Mr. Speaker, in the 1993 election one of the things the Liberal government did was set up expectations. It campaigned on the promise that it would create jobs, jobs, jobs. Those were the expectations it left Canadians with.
In the 1996 budget and over the previous two and a half years we have seen nothing that solves the problem of the high unemployment we have in this country.
Today we have youth unemployment of 16 per cent to 18 per cent. We have 9.5 per cent overall unemployment. That is simply unacceptable. The government has failed miserably in its promise to create jobs for Canadians.
There are many good reasons for that. One of the things Canadians were hoping for in this budget was some tax relief, some light at the end of the tunnel. There is nothing like that in this budget. This budget is simply a cipher. It is a willow wisp. There is nothing to it. It is hollow. Anything proposed is over the hill and into the next millennium.
Canadians were hoping there would be something indicating stronger social programs down the road. They have certainly talked about the mechanics of social programs as they now exist and how they would change them. There is nothing in this document that explains it all. Nothing explains where the money will come from to sustain these programs over the long haul. By continuing to add debt on to debt the government is simply weakening these programs.
The government set very high expectations. It encouraged Canadians to think positively about what would come under a Liberal government. Unfortunately it dashed those hopes in the 1996 budget. It is simply an empty document with a lot of hot air.
It want to talk specifically about some of the challenges we face and how the government has failed to deal with these issues. I have talked about jobs, higher taxes and the unsustainability of social programs as they presently are. Now I want to talk about the cause of those things, why we have those problems.
The reason we have high unemployment is not that the government has failed to come up with short term, make work job creation programs, dusted off programs from the 1970s. That is not why we failed to deal with the unemployment problem. The problem is a debt of $575 billion. That has contributed to a structural problem with unemployment. That is why we have had 11 per cent, 10 per cent, and 9 per cent unemployment over the years.
This budget has completely failed to deal with that problem.
The Liberals are laughing at this. It is a big joke that we have unemployment. I do not think it is a joke. I do not think that when they went door to door saying they would solve the problem they made a joke of it. They led people to believe there was something serious going on and that they would solve it.
They have failed miserably to address the problem in the budget. They have not got to the root of the problem, the huge debt of $575 billion.
The only way we can create the jobs Canadians so desperately desire is to lower taxes and interest rates. The only way to do that is to wipe out the deficit and begin to pay down the debt. They have failed completely to do that. They have added $112 billion to the debt over the course of their mandate.
Not only have they failed to meet the hopes of Canadians with respect to jobs and job creation, they have contributed to the problem. They have added unemployment and for that they will be judged very harshly.
One of the concerns Canadians have, particularly those who are job creators such as small business people, is that we have extremely high taxes. The finance minister and members opposite have been crowing that they did not raise taxes in the budget. Raising taxes should not be a standard of a budget; it should be the exemption.
We have seen 22 tax increases since the government came to power. It has added $5.9 billion to the personal debt load of Canadians. That is shameful. Is it any wonder there are record bankruptcies in Canada. Is it any wonder people are so pessimistic about the future of the country.
The budget did not address that problem. There is no mention of tax relief. The reason there is no mention of tax relief is that the only way we can have tax relief is by wiping out the deficit. The government has failed miserably to address that problem.
The government did talk about a tax of one kind, in a very innocuous way about the GST. If I remember correctly, during the election campaign hon. members opposite told Canadians they would abolish the GST. They would axe it. They would kill it.
The Deputy Prime Minister on CBC national television on October 18, 1993, a week and a half before the election, said the GST would be abolished under a Liberal government and if not she would resign. Two and a half years and three budgets later, the Deputy Prime Minister sits in her seat and smiles. She knows the government has succeeded with its ruse, at least until now.
Canadians will not forget the issue. They will not forget that promise. They are already cynical about the promises politicians make. They will be very hard on the Liberals for that promise which they have failed to keep.
Not only have they failed to keep their promise with respect to the GST, the very tax they said they hated and would abolish, one which the finance minister called a stupid and contemptible tax, but they are talking about augmenting and strengthening it. They are talking about making it a tax which would reach more goods and services. They are talking about creating a super tax which in Ontario alone, according to a recent University of Toronto study, would kill 70,000 jobs. How does that square with their commitment to create jobs? It does not square at all.
I will talk about social programs. We have a situation in Canada today in which people are fearful about not being able to collect the pensions into which they have been paying over the course of their lifetime. The government has done nothing to address that issue. It has gone the other way.
The government talks about making changes to RRSPs which would mean that Canadians could contribute only until age 69 instead of age 71 and therefore they will not be able to save as much for their retirement. On the other hand CPP is in terrible danger. That works against the principle of merit. It works against the principle of initiative, that people should look after themselves. We are working against that. Why are we doing that? It makes absolutely no sense. We are making the pension system unsustainable on the one hand but also robbing people of the ability to save for themselves on the other hand. It does not make any sense.
Again, is it surprising that people feel pessimistic when the government does not deliver on its implied promise that somehow things would be better when the Liberals got to power.
I will conclude by saying Canadians want some hope. They want to feel optimistic about their future. This government led them on in the 1993 election by saying: "We will provide you with jobs, jobs, jobs". Implied in that was prosperity; implied in that was that we would have a strong social safety net. None of that is happening. Quite the contrary, it is going the other way.
In fact this budget has been a budget of irresponsibility in the sense that despite the fact the government knows that these problems sit over the heads of Canadians like a very sharp sword, it has not done a thing to deal with them.