The hon. minister responsible for financial institutions says it is coming. Is that not what they said in their first budget, that they were going to accelerate reform of the GST? Is that not what the Liberal government said in its first budget?
What has happened since? Nothing, except the vain hope that the Deputy Prime Minister will resign if it is not done. That is the glimmer of hope they have offered to Canadians with regard to changes to the GST.
The vindication of these Tory policies lies not in their dubious embrace by today's government but rather in the results now being achieved in the country's productivity, its increased investment in exports and the new job creation.
Our economic growth today and in the foreseeable future is based for the most part on these Conservative initiatives so mindlessly and vigorously obstructed by the Liberals in opposition. It is one thing for the opposition to say that everything that is wrong with the country today was the previous government's fault. If we were to follow that line of thought, then they would have to admit that what is working would also be the previous government's fault.
Things as trivial as an increase of 40 per cent in trade between Canada and the United States, which is the number one reason we have job creation in the country today, that they fought against vigorously and at every turn. Things like changing the GST because it actually changed the federal sales tax for manufacturers in Canada. If we ask manufacturers today why they are more competitive, it happens to be because of the GST.
There is more than one side to this story. Those are things that are forgotten. For all of these policies they demonized Prime Minister Mulroney. They and their acolytes would not even concede the elementary assumption of civilized discourse in a democratic society, that their opponents acted in good faith for good motives but maybe with a mistaken policy. That usually would be the presumption. No.
As far as the Liberals were concerned, Tories wanted to sell out the country. We were bent on dismantling the federal government. We were going to balkanize the country, killing the Canadian dream. This was imposing the Thatcher-Reagan neo-conservative corporate agenda on Canada. That is what they were saying during the nine years in this place.
Now the President of the Privy Council is quoted in the Toronto Star of March 4 acknowledging that he cannot recall the Conservatives cutting anything like the $7 billion the Liberals plan to take out of the provincial social programs between 1996 and 1998. The same minister in the same article is quoted invoking the name of the Hon. Erik Nielsen, boasting that this budget was a mega-Nielsen exercise.
These are the same people who for nine years behaved in a way that is totally the contrary of what they are espousing today. As far as I know there is only one Liberal member of Parliament who has stood by his convictions. Only one Liberal member of Parliament has said he is offended by this. That is the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce who is quoted in the same newspaper article as saying it is a repudiation of everything the party stood for in opposition and promised in the 1993 campaign.
This is not the member for Sherbrooke. This is not a member from the Reform Party. It is not my colleague from Saskatchewan saying this. It is a Liberal member of Parliament sitting on that side of the House who was there for the last nine years, who
was there before that also and still sits, for now, with the government. We await his vote on the upcoming budget in regard to these issues.
As for other Liberal MPs, their critical faculties and social consciences seem to have been dulled or blunted along with their political instincts, lulled by the most insidious narcotic known in politics: the polls, the fast results and public opinion polls.
The Minister of Finance now boasts that his budget policy is such good politics that there will be more of the same, more again and yet even more as we get closer to the election campaign. Let me offer some advice to members in the House. Save those quotes. Cut them out. Keep them close. As we approach the days of the election campaign you will find them very useful.
We will also find out in the next two or three years that the government has an intended raid on the treasuries of other governments. That is what the budget is really about. From 1995 to 1997 there is a series of delayed action bombs which it hopes will explode in provincial jurisdictions and take out provincial and not federal politicians.
Most of all, we should give credit to Canadians. If anyone deserves any credit in this country in regard to some of the good decisions that are being proposed it is the Canadian people who have spoken in a loud voice and with consistency in regard to these issues.
The bottom line in the budget is that the cost of servicing the debt is going up as fast as program expenditures are coming down. Fiscal improvement is the product of increased revenue from economic growth. That is what we are seeing. So far as balancing the budget is concerned it has to take place at some unspecified time.
The government has made hay of the fact that it has a 3 per cent commitment in terms of reducing the deficit to GDP. It even has the temerity of adding that this is the standard of the European Community. What it forgets to say is that in the European Community this standard is applied to national governments.
In Canada, in the federal system, the provincial governments also incur debt. This year alone it is estimated that they will add $16 billion to the annual debt of the whole country. This is a false standard and the marketplace has recognized it. In fact, if we were to speak objectively of the reaction to the budget, at first what seemed encouraging has since then soured. The bank rate since the budget has gone up. The prime rate has gone up and the dollar has fallen. Those are objective facts.
I will recognize that there are other factors out there in the international marketplace but if the government makes a pretence of telling us to look at the numbers because it is on course, it reveals to us that it is certainly not on course in terms of the provisions it has made.
