Mr. Speaker, I have been listening with great interest over the last number of weeks to the debate on the budget while I waited for my opportunity to participate. I have been truly amazed with the disregard the government is showing for the intelligence of the Canadian public.
The budget represents a betrayal of the red book or election platform on which the government was elected; also the betrayal the dishonesty and the deceitfulness of the rhetoric surrounding the cuts that must inevitably come if we are some day to reach a balanced budget.
Canadians were told by the Liberals during the 1993 election platform that the Liberals could solve the deficit problem through economic stimulation and job creation. Today unemployment is still unacceptably high and the deficit is still out of control.
Canadians were also told by the Deputy Prime Minister during the 1993 election that they would eliminate in the GST in one year or she would resign. To my knowledge she is still a member of the House.
Another inconsistency the Liberals told during the 1993 election campaign was that they would never cut the civil service. Upon making this promise they were viewed as the friends of the civil service, unlike the Tories. We must wonder what these same civil servants are now thinking with 45,000 of them being shown the door.
Canadians who voted for the Liberals in 1993 believed they would never cut transfers to the provinces in support of health care, education or social services. All seniors believed the Liberal Party would never cut old age security. Lo and behold only a year and a half later the Liberal government has done a total flip-flop on these and other election commitments.
Are Canadians to believe the Liberals really believed these commitments to be realistic or was it really the old political strategy of telling the people what would get them elected because a long time ago Canadians gave up holding politicians accountable for election promises.
I do not think Canadians will forgive so easily. I will do my best to see they do not forget. I will remind Canadians the Prime Minister's red book commitment to rebuild respect and integrity in government was simply more empty political rhetoric.
During the 1993 election campaign the Reform Party presented a plan to balance the budget in three years and the Liberals labelled us the slash and burn party, the destroyers of health care and old age security. Now only one and a half years later in the budget the government has implemented many of the zero in three cuts and even went further than that zero in three plan, not because it would choose to do so but because as we predicted there was no alternative.
This year again Reform put forward a budget and a plan to balance the budget in three years and again the Liberals rile and rave about the proposed programs and put their spin doctors to work to sell their own deceitful budget and hide the reality of what must inevitably come.
They continue to hide the realities in rhetoric like the following: "By consolidating our existing resources into one human investment we can then sit down with the provinces as we are doing now on issues of child care and literacy and work out new partnerships and new arrangements with the provinces and municipalities and private sector partners. It gives us the flexibility we need now to engage in a new generation of social programming that really fits both the reality and the changed circumstances that the country finds itself in".
This is the best example I could find of the dishonesty of the rhetoric being thrown at us. I will leave members opposite to surmise which member might have spewed that gem on us.
The truth must be told and we must face the music now as painful as that may be because if we postpone balancing the budget to somewhere in the future, say the year 2000, the debt could then be approaching $800 billion and the cost of interest on the debt will have risen to the point at which we can no longer
sustain even the core of our social safety net programs which have made Canada the most desirable country in the world to live in.
I have heard the howls of disbelief from the members opposite. They say they are a caring and compassionate government. They say what about the human deficit.
I listened carefully and the arrogant hypocrisy makes me very angry. Who do these people think they are that only they have compassion or care about people? The single most important reason I joined what is now the least respected profession in Canada, at least outside of this place, is my concern for the future of this country and what 30 years of Liberal and Tory governments have done to the future of my children and grandchildren.
What this government is doing to future generations of Canadians is not caring or compassionate, it is greed and selfishness; it is the me generation saying: "I am not going to live within my means and the next generation cannot only pay for my greed but can no longer enjoy the benefits and the standard of living this me generation has had".
The best example of this greed is the refusal of the Liberal caucus power brokers to give up their gold plated pension plan. As long as I am a member of the House I will do everything within my power to see that the first pensioners who do not receive an old age security pension check because the country is broke will be the same greedy politicians who mismanaged this country to the point we are at today.
The examples of mismanagement are everywhere. A few examples lie within my portfolio as natural resources critic. Petro-Canada is one of my favourites. Every budget since 1984 has promised to privatize Petro-Canada. Canada's window on the energy industry was created by the Liberal government at a cost of over $5 billion. Petro-Canada has never provided any benefit to Canadians that could not have been provided by the private sector. Governments since have never had the courage to admit to Canadians they will only be able to recover less than $2 billion of the $5 billion it cost to create Petro-Canada. Although this is the second Liberal budget that has promised to privatize Petro-Canada, I doubt very much if it will happen soon.
Let us have a look at how this budget and this government in past budgets have squandered Canada's natural advantage in the world marketplace. Gasoline, a favourite cash cow for governments, has always been a cheap source of energy. It has allowed compensation for Canadians for the great distances we must move our produce and our people compared with other countries.
Governments have gone back to the well so often that in the last 10 years taxes on gasoline have risen by over 500 per cent if one includes the 1.5 cent increase in this budget. Almost 25 cents of every 50 cent litre of gasoline is tax. At the same time the government is moving to eliminate transportation subsidies across the country. Long gone is our natural advantage. The U.S. is importing Canadian crude oil with a $1.40 dollar, refining that oil and selling the same gasoline at almost half of what we are paying in Canada.
The final example is the elimination of the income tax transfer on privately owned utility companies. The finance minister stated in his budget that if government does not need to run something, it should not and in the future it will not.
How many provincially owned utility companies will ever consider privatizing under these circumstances? In spite of vowing to prevent discriminatory taxation against Alberta during the election campaign, the Minister of Natural Resources remains totally silent on this issue in the House.
I could go on endlessly but time does not permit. The budget does, however, represent a dramatic reversal in Liberal philosophy which the reform Party can take some credit for. That shift is so dramatic that even some of the Liberal dinosaurs in the Liberal caucus have threatened to withdraw support for the budget.
As dramatic as this change might be, it does not go far enough to break the back of the deficit. If in the next three years the government cuts $12 billion from spending and the interest costs rise by $12.7 billion, I hardly think the monster has been mortally wounded and I am sure after a short respite it will be back to threaten to destroy our economy.
Already the real agenda begins to leak out in well planned trial balloons. The Prime Minister says our health care system will be reduced to the provisions of 50 years ago. Liberal members are suggesting that the minimum pensionable age will have to be raised to 67.
These adjustments to our social safety net may indeed be necessary, but who knows? This government clearly has no plan to balance the budget in the foreseeable future.
One fact is indisputable. By postponing the balancing of the budget to the year 2000 or beyond, the cuts that will have to be made will be far more destructive and devastating than those proposed in our taxpayers budget. This is where the deceit and the dishonesty in the Liberal budget lie.
I think the Prime Minister and the finance minister would do well to heed the words of a very wise man, F. J. Clark, when he said: "A politician thinks only of the next election. A statesman thinks of the next generation".