Mr. Speaker, 12 years ago a Boeing 767 flying from Montreal to Edmonton nearly crashed over northwestern Ontario. This near tragedy was not a result of a mechanical failure or a powerful prairie thunderstorm. It simply ran out of gas.
In its statement the airline placed the blame for this emergency on human error involved in converting the fuel measurement from imperial to metric amounts. It was only the skill of the pilot that manoeuvred the drifting aircraft to a safe landing. At 30,000 feet refuelling is no longer an option. The fate of the passengers lay in the hands of leadership. Interestingly enough the airline was Air Canada.
Canada as a nation is like that aircraft. Our ship of state is in trouble, not because of some internal mechanical malfunction but because of human error.
The world has changed to a new competitive economy. The rules have changed but our ground crew still does not know how to make the conversion. After two decades of human error air Canada is drifting. Our financial reserves are empty and Canadians, the passengers, are deeply concerned about their future and safety. The only problem is that at this moment the incompetent ground crew is still flying the aeroplane.
Each one of us knows that personal security is vitally important to Canadians. Ours is a compassionate society. We all want to know that our friends, families, neighbours and ourselves will be taken care of during times of need. Yet somehow after 30 years of ballooning government spending on social programs we have been left with less security rather than more. Why is this so?
Let me save the suspense by answering my own question. Canadians feel more insecure now than ever before because government overspending has robbed them of their personal security. The welfare state has failed. Just as communism and socialism crumbled after a 75-year experiment, our own 25-year social digression has come to a painful conclusion.
Canadians are beginning to realize that the welfare state is not working and that it is time to re-evaluate the government's role in providing social security to individuals. The greatest single danger to the personal security of Canadians comes from the
financial unsustainability of social programs currently monopolized by government. They are unsustainable if we have to borrow money to pay for them, which is exactly what successive governments have done for the last 25 years.
Thanks to such irresponsible management the federal debt is now over $530 billion and provincial and municipal governments owe another $190 billion. Instead of providing peace of mind these programs and their associated debt have left Canadians feeling anxious about this, about their and their families' futures.
Why have Canada's debt and deficit left Canadians feeling anxious and insecure about their futures? The reason Canadians feel such concern is that after being deceived for so long, led to believe that government would look after them and take care of them from cradle to grave, they have come to realize they are now relying on a bankrupt state. They have come to realize the interest payments on the debt have become so large and are growing so fast that it is beginning to crowd out the social programs that have protected them for nearly a generation.
The greatest risks to Canada's social fabric are the threats of annual deficits and a rising national debt which over the past 30 years has crowded out many legitimate expenditures of governments.
We have borrowed so much over the last 25 years and accumulated so much debt that all the money we borrow this year will be used to pay interest on our federal debt. When it comes to government there are no free lunches. In fact compound interest make the ultimate cost of what government is borrowing very costly indeed; in fact more costly than if we had paid for them outright, if we had paid our own way to begin with.
Effectively interest payments are crowding out programs. Money that could be used to help Canadians is simply not available to us because we have to pay our interest obligations. Interest payment on the debt is now the single largest expenditure item for many governments, depleting resources for public investments in health, education and infrastructure. As we continue to borrow, our debt increases as does the interest, leaving even less money for essential programs.
Where does all this debt and compound interest leave Canadians? It leaves us paying more taxes while at the same time receiving fewer services. Canada's debt burden is both eating up a substantial portion of current tax dollars and reducing the ability of all levels of government to provide essential social services. Can we understand now why Canadians are concerned?
How did we get into this mess? Whose human error or ignorance while working with ground support has brought us to a place of flying empty at 30,000 feet? Who could the passengers of our drifting air Canada hold responsible for bringing them into such a dangerous predicament?
It just so happens the ground support staff has been promoted to captain and crew. Is that not a comforting thought? The very ones who got us into this mess are now in control. Meanwhile, Captain Chrétien sails serenely on committing ordinary Canadians to a perpetual stream of more interest. Ironically it was the Trudeau Liberal government of which Mr. Chrétien was a member and a one-time finance minister-
