Mr. Speaker, on October 17 of this year I asked the Minister of Finance to come clean with Canadians about what the government's intentions were in terms of reducing funding for social programs in this country.
Since that time there has been much speculation. One report indicates a potential cut of $7 billion contemplated by the government in our social programs envelope. Others, for example the Standing Committee on Finance which has just released a report, project that over the next two years there will be something like a $3.4 billion cut in social programs.
This discussion that is going on certainly does not take into account the reality of what social programs have contributed to this country. Certainly as a New Democrat I am not against changes to social programs, but clearly Canadians are beginning to realize that the social security review has been merely an attempt to cut expenditures rather than to really and truly change our programs.
If the intent was to change programs, to make them better, to make them more efficient, I think we would have seen a very different process. I think the government has to be clear with Canadians what the intent is around the reduction of revenues in the social program area.
I would remind the government that in 1991 Statistics Canada was very clear that only 6 per cent of our debt could be attributed to social programs. I would suggest to the government that we need equal debate, indeed more debate, on that 94 per cent of the cost of our debt and deficit.
One of the major costs of that is how we finance our programs, not simply what we do within the purview of those programs. Since October 17 when I first posed the question to the minister I continued to raise questions about the financing of the debt. For example, only yesterday I posed the question to the Minister of Finance suggesting that he should have a public inquiry into the role of the Bank of Canada in setting interest rates, because of course the amount of our foreign debt is certainly affecting the
interest rate policy, and to look seriously at how monetary policy in this country is formed and the role of the Bank of Canada in that.
The minister did not respond to that particular request. I would suggest again that the minister instead of just simply looking at cuts to expenditures should also look at why they are necessary. Part of the reason for that is the monetary policy that was pursued by the previous Mulroney government and has been continued if not with even more zeal by the current Liberal government.
There are several things that the minister should be looking at in this area. The minister might recall that before 1967 the Bank Act legislated a ceiling on interest rates that allowed for some control. Prior to 1991 the act ensured that the Bank of Canada had some control over interest on the national debt.
I would like to ask the question why it is that the government will not be clear about the reduction in expenditures it wants to make to the social programs envelope? In addition, why will the government not look at the way and the role of the Bank of Canada, which has become I might add not the bank for Canadians but the bank for chartered banks, and how the government by looking at that could return the controls of its monetary policy to the people of Canada and not simply to the chartered banks.
I would be very interested, Mr. Speaker, in again posing those two questions.