Mr. Speaker, on March 7, I raised with the Minister of Human Resources Development the concern that Canadians have at the breakneck speed with which social security reform is taking place in Canada.
I am pleased to see that the provincial governments have put a break on that breakneck speed and have slowed the process down to give people in Canada more of an opportunity to look at the implications.
I also raised with him the concern that one in three Canadians have that the main aim of his social policy reform is to in fact cut social program expenditures. He responded that the objective of reform was to get programs to meet needs. This is a noble goal but one which the government is falling far short on because we have in Canada 1.3 million children living in poverty. We have 1.6 million Canadians on unemployment insurance, 2.4 million Canadians on social assistance and who knows how many Canadians underemployed, working part time when they want to work full time, not making full use of their qualifications.
We have a crisis in unemployment in this country which the government is sitting back and watching, preferring instead to focus on social policy reform and not dealing with the matter at its core which is to make this economy function effectively for, as I say, those over four million Canadians who are without work and who want work.
It is clear, as everyone in this House will know, that the best social policy is a job. Yet we are still seeing unemployment rates hovering over 11 per cent. Recent studies show that if half a million more Canadians were working full time, provincial and federal governments between them would collect approximately $12 billion in additional revenue on top of savings to unemployment insurance. Clearly if we get Canada working again the problems about social programs become much less significant.
Even dealing with some of the government's successes in terms of providing 80,000 young Canadians with job opportunities, that still leaves over 320,000 unable to find work; 320,000 of our future, our young people in Canada not able to find work.
There are other ways the government seems to refuse to pursue. For example, there are opportunities to raise tax dollars from the richest in our country and from corporations. Indeed, over $140 billion in corporate profits have gone untaxed in the last nine years. If Exxon in Canada had paid its 1992-93 deferred taxes $600,000 child care spaces would have been created. Imagine what we could have done about getting Canadians back to work through that process.
We know that half the government's debt is due to tax breaks and loopholes for wealthy Canadians. Statistics Canada has told us that. We know that 44 per cent is due to high interest rates. Only 6 per cent is due to program spending and only half of that from social program spending.
However, the government attacks just 3 per cent social program spending rather than attacking the core problem which is that Canada does not work for 4.5 million Canadians.
Also we could look at a wealth taxes, we could look at more effective tax auditing and we could even look at lowering the limits for RRSPs if we were looking to balance some of the problems that Canadians face and if we were looking to respond with adequate social programs.
We now have confusion within the government. Once the Prime Minister said that there would be no more need for budget cuts, now he has agreed with his finance minister that there will be need for budget cuts. They look to be severe budget cuts in order to respond to the way this government is looking at dealing with the deficit which is the same way all Conservative and Liberal governments across the country have dealt with it, which is to attack the most vulnerable in society.
I think what we should do is slow down the speed. We should give those who support the least well off in society the opportunity to develop adequate-