Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join this very important debate on Bill C-51 today. I say that because this particular bill would put in place many of the measures that have been in the budget but will also return Canada to a shameful history of deficit financing.
It is an important bill and all Canadians should be fully aware of its implications. A shameful history of spending beyond our means will leave our children and our grandchildren still trying to pay down the debt that is being incurred today.
I want to give a bit of history. In 1993 Brian Mulroney's Conservatives had grown Canada's deficit to more than $40 billion, a trend that exploded the national debt to more than $400 billion. In the election of 1993, Conservative fiscal mismanagement was the key issue of that election. Unemployment was very high. Inflation was rampant. Interest rates were out of control. Many of the viewers and certainly the people in York West remember 19% and 20% interest rates. The International Monetary Fund would signal big trouble for Canada.
Canadians were rightly concerned that the careless and free-spending policies of Mr. Mulroney and the Conservatives were putting our social safety nets in jeopardy as well as our entire country. Canadians responded by sending 177 Liberal MPs to Ottawa with a strong mandate to bring spending under control once and for all. After years of empty Conservative promises to get serious about budgetary prudence and restraint, Paul Martin took hold of the finance department and set Canada down a new and brighter path.
By the time the Liberals left office in 2006, we had eliminated the deficit, paid down billions of dollars of debt, reduced taxes by more than $100 billion, reinvested the surplus to bolster social programs and transfer payments, placed the CPP on a secure fiscal footing, and generated and maintained an annual budgetary surplus that the current government always complained was too high. But that was then, and this is now.
Despite inheriting a $13 billion surplus in 2006, in just three very short years the Conservative government has squandered that and returned Canada to deficit once again. Sure enough, Tory times are always troubled times. This is no small accomplishment for the members across the way. In their drive to become the largest spenders, or should I say overspenders as a better description, in our history, they had to first eliminate the massive surplus that they inherited.
I am going to put this in simple terms: a $13 billion surplus the Conservatives inherited just under three years ago, plus the $56 billion we are talking about now which already may be much higher but we are talking $56 billion because that is the amount the finance minister is referring to, makes a total overspending tab of $69 billion, that is $69 billion of Conservative mismanagement. That number must make Mr. Mulroney green with envy. At least the Mulroney government acted like it was trying to bring spending under control, contrary to the current government.
We know what the Conservatives are proposing to do with $69 billion, but I wonder what Canadians would have used $69 billion for. Here are a couple of things that we could have done. We could have more than quadrupled all federal spending on health care and other vital social programs such as our Canada pension plan. We could have given a hefty increase to old age security and helped our seniors. We could have increased the amount of money being spent from all sources on homelessness by more than 700%, or we could have reduced the national infrastructure deficit by more than 55%. Those would have been interesting things to have done with all of that money, but that was not what was done.
Let me put it in terms as clearly as I can for people to understand who are watching. For example, in 1993, 38¢ of every dollar collected by the federal government was needed to pay the annual interest on our federal debt. Thanks to the work of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, that number plunged to just 14¢ by the time we left office.
Today, Conservatives are again increasing our debt by living off our credit cards and having the bill sent to our children and grandchildren. If they continue to overspend at the current rate, never mind the possible increase, just at the current rate today, they will have reversed all of the progress made during the 10 years of national debt repaying before the end of their current mandate. Canadians remember today all the difficulties when they were dealing with the last deficit. That is right, the federal debt is again growing, and at this moment stands at more than $493 billion. The Conservatives are planning for a deficit that is the highest in our history.
Mr. Speaker, you should also know that we divided it up so that we could figure out what your share would be. Your share of that debt, the $493 billion, would be $15,000. That is $15,000 for every man, women and child in the country, regardless of age or income. My husband and I have three married children, and combined they have five children. That makes my family's share of the debt $195,000. That is a lot of money. That $195,000 worth of debt could have nearly paid for a new home in many parts of Canada. Instead, the government is squandering it, hand over fist.
The Conservatives will say that the Liberals supported the budget, and they are right. We voted to allow them the time to get past the current recession. We have held them up for almost four years in order to move the country along. We voted many times we did not want to, but it was important to work on behalf of Canadians. We now realize that will not be possible.
Less than a year ago the Conservatives were pretending they were running a surplus. Then suddenly it was a $34 billion deficit within six months. That so-called temporary deficit became a $50 billion deficit and now they admit to a $56 billion deficit. We will see what it is next week. When will it stop? No one can believe their numbers any more and no one knows how high the balance of Conservative overspending will be. Either they are not being up front with their budgetary facts, or they are not capable of managing our nation's finances. Maybe it is a bit of both, incompetency at both levels. Either way, the current situation is unacceptable, and I will be voting to return control and prudence to our national budgetary process.
As the official opposition, we were prepared to work with the Conservatives, as I indicated earlier, but they have squandered that trust, just like they have squandered billions of hard earned tax dollars, and continue to mislead, twist and turn all of the truth that is necessary when it comes to being a responsible government. I used the word “squandered” intentionally because the Conservatives promised many things like infrastructure and job stimulus, but they have failed to deliver 88% of that money, and the little that has got out there has not got to where unemployment is the highest and the needs are the biggest but to Conservative ridings. Not Bloc, NDP or Liberal ridings, it has to be a Conservative riding first.
The Conservatives promised never to raise taxes. They brag about that all the time, but they have implemented a payroll tax of $13 billion. That is a $13 billion tax on jobs, which will clearly be a job killer, not a job implementer. This measure alone amounts to $632 in annual payroll taxes, an increase on Canadian workers, no matter how much they try to deny it. They will be forcing small businesses, that are already struggling, to pay $884 more for employees per year. And they say they do not raise taxes.
I do not think that is being responsible at all. It seems the government has forgotten the basic rules, and the Prime Minister and the finance minister have failed to be up front and honest with Canadians. They have failed to grasp even the basic fundamentals of recessionary budget management. They have failed to effectively manage a looming unemployment crisis with 459,000 people currently unemployed. The OECD is predicting another 200,000 people who will be unemployed. The Conservatives have failed to keep spending under control.
I thank the House for the opportunity to speak, to get my points on the record, and I welcome any comments. I suspect there will be a few.
