Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to speak to the prebudget debate.
I begin by acknowledging the chair of the finance committee who has always been extremely fair. He was fair again and did a good job of conducting things, speaking from a logistical point of view. Again, he has always been more than fair to members of the Reform Party.
Unfortunately I cannot say very many good things about the government members' report on the prebudget hearings. Frankly, I think there are a lot of problems with it.
I just complimented the member on how he ran the hearings, but it was fairly obvious to me and my colleagues that many witnesses had the big problems with the whole process surrounding the prebudget hearings. People who travelled on either leg of the prebudget hearings will acknowledge that we had to cancel all kinds of sessions this time round simply because witnesses did not show up. Apparently there was some confusion but also people did not see the value of appearing before the finance committee once again.
In fact, there is no question in my mind, if people ever knew they no longer know why we are having prebudget hearings. My
experience has been that a lot of people came and put forward issues that had absolutely no chance of being accepted by the government. It is acknowledged in the government's report that many social groups advocated all kinds of ideas that simply were not on.
It is incumbent on the government, if it is going to invite people to come and speak before it and spend hours putting together a presentation, that it says outright that there is no chance that those types of ideas are going to be accepted. In other words, there were no clear parameters for the debate. It is even acknowledged in the document. It states:
If anything, the success of the Government's approach has intensified the debate and transformed it. Advocates of spending cuts now argue that even deeper cuts can be and should be made to create room to reduce taxes on the deficit. On the other side of the spectrum, the advocates of higher taxes on corporations and "the rich" to finance deficit reduction now argue more vigorously for this approach and for the restoration of spending programs.
The Committee has preferred to avoid these extremes, supporting instead the approaches that are working and which are supported by the broad mainstream of opinion as demonstrated in its hearings.
There is a quote from Jordan B. Grant, chairperson, Bank of Canada for Canadians Coalition. It states: "You have savings of about $4 billion. Our immediate suggestion is that in this budget you put the $4 billion back into the economy".
Obviously Mr. Grant, whom I certainly do not agree with, was invited to the hearing, took some time to put forward a report and then has it dismissed out of hand. It should have been very clear early on that the government had a particular vision and then asked people to debate it. That is not what happened. People spent countless hours putting together reports and then they were completely ignored.
Meanwhile, we had all kinds of other people who should have been invited before the committee and simply were not. I speak of the C.D. Howe Institute, a well known and very reputable organization that comments on all kinds of economic matters, that was not invited. Neither was the Fraser Institute invited, one of the most prominent institutes with respect to economic matters in the country. The Atlantic Institute was not invited. It just delivered a report on the effect of the $185 billion in subsidies of various kinds to Atlantic Canada. That report had a very high profile in the media but strangely it was not invited to appear before the finance committee.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation attempted to appear. There was a little bit of a mix-up with respect to it appearing and its delegation said it would put it off for a little while. The people at finance said: "That was fine, put it off until next week when we return from our trip and perhaps you can come then". As it turned out that was the end of the hearings and its delegation never had a chance to come forward. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, that speaks for about 83,000 people in the country, never had a chance to appear before the committee and bring forward its members' views.
Do not take my word for it. I want to quote from the Alberta Chamber of Commerce "Policy News and Views" dated November 25, 1996. Chamber president Cheryl Knebel states: "We were extremely disappointed by the way this year's consultation process was organized. We came prepared to speak to budget specific issues like program spending, the deficit-debt, interprovincial trade barriers and regulatory overlap".
Ms. Knebel continued: "There is an expectation within the business community that when the government asks for advice on the budget process it is prepared to seriously consider views pertaining to the issue". She paid me a personal compliment which is nice, but is it is not the point. She goes on to say: "He pressed to refocus the debate on the need to eliminate the federal deficit and reduce the debt as a fundamental means of addressing every other issue in government but there was just no support".
Obviously the whole thing is way off track. If you do not have goal any answer is equally good. People can say whatever they want. If there is no clear vision it does not matter what people say because the government has not laid down the parameters. It has not told the people what it wants. It is pretty difficult to get input when people do not know what the input is on.
Clearly the process is flawed. People were not coming out. The media was not very interested this time round. This should be exposed for the sham that it really has become even though initially perhaps the intentions were good.
I want to mention a couple of things about the report. I mentioned a minute ago that the government members on the committee had written in their report that the committee has preferred to avoid extremes. I am talking here on the one hand about spending reductions and tax cuts, and on the other hand about increasing spending. It supported instead the approaches that are working and which are supported by the broad mainstream of opinion as demonstrated in its hearings.
The government claims that these are working. Canadians are not working. If these approaches are working so well, why are Canadians not working? Unemployment stands at 10 per cent. We saw this in the Friday unemployment numbers. The premise rather obviously does not bear scrutiny.
If these approaches are working, why has the government's record on child poverty been so poor? It has gone to great lengths in the document to talk about the need to address child poverty. On the other hand it says its approaches are working. It is fairly clear they are not. By the government's own numbers we know that child poverty has actually become far worse under the Liberal government.
In 1989 a motion was moved in this place which said there are one million children living in poverty and that poverty should be eliminated by the year 2000. Today the number is 1.3 million. It is worse by one-third. I do not understand how the government can say that these so-called extremes, like cutting taxes, is somehow out to lunch. Looking at the empirical evidence, the government's approaches have not worked and we have to start casting around for some new ideas. That is exactly what the Reform Party has tried to do and we offered that in our minority report. I see my time is up.