House of Commons Hansard #15 of the 35th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was budget.

Topics

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

5:25 p.m.

Reform

Jake Hoeppner Reform Lisgar—Marquette, MB

Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy hearing the hon. member for Malpeque stand up for farmers. Is he one of those taxpayers that has not paid his share of taxes in the past so that we have this huge debt and deficit.

The hon. member is fighting for the livestock producers getting better feed freight assistance programs. Does he feel it is fair that livestock producers in western Canada get absolutely nothing out of the WGTA payout because they are suffering just as his livestock producers are?

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

5:25 p.m.

Liberal

Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE

Mr. Speaker, that was quite a long winded question.

We are trying to find a better balance in the budget by having a fairer taxation policy and that shows throughout the budget papers.

I always enjoy the member's questions concerning the agricultural area. As I mentioned, because of concerns the member and some of his constituents raised, we have moved to address the concerns of the Crow benefit payout. We moved up the time frame it would be paid out so that producers would have the capital up front to do what they have always wanted to do in western Canada: get into a more diversified economy.

The bill also increases the ability of the livestock sector and makes it more competitive because there is cheaper grain as a result of the transportation changes.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

Andy Mitchell Liberal Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to have an opportunity to speak to the government's most recent budget which has established the right combination of measures to help move the country forward.

The budget deals with the Canadian deficit, as it needs to do. It deals with the issue of jobs, which is also a priority today. It also deals with the least advantaged in Canadian society and the obligation and need of government to help those people.

It does it in a way that understands government has two responsibilities. The first one is a fiscal responsibility. As a government we have a need to ensure that the expenditures we undertake are prudent, that we get value for every dollar we spend, and that we make sure Canadian taxpayers are getting full value for the money they are paying into the federal government.

Our responsibility as a government goes far beyond fiscal responsibility. It is more than just a matter of maintaining the books. It is more than just a matter of a balance sheet or an income statement. As a government we also have a social responsibility. We have a responsibility as a government to individual Canadians.

For the last 50 years we have historically agreed that we will not allow Canadians to fall below a certain level. As Canadians we collectively agree that when an individual goes to a hospital the first question asked should be what is wrong and not how much money does he have. We also agree to ensure that people have shelter and will not starve. We must have a social safety net, and government has that responsibility.

When we look at the budget it is important to recognize that we have achieved our mandate or our objective of fulfilling both those responsibilities.

I will talk a bit about fiscal responsibility. The government has done a good job in the three budgets it has brought forward in dealing with the Canadian deficit. During the campaign we promised to reduce the deficit to 3 per cent of GDP and we will be achieving that. Beyond that we have set a new objective of 2 per cent of GDP.

It is difficult to get one's mind around percentages. It is even better to look at some numbers. When the two-year planning phase announced by the minister in his recent budget is completed, the deficit in Canada will have been reduced by $25 billion. No government in the country has done a better job in reducing expenditures or in deficit reduction than we have done as a federal government.

Even more important in terms of fiscal responsibility, our borrowing as a nation and as a federal government in the upcoming year will be reduced to $13 billion and in the year following to only $6 billion. That is the best record in the country in 30 years and the best among the G-7 as a percentage of GDP. We are doing a good job in ensuring the borrowings of the federal government are being reduced dramatically.

We have gone from program spending being about 16 per cent of our gross domestic product to where it will be reduced by about 12 per cent when this budgetary cycle is completed. That also represents significant progress. It is the best we have done in the nation since the second world war.

There are things far beyond deficit control that governments need to deal with. One important objective is the need to create jobs. As a government we are doing a good job in that regard. We are ensuring that an environment exists within the country which allows jobs to be created. We are doing it in part because we are getting the economic fundamentals right.

Inflation in the country is at the lowest sustained level it has been in 30 years. That is a strong economic fundamental. Interest rates in the country have dropped by three points in the last year, another strong fundamental.

As I mentioned a moment ago, government's borrowings are being substantially reduced. This means the private sector is not being crowded out of the capital market and is being allowed investment opportunities to create jobs. We are getting the fundamentals rights. We are allowing for an environment to be created in the country in which job creation can occur.

As many of my colleagues have pointed out today during the debate, job creation has been occurring in the country. In the last three months Statistics Canada has reported almost 125,000 to 130,000 new jobs or in excess of 600,000 new jobs since the government came to office.

