Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to get up and speak to this important motion on the table. I would like to congratulate my colleague, who did a super job with her comments, both in English and in French. As nervous as she was, she did a fine job, and I applaud her for being able to do that.
I am on my feet today to speak to the NDP motion, but I have to say with profound disappointment that instead of discussing the budget, we are discussing why we do not have a budget. I really do find it quite shameful that the government is refusing to conduct itself with even the slightest degree of fiscal prudence and transparency. A government that campaigned on accountability and transparency 10 years ago is now in a position where we are talking about passing motions to force it to table a budget. It really does not make a lot of sense when we look back at what the message was.
Canadians know that the fiscal situation has changed since the fall economic update. The government owes all Canadians an honest answer to hard economic questions. Level with Canadians and let them know what the situation is. I can see no reason why they would not just understand it, accept it, or disagree with it as they might, but they at least have the right to know.
The facts are clear, yet the Conservatives are smugly refusing to deal with the true fiscal reality, and their head in the sand approach is beyond contempt.
This is what we know so far. The most recent fiscal update made a series of assumptions about economic variables, including what the price of a barrel of oil would be over the next several months. The last time the minister did his math, oil was trading at $81 U.S. a barrel. At $81 a barrel, the minister figured, rightly, that there would be a surplus this year, the first since 2008, of about $1.9 billion. Now, however, sources such as those at the Bank of Canada say that oil will trade well below that $81 a barrel average. In fact, TD Bank said earlier this month that $50 a barrel oil would result in a $3.2 billion deficit. We did not say that. The Parliamentary Budget Officer did not say that. It was Toronto-Dominion Bank's expert economists. At $40 a barrel, which is not too far from where we are now, it would result in a deficit of $4.7 billion.
I think that Canadians would understand this if the government came forth and explained it, but no, the government continues to put its head in the sand in trying to figure out how it is going to do all of the things that it promised, even though we clearly cannot afford them.
Why can the government not just admit this and ask for help? Why can it not be honest with Canadians and parliamentarians and say this is a serious situation and ask how we can solve it in a non-political and positive way?
Rather than giving honest and forthright answers, the government has promised a spending spree totalling billions of dollars. It has steadfastly promised to ignore the facts because it claims it can increase expenditures, decrease revenues, and balance the budget simultaneously. The Conservatives must be real magicians to do that, and all of it would be done just in time for an election.
As appealing as all of this would seem when expressed as a sound bite in a taxpayer funded Conservative ad, it is just not believable. Canadians are not swallowing it. They do not believe it. They run their own households and businesses, and they know that the serious impact on oil revenue will have a huge effect on the government's ability to deliver a balanced budget.
I operated a small business for 30 years, and my banker would never have accepted a financial plan like the one the government is talking about. Most Canadians know that we cannot budget like this. It does not work in a household. It does not work in business. It certainly does not work in government, as least if we are being honest with people.
Liberals want to see the updated numbers. Let us have some transparency and some honesty so that Parliament can make the decisions necessary to get past this crisis.
Canada needs a coherent economic growth plan. Instead, the Prime Minister is making it up as he goes along. The Conservatives have put all of Canada's eggs into one basket, and when that basket crumbled, they lost their footing and had nothing to fall back on.
The Prime Minister is addicted to high oil prices and now that the economic situation has changed, he is unable to cope with adverse economic developments. He is retreating to a bunker with the hope that no one will notice and that somehow, when he gets up the next morning, everything with be fine.
As I said, instead of reaching out to Canadians to show leadership and build confidence, the Prime Minister has punted the federal budget, which is normally delivered in February, into April or later. It might mean a June budget being introduced without any analysis, which means we will not have any time to discuss or debate it, and roll right into an election. By the time Canadians find out the real picture, it will be well after the election, and by that time it might be too late.
It means that Canada will go without a budget for more than this entire fiscal year. Granted, Conservative budgets are only slightly better than nothing, but it would be nice to have some accurate numbers, and even if they are not really accurate, at least it is something with which we can deal.
Let us remember that the government did not get us into this situation overnight.
In 2006, the Prime Minister was handed a steadily growing economy, which had generated 3.5 million net new jobs, declining debt and taxes, a decade of balanced budgets, annual surpluses of about $13 billion and fiscal flexibility projected ahead five years totalling $100 billion. This is what the Prime Minister had to work with, the most robust fiscal situation in the world, but he blew it in less than three years.
He overspent by three times the rate of inflation, eliminated all the financial shock absorbers that had been built into Canada's budgetary framework to protect against adverse events, and he put our country back into deficit again, a structural deficit, before and not because of the recession which arrived in late 2008.
The Prime Minister failed to anticipate that recession. We all remember his great words that there would be no recession and that we were in great shape. However, six months later, we had a recession.
As the recession began, the Prime Minister dismissed it as just a good buying opportunity. When he could not deny reality any longer, his belated stimulus plan was slow, convoluted, intensely partisan and tainted with boondoggles like fake lakes in Toronto and multimillion dollar misappropriations for ornamental gazebos and sidewalks to nowhere in Muskoka. He used the stimulus package as a mathematically-challenged excuse to cover up what was horrific and short-sighted fiscal management. In effect, he went on a spending spree with the nation's credit cards, and he has no plan now to pay the bills, not even the minimum balance.
The Prime Minister thinks he should not be required to report to Parliament. He just expects that people will trust him, despite his personal legacy of fiscal failure. However, Canadians are weary of the fiscal failures that characterize the current tired government. The Conservatives expect us to lower expectations and settle for less. “Just trust us” they say, whether it is the Iraqi war or the budget. That is the exact opposite of what any of us should be doing.
Unfortunately the bill for Conservative blunders is being shouldered by Canada's middle class and the children of that middle class. Middle-class incomes have been flat for years, while living costs and household debt have ballooned. Of those employed in the private sector, 70% cannot count on a company pension, 60% of middle-class parents worry about affording any kind of higher education for their kids, youth unemployment remains near recession-like levels and a whole generation of young Canadians have put their lives on hold. Let us not forget the attack on income trusts and old age pensions. Is this what the Prime Minister means when he talks about prosperity? I do not think so.
Today's motion is about transparency and accountability, and Canadians deserve a fiscally competent government, just not this one.