Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to speak for a few minutes. I have heard all kinds of things since being elected to this House a little over a year ago and I have sincerely tried to understand our friends from the Reform Party. It sure is not easy. I sometimes get the feeling that they have rocks in the head. Something is wrong with them. Perhaps they have bats in their belfry. For whatever reason, they are not quite with us.
It is obvious that everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. We all agree on that. When Reformers talk about cutting government spending, I agree with them that cuts have to be made. The point was made that extravagant expenditures were made in the past, on embassies, for example. It happens that certain things slip by the government unnoticed. The Reform Party estimates that the major part of government expenses responsible for the national debt approaching $600 billion are expenses the government made in an effort to help Canadians by developing social policies, in an effort to put Canada on the map with a number of social projects.
If drastic cuts were to be made in all this today, as suggested by the Reform Party, some 33 to 40 per cent of Canadians would just starve. This is unacceptable on the part of a political party, although I must admit it shows that Reformers have a lot of guts. I am impressed by their courage in tabling budget number one of the era of Reform. I am not as impressed, however, with the contents of the document. They are attacking multiculturalism, Canadian bilingualism, and Canadian subsidies. But do they know that $900 million is granted every year to Western producers, in their home region?
If this was cut overnight, what would happen to these people back home? Western farmers would simply be condemned to die slowly but surely of starvation. Now, this is not what politics is about. One has to know when and where to cut so that it is as painless as possible. It may be great fun to cut back the federal civil service by 30 per cent, but if you just drive civil servants out of A to force them onto B, B being welfare, and have no money to pay for welfare through federal-provincial transfers, I fear that Reform Party voters will have to tie their wallets to a chain, as some people have already started doing. This country will be subjected to widespread plunder.
Our social programs are also used to buy social peace. Take that away and the Reformers may well see prison populations swell, which is what they want, as a result of their fiscal policy. I do not know. I am just trying to understand.
This budget number one of the Reform Party does not strike me as a serious one. I would suggest that it goes back to the drawing board and come up with something practical, not prima facie grandstanding, something that makes sense.