farmers and it puts Saskatchewan at the forefront of a revitalized stronger Canada.
