Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure on behalf of my constituents to speak on the budget process.
Just after I was elected I went on a talk show in Vancouver. One of the first things the host asked me was whether I would deal with the budget deficit. He outlined how minister after minister had set targets to deal with the deficit and each time they had failed. I said we would deal with the deficit, that we are determined to deal with it, and that as time goes by we will meet the targets.
I congratulate the finance minister who has not only met the targets he set but has exceeded them. In the last fiscal year the target in terms of the deficit was $39.7 billion. The minister was $2.2 billion below the target he set.
The finance minister has done what many finance ministers in the past have failed to do. He has also done other things which the Liberal Party promised during the election.
For the first time in history a finance minister went to Canadians and consulted with them before introducing a budget to make sure Canadians had an input into the budgetary process to, ensure we were able to take the excellent ideas Canadians had, and the ideas economists had, to ensure their ideas also were reflected in the budget.
There is no doubt Canadians said they want us to deal with the deficit and the debt. During the election we said we would bring down the deficit to 3 per cent of GDP. So far we have that carried out. There is no doubt we will make sure we meet the targets set out in our election platform. We will be able to deliver on one of the fundamental promises of the Liberal Party, to bring the deficit down to 3 per cent of GDP.
We have a further vision which the Minister of Finance has articulated. We will bring the budget to a zero deficit. As we all know, in order to deal with the debt and the deficit problems we must deal with the deficit first. The way to deal with it is to bring it down to zero. That is our vision. Each two years the minister sets the targets to ensure we are working toward that goal.
One of the fundamental reasons it is so important is the targets we meet send a very loud and clear message to the international community. We will not set targets we cannot meet. We are realistic. There is a political will that once we set these targets down we will meet them.
In the international community that develops confidence in that what the government says, it is willing to do it. In creating confidence in the international community we will ensure the fundamentals which help us create jobs and growth will be there. Lower interest rates, which we have seen, and long term interest rates on mortgages have dropped because we have sent a very loud and clear message to the international community that we will work toward a zero deficit.
When the government set those targets it was very important to look at the principles on how we were to achieve our deficit targets. There is a whole variety of ways. Some of our colleagues on the
other side have given us their views. We have rejected their views when they said we should do it in three years and that we should bulldoze many government programs and that we destroy some of the infrastructure and some of our industries in the science and cultural areas.
We said no. We have to look at the core government, what we should be doing as a government, what we have to build on, what we have to expand. What provinces and the private sector can do we should let them do. They will be more efficient in providing the service. We have to look at what we as a government need to do. There is a role for government in many areas.
We had a comprehensive review from the bottom up. We looked at services government provides. We looked at what things we need for the future of the country and where we have to be strategic in strengthening our position as a government. Many things that may have been relevant in the past in today's economy, in this day and age, may not be relevant. We looked at boards. Many boards were eliminated. We realized we really did not need them.
This was a grassroots approach, from the bottom up, to evaluate all government services. We went to those people and asked where duplications were. Let us take the duplications out. Where can the municipalities provide the service better? In recreational harbours in the area of fisheries it does not make sense for us to manage those from Ottawa.
We are going to the local governments, to the provincial and the municipal governments. If they are not interested we will go to the private sector and say: "Do you want to manage these assets? You can do a much better job". It will create opportunities for small business people and opportunities to develop that asset more.
We have gone through a comprehensive review from the bottom up. At the same time we do not want to forget to restore the fundamentals and provide better core services to ensure that we improve on them.
We also want to look at the infrastructures that make us competitive. One of the reasons we are competitive is because we have strong infrastructures. We do not want to destroy those. We want to develop them. We want to make sure our telecommunication infrastructure is the best in the world. We cannot escape the global economy which is moving very quickly.
As a trading nation where one out of five jobs is created because of the trading, we have to be competitive to ensure that the total infrastructure, whether it is telecommunications, transportation or the information highway, is competitive and we are able to compete with the rest of the economy.
That is why we want to strengthen these areas. The Minister of Industry has done a tremendous amount of work in strengthening our position in the area of information technology. In the environmental industry, one of the great opportunities that exist around the world is in this industry. There is going to be a tremendous amount of opportunity there. Strategically as a country we must make sure we have the skills, the knowledge and the infrastructure to take advantage of the environmental industry.
The Prime Minister has taken a leadership role in the area of trade to ensure that Canadian businesses have the opportunity to take advantage of all the new opportunities that exist in the global economy by going to different countries. At the same time, we need to develop a trade infrastructure so that we develop an information system which tells our small and medium size businesses that there are certain opportunities that exist in all the different sectors we compete in.
In meeting with people from many other countries, they have told us that Canadian technology is some of the best in the world and that we can compete with anybody out there. However, we need to know the opportunities. We need to ensure that we build a system of information so that right at a computer they will be able to access all the tenders that are coming up and all the opportunities that exist in the rest of the world. That is the reason why we need to develop our trade infrastructure so that we will be giving opportunity to small and medium sized businesses.
What we have done in this government is fulfil the promises we made to Canadians by ensuring that we meet our deficit targets and that we have a vision for this country to bring the deficit to zero and to build a country where small and medium sized businesses will take the opportunities that exist in the global economy and that is the way we are going.