Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate today. I am a little surprised that we are continuing only on the fifth day of debate on the speech from the throne, considering it is nine months since the speech was given. Perhaps it speaks volumes about the worth of the words in the speech from the throne and the integrity of the government in implementing some of those ideas.
I listened with considerable amusement to the former speaker because it was such a typical Liberal speech. The Liberals, in the last three years since I have been here, truly have been masters of governing by illusion and creating an illusion of doing great things when the facts do not bear those things out.
Truly, what could we expect from a party whose leader has an imaginary friend he talks to on the street corner and has imaginary ethical guidelines that his ministers go by? It would only stand to reason that we would have an imaginary report card on the performance of this government giving it an honours score when, in reality, the facts do not bear it out in any way.
I would like to go through some of the facts and statistics that would paint a somewhat different picture than what I have heard coming from the members of the Liberal Party.
The speech from the throne, as a previous speaker indicated, kind of took a three pronged approach in its direction. Its objective was "to provide security for Canadians, to provide unity for Canadians and to provide jobs for Canadians". I believe that was the expression we heard.
When we look at the facts, in spite of the rose coloured glasses that some members wear, they do not bear that out. When we look at the security for Canadians, this government over the last three years has cut social spending transfers to the provinces by some $7 billion. It has cut funding for health care, for education and has enforced the closure of hospitals. There are many things people do not hear it talk about.
It has cut substantially the benefits to seniors since coming to office in spite of the rhetoric we hear about protecting seniors' benefits and all the rest of it. There has been one segment, however, that it has provided substantial security for to show where its priorities are. Of course, that is in the security of the MP pension plan, looking after its members' own security on retirement. I do not hear a lot of them bragging about that when they are proposing to cut security for other seniors in this country.
When we look at the promise to create unity for Canadians, the statistics do not bear out that there has been much progress on this front as well. Only a year ago we came within half a percentage point of losing the referendum and having this country split apart.
I did not see much progress being made up to that point and certainly not much since. The only reaction before going back to sleep on the whole issue was the proposal to drag up the distinct society clause for Quebec which even the party representing Quebec in this House and most Canadians rejected soundly in the Charlottetown accord many years ago. I do not see that there has been substantial progress on that.
The third prong of the speech from the throne was dealing with jobs for Canadians. Perhaps this is one of the most dismal areas in spite of the illusion that the previous speaker tried to create of this wealth of jobs being created for Canadians.
The fact remains that personal and business bankruptcies are at an all time record high in this country. In spite of presumably coming out of the recession that the North American economy was in and having some of the lowest interest rates since the 1960s, our unemployment rate still hovers on one side or the other of 10 per cent, in spite of the fact that across the border to the south unemployment rates are only half the rate they are in Canada. I do not see a lot to brag about when we talk about job creation.
Looking a little further at what has been going on in Canada over the last 30 years it is hardly any wonder that conditions in Canada led to the creation of the Reform Party and some of the ideas the Reform brought to this House and promotes in Canada. In spite of all the bragging and illusion created Canadians today, after three years of Liberal government, are unquestionably worse off than they were three years ago. There is no arguing that.
The income of an average family of four has dropped by $3,000 since 1993. People are working harder and harder just to try to maintain a standard of living. Two out of three two-parent families have two or more jobs; 1.4 million Canadians are unemployed and continue to be unemployed; 2 million to 3 million Canadians are underemployed and one in four Canadians are worried sick about losing their jobs and not being able to provide for their families.
Canadians truly have taken a national pay cut. For a family of four the pay cut has been some $3,000 over the last three years. The Liberals at the end of their mandate will be collecting some $26 billion more in taxes than they were when they came to office in 1993. This government, which says everything is so wonderful and rosy, the economy is booming, jobs are being created, has added $111 billion more to the national debt, forcing it up to the $600 billion mark; truly not a very good track record.
Looking at the last 25 or 30 years in this country, in 1972 when Pierre Trudeau came to power only 553,000 Canadians were unemployed. When his government was defeated in 1984, 1.45 million Canadians were unemployed.
Then the Tories took over and were going to turn things around. They talked about a job for every Canadian who wants to work. By the time they left in 1993, 1.65 million Canadians were out of work. Certainly in 1993, in spite of the red book promise of jobs, jobs, jobs, there remains in Canada today 1.5 million Canadians out of work.
The Prime Minister is trying to tell Canadians that somewhere around that level of unemployment is acceptable, that it cannot be brought down lower. We know what happened to former Prime Minister Kim Campbell when she made that remark.
Certainly we have heard a lot of bragging today about balanced budgets. A number of previous speakers talked about achieving a balanced budget somewhere in the year 1998-99, getting the deficit down to $9 billion and then assuming at that point that the budget was balanced. I submit that only in a place like this would anyone presume that a $9 billion or $10 billion deficit is in fact a balanced
budget. Certainly in the real world I do not think that could be considered a reality.
Between 1972 and 1984 the Liberals increased the national debt from $17.2 billion to $199 billion, a staggering 1,057 per cent increase. In 1984 the Tories promised to put a stop to the increase in the debt. Instead they increased it from $199 billion to $508.2 billion in only nine years.
Then of course the current government has added another $111.5 billion, bringing the debt to the $600 billion mark. It is not a record about which most governments would have the audacity to brag, I am sure.
The illusion is not one that most Canadians will long believe. I firmly believe that Canadians are demanding an end to this political rhetoric, this campaign platform that makes all kinds of promises that the government has no intention of living up to. Canadians are demanding some integrity in government, some honesty in election platforms and they are demanding a fresh approach to government, a basic restructuring of government, a basic downsizing of government.
I spent last week travelling in western and central Canada with the natural resources standing committee which is holding hearings on rural economic renewal. In spite of real prompting from the members of the Liberal Party on the committee to try to initiate some response in favour of another infrastructure program or subsidies to provide incentives to small business, witness after witness said: "We don't need more hockey rinks and canoe museums and the like. What we need is government to get off our backs, get out of our pockets, give us a chance to make a dollar, succeed in our businesses and be successful".
That is a story we heard over and over again. I very much look forward to the day when we write the report on the committee and put into print what supposedly we heard on the tour.