Madam Speaker, it is another year, another budget, and another set of broken promises rolled up into Bill C-44, the budget implementation act.
There is, I suppose, a certain irony that the government, which claims to be opposed to omnibus bills, would bring in this massive document that touches on so many areas, rather than separate legislation for its new ventures, such as the infrastructure bank. The government hopes that by burying the legislation in these hundreds of pages, it can avoid any detailed scrutiny.
We have to give the Liberals credit for one thing. They are treating Canadians equally, raising everyone's taxes. That is not surprising when we consider the reckless spending by the government. In the 2015 election, the Liberals made a promise to Canadians that they would run a small or modest deficit, perhaps about $10 billion a year in the first year, and then they should be able to balance the budget after their first term. We know now that those were empty promises. I leave it to Canadian people to decide if they were lies or just incompetence.
Once again, the Minister of Finance has let Canadians down. There is nothing small or modest about the deficit he is running. He has no plan to balance the budget by the end of this Parliament, or maybe ever again. The previous Conservative budget suggested balanced budget legislation that would include pay cuts for cabinet ministers while the government was running a deficit. Somehow I do not think we are going to see this government take that sort of principled stand.
Anyone who has ever run a business knows that borrowed money has to be repaid. The Minister of Finance is sinking Canada further into debt, making future generations pay for his spending spree. It is wrong to mortgage Canada's future this way. Politicians should be setting an example, not behaving as if money grows on trees.
The government will tell us it is doing great things with this spending spree. “Look at us”, they say, “Are we not great? We know how to spend money.” Of course, that is the pride the government has shown people so far. Any child can delight in spending money that does not belong to them. Fiscal responsibility is a lot tougher to accomplish, and the government does not seem to want to work hard enough to do so.
What are the great things the government is doing? There are tax increases for 1.8 million Canadian public transit users, for those who drink beer and wine, and for those who donate medicines to worthy causes. There are more tax hikes on child care, on small business owners, such as farmers, fishers, doctors, lawyers, and accountants, on oil and gas companies, and on tourism. The Liberals' motto seems to be “If it breathes, tax it.”
Where spending is needed, they instead cut back. We are looking at major cuts to defence spending, despite demands from the U.S. that other NATO members spend at least 2% of GDP to shoulder a greater amount of the load for our collective security. The government is deferring $8.5 billion in equipment purchases for our military, having already deferred $3.7 billion in the past budget. Our armed forces may be the best-trained and bravest fighting force in the world, but the men and women on the front lines cannot do their jobs without proper equipment.
National defence is clearly not a priority for the Liberal government. In an era of reckless Liberal spending, it is appalling that the largest cuts are consistently at the expense of the Canadian Armed Forces. This raises the question of whether or not the Liberals believe that Canada needs the ability to defend itself and our allies. Recent examples—including the Liberals' decision to pull our CF-18s out of the fight against ISIS, their preference for fourth generation fighter jets, their lack of increased support for our Ukrainian allies, and their failure to advance important procurement projects—suggest the Liberals expect other countries to do Canada's share.
They say Canada is back, but only as long as we are not asked to do anything, except look pretty.
The Liberals have repeatedly delayed releasing their defence policy review. Instead of ensuring that our men and women in uniform have the best equipment, training, and support available, it is looking more and more likely that Canada's military will be further scaled back and asked to do more with less.
Since the Liberals took office, 94% of announced infrastructure projects have failed to start construction. It is just big talk, with no walk. This means that jobs are not being created and the economy is not being stimulated. Instead of coming up with a new plan that actually builds infrastructure and creates jobs, now the government wants to double down on the existing infrastructure plan that has been proven not to work. This is how the Liberals define innovation.
We already knew that the Liberals were planning to take billions of dollars away from communities to pay for their infrastructure bank. Now we learn that they are also going to cancel the public transit tax credit, making it more expensive for Canadians to use public transit. The Liberals talk about something, but do something else.
Additionally, by allocating public transit funding based on ridership, the Liberal government is disadvantaging Canada's growing communities in favour of already developed urban centres. It looks as if no new public transit spending will occur in 2017-18. Indeed, the Liberals have decreased the federal share of funding for public transit projects to 40% and failed to include provincial cost sharing requirements. Without matching funding, municipalities may not be able to complete important projects. It is a mistake for the Liberals to continue to allocate public transit funds based primarily on ridership numbers. This formula favours large urban centres that already have developed public transit systems, and it disadvantages growing communities that arguably need these funds more.
Municipalities need good infrastructure, but they also need programs that are easy to access, provide predictable funding, and do not leave small and rural communities behind. They also need money now, not at some point in the far future, in 2050 or in the 22nd century.
We know that $1 billion of lapsed infrastructure funding from 2016 will not be reallocated until 2022-23, and that $15 billion will be taken away from community infrastructure projects in order to finance the Liberals' new infrastructure bank, including $5 billion removed from public transit projects, $5 billion removed from trade and transportation corridor projects, and another $5 billion removed from green infrastructure projects. That is taking away money that costs less, to borrow money that would cost two or three times more.
Bill C-44 includes the Canada infrastructure bank bill, but it is hazy on some details. Will foreign investors get to decide which infrastructure projects it funds? We already know that it will not be operating at arm's length, making it susceptible to Liberal government interference in its decisions.
One last thing I would like to look at is the changes this bill makes to the operation of the parliamentary budget officer. It is important to note that the government did not consult the PBO on these changes but has introduced them unilaterally. The PBO has expressed concerns about this legislation and its impact on his ability to do his job. He feels it will undermine the independence and non-partisanship of the PBO and undercut his office's ability to support Parliament.
This should be a concern for all parliamentarians, regardless of their political affiliation. This act makes changes to the degree of control that the Speakers of the Senate and the House of Commons will be expected to exercise over the PBO's activities, and it places limits on the PBO's ability to initiate reports and members' ability to request cost estimates of certain proposals.
To involve the PBO in the costing of election platforms, as this act does, seems to me to risk the non-partisan nature of the office. No matter—
