Mr. Speaker, I rise to address a very critical issue in Canada today and a very complex one too. I wish we were not here today debating this particular amendment because I do not find it particularly satisfactory to the dilemma we find ourselves in.
However, it may be the only way in which we can register our concern and opposition with the government, and the way it has botched a critical matter in Canada today.
We are almost at a crisis point in this country in terms of our federal-provincial relations. I have been in political life for close to 20 years. I have never seen such a divisive situation, such a sour situation with many different agendas competing for attention. I have never seen so much backstabbing and so little leadership to bring parties together to build a strong nation.
I have travelled the country with the finance committee on fiscal imbalance. I have had a chance to see just how deep those divisions are and what angst exists in provinces right across this country. I cannot emphasize enough the seriousness of the situation today in terms of our nationhood, in terms of our ability to build a stronger nation, to keep the federation in place, and to address competing interests between the provinces, the territories and the federal government.
I am worried about how this situation will unfold in the next short while. I have not seen any leadership from the government. I have not seen any leadership from the finance minister, the Prime Minister, or any of his colleagues. I feel nothing but gloom and despair as I see events unfold and feel somewhat helpless about this tragic situation. If I, as an elected member of this place, feel helpless, just imagine how Canadians must feel watching the news day in and day out and wondering what this country is coming to.
We are debating today one of the most fundamental concepts for this nation as a whole, for the preservation of national unity, and for describing our unique identity. Yet, we have heard neither a satisfactory answer from the government nor a clear cut proposal from the official opposition.
As I said at the outset, we may support the motion. It may be the only way by which we can register our opposition to the government which continues to act as if it had a majority and continues to ignore the voices of parliamentarians and the wishes of Canadians. It may be our only way to force the government to address some inequities in the system that it has created. I think in particular of the Minister of Finance's own province of Saskatchewan and the way it has been treated over the course of the last several months vis-à-vis the side deals that the government has embarked upon.
Equalization is about who we are as a nation. It is the glue that holds this country together. Equalization is part of the financial foundation of our social programs. It is part of the collective commitment that we all make to solidarity and social cohesion.
It is a program and a concept that is so important to Canada that it is entrenched in the Constitution. It is a program that has a long, proud history and it must be remembered and revisited at this critical moment if we are ever to find our way through these deep divisions and these dark days.
I do not need to remind the House that we have had equalization since 1957 for the provinces and 1958 for the territories and how it has formed an integral part of our national effort to ensure some semblance of equality across our diverse regions, provinces and territories.
Equalization aims at ensuring roughly comparable services with roughly comparable taxation levels through good economic times and bad. It symbolizes, at the macro intergovernmental level, the positive role that government can and must play in redistributing wealth so all may prosper. As I said, it is so fundamental to the fabric of Canada that in 1982 it was entrenched in the Constitution.
If equalization is so fundamental to the country, why are we here today dealing with a motion that essentially is running around trying to pick up the pieces of the equalization process? Why are we dealing with a motion from a political party that has no more interest in pursuing the notion of equalization than it has of pursuing equality for women?
I do not need to remind members how much this concept has been held in disrepute by members of the Conservative Party and before that members of the Reform Party. I do not think we need to go over the whole history, except to remind ourselves that inherent in the position advanced by the Conservatives in the House today is the notion that somehow equalization is bad because it saps energy and vitality and takes away incentive to overcome the odds and prosper without due regard for the structural issues at the heart of any difficulties a province or a region might face, without any understanding of the historical accidents that occur, which is really the placement of oil and gas reserves and other natural resources. It has nothing to do with the strength of a province such as Alberta with its ability to overcome all odds. It has to do with an accident of history where those reserves are placed.
It is like trying to get through to that party the concept of equality of condition for all individuals. The Conservative Party has no understanding of what it means to help put in place those programs and supports that ensure equality of condition. The Conservatives seem to think that all that has to be done is let people loose and they will do it on their own. They will overcome all odds and difficulties and do not need to have a government that worries about a national child care program, a health program, an education support system, a housing program, an environmental protection program, a transportation program or a social assistance program. The Conservatives do not have any understanding of those programs.
Therefore we obviously approach this debate with a great deal of reservation. If and when we support the motion it will be with a great deal of reservation. It will be because we are left with a government that refuses to exercise its leadership and prevent the kind of dismantling of the country that we are seeing all around us.
Why are we trying to pick up the pieces here in this way? We do not have to look very far. We only have to look to the government benches. The Liberal government bears responsibility for this mess in so many ways.
It was the Liberals, under the current Prime Minister at the financial helm, who brought in the vicious cutbacks of the mid-1990s, which sent transfers for health care, post-secondary education and social services into a tailspin, that has spawned an ongoing series of crises over federal-provincial funding arrangements that continue to this day and goes to the heart of my presentation today.
We are not dealing with a situation that has been fixed by the Liberals. We are dealing with some band-aids, a patchwork of systems, a set of boutique programs over here and some pilot projects over there, to try to deal with the kinds of crises the government has created with its single-minded focus on dealing with the deficit back in 1993, as opposed to balancing the need to restore some balance in the fiscal situation of government while not neglecting the human deficit.
