Debate on C-48 (NDP Budget) Hansard excerpts - June 16/05

Mr. Deepak Obhrai (Calgary East, CPC): Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to speak on Bill C-48, a budget bill that was introduced by the Liberal government.

What is important about Bill C-48 is the backroom deal that was made by the NDP and Liberals for the government to stay in power. Originally, Bill C-43, the budget bill, had a lot of sense to it, but when the Liberal government felt threatened it suddenly made a deal with the NDP in Bill C-48, which committed $4.6 billion extra as demanded by the NDP.

Without thinking, without consultation and without any kind of plan, the deal with struck. Now we have a bill before the House that has an additional $4.6 billion for expenditures. It is causing concern across the country because we do not know how the money is going to be spent.

Of course there are vague ideas such as housing, foreign aid and things like that, but there is absolutely no concrete plan because this was struck very quickly. Neither did the NDP members ever have an idea about what they wanted to spend the money on, but because there was an opportunity presented to them they signed a deal and said they wanted $4.6 billion to be spent on certain areas, which they identified.

Now Canadians are stuck with it. Today we are debating the bill. It is not possible under any circumstances for any person who is fiscally responsible to support the bill, because this bill, in its generalities, is just about spending money.

Of course one of the areas that has been targeted is foreign aid, which the NDP keeps thinking is its domain. I have been in Parliament for almost eight years and have constantly heard from the NDP that it wants to increase the foreign aid budget to 0.07%, because this was a figure that was pulled out of the air and now the United Nations is committed to it. I think that is a substantial sum of money.

But the dynamics have changed. I come from the continent of Africa, which has been a recipient of the largest amount foreign aid for years and years and I have seen the effects when foreign aid is given without a plan and how it becomes a completely ineffective tool of development. Today, Africa and Latin America have not--and I repeat, have not--borne any fruit from the money that has been poured into these countries with good intentions. Today Africa has the highest levels of HIV and poverty. It has an education system and a health care system that are collapsing. So does Latin America.

People have the idea that if we throw money at this, which is what this budget is all about and what the NDP came up with, for some reason or somehow the extra money will solve the problem and we do not need to have a plan.

Even this week Mr. Lewis was crying that there needs to be 0.07%. What I do not understand about the 0.07% issue is how the money is going to be spent for these people. As a former critic of international development, I have gone round the world. I have been to Europe and I have seen the foreign aid budget for Ireland and for the Netherlands and the foreign aid budgets for all these countries that are pouring in more and more money, but for what and how are we going to use it?

Let me give a small example. When the tsunami disaster took place, the world responded with generosity. Suddenly there was all that money coming in, but there was no plan for how to spend it. The money was there, but how would we spend this money? That today is the issue of foreign aid.

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The finance ministers at the G-8 have just wiped out the debts of all these poor countries. I do not see anything wrong with that because those countries were being burdened by their debts. They could not spend money on education and social services that were required in their countries because they were paying this heavy debt. There was no tangible economic benefit received for the money that had been borrowed because nobody was interested in seeing how development took place in these countries.

Now we have the same scenario. We have cleaned up the debt. Fine, but what have we really done? We have changed the fundamentals. Let me explain. Yesterday, even the World Bank president admitted there was a serious flaw. Unless we correct the fundamental flaws that cause poverty in these countries, we can throw as much money as we want at them but nothing much will happen. Let us talk about these fundamental flaws that are causing concern around the world.

Trade barriers to these countries are the largest impediments to development. Farmers in these countries cannot sell their products to us at all because we put artificial barriers on them. The subsidies that we give out, the thousands and thousands of dollars to agriculture, are hurting all those farmers in those countries. If they cannot sell their products, they will remain beggars. We come along and throw a couple of dollars at them and call it foreign aid, but it does not work. That is a fundamental flaw. We need to change that. The WTO is saying that change is required if we want to take Africa and Latin America out of poverty. That is one of the critical factors.

Another factor is good governance, responsible governance. NEPAD has come into place in Africa to provide good governance to Africans. That is fine. One can understand that we would support NEPAD. If Africans can police themselves well and bring in good governance, we would be happy with that, but the case of Zimbabwe shows that NEPAD has a serious flaw. No one is holding Mr. Mugabe accountable for the simple reason that Mr. Mugabe fought for independence in that country when it was under white rule. Out of courtesy to him and out of courtesy for that war that he fought in the bush, nobody is willing to hold him accountable despite the fact that every factor indicates that Zimbabwe is going down.

