Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in this debate that is so very important for our country.
I want to indicate at the outset that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Edmonton—Spruce Grove, who is one of the most impressive young women to come into the House in many years. I am honoured to be sharing my time with her tonight.
The previous speaker indicated her position on a number of issues. In particular, she spoke at some length and with passion about the health care system. The question I would have asked her, had I been given the opportunity, with respect to her plans and her government's plans for health care, is quite simple: what was stopping them for 12 years?
What was preventing the Liberal government from taking some of the very innovative and, I would suggest, very useful measures that she spoke of in her remarks? What on earth prevented the Liberal government from doing so?
In fact, when one reads between the lines and reads outright the words of the Supreme Court of Canada, that is essentially what they say. It was a scathing condemnation of this government's administration of the Canada Health Act.
Without a doubt, the state of health care today is in ruins as a result of the administration of the Prime Minister, who as finance minister made the brutal unilateral cuts to transfer payments to provinces that resulted in the deterioration of health care. No one in the country is more to blame for the abysmal state of health care than the Prime Minister of Canada today.
The blunderbuss omnibus bill that we see before us as the budget is typical in its approach as far as the Liberal Party is concerned. It reminds me of the old parable of how a loaf of bread is stolen and some crumbs are then given back to the thankful plebs. That is how the Liberal government tends to administer the money and the finances of the nation.
Bill C-43 is a bill which the Conservative Party sought to improve and, I would say with some confidence, did improve. Our position has been consistent. We saw this as initially a Conservative bill, but in need of improvement, with serious flaws that in fact would have been detrimental to the livelihood of Canadians.
In fact, we have been responsible in trying to make this a better piece of legislation and have done so. We have brought forward amendments that in fact, ironically when one looks at it, restored some of the initial tax relief that was put forward by the Minister of Finance before he was co-opted by the Prime Minister's deal with the NDP.
I think what we may find at the end of the day is that what the NDP has been promised will amount to a hill of beans because, like much of this budget, it is post-dated. It is a promissory note. It will happen years from now. In fact, the immediate impact of this budget is $16 to the average Canadian, the cost of a medium pizza.
I do not think that is good enough when we think of the number of working Canadians, of single mothers, of hard done by Canadians who are out there trying to get by. Far too many of those Canadians are still on the tax rolls. They should not be paying tax. The government should raise the basic personal exemption and take some of those working Canadians off the tax rolls. They are the working poor. This budget does not speak to those hard done by Canadians.
This bill, with 24 separate and in most cases unrelated pieces of legislation, has a lot of unwarranted and, I would suggest, unwanted measures and has caused regional divisions in the country. I am speaking, of course, of the Atlantic accord.
The Conservative Party made several very concerted efforts to pull the Atlantic accord out and have it presented to the House as a stand-alone piece of legislation, which would make common sense and which was in fact the original intent of the Atlantic accord, as we all know. It was consistent with the approach that the Conservative Party had taken in saying that we must deliver to Atlantic Canada, and to Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia in particular, the ability to benefit from their own natural resource revenues.
This approach that the Liberal government took to bury it in the budget was clearly an attempt to renege on that commitment. We have taken a positive and constructive approach throughout in trying to deliver on that promise to Atlantic Canadians.
We wanted to build a better budget. We wanted to improve the quality of life for Canadians. Again, I would suggest that we have. This is a compassionate, conservative way that is very much in keeping with the type of governance we want to bring to Canada, one that we will continue to pursue with passion and in a progressive way in the coming days and on in through the summer.
We want to protect the livelihoods of thousands of Canadians by preventing a Liberal-NDP coalition that will remove tax relief for Canadians. The tax relief was very much about improving competition, improving the job market, and improving the ability of companies to employ thousands of Canadians. We are going to continue to fight for hardworking and overtaxed Canadians.
This bill is a massive, cumbersome and convoluted bill. Yet what we see at the end of the day is an attempt to buy people with their own money. The government has really sunk to new lows when it comes to buying people with their own money, or buying members of Parliament even.
In contrast, the NDP add-on budget, if I can call it that, has three clauses and is one page. Imagine allotting $4.6 billion in spending and scratching it out on a page and a half. There is no plan or fiscal framework whatsoever. It is an absolutely abysmal and irresponsible approach to governance and fiscal management, such as the sponsorship program, for example, or the gun registry, or the HRDC boondoggle, or many of the contracts that were cancelled that again were an absolute pillage of the public purse. They were consistent with the government's approach for the last 12 years that included irresponsible and out of control spending practices with no consequences. Well the consequence has come. It is called the Conservative Party of Canada.
This attempt to have the NDP on side was of course also about a shameless attempt to cling to power. Much of what we hear from the NDP in the House now, the rhetoric and criticisms of the government, mean nothing because the NDP is propping the government up. Since this budget was announced, we know that all pretense of fiscal prudence is out the window. It was all about partisanship and buying the temporary support of the NDP. That house of cards will crumble soon enough.
We now have an additional $26 billion in spending outside of the budget. This is all since the Prime Minister took to the airwaves with his much publicized mercy plea to wait for Gomery. We have seen in recent days attempts for the old Chrétien and current Prime Minister coalition to come together again to somehow derail Gomery through a secret deal that would allow Mr. Chrétien to file an objection to the Gomery report and most likely prevent an election that was promised by the Prime Minister. This is the Prime Minister's little election escape hatch.
Some members in the House, not many, may recall that Jean Chrétien's fiscal policies as finance minister brought about an 83% net increase in the federal deficit from 1977 to 1980. I do not think even you were here at that time, Mr. Speaker. We often hear from the Prime Minister about the deficit that he inherited, the much ballyhooed deficit that was inherited by the Liberal government in 1993.
What is never mentioned and what is always overlooked but is factual, as Yogi Berra said, “You could look it up”, is that the incoming Conservative government in 1984 inherited a $38 billion deficit from the Trudeau years. It is all about convenient memory and selective quoting when it comes to fiscal figures.
The Liberal government came to office promising to clean up government. However, since coming to office the Liberals have been involved in the sponsorship scandal, the envelopes of cash being passed around in restaurants, and the unbridled, out of control corruption that we have seen. This has all been playing out before the Gomery commission. The Liberal Party is being exposed day by day and the dance of a thousand veils is over. We see it laid bare. It is the proverbial emperor without clothes now that we have before Canadians.
It is perfectly clear. There is now an opportunity for Canadians to judge for themselves, based on factual information, what they want. They want an ethical, clean government that is going to provide health care and direction on important matters of fiscal concern to them dealing with trade, the economy, and issues relating to national defence, the justice system and the environment.
It was interesting to hear Elizabeth May from the Sierra Club recently describe Prime Minister Brian Mulroney as Canada's greenest Prime Minister, compared to the Kyoto disaster that is still being peddled by the government. The government is attempting to dupe Canadians that this is good for them and that we are somehow going to reach those unrealistic targets. That by buying foreign credits we are going to actually improve the Canadian environment. That is just not true.
For the last 11 years we have seen a government that has consistently made poor decisions that have hurt Canadians, hurt our economy, and hurt our international reputation. This budget is a chance at least to bring back some semblance of fiscal prudence without the NDP add-on.
I will now forfeit the floor to my colleague from Edmonton—Spruce Grove who will enlighten the House further as to her insights into what we should be doing in the future with respect to fiscal management.
