Members opposite are shouting all kinds of comments, asking "What would you do?" We have clearly demonstrated that. We have laid down principles. When there are principles then you build the budget on that.
We said we would eliminate 100 per cent of the grants to business. The taxpayers' budget said we would eliminate 100 per cent of grants to special interest groups. We made that absolutely clear. Is the government listening? No. It caters to all these special interest groups and it keeps funding them.
We do not have enough information in the estimates to know how many of the grants and handouts are going to businesses and special interest groups. If we did I think we could cut millions from this motion alone if they would only come clean and give us that information.
Reform also said that for all the training programs and make-work projects where the federal government is intruding into areas of provincial jurisdiction Reform would gradually return the responsibility to the provinces. Under a Reform government this process would be completed over five years to allow for a smooth transition. We proposed an immediate 24 per cent cut in this fiscal year.
Now the government will claim that Reform's principled approach is somehow hard hearted. I maintain it is both hard hearted and soft headed to keep spending money on programs that do not work. It is both hard hearted and soft headed to spend tax dollars that would produce a worse job creation record than if they had just lowered taxes.
The government will cry that thousands of people helped by the Atlantic groundfish strategy will have no alternative but to go on welfare. I have two things to say to that in response to these soft headed views. First, what is so bad about welfare in a crisis? The federal government already pays 50 per cent of the cost of the program, and if the provincial governments want to direct their welfare money into workfare and training programs, as the federal government has done, that should be their choice. It should not be decided by a bunch of bureaucrats in Ottawa.
Second, the federal government created the fisheries crisis by mismanaging the fishery. Then the federal government responded by creating a $164 million make work program for the federal bureaucrats. A better federal response to the crisis in the fishery would be to provide emergency funding to the provinces to top up what they get through the Canada assistance plan or equalization payments. Then the provinces could spend the money in accordance with the wishes of the communities and the people hardest hit by the crisis. That money should be distributed and should be used by those who understand the situation best, not by a bunch of bureaucrats back in Ottawa.
Is this too simple a solution? This government likes to play politics and create these grand programs that make it appear like it is doing something, but the simple solutions it seems to avoid. I am sure it will be a long time before any common sense
approach like this is ever advanced by the Liberal government, its power hungry politicians and money hungry bureaucrats.