What is the price attached to that? It is not known.
Empowering the unemployed and job creators: tax relief or reform. Empowering citizens to meet education needs: this is after suggesting that we should get out of education.
What do they say? They refer to an annual federal-provincial conference to define national standards. Have they ever gone to a federal-provincial meeting where they did not contribute anything and did not have any authority? Who is inviting them? What are they doing at the table? Nobody cares if they are there if they are not contributing something. However they have said that is what we are supposed to be doing.
Empowering those who cannot help themselves: tax relief. Those who cannot help themselves get tax relief. If I were to tell the people on social assistance in Winnipeg North Centre that I was going to help them with tax relief, they would be very curious about what taxes I was relieving them of when they cannot afford anything and they get about $400 a month on social assistance.
Empowerment for aboriginals: many Canadians are frustrated with the administration and the development of self-government in Canada. It would be wrong to deny that. The Reform Party suggests a substantial savings on the aboriginal community. It is about $500 million; I do not have it in front of me.
What do we do when that population base increases about 6 per cent per year? The baby boom within the aboriginal community is the most pronounced generational problem in the country. If we did that we would not just be freezing money, but on a per capita basis when dealing with questions of housing, education and assistance to young people within the aboriginal community there would be phenomenal cutbacks.
The Reform Party has pronounced a huge cutback in the CBC, with a savings of $375 million. Those of us who look at the CBC carefully know there have been a lot of criticisms. I am sure the CBC understands this, but to cut $375 million would probably end CBC television.
This morning when the leader of the third party stood up in room 200, what did he arrange to have? Well, well, well, national broadcast by the CBC. What does he want to use? He wants to use national broadcasting to promote the end of the company doing that national promotion. Does he ever mention it in his speech? No, he just swerves right by it and remains silent on the whole issue. That is the nature of this presentation.
This goes on day after day. Those members talk about equalization. The first thing this government did, Bill C-3, was to stabilize equalization for the poor provinces across this country. This is a very important point because as we move toward other funding and as we begin to deal with the provinces and as we can tell from the report of the federal-provincial meeting last week, these are going to be difficult times for many of the provinces which have to be given credit for the fact that they have shown leadership and produced near balanced or balanced budgets.
Pretty well all the budgets in western Canada, for example in my own region, are getting close to being balanced. Different strategies are being applied, some gradual, some very abrupt strategies but nevertheless they have been stabilized. Equalization is an opportunity for the federal government to make sure
that the other provinces which have a more difficult time have some stability.
They suggest a $500 million cutback in stabilization. However, if we look at it, stabilization increases about $500 million a year. Therefore to freeze it at the level they are doing is a much more extensive cut than they have said. Sixty per cent of equalization payments in this country go to the province of Quebec. It is a very important contribution that the federal government makes.
I would suggest as we are moving into a very difficult year in fighting out the referendum. All parties should appreciate the extent to which the federal government supports the economy of Quebec and not undertake budget initiatives which destabilize that economy at a very important time in our history.
To not acknowledge in the paper whether or not they understand the relationship between equalization and the economy of Quebec, whether or not they just choose to ignore it is a moot question which I am sure they will be willing to address later on.
However, the federal government has a responsibility when it set out a program in March of one year to the next year to continue that program and to continue the stabilization.
They go on to talk about the reform of the social security structure. They have a new program to come out which is basically to disband the RRSP idea. One of the most expensive programs that we have in this country, the way the federal government helps families and individuals, is through pensions. It is through support of the RRSPs and through the support of the registered pension plans. We by most estimates allow $15 billion of contributions to go into those plans without taxes. That is one of the major tax expenditures that we have.
If one wants to have a balanced budget within three years, I would suggest that there are limits to ways that one can extend new programs. To put out the feeler or just a vague idea to Canadians that there is going to be tax relief, there is going to be tax reform, it is going to be made easier for them in the future is a subtle signal that it cannot be sustained by any logical argument.
The last part of what they talk about is a taxpayer protection plan. This has been tried in other countries. The fact is that the last government played with the idea also. We have a parliamentary system. In the parliamentary system it is very difficult to contain a government from doing what it wants to do. That goes back to Walter Bagehot and the English Constitution.
Whether one likes it or not a parliamentary system does have a lot of power. To argue that by law one can change the behaviour of a government is wrong. In reality one has to change it in the spirit of the government and by the moral commitment it makes to be reasonable with taxpayers' money.
That moral commitment, that fiscal commitment, is here in this government. To offer taxpayers protection act again puts out this phoney signal that there is a solution just around the corner: "If only the government would agree with our act".
Here is where silence is not golden. They talk about taxpayers. What do they not define? The taxpayer. Who is one of the most common taxpayers? Corporations and banks. Are they saying that tax base should never be changed, that there should never be another tax, that Canadians are happy with the corporate and bank tax structure in this country, that none of us have ever heard people ask what we are going to do about the tax on this and the tax on that? What about the foreign ownership of the Canadian economy? Are we going to remain silent on that, a taxpayer issue that we are going to put into the Constitution?
My time is limited and my comments are extensive. I have tried to contain my frustration with an opposition party which is misusing an opportunity immediately before a federal budget to give Canadians the false hope that there is an easy solution, that we can somehow magically eliminate all the problems and all the bad judgments made by governments over the last two decades. Yes, I include the government and my own party in that.
We have accumulated a lot of debt. To acknowledge the accumulation of debt is also to admit that we have a very difficult problem ahead of us. All of us will have constituents who will suffer. If any member in the House thinks that their own constituency is going to be exempt, that their own lifestyle is going to be exempt, that we will not feel the effects of this budget, they are kidding themselves. Our job is to maintain a consensus in this country, not to have a social struggle, not to have class bitterness, but to understand that we are all in this together.
I thank the House very much for the opportunity to participate in this debate and I look forward to comments from other members.