Daryl Kramp

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to have the opportunity to clarify a point that I do consider rather important. Perhaps the member has not listened to me and another 30 of my colleagues tonight who have mentioned how important it is to spend wisely.

There is no doubt that there is not one member of the House who would not like to be able to walk up to every citizen in this country and ask, “What do you want? What are your needs? Here it is”. That is what the hon. member is basically suggesting. Quite frankly we have to make tough decisions. Those decisions are how to spend the money wisely so all Canadians benefit and the government can deliver equitable arrangements.

The government promises $4.6 billion or $9 billion or $2 billion and says it is not sure how it is going to spend the money or how much it is going to spend and it does not know whom it is going to spend it on. If we are going to spend $900 million on transit or $1.6 billion on homelessness, exactly how many spaces and where? In other words, should the government not come up with a plan to decide what it needs to spend the money on before it designates where the money is going to go? It is the same as giving candy to a baby and then asking if the baby would like it. In other words show me one municipality or one province that would not gladly take any money offered.

It is the same with the Prime Minister's commitment to solve health care: $41 billion for a decade and our entire health care woes will be over. Liberals say the provinces will get the money some day, well after the next election when the Liberals will not have to deliver on their promise. That $41 billion worth of promises has not solved the health care dilemma. We have to identify what the problems are, put a cost to them and then allot the funds, not do it bass-ackwards which is what the member is suggesting.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Yes, my kids matter a lot. Every kid matters in this country. It all matters. Unless we have the ability and the dedication, and the commitment to bring forth a better future for our children, we are just absolving ourselves of our responsibilities.

In order to do that, that takes taxation and that takes dollars. However, we cannot overtax our citizens. We cannot kill the goose that lays the golden egg and then spend that money in a haphazard manner. That money is just too hard to come by. I cannot imagine what $1,000 or $2,000 per individual for a family would mean in a tax cut. I know it would mean a lot to people in my riding.

Maybe there are some ridings here that are extremely wealthy, but I have a lot of people who work very hard for a living and $1,000 or $2,000 means a lot to them. Instead, that kind of money is being taken away from them and is being spent on this NDP initiative, simply so the government can retain power.

To further illustrate my point I must compare the first budget, Bill C-43, with the NDP budget, Bill C-48. On February 23 I sent out a press release stating that the original budget had certain measures which I could support. There were many opposition concerns such as health care, defence, tax cuts and seniors. Though I did not agree with them all, I took them under consideration. They certainly did not please me totally, but I could live with some of them. I could find a reasonable compromise that made sense to some people. To me it was not worthy of an election, but was worthy of trying to find a way to make this minority Parliament work.

I was disappointed, of course, in the lack of funding for agriculture. In my riding and in many others across this country, rural communities felt as though they were simply left out. I noted that most of the money, the $10 billion or $12 billion, that should have been allocated or promised to some extent for child care, the gas tax transfer or climate change was delayed in the original budget until the end of the decade. The promises made, in other words, before the actual life of the government were back loaded. Of course, this was without any feasible plan for when the implementation date would be.

Nonetheless, I have never spoken on the record against the first budget and I continue to support it today. I did this in part because there was a semblance of a plan. I certainly did not approve of it totally, but there was a semblance of plan, at least a minor direction, perhaps a 10% indication of where this country should go. Now what do we have? We have a second budget of $4.6 billion that the government has tabled with increased spending and literally no consideration.

A lot of people ask about the amount of money? We talk about thousands, millions, hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. The government said $4.6 billion is not much money. Let me tell everyone what it is. Let us put it in the context of even 25% or less of that, $1 billion. What is $1 billion to the people in my riding? That is $1,000 million. Whether it is Foxboro, Bloomfield, Marmora or Wellington, I could give every family in those ridings $1 million and still have $100 million left over. That is the kind of money we are talking about. That is unbelievable.

We lose the total concept of how much money this is and what it means to the everyday citizen when we throw billions around here. We are talking $2.3 billion per year and $4.6 billion over a couple of years or three or four or five. Who knows? What is the plan? Buzz Hargrove and the member for Toronto—Danforth writing a deal on the back of a napkin in a motel room is how we come up with $4.6 billion. I cannot believe that.

The sad thing for my NDP colleagues sitting at the other end is that they have taken this and said, “Look at what we have here. We have negotiated $4.6 billion for our constituents”. I say to myself that they have been had. I say to my NDP members that I hope they have the courage to go to their constituents and tell them that they are not going to see any of that money or will have the opportunity of seeing any of that money.

They have made a false promise to their ridings because they know that money is not going to go there. It is another promise that will be broken, just as we have seen promise after promise. The government on the other side of the House lives on promises and does not deliver.

I was sitting in the House when the finance minister said that we had reached our limit. He said the cupboard was bare, in essence. He indicated that we had a budget projected at $1.9 billion but that there was no money left for any other programs. He said that we had reached our limit and that we should not even talk about other considerations that might be of interest in the rest of the House.

