That is right. However there is a backlash. If they increase taxes people spend less. Fewer people are employed. Jobless rates go up. There is more of a demand on our social programs. Our debts go up. Our interest payments go up. The cycle repeats itself. It is a spiral that ultimately results in the collapse of the financial, economic and social backbone of our country.
To put this into a more stark perspective, by the year 2010 interest payments and social spending will combine to swallow every single dollar this government or any government will take in. That is 100 per cent of revenues. That will mean there will be no money for government services including the armed forces, foreign affairs, RCMP, or the precious multiculturalism and bilingualism the government holds so dear.
At best, with government services amounting to $42 billion, the most we can reasonably cut is between $8 billion and $10 billion. The rest must come from social spending. There is no way around this fact of life.
We in this party are not looking to slash social spending. We are looking to cutting a modest $12 billion to $16 billion which, in combination with the other $8 billion and the expected rise in GNP, will result in a balanced budget in the next three years.
The threat to government programs is already very evident. I will use the concrete example of health care that is close to the hearts of Canadians including my own. Our health care system is in crisis. The federal government is giving less and less money to the provinces and the provinces are funding less all the time because they simply do not have the money available. They are in exactly the same fiscal crunch the federal government is in.
This results in the deplorable situation of rationing, particularly the rationing of essential health care services. Less money, increased demands, an aging population and more expensive medical technologies all combine to comprise people's health. The most essential of health care services right now are being withheld from people, which will result in people suffering and people dying.
There is a five-month waiting list in Ottawa for heart surgery at the Ottawa Heart Institute. In the province of Quebec there are tens of thousands of individuals on hospital waiting lists, 800 of whom require urgent surgery now. That is absolutely deplorable. Seventy per cent of individuals in severe pain who need new hips, which generally applies to the aged, will wait at least five months and 40 per cent of them will wait 13 months to get hip transplants. Imagine ourselves, imagine our parents, imagine our grandparents suffering in severe pain waiting for a hip replacement that may never come.
The federal government is taking away money on one hand and forcing provincial governments to adhere to the archaic Canada Health Act. It in itself philosophically compromises the health care of every Canadian.
What do we propose to do in this party? We do not propose to destroy the Canada Health Act. We propose to amend the Canada Health Act to ensure that provinces have the ability to take care of their finances and to enable them to experiment with various funding models to be able to pay for the essential health care services people require.
Right now people are not getting essential services. How do we prevent a two-tier system wherein the poor will suffer? The way to do it is to define essential health care services, which is the job of the government. We are more than happy in this party to help the government toward this realization of defining the health care system and ensuring that those services will be covered for every Canadian in the country regardless of socioeconomic situation.