Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this year's budget debate.
I feel fortunate to be able to have this opportunity to pass on the views of my constituents of Edmonton-Strathcona. The constituents of Edmonton-Strathcona voted for a Reform member of Parliament based primarily on three principles: justice reform, parliamentary reform and, most significantly, fiscal reform.
It is because of the fiscal reform that I became involved in politics. I wanted to ensure that the standard of living which I have enjoyed will be maintained and passed on to my children and to my children's children.
This budget presented by the Liberals does nothing to seriously address the national debt and deficit problem. It has been said that a new government receives only one chance to make the necessary changes, one window of opportunity. This government has had not one but two chances.
The first was a year ago when the government was more concerned about increasing the deficit through increased spending and claiming that the deficit was not a problem. It then spent the rest of the year producing discussion paper after discussion paper while doing nothing.
The second and final narrow window of opportunity which the government has had to balance the budget passed earlier this month when it failed to implement the necessary restructuring in its latest budget.
It is therefore amazing to me that this government can stand before the citizens of Canada and present such a disheartening and ineffective budget. It is another example of Liberal smoke and mirrors. The Liberals state this budget is exactly what the doctor ordered. If this is the prescribed medicine, it not only smells bad and tastes bad but it is totally ineffective. Canadians have been subjected to a clinical trial where they have received nothing but a placebo.
This budget has cut spending by $12 billion over three years with a cut of only $4.1 billion in 1995-96. What the government is not telling Canadians is that we are borrowing more money this year than we did last year even after these poorly placed budget cuts.
The reason for this is extremely painful. It is because the interest payments on the debt are becoming astronomically high because of previous Liberal and Conservative governments and this Liberal government's continuation to run deficit after deficit.
With this Liberal plan Canada will still be running deficits of approximately $25 billion annually by 1997. This is a sad commentary on the government's unwillingness to listen to Canadians. At the end of the day, the national debt will still rise by $100 billion and Canadians will have to cough up nearly $50 billion a year in interest payments. This is a $12 billion increase since the Liberal fat pack came to power.
The Liberals have also managed to introduce a budget which involves short term pain with even longer term pain. What Canadians wanted was a budget which not only controlled spending but a budget which made a concerted effort to begin the process in which the deficit can be eliminated.
This is what we introduced in the taxpayers budget. It was a budget that could have seen the elimination of our national deficit within three years. The Reform Party had its fair share of short term pain. However, it had a light at the end of the tunnel. It was a budget that reflected hope and prosperity, unlike the Liberal budget which reflects doom and despair.
The Liberals have merely postponed the tough decisions until 1997. If they are unwilling to do the right thing now, how can they expect Canadians to believe they will be willing to make the right decisions down the road when those same problems still exist and the tough decisions have become tougher?
They should be honest with Canadians. I know we were with respect to the Reform alternative budget. The Liberals should come clean with Canadians and explain the consequences of their fiscal indecision and ineptitude. It took the Liberals 12 years to add the first $100 billion to the national debt. By the end of this mandate, the Liberals will have added a further $100 billion in only four years. This Liberal fat pack is extremely efficient, efficient overspenders.
Middle class Canadians are asking the same questions the Reformers are. For example, is heating your home a tax loophole? Is having electricity in your home a tax loophole? Is having water a tax loophole? Is having a car a tax loophole?
If the answer to these questions is no, then my constituents, Albertans, and for that matter all Canadians would like answers to the following: Despite this government's promise to limit tax increases to the rich and corporations by closing the so-called tax loopholes, why is it that the middle class has ended up with the burden of paying the majority of this year's nearly $1 billion tax increase in which a $.5 billion gas tax is included?
Why does the Liberal Party exploit Alberta to the extent that it does? Liberal governments have been notorious for abusing Albertans and this government continues the Liberal legacy. First we had the national energy program. Now we have the termination of the Public Utilities Income Tax Transfer Act through which nearly $200 million annually will be taken out of the pockets of Albertans.
While it is true this government did not raise personal income taxes, this government continues to speak out of both sides of its mouth. There is only one taxpayer and taxes did in fact rise by $1 billion this year and will rise by almost another $3 billion by 1997. Instead of tax increases, the government should have looked at the elimination of funding for non-priority items such as multiculturalism or regional development programs such as ACOA, WED or FORD-Q.
The government has taken a step in the right direction in terms of privatization. However, it did not go far enough. Every ministry has one or more areas in which the government is providing a service which is in competition with the private sector or could be done more efficiently by the private sector.
The Department of Canadian Heritage is no different. Due to time constraints I will focus my comments on the CBC. The CBC's primary mandate should be the provision of distinctive, culture specific information and drama programming. In an increasingly multi-channeled environment the current mandate to provide a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains is too broad. It is also clear that the mandate of the CBC is to provide Canadians with predominantly Canadian programming. However, what Canadians are being subjected to is extremely questionable in terms of meeting the prescribed mandate.
The issue is no longer whether the CBC has adequate funding, as that passed long ago, but rather the structure of the CBC. In particular, the organization has not adjusted to the realities of the marketplace. It is an outdated, highly concentrated and expensive organization.
We must constantly remind ourselves that the Canadian broadcasting environment has changed radically since the conception of the CBC. New technologies, new services, changing viewer tastes and fundamental changes in advertising behaviour
have transformed the broadcasting environment. We must not forget that in a world where the CBC is no longer the only national service, does it make sense to use scarce public funds to subsidize the provision of commercial television programming?
In this new world of broadcasting consisting of many more options to television viewers, public broadcasting cannot effectively maintain its all things to all people objective. It is therefore essential for survival in this multi-channel universe that the public broadcaster be willing to reinvent itself. It is quite evident that the corporation is unwilling to do just that.
When the president of the CBC states that revenues are not its mission, we must therefore as parliamentarians address this area for it. Since revenues are not the mission of the CBC, what is?
How can a private company such as CTV make revenues its mission while still adhering to Canadian content legislation? Last year, CTV spent $488 million on Canadian content. The CBC spends $561 million on Canadian content programming. This is not a huge difference considering we spent over $1 billion for the operation of CBC and nothing on CTV. CTV spends close to the same amount as CBC on Canadian production. The difference is, one is government owned and one is privately owned. One is a drain on the public purse and one adds to the public coffers through taxation and profit.
Had the government privatized CBC television, it could have saved the taxpayers approximately $800 million. This number does not include the revenue which would have been generated from the sale of approximately $1.5 billion in assets which the CBC currently holds.
The government must balance its books, which means all areas of public financing must be evaluated for efficiency and cost effectiveness. It is for these reasons that the Reform Party will not support the budget.