Stephen Harper

[The Budget, March 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the numbers and facts in the budget and the actions of the government speak for themselves.

My supplementary is for the same minister and also concerns the massive cuts affecting transfers to the provinces, since the minister did not answer the first question. In spite of its sovereignist agenda, the Bouchard government pledged to eliminate the deficit created by the provincial Liberals. Must it also eliminate the deficit generated by the federal Liberals?

[The Budget, March 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, today we have learned the provinces are refusing the federal government's attempts to get them to harmonize the GST and raise federal taxes.

We know in the budget that the federal government is planning to cut transfers to the provinces for health, education and CAP by $7 billion over the next few years.

We all know the provinces have been balancing their budgets. Is it not the real budget strategy of the government to get the provinces to balance the federal budget as well?

[The Budget, March 7th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, on the youth employment initiatives, I guess all I will say about them is the youth of Canada will be paying the interest on the borrowed money for those for the rest of their lives.

A comment was made of importance of lower interest rates for young people. Let me say something about the lower interest rates of the government.

When I was elected I was married just after that in 1993. Being an economist by training and watching what was planned in the fiscal policies of the government, my wife and I took out a mortgage. I said lock that mortgage in today for five years because under the government we will not get interest rates this good for the next five years. Today even with the low interest rates the government is talking about one cannot lock into a mortgage at the interest rate I locked into in late 1993.

[The Budget, March 7th, 1996]

The parliamentary secretary asks if they got there. No, they did not get there. And there is no guarantee we will get there this time either.

The last government did not get there because it did not have a plan and because everything it did was eaten up by increased interest payments. But I will say that this government does have a partial plan to get there. What is that plan? Very simply it is to attack the slash and burn Reform Party while slashing in particular social programs far deeper than the Reform Party ever proposed.

In the 1993 election we said to cut unemployment insurance by $4.5 billion. There were howls of outrage from the Liberal Party. The Liberals have already cut the program which was at $20 billion at its peak under the Tories and which is now paying out $13.5 billion today with more cuts to come as proposed in the bill the government tabled in the last session and will table again.

We said to make old age security based on income and not to pay it to anyone with an income above $53,000. The Liberals now propose exactly the same policy. No more universality. Make old age security based on income. Except now it is based on $40,000 instead of $53,000.

We said to cut the Canada assistance plan by roughly 10 per cent, $750 million. The Liberals have done exactly that and there are more cuts to come in the next two or three years.

In our 1993 election proposals we said we did not need to cut post-secondary education at all to balance the budget. The Liberals have already cut it 10 per cent and there is more to come.

We said not to cut health care funding. It is the most important priority of all Canadians. The Liberals said they would not. They said they would preserve the five principles of the Canada Health Act. They have cut health care by 10 per cent and there is more to come. There are still the five grand principles; there will just be no money to implement them.

In fact, in these last three areas, the Canada assistance plan, health care and post-secondary education, in the next two to three years the Liberal Party will cut over $7 billion in cash payments to the provinces. This will be the principal means by which the Liberals will reduce the deficit.

What is still there that we have proposed to cut that the Liberal Party has not cut? The Liberals have not cut the regional pork, the regional development programs. They did not cut the funding to the special interest groups. All those programs are still there. And of course, they still have their gold plated MP pensions.

What happened to the other promise, the one about jobs? We were told we did not have to worry about the deficit because we were creating jobs instead. Well, there is no jobs plan in the budget. There is not even an estimate on jobs in the budget. It is unprecedented in my 10 years of experience in federal politics to not even provide employment estimates.

The Liberals say cutting is not an end in itself. Cutting is apparently not an end in itself. Cutting is done by the government not as an end in itself but in order to protect friends, in order to send out political messages, in order to attack the Reform Party, in order to mask fiscal incompetence. In other words, the government cuts spending in order to make programs, in order to make taxpayers and in order to make jobs the targets of our policies instead of the winners; to make them the victims instead of the winners.

The Liberals were elected in 1993 by telling people what they wanted to hear: there would be no GST, no free trade, no distinct society, lots of jobs, universality of pensions and do not worry about the deficit.

Canadians have to make a very serious decision next time of whether they will be fooled again.

[The Budget, March 7th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure on behalf of the Reform Party of rising to speak to the budget. In doing so I will try to keep my remarks brief and to the point.

In the 1993 election the Reform Party ran on a proposal to cut the deficit in order to create jobs and to cut nearly $20 billion in government spending over a period of three years. The Liberal Party ran on a program to create jobs by ignoring the deficit.

Let us look at what we actually have from the government after three years. I draw the attention of any Canadian who is interested to the budget speech. Skip through the first 27 or 28 pages, which is all bafflegab. One thing we notice about this minister is that the less he has to say, the longer his budget speeches.

