Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to comment on the member's remarks and on the whole social program review debate.
I wonder how seriously the government takes this whole program. When we look back at the chronology of events leading up to today and some of the recent statements by the human resources development minister, it makes us wonder how devoted the government really is to tackling the problem of social programs, the debt in general and how to make government run much more efficiently.
When I think back to the election campaign I remember distinctly how our party talked quite a bit about social programs and how they needed to be reformed. I remember Kim Campbell, the then Prime Minister, talking about social program reforms in so far as she said they were too important to be discussed during an election.
I also remember the deafening silence of the Liberal Party on this whole issue. If one looks at the government's red book it is almost without mention of social program reform. That was one year ago. I guess the Liberals must have been holding this close to their vests because shortly after they became government they started to make noises about the need to change social programs.
What happened is they came face to face with the reality, at that time, of about a $500 billion debt. Today it is just about $540 billion. They realized that they were going to have to do something to deal with the deficit and debt so they looked at social program reform.
During the throne speech and in the days shortly thereafter they said they would launch a task force and have an action plan on the reform of Canada's social programs. A motion was made to that effect at the end of January of this year if memory serves me.
Over the course of days after that, we found that it was going to be the same old thing, the same old way of doing politics. First we found out that this group was going to be hearing not from regular Canadians but instead from special interest groups who, in most cases, were funded by the government. In fact I sat on that committee as an associate member.
I remember as a newly minted MP how disappointed I was to find out we were not going to hear from some of the Canadians who have a vested interest, as taxpayers, in seeing social programs work well. We were pretty disappointed that this was not happening.
I must also comment that over the course of events we saw that the task force the minister was going to refer to was in many cases a bunch of hand picked patronage appointments, people who had strong ties to the Liberal government. Over the course of the summer we found that it lost its impetus and now the action plan has become a discussion paper. Over the course of events we have found that the government has failed to really pursue this with the necessary vigour considering this country's huge debt. Now taxpayers are running, afraid that the fat greedy fingers of government are going to get them.
So far this government has been unable to bring forward a real action plan. I encourage the government to move with dispatch. Get a handle on this serious problem by dealing with the social program review forthwith. Bring forward a real action plan that will bring the deficit and debt to heel.