Of course with the possibility of an election, the government felt threatened so it wrote down another $4.6 billion on the back of a napkin in a motel room. And whoops, all of a sudden there is a $9.1 billion surplus. Where did that mysteriously come from? How can Canadians have any respect for this institution when the government cannot count? It is either that, or it deliberately misleads the House and all of Canada.

The spending the government has taken on in the last number of years is criminal. In a time of fiscal restraint in order to balance the books, supposedly, how do the Liberals spend 44.3% of an increase in six years? What document did they present to the House that suggested we would do that?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pay tribute to my colleague who very efficiently, eloquently and in a matter of fact drove home just how important it is to have a sincere and honest budget. If I might just throw another word out to build upon that statement of clarity, I would refer to a budget as a plan.

A wise man once told me many years ago, when I was just in my infancy starting out in the business world, “Young man, in order to be successful in life, whether it is personal life, political life, business life, you have to plan your work and then work your plan”.

Simply, and sadly, Bill C-48 is proof that the government does not have a plan. That is just a tragedy. How can it bring forward $4.6 billion in spending, put it on a pair of pages, and suggest to the Canadian public that it is something that can not only be digested but utilized to the benefit of all Canadians? Honestly, it is an insult to Canadians.

My children and I can go out and pick up a mortgage on a home and we can sign a few documents; it might be four, five, six, seven or eight pages. We can go out and buy a car or a piece of furniture and sign a document that is one or two pages. Heavens, we can even go and rent a video and maybe fill out a one page document. Yet we are asked to accept $4.6 billion worth of absolute spending and we have a two page document. That is $2.3 billion per page.

It almost defies belief. I find it incredible that anybody in this country could say a government is bearing responsibility for $2.3 billion worth of spending and that it can just take one page like this and say that this is what it is all about. We are doing this for Canadians. All the benefits are one page and they are worth $2.3 billion.

That is a sad example of leadership. It is a sad example of a government that, honestly, is simply rudderless. It is obviously an example of a government that is so desperate to cling to power that it will sell its soul for simply the price of a piece of paper and the price of promises that everybody knows will not be met.

I do not think there is a person in this world who does not want Canada to achieve its rightful place in this world. With the resources we have, the manpower, the people and the talent, the geography, the nature, and the history of this country, there is no reason this country should not be number one, literally, in every dramatic portion of this world. Every member and, I would certainly hope, all my colleagues in this House would share that.

The sad reality is that we are not going in the right direction. Our health care system, which used to be number two or number three, is now sitting around 12th, 13th or whatever. Our economic prosperity, relative to G-8 countries, is advancing in the negative capacity. This is not the direction this country needs to go. That is not the direction that I want to--

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

There's more?

[Seniors, June 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this week is Seniors Week in Canada. I rise today to pay tribute to the millions of Canadians over the age of 65.

As more and more baby boomers retire, including of course many of us in the House, Canada will be facing new challenges and requirements. Seniors today face a multitude of issues, including pensions, health and home care, transportation, drug insurance, housing and palliative care to name just a few.

That is why I moved for the creation of a separate ministry of state for seniors in 1997 at our party's policy convention. I am pleased to see this initiative finally included in our March 2005 policy declaration and the appointment this past week of a critic to this vital portfolio.

I urge the government to consider the creation of a ministry of state for seniors to allow for easier access of government services for our aging population. Our seniors certainly deserve that.

[Petitions, June 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured today to table a petition on behalf of the fine people of Prince Edward—Hastings and surrounding area.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to pass legislation to recognize the institution of marriage in federal law as being a lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

[Supply, June 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in response to the hon. member on the other side of the House, we have a little something in common. We are relatively close to the same age. That puts us almost into the baby boomer status. This poses a real problem.

I thank the hon. member for mentioning the initiative of bringing the health round table together. It is a start.

However, what happened 12 years ago? We have a group going through the baby boomer years. By 2008-09, we are into crisis in this country. We have millions of people who will stop becoming productive citizens. We will not pay as much tax. There will not be as much income coming into the government, yet the demands will be dramatically increased on our health care system. We are coming to that age when all those calamitous diseases start to take hold.

We have a little too much talk coming out of the government and not enough activity and action. I am thankful that an initiative has been started. I believe we need more than an initiative. We need a national strategy. It has to be the number one priority for the government.

We can no longer sit and suggest that some day, some time, this problem will reveal itself and we will get over it. We have a disaster in the making. The government must recognize that a national strategy must be implemented immediately, that all the stakeholders must come to terms with the fact and we must get on with the job.

[Supply, June 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Blackstrap for sharing her time with me this afternoon.

The health and safety of our citizens must continue to be the number one priority for the government, a position which I endorsed from the first day I started campaigning and I will continue to endorse until the last day I serve in the House. I have and I will continue to be committed to achieving better and more accessible health care, not only for the citizens of Prince Edward County, Prince Edward--Hastings but for all Canadians.

