Mr. Speaker, I have bad news. As of one o'clock yesterday the doomsday clock which registers the national debt was $570,947,551,591.35. The second bit of bad news is that we cannot continue to borrow indefinitely. The third bit of bad news is that the public has lost confidence in the government's ability to manage money and resources and to live within its means as taxpayers have to do.
The greatest single impediment to job creation today is the plethora of taxes Canadians face. Governments must reduce the tax burden of individual Canadians and businesses alike. The debt and the interest expense to service the debt are jeopardizing the viability and flexibility of existing programs. That is why we need a balanced budget.
Instead we have a finance minister who mocks the Reform Party for presenting a balanced budget over three years as if the value and the merits of a balanced budget are insignificant and irrelevant.
When the finance minister talks about rolling deficit targets as a percentage of GDP and meeting those soft targets, he brags about bringing in a deficit of $37.5 billion. I would really be proud of that. That is exactly what the Conservatives projected two years ago, which of course ended up being $42 billion or $43 billion.
As a businessman I am astonished to find that even when the country is facing a debt of close $600 billion reality has not set in with the government. Government overspending is the number one problem facing the country, and the finance minister will not act decisively. He had his opportunity two years ago. He had his opportunity last year. He would rather concentrate on deficit financing, continually spending more money than we bring in. People are tired of this.
In 1968 the great and wonderful Liberal leader by the name of Pierre Elliott Trudeau ran across the country and got everybody to vote for him. That is when the Liberals started to run deficits. He ran a deficit. He came in at $17 billion. When he left it was close to $200 billion. Then Mulroney came in and left the country with a debt of about $508 billion.
Now we have this Liberal government. After four or five years, when it leaves two years from now, its legacy to the people of Canada will be to leave a debt over $600 billion. I hope the government can be proud of that.
As the member for Medicine Hat said earlier, the debt and interest costs are hurting the country, the drag and the slag that will put us into receivership somewhere down the road. Our grandchildren will have to pay off this huge debt. We have a responsibility to do something about it.
Having been in the Standing Committee on Finance I heard a number of witnesses who appeared before it for the prebudget consultations, and that is really what we are debating today. Some interesting comments were made. I am looking forward to the budget to see if the minister listened to the submissions.
One day 10 leading economists appeared. I heard a number of them say-and it was consistent across the spectrum-that it was good a target had been set and achieved. That sends a good message to the financial community. There is nothing wrong with that. We needed some confidence. We needed to restore some credibility in the finances of the country. To that degree the finance minister has done that.
However the hole is dug and it is deep. Now he will continue to dig it deeper but just dig slower. To solve the problem he has to stop digging. That is what a balanced budget means. Somewhere we will stop digging in two years, three years or whatever.
This year a number of economists suggested a 3 per cent target next year in terms of the deficit as a percentage of GDP, 1.5 per cent the year after and zero in the third year. That is what they suggested.
Another economist suggested that we should get off of the treadmill of deficit as a percentage of GDP and talk about debt as a percentage of GDP. Overall as a nation it is over 100 per cent. As a federal government we are at a 73 per cent debt to GDP ratio. Even the Governor of the Bank of Canada at a public accounts meeting said it was too high, that we had to get it down.
For two years we have had economic growth. The wonderful targets the minister has been achieving have not been through spending cuts. Ninety per cent of them have been through growth. He is deceiving the Canadian public by taking all the credit for it. The businesses and the people of Canada should take credit for it.
The minister is playing games with the people. The projections by the economists were 2 per cent or maybe 2.5 per cent in the short term. That is not very much. If the inflation rate is close to or higher than the growth rate, the economists say that what is needed is a surplus budget. That is what the Governor of the Bank of Canada says, but the government will not do that.
I recommend a balanced budget. Yes, we will have a deficit. The finance minister should tell the Canadian public when he will have a balanced budget and when he will address the real problem in Canada, the high levels of taxation. Then he can start promising Canadians tax relief. Then he can start promising Canadians a break in their pocketbooks. Then we can start looking at ways to stimulate the economy which will lead to money in the hands of the people and will let them do it, rather than the government.
I recommend the three 1.5 to zero scenarios, versus the four, three and two which the finance minister is now proposing. When the finance minister introduces his budget he will use the same principle he used before: selective hearing.
The business community was also at the standing committee hearings and said the same thing. It said that government targets were too soft and that it was moving too slowly. The finance minister has a tough job. It is difficult to predict and I respect the job he had to do. However, the business community said that if the finance minister was to err, he should err on the fast side and not on the slow side. It is better to err by cutting quicker than by cutting slower.
He is cutting slower. He is trying to ensure that he keeps his support in Ontario. He is not telling the truth to Ontarians. We cannot afford to make the payments for the programs that we are delivering at their current levels. We have to reduce them. We have to help the needy, the truly needy. We have to start helping people to become more responsible for themselves. The way to do that is to be honest with them. The way to do that is to tell them that somewhere down the road, if we bite the bullet now and learn to live with less, we can lower spending and then we can begin to lower taxes. That is what we have to achieve.
The finance minister also promised in the election campaign that he would get rid of the GST. The Prime Minister said they would kill it and that they hated it. The Deputy Prime Minister said that she would quit if the Liberals did not get rid of the GST. That was addressed at the hearings as well. People were saying: "Let us do something about the GST". Two years ago the recommendation was to harmonize with the provinces: combine it, have it at one rate, hide it and the people would forget about it.
No. Any tax should be visible. As a matter of fact, not only should taxes be visible but our spending should be visible. We use income tax too much to deliver social and economic benefits when we should be taking those tax breaks out of income tax and putting them in a spending envelope under direct spending as they did in New Zealand.
Then we would have politicians and bureaucrats who could be held accountable. Then we would have a politician saying: "This is what we will spend on welfare. Here is my envelope. It is a $5 billion program". The deputy minister and the bureaucracy could help the politician do that. That would create an incentive for bureaucrats to succeed. They could actually receive a bonus if they helped the politician achieve the objective. The morale in the
public service is very low. I critique the departments of Revenue Canada and Customs and Excise and I could tell stories that would scare people.
In the next budget I would like to see a solution to the GST that is better and different from harmonization.
The finance minister is doing a disservice to the country if he will not accept complete responsibility, present a balanced budget and tell Canadians when they can expect tax relief. I hope in the next budget he will not be accused by opposition members of having selective hearing in committee.
He should have listened to that committee the way I listened to that committee. I know what he has to do. We know what he has to do. Let us hope he has the courage and the conviction to be honest with the Canadian people and deliver a budget that is tough but fair and that he cuts out this crap about draconian reform measures.
Compliments of the season to everyone in the House.