We understate, as the parliamentary secretary who intervened knows very well. It is our tradition to understate.
There is a little bit of voodoo economics in some of the proposals put forward by the second opposition party. For example, cutting provincial transfer payments with a corresponding transfer of tax points does not result in lowering the overall public debt. It is simply to transfer federal problems to the provinces.
Alberta and Saskatchewan already have their own economic houses in order but other provinces have not. I do not think they are going to appreciate a federal government abdication of responsibility.
Let us take another example. Broad brush cuts look very simple. There is a proposal that has been floated to automate lighthouses on the west coast. It is a major issue for people on the west coast. Many sincere, decent people have discussed this subject with me. I have 25,000 names on a petition in my office opposing this one budgetary cut. I accept the sincerity of the proposals, the logic of the argument, but I also recognize that we have to make cuts.
I have to pose the question: "Whom would you cut and why? Is the deficit to be cut everywhere but in one's own backyard?" These are the hard problems that a finance minister must struggle with.
The Indian affairs department has been referred to. It is a favourite target for many people who do not bother examining
empirical data. It is in the process of devolution that is being spearheaded in Manitoba. The department has cut its workforce by 45 per cent in the last several years. Some bands are ready for self-government, although that is not totally defined, and some bands are more ready for self-government than others.
Consideration of further cuts in the Indian affairs department has to be related to the progress to self-government and to the concept of moving by steps which the government rightfully on all empirical political experience has accepted as the best road to self-government.
Transferring responsibility to what is called the family ignores current social structures that exist as the living reality today in Canada. I would suggest the second opposition party has a rather restricted particularistic definition of the family. One would raise the question and not simply rhetorically: "What about Canadians who do not have a well-to-do family to rely on? What about them?"
There are too many contradictions-antinomy is the technical term-in the shadow budget of the second opposition party that are simply not resolved. Empowerment of individuals is brought forward as a buzzword but is really a code word for abandoning those in need. Basically it calls for people to look after themselves whether or not they can.
This contradicts what in another part of the second opposition party's proposal, the shadow budget, is called equalization. Again one talks of national standards but this contradicts the principle of cutting transfer payments. If we want to impose national standards as a federal government in a domain where the federal constitutional power has to be stretched to the limit, how do we do it without using the tool of transfer payments? The contradiction is there in the shadow budget of the second opposition party. It simply has not bothered to try to resolve it or to suggest how to do it. That again stems from the fact of absence of responsibility in making the hard decisions that we must make as a government.
Again to take a further contradiction on a contradiction, the equalization principle contradicts the idea of cutting transfers to the provinces as such. I believe there is one basic truth here which all of us must recognize. The budget to be brought in by the finance minister within the next week will be the toughest budget Canadians have seen in 127 years. That is the reality. It is going to be a very tough budget. That is our responsibility.
Since I am not privy and constitutionally could not be to the finance minister's plans until he actually announces them in the House, I do not yet know what is in the budget; but I am on record, as are many of my colleagues in the government, as supporting drastic reform of the pensions of members of Parliament. I am on record, as are some of my colleagues, in advocating that Parliament bring MPs' pensions into line with those in the private sector.
There has been reference to foreign travel. I personally have not partaken of any foreign travel at taxpayers' expense since my election. Many government members are in the same position.
I support unemployment insurance reform. Indeed the most imaginative part of the green paper on social reform brought forward by the minister charged with social security concerns unemployment insurance reform. Many Canadians are paying $1,200 per annum in premiums even if they have never made a claim. The seasonally unemployed and the manufacturing industries which include unemployment insurance abuse in their business plans should be made to be more self-supporting through increased premiums, fewer weeks of benefits, more weeks to qualify and mandatory retraining.
These are the materials before the finance minister that have been given considerable consideration by committees, by task forces and by other groups. They are the sorts of decisions a government must make, big tough decisions, balancing the interests, choosing among the conflicting interests and resolving the antinomies.
I support, as do many government members, the commercialisation of as many crown corporations as possible and a rationalization of those remaining. The government accepts that responsibility. It will be reflected in the choices that it has to make in the budget.
We all support the elimination of overlapping government services. We support the transfer of powers to the provinces in such areas as natural resources, fishing and health administration, without sacrificing national health standards. These proposals have been part of our historical debate for the last 30 years since the quiet revolution.
We welcome the suggestions put forward by governments in Quebec, by the Bourassa government and by its present government, for study in this area but we recognize the impact upon the budget in adopting proposals of this sort.
I am really saying that the shadow budget of the second opposition party does not really tackle concretely the problems of making those hard choices. To the extent that it does, it seems to me that like the previous Mulroney government's approach to the economic situation there is a give it up philosophy there.
It is not enough to slash government expenditures. We need, and this was our proposal in the red book and in the general election, a dynamic policy of creating new jobs. We need new export industries. We need more foreign trade. We need to be competitive there.
The Prime Minister has made his trips to Asia accompanied by our leading business specialists and to South America. This is part of the new politics. We need to harness science and technology in aid of economic growth and that requires a strong federal presence. This is the key to the infrastructure program that the government has been carrying forward since its election. It is the key to areas such as western economic development, but it is a recognition. The slashing of expenditures, if that is all it is, is a descent into economic pessimism. It reminds one of the policies of the economists who failed in Germany at the end of the 1920s and who failed in the United States in the Hoover period.
The country is strong. To echo the remarks of the man who replaced President Hoover, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. What we need are new jobs, new markets and new tax revenues. This is a positive, dynamic way of controlling the deficit and reducing the external debt. Create the new jobs, build the new revenues from the new incomes. It is a new, dynamic and optimistic approach to the Canada of the next century. This will be the thrust in the budget to be presented I am sure in the next week.