Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be speaking today to the motion which addresses some of the problems of the recently announced budget.
Last Monday when I spoke to Bill C-14, the authority to borrow up to $37 billion more on the backs of the young people of Canada, I said I wished that government members would vote against the bill in order to avoid mortgaging the futures of their children and grandchildren.
Unfortunately my pleas were not heard or they were not understood or they were not convincing enough. For whatever reason absolutely not one government member voted against adding another $1,450 in mortgaged future to every man, woman and child in the country. Government members refused to acknowledge or are incapable of understanding the seriousness of the problem and they voted for Bill C-14.
As one person put it, because of the budget the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned out until further notice. No light at the end of the tunnel usually means there is a wall at the end of the tunnel. We do not have to keep speeding into a dark tunnel on this train of out of control debt. There is a chance for government members to help stop the train.
What is needed, among other things, is for them to support the motion before us today, a motion that would foster co-operation, to place caps on spending and to develop a spending contingency plan that will stop piling debt on to our children and grandchildren.
Of course government members are always worried that our real plan is to overthrow the government so that we can have another election. I would just like to say to them that this is simply not true. We believe in stability in government and we will support any government at this critical time that is prepared to address seriously the issues of deficit and debt.
Government members should be placing partisan politics in second place and start admitting that Reform MPs are telling the truth about the seriousness of the problem. If they do not believe there is a problem they should think about what has happened in Ontario. They should ask themselves: If government spending was the answer to the problems, how come the premier of the province of Ontario has had to abandon his program of $13 billion deficits? If it did not work for Ontario, how can it work for Canada?
The fact is that government deficits kill the economy. Government deficits lead to high taxation and excessive regulation. Government deficits suck the wealth out of the private sector and destroy hopes for the future. Government deficits turn out the light at the end of the tunnel.
I find it hard to believe that at least some of the government members have not realized that the government, like ones before it, has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. I find it hard to believe that at least some of them have not realized that we have reached tax saturation point, that it is time to abandon these possibilities of widening the tax base. It is time to realize that increasing taxes will only lead to a bigger underground economy. Prior to the 1993 election Reform was the underdog. If this government does not wake up, it will find that after the 1993 election Reform is the watchdog and after the next election we will be the top dog.
The best way for government members to retain their seats in the next election and to prevent Reform from winning is to support the motion before us today. That is another bit of the free advice I give occasionally to government members to help them with their re-election.
I know that government members like to say the policies of Reform are slash and burn. This is ridiculous rhetoric. It really does not contribute anything to solving the problems. The people who watch the proceedings of the House of Commons on television are intelligent, thoughtful people who can see through that rhetoric. They understand it for what it is.
We on this side of the House try to offer constructive alternatives. We offer alternatives that are workable and reasonable. It would not hurt for a government member to occasionally vote with us on something that we propose.
The evidence that we speak the truth is all around us. The National Citizens Coalition, which the government would dearly like to silence, has widely distributed a taxpayers' score card. If any government member filled it in honestly, they would have to admit that the government had failed in its budget plans.
More evidence came right from the horse's mouth, so to speak, when the deputy finance minister admitted to the public accounts committee on March 9 that the tax burden on individual Canadians and corporations is higher than in any other major industrial power except France and has climbed to almost 40 per cent of the gross domestic product.
Peter Cook in the Globe and Mail on the same date wrote:
Mr. Martin may have convinced himself that economic growth and the spending cuts he announced will head off a debt crunch, and he has convinced his boss-
Do we know who that is, Mr. Speaker?
-who is rather easily convinced on this subject. But at the great bar of public opinion he is not doing so well. Not only has he failed to convince most Canadian economists and the Canadian media, but he is facing an international audience that is getting rather peppery and impertinent.
Reports in the financial circles of Germany and the U.K. criticized the failure to act on the spending and predicted that the Canadian dollar would continue to slide. The proof is out there for us all to see; another third of a cent drop in the dollar last Friday, almost four cents since the election. Is the government proud of this wonderful achievement?
Can government members not see that this will lead to higher interest rates, higher inflation and no possibility of getting control of this deficit? Anyone with a calculator can see that we are already off the targets that were set in that budget. Even the government's infrastructure program, which was supposed to
kickstart the economy, has become a scandalous wish list of pork barrel politics and make work projects.
In a news release on February 18 by British Columbia-Canada infrastructure works it was revealed that short and long term job creation are no longer essential criteria. They have been reduced to only important criteria. The item at the top of the list is now incrementality and/or acceleration of investment, whatever that means. Let's face it, it is a mess and it is not going to get better as a result of the budget.
Our Reform motion today tries to address some of the problems and it promises co-operation. If I were a betting man I would bet that the government members will do the usual thing and vote against it without having any good reason to do so.
The Globe and Mail editorial on the morning after the budget said:
The budget makes a mockery of Jean Chrétien's promise to return to the good old days. In the good old days the future was not mortgaged to the selfishness and cowardice of the current generation.
I am not a coward. I am prepared to tell it as it is, and I am not afraid to support decisive action.
I am also not selfish about it. I have taken a voluntary pay cut and refused to sign the form making me eligible for the gold-plated MPs' pension plan. I have proven that I am prepared to make sacrifices to avoid dumping more debt on to the next generation. I can sleep at night because I can say to the next generation that I tried to stop the debt train in that long dark tunnel while the government opened the throttle, hoping the light at the end of the tunnel would reappear only to discover there was a wall in front of it.