Mr. Speaker, I have a comment for the hon. member for Outremont and Secretary of State. I heard him congratulate his great party, the Liberal Party, a great party that has existed for a very long time and has done wonders, and an extraordinary party that has set up many social institutions in Canada.
I would like to point out to him that he is partly right, but he neglected to mention one thing. When the Liberal government decided to put in place great social programs in areas such as health care-and it interfered in education and many other areas-it neglected to tell Canadians that all these programs would cost money. If that great party had been honest, it would have told the population at the same time that it would cost $2 billion, $3 billion, $20 billion a year to provide those services. But the Liberal government did not say so.
Between 1970 and 1984, Canada's debt increased by $175 billion. Sure, the Liberals gave all these wonderful services to the population, but the member for Outremont neglected to say how they gave them: by borrowing on the backs of Canadians. The great Liberal Party neglected to tell them that the government was providing those services with borrowed money. This is the source of problems.
I would like to remind him also that, in 1983, the finance minister, Mr. Lalonde, who was then the member for Outremont, his predecessor, ran a $45 billion deficit in his budget with revenues that were, at the time, less than $70 billion. This was unprecedented in the history of the world. No other political party in the world had created such a great disaster. Thus the member should remember that the current debt, a great disaster, was created entirely by his great Liberal Party. I know it, for I have been here for twelve years and I am very aware of what went on. Why are we still adding to that debt now?
The hon. member forgot to mention another element in the comparison between Canada and other industrialized countries. I checked the tables in the budget, and I found them misleading. As the hon. member mentioned in his speech, annual deficits are compared as a percentage of the gross domestic product. Our target is 3 per cent.
The hon. member neglected to mention that, in all the G-7 countries, when the debt or the deficit is considered as a percentage of the GDP, the provincial and municipal deficits are taken into account. To be a member of the European Economic Community, a country should not have a debt that represents more than 60 per cent of its GDP. Canada's total debt is 105 per cent of its GDP. This country is bankrupt, nobody is saying it, and we go on spending huge sums of money.
We are talking here about the Canadian debt, the federal debt, but we neglect to mention the accumulated debt of the provinces. In the other countries, the debts of states or provinces are included in the total debt. At this time, our real accumulated debt stands at 105 per cent of the GDP, and the deficit at 5.7 per cent. That is much too high.
If only the federal government decided some day to stop being stubborn and reorganized the way we run this country by decentralizing more powers to the provinces, it could be much more efficient, save billions of dollars and wipe out the deficit. But we are heading for a disaster because of this stubborn Liberal government, which wants to keep controlling everything from Ottawa. The hon. member for Outremont and secretary of state should be aware of that. He should openly tell the whole truth to Canadians, instead of half truths.