Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a small correction. I have seven minutes left as I am splitting my time with the member for Saint Boniface.
To continue from where I left off, I was talking about budget 2006 and how the Conservative government saw fit to make cuts despite the fact that it had a $17 billion surplus. One has to pose the question: why cuts, especially social spending cuts?
What does the government have against the vulnerable, the poor and women, people who are really in need of assistance? The only logic there is that the government has a neo-conservative agenda. Those members are not thinking about the people of Canada. They are thinking about those who match their mindset of every person for themselves.
A statement released by the Treasury Board on September 25, 2006 said, “We have found savings in...Programs that weren't providing good value for money for Canadians”. Which Canadians is the government talking about?
Could the government be referring to people who suffer from the lack of basic literacy skills? Could it be talking about students looking for a summer job so they can afford to pay tuition? Could it be referring to our first nations and Inuit people?
Perhaps it is referring to our troubled forestry sector and single industry communities that benefit from regional economic development funding. Or what about ordinary Canadians who face discrimination on a daily basis yet lack the necessary resources to launch a challenge in the courts?
Maybe it is referring to the thousands of women over the age of 65 in this country who live below the poverty line. What does the government have against these seniors who have contributed to Canada and its well-being?
It does not make sense for the Conservative government to go after the most vulnerable in our society.
Let us look at budget 2007, with its rather strange heading, “Aspire”, which won the finance minister a place in Canadian history for the highest spending budget ever. Gone was the Conservative mantra of less government and lower taxes. In 2007, the Conservatives “aspired” to blow as much of the surplus as they possibly could in the shortest possible time.
What did they get out of it? Zero. The money went down the drain without any investment in the Canadian economy and without boosting the Canadian economy. That leads us to the Prime Minister's current dilemma. Now that the United States has entered a recession, the Conservatives are faced with the stark possibility of running a deficit when the economic fallout hits Canada. The Conservative solution, of course, is to force an election before the storm hits here.
Although the Prime Minister is renowned for keeping secrets well within the dark confines of the PMO, I will let members into his current strategy: first, play politics with our troops currently serving in Afghanistan and then try to blame the government's indecision on opposition parties; and second, create an artificial crisis in the Senate, which is currently examining far-reaching justice bills that cover everything from conditional sentencing to the age of sexual consent, and then draw a line in the sand because the bill is being given second sober thought in the Senate.
Or else what? Will the Prime Minister call an election? Does the Prime Minister think Canadians are foolish? They know that procedures are in place in Parliament which allow the government to get over the logjam. The government does not have to go into an election.
However, the Prime Minister, in his deceitful manner, is trying to fudge issues and convince Canadians that somehow his desire for an election can be blamed on the opposition. Or could it be that the budget is on the horizon in the next three weeks?
Canadians do not see a pressing reason for an election. The Prime Minister knows that he will face the wrath of Canadians if he is perceived to be engineering his own government's defeat.
What would be in the next budget? We can only guess, because the Conservatives have utilized all the surplus. They cannot give out any more goodies. What are they planning to do? They will make empty promises with no intention of delivering them, because the cupboard is bare. The cupboard is bare because of our finance minister, who was the architect of the deficit in Ontario and is bringing those very skills here to the federal Parliament.
The fiscal incompetency of the government has come home to roost. The cupboard is depleted. The government cannot show anything, zip, zero, for all the money it wasted. The previous budget was an inflationary budget. It has done nothing for Canadians.
Let us look at history. Who was responsible for the largest federal deficit in history? Brian Mulroney was. Of course there also was Mike Harris in Ontario. The current Minister of Finance was his finance minister.
In 1993 the federal Liberals inherited a bankrupt country. It took intelligence, commitment and vision to get the country back on track. The IMF once called Canada a economic basket case, but by 1997, thanks to the discipline and the leadership of the Liberals, we saw balanced budgets and Canada was back on track. Now Canada is the envy of the G-7 countries.
If history is repeating itself, where the Liberals come back to clean up a Conservative mess, we are probably right when we say that the government is way out of its depth, without vision, morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest.