Despite getting the fundamentals right, which is important and represents real progress, our government also understands the necessity for government to target specific areas in which to do specific work. That is why we see new initiatives announced in the budget which deal with youth unemployment. Our government realizes this is a particular area of concern and we are acting in that respect.

The government also understands that there are areas where we can have the most impact on job creation. We have seen some initiatives undertaken by the government which will help see that happen. The establishment by Industry Canada of a technology fund that will start off at $150 million and grow to $250 million is important. It is a growth area of the economy where jobs can occur and we need to support it.

We are a country of exporters. We need to have more small businesses involved in it. Much of our exporting is done by the largest corporations. We need to move that down the scale so that our small businesses are taking part in export development. I was pleased to see our investment of another $50 million in the Export Development Corporation.

On the high tech side $50 million has been invested in the Business Development Bank of Canada so that it will be able to provide the necessary capital to firms dealing in the high tech sector. This is an example of the government understanding that in addition to the fundamentals we have done a good job in getting right there is a need for us to operate in specific sectors to help stimulate job creation.

The third area I mentioned when I started my speech was the need to help the least advantaged in society. There is a need. Whether it is helping the least advantaged areas in society geographically-and we do that through our transfer program, our equalization payments-or whether it is that we have increased the child tax benefits for 700,000 low income families, we understand the need to help the least advantaged in society.

In summary, the government understands that the way to deal with the Canadian economy, the way to create a budget and present a budget, is to have an approach that takes in several components and not to fixate on one simple part of it. That is why we have dealt with the deficit. That is why we have dealt with jobs. That is why we have dealt with helping the least advantaged in society.

I close by reiterating that the government understands it has a dual responsibility in governing the nation. It understands fiscal responsibility but it also understands it has a social responsibility to individual Canadians.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

5:40 p.m.

Reform

Jim Silye Reform Calgary Centre, AB

Mr. Speaker, first I will make a comment and then I will ask a question. The hon. member who just made his speech took an awful lot of credit for the recent statistics he quoted on how much the interest rates have gone down, on how employment is higher and on recent changes as if the government caused all of them and should take credit for them.

I am glad he is taking the credit. When the economic fundamentals change, when interest rates go up as they will and as they are already starting to do, when unemployment does not get solved by cash injections from governments, and when the Liberals get tired of trying to blame the private sector for the jobs they promised to create but cannot create, I wonder whom he will blame.

The member said that the government has the fundamentals right. A few members over there have accounting and tax backgrounds. I wish they had a little more influence over the finance minister. They stand to tell Canadians that the back of the deficit has been broken and that the balance sheet of the nation is in order. They are distorting some facts to a degree that the elastic band will almost snap.

Does he understand the difference between a government coming in with a huge debt and adding $112 billion to the debt when exiting? Is that getting it right? Does he understand leaving a $17 billion deficit and committing the country to spending more than what it brings in as it did when it first started? Does he understand

when a government has a balanced budget over its mandate? Does he understand the difference between what this party represents in terms of a balanced budget and what the government side represents in its continued support of deficit spending?

The difference is the size of the debt and how much the government adds to the debt. According to the finance minister's own numbers, the government will have added close to $113 billion to the debt when it leaves. With our numbers it would have been half of that; it would have been $60 billion. The difference is $61 billion. The interest cost to service that additional debt is what it is all about. Those are the fundamentals. Does the member understand that difference in the fundamentals?

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

5:40 p.m.

Liberal

Andy Mitchell Liberal Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer both the observation of the member and his question.

As to his observation, I have no doubt that if the fundamentals were not right he would be very critical of the government. When the fundamentals are right because of positive government action I will say so. Our government has done a good job. It has made good progress in making the fundamentals right.

As to adding to the debt, I am glad the member admitted in his presentation that his party would have added $61 billion to the debt.

I will go back to my career in the financial services industry before I took this job to give an analogy of what we are talking about. Most of us have found ourselves in a position where we may have overspent. We may have bought a house that was a little too big or had a mortgage that was a little higher than it should be. Perhaps we bought a vehicle on the spur of the moment because of its accessories, making the debt for our car a little higher. Perhaps we ran the plastic up on the last trip or whatever and we find ourselves owing more than we should.

As somebody who dealt with consumer loans I often had individuals come to me who had found themselves in that situation. Our country is essentially in the situation today where we find that we have overspent and we have a large debt. If we took the philosophy of the third party in our dealings with such individuals, we could simply say that is too bad, that they have to pay back all the debt in one year and the fact they will not have enough money to feed their families or clothe their children is irrelevant.

