Mr. Speaker, for the benefit of Canadians watching today, I would like to repeat that this is a debate on the budget implementation act. That does not sound like a very gripping topic, but it is very important. Really what it means is that we are talking today about how our government spends our money.
It is important to emphasize to Canadians that governments have no money of their own. They simply use our money and they use lots of our money. In many cases, Canadians feel that we are supporting government instead of government supporting us.
Be that as it may, it is very important that we examine carefully and very logically how governments spend our money. Because I am a human resources development critic for Reform, I would like to spend the minutes I have to discuss the budget implementation act and talk about how social program spending is handled in this budget.
First, this budget is rather shockingly vague about how social programs, particularly very important social programs, are going to be handled by this government. For example, the budget says that unemployment insurance will be cut a minimum of 10 per cent. How much would be the maximum? We do not know. The budget is silent. Who is going to be cut? How are the cuts going to be made? When are they going to be made? We do not know. The budget is silent on that and so is the budget implementation act. We have big questions about that big program that are not answered in this budget.
The second thing the budget says is that the two pillars of the pension plan are going to be re-examined in order to make them more sustainable. When are they going to be re-examined? We are not sure. We were supposed to have a paper, promised by this government, months ago. Now the government says it thinks it will be in the fall. Canadians hope so, but experience has shown that the time lines of this government are a little flexible, to say the least.
Here we have the pillars of the pension plan, the Canada pension plan and the old age security; they are going to be re-examined. There are going to have to be some changes. Those are code words for cuts, because we know there is no extra money. But we do not know when. We do not know who. We do not know how. There is a lot of vagueness in how important programs are going to be handled.
The budget implementation act in part IV does talk about how this new transfer to support health care, post-secondary education and welfare is going to be handled. The transfers from the federal government to the provinces for these three programs have now been rolled into one big transfer of block funding. Now this block has been given a nice name by Liberal spin doctors. It is being called the Canada health and social transfer.
Really the bottom line is that the moneys that used to go to the provinces for these three programs are being cut substantially. That in itself probably would not concern Canadians because they know that we cannot keep funding these programs on borrowed money. We cannot keep mortgaging our children's future to pay for these programs. The real concern is that there seems to be no coherent plan at all about the future of these programs.
We can live with cuts; we accept that cuts are necessary. But we need to know where that leaves us. Where is this going to take us? Where it takes us is a big question mark. There are absolutely no long-range plans, no game plan, on what is going to happen, for example, to the funding for the Canada Health Act, the medicare plan, our health care.
The provisions that are being put in place, the cuts that are being made, are simply for the next two or three years and then there is a commitment to talk to the provinces, to have some kind of consultation. Then we will see what comes out of that.
I would suggest that health care is one of the most important things to Canadians. All of us know our vulnerability to health care problems. Yet here we have a very important program for Canadians being cut, but there is no long term plan. One has to wonder why this government could not have had a consultation with the provinces, put together a long term plan in consultation with other major players, and then come out with changes to the game. But no. This government simply sat on the sidelines and made changes to the rules of the game in mid-game, with absolutely no idea of where this is all going to take us on a very critical plan.
I do not think that is good management on behalf of Canadians. Canadians deserve a lot better than that.
We have had several promises to come up with papers to deal with pensions and the changes that are going to be needed in our social programs. However, there is nothing for Canadians to give us any idea of where we are headed on these matters. We know we are losing our programs. We know they are being cut back, and cut back without consultation with the provinces. For example, about one-third of all provincial spending is on health care alone. Yet changes are being made without any consultation with the major players.
The second thing that concerns me in this budget implementation act is the punitive approach that is being escalated in the matter of transfers from the federal government to the provinces.
In the past, if the provisions of the federal government were changed or not adhered to by the provinces, then transfers for those programs could be cut. Now, under this budget implementation act, any transfer to the provinces from the federal government can be cut, even it if it is not referable to the social programs that the provinces are trying to change.
The federal government has promised certain transfers to the provinces. Now it can hold them hostage if it does not like what the provinces are doing in any area.
These powers are very arbitrary. It gives arbitrary power to the health minister to become the sole guardian of the Canada Health Act. If the minister is "satisfied" that a province is not in line with her own interpretation of the Canada Health Act, then she has the authority to effectively become the judge and jury of the provincial health system and can then ask cabinet to cut any federal transfer to the provinces.
This is just unacceptable when we are dealing with such critical programs. We need some certainty for our provinces.
When the health minister is asked how she is going to enforce these new arbitrary powers that she has been given, she says she will enforce them flexibly. However, when one examines the legislation there is absolutely no reference to any flexible interpretation of the Canada Health Act. In fact, we have members of the government and the Prime Minister standing up and saying: "The provisions of the Canada Health Act will be very firmly enforced by this government".
So we are hearing again two different interpretations of what is going to happen. If we are going to get our House in order and if we are going to ensure personal social security for Canadians, we need to have a great deal more certainty than we find in this bill.
It is incumbent upon the government, when it is bringing forward this kind of spending legislation, to tell Canadians how it is going to work, to give them a plan that they can count on, and to work with the provinces to make sure that the programs we have can be counted on and have some type of long term management rather than this cut and paste approach to what have become very important programs for Canadians.