Mr. Speaker, as critic for human resources development I have some statements to make about the bill.
For the benefit of Canadians who are joining the debate by television, I would like to set out the purpose of the bill. It deals with major pieces of legislation involving enormous expenditures by the government. However the bill is not a major initiative. It is a piece of housekeeping and its purpose, according to the summary, is to improve services to clients to allow for more efficient program administration and to increase efficiency between programs in the case of old age security and the Canada pension plan.
It is almost exclusively concerned with amendments to the Old Age Security Act, that is the first 16 pages of the bill; with the CPP act which takes us through the first 30 pages of the bill; with the Children's Special Allowances Act which takes up a couple of pages; and with the Unemployment Insurance Act which takes up another couple of pages. These acts are housekeeping in nature but, as has been stated by my colleague from the Bloc, there are some policy considerations that should be brought out as we debate the piece of legislation.
The government speaker who spoke on the bill in the House this morning played rather heavily on the government's "commitment to seniors". Back in January the government introduced with much fanfare a review of our social security system. I will read from the terms of reference that were put forward to the House respecting that review: "that the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development be directed to consult broadly, to analyse and to make recommendations regarding the modernization and restructuring of Canada's social security system", and this is the operative part, "with particular reference to the needs of families with children, youth and working age adults".
Seniors are quite conspicuous by their absence from this mandate and review of the social security system. At the time the mandate was debated in the House I stood and proposed that it was deficient in that it ignored our social security system as it related to seniors. Seniors are some of the people most impacted by our social systems. OAS, CPP and health care are very much of concern to seniors. Yet their interests were ignored in the terms of reference for the review. Now the government stands and plays the violin about its commitment to seniors. That is a little hypocritical.
The bill does one thing for Canadians. It points out the enormous complexity of the legislation and administration of our social programs. This complexity catches Canadians in many ways and causes their lives to be a nightmare of forms, deadlines, red tape, information exchanges, letters, phone calls and all things that go along with an enormous state bureaucracy that is supposed to look after us but in fact does not do it very well.
After one year in office the Liberal answer to the need to address the substantive dysfunction of a lot of our social programs, and the concern that the services to Canadians are eroding and cannot be sustained, is to bring forth a bit of housekeeping legislation. That is simply not good enough for Canadians. We need to be serious about addressing our social programs.
I will talk about that in a moment but first I will address the concern about confidentiality. Canadians want to see some common sense in this area. For example, if a non-citizen, someone from another country, comes to Canada, decides to stay for reasons we can certainly well understand and makes applications as a refugee, that the individual is on welfare or some other social program cannot be disclosed to Canadians trying to evaluate which people should be allowed to come to our country and be accepted as citizens to help build our nation.
There are many areas where the concern about confidentiality interferes with efficient, effective and common sense administration of our own system. For example, if someone applies for benefits often it cannot be disclosed in other jurisdictions or to administrators of other programs. That is one of the reasons we have abuse, inefficiency and overlap.
We need to be very sensible when we address this area and not go overboard by suggesting that nobody, especially the system that is paying the bills, has a right to know what individual Canadians are receiving in benefits.
The real issue is not that we need a little tinkering with our programs, a little housekeeping legislation from time to time to try to smooth the bureaucratic wheels. As we know these programs are in far deeper trouble than that. What is really needed is a substantial review and reform of our income security programs and our social programs and that is what we are not receiving from the government.
The review taking place presently totally ignores all the programs of most concern to seniors. It totally ignores CPP. It totally ignores old age security. It totally ignores health care. Government says this is coming. Our social system is just that. It is a system. All these programs are interrelated. If changes are made to program a it will impact on programs b , c and d. That is the way it works. To do this piecemeal, to look at one program,
then maybe another and a couple of years down the road we will get around to looking at the rest, is not the way to look in a coherent, effective and clear manner at how social programs should be administered.
A lot of people refer to the old saying: if it ain't broke don't fix it. Why are we looking at social programs? Why has the government brought in the review of social programs in Canada? It is fairly clear to everyone in the House and certainly to most Canadians why it is necessary. Although these programs are barely 30 years old, they are already unsustainable financially. They are not paying their own way. The cost of these programs is growing astronomically year by year and, worst of all, they have been largely financed on the backs of our children.
The bill for much of the spending on these programs which are so nice for us today is being handed to our children tomorrow. We are mortgaging our future so that we can have these programs. How long have we even had them? We have had them for 30 years. For 30 years we have impoverished our country and we are impoverishing our children so that we can have enormous benefits and an enormous bureaucracy to administer them. What have we accomplished? Very little as far as the long term benefit to the country is concerned.