Or, we could do what is generally done in the industry. We could arrange a debt consolidation loan where the need to eliminate that debt is recognized and the fact that while it is being eliminated food for the family and clothes for the children have to be provided. Therefore we would arrange for the payments to be over a reasonable period of time.

In my speech I pointed out that we take a balanced approach as a government. However, here we have a party fixated on one aspect of our responsibility. It does not recognize the social responsibility which the government has to Canadians.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

5:45 p.m.

Bloc

Pierre De Savoye Bloc Portneuf, QC

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister's budget seeks essentially to reduce the deficit and succeeds in doing so through a series of measures with which I disagree. I will express this disagreement to my colleague, who may respond.

First of all, operating expenditures are being cut. But, for every $1 reduction in operating expenditures, one dollar will be cut from transfer payments to the provinces and another one taken from the UI fund. This is a strange combination. This combination requires employers and employees to pay a special tax amounting to almost 30 per cent of their UI contributions to help reduce the deficit.

By cutting transfers to the provinces the federal government has decided that it is in a better position to spend this money than the provinces themselves. Finally, when it cuts its operating expenditures by only one dollar, that is to say, by another third, it is not listening to the auditor general, who said among other things last year that the defence budget could be cut by as much as $1 billion without any noticeable effects because it was sheer waste. Well, only $600 million was cut, which leaves $400 million. Meanwhile, students are being penalized as transfer payments for post-secondary education have been cut by $150 million. And, to top it all, because the government has set aside $600 million to create summer jobs, it is expecting students to be grateful. These are the facts. This is what it says in the budget. I totally disagree and await the explanations of my colleague across the way.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

Andy Mitchell Liberal Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON

Mr. Speaker, in the budget we will ensure that all parts of society according to their needs will contribute to reducing the deficit and no one part of the country or no one part of society will be totally spared.

I disagree with his figures. Our expenditure cuts will amount to 19 per cent of government programming. It is less than half of that amount in terms of transfers to the provinces.

In terms of building up a surplus in the UI fund, the hon. member opposite would be the first person to criticize the government during a recession if it were required to increase UI rates. Members opposite would be yelling at us that we were increasing UI rates during a recession at a time when we should not be taking money out of the hands of workers and the businesses which create jobs.

Having a UI surplus during periods of economic growth makes eminent good sense so that we do not have to take money out of the economy during a recessionary period. It makes good economic sense. It should have been done by previous governments. This government is doing it.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

5:45 p.m.

Reform

John Duncan Reform North Island—Powell River, BC

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to debate this, the third attempt by the federal Minister of Finance and his lackluster government to get it right.

It is my duty to report, and I regret to inform the government, that it still did not get it right. For the 27th year in a row federal revenues and expenditures are not balanced.

The weariness of the debt and the hopeless treadmill of lack of resolve by the government continue. It is a sad commentary that debt continues to grow and accumulate, which over the government's term will add more than $112 billion to the debt load.

It is a sad commentary. This government generated debt will place the average Canadian in a position of financial hopelessness, unable to get ahead and forced to survive with a current personal debt load equivalent to 95 per cent of their annual personal disposable income. In 1982 that number was 62 per cent.

With no tax relief in the foreseeable future, the Minister of Finance counters by saying there are no tax increases. How does he explain why gasoline taxes jumped half a cent per litre in Ottawa less than a week after his budget theatrics on Wednesday? What does he have to say to shell shocked taxpayers who last week faced one-half to three-quarter per cent increased rates for mortgages?

The minister knows full well that for every 1 per cent increase in these rates, 100,000 perspective first home buyers are removed from the list of potential purchasers. So much for the new tax. The cost of living takes care of all of that.

Two of the constraints in life are death and taxes. They are inevitable and therefore we suffer in quiet desperation and resignation. One of the elements of this cliche that makes life on this treadmill bearable is the mistaken belief that all Canadians will share equally in this tax burden; the element of fairness. More and more Canadians are catching on to the cruel myth, and it would be remiss of me not to further dispel the hoax of equity.

Allow me to focus my comments for a moment on departmental spending, specifically the department of Indian affairs, otherwise known as the money vacuum. Let us start at the beginning.

In 1976-76 total departmental spending for the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development was $587 million. Today that number is $4.2 billion for about 573,000 status Indians, those registered under the Indian Act, about 2 per cent of Canada's population.