One group of people had it right. One rating agency grasped the essence of the budget very quickly. It was the Dominion Bond Rating Service. This service looked at what was proposed in the budget and then went on to place Ontario's rating under negative review because the provinces stand to lose billions of dollars in federal transfers. It understood what had just taken place. The problem had now been transferred to the provincial governments. It then turned to Ontario and saw who was in trouble now. It was Ontario that was going to be losing the money. It understood the real impact of the budget.
Some apologists for the government and some wishful thinkers explained the budget as a triumph of pragmatism.
Let us not kid ourselves. When the government says it is taking a pragmatic approach, the fact of the matter, what we have actually seen, is that it is all improvised, an off-the-cuff, ad hoc, last minute approach, which is interestingly enough reflected in the decisions that are made, particularly with respect to provincial transfers for social programs. It will all come out of the same big transfer pot, so to speak, with as little connection as possible.
In its budget, the government even had the nerve to suggest putting the Minister of Human Resources Development in charge of negotiating new standards with the provinces. After his first mission-which was a flop, a complete fiasco, ending in humiliation, and ultimately disowned-he is asked to go and consult again with the provinces, while cuts have already been announced.
Mr. Speaker, let us not be naive. We were not born yesterday. Just between you and me, what is going to happen when they get together with the provinces? How do you think things will go? The provinces are going to say: "Look, you made the decision to cut. There is nothing left to negotiate. Give us whatever money is left and leave us alone." This certainly reflects a lack of planning.
This brings me to what I see as the first major weakness of the budget: there is no plan. It reflects nothing of what the Liberals said, did or stood for in the last nine years in this place. The budget reflects nothing of what is written in the red book. All promises have been thrown out the window. The red book has been scrapped and the government and the country are left with no plans and no priorities. What kind of a situation does thatlead to?
This government is cutting R and D and the granting councils 14 per cent, the same way it is cutting small craft harbours across the country at a time when R and D is important for the country. This is a government of one of the only modern countries in the world to have closed universities. That is what happens when there are no priorities. That will be the first weakness of this government.
I have already alluded the second, this false objective of 3 per cent of GDP which frankly is not good enough and will not last. The country needs a very firm commitment to balance the budget with a timeframe.
The third weakness in the budget is in its approach. The budget and its unilateral ways go against the very essence of what federalism is about. Rather than setting national objectives for deficit and debt reduction, rather than sitting down with the provinces to avoid a situation, we are only off-loading debt into their yards.
How do we know a provincial government will not choose to increase taxes as a consequence of the budget? Where does that leave the taxpayer, the men and women, individuals who pay taxes today? There may be more than one level of government but there is still only one taxpayer. The approach is wrong and will not work.
The fourth area is the hidden agenda. Pension reform is the most glaring one. Here is a government that says it wants to undertake pension reform but will not share with the House of Commons the studies it has done in this regard when we know the impact and the consequences of what it is proposing are tremendous.
Let me give another example of the hidden agenda of this government with regard to the budget. The Prime Minister went on a TV show with Mike Duffy, stating as a matter of policy the government wants to reduce the cost of health care 1 per cent of GDP.
Mr. Duffy had a guest on his show last week, Dr. Jane Fulton, Ph.D., a professor of health policy and ethics at the University of Ottawa. I do not remember anything being said in the budget about cutting health care in Canada 1 per cent relative to GDP. This is not an ordinary member of Parliament who said this. It was the Prime Minister.
What does this mean? According to Dr. Jane Fulton: "I think if we have to talk between $7 billion and $10 billion, and every time we cut $1 billion out of any kind of public funding we cut about 10,000 jobs". I am not quarrelling that there need to be serious thinking and reduction of funding in health like in every other area of government.
What I find objectionable is that the government in this case has a hidden agenda. It is not coming clean with Canadians. Why did the Prime Minister not say this? Why did the Minister of Finance hide this from the House when he came forward with his budget? I am assuming the Prime Minister did not think this up. Did it just appear in his mind during an interview that this would happen? If that is the case, we all need to be enlightened with regard to this.
There is one advantage to the budget in terms of what it means to all the issues we are confronted with. It certainly puts into perspective the real accomplishments and the failures of previous governments. If this government likes to blame the previous government on anything that went wrong, it would also want to acknowledge the strong growth we have in our economy today was also because the previous government restructured our economy, brought forward the FTA, the NAFTA, the GST, privatized, deregulated.
These were the main features and the Liberals fought every one of them for nine years. Those enabled Canadians today to have economic prosperity and see some real job creation as we now go on to deal with some of the really tough issues we are confronted with.
This government has no compass, no plan. The last nine years were a complete farce. Whatever it was saying or purporting to present as positions were all thrown out the window. The red book has been thrown out the window.
I see my colleague here, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Foreign affairs took a deep hit in the budget, contrary to anything the Liberals purported as being a position for ODA in the years they were in opposition. It does not resemble it at all.
Canadians will now watch very closely as this government tries to get its act together and await whether there will be a sense of priority and planning in terms of where this country is going.