Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to make a few comments on the budget today. I begin by quoting the famous Yogi Berra, who summed it all up when he said: "It is déja vu all over again".
I feel like I am having a déja vu experience here today talking about this budget. This is a budget that Canadians have already seen not once but many times before; the predictions of great things to come some distant time down the road. I remind the House that has been promised before and it does not give a lot of hope to Canadians who are looking for some kind of solution to our fiscal mess today.
Let me remind the House of a few things that went on before. When Mr. Trudeau took office in 1968 the total national debt was $17 billion. When he left it was $200 billion. Then Mr. Mulroney took the driver's seat and when he was finished with us the debt was $508 billion. Now the Liberals are at the wheel again and this year the debt is predicted to go to over $600 billion. Sometime in the next millennium we hope for a balanced budget, so say the Liberals, but then the debt will be possibly $650 billion.
It is all talk and we have heard that kind of talk before. As it happened before, a balanced budget may be a dream despite the good wishes or the good hopes and dreams the finance minister puts into his predictions. The deficit this year will be almost $33 billion. The Liberals hope to reduce it by $9 billion, half of which will be obtained through increased revenues from Canadian taxpayers.
A rise of just one percentage point in the interest rates adds $1.3 billion to the deficit. This year, who knows what will happen to the interest rates? Will they go up or down? Who would have
predicted a year ago that they would drop three points and save the bacon of the predictions of the minister in the last budget?
If there is the slightest hiccup in the U.S. economy, if there is a slight problem in the elections coming up in Russia, if there is a problem of world turmoil in Taiwan as was mentioned in question period, or in Israel, who knows? Interest rates could jump. If they jump by only a couple of percentage points, the predictions of this minister will go down the drain.
There has been just a small three point rise. If we go back to where we were a year ago, it would leave us once again with a $30 billion deficit. There would be panic among investors, among small business people and among people who are trying to plan for their future. It would cause drastic cuts in health care, in welfare, in pension plans, plans that all Canadians have a right to expect from the Canadian government. That is how dicey the situation is.
I want to talk for a moment about these interest payments on our national debt. The debt is the problem and the debt has not been addressed in this budget. Not only have the Liberals kept the deficit very much alive, they seem somehow to be proud of a deficit of $25 billion. We have added $100 billion to the national debt since this government took office.
The budget states that this year interest payments will be $48 billion. These payments have risen even faster than the debt. They have jumped by 30 per cent since the government took office. To put this into perspective, what could we do with the $48 billion this government seems thrilled to be able to spend on the interest on the debt?
We could build 25 high speed rail links every year in Canada for that much money. We could pay the entire budgets of B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories combined. We could give them a complete tax holiday, tell them all to take a vacation, that all of the expenses would be looked after just on the interest on the national debt. We could give a cash present every single year of $1,250 to every man, woman and child in Canada with that much money.
Imagine, a person with three or four children could go home and say: "It is tax time. The government gave me $8,000. Thank you". But it will not happen. That dream will not happen because this government seems to be satisfied to run deficits, to build the national debt and to pay 35 cents out of every dollar collected in servicing that national debt.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce made a prebudget presentation to the finance committee and said: "The massive debt is choking our economy and hampering our international competitiveness". It is not talking about long term projections. It is not talking about what may or may not happen to the interest rates. It is not talking about the wish list of this Liberal finance minister and the people who put out the budget. It is talking about the debt.
This is not pie in the sky stuff for fabrication. It is the debt. While the finance minister seems thrilled that we will only have a $25 billion or $30 billion deficit next year, the debt has climbed by $110 billion under his management. He seems to be thrilled with this.
As the Chamber of Commerce says, the debt is choking our economy, it is hampering our international competitiveness and it is costing us jobs, jobs, jobs. Until the government side of the House understands that concept, we are in a long tunnel with very few dim lights spaced out along the way. The light we will see at the far end will be an incoming train, which will be a fiscal disaster if this kind of policy continues.
In the plan Reform has offered this would have been the last year with a deficit. Imagine. All of the pain would have been over. All of the cuts would have been over. All of the health care funding would have been restored and firm because there would have been no more deficit if the government would have followed our advice. Next year we would have started to pay down our debt. Next year we would have been able to look forward to tax relief. We would have wondered what to do with the extra money. However, that will not happen. We are looking at continuing cuts and increased tax burdens far into the future.
The few good ideas that are in the budget-and I am happy to give the government credit for them-were stolen completely from the Reform Party's zero in three plan. There are no new major tax increases, which is good. We applaud the government for that, although tax cuts would have been better. The Liberals have raised taxes 22 times since they have taken office. Thankfully there are no new tax increases in this budget, but there were certainly plenty in the past.
I will give the government credit that it has continued to hold the line on taxing the resource allowance, which is an area of my critic portfolio. I badgered the government in question period about it. I have tried to get confirmation on it and I am pleased to see that at least the taxes have not gone up on the resource allowance.
However, it continues to fund government babies such as AECL, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the CBC, subsidies to business and of course the MP pension plan, among other things.
The rise in tax deductibility for charitable donations is something with which I agree. It is a good move. Again, if we look at the taxpayers' budget, which is the budget we tabled a year ago, we will see that we said at that time: Give a break to charitable organizations. Allow them to come in and fill some of the void that will be there when some of the cutbacks happen in government. Allow the charitable organizations to look after that. They will do that if they are given a chance. I am pleased to see the charitable
donation idea. It was stolen from our budget but I am happy about it. If the government wants to steal more, I encourage it to do that.
When can Canadians hope for a rise in their standard of living, lower taxes and more job creation with this budget? Certainly not in this century. Since January of this year 200,000 full time jobs have been lost. We heard about that in question period today. Only tax relief, lower payroll deductions and a light at the end of the tax tunnel will bring those jobs back. The finance minister has put off his political pain and in the meantime he has sacrificed jobs for Canadians.
This budget is like an anaesthetic without an operation. It is like going to the dentist, getting ready, going through the fear, getting the needles and then the dentist saying: "We have done all of that, but I am sorry, we are not going to drill today. It would be too unpleasant. I would like you to come back next year and I will continue to freeze your mouth. I will keep drilling your teeth, causing you pain and at some point I will fix the problem, but not today. I will just keep on giving you the pain".
The finance minister could be called Doctor Doolittle. I would say that Canada does have a major toothache. It is called the Liberal Party of Canada. It will not get to the root of the problem and that is something which will cause pain to Canadians for years to come.