Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise this afternoon and speak in opposition to the Bloc motion.
In some ways and in some areas of the bill highlighted on this motion we agree with the Bloc that the system is broken and these bills are not addressing the real problem.
Where we differ with our colleagues from the Bloc is the problem is repairable. It can be fixed. There is absolutely no reason for quitting or separating. Canada is worth fighting for and that is what we have to do.
What I read in this motion, the me, we mentality, is the real problem. It is what is in it for me and not what is in it for Canada.
I recall an article about the me, we generation. It identified the 1980s as the me generation. It talked about the Milkens in the United States and the Campeaus in Canada who were out for personal gain and glory at the expense of jobs to thousands of Canadians.
The article suggested that changed in the 1990s, that the 1990s changed to what we call the we generation. It talked about people becoming more concerned about what is really important in life. It talked about the number of people who have started contributing to charities and working for the betterment of their communities.
In the article a minister had interviewed many people in their last moments. He never had heard anyone say in those last moments they wished they had spent more time at the office. The message there was we all have to remember that what is good for the family is really what is important.
There was also a story of a very successful stockbroker who had made millions in the stock exchange, more money than he could ever hope to spend in his lifetime. He quit all that when he realized what was really meaningful in life and what was really important to him was missing. He walked away from it. He went home to look after a young family even to the point of making sandwiches and participating in life. He found a great deal more satisfaction from that. This mentality of we, me is at the bottom of many of the problems we have in Canada today.
The status quo has been rejected overwhelmingly. There is no question about that with 205 new members elected to Parliament. There was a very strong message from the Canadian people they were not happy with what had been happening here and they wanted change.
Change does not mean walking away or quitting. The change they are asking for is a change to the system to make it work, to make for a better and united Canada. Canada is worth fighting for. We have the greatest country in the world.
We have a great opportunity with 205 new members. We have some fresh thinking, some new ideas and new visions for a new Canada, a Canada where all citizens in all provinces will be treated equally.
I am sure the people in the province of Quebec are no different from the people in every province across this great country. They are looking for a government that will live within its means. They are looking for a government that will do what it has to do in their lives and in their businesses.
There is no way any family or any business can continue to go deeper and deeper in debt year after year and survive. The people in Quebec are looking for politicians with integrity who will say what they mean and mean what they say. The tragedy of broken promises has created a level of cynicism which has to be overcome all across Canada.
They are looking for a change in the process. They are looking for changes with the government being more responsive to the needs and demands of the people. They want to have a say in what is going on in Ottawa, not just hear the voice of Ottawa in the ridings. They want a change in the process. Freer votes, referenda and recall are all issues which the people of Quebec would support as well as the rest of Canadians. As I said in another speech, if you want trust you have to give trust. We have to do that to return to the level of trust that has been lost. I am sure the people of Quebec are no different from other Canadians in wanting safer streets, safer homes and safer communities.
This motion highlights several bills and I would like to deal with two of them, the budget bill, Bill C-76, and Bill C-88, that deals with interprovincial trade barriers. In those two bills the government missed an opportunity and failed to unite Canada and to address the barriers which exist. I would like to highlight where the government went wrong and what should be done to restore Canada as a united nation.
The budget was wrong. It failed dismally in addressing the deficit and the debt, which are the most serious problems Canada has today. I was very disturbed and disappointed by the Bloc response to the budget. Apparently Bloc members still do not understand and appreciate the fact that the deficit and the debt are the major problems in Canada. What I heard was: "It is not really a problem. It is not too serious. All we have to do is trim a bit of government fat. Whatever we do, we should not touch the social programs because they are sacred".
I would suggest that with a $600 billion debt, overspending of $25 billion a year and interest payments approaching $52 billion, all programs have to be looked at thoroughly. It cannot be done simply by trimming government fat or by going after the social programs. All areas of government spending must be addressed. The spending which has been taking place in social programs, because they represent such a huge portion of the total spending envelope, absolutely has to be addressed.
The message is that Canada has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Canadians from coast to coast understand that. They were ready for the budget. When I say coast to coast I am including the people of the province of Quebec. They understand the magnitude of the problem. They understand that living beyond our means has to come to an end. There will be some pain associated with it, but that is facing reality. To suggest that the deficit might be tackled by getting delinquent taxpayers to pay the tax dollars they owe is a flight in fantasy. It nowhere nearly approaches our enormous debt.
It is interesting that Moody's, the bond rating agency which fired a warning shot across the bow of the finance minister before the budget came out is not Conservative, Liberal, Reform or Bloc. Moody's is non-political and was, as a bond rating agency, in my estimation, doing us a favour. It was sending a warning to the government about the seriousness of the overspending problem.
What did we do? We shot the messenger. The messenger was not telling us what we wanted to hear. In reality the messenger was giving us good fiscal advice to get our house in order and to get it in order quickly. It did that in advance of the budget because there were two messages which it wanted the government to get.
The first message was that 3 per cent of GDP is too low a target. It is easy and it will not fly with the investors that have been buying our bonds. The second part of the message was that it wanted a date set when Canada was going to achieve a balanced budget. Rolling two-year targets that the government hopes to meet will not fly with the people who have been buying our bonds. They want to know how and when Canada will balance its budget. No reasonable banker and no reasonable Canadian would expect less.
The downgrade which Moody's threatened before the budget was introduced, as we know now, happened. The budget which could have united us did not. In fact, it is doing more damage to the country as we are going deeper and deeper into debt. The downgrade has not really taken effect yet but it will down the road. It will have a very dramatic effect on the rate of interest paid to finance our bonds. Every 1 per cent increase in those interest rates costs Canadian taxpayers in the first year of borrowing an extra $1.7 billion. The impact of that downgrade is very significant and does not look well for the future.
