"This budget fails to recognize the real calamity facing farmers and community life on the Prairies."

Ottawa – Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton-Melville, had little praise and lots of criticism for the Liberal government’s millennium budget. "Liberal promises of tax cuts over four years should be tempered by the fact that this is the same political party that promised to ‘scrap, abolish and kill the GST’ in the 1993 election," observed Breitkreuz. "The end of $2 billion a year in ‘bracket creep’ tax increases was totally unexpected from the Finance Minister. Taxpayers thank Mr. Martin for finally implementing a proposal Reform has been recommending for the last five years. The worst oversight in this budget is that it completely fails to recognize the real calamity facing Saskatchewan farmers, and community life on the Prairies."

"Tax fairness and treating families equally was also totally ignored in this budget," reported Breitkreuz. According to the government’s own budget documents, a typical family of four with two incomes earning $50,000 a year will pay $2,836 in federal tax in the year 2001. A typical family of four with one income of $50,000 will pay $5,685 in federal tax. "This means that the single income earning family of four will pay $2,849 (100%) more in federal taxes than the neighbouring family of four with two income earners."

Other observations made by Breitkreuz in response to the budget:

1. This government still fails to understand that a budget surplus is over-taxation, plain and simple. Reform’s plan for a single tax would have cut taxes by twice as much.
2. $13.5 billion in announced Liberal tax cuts are really just cancelled Liberal tax increases.
3. Canada Pension Premiums will increase by $29.5 billion over the next five years effectively cutting the announced Liberal tax cuts in half.
4. This government refuses to realize that taxpayers are sick and tired of Liberal billion dollar boondoggles and buying votes with grants using our money. Reform’s plan calls for the complete elimination of all grants and handouts to business and special interest groups.
5. This government promises to spend $150 million improving highways while it takes $4.5 billion in fuel taxes out of taxpayers' pockets each and every year. Our roads need fixing, not just more patches on the patches.
6. This government would rather pay $40 million a year in interest to foreign banks than reduce the $570 million debt that’s hanging like a mill stone around taxpayers’ necks.
7. This government claims tax cuts in one breath and raise dozens of other taxes, premiums and user fees in the next so they can continue to play politics with other people’s money – yours.
8. The one-time injection of $2.5 billion into health and education transfers won’t eliminate the shortage of doctors and nurses or shorten the waiting lists in our hospitals. Canadians need real solutions to real problems in our ailing medicare system.
9. This government has failed to wake up to the reality of Canada’s aging population and prepare a plan for how the Canadian people will pay for the $1.5 trillion unfunded liability in health care funding and old age pensions.

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