How could we expect that these kinds of people will be brought to justice? Mr. Mugabe did his job but it was time for him to move on and he did not. These examples keep going on and on. It does not take long for countries that are not sound to fall down. We need to stand behind the African countries and tell them they have to have those institutions. We need to support those institutions.

Only recently, CIDA narrowed its focus to 25 countries. Prior to that we were in 106 countries giving a few dollars and doing what? I do not understand what we were doing. Today my colleague questioned the Minister of International Cooperation as to why we give aid to China. China itself is giving foreign aid to other countries and Canada gives foreign aid to China. Somebody needs to knock their heads here. In answer to our questions we hear, “No, we do not give aid to China. We give it to the other institutions to help them”. They have the money for their institutions to move forward. WTO negotiator John Weekes is working to help China in the WTO.

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I could go on and on about foreign aid. It is difficult to support this budget because there is no plan. There is no plan on how we want to spend this thing out here. Hopefully, somebody will hold the government accountable because these are Canadian taxpayers' dollars that we are talking about...

Mr. Deepak Obhrai: Mr. Speaker, my colleague has raised an excellent point. It has become shameful for us in Canada. He is absolutely right. We have been going around talking about good governance and telling other countries how they should handle their affairs when we do not look at how we handle our own affairs.

We only need look at what has come out of the Gomery inquiry, and let us not mince words about it. The way the Liberal Party operated in Quebec on the sponsorship scandal with all this money, one would think one was reading a novel about some dictatorship in a third world country where money was flowing around to buy things. Under no circumstances would one expect something like that in a country like Canada. We would expect that people who are in public service would have honourable intentions and would not take the Canadian taxpayers to the cleaners.

What we have heard is extremely shocking. No wonder Canadians are angry. Let us not even worry about what the foreign aid people in other countries are saying, we Canadians ourselves are angry. When I go out in my riding and talk to my constituents, it is unbelievable the amount of anger that exists.

The Prime Minister of Canada went on national television and stated quite clearly that he was sorry. It is not a question of being sorry. What kind of a message are we giving to our children? What kind of a message are we giving to anybody on what has happened here?

One of the good things about this whole issue is that we do have certain safeguards. One safeguard that brought this issue to light was the Auditor General. I am very happy to say that it was the Auditor General's investigation that brought this issue right out in the open. I have been speaking in Parliament about all the government waste that is going on and nobody listens, but when the Auditor General brought it up, that was the safeguard we had. I am happy to say that part of the Conservative Party's platform is to strength that institution to ensure there is accountability and never again will something like that happen in Canada.

Mr. David Anderson (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC): Mr. Speaker, in his excellent speech, my colleague mentioned that the government has no plan. That is very clear in a number of areas. One of the big issues in my riding right now has to do with safety and security.

We just found out in the last couple of days that five RCMP detachments in the southwest corner of Saskatchewan are going to be closed. These are detachments along the border. We have about 150 miles of border with Montana. The RCMP have decided that they are not going to put resources into that area any more. They are going to pull out.

There will be 100 miles of border that will be basically undefended. There will not be an RCMP officer stationed within 50 miles of the border. Each of the three points have multiple intersections to highways and as people come away from the border, it is a long time before they get to a place where there is an RCMP detachment. I just wanted to point that out.

In terms of no plan, it is kind of interesting as I have called around and brought this up in the House. The Liberal government said, “It is not our fault. We do not have anything to do with this. It is the province's fault”. When I called the provincial justice minister, he told me, “It is not our fault. We work with the RCMP, but it is really their fault. They allocate the resources”. I spoke to the RCMP and they said, “We really don't make those decisions. We kind of leave that up to the local detachment”. I pointed out to them that I was sure that the detachments could make the decisions to reduce staffing but they sure could not make decisions to increase staffing.

A large area of our province is being left completely unprotected along the border. It is interesting that the Liberals seem to have no plan there, but they do have pretty specific plans in other areas.

We heard this afternoon in question period that the industry minister's official agent has been appointed as a director of the Business Development Bank. It seems the Liberals were able to plan that very well. I have been involved in Wheat Board issues. It is interesting that the campaign manager of the minister in charge of the Wheat Board has been appointed as the lobbyist for the Canadian Wheat Board.

I would like the member to comment on why the Liberals seem to be so well organized and so able to plan when it is to their own benefit, but they are so unable to plan when it is to Canadians' benefit.
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Mr. Deepak Obhrai: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for pointing out what is going on in our federation. We are blaming each other. The federal government blames the province, and the province blames the federal government. This playing goes on all day.

