Ottawa-Ed Komarnicki, MP, condemned Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, who delivered his budget speech in the House of Commons today, without a single mention to farmers or the agriculture industry.

“I could not believe, as I sat and listened to his speech, that Minister Goodale completely ignored his own province and the needs of our farmers. This is absolute proof that he has made the full conversion to becoming completely ‘Ottawa-ized’ and completely out of touch with his home town and home province,” declared Komarnicki.

“Goodale was able to hand out goodies, address the national debt and pour a lot of money into liberal pet projects,” said Komarnicki, “but how could he forget the people of Saskatchewan? This is the biggest slap in the face to our farmers I have seen yet. This Liberal government is not prepared to acknowledge the severity of the income crisis facing farm families. They continue to limp along with a flawed CAIS program and have no program with a vision that will keep our farmers doing what they to best, farming our land. Only with a change of government is there any hope for new thinking and sufficient funding for farming into the future. So much for Liberals addressing western alienation.”

Any type of income tax decrease, whether direct or through raising the exemption is welcome relief, although it falls far short of what the Conservatives were proposing. The Finance Minister is offering a tax break to Canadians by raising the personal exemption, but this will be done gradually, at a snail’s pace over the next five years. Canadians will barely perceive any benefit of this announcement until into the next decade.

The Minister announced, what he said was a significant increase in spending for the Canadian military, but much of this money is a re-hashing of previous commitments. There is no doubt that they are under funded and under equipped. It’s embarrassing that what military assets and personal Canada does have cannot be moved to arenas of operation. We have to rent planes and ships from other countries to get our forces overseas.

Increasing capital cost allowances and small business deductions, strengthening support for innovation on the part of small and medium sized business firms and taking steps to improve the business environment are welcome relief. The Minister promised a reduction in corporate tax from 21% to 19%, but again, these do not come fully into effect until 2009. This will take too long to be of much value to businesses.

In this budget, the Minister continued the folly of trying to meet its unrealistic Kyoto obligations which includes money to be sent overseas to pay for “hot air” credits from other countries. Today, they started to unveil some plans, carrot-like tax incentives and subsidies to coax businesses and consumers to become more energy-efficient and to cut down fossil fuel use.

The government has set aside $5 billion over the next five years to be funneled into a national day care system, a policy which is strictly within provincial jurisdiction. “Do we want state run institutions raising our children or would we sooner put some money in the pockets of Canadian families so that they can make their own choices on child care,” asked Komarnicki.

Many of the budget promises are a recycling of promises that have been made, many of which extend into the future. “This wouldn’t be so bad except we have to remember that it will be up to the Prime Minister, who the media have nicknamed Mr. Dithers, to implement them. The Services Canada notion has some merit in breaking the bureaucratic bubble in Ottawa by making services to the public more available across Canada, but as surely as day follows night, Ottawa will figure a way of having it cost more and landing in Liberal friendly areas,” said Komarnicki.

The Liberals having simply forgotten farmers are happy with the hope that the American border will be open March 7th to live cattle under 30 months. It is sad to see farmers going down while the Liberal government concerns itself about buying hot air.

I was pleased to see rental subsidies as part of the government housing policy. The government should be out of the business of owning and maintaining houses. There need to be incentives to developers to build rental accommodation and houses, Zero-down payments, for those that can own homes and rental subsidies for those that cannot is a good idea. We must always look after our homeless and so I was pleased to see a specific amount directed specifically to deal with homelessness and the issues associated with it.

The gas tax transfer to municipalities is much needed by municipalities but we must remember that the overall state of infrastructure in the provinces and municipalities is due to the federal government failing to provide the funds necessary to maintain and improve them.

The equalization formula itself has ripped Saskatchewan off in excess of $4 billion. Mr. Goodale makes much of the setting of the new Equalization formula and establishing a panel of experts to review Saskatchewan’s equalization payments, but is unprepared to do for his own province what he has done for Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. He exempts them from counting nonrenewable resources as part of the equalization formula, but still penalizes our oil reserves thereby cheating Saskatchewan out of additional funds, which are available to the Atlantic Provinces.

“Bottom line, the Liberals continue to be the arrogant government they have always been. From Paul Martin not knowing or not admitting to knowing about the Adscam, to Jean Chrétien demeaning Justice Gomery by his golf ball fiasco, to the Liberals ramming through same sex marriage, to the essence of today’s budget, they continue to be arrogant and only the next election can take care of that,” concluded Komarnicki.