Mr. Speaker, if we are going to try to get our deficit and our budget under control we are going to have to engage in some bold new thinking. We cannot go on the same old way. We cannot go on making the same old assumptions. It really is true that as Tony Robbins expressed, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.
The Progressive Conservatives certainly proved it with their refusal to tackle program spending. What they did was considered insane either politically or in terms of the national interest.
Apparently the Liberals were too busy scoring partisan points to notice what had happened, let alone why. Look at the minister's social policy review. Having helped create our impossibly expensive social programs, having made many extravagant promises that drive our welfare state, the minister set out to produce sweeping reforms without changing his approach. He failed.
While we all feel a little pain at his embarrassment, even humiliation, in failing so spectacularly and so publicly in the most important assignment of his long and sterile career in politics, those of us on this side also feel a certain annoyance that the minister, given such responsibilities, was unable to rid himself of old and discredited ideas about the proper role of government.
The idea the minister did not have and the idea that the Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs did not have are one and the same. They did not ask whether the programs we are spending too much money on are working. They just assumed everything was fine, but we were not quite efficient enough.
The programs are not working. What we need is bold and original thought. We need clearly expressed yardsticks for measuring their success. If they are not working we need to shut them down.
Actually, as I stand here and say that it does not sound all that clever or difficult. I wonder why the minister did not think of it, or the Prime Minister, or the President of the Treasury Board. If they had they would have noticed something, not something small and subtle, not a little tiny point of light in the distance. They would have noticed a huge, roaring fire, consuming money in amounts that are literally astronomical, and for nothing that we can see that we want.
I refer to our social programs. They consume two thirds of non interest spending by the federal government. They consume more than $80 billion a year. In a country that is unimaginably rich by historical standards, these immense social program expenditures are taking place side by side with the apparent disintegration of our society. We spend billions on poverty relief but apparently poverty keeps getting worse. We spend billions on health care and our spending grows geometrically. Yet waiting lists lengthen, equipment deteriorates and our politicians go for treatment in the United States.
We are paying 5 per cent of payroll into the Canada pension plan yet it is an unfunded liability and has reached half a trillion dollars to date. Half a trillion is a five followed by eleven zeros.
Meanwhile, the President of the Treasury Board, to save us all from bankruptcy, has decreased the board of directors of the CBC from 15 to 12. Were they spending over $12 billion each? Perhaps the government will tell us every little bit helps. I am here to say that it does not, not enough. I am here to say that Ralph Klein was right when he said: "You have to go hunting where the ducks are". The ducks are in the social programs, not in the board of the Canadian Cultural Property Export and Import Act, and that is where we have to go hunting.
When the minister spends as many months and as much political capital as he has to eliminate the post of secretary of the Canadian Film Development Corporation, it is that many months and that much political capital he cannot spend on changes that would really matter.
I do not know whether hon. members opposite ever watch Yes, Minister or whether they are too busy living it. However, they should watch it because it is not just funny, it is very accurate. In one episode when the minister is criticising his permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, for the amount of bureaucracy that exists, Sir Humphrey tells him quite rightly that it has nothing to do with him, it has nothing to do with the bureaucrats. The reason there is so much bureaucracy'', he insists,is that the Parliament keeps creating programs and they all need to be administered''.
The total cost of administration for the federal government is $20 billion. The deficit is close to $40 billion. We would have to shut it all down twice to balance the budget. This bill does not come close.
I realize that to make a real dent in the deficit, the government would need two qualities it does not possess in any great quantity: courage and imagination. Even the Republicans in the United States have found that what the public wants to hear is that they are cutting bureaucrats, not programs. To say that is to take the easy way out. It is not the bureaucrats who are causing the deficit, it is the programs. Before one can say that, one has to be able to think it and that is where the active imagination comes in.
Many members opposite have been in politics a long time. They do not realize that the ideas that were once bold and new have gone stale and timid in the decades since. They do not understand that "government knows best" has been tried and it has failed miserably.
However, I put it to them directly that when one is looking at a roaring fire that is consuming some $40 billion a year and one responds by changing the definition of a peace officer under the laws governing the International North Pacific Fisheries Commission, one is totally missing the point. One had better take a step back and take a good hard look at the overall structure of government and then one had better be willing to tell people openly and honestly what was found. The government has to tell the people that Ralph was right. It has to tell them that we have to go hunting where the ducks are and that they are in big social programs, not in the board of trustees of museums. Then it has to cut them.
Let us have a rousing "nice try" for the minister but let us be clear that he failed. Maybe it is time that he stepped aside. Maybe it is time that the human resources minister and the Prime Minister stepped aside and let a party that truly knows and truly has the vision to resolve these problems take control.