Mr. Speaker, I will not pursue the point of order except to say that maybe the hon. member for the Reform Party should let go at one point in time. When does he think kicking someone around should stop, if that is the case? Or does he feel that we have abused our privileges in this place? Anyhow, we probably witnessed a new definition of what meanness is in this place, but for many reasons, I am a lot more interested today in addressing the issues relative to this budget.
This budget has the advantage of putting things into focus and perspective in regard to a few elements that are important to Canadians. First is where the Liberals really stand on these issues and what their real agenda is or is not. It puts into perspective the previous accomplishments of other governments and what their records mean and what do they not mean. It also brings into perspective the real issues we have to address.
I wish to begin by being as frank and straightforward as possible. There are things in this budget we agree with. There are things in this budget that we think are positive for the country. We intend to support those proposals that are positive and constructive.
I do not think it is very useful for us to enter into any phoney indignation on budget night in terms of what the budget is all about. It is not useful to stray around with inflated vocabulary that only rings false in the ears of the Canadian public when they try to look at this budget.
Frankly, in trying to assess how the government needs to deal with this issue, anything I have heard is that Canadians want government to succeed. Canadians want the government to do well in dealing with the budgetary and fiscal problems facing the country. They do not want to see the government face another crisis. On the contrary, they hope that it will make the right decisions. It is very much in that spirit that I would like to offer my thoughts and comments today.
The most interesting part-I happen to be one of the few members in this place who has a view on this because I happened to be in the other Houses-is that this budget also brings into perspective the policies and positions of the Liberal Party of Canada. That has to be one of the first assessments that we need to make about the budget.
To be brutally frank, it needs to be said that the budget is a denial of the principles espoused by the Liberal Party during its nine years in opposition, a repudiation of the policy it placed before the Canadian electorate 16 months ago, an abandonment of those people whose defenders the Liberal Party pretended to be.
For nine years Liberals purported to defend old age pensioners against any reductions in benefits, to fight for the jobless against changes in unemployment insurance, to maintain the annual increases in parliamentary grants to VIA Rail, to the CBC and to all the cultural agencies. They called for the expansion of day care.
The parliamentary secretary this morning even had the temerity to raise day care when if one reads page 40 of the red book as Canadians have, one will find there is a clear commitment to increase day care spaces by 50,000 a year the moment the economy goes beyond 3 per cent.
Is there anything about that in the budget now? That was the Liberal position. They vowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with single mothers, with poor families, with refugees and immigrants, with the regionally disadvantaged, with the sick, with
needy children here at home or abroad, all of whom were to be given more, not less, financial support by a Liberal government.
Maybe I am naive but I am still young enough to be disheartened by the treachery and old enough to know that in time the Liberal Party will pay for this. It is said often enough but it bears repeating because it is true: Liberal policies in opposition were unrealistic. Their promises were irresponsible, their opposition to budgetary restraints of any kind in any circumstance at any time over nine years were not principled, but dishonest, totally political and wilfully ignorant of the national interest.
Everywhere they sought to obstruct-I was in that House for nine years-systematically and without question any cuts or reductions in expenditures. In fact when the government was elected in 1984, previous expenditures were growing at a rate of about 13.4 per cent a year. Program expenditures under the previous Liberal government were brought down to under 4 per cent a year. Did Liberals support that? No, not once that I remember.
What now? Do we congratulate them on having seen the light? Is their policy any more principled than the old policy? Is it any more credible? Is it any more reliable? That is the real question.
Liberals bitterly fought the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement. I remember that well. Under the present Prime Minister's leadership, they opposed NAFTA, the North American free trade agreement, in Parliament and promised on the hustings they would not ratify it unless specific amendments were agreed to.
They opposed the previous government's energy policies. They obstructed the changes in pharmaceutical patent protection. We are still not sure where they stand on that today. They fought the dismantling of the foreign investment review agency. They denounced deregulation and privatization. They also swore to abolish the GST, to scrap the GST. We even heard in their first budget-