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Edited Hansard • Number 083
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
The House resumed from April 1, 2003, consideration of the motion that Bill C-28, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 18, 2003, be now read the second time and referred to a committee; and of the amendment.
[Hansard – Pages 5050-5052]
Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, Canadian Alliance): Mr. Speaker, I would like to briefly address the budget implementation bill.
One of the concerns the people in my riding of Yorkton--Melville have is that the budget really has turned the surplus into a slush fund. There are a whole bunch of different programs funded by the government. There is no direction. The Liberals are buying a few votes here, buying a few votes there and creating the impression that they are doing something wonderful for society, but when it comes right down to it and we look very carefully at it, there is really no substance to it.
I will deal in a few minutes with one of those slush fund projects that really is a symbol of what is wrong in this country.
An hon. member: It wouldn't be the gun registry, would it?
Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: It would be the gun registry but we will get there in a minute.
There is a lot more of a surplus than the government would have us believe. Surplus is a nice word for overtaxation. If we used that surplus to lower the taxes, we could create a lot of jobs in this country. There would be an incentive again to invest. Companies would have more. Canadians would have more money in their pockets to spend. They could buy goods and services in their local communities rather than send the money to Ottawa where it just gets lost in a big black hole.
That kind of tax reduction is desperately needed. It would help the poorest in this country. If we raised the personal tax exemption that would have a huge impact on helping poor people in this country.
The budget announced $17.4 billion in new spending initiatives over three years, but the tax cuts were only $2.3 billion. The Liberals talked about all the tax cuts and they were almost insignificant compared to the huge increases in spending.
Hon. Anne McLellan: Is $100 billion insignificant?
Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: This backward budget really reflects the backward Liberal promises that it contains.
The government projected another $2 billion on Kyoto. It is probably the same as the gun registry. Where is that money going? What are we going to get for it? Has a cost benefit analysis been done? No. We have asked for a cost benefit analysis. The minister who is now replying to me was one of those people who should have done the cost benefit analysis on the gun registry before she handed it over to the next justice minister and before he handed it over to the Solicitor General. That cost benefit analysis should be done.
Are taxpayers getting value for their money? Absolutely not, because that study which I have asked for has never been relayed to Parliament. In fact when the Auditor General brought her report out on December 3 last year, she clearly said that Parliament has been kept in the dark. That is one of the ways it has been kept in the dark . Where is the cost benefit analysis? It has never been given to Parliament. We do not know if there are any benefits at all and whether they are cost effective in saving lives and reducing crime. But I digress.
The Canadian Alliance also believes, and I really want to underline this one, that the child care options should be given to parents and not to bureaucrats. Every parent in this country deserves the opportunity to choose the kind of child care he or she wants. By limiting their choices the government is doing a disservice to parents.
One program which I think has become a symbol of what is wrong with government in this country is the whole gun registry program, or as the Liberals like to paint it, gun control. I challenge Canadians to scratch below the surface on issues. If they scratched below the surface on this issue, they would realize that the gun registry has nothing to do with gun control, yet the government is asking for more and more money. The projected cost by the end of next year that the government admits to is $1.07 billion. It is unbelievable.
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Last week the government released a report on priorities and spending on the gun registry program. The government filled in a few of the blanks in this report, but there were 105 blanks where it did not know what the costs were.
It is unforgiveable that a government would table its spending priorities and leave all of those blanks. I call it shooting blanks. In effect the government is keeping Parliament in the dark. It is firing a bunch of missiles across here, asking Canadians to believe this is gun control when in fact it is not.
What could the government do with $1 billion? I was listening to my colleague a few minutes ago talking about how many MRIs could be bought. MRIs in our medical clinics would really help preserve people's lives and help improve the health of this country. That is not being provided.
The government could get 238 MRIs fully installed, staffed and running for that kind of money. If those MRIs were spread out across the country we would have something that is cost effective. That is why a cost benefit analysis is so important and needs to be done. It has not been done.
When former Bill C-68 was introduced the government was spending $16 million a year on cancer research. Think of the number of lives that could be saved if $1 billion was put into cancer research. That is why a cost benefit analysis is needed.
The Liberals will always come up with the mantra that if it saves one life, it is worth it. How many lives are being lost because of the misplaced spending priorities of the government? It is unforgiveable that it would go down this road and not examine what could be better done with that money.
The Liberals are great at creating impressions. I believe this is what the budget was all about. I believe that the gun registry was simply creating an impression. Why? To get votes. The Liberals were playing politics with taxpayers' hard-earned money, creating impressions that they are somehow improving public safety, creating the impression in the budget that somehow they are improving the lot of Canadians.
If Canadians scratched below the surface, and I challenge them to do that, they would find that the opposite was true, that the Liberals are taking the hard-earned money away from Canadians and putting it into funds that really do not accomplish anything in a material way.
My colleague talked about the amount of money that is collected through gasoline taxes, almost $5 billion a year. The government talks about its infrastructure project. If we actually scratched below the surface on that, we would see it is just a helter-skelter spending of money here, there and everywhere with no focused direction in getting our products to market and ensuring that it is helping the Canadian economy. If that was the government's purpose it would use that $5 billion to improve the highways in this country, to put in place those things in our transportation system that will be effective and truly help Canadians.
I have to touch on one other thing. It is unforgiveable and borders on a crime for the government to not pay down the debt when we have the opportunity to do so.
An hon. member: We are paying.
Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I hear them complaining about my comments on this.
This is an ethical issue. Why should our children and grandchildren be saddled with this huge debt, having to pay that for generations to come? Why do we have to support the government's habit of wasting money on a gun registry, on wasting money on all kinds of slush fund programs and not paying down the debt? That is unforgiveable.
The government should seriously look at the trust that has been placed in it by Canadians. It has to take that seriously and start doing the right thing. That would be to pay down the debt.
One of the things that has really come to the fore lately is that there will be a great leadership change within the Liberal Party. The leaders that are coming forward now have been the ones that have been signing the cheques, that have been part of the mess that has been created in this country. For us to suddenly think that this is somehow going to change if there is a change in leadership is again misleading Canadians.
(1705)
We should remind Canadians that this firearms registry, which has become a symbol of what is wrong with this country, was funded by a finance minister who now wants to become Prime Minister. I warn Canadians that we have to start to make substantial changes in this country or we will continue to slide downhill.