The budget has been passed on the assumption that interest rates will remain fairly stable. That is a very dangerous assumption. It does not take into account the possibility of a downturn in the economy which we know is coming. It is not a matter of if it is going to come. Economies go up and down and Canada could very well be into a downturn in the economy now and is very poorly positioned to deal with it.
Canadians know there are three ways to balance the books in Ottawa. One is to raise taxes. The second is to hope for growth in the economy and the third is to cut spending.
Canadians from coast to coast are not prepared to pay any more taxes. Again, the people in Quebec are no different from the people in every other province who are taxed to the limit.
That is not an avenue that the government should explore to raise funds in order to balance the books.
Growth in the economy is an area the Liberals look at through rose coloured glasses, hoping that there would be greater growth in the economy than actually happens. The downside of that is when the economy does not grow. In fact our deficit and debt has increased, it has not been reduced.
Going back to taxes for a moment, taxes right across Canada are counterproductive. The more taxes are increased, the more the underground economy is fuelled. As huge as it is now, it will only grow by any attempt at an additional tax grab.
The area that we have complete control over is spending. That is where the government missed with this budget. It did not go after the reductions in spending to get the books in balance so that there would be no new and increased taxes.
The government likes to say that it inherited the problem. I suggest that it initiated the problem. I go back to the years 1963 to 1984 when the debt rose from $20 billion to just about $200 billion when it left office.
Unfortunately, the Conservatives took office and in their years from 1984 to 1993 the debt increased from $200 billion to some $490 billion. It is interesting that some of the Bloc members today were actually sitting with the Conservative government and were allowing that debt hole to continue to go as deep as it did.
It is also interesting to recall that very little was done by government members when they were in opposition to support any of the attempts that were made to get spending under control. For them to say that they inherited the debt is not quite factual. They initiated the problem several years ago that put us in the mess we are in today.
In 1993 when the Liberals presented their first budget, they still had no idea of the magnitude of the problem. The message we got then was: "Be happy, don't worry. This deficit and debt are not serious. We are not going to do anything". In fact they did nothing.
I should not say that nothing was done but what was done was unbelievable in the short time after the budget. The Bloc was part of this. They gave in to the smugglers. They gave away $350 million in taxes that Canadians could ill afford then and certainly could not afford today. That is aside from the additional health costs that are down the road because of that very foolish move on the part of the government.
What has been learned since is that the forecast of $350 million, which should not have surprised us because they are not good with numbers, turned out to be something like $800 or $850 million. It cost nearly a billion dollars to give in to the bad guys, the smugglers. It is unbelievable given the fiscal position we are in.
What happened in 1994? We had an admission that the problem was serious. Now the finance minister is saying that this is a serious problem. It may even be life threatening. Unfortunately he does not have a solution.
They have some plans for these rolling targets. At the end of this first rolling target the government will still be overspending by $25 billion a year and will be $600 billion in debt. When it addresses the next budget it will be trying to shoehorn in $52 billion in interest payments.
If members think this budget was difficult, try the next one, where the government will be trying to find a way to accommodate $52 billion in interest payments without any significant cuts. I would suggest it cannot be done.
Canadians in every province want fiscal sanity in this place and that is not what Bill C-76 gave us. They are not looking for pie in the sky. They know what has to be done. They are looking for reality and they are prepared to support a government that will give it to them.
Let me speak for a moment on Bill C-88 concerning interprovincial trade barriers. It is a bill that could have meant a great deal to uniting the country but it missed the mark completely. It was a great opportunity to bring down the walls that are dividing us east to west.
In spite of the barriers there is about $146 billion in trade between the provinces. It was the Canadian Manufacturers' Association that said those barriers are costing taxpayers $6 billion and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Canada can trade north-south with free trade but it still cannot trade east-west. Bill C-88 did nothing to really address that. It just touched lightly on some areas but did not get into the real meat of the barriers that are there.
Free trade is talked about as the salvation of Canada. If it was not for free trade, our exports would be in a much sadder condition than they are presently. Free trade was violently opposed by the current government when it was in opposition. Today it is proving to be its salvation.
The federal government has a responsibility for breaking down the barriers to interprovincial trade but it has abdicated the responsibility. Those walls must be broken down because those barriers are interfering with the interaction of governments and deterring the development of culture between the different provinces.
The provinces have always been able to negotiate bilateral trade agreements. As a matter of fact one was negotiated between Quebec and Ontario regarding the construction trades. Both provinces worked that out and it was a model which showed those things could be worked out across Canada.
Bill C-88 as it is now discourages international investors from coming into all the provinces and creating employment. Years were spent negotiating GATT. The Department of Finance estimated it represents about a .04 per cent increase in Canada's gross domestic product. Yet the Fraser Institute said that if interprovincial trade barriers could be broken down the GDP could be increased anywhere from 2 per cent to 6 per cent. All this time has been spent negotiating GATT for .04 per cent when if something was done about internal barriers a much more significant improvement could be made in the GDP. This would translate into jobs that are sorely needed in the economy. As I said, it would strengthen our economic, political and cultural ties.
These barriers cause lost jobs in every province resulting in higher taxes and making us less competitive in the global economy. If we really want to benefit from north-south free trade, we can only do it by maximizing trade east-west as well. Again, it is the me mentality that exists which must be broken down. It has to give way to the we mentality.
In closing, I would like to say that with 205 new members in the House we have a great opportunity to resolve the problems in the country. We do have problems. There is no denying that. We are a family and all families must give and take. In every successful marriage it is give and take. It is never all one way if it is to be a successful and happy marriage. Working together we can fix it. We can make Canada a better place for all Canadians.
Indeed, Canada is worth fighting for. I intend to fight for it as hard as I can, as hard as I know how. I want to do that because my grandchildren are counting on me to do that.