Mr. Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to speak to Bill C-108, an act to amend the National Housing Act. This is a very brief bill, just four lines long, but the impact is significant.
I listened to my colleague's debate, and her argument is basically that CMHC is going to turn off the tap. That is not true. This bill is about raising CMHC's loan limit from its present $100 billion to $150 billion. We are not talking about limiting what is already there. The pot is huge, $100 billion. That is $100,000 million that CMHC has to deal with presently. This bill would raise it by another $50 billion.
We object to that because of the state of the country. This country is now $564 billion in debt. We cannot continue to carry on programs that are going to cost the government money. I object to my colleague's statement that this does not cost the country. It does indeed cost the country.
If we are going to address our debt, the first thing we must do when we are in a hole is stop digging. Right now this bill continues to dig the hole. We cannot increase our debt any more. The country is broke. Let me repeat that: we are broke. This bill is going to add more liability to the country. It does not stop anything. It does not stop the $100 billion that is already in the pot. It is an increase.
I would like to comment on the experiences of New Zealand. We were briefed on this bill by CMHC and I asked what is CMHC's ongoing liability, because it is into mortgages 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ahead. It does not know. Current accounting practices say that you only have to be five years ahead. That is the window. I find
it incredible that a corporation dealing with this amount of money does not know its total liability.
New Zealand put in legislation which states that every year the government has to publish all liabilities of the government and all crown corporations. It was a real eye opener, because a number of areas like CMHC had to disclose exactly what their liability was. Right now CMHC is not doing that.
Another concern we have is that the government is sending mixed messages. It wants to decentralize. The Prime Minister has said that. We had a referendum in Quebec the other day that was about decentralization. Yet the bill goes in exactly the opposite direction. It enshrines more power into the federal government at a time when the federal government should be passing its powers down to the provinces.
Canadians want a smaller federal government. We are overgoverned, overregulated. Business is telling us to get out of their faces and let business do what business does best, run their business. The best thing the government can do is get its house in order. This bill goes in exactly the opposite direction.
I offer to my colleagues across the way a 20-point plan to decentralize the federal government. In fact Preston Manning spoke at the Canadian Club last week and got a standing ovation from the business people who recognized that a number of points of duplication between the federal and provincial governments have to end. Environment, natural resources, culture, and housing should all be done at the provincial level.
Private enterprise is already into the mortgage business. CMHC is already into it to the tune of $100 billion. There is no need to increase it by another $50 billion. One hundred billion dollars is just fine, thank you very much. Let private enterprise do what it does best and deal with this issue.
My colleague was saying that this does not cost the government any money. Let me remind you about the downturn in the early eighties. We can all recall that people in the housing market in Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg were walking into their banks, dropping the keys on the desk and saying: "Take it". Because of the downturn in the market, their mortgage was worth more than their house. If that happens, ladies and gentlemen, guess who is going to carry the can? The Canadian government.