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Edited
Hansard • Number 031
Monday, March 29, 2004
Financial Statement of Minister of Finance
The House resumed consideration of the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government, and of the amendment.
Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I stand before you having heard what the Liberal government has to offer to Canadians in the form of its 2004 budget. It is quite obvious that Canadians have had to listen to the Liberals' so-called plans for a better Canada, but the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and this Liberal government have not listened to the taxpayers of this country. They have not listened.
I recently toured my riding of Yorkton--Melville, an area in eastern Saskatchewan that includes both urban and rural settings, and I can tell the House that Canadians are sick and tired of being jeopardized because of the Liberal agenda. If there is any question as to whether the Liberals' billion dollar scandals like the sponsorship program or the gun registry are fading from the minds of our taxpayers, members can just ask any of my constituents: they are not.
Canadians feel sheer resentment and frustration toward the Liberals for misusing and mishandling their money, and uttering words like accountability and transparency in the budget speech is not going to regain the trust that this government has lost.
Canadians are outraged over the loss of their tax dollars, yet the Liberal government chooses to ignore their cries to scrap programs like the gun registry, which is estimated to balloon to $2 billion before it is even fully implemented. We are hearing that there may be changes to the gun control program, but that is not what we need to hear. Canadians were waiting to hear that no more money would be wasted on the useless registry. Instead, they were lied to with words like “better money management”.
How is their money being better managed with a program that the Liberals said would cost $2 million but is instead heading toward the $2 billion mark? That is one thousand times over budget. How can the government justify continuing spending on a program aimed to keep duck hunters on the edge and further outrage the very people who are funding it, the Canadian taxpayers? How much longer will our taxpayers have to pay for a useless program that continues to exist only as a Liberal propaganda program?
My riding is home to one of Saskatchewan's major health care facilities, the Yorkton Regional Health Centre. It helps serve 60,000 people in the Sunrise health district, plus a good number of western Manitoba residents. The heath districts in Saskatchewan share a number of services, requiring people to travel to Regina or Saskatoon for major surgeries, tests or specialized treatment.
While the drive to one of these centres on a weekly or sometimes even daily basis can be very tedious, the grave concern is with the amount of time people have to wait to receive treatment or in some cases even to be diagnosed. It is an unconscionable length of time that they have to wait. People are walking around with cancers spreading through their bodies and some do not even know it. Men previously diagnosed with prostate cancer are waiting months for treatment while the cancer spreads. For some, necessary surgeries come too late and the spreading cancer cannot be stopped.
It is absolutely unconscionable. These people have no hope. The treatment they are getting makes them feel more hopeless. The health and quality of life of Canadians are suffering because this government cannot get its priorities straight. The $2 billion band-aid the government announced is incomparable to the $25 billion wound that was opened by the finance minister when he slashed health care spending.
Young people in their forties and fifties are being forced into wheelchairs because they are waiting for hip replacement surgeries. They have to put their dignity on the line as they ask for help in bathing, dressing and using the washroom. These people have to rely on others to care not only for them but for their own families as well. All they want is a chance to live life again.
These people understand the need to wait their turn for surgery such as a hip replacement, but there is no answer as to how long that wait will be. The waiting lists in Saskatchewan are so long that necessary surgeries are not even being scheduled. People are living in agony. For some, that means placing even more of a load on overworked doctors, nurses and other health care employees. There is no light at the end of the tunnel for these people because this Liberal government refuses to hear what is really happening out there. The Liberals have placed a huge burden on the health care system, yet they will not take responsibility.
My constituents are very perceptive. They already see the pattern formed by the Prime Minister and his Liberal government. They see that the government cannot control taxpayers' dollars. Nor do they believe any of the promises made by the Prime Minister. Time and time again our people have been let down by the government and they simply will not fall for false hopes anymore.
The Prime Minister says health care is a priority, yet that clearly has not been the case in this or any of his past budgets.
He says more resources need to be devoted to the military, yet our servicemen and servicewomen are risking their lives flying in ancient Sea King helicopters and there is not even a plan to replace them.
There was the promise to scrap the GST, which was broken.
There were promises to lower taxes. They were broken.
And just where does the fuel tax go? Certainly not to the broken down highways connecting my constituents to their hospitals.