Yes, it was the Liberals and their transfer cuts that downloaded more financial responsibility on to the provinces that added to equalization pressures as the only life raft within sight through which to recover provincial stability. It was the Liberals who followed the Conservative dictum of backing out of their government responsibilities to develop an energy strategy for Canada that has led even more directly to today's debate.
Such a strategy is the proper context for today's discussion but, under the Liberals, the strategy does not exist. During their entire regime, fully conscious of the changes that signing free trade agreements has brought to our energy picture, the Liberals have done nothing. Selling off Petro-Canada for them is an energy strategy.
Even worse, for their entire regime they have also been aware of the energy implications of climate change and the need to act on Kyoto. Again, they have done nothing to build an effective energy strategy for the future sustainability of our economy and our planet, or even to work out these vital issues with the provinces and territories.
As my leader, the member for Toronto--Danforth, wrote in a communication with the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador almost a year ago, Canada needs a national energy strategy that not only corrects such fiscal imbalances regarding resource extraction but also best positions our country for a future under the Kyoto protocol and beyond.
The government has been dithering with a capital D and that dithering has become the Liberal trademark, the real branding of the government. Wherever else we have seen it over the last few days, weeks and months, whether we are talking about the sponsorship scandal and the Gomery file, the budget and its commitment to deal with social infrastructure and urban needs, or any number of issues before us today, that dithering has extended to the whole equalization process as well.
It was the Liberals in 1982 who brought in a system of basing equalization payments on only five provinces' economic performance, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and B.C., instead of ten. It has created problems over the years but the Liberals have avoided the type of meaningful negotiations with the provinces that could have reached a more lasting solution.
A make do, buy some time agreement in 1999, was an opportunity to move forward, but no. What did we get? We got more dithering. The fundamental issue was so low on the Liberal priority list that by the time the deadline was approaching in late 2003 so little had been done that the Liberals had to introduce Bill C-54 as an interim measure just to ensure that the whole equalization process did not grind to a halt along with equalization payments.
When that died, to enable the Liberals to create an event out of their leadership change, they had to follow up last February with Bill C-18 to essentially buy another year of time.
However, that was not at all necessary. All the provinces, interestingly, at that point in time were in agreement as to the route forward to get equalization back on track with a full 10-province rating system and an all inclusive calculating method. I have the document here and I hope the Minister of Finance refreshes his memory with this important contribution dated September 2003, a paper entitled, “Strengthening the Equalization Program: Perspective of the Finance Ministersof the Provinces and Territories”.
Just a couple of years ago the provinces were in agreement on a proposal that would have dealt with some inherent problems in our equalization system. It would have put us on a solid footing for ensuring that the program continued over the next five years on a fair basis and in a reasonable way. The proposal called for a 10-province standard and the inclusion of all revenues, including non-renewable energy resources. It would have worked and it would have had the support of all the provinces. It would have dealt with some inherent inequalities. It also would have, by its existence, prevented the government from making the foolish mistake it did by not pursuing a good plan and then ending up making side deals with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
I believe the Liberals apparently were not interested in actually negotiating a solution. Instead, they came back to the provinces in October with a take it or leave it deal, another Liberal trademark by the way, to which the provinces and territories reluctantly agreed despite some obvious flaws. They put a pot of money on the table and told the provinces that it was theirs to basically do with as they wanted. The Liberals then set up another committee to study a longer process and a panel for which there are deep concerns right now about who is on it, what work it will do and when it will report.
Immediately the Liberals became embroiled in side deals. If we fast forward, today we are being asked to formally recognize side deals as the new way of doing equalization. It is obvious that the Liberal deal from last October began to unravel before the ink was even dry on the page. The danger is that the whole valued equalization process may unravel with it as both have and have not provinces have heightened, not lowered, their dissatisfaction levels. The dilemma should be really no surprise to Canadians. Balkanization has become the Liberal password.
We have watched the Liberal government's consistent abdication of the use of national standards or the national programs that have been part of the great tradition that has built Canada. The current Liberal government seems only qualified to dismantle programs and measures such as equalization.
Social cohesion seems to run counter to the Liberal vision and the corporate interests it represents. Equalization is the fault line in the neo-Liberal agenda in Canada where Liberal cuts and downsizing government services meet government's role as the major agent of equality and the redistribution of wealth head on.
Of course Saskatchewan and other provinces want to protect their future economic stability. They recognize the volatility of the commodity market. Unfortunately, the Liberals have not acted. They have stood by as spectators while our economy has shifted once again back toward a dependence on oil, gas and other commodity exports to the United States.
The Liberal dithering and inaction is stunning to its extent and that is why we end up in this dilemma in the House today debating a motion that is less than satisfactory but one that may be the only way to make the government listen to the provinces, deal with the present concerns and inequalities, as in the case of Saskatchewan, and begin now to put in place a formula that is based on the 10-province standard inclusive of all revenues.