Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be splitting my time with the member for St. Catharines, who, for the record, worked tirelessly on this report. I believe that he travelled across the country attending each of the finance committee's prebudget consultations. Indeed, it was a great pleasure to work with all of my colleagues on the finance committee in order to come up with the report that was tabled in the House on Thursday.
I want to take a few moments to thank the House of Commons committee staff as well for their hard work on this report. Too often we forget the number of hours of recording and summarizing of the consultations and discussions that go into a report of this stature, especially since the discussions often contained conflicting views. It will not surprise the House to learn that there are even sources of disagreement across party lines and at times among party members. Therefore, focusing on the positives to come up with a report that all committee members are comfortable with is certainly no small feat.
I also want to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for the work they contributed to what I think is a very good report. It is truly unfortunate that legislative duties in the House on behalf of the Minister of Finance kept me from a couple of the meetings across Canada that I would like to have attended. I want to thank hon. members who are not full time members of the House Standing Committee on Finance but who graciously agreed to fill in from time to time at these important meetings that allow Canadians to have input on the budget.
I had hoped by moving forward the government could build on the positive momentum from this report to work cooperatively for all Canadians. We heard from a very broad spectrum of Canadians on what they personally, or the association that they represented, thought should be included in our report as advice to this government.
Having said that, I must say that I was disappointed when some members of the opposition then wanted to add into the report some of their own partisan pet projects that no witness had raised before the finance committee. Then, adding to my disappointment, I read some of the stories this week which made their way across the news wires a few hours after the meeting took place between the Minister of Finance and all opposition finance critics.
The critics' chairs were not even warm when one would have thought that they mistook the finance minister for Santa Claus. There were asks in the tens of billions of dollars with no long term strategic thinking or any kind of accurate accounting, led off, of course, by the Liberal finance critic asking us to go backward in time to re-release the Kelowna press release. After all of the things that this government has accomplished in two short years for first nations, why would we go back to the old Liberal way of years of promises ending in a deathbed conversion, admitting that the Liberals had failed first nations? Then there was the greatest ask of all, that if we can, to please try not to go into deficit. That was what we heard, after the list of asks. I am paraphrasing to keep my remarks short.
I shake my head at the opposition on this for playing politics with people's lives. We have taken the approach as the government of this vast and diverse land to enact policies that will provide Canada with the strongest economic fundamentals. We do this so that Canadians will have the fewest possible roadblocks in their way along the path to prosperity, a path Canadians have shown they are more than capable of following, especially given that this government under the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have provided a clearly marked road map.
We need to acknowledge that there are certain sectors which, for various reasons, are facing very real challenges right now. Based on a myriad of factors, some Canadians are hurting and we cannot ignore that. However, the answer is not to pit Ontario manufacturers against Alberta's oil and gas sector, or Quebec forestry against Saskatchewan's potash industry.
The Bloc and the NDP have a few things in common on that file. They ratchet up their dangerous and harmful rhetoric for ideological reasons. The Bloc believes Quebec would be better off on its own, separate from Canada. The NDP believes that corporations should not be allowed to prosper, but in the same breath demands that they employ more workers. It is time that the NDP joined the real world and realized that it is these same corporations, large or small, that help fuel the strong economy that we all enjoy.
Both ideas are misguided and ones with which we cannot agree, but at least they actually believe in these things. Because they believe these things and because at the end of the day based on our system of government, the Canadian people have the last word, their beliefs mean that they also share the bleak political future of never having the Governor General ask them to form Her Majesty's government. Thank goodness.
The Liberals, on the other hand, try to fuel the fires of regionalism and nationalism because of a much more sinister motivation. They simply want to divide and conquer, pit the English versus the French, the rich versus the poor, Ontario versus Alberta, or Quebec versus Saskatchewan. It makes no difference to them to have Canadian versus Canadian and to govern for the sake of governing. Not on this side of the House; we will not have that.
My home province of Alberta is doing quite well and I will not apologize for that. We are proud of that, but I do recall times that were not nearly as prosperous, that in fact, were quite troubling. Now is not the time to say, as the opposition would have us do, that we have $14 billion in surplus, do not pay down the debt, give it to the forestry industry, to the auto sector or any one of the provinces. That is not what this government is about to do.
The sad truth is that despite the excellent stewardship of the economy by the Prime Minister and the steady hand of the finance minister, Canada still owes in excess of $465 billion. And the Liberals say we should not address that? It is a debt burden that we risk passing along to future generations of Canadians who would be saddled with that through no fault of their own. In the absence of fiscally prudent, responsible and careful spending based on a long term plan and strategic approach, Canada is in very real danger of slipping back into a deficit situation. That is clear.
Now is the time to lower taxes and make sure government spending is under control and to continue to pay down our debt. The opposition would have us increase taxes, spend like drunken sailors and ignore the debt, sending Canada into deficit. Canadians have been very clear in all of our consultations with them throughout this process. They realize what is happening in the United States. They realize that we are not planning on going down that road and that we do not want to go there. They are proud of the leadership this government has shown and the capability that it is showing of staying out of deficit.
We promised Canadians that we will do that. We will continue to do that, but along with that, we will make sure that the debt is reduced for our children and grandchildren.
