Madam Speaker, it is such a delight to respond to the hon. member opposite as he whips his rose coloured glasses from his nose.
You do not have to be a brain surgeon to figure that if you have been running up debts, you can live like a king if you are doing it on someone else's money. The problem is the bank is about to cut off our Visa card. Our Visa card, American Express, Mastercard and our bank line are as high as they will go. We opened up a home equity line of credit which we are using and still we cannot pay our bills. We are going further into the hole every day. That, sir, is the problem.
Step number one in solving a problem is that you must deal with things as they are, not as you would wish them to be. This Pollyanna wishing and saying that the United Nations says we are number three in the world, why are we not number two or number one in the world? We are borrowing it. We are going down the hole. Our grandchildren and our children will be paying off debts that our generation and the generation that preceded us ran up. And these people are saying: "Everything is fine in the world". It is insane.
Let me read from The Wall Street Journal about this number one nation in the world. I am quoting Mr. Alan Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal of Friday, October 14:
The drop in the Canadian dollar, 20 per cent since 1991, is largely caused by the uncompetitive tax climate for both labour and capital. World investors do not like to invest in countries with rising tax rates.
The article goes on:
The weak currency means Canadians, and the Canadian government, have less buying power in the world. When the Canadian dollar falls, the government needs more Canadian dollars to make the interest payments on its large foreign debt. The increased tax rates after 1989 have thus increased the spending side of the government's budget by sinking the currency and raising interest rates, as well as shrinking real revenues.
Now this is not the party opposite. This is a world renowned, respected economist from the Hudson Institute.
These are the kinds of comments, the kinds of articles that affect our interest rate on the 30 per cent of the foreign debt owned by other countries. Every time we make an interest payment on that foreign debt we are putting German, Japanese, and American people to work.
Why do you think our interest rates are five points higher than the American interest rates? Is it because we are such great money managers? Why do you think our unemployment rate is 3 or 4 per cent higher than the American unemployment rate, yet our economies have matched each other for 40 years? Is it because such masterful people have been running our economy, the Liberals, the Conservatives, and again the Liberals?
In 1984 the Conservatives were elected with a mandate to get our country's finances under control. They did not. They blew it. There are two Conservatives in this House today. Count them. The Liberals have the same opportunity today to address the number one problem. If they do not do it there will be two of them left after the next election, maybe. Canadians are sick and tired of this Pollyanna attitude to what is really hurting our country.