The federal Liberals put out their first budget in two years Monday.

Foothills MP John Barlow says his first word he'd use to describe it is irresponsible.

"This is record-setting amount of spending with no real outline of a strategy on how to rein in this spending and get it back under control and get Canada some sort of fiscal common sense and a balanced budget," he says.

Barlow says the federal finance minister's idea that this is sustainable spending is wrong.

He says the government can't continue to spend over $150-billion a year more than it takes in and hope the economy will grow and take care of it.

Barlow says the Liberals have talked about affordable child care for generations and what they've proposed looks good at first glance but once you look at it you see the problems.

"You promise $30-billion for a child care program without mentioning the fact it hinges on the fact you need a 50-50 cost-share with the provinces and territories, who are broke right now because of this pandemic, so there's not a lot of provinces that are going to have the resources to kick in on a child care plan," Barlow says. "But this is a typical Liberal program where if this were to go ahead families would have to put their kids into a government-funded daycare program when in 2006 under the Harper government we put in the Universal Child Care Benefit because we know parents make the better decisions on who should care for their children."

He says daycares have to be flexible if women are to be able to take advantage of it and get back to the workforce.

Barlow says the extension of CERB and other benefits is a good thing.

"We want to be there to support small businesses and companies and I'm sure that many of these businesses remain solvent and operating but I think you have to go back to how we got to this point," he says. "Extending these programs may not have been necessary if we had access to enough vaccines."

He says Canada is not even in the top 40 for countries that have vaccinated their populations there have been extended lockdowns and quarantines and the third wave might now have been nearly as bad as it is if we'd had vaccines.

Barlow says money for science to manufacture our own vaccines is coming years too late.

He understands Canadian's frustrations when they see what's happening in the U.S. and the U.K.

The local MP says the pandemic highlighted gaps in seniors and long-term care, which is under provincial jurisdiction but the money for that will help protect the most vulnerable as long as it goes where it's most needed.

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