There were fewer proposals in this one than in the last two but it must have been the longest budget speech in history. When you get to the end, look at the four pages at the back because they provide a statistical summary of the budget that has most if not all of the relevant information for most Canadian taxpayers.

From 1993 to 1998 the deficit is projected to fall from $42 billion to $17 billion, a drop of $25 billion. How is that achieved? Revenue will rise in the same period by $25 billion. This is the government saying it has no tax increases but revenue is rising as a percentage of the economy.

However, if we have a $25 billion revenue increase and a fall in the deficit of $25 billion, why do we have any spending cuts at all from the government? Why do we not have a balanced budget?

We have an increase in interest payments of at least $11 billion. I say at least because most of that has already been achieved and it will continue to rise. One of the ways the government makes the deficit look like it is to continue to fall is by insisting that interest payments will taper off, that we will have lower and lower interest rates, but that is the best case scenario.

Interest payments have already risen $11 billion, and so the government has been cutting over this period. By the end of 1998 it will be cutting $23 billion in programs and will still have a deficit of $17 billion. That is an interesting figure, $23 billion, because that is more than the Reform Party had proposed to cut in the 1993 election. It is because the $100 billion in debt the government is adding, it is the cost of its delay and the cost of fiscal mismanagement. By the way, the debt at this moment and in the next year at least and probably the year after will continue to grow faster than the economy.

Now the Liberals tell us they have targets. The targets are outlined in the budget. We just had a deficit of $32 billion. It will be $24.3 billion next year and the year after it will be $17.7 billion. This all sounded very familiar, so I asked one of my researchers to get me the 1991 Tory budget presented three years into the Conservatives' last term of office. Guess what the 1991 Tory budget stated. The deficit that year was $30.5 billion; for the fiscal year beginning in 1992, the projection was $24 billion; in 1993 it was $16.6 billion. It all sounds familiar.

[The Senate, March 7th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I was writing a statement about the appointment of Alberta Senator Bud Olson as Alberta's next lieutenant-governor, calling for a Senate election under Alberta's Senatorial Selection Act to fill the vacancy. Before I was finished writing, former Alberta Liberal leader Nick Taylor was appointed to the Senate.

It may take 10 years to balance the budget, 10 years to lower taxes, and 10 years to reform people's pension, but it takes only 10 minutes to reward friends with Senate appointments. Albertans expect the Prime Minister to respect their wishes and permit them to elect their senators.

Canadians from Newfoundland and Labrador to British Columbia remain ashamed of Canada's senior legislative body. They are ashamed the Prime Minister continues the disgraceful, undemocratic appointment of undemocratic Liberals to the undemocratic Senate to pass all too often undemocratic legislation. Fourteen times a seat has become available in the Senate; fourteen times loyal Liberal cronies have been rewarded. Oops, I should say fifteen times. I had better revise that.

[Business Of The House, March 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the member would have liked to finish her remarks but at this moment she cannot be in the House. She will be returning a bit later.

[National Unity, February 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, apparently when the Prime Minister meant that Canadians would be able to express their views, he meant only the 11 first ministers of the country. Nothing has changed.

Yesterday when the hon. member for Beaver River was asking about this, the Deputy Prime Minister responded: "We believe that Canadians do not want more constitutional wrangling". If that is the case, I would like to ask the Prime Minister why did the government propose in the throne speech to constitutionalize the distinct society notion, to change the amending formula of the Constitution? Why is it proposing to reopen the wounds of Meech Lake, Charlottetown and the patriation of 1982?

[National Unity, February 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask about another promise which had a shorter shelf life than the one just addressed. That is the promise of a national referendum which seems to have gone out the window already.

The government said in its throne speech: "Canadians, no matter where they live, will have their say in the future of the country".

I ask the Prime Minister: What precisely did he have in mind when the government made that commitment?

[Social Programs, December 13th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Quebec Minister of Finance made an excellent suggestion regarding social programs. She asked that the federal government transfer tax points to the provinces, instead of money, and give them greater autonomy regarding the management of these programs.

The minister would like to change a system whereby Ottawa can withdraw its financial assistance, while continuing to impose federal standards. That proposal is already included in the 20 point decentralization plan of the Reform Party, and several provinces support such changes.

The federal government should contemplate such a reform, instead of wasting its time on symbolic measures such as recognition of the distinct society. The irresponsible refusal of the federal Minister of Finance does not mean that federalism cannot be reformed and that Quebecers must separate. On the contrary, Quebecers have allies all over the country, as regards this issue. It is the Liberals that cannot be reformed.