They have destroyed health care as my good colleague has said.
In the post-1993 election, the Liberals arbitrarily gutted health care. Now all of a sudden in this budget, money has been put back into health care. Unfortunately, it just takes us back to the 1995 levels. What the government did, and this is really deplorable, is it arbitrarily took cash away from the provinces and put the blame for health care on them.
There is a term cooperative federalism. The government does not understand cooperative federalism. It does not understand cooperation in just about anything. It is arbitrary and unfortunately the Liberals have to pay for it. The Liberals paid for it on Monday night and they will certainly pay for it in elections to come.
Madam Speaker, I am sure you would much rather be outside in the sunshine than in here listening to me rant on the budget, but my time will be up very shortly and I am just beginning to roll.
We can talk about what the Liberals did not touch in the budget. They used the shotgun approach. They made all of these wonderful expenditures where the Prime Minister is trying to pay off all of his little debts before he leaves. What they did not do was talk about the real vision of what was required.
In my previous life before coming to the House, I found that it was always better to keep money in the pockets of the people who pay the taxes. This is really a simple philosophy. The member for Regina--Qu'Appelle probably will not share this philosophy with me, but it is better to keep the money in the pockets of the people who pay the taxes. They know how to spend the money better.
The finance minister has stood in the House and I think he used the term “northern tiger”. That was probably one of the biggest heights of hypocrisy I have ever heard, calling us the northern tiger, because he has never implemented any policies on tax reform that would give any indication that we are heading in the direction of being a northern tiger. The real tigers are the economies of Ireland and Hong Kong. Those are the economies that have used tax deductions and tax reductions to the benefit of the consumer, to the benefit of their citizens, to develop those economies that can be referred to as tigers.
We would be better referred to as the economy of the pussycats. We have effectively no tax reduction. We have absolutely no understanding as to how this economy could be better served by the Liberals not spending the money on HRDC, not spending the money on the gun registry, not spending the money on all of those black holes that the Prime Minister has put into place. It is better to make tax reductions, tax rebates and tax cuts, not only to Canadian consumers and taxpayers but to the corporations. Then we could develop a thing called a positive business environment that certainly would attract people to this country.
There are a couple of things. Let us reduce those taxes. Let us reduce the capital gains tax. Let us reduce the levels of taxation. In Canada the highest margin of taxes is at $100,000. In the United States it is at $400,000. We already are dealing in a deficit. Our Canadian children who have talent are going to go to other places rather than stay in this country which is deplorable, but the government is forcing them to leave. That in itself is deplorable.
Let us make some changes and reforms to the taxation system. What would the Liberals rather do? They would rather play with a piece of legislation that is going to deal with political financing because that is the Prime Minister's agenda, not making it better for Canadians with tax reductions. Why is the Prime Minister's agenda on political funding? Because he is vindictive enough to try to get the people on the back benches, to get the people on his own front benches who are running for leadership. That is why he has that agenda and not the agenda that is best for Canadians, not whether there will be tax cuts, not the situation with the sex offenders act, not the priorities of Canadians in general. That is deplorable.
I am going to sit down right now and let the parliamentary secretary speak. No applause yet. I know the parliamentary secretary is going to talk about the $42 billion deficit but he is not going to defend his government's mismanagement of every other thing that I have said here today. I want him to stand and tell me how he can defend the gun registry, how the health minister could stick her head in the sand when the SARS issue was prevalent in Ontario, how the Liberals could stick their heads in the sand while they destroyed the health care system, how they could stick their heads in the sand while they destroyed the softwood lumber industry, and how they could stick their heads in the sand when they destroyed agriculture. I want to hear those answers from the parliamentary secretary.
This has been a great week. Congratulations to Gary Schellenberger and congratulations to the citizens of Perth--Middlesex who have made the very wise choice to send a Progressive Conservative to the House. I can assure members that he will be on that side of the bench in the not too distant future. I do hope that the Liberals have the intestinal fortitude to call an election this spring with the current Prime Minister. We would love to go to the polls.