Madam Speaker, I have a couple of words concerning this amendment and the assumption that the Reform Party of Canada is the party that will protect provincial rights, that it will promote the non-intrusion of the federal government into provincial rights.
It is very strange to hear the Reform Party of Canada chastising the Liberals and chastising the Bloc on this question. In its policy it interferes with provincial jurisdiction. Reformers are the ones who claim in their bible, in their budget of last year, that not only would the air and airports be privatized, not only would the ocean, the seaways be privatized, but also roads and bridges. If that is not provincial jurisdiction I would like to know what is. That is not only an intrusion into provincial affairs but an intrusion into Canadians' affairs.
Imagine, as they suggest in black and white, having large businesses build highways; they would have to be large to build roads. Then we would have to pay to drive on those highways. That is their policy.
The party that says it does not want the Government of Canada intruding into provincial jurisdiction is the same party that suggests in its policy booklet to cut equalization by 35 per cent. Imagine, coming from Atlantic Canada, what kind of intrusion that would be to the provincial governments; that 35 per cent cut in the bible of the Reform Party of Canada, in its so-called taxpayers budget.
Imagine the cut of 34 per cent the Reform Party advocates to the Canada assistance plan. Is that not an intrusion into provincial jurisdiction? That is the plan the provinces use to pay for their own programs, 50:50. The Reform Party of Canada says slash that by 34 per cent and slash equalization by 35 per cent.
That is not all. Look at the intrusion into provincial jurisdiction when Reform Party members attack our medicare system. We know what words they use on medicare. The words used in reference to Reform Party policy are "intolerably expensive and unnecessary". Those are the words used in its policy booklet, in its
so-called taxpayers budget, its bible, not the authorized version but the unauthorized version because nobody apart from the Reform Party would authorize it.
Is it not an intrusion into provincial jurisdiction to be telling the provinces that medicare, the very thing we depend on, is intolerably expensive and unnecessary? Is that not an intrusion into provincial jurisdiction, then to say misrepresentation? That is in its policy booklet, the taxpayers budget. I look at it almost every day. I have it right here.
Reformers say they would have private enterprise build the roads and the highways and charge the public for it, build the bridges and charge the public for it. Is that not an intrusion? They would cut equalization by 35 per cent and CAP by 34 per cent. They say our medicare system should be thrown out the window because it is intolerably expensive.
Then they turn around and do what? What do they approve of? What they approve of are all the big tax breaks they can give to the biggest corporations operating in the country.
They jumped up and down with joy when the Senate sent a bill here recently which talked about a 50 per cent tax cut for the largest foreign controlled multinationals in the country. They jumped for joy when there was a 30 per cent tax cut on interest that flows out of the country across the border. They said: "Come on, Senate, give us some more because we love this. We loved to do away with the royalties on all the taxes that go out of the country".
Here they are cutting things from the provinces, cutting things in provincial jurisdictions. Then they stand up in the House of Commons and say this bill is really an intrusion into provincial government jurisdiction. They should go back to their own handbook, to their own policies. They should have a little charity when they think about Canadians.