Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his intervention. He certainly made some good points, but I would like to correct him.
Why do we now have an economy where our interest rates have essentially doubled since this government came into power? Why is that? Why has Moody's downgraded our bonds? The reason is that our economy right now is in the worst state of affairs it has ever been in. In point of fact, we are on a steep, slippery slope to economic dislocation and economic disaster.
Three years from now, if we pursue the economic principles of this government, we will have $100 billion more on our debt, our interest payments will climb from $40 billion to $50 billion and our expenditures for government programs will decline from $120 billion to $102 billion, an $18 billion shortfall.
What are we going to say to the Canadian public? What are we going to say to people who are sick and who need their health care? What are we going to say to the elderly who need their old age security and cannot take care of themselves? What are we going to say to needy people who through no fault of their own need welfare? What are we going to say to them in the future when that money is not there? That is the reality of the economic plan this government has put forth.
I correct the hon. member that our situation economically is a lot worse. However, the hon. member did put some good points forth on education. I agree with him that we do not need more money in education. The Reform Party has never supported that. If the government is going to decrease money to the provinces, which is what we said, then do it. However, it has to give the provinces the ability to raise funds themselves by giving them the tax points to do it.
This government has said: "We are taking money away from you, but we are not going to give you the ability to raise money without penalizing you". That is fundamentally and morally wrong.
The hon. member did make a couple of good points on the co-operative activities of education and how we should indeed bring forth and use our education dollar to more efficient standards to increase the standards within our schools today. We do not need to spend more. In fact we can spend less because there is a lot of money that is wasted within education.
He brought forth some interesting points about bringing parents into the educational circle, something I have spoken about on a number of occasions within this House. I would be very interested at some time in the future in listening to what the hon. member says this government is doing in this regard. It is very important and I would be more than happy to help them with this.
We in the Reform Party are very much in support of improving the standards of education within this country without spending more, making sure that our students in this country have the skills that are necessary in the future to become competitive in the 21st century. Many of our schools are failing to do this. The tragedy for the students in this country is when they get out in the working world and find out that when they are competing against students from the Pacific Rim countries they are up against some very hardnosed, highly competitive individuals.
I hope we will be able to change our system somewhat and give our students the information and skills necessary to be competitive for them to be employed in the future and for them to build the strong economy we need in this country.