Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Skeena.
It is clear to everyone but the Liberal government that its 30 years of social engineering experiments have failed and failed miserably. The main reason why social programs have become unaffordable and unsustainable is because they create greater and greater dependency on social programs. No matter how these programs are designed, the end result would always be the same. More and more people would use the system and eventually it becomes unsustainable. The government can no longer afford to pay the huge sums of money needed to satisfy everyone's so-called needs. This is why half of the people on welfare today are described as employable. That is why the unemployment insurance program actually creates unemployment.
I will give an example of some of the things that the auditor general has said in his 1994 report. He said: "Rising social program use and high repeated use suggests that social programs may be creating long term dependency among some users". Here is something else the auditor general said: "Disincentives to work are created when benefits from social programs compare favourably to earnings from jobs". He also said: "Employers and employees may be using unemployment insurance to support short term layoff strategies". "Interactions among social programs may result in programs working at cross purposes to each other". Finally, the auditor general said: "Unemployment insurance may be a factor in Canada's rising level of unemployment and in the lower level of outputs that result".
Today we are debating a motion which will authorize the government through the Department of Human Resources Development to spend over $1.3 billion. The same lack of thinking that the auditor general reported last year is evident today.
The government is proposing to spend $55.3 million on grants to improve employability and promote employment opportunities. It can provide no proof that the money it has spent on such grants in the past has improved employability and yet it continues with this program. It can provide no proof that the millions and millions of dollars have actually resulted in promoting employment opportunities and actually have resulted in real jobs.
If this motion passes, the government will spend over $1 billion on grants to the sectoral training fund and on payments to facilitate the efficient functioning of the labour market, whatever that is. Study after study shows that make work projects do not create jobs. Study after study shows the government's training programs fail to train people for real jobs that are needed by the private sector.
The government cannot predict where the job vacancies will be next year, let alone five or ten years from now. When will it realize it should leave the hard earned tax dollars in the taxpayers' pockets and let individuals pay for the training they think they need? When will it realize it should leave the hard earned tax dollars in the hands of employers so they can run their own on the job training programs which are far more effective than any other type of training?
The government wants to force people into institutions to take training for jobs that are downright scarce or non-existent. It pays for training and employment programs because it supports the status quo. These programs actually support a huge bureaucracy that could not survive if it were judged on effectiveness and results. These programs support government handouts to special interest groups that are also more interested in the survival of their own organizations than they are about the workers they purport to represent.
The vote on this $1.3 billion of taxpayers' hard earned money is an admission of failure by the government. It is an admission that it is committed to repeating the failed policies of the past 30 years. It is an admission that it has no new ideas about how to get people back to work.
The government knows the only way to create real jobs is to reduce spending, balance the budget, reduce taxes. Reducing taxes creates real jobs. Government programs like these create more government spending, which creates more debt, which
creates higher interest payments, which creates higher taxes which kills jobs.
While we were having this last exchange a few minutes ago one of my colleagues went out to get a book to actually show the members opposite what the budget is all about. They do not believe that when the government says it is making all these difficult cuts it is actually increasing spending. They do not understand by their own numbers that they are not doing what they claim they are doing.
Higher taxes kill jobs. George Orwell's doublespeak is alive and well in the Liberal government. They tax the people and employers, which kills jobs, and then spend the money on programs that they say will create jobs. More jobs could actually have been created by simply not taxing the workers and the employers in the first place.
When will the government learn? How many more billions will we have to waste? How long will it take for the Canadian people to realize the Liberals and Conservatives are the same? Those who came before them and those who are here presently have been running a shell game, which benefits mainly the bureaucrats and the politicians.
Even if these programs did work, and they do not, training and employment programs are areas of provincial jurisdiction under the Canadian Constitution. It is not the job of the federal government to even be involved in that.
The federal government is proposing to spend $1,329,481,000 in an area that is the sole jurisdiction of the provincial government. If I were the premier of a province I would be demanding that the government quit taxing my people by the amount they are spending in my province and get off my turf.
If government members wanted to understand how to prepare a budget they should look at the Reform's taxpayers budget. It started with basic principles. The first principle is that we will get the federal government out of areas where they are intruding into provincial jurisdictions.