Madam Speaker, if it ain't broke don't fix it. This is what I learned in my days of farming. The social security system of this country is broken. It has been broken for a long time. I would like to give one example of this which occurred in my constituency office only last week.
A middle aged man came into my office and asked if we could find him some money because the telephone company was going to disconnect his phone. He had rolled up a debt of over $1,500. He was drawing social assistance. Before that he was on unemployment insurance. Before that he had been a federal government civil servant.
When I asked what the moneys were for, if they were to find a job, he told us that it was for telephone sex. What have we done with our social system that actually allowed someone to think it was possible that the taxpayers would pay for his perversion?
The social program spending dealt with by the Minister of Human Resources Development's discussion paper is in the amount of $38.7 billion which represents approximately 31.4 per cent of total federal government spending, excluding debt servicing. Our deficit problems are symptoms of a country living beyond its means. It would be nice to go on a foreign holiday but we do not have the bus fare. An unpaid holiday is what we have all been living.
These are the indiscretions of past governments but the problem is now squarely before us today. There are those who will argue to increase taxes. Canada's personal income tax is one of the highest in the western world. At 53.5 per cent our top marginal rate is only second to that of France. We can compare this with 40 per cent in the United Kingdom and 32 per cent in the United States.
Higher taxes actually produce less revenue as people attempt to take their money and finally themselves to more friendly tax environments. We only have to study the history of Argentina to realize this was true. Taxation actually drove that country to financial collapse.
In short, we have only one direction to go and that is in the area of program expenditure reductions. The trick is to execute this in a way that continues to shield those with genuine needs but reward those who are able to bridge the gap to self-maintenance. We must stop the except me philosophy. The fact is that we are all in the soup together and it will need our collective wills to solve these problems. Failure will be an invitation to have others outside our borders decide them for us.
All is not bad in this process. Indeed there is a great opportunity to retool the Canadian economy to make it internationally competitive as well as allow Canadians to regain control of their own affairs.
I would like to speak on three specific areas of reform. The first is unemployment insurance. Instead of a short stopover for displaced workers, the program has become for many a basis of income support, over 40 per cent of regular users of the system. This is not necessarily the fault of any one but it reflects that our economy is changing. This is a symptom of what is known as structural unemployment. We do not need bottle washers because we have machines to do it. Some employers have abused the plan by using it for work stoppages and all sorts of reasons not to do with the original intent of the plan.
Financially the benefits of the program are one of the highest in the western world. It has reduced the productivity of the labour market. Why take that job when unemployment insurance is better than wages, less day care, less travelling costs, et cetera? Indeed Canada's productivity has been declining even during the recession. Clearly this has to stop and unemployment insurance must get back to its original function, that is strictly insurance. We cannot ask the general taxpayer to foot the bill for lower productivity.
Now I would like to address the area of child care. Much talk has and will evolve over the concept of child poverty. When we say this it conjures up images of children starving in the streets, begging and so forth. I have witnessed this firsthand in Peru, in Africa and even in Ireland. I have not witnessed it here in Canada. May I be so bold as to suggest that child poverty is a symptom of the mismanagement of family resources rather than a lack of transfers by government.
I am heartened by a recent case in Thunder Bay where a single woman with two children was able to save over $20,000 in two years while living on social assistance. Personally I do not believe that throwing more money at these situations will in fact alleviate child poverty. It may even increase it as these families will have less incentive to seek gainful employment which may have resulted in a more responsible attitude toward child rearing.
Finally I would like to address the area of post-secondary education. Canada has established an assembly line approach to higher education. Some statistics given regarding the need for higher education are skewed, that is to say we have not properly taken the time to consider what is the cause and what is the effect. For instance, do employers not simply use education as a method of screening job applicants? Does one really need a BA to clean out parking meters? I suggest it may be a disadvantage. This is not to say that we do not need a better educated job force, but it calls into question the type and quality of education.
Somewhere in the past we elected as a nation that we did not want to get our hands dirty. We closed down technical schools. We said that our children would all become doctors and lawyers. Our universities are full to the brim with students in social studies that have no more prospect of getting jobs than do high school graduates.
John Smith in Port Perry sits in grade 10 hating and failing his course in English and French literature. Maybe he will become one of our dropout statistics. In reality John Smith would rather be learning a trade, becoming an auto mechanic or other form of technician. Many of our largest employers regularly bring in trades from Europe because they cannot find them here.
In short, we need a more aggressive apprenticeship training program. We must recognize that technical programs are just as valid as and perhaps even more so than some of our academic programs.
I wholeheartely support the concept of using vouchers for post-secondary education. I would even hazard to take the process one step further by weighing more heavily on providing larger vouchers in support of science and technology as opposed to other programs. This would result in a shift in the skills of our labour force which would allow us to compete head on with the emerging economies of southeast Asia and others. Sue and Sam will need a greater focus toward job expectation than they have had in the past.
In conclusion we have a lot of soul searching to do, but it is also time for action. We must resist the thought that it is not our problem. Canada can move forward toward prosperity in the 21st century but it must renew itself first.