Mr. Speaker, I will try to get the debate this afternoon back to the bill that we are supposed to be debating, the budget implementation act, Bill C-29.
This is about the third or fourth time now that I have had the opportunity to speak to the budget since it was introduced by the finance minister in the spring, and it does not get any better when I speak to it as we go forward. The financial situation just seems to be getting worse. In fact, we are debating a budget implementation bill that has already been effectively ripped apart by the minister's economic statement here a couple of weeks ago. It is a budget that fails to create the jobs and the growth promised by the government. The finance minister stood up in the House and said that the modest little deficit that was promised in the election campaign is going to bloom to some $30 billion and that the government is not going to give any indication as to when it can balance the budget again.
I will save the deputy government House leader from asking the question that he always asks when we make these relevant points, which is: Did the Conservatives not run a deficit at one point in time? The Conservative government did run a deficit because it was dealing with the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. However, the difference was that the Conservative government had a plan to get back to a balanced budget while the Liberal government has shown us it has no plan to get back to a balanced budget despite the fact that it was left with a balanced budget when it took office.
Lately, I have not heard the government saying that it did not have a surplus when it took over. I have not heard that lately from my colleague from Vaughan. All he has talked about this afternoon is the infrastructure bank that was in the Liberal's election platform. Not a word was mentioned in their election platform about the infrastructure bank. When those members stand up here and start talking about fulfilling their election promise, we all know that is not the case.
This budget has failed to address what it actually set out to do. It was set out to go deeply into debt so that jobs could be created. About two weeks ago the September-October Statistics Canada job numbers came out and the top line looked pretty good. It talked about 44,000 net jobs having been created, but then some Liberal math kicks in, because despite the fact 44,000 net new jobs were created, the country lost 23,000 full-time jobs while creating 67,000 part-time jobs. The group that was hit the most is who the government always talks about, the so-called middle class. Working men between the ages of 25 and 54 have suffered 63,000 lost positions since the Liberals took office a year ago. That is shameful. The government is not fulfilling its promise for why it is going into debt. There is no plan to get out of debt. There is no indication that going into debt is actually working.
We hear a lot about infrastructure. The budget was supposed to create infrastructure projects. I asked the Minister of Finance when he appeared before the finance committee about this, because a Bloomberg report said that out of some 860 projects that had been approved, only one has actually broken ground.
During our constituency break last week the infrastructure minister was running around the country spending other people's money. I saw he was in Edmonton announcing a $30 million flood mitigation program. I guess we will see how many jobs that flood mitigation program creates. It is ironic that it happened to be in Mill Woods, which, if we check, is the riding that this particular infrastructure minister represents. Not only is he spending taxpayers' money to redo his office, he is also spending taxpayer's money in his own back yard.
It reminds me a bit of the move that the immigration minister made, closing down the office in Vegreville, which happens to be, by the way, a Conservative-held riding and has been since the beginning of time. He moved it into a riding in the centre of Edmonton that a Liberal member happens to represent today. He will be a one-term member, because this is another effort by the Liberals to try to shore up their shaky ground in Alberta. Albertans are not going to be fooled again by this particular government.
Instead of the infrastructure minister running around the country handing out cheques that taxpayers are footing the bill for, he should be spending some time convincing his cabinet colleagues that there are other ways to create jobs in this country, indicated by one simple word: “pipelines”. The Minister of Infrastructure and Communities should convince his cabinet colleagues. All of the studies that have been done around Kinder Morgan, and everyone else, have recommended that the Kinder Morgan pipeline be approved, and yet his cabinet is sitting on that decision.
If cabinet said tomorrow that it would approve Kinder Morgan's pipeline, it would create thousands of jobs, not only on the construction of the pipeline but in Alberta for revitalization. Many of the full-time positions that the Liberals have lost over the last year are in Alberta in that particular industry. It could also get the process under way for the energy east pipeline. Despite some of the musings about our friends from Quebec, located next to us, who shake their heads and smile when my colleague from Calgary Shepard talks about jobs lost in the industry, energy east could save some of those jobs. That is a project that absolutely needs to go ahead and the process to get it approved has to move quickly.
Of course, now we are left with the much improved possibility of Keystone being approved by the new president-elect, once he takes office in the United States. I know the Liberals worship the outgoing president, whom we saw here in the House when he visited, but I think a lot of the things that the liberal president of the United States implemented in the last few years will be undone pretty quickly, although it is hard to come up with many accomplishments of his in the last eight years, whatever they were.
I will conclude my remarks with a couple of comments. As I said, the Conservative government left the Liberal government with a surplus. It is not even denying that any more. This is a budget that is out of date before it even passes the House. The finance minister acknowledged that in his economic update. The election campaign promise about modest deficits has now ballooned into a runaway budget deficit, and for that reason, I would like to move the following subamendment. I move:
That the amendment be amended by adding after the words “exemplified by” the following: “a stagnant economy”.