On Thursday, after Question Period in the House of Commons, Conservative Finance Critic was asked about his party’s positions going into the federal budget planning process. The budget is to be tabled by the Liberal government on Feb. 23. Here’s an edited transcript of his exchange outside the Commons. The questions are from journalists:
Question: Have you been consulted [by the Liberals about the budget] yet?
Monte Solberg: Well, I have been consulted. I've written a letter to the minister and I will be talking with him when I travel with him. We're going to London tonight so I've got a meeting scheduled with him in London to talk about the budget.
Question: Would your party be prepared to vote down the budget if you didn't — if you don't like what you see?
Monte Solberg: Well, we're going to keep our options open but, you know, it's going to have to be a pretty bad budget for us to bring down the government of course but, you know, we're not going to — we certainly don't want to send the message they can do whatever they want in that budget. We're going to be fulfilling our role as the official opposition and our default position is to oppose the budget and they're going to have to do some pretty impressive things if they want to get us onside.
Question: Well, the minister keeps on talking about fulfilling all these spending promises. Like you want tax relief. Do you think they're going to be accomplished here?
Monte Solberg: Well, yeah, it's going to be difficult for him to square this circle. He's got three opposition parties and probably opposition in his own party on things that he wants to do so it's going to be difficult for him but, you know, one way to get people onside is to fulfill the commitment he made that was a demand of all the opposition parties which is to cut taxes and it was part of the Throne Speech amendments that they accepted. And so we expect them to fulfill their commitment.
Question: So you're willing to go to the polls for tax cuts for the middle class.
Monte Solberg: That's not what I said. I said that if they raised taxes or put us into a deficit, you know, that's something — that would be something where we would probably vote en masse to oppose the budget. But remember that the Official Opposition always opposes the budget and it's up to the government to get the other parties onside to support it. So this is not something that necessarily is completely in our hands. It's up to the government to ensure that they've got the support of the other parties