Madam Speaker, I have a considerable challenge to change the minds of hon. members in the House who have the real power in this place.
I am very annoyed on behalf of my constituents and on behalf of all Canadians that we do not in this boardroom on behalf of the country have the mechanism to defeat a budget which is bad. This is even before I am talking about this particular budget.
Let us say a party brought in a really bad budget. We will not say the Liberals did that this time, that is self-evident. Let us say it was some hypothetical party some time in the future. The thing that is wrong with this place is there is no mechanism which permits the members of Parliament as representatives of their constituents back home to actually defeat that budget.
I believe that is deplorable. It is deplorable that the member for Saskatoon-Dundurn cannot stand up here and vote against this budget if he felt he should without the fear of being disciplined and without the fear of losing that treasured privilege of being able to run a second term in order to get his high priced pension plan.
A lot of people are aware of this MP pension plan. They are also aware that the Liberals have only tinkered with it. They did nothing tangible really. Changing the age to 55 is commendable. For most Canadians there is no pension until they are 65. Furthermore, they do this at a time when they are talking about reducing the number of years ordinary Canadians can pay into their RRSPs. They are talking about it at the same time they are talking about increasing the age when Canadians will become eligible for the Canada pension plan. Yet for themselves they bring it down to age 55.
We have this new member from the Bloc here who is now 22 years old. Theoretically before this little change he could have picked up his pension at age 28 for the rest of his life. The wonderful Liberals said: "You cannot have that. You now have to wait until you are 55", while other Canadians have to wait until they are 65.
Canadians ought to know one important fact. There is a much greater price to pay for that MP pension plan than what is evident. As members probably know, I am a mathematician of sorts, although not a very high powered one. I taught high school math for four years and I taught at a technical institute for 27 years teaching mathematics and computing.
I know a little math of finance. I did some calculations. If I wanted to provide for myself the same pension I would be eligible for if I were in the MP pension plan, and I am proud to say I opted out, the cost to me at my age would be around $4,000 per month.
I am already over 55. I would be eligible right now if I had six years of service here. That is incredible, approximately $4,000 to provide me with a lifetime pension if I live to be the same age as my grandfather did. He had the same shape I do and he lived to be almost 90. Obviously I am taking that into account.
That is incredible. It means the members here who say how terrible of our member from Calgary who said we should increase the salary of the MPs are the same Liberal members who are taking the money. They are taking that money but they want to keep it a secret from the Canadian people. That is-I cannot use bad words. I do not want to get into any unparliamentary language, therefore I will stop there.
There is a lot of resistance on the governing side to actually fix the budget and to reduce government spending. It does not have to be done in social programs only. Certainly there are areas in our social spending that should be done more efficiently. There are many areas of government spending where we waste an incredible amount of money. We use around $5 billion a year to subsidize business. That is obscene when there are hundreds of people struggling to make ends meet and to pay their annual tax bills.
The government is eager to get re-elected. It is doing that by making sure the people of Canada do not have the bare facts on what it is actually doing.
I will give members opposite a little insight into what it means when one allows the debt to grow. I preface this by saying I would like to commend the Liberals. They will take this out of context. They will say the member for Elk Island said he wanted to commend the Liberals. Please listen to the end of the sentence. I want to commend them for borrowing less than probably the Conservatives would have done if we would have left them in. It is really incredible since the people chose Reform and put a lot of influence through Reform, through their own members to cut spending somewhat.
This has been done. Canadians ought to know that in the last three years of the government there has been a reduction of government spending on operations. In 1993 when we came here it cost around $120 billion a year to operate the government. That was reduced the next year to about $119 billion and the next year to about $116 billion.
We have a reduction. With the projected budget in 1996-97 there is a reduction in government spending of around $8.8 billion. If we are spending $8.8 billion less, we would expect that either we are paying down our debt because we are spending less or there should be a tax cut.
Has there been a tax cut? No. We hear a lot about no changes in tax rates. That is not entirely true. We experienced last year the increase in gas prices. There have been other changes as well.
While government operations have decreased by about 7 per cent, interest payments have gone up in that same period by almost 30 per cent. That is something Canadians ought to know. Members on the government side ought to know that.
When they see that, there should be a greater sense of urgency on balancing the budget and getting the deficit not to 3 per cent or 2 per cent of gross domestic product, not continuously adding to the debt, but getting the deficit to zero, getting the Government of Canada to spend no more in total than it is taking in. The reason is that interest is eating this up because in the same time interval total government revenues have increased by approximately 17 per cent. That means the government has taken that money out of the economy and spent 7 per cent less, but interest has increased by approximately 30 per cent.
Those are the facts. I have taken them right out of the budget book which the minister presented in the House. I have done a bit of work with my calculator on those numbers.
That should cause these members to ask whether they are really representing their constituents, their children, their grandchildren and future generations by loading on to them an additional debt.
As I approach the end of my time I would like to talk a bit about amortization. Again I have made a few computations based on paying off a mortgage.
Canada has a huge mortgage. In 1993 when the Liberals took over the mortgage was around $508 billion. If at that time we had had a balanced budget what kind of a surplus would we have needed to pay off the debt in 25 years? We would have needed an annual surplus of some $48 billion if we ever hoped to pay off the debt.
Some people say it does not matter if we pay it off. I am sorry, but every individual who has bought Canada savings bonds, government T-bills or any of the other items wants to get their money back. That debt has to be paid, whether it is to foreign lenders or to Canadians. We have to pay it back. Every year we delay the price goes up.
After we reach $603 billion, which will happen after this budget year, the annual budget surplus required to pay off the debt in 25 years will have grown to $56.5 billion annually, an increase of some $8.8 billion per year for 25 years. All we have done is waited for three years.
I am with these members. I look at the people of Canada who have needs. We are a country rich in resources. We are friendly and compassionate. No one in Canada will starve to death, not if I can help it. However, I am not sure the way to arrange our affairs is to sink our children into an enormous debt. Anyone who knows anything about the magic of compound interest will realize we are getting into an increasingly difficult debt hole.
I am not content to be in a Parliament which, in this term of office, has increased the debt of Canadians by approximately $8 billion annually. That is not acceptable; $100 billion dollars more debt.