Holding the Government to Account

Thank you to everyone who submitted their recommendations for Budget 2009, I am always impressed by the wealth of ideas that come from our riding.

With respect to a budget vote, the Liberal Party will support the Government’s budget in the House of Commons. This is the right thing to do.

The Conservative government’s management of our economy has been appalling. They have recklessly overspent in previous budgets; engaged in utterly irresponsible tax policies in order to curry favour with the electorate; misled the public on the true economic situation before us (claiming that Canada would see a surplus while knowing that they had already overspent and we were heading into deficit spending); and introduced an economic update last fall that was a purely political document that would do nothing for our economic challenges. Budget 2009 has many important solutions that we asked the government to adopt. We are therefore able to support it. The alternative is to defeat the budget and have an election. This would be irresponsible in our nation’s time of need.

The solutions we fought to get into the budget include: measures to make credit available to small and medium sized businesses, which is a crucial measure given that the absence of credit is a major cause of this downturn; support for affordable housing and skills development; an investment in colleges and universities; and support for infrastructure. We also sought and got an expansion of the working income tax benefit, child tax benefit, a reduction in taxes for those who are least affluent in our society, and a modest extension of EI benefits.

However, this budget missed an enormous opportunity to invest in the green economy, change the EI system sufficiently to help those who have lost their jobs, and invest adequately in research and development. We will continue to pursue these and other solutions which we feel are very important to protect the vulnerable, get people back to work, and capitalize on modernizing our economy so that we can take advantage of future opportunities.

We will also hold this Government to account by setting benchmarks for them to achieve and demanding that they submit regular reports to Canadians on their progress. Mr. Harper has a history of promising and then chronically failing to deliver, whether on the economy, the environment, defence or social policy. As the Official Opposition, we will do our job to set the benchmarks, hold the government to account, and offer solutions to deal with the challenges our nation faces.

The future is uncertain, but our duty and commitment is to our citizens and our nation. We will ensure that we, as Canadians, can achieve the highest standard of living with a strong economy, a sustainable and clean environment, and that we take care of those who are most in need.

-Keith

See Budget 2009 for yourself at : http://www.budget.gc.ca/2009/home-accueil-eng.asp

Holding the Government to Account

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Environment, Health, Jobs and the Economy, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.