moved:
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.
Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and a pleasure for me to talk on this motion on this auspicious day. Today is October 25, 1994. It happens to be the first anniversary of the general election last year at which time the Reform Party laid before the people of Canada a real plan of how to deal with the debt and the deficit.
We presented to the Canadian people a plan that we called zero in three, a plan to balance the budget in three years. We laid out specifically where we would cut the money. We had a balanced plan between growth in the economy and cuts in government spending. In that way the Canadian people would know that within three years we would have a balanced budget.
We spelled it out in detail that we would cut 25 per cent of subsidies to crown corporations. We would reform unemployment insurance to make it a real insurance plan based on the debate and discussion between management and labour. We talked about abandoning and eliminating subsidies to special interest groups, and so on. We laid out a complete and detailed plan on how we would achieve that.
On this day last year 2.5 million Canadians voted for that plan and elected 52 Reformers to this House. It was one of the great electoral upsets in the history of Canada. We had only one MP before and now we are represented here by 52 MPs.
During that same election, the Liberals ran around waving their red book. The Prime Minister said that he had a book and he had a plan. The nature of our motion today is to ask where that plan is. We have not seen it yet. On this the first anniversary the Liberals have been in power for one full year and we are still waiting for them to take action on that infamous red book "Creating Opportunity, the Liberal plan for Canada". We have not seen what they intend to do with it.
The Liberals talked about reviving the economy, reducing the deficit, creating high tech jobs. One of the first things they did was cancel the helicopter program that was going to cost about $5 billion and would have generated all kinds of research and development and high technology. What did they do with the money? They started digging up ditches, digging sewers and so on. That will not add to the future viability of this country. That type of plan will get them nowhere in the long term.
We were expecting big things when they waved that book all through the election campaign. We thought it was going to be an exciting 100 days, even though we were sitting in opposition, but what happened? It took the government almost 100 days to get Parliament back sitting. That type of lethargy is what has happened. That is the story of this Liberal government in this past year.
The Liberals have fallen flat. They have not delivered on their promises. They have accomplished very little, if indeed they have accomplished anything apart from their discussion papers of course.
A few weeks ago the Minister of Human Resources Development laid before us a document that said we have a problem. Did he have any solutions? No, he had nothing. He promised to deliver that paper in June and he did not. He took until October before he laid that plan before us and all he could was say was that there is a problem.
We are looking for real direction from this government. We have not seen it so far. In his plan of a review of social programs he excluded $20 billion of old age security payments. That says this is not even going to form part of the discussion. Transfers to the provinces for help, let us not even talk about that. It is not part of our social security review. Yet the whole idea is surely to review the program to find out if any money can be saved.
The ministers of the government have to get their act together. We are asking and pleading with them to lay before Canadians a plan of action that shows us how they intend to balance this budget.
He talked about a health care program. The Prime Minister took great pains to explain and be proud of the fact that he was going to call a premier's conference on health care in June. It did not happen in June and it did not happen in July. By the time October came around he finally got a few people to show up. Not one representative from the provinces showed up on his much vaunted forum on health care. Again it has fallen flat.
The red book said the Liberals were going to reform the GST. The finance committee met ad nauseam from January to June. It produced a document but we still have not seen anything. They have no plan. They promised to get rid of the GST and they have not produced a thing.