When I go out in my riding Canadians are saying, “We don't care who you are. Get the job done”. It is as simple as A, B, C. We have provincial agreements and we could easily sit down and talk with each other to find solutions. Our duty is to help Canadians.

This afternoon a colleague asked a question regarding the fiscal imbalance. The federal government keeps taking in money but how much money is it putting back into Canada?

During the election campaign, we saw all the expenditures. The Liberal government says that it is giving money to the cities, but it was the Liberals who starved the cities. The Prime Minister was the finance minister for how many years? Today as we look around, the cities, infrastructure, defence, everything everywhere is crying for money.

My colleague from Saskatchewan has pointed out another example where I am sure that the government decided to take the money out to save the expenditure. Of course, that was not part of the NDP deal and that is why the RCMP does not have the money now. After all, this budget bill is $4.9 billion for the NDP so the Liberal government can survive.

The common sense approach that the member was asking about, I would not expect that from the government side.

Mr. James Rajotte: Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for the member. I know that he has a fine mind, but he is twisting himself into a pretzel to defend this legislation.

The fact is that he and his colleague, the Minister of Finance, defended the first budget bill as a perfect bill and a month later they are twisting themselves into pretzels, saying, “Whoops, we missed $4.6 billion. We are going to have to put this in”. It is a perfect budget now, they say, after they have changed it by $4.6 billion.

He talks about the issue of unplanned surpluses. The reality is that the finance minister in the last election stood up and criticized our party when he said that there was no way we could afford those things we talked about because the surplus was $1.9 billion. We all know what he said after the election. He said, “Whoops, I got that wrong too. It is actually $9.1 billion”. Maybe he is dyslexic and he got the numbers mixed up, but that shows what this government is doing with its own surpluses. It has no idea. That is one of the concerns: it has no idea in terms of fiscal forecasting.

Second, on the whole issue of “enabling legislation”, that is a euphemism. This is a $4.5 billion slush fund. That is what this is. After closely watching this government operate for 2000, I have absolutely no confidence whatever in its ability to manage or spend taxpayer dollars.

I will give another example of that. In the budget of February 23--

Hon. John McKay: Eight surpluses in a row.

Mr. James Rajotte: Because the government has been overtaxing Canadians.

In the budget of February 23, the government said that if it spent $5 billion it would implement the Kyoto protocol. Three weeks later, the government said it was sorry, but it got that wrong and it was going to have to spend $10 billion.

At the environment committee, I know that the member for Essex and the member for Red Deer looked at where the money is going. They cannot find out where the money is going. It has gone off into various programs. We cannot find out where it has gone. While the government has actually spent about $2 billion, emissions have gone up.

That is the fiscal record of this government. It is absolutely disastrous. The only reason it has surpluses is that it has been overtaxing Canadians.

That is my final point. The Liberals have no concept of the fact that average Canadians are working harder and harder, even according to Don Drummond, and there is no increase in their take-home pay. That is fundamentally wrong and it needs to change.
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Mr. Charlie Penson (Peace River, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I thought the member for Edmonton—Leduc really hit the nail on the head when he talked about the irresponsibility of this Liberal-NDP coalition budget. It is really illegitimate.

I was on the finance committee during the prebudget hearings. We heard from a lot of Canadians about what they wanted. We thought the budget in Bill C-43 set out the priorities that government thought important. We thought that was its agenda for the year. Then we found out that they had an illegitimate meeting in that no-tell motel room in Toronto and produced an illegitimate budget as a result.

The member for Edmonton--Leduc was talking about the debt. I would like to ask him a question. Was it not the irresponsible spending during the last coalition of these two parties, the NDP and the Liberals, that ran up this massive debt and cost interest charges of $35 billion to $40 billion per year, which Canadians are having to pay?
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Mr. James Rajotte: Mr. Speaker, I will address the last issue first. It was the debt; it was the increase in spending that started in the Trudeau years, from 1968 until about 1984, that caused the increase. There was a $200 billion debt at that time because of the way the system was set up.

An hon. member: Mulroney figured it out before that.

Mr. James Rajotte: The member knows there is a lag in terms of when economic policy is implemented and it actually takes effect.

The fact is that the Liberal-NDP coalition set it up so that the Conservatives had a very difficult time in office. Operationally there was a surplus in terms of incoming money, but the problem was what I referred to earlier: the debt was so big at that time. The yearly payments to service that debt were so large that it caused an increase in the debt up to $400 billion.

Those members created the problem and they are making it worse with what they are doing right now.
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