I would love to stand in the House here today and declare to all Canadians that Parliament has served them well, that we have the situation under control, that their health care is of the finest quality, that it is equally accessible to all and that it is in capable hands. Sadly, that just is not the case.

We do have some measures of health care that are performing well, but by and large, the lack of definitive direction in our health care system is causing widespread inequities and failure. In my riding of Prince Edward--Hastings, for example, we have approximately 15,000 citizens without access to a family doctor and we have among the highest rates of cardiac problems, strokes, aneurysms and cancer in Canada.

Yet I like most Canadians listened when our Prime Minister, prior to an election, promised over $40 billion. He said that would just simply solve the problem for the decade. The reality is that no amount of spending, promised or real, will solve the problems facing health care unless there is a real plan on how to deliver measurable results with a clear guarantee of accountability.

There is an old adage that comes to mind, which I believe offers a rather simplistic overview of the strategy that we must follow, and that is “Plan your work and work your plan”. We have many wonderful health care professionals who are so dedicated to the well-being of society, yet they are stymied and shackled with a system that is overly bureaucratic, overworked, duplicitous and inefficient. Why? Because there is no overall blueprint or plan on how to work effectively and cooperatively.

There remains great disparity in the quality of care in our country. That is not acceptable. Health care professionals are suffering burnout. That is not acceptable. Our health care system, which was in the top three in the world, a source of pride in service, now is rated in the high twenties to early thirties. That is not acceptable.

Before arriving in Ottawa as a member of Parliament, I had the wonderful opportunity to serve as president of the Madoc chapter of the Canadian Cancer Society. I learned first-hand how important a strategy was in combatting diseases such as cancer. My friends at the Canadian Cancer Society, Hastings-Prince Edward County unit, are eagerly anticipating a national strategy which they can finally implement at the local level.

I note with interest that the Canadian strategy for cancer control has called for a nationwide cancer prevention strategy. Yet in 12 years the Liberal government has yet to implement a national strategy for cancer, mental health and heart and stroke.

Today we are discussing this Conservative supply day motion that declares a national strategy is needed to reduce human suffering and economic costs related to cancer, heart disease and mental illness. The motion is by no means intended to clear all the ills in our health care system, but it will serve to set the tone and the direction for planned accountability and measurable improvement.

In my brief time today, let me try to put a few numbers to this needless human suffering.

Despite spending $14 billion per year in Canada last year, 710,000 Canadians are living with cancer. In the past 12 months alone, an estimated 140,000 have been diagnosed with some form of a disease and almost 70,000 will die from it. That is more people than live and exist in many of the ridings in this country.

Mental health statistics are equally troubling, with over 4,000 people committing suicide in Canada each year, including many of our young and vulnerable. As we know, there are countless thousands of suicides that have gone unreported.

Depression, mental illness, is projected to be the most expensive cause of loss of workplace productivity due to disability by the year 2020. Cardiovascular disease accounts for over 70,000 deaths per year and costs the economy over $18 billion a year just unto itself. The long term cost of cancer, of mental illness and cardiovascular diseases will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Since I first arrived in Ottawa, I have been waiting for the government to produce for Canadians a health care plan, a framework, a legitimate plan that will improve the system in a coordinated, organized strategic fashion. Instead, I have watched when the Liberals have signed deals in an ad hoc manner and when they have signed one-off deals with the provinces. Yet when they continue to either promise or throw more money at health care without any real long term strategy or plan, the Liberals unfortunately appear to be more clearly concerned with the optics of political photo ops than with discernible human results. I emphasize that positive results will only occur when there is a solid direction and a solid plan.

As Canada is one of the few developed countries in the world without a national action plan for mental health and heart disease, I respectfully ask my colleagues on all sides of the House to place the people ahead of the politics and to endorse, with enthusiasm, this Conservative initiative, this Conservative motion to establish a clear national strategy and a timeframe to implement such.

Millions of Canadians in our ridings depend on this. I honestly believe it is time that Parliament places its priority on the health and safety of all Canadians.

[Sponsorship Program, June 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I noticed that the minister seems to use the convenience of the Gomery testimony in his own allegation to interpret as he wishes. On the one hand Gomery has the ability to name names, yet clause (k) says he does not. On the other hand the minister wishes to bring forward a motion that suggests that he should have the opportunity to name names.

He cannot have it both ways. Canadians want the answers. They want the truth. They want to get to the bottom of it. They do not want more Liberal corruption. They want answers and they want dollars.

[Sponsorship Program, June 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the government shut down the public accounts committee last spring in order to hold an election because it really feared the truth about the sponsorship scandal. Now it has tied Justice Gomery's hands by including clause (k) in the terms of reference which stipulate that he cannot assign blame in his conclusions. Canadians deserve the whole truth.

When will the government give Justice Gomery the proper tools to finally get to the bottom of this Liberal corruption?