The sadness in this profligate sinkhole of spending is the continued misery and sense of hopelessness wherein so many of our native people continue to live. Despite the spending restraint placed on all other government departments, the department of Indian affairs spending to 1998-99 will grow a cumulative 12.7 per cent compared with a decline of 24.4 per cent in other departments.

This will be the only federal department in which spending in 1998-99 will be higher than in 1994-95. It is a history of misguided priorities where the current minister feels that maintaining this native dependency on the federal treasury will deliver these people to self-sufficiency, dignity and a stable future. It is a denial and a cruel manipulation of these people that is demeaning and paternalistic; keeping his charge in poverty paralysis, fed and warm but never to let them break the surly bonds of welfare and dependency unless they are the elites at the minister's trough.

Furthermore, it is a cruel, unfair hoax on the Canadian taxpayer because despite all the federal largesse and misguided paternalism, those status Indians who live on reserves do not pay income, property or sales taxes on purchases delivered to the reserves.

Section 87 is surely an outdated, out of step section of the Indian Act which protects and maintains this counterproductive exemption. Total government spending for Indians for all departments runs $7 billion, excluding the taxation exemption or foregone revenue.

If this is working, why are 43 per cent of on reserve natives on welfare? There are certainly some people getting bloated on the morass of spending. One place is the Hull bunker of DIAND which houses 3,400 of these bureaucrats.

Accompanying these public servants are consultants, negotiators, lawyers and advisors, all taking a piece of the $7 billion in action and keeping the myth and their club memberships alive. It is an Indian industry that has made some cling-ons very rich.

I have in my possession billings to an Indian band by one Ottawa lawyer of $300,000 per year for the client, a band of 250 adults, the majority of whom live in poverty, fear, violence and abuse. This is the $7 billion legacy. It is a system rife with avarice where a federal royal commission on aboriginal people, instituted in 1991 and originally budgeted for $20 million, is now highjacked by the politically predictable Indian industry. The commission is well overdue and running a tab currently of $60 million, the most expensive royal commission ever done. It has employed seven commissioners, 150 staffers and more than 500 consultants.

One of the commission's interim reports dealt with extinguishment. The minister was not content with the results of this $60 million enterprise and so he commissioned another independent fact finder to hold 65 sessions across the country at a cost of $500,000. Money for these kinds of exercises is no object for this minister. This keeps the $7 billion budget intact and makes some lawyers and some consultants very wealthy.

When you raise the issue of native taxation, as I did on March 11 in the House, you do so at your peril from an overly sensitive minister who resorts to bluster rather than explanation. When you have misled Canadians on the issue of taxation surrounding the Nisga'a settlement I guess bluster is the only way out of this misrepresentation of facts.

Anyone reading the Nisga'a agreement can come to only one inescapable conclusion: the Nisga'a will have constitutionally entrenched tax exemption.

I have painted a bleak picture. There are some ways out of this mess. A good place to start can be found in the Reform Party aboriginal policy document. Look for the word accountability. Our policy report calls for the auditor general to have full authority to review Indian management of federal funds. Legal proceedings can be recommended at the auditor general's discretion when he or she feels there is a problem.

We also call for the chief electoral officer of Elections Canada to have full authority to examine Indian election procedures. For too long many band councils have maintained a top down repressive regime. The band council system makes the chief and council more responsible to the minister and the department than it does to their very own membership. On every occasion I have been involved where an individual has appealed to the department, the department has supported the chief and council rather than the individual.

On this issue how can we ever expect any kind of accountability when spending on aboriginal affairs is diffused among 11 federal departments? It is an accountability nightmare surely meant to obfuscate and confuse-

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

5:55 p.m.

The Speaker

The time has expired. Comments or questions.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

5:55 p.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary North, AB

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add some comments and observations for Canadians following this debate on the latest federal budget.

I think the question Canadians are asking and to which they are getting a variety of answers is whether this a good budget for Canada. Some people say yes, some people say no.

I would like to address that question and give some observations I hope will be of some assistance as we evaluate, as Canadians, whether this is the way we want our finances managed. The budget was summed up in a newspaper headline that I read the day after its presentation. It read: "Canadians left sitting on a ticking time bomb". The time bomb is the debt. Canadians owe a mortgage on the country of over $600 billion.

Most of us do not compute in terms of billions of dollars. It would be helpful if we talked a bit about how much $1 billion is. Canadians might want to be aware that $1 billion is so big that if one spent $1,000 every day since the birth of Christ one would not yet have spent $1 billion.

