Mr. Speaker, I believe there are two related fundamental questions which must be considered when considering the motion before the House today. First, can Canadians continue to live on borrowed money? Second, should Canadians continue to live on borrowed money?
We ought to acknowledge that it is very pleasant to live on borrowed money. Certainly Canada has enjoyed that position for over 20 years now and it is even desirable if only immediate benefits are the consideration.
However, I believe that living on borrowed money for our country amounts to short term gain and a lot of long term paying. Addressing the question of whether Canada can continue to live on borrowed money, the answer obviously has to be no, not in the long term.
We are already starting to drain away money that would otherwise have been available to fund our health care education and pension programs by the interest obligation that we have built up on the half trillion dollars plus that we have managed to borrow in the last 20 years.
Our interest obligation is this year $41 billion. We are borrowing only $39.7 billion. Therefore we are not even borrowing enough this year to cover our interest payment. We are going to have to take away tax dollars that could have gone to fund social programs if we had not built up in the last 20 years this interest obligation.
This means also that for 21 years plus our creditors have funded an artificially high standard of living for our country. I would submit that anyone who lives on an artificially high standard of living for very long is going to have to face reality one day. That includes our country.
Unfortunately the government says that it intends to put us even further in the hole over the next three years by borrowing another $100 billion more than we earn. Even if interest rates were so fortunate as to stay at around 5 per cent, on the $100 billion the government is going to borrow we will have to pay each and every year forever $5 billion.
That is a lot of money. The interest today that we are paying amounts to $1,200 per second and that is money that could be helping a lot of Canadians if it were not going down the drain in interest on high living for the last 20 years.
Anyone who has ever run a business or managed a household budget or even the allowance in their piggy bank knows that if one keeps spending more money than is coming in soon one will find oneself in trouble. That is a simple fact of life.
Unfortunately our leaders seem to be the only ones who act as though real life truths need not apply to their decisions. As more and more of our income is spent each year on interest, we are going to have less to spend on health care, education and pensions, let alone on the new programs that governments keep introducing, 18 in this particular budget.
Every dollar that has to go to government in taxes to pay this interest and to pay for government programs is one less dollar that can be invested to build and create business and job producing activity.
This is not a healthy state of affairs. Sir Roger Douglas, a former finance minister of New Zealand, stated: "The only justification for the government taxing people and then spending the money for them is if the government can demonstrate some special skill or knowledge that the average person does not have in how to spend the money". He then said: "I simply do not believe that".
I think a lot of Canadians would agree that governments in the past and present have not demonstrated any special skill in spending our money for us as Canadians.
Saddest and most disturbing, however, are the consequences of governments setting this great country on a course of living on borrowed money. It makes future taxpayers the ones who get stuck with the bill. Sometimes driving down the road one will see a bumper sticker, quite often on a nice motor home, saying: "We are spending our children's inheritance". This is true: in Canada today we are spending our children's inheritance. We are spending their future earnings.
This reprehensible behaviour amounts to taxation without representation. Instead of paying our own way, enfranchised Canadians today through their elected leaders are literally spending money that will have to be paid back with interest obligation by our children and our grandchildren. We have heavily mortgaged their future so that today we can have expensive and comfortable programs.
We are not justified in spending the birthright of future generations of Canadians. I would further submit that we have a duty to protect the interests of those who have no say in the burdens that are being placed upon them. They are the ones who are going to have to live with our mistakes. In 20 short years we are already worse off than if we had not borrowed a nickel.
The money that we bring in today is now not entirely going to fund the help that we want to give disadvantaged people of our society. Some of it is already starting to go to pay interest. As that increases more and more of our income and our tax dollars are going to have to go to interest. We will have fewer and fewer dollars to fund important programs like health care and education and pensions. Pretty soon those programs are going to be squeezed out of existence. They are already being eroded right across the country.
We in the House ought to join together and make the sometimes tough choices needed to secure our children's future. The motion before us today makes four modest proposals to take us in that direction. First, the motion urges us to say no new programs and, second, to put spending caps on the discretion of government. The Reform Party has proposed a very modest spending cap of only 6 per cent. There is barely a household or business in the entire country that has not cut its spending by at least 6 per cent and, I would venture to say, a good deal more than that in the majority of cases. Yet members of the House in both the Official Opposition and the government parties would not even support such a minuscule spending cap by the House. I say that is to our shame.
The third proposal we have put forward is to require progress reports on deficit reduction by those responsible for handling our finances and our fiscal affairs. That is an accountability measure which is only prudent in any company or enterprise.
Last, as leaders, as people who have been entrusted not only with today's affairs but with the well-being of future Canadians, we have to put together a plan for corrective action where we should not be moving further in the direction of living on borrowed money.
For the sake of young and unborn Canadians, I appeal to members of the House today to show the courage and the leadership to support the motion before us.