By offering very little in the budget, maybe the Prime Minister thinks he can make good on very little promises. They are baby steps, I guess.
My constituents, like others in agriculture based ridings, resent the government for holding its farmers and cattle producers hostage. The very reason that communities in my riding exist is the agriculture industry. They exist thanks to it. International farm machinery manufacturing facilities like Morris Industries in Yorkton and even the town of Esterhazy, home to IMC Kalium Canada, the world's largest potash mines, know how vital farmers are to the country.
Our farmers and ranchers have suffered through droughts and poor markets, and now BSE, virtually alone. The Liberals have repeatedly ignored pleas from our food providers all while millions have gone to fund this government's latest scam.
I will have to finish later, Mr. Speaker.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair): I thank you for your cooperation. You will have three more minutes for your speech after question period.
Financial Statement of Minister of Finance
The House resumed consideration of the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government, and of the amendment.
The Speaker: When the House broke for question period, the hon. member for Yorkton--Melville had the floor and there remained to him three minutes in the time allotted for his remarks.
Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I would like to complete my remarks. I was describing the hardships borne by the people of my riding because of the fiscal mismanagement of this government.
The recent financial injection is very welcome for farmers, but it only helps those who are left in the agricultural sector. Even for most of them, it is rather ineffective.
It took the government 10 long months to finally come up with something to offer our cattle producers. However, in those 10 months ranchers have lost so much money that they have had to choose whether to feed their animals or feed their families, whether to waste fuel transporting an older cow to auction or waste a bullet to eliminate one more cull cow, and whether to trust this government will come through with some help or sell a farm that has belonged to a family for 100 years. These are some of the decisions they have to make.
Every day another auction is being held in my riding, selling off whole herds and in some cases entire farms, all because Liberal aid came too late. For some who are selling their farms, they are also selling the only home that they have known and a family heritage piece. The tragedy is not only in witnessing the loss of a livelihood, it is in knowing that the livelihood is lost because this Liberal government could not get its act together quickly enough to deal with the crisis.
Tragedy is seeing farmers sell their homes because this Liberal government made them wait for compensation just so it could have a photo opportunity to announce aid to the agriculture sector. Tragedy is seeing the resentment on the faces of those people abandoned by this Liberal government. What does the government have to offer those who already have had to leave behind 100 years of family tradition and heritage? Members can believe that the picture-perfect press conference last Monday in southern Alberta did nothing for those farmers who have already gone broke.
With the death of our farms, we are also seeing the death of our rural communities. As the population ages, more and more people are moving to the cities. My riding has seen the migration of people to the city. Farms are being abandoned and with that comes the closure of businesses and schools.
Since 1997, one school division in the Yorkton--Melville riding saw four of its eight schools close before the division amalgamated with the city division. One community fought so hard to save its school that in the end it formed its own school division in order to remain open. Another school in the division has been granted one more year before its closure. Parents are struggling to keep even elementary schools open so that children as young as five do not have to sit on a bus for an hour each morning and again each afternoon.
While cities are seeing population explosions so great infrastructure projects cannot keep up, the rural communities are fighting to survive. A half hour drive one way for a jug of milk or the mail is a common event for rural people. As our agriculture industry continues to slump under Liberal rule, rural communities will continue to disappear. That half hour drive will become 45 minutes and then it will become an hour. There is resentment toward this government and how it has abandoned our rural population.
Just like the rest of Canada, my constituents are well aware of the little surplus game that the Prime Minister likes to play. They know the Liberal way: underplay the surplus only to see the surprise and delight on the faces of the Liberal bigwigs when they reward Canadians with supposedly unexpected money. Nobody is falling for it. Canadians do not want to pay into a surplus so that the Liberals can play the role of hero and suddenly hand out money just before election time.
No matter how we look at it, the Prime Minister is not suddenly coming up with more money for health care or the cities. It is still our money, but the Liberals just hoard it and that suits their purpose. In this case, the purpose will be an early election call and an attempt to buy votes with taxpayers' money. I am sorry, Mr. Prime Minister, but my constituents and voters across the country cannot be bought off. In fact--
The Speaker: I hesitate to interrupt the hon. member, but I have tried my best to accommodate him on his three minutes. He has gone a little over. The hon. member for Athabasca.