If you made $1 per second, Mr. Speaker-and I know some people think you do but I know it is not so-you would be a millionaire in just 11 days and it would take 33 years to become a billionaire.

A billion dollars is a great deal of money. Yet the government has borrowed or put us in the hole for another hundred billion dollars in the very short time it has been in charge of our fiscal affairs, a hundred billion dollars that we have to pay interest on every year, a hundred billion dollars that we will have to pay back some day, a hundred billion dollars added to the mortgage on the future of our children and our grandchildren. In my mind it is a very big burden for Canadians to be saddled with.

The government likes to talk about having cut the amount of money it has been borrowing. Yet it is interesting to note that its total spending has been cut a minuscule 1.8 per cent over the time of its stewardship.

The interest we have to pay on our debt has risen considerably from $38 billion when the government took office to a forecasted $48 billion next year. That is another $10 billion that we have to pay to our lenders. It is $10 billion that we cannot put into an ailing health care system. It is $10 billion that we cannot use to educate our young people so that we can be internationally competitive. It is $10 billion that we have to take away from job creators. It is $10 billion more that we have to pay, pull out of our jeans, than we did before to service the country's staggering debt. We have one of the highest debt to production ratios in the industrialized world.

What does that mean? The simple reality is that we will need not less but more money for services in coming years. In 20 years time people like me, baby boomers of whom there are a great number, will be retiring. They will be demanding the pensions they have been promised and have been paying into. They will be demanding and needing extra health care and other senior services. The demand for these things will increase dramatically within the next 20 years.

The only way to prepare for it is to run surpluses now and reduce the debt as quickly as possible so that the government has the flexibility to meet the needs of the future crowd of seniors who will soon be retiring. This is not happening. In fact our debt load is increasing by $24 billion of the billions of dollars I was talking about earlier. It is a lot of money to borrow, to go in the hole in one short year.

The younger generations will be saddled with an unprecedented burden. Not only will they have to pay for health care programs, putting something away for retirement, educating their children, helping those who are disadvantaged and needy and supporting the activities of government. They will also have to pay a staggering amount of money every year on the billions of dollars the government has so cavalierly borrowed and spent, the $24 billion this year. The finance minister is borrowing and spending about what we take in and the younger generations will be saddled with that.

A paper released earlier this month by the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Montreal showed that under the fiscal policy of the finance minister a baby born today will pay $131,000 more in taxes than he receives in benefits from the government over his lifetime.

For the first time the government made no prediction in the budget about the unemployment rate. One is led to conclude the government must feel pretty negative about the job situation to have had to take job projection numbers out of its budget.

Much has been made of the fact there are no tax rate increases in the budget although the government will take in more tax money this year than it did last year. One citizen observed: "I cannot pay the taxes I have already paid so no new taxes does not mean much to me. I need a job".

High taxes and payments to lenders as a result of the wild borrowing that has taken place over the last 30 years are doing two things to the economy. First it is destroying job opportunities. When job creators have to pay a large amount of their incomes to government they are unable to use the money to create jobs, to expand their businesses and to take advantage of export opportunities. High taxes and payments to lenders are also eroding our social services. We see evidence of that every day. We also see evidence of the concerns of citizens in that regard.

In the last two and a half years the Liberal government has increased the tax take from Canadians by $8.8 billion. Notwithstanding this enormous tax increase a balanced budget is still nowhere in sight.

On one hand the finance minister expects Canadians to take more personal action to plan and save for their retirement. On the other hand he makes taking such action more and more costly for Canadians. They can now only hold RRSP moneys until age 69 and RRSP management fees can no longer be deducted.

The finance minister has continued to freeze the contribution limit on RRSPs to $13,500 a year even though it was promised to be raised in 1995 to a level that would allow a reasonable rate of retirement income. Worst of all, there is no target or plan to get to a surplus position which would allow tax reductions, a systematic debt pay down and flexibility in our important social programs.

We have some real concerns about the budget. I would answer the question on whether the budget is good for Canadians with a resounding no. I urge the government to set realistic targets as quickly as possible to eliminate the deficit, to quit borrowing money, to quit spending more than we take in, to get to a surplus position, and to protect the social programs that we need and the economic future of the country.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:05 p.m.

Liberal

Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS

Mr. Speaker, I found the member's comments very interesting and noted them. I have been talking with people in my riding of Halifax East since the budget was presented and the comments I have been hearing about it have been very positive.

