Mr. Speaker, we in the House should spare a moment of sympathy for the Canadians who, for unknown reasons, are watching the debate on television. We have members opposite saying that it is a wonderful budget, a visionary and perfect budget for the country. Then we have members of our party who are responding to the budget with grave concern and alarm. It is only fair for Canadians to know why there are real concerns about the budget.
It is true that the budget reduces the deficit. Unfortunately the budget and the so-called rolling targets that it contains substantially increase the interest burden. That is the real threat to social programs.
I do not think the finance minister should get a lot of credit for reducing the deficit. As a matter of fact, he had absolutely no choice. Not only are Canadians telling their political leaders that their number one concern is the debt and deficit, our creditors have been sending us strong, unmistakable messages that we had better get our fiscal act together. According to the Wall Street Journal Canada ``has now become an honorary member of the third world in the unmanageability of its debt problem''.
The debt is about $550 billion. By the time the government is finished with us it will be $650 billion. Where is a country like Canada going to be with that kind of debt loading down its future and its young people? Moody's has threatened to remove our coveted AAA bond rating. International lenders everywhere want assurance from the government that a $25 billion deficit is just an interim goal. In fact, the budget sets $25 billion as the goal. Then there is some very nice talk about good intentions down the road. The good intentions of the Liberals for the last 30 years have paved a lot of roads and they all lead down into the debt hole.
Our real concern, which Canadians share, is that the budget will have a profound effect on the future of social security. Contrary to popular belief, Reformers are going to get old. Some of us are quite close to that goal. Reformers get sick. Reformers have disasters strike them. Reformers become unemployed. We are very concerned about the security of every single Canadian. That is why we brought in a plan to stop the horrible interest drain on the social security resources.
The finance minister's refusal to deal with the financial mess that is being caused to social programs by ever-burgeoning interest payments is a missed opportunity for which all Canadians will pay a heavy price. Much of our social program spending is funded and has been funded for years on borrowed money. Every year we borrow money, and that has been every single year, unbelievably, for the last 25 or more years. We increase the size of our interest obligation.
Every increase in the amount we are forced to pay in interest decreases the amount we have left to fund the programs we offer to Canadians. The only hope we have to break this vicious cycle of higher interest payments and less cash for our programs is to quit borrowing. That is exactly what Reformers have proposed; to quite borrowing as fast as possible, in fact by the end of three years.
In order to quit borrowing, social program spending has to be reduced. That is because fully two-thirds of non-interest spending by the federal government is on the social side. Even if we virtually wiped out every other program and function of government, we would still barely balance the books.
Of course many essential government programs cannot be eliminated. Although there is some fat in other non-social spending government programs-and the taxpayers' budget starts by cutting government operations by a full 25 per cent for a $10 billion savings-simple arithmetic dictates that some spending reductions must take place on the social side.
Interestingly enough, even our human resources development minister has figured that out. On page 8 of his discussion paper, which as we know went nowhere, it states:
-the interest costs on that debt are choking governments' ability to deliver services that the public needs and depends on-The larger the debt gets, the bigger the interest costs and the smaller the budget for services-The status quo is not an option.
That is the government's own minister. We have to ask ourselves why is status quo social spending precisely what the finance minister brags he has given us in the budget when another minister is saying that the status quo is not an option? The clue is in the rhetoric with which he has chosen to surround this sensitive issue.
Instead of providing a plan, the finance minister, like the human resources development minister, has again chosen to delay addressing Canada's ailing social programs, letting the cancer spread, letting the patient get sicker and sicker. Why? Because the Liberal government does not have the political guts
and fortitude to do the job, to get social spending under control so that we can preserve social programs for the future.
The Liberal government, knowing full well that the future security of Canadian citizens is in peril, lacks the political fortitude to take bold and decisive steps to effectively address the issue. Even worse, not only are Liberals afraid to deal with the problems in this critical area, they work hard to make Canadians afraid to have it dealt with at all.
How do they do this? By telling Canadians again and again that any plan to safeguard the ability to provide long term security by some reductions in social spending today is too cruel, too heartless, too harmful even to consider. Anyone suggesting such a course of action is immediately set upon and labelled as lacking in compassion and uncaring about the poor and needy.
Clearly Liberals cannot honestly believe this to be true because they are saying, and I quote again from the human resources development minister's discussion paper: "The interest costs on the debt are choking government's ability to deliver services that the public needs and depends on". They know this. One can only conclude that the government is anxious to make a virtue out of what can only be termed a shameful failure to get a grip on its deficit spending habits.
We are treated to loud protests by members opposite. In fact, they can be heard even as I speak, in the background nattering on and on. Any suggestion of spending reductions on the social side, even though they clearly know that government must reduce its expenditures in all areas if we are to have any hope of curbing the interest haemorrhage from the national treasury, is cloaked in inaction with a lot of talk about their commitment to compassion, fairness and equity. However, Canadians are beginning to see through all this nice talk to the lack of substance within.
Nowhere is this made more clear than in last week's unveiling of the Liberal so-called reform of MP pensions. Canadians were treated to the unseemly spectacle of government ministers flatly refusing to lose a nickel of their incredibly rich pension benefits.
This year the Canadian government paid $42 billion in interest. Just think for a moment what we could have done with $42 billion to spend on the citizens of our country. It could have doubled all guaranteed income supplement payments to needy seniors. It could have cut income tax by 20 per cent. It could have given free tuition to 100,000 students. It could have provided $10,000 to 100,000 newly married couples for mortgage down payments. In addition, it could have totally eliminated the GST, something the Liberals promised to do. To put the icing on the cake, it would have paid to build a $500 million skydome in every province, including P.E.I.
We did not have that $42 billion because we had to pay it to the Liberal interest debt they have built up.
The real threat to social spending is Liberal borrowing and deficit. It is not changing in this budget. If not now, when? Canadians and their children will remember the 1995 federal budget as the one which could have and should have but failed to provide a plan to ensure personal security in the years ahead. That it failed to do so will be seen as one of the greatest tragedies of the 35th Parliament.