Someone needs to stand and say this and do something about it. Canadians are looking to the government for leadership and for a good, common sense grappling with the issues facing us not just today but in the future. We do not see that happening.
We have a government that is continuing to say mortgaging our country to the tune of $100 billion during its term in office is okay. It will celebrate if that is all it does: if it only puts us in the hole by $25 billion a year it has done a great job for us! Canadians will beg to differ and certainly our children will beg to differ.
Seniors are at risk unless something is done. This is why many seniors are dependent upon pension benefits they have counted on to sustain them in their retirement years. It is very clear from anybody looking at these programs that in coming years our seniors will be sadly disappointed.
In just 15 short years we will have 40 per cent more retired Canadians than we have today. That is a huge increase. These Canadians will be looking for old age security payments. They will be looking for Canada pension plan payments. They will be looking to the health care system to make sure that their increased medical needs are covered and looked after.
Yet what is happening? These programs are costing more and more money. They are increasing the debt burden on our country
and are in serious trouble by any standard. Yet there has been no substantial, serious or urgent look at the situation.
If we look at the Canada pension plan into which people like me faithfully and without any free will on the matter paid for so many years of our working lives, we see that the premiums to sustain the program have already had to rise. By the most moderate analysis they will be rising to at least 13 per cent by the time the next generation is paying our pensions. Some analysts suggest that the burden on future workers and taxpayers could be as high as 16 per cent. This off the top payment, even if it were only 10 per cent, will be in addition to the enormous yearly interest that will have to be paid on the money that we borrowed and to the payment for all the other programs we will be using.
Do we seriously think the taxpayer of the future, in addition to paying the interest, paying for all the other programs to sustain society, trying to keep their lives together and building businesses and professional lives are going to pay an additional 10 per cent, 13 per cent or 16 per cent off the top so that you and I, Mr. Speaker, can have the Canada pension plan? That is not going to happen.
The future taxpayer will rise up in revolt and say that we are the guys that got them into the mess and if we think they are going to pay that much money off the top of their earnings in addition to everything else so we can have Canada pension fund benefits, we can think again; it is not going to happen. I can scarcely blame them.
Somebody has to get serious about the situation. Just going along with it and saying "don't worry, be happy; it will all work out" is not good enough.
The future taxpayer will have to pay billions and billions of dollars every year in interest on what we have borrowed. This year, for example, we are having to dig into our pockets for at least $40 billion-and it looks like it will be $44 billion-to pay interest on money the Liberal and Conservative governments have borrowed in the last 25 years. In 25 years they have managed to extract from our economy an obligation for $44 billion, and that is $44 billion that cannot be used for old age security, Canada pension plan, health care and all other programs we desperately need.
That interest obligation is rising. The government is going to think it is doing us all a favour if it only rises by another $5 billion or $6 billion every year due to its feeble stewardship over the next four years of its mandate.
We cannot continue to impoverish our future by not getting a grip on the issue today. We simply have to say we cannot continue to obligate our children to take $40 billion or $50 billion every year out of our economy, out of their hard earned pay, out of our economic activity, because we did not have the courage and the good sense to do what is right: to live within our means and pay our own way.
These programs have to be reorganized so that the people who really need them can count on them in the future. They have to be reorganized so that the state does not continue to have this enormous inefficient and ineffective bureaucratic growth, saying that it is going to look after us when it is abundantly clear that even at great cost, great inefficiency and great numbers of bureaucrats and administrative tribunals, it is simply not working and will not continue to work.
Last of all, we need to ensure these programs will be something we can continue to count on and pay for into the future. That is absolutely essential. It is a cruel deception for the government to tell Canadians it is looking after things, that everything is all right and that it is going to reward seniors who have invested in the country by making sure they get the programs. The government's inaction is virtually ensuring that our seniors will not be getting these programs, even in the foreseeable future as numbers of seniors rise.
I urge the House today not to look just at housekeeping legislation and a few little administrative changes to help a few people caught in the bureaucratic jungle. That is good; that is nice. However the answer is not to tinker with the programs. The answer is to look at the whole system that we have set up, all the structure that is not working after a mere 30 years or sometimes less, and have the courage, the vision and the leadership to get a grip on the situation and turn it around so that all Canadians can feel secure and confident that when they need help it will be there; otherwise the government will keep its hand out of their pockets and its nose out of their business.