People seem to be very pleased about many aspects of the budget including the measures which deal with child poverty, in particular the working income supplements increase over the next three years from $500 to $1,000 a year. It will help low income working families take care of their children. It is a very important measure.

I found it interesting that members suggest we need to run a surplus. I understand the idea; it would be nice if we could run surpluses overnight and cut the deficit to zero and beyond right away. However that does not take into account the economic reality of our country or the impact that would have on individual people across the country.

To say we will do that without, as the Reform Party promised, bringing forth its own version of what it will do and how it will achieve those goals seems irresponsible.

Why is it that the Reform Party did not, as promised, bring forward its own proposed budget this year before the budget was brought down to say what it would do? What would that party cut? It is saying that it would cut far more than the government has cut so far, that far more would be required to be cut from the federal budget to reach a surplus.

What fees would the Reform party increase? What programs would it cut far more than has been cut already? Would it cut health care? Would it increase the cuts in transfers to the provinces? What

other areas would it cut? It is not telling us about those things which are so important to know and I look forward to hearing.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary North, AB

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure why the hon. member is begging for a budget from the Reform Party since he obviously has not read the first one.

The taxpayers' budget we placed before the Liberals for their consideration would have cut health, post-secondary education and welfare by $3.5 billion and in three years that would have put us in a surplus position.

What have the Liberals done? Have they cut $3.5 billion from health, post-secondary education and welfare? Yes, they have cut $3.5 billion from those areas. In fact they have cut $6.3 billion from those areas and we are still not in a surplus position.

I urge the hon. member to look at the budget we put forward. With far less draconian measures we would at least get some results, which is more than we can say for the government.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, very simply the issue of RRSPs is a very good example of the difference between the thinking of the Reform Party and the thinking of the Liberal Party.

The hon. member talked about increases in taxes as a result of changes such as reducing the age at which one can make a contribution from 71 to 69. At that point we are not talking about providing retirement income; we are talking about sheltering wealth for those who have the means to shelter wealth.

She was concerned about massive management fees no longer being deductible for tax purposes. However she did not mention that they would be payable out of the RRSP itself and would not impact the taxpayer.

She lamented that we did not increase the $13,500 limit. Those people who can afford to put away $13,500 would have to make $75,000 a year.

The hon. member has been critical of changes which affect the most wealthy Canadians, but she failed to recognize that one of the important changes included in the budget was the elimination of the seven-year limitation on the carry forward of unused balances of RRSPs. This means ordinary young Canadians who are struggling from paycheque to paycheque will have an opportunity in the future to make up those years in which they could not make a contribution.

The difference between the Reform Party and the Liberal Party is that the Reform Party is advocating on behalf of the most wealthy Canadians and the Liberal Party is advocating on behalf of ordinary Canadians who are living from paycheque to paycheque.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary North, AB

Mr. Speaker, I know Liberals opposite would like to characterize their budget as being tough on the wealthy. However I point out a couple of matters the hon. member might want to keep in mind.

The 40 per cent of people who invest in RRSPs make less than $30,000 a year. People are very worried about their retirement future. They are starting to put away money in RRSPs in order to protect themselves. Yet this government is making it more difficult for them to do that.

The level at which a person has to save in order to have a reasonable retirement income has been pegged at $15,500 but the government will only allow people to save $13,500. Even if the wealthy need a reasonable amount to live on when retired. This government is telling seniors on one hand that if they are wealthy, they should not expect anything from the government but on the other hand they will not be allowed to save a reasonable amount in order to compensate for that. Wealthy people have to live too.

People have to have enough for a reasonable retirement income, particularly with services being eroded by the debt the government is running up. We cannot have it both ways. There will not be the wealthy at all. Wealthy will just be a memory of Liberal rhetoric. There will only be very poor, very needy and very unhappy retired Canadians.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

The Speaker

My colleagues, it being 6.15 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the subamendment now before the House. The question is on the subamendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the subamendment?

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

No.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

The Speaker

All those in favour of the subamendment will please say yea.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

The Speaker

All those opposed will please say nay.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

The Speaker

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:10 p.m.

The Speaker

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the amendment to the amendment which was negatived on the following division:)

The BudgetRoutine Proceedings

6:40 p.m.

The Speaker

I declare the amendment to the amendment defeated.

The House resumed from March 14 consideration of the motion, the amendment, and the amendment to the amendment.