Mr. Speaker, for those Canadians who are watching this debate on television I would like to read again the motion that has been put forward today to the House for debate by the Reform Party:
That this House requests the government to table a clear detailed plan to show how and when it intends to balance the budget including a clear statement of its vision of the role of the government in the economy in order for the people of Canada to debate the plan and vision.
There are a few things we need to point out about this process that Reform's motion suggests and proposes. One is about this whole question of public debate and consultation.
I have been rather amused to hear the government keep playing the violin about consultation, talking to the people, wanting Canadians to draw up a blueprint for reform of social programs, which is the area I am involved in the most, but not having anything to debate.
If we have a debate there is a proposal, a question, some sort of statement and people take the pro and the con and they debate it. How can we debate a nothing? There is no debate.
This government has made a fetish out of debating and consultations and put no meat on the table, put no clear proposals on the table, no question to be debated. It is just: "What would you do about social program reform? What would you do about budgets?". People are going to come from all over the map on that type of question.
What we have suggested in this motion today for debate is that the people of Canada be given a plan and a clear vision to debate. The government should come forward and say: "After talking to all of our experts, after examining all of the options, after examining all of the facts and figures and knowing all of the cost benefit of what we might do and what we might not do, we think we should do this. However, because this is a democracy, because we want to truly represent the people who are paying the bills and whose futures are going to be affected by this plan, we are now going to you the people and we are saying this is our best judgment about how we should attack and address this problem. But we want to know whether you are willing to support it, given all the information that we can make available to you and given sufficient time for you to examine our proposal".
That is what consultation is. It is not just: "What do you think?". We definitely need leadership from people in charge, a plan and a proposal and some direction, vision and purpose. We need to get that out for debate.
We do not have that from this government. That is one of the things that is sorely lacking. I am afraid quite frankly that the Canadian public will become very cynical, very disenchanted and very disrespectful of this whole business of consultation. It is going to become a dirty word. What it means is just pooling our ignorance, just "whatever you think". That is not good enough.
Consultation has to be focused on something concrete, something specific and something with some vision and a plan. Therefore I urge this government not to debate the notion of consultation with this kind of open ended, whatever you think, throw it at us. Let us show as parliamentarians and leaders, particularly those members who are representatives of the government party, that there is some leadership, a plan and a focus and that we are going somewhere so that we as Canadians can say: "Yes, we agree. We support that. It makes sense to us", or "No, we would like to see changes". At least we would know what we are talking about.
There has been a lot of talk about balancing the budget. Goodness knows our party has been talking about it for seven long years. They say seven is the perfect number. I hope it is because some time or other you would like to see this vision of a balanced budget coming to fruition.
We have been labelled as hackers and slashers, wanting to gut social programs, and all of the negative things that can be thrown at people who have one very sensible, very common sense proposal, and that is that we live within our means.
Why on earth would representatives, leaders and public officials want to borrow from the future? We do not want to mortgage our country. We do not want to lay the burden of our spending on our children. Why would that be such a difficult concept to accept? We do not know.
Why would it be such a difficult concept for the government to accept? We do know because it is still believed that governments can scoop up our national wealth and reallocate it in a way that is beneficial to Canadians. If the last 30 years have not demonstrated that that is a foolish and fallacious notion, then I do not know what will convince people.
If you had done something for 30 years, if you had scooped up billions and billions and billions of dollars of our national wealth and had it spent by bureaucrats, politicians and social engineers and then seen the mess we are in today, you would have thought that someone would stand up and say: "Gee, maybe this isn't working. Maybe we should do something different".
No, Mr. Speaker. What do we have from this government? Instead, the same old cant about "Well, maybe we just need different programs. Maybe we just need to spend it differently. Maybe we just need to do this or that or the other thing".
Maybe what we should do is run this country like any sensible business or household is run, that is living within its means, and letting people have the freedom to define their own futures, to look after themselves and their families, to help each other and their communities instead of this notion that somehow the state, mother government, the bureaucracy, the central planners, the wise men from the government can do everything.
It is not working and it is time that we acknowledge that. It is time that we started to say that we can do better in this country. We can do better than giving billions and billions of our hard earned dollars to government, politicians, bureaucrats, programs, and social engineering experiments that are simply making the situation worse.
When we talk about balancing budgets we are simply talking about taking the money that we have and using it with some common sense. We are talking about taking the money that we have and using it for what needs to be done, not what governments and bureaucracies and industries of different sorts think should be done with it.
This talk about balancing the budget is going to be just so much talk until something is done. I remember as a brand new, some would say very green, parliamentarian sitting in this chamber in February and listening to the finance minister. One thing that the finance minister said struck me very powerfully.
"We are no longer going to nibble around the edges of our deficit." I thought, wow, this is great. What happened at the end of the day? He cut just over one billion from spending. A lot of people said that was by smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand and kind of mixing and matching the numbers. When you are spending $160 billion and you cut it just over a billion, is that not nibbling around the edges?
Canadians are sick and tired of governments and politicians who say one thing and do another. It is time that this government and this House got a grip on this country, started using some common sense, started using some principled behaviour in the way they manage this country and its wonderful resources, and started balancing their spending.
I urge this House to strongly support our motion today.