Mr. Speaker, before I turn to the main contents of my remarks, I would like to remind members of the House that in the last 24 hours the debt of the Government of Canada rose by $100 million. It now has reached a total of $556 billion. This is a very severe indictment of the budget, of which Bill C-76 is merely a method for implementing its contents.
We should periodically recall that Canada is in severe difficulties. We have to do more to eliminate the deficit, especially now that the economy seems to be slowing down and there are some indications of inflation raising its ugly head. I had hoped and wished that the government had cut spending more but obviously it was not to be.
Bill C-76 implements the budget. I am here to discuss the amendments which the Reform Party has proposed with respect to the maintenance of national standards of social programs.
The Government of Canada has a severe problem because it has switched from the traditional granting of cash to the provinces to a system which ultimately will lead to the elimination of all cash transfers. The reason is that along with the cash transfers used to come the opportunity to impose national standards on welfare and health and other programs which were financed. When this is eliminated the government will have difficulties because it will not have leverage over the provinces.
How has the government attempted to resolve the problem? The problem has been resolved by having the opportunity, without consent from the provinces, to impose standards. This is an interpretation we have put on what is in the bill. The government is acting without the consent of the provinces to impose standards. The Reform Party believes this is a very serious matter.
It is a pulling of power toward the centre that is unprecedented in Canada and we wish to oppose it. We have proposed some amendments which would clarify the point. No minister, no agent of the crown, can simply impose standards. They can be imposed only with the mutual consent of all of the provinces.
The second method which is very disturbing to Reformers is the decision whether certain standards have been violated by any province can be decided by cabinet in a closed session. We believe it is a similarly usurpation of power which is not suitable for the federal state. Third, there is a clause which we find unfortunate in that the power to withhold finances will not just be limited to the program, the standards of which were alleged to have been violated, but the ability to withhold money applies to other transfer payments. That is also an unfortunate development.
All of these approaches to try to maintain standards from the centre under the new Canada health and social transfers program are fundamentally against the current trend in Canadian society. What we have seen during the election campaign is the desire for devolution of power, to have smaller government.
I find it ironic that the parliamentary secretary a minute ago was praising that his government's program would lead to devolution.
At the same time there is this attempt to grab it back by trying to have clauses which restore and maintain the ability to set national standards.
I find it interesting to consider how we got those national standards. I remind the House that many years ago there was the obligation of individuals to look after themselves and if they could not do it families did.
We know when this is the case, cheating and excesses are not possible the way they are today. The closer programs are in their administration and design to the people they serve and who pay for them in the end, the more efficient and better they are.
The family alone historically was not able to maintain those services. When society became more complex churches, fraternal associations and all kinds of decentralized but slightly collective organizations took very good care of society.
How did it all happen? It happened in the post-war years when an intellectual, political and media elite imposed itself on Canada. It had a love affair with socialism, if not communism. The people who opposed these things thought the socialist experiment that had been undertaken in some of the industrial countries, especially the Soviet union, were a great success and that we should emulate them. This is how it came about. The initiation of those standards had their roots in a fundamental distrust in the wisdom of the people. They thought the people could not be trusted, that it took a political media elite to establish the kind of standards it thought were appropriate.
To me the most unbelievable thing was that this elite was able to persuade the media and others of the merit of its program. It introduced in a major public relations coup the idea that national standards are needed for national identity.
In the finance committee we heard a concerted effort of the political left discussing continuously on how a removal of these national standards means a destruction of Canadian national identity.
I am appalled by the ease with which this idea is still accepted. There is not one person questioning it. Is anyone saying that before we had national standards there was no Canada? Would anyone wish to ask the Prime Ministers governing up to the 1950s if they did not preside over Canada? That in my judgment is a lot of bunk. It was not the kind of Canada which the socialist dreamers wanted but it certainly had a national identity. I think that is absolutely silly.
In Europe the arguments are going in the opposite direction. Countries are attempting to integrate and unify their programs. For a long time the argument was there cannot be a united Europe, a European Union, because of different social programs. That is bunk also.
When a person grows up in a country with low taxes and low social programs, especially retirement benefits, they cannot when they retire or get sick move from that country of low cost in terms of taxes and the low quality benefits and say it is now their right as a member of the European Union to go into a country in Europe in which the taxes are high and the benefits are high.
I can understand how that would result in a breakdown of the system. We pay the low insurance rate when we do not need it. Then when we have the need to draw on the system, we go where the rates are high. It is very easy to avoid this kind of thing both in Europe and in Canada. We will be able to move from a province with low benefits and costs to one with higher ones, except that the benefits we get have to come from the province in which we have made our payments when they were low. It is as simple as that.
The ideas that we need national standards for national identity and that the system would break down because of different tastes, different levels of benefits and costs in individual provinces are a fabrication of people who were out there in the post-war years to persuade Canadians by any means possible that it takes people in Ottawa of obviously superior intellectual and moral standards to say what is the right level of welfare benefits, of health care and of unemployment insurance and various other goodies the state provides.
The amendments the Reform Party has proposed try to deal with this. We have done so with the conviction that it is in the interest of Canada in the long run to continue the process of devolution. We have gone through a very noble experiment of centralization, of national standards, which has obviously failed. The programs are all in financial difficulties and there are more people needing these kinds of systems simply because they were not administered properly.