Mr. Speaker, on March 8, I took part in a television program called "Droit de parole" on the Radio-Québec network, along with representatives from various social and economic groups; employers, unions, women's groups, young people and chambers of commerce were represented.
A SOM-Le Soleil poll released during this program shows that only 33 per cent of the population rely on the budget to promote job creation, while 53 per cent rely little or not at all on this same budget to reach this job creation objective.
Also, when asked about the future of pensions, increasingly, fewer young people and members of the middle class say they rely on the federal government to ensure the future of the public pension system.
In a period of accelerated technological and social change, where confidence in democratic institutions should be high, the government is showing no leadership whatsoever. The government has lost all credibility with a growing number of Canadians. This had led, spontaneously, to the founding in Canada of about twenty new groups, such as the group Conference Confederation 2000, which met at the Château Laurier in March, following last October's referendum campaign, to fill the political vacuum left by this government. The emergence of these groups shows that nature abhors a vacuum, and at present, the vacuum is the government that is in place here in Ottawa.
What are the main causes of such a lack of credibility of the Canadian government with its citizens? Government rhetoric changes from month to month; federal ministers contradict each other, and policies put forward often cancel each other out.
This lack of direction is reflected in the deficit reduction measures and some job creation measures which are supposed to be found in the federal budget.
The Minister of Finance emphasizes in his budget that the deficit will be $24 billion next year and $17 billion in two years. The Minister speaks only of the future. But let us not forget that the deficit is now very close to $33 billion and that it was $37.5 billion last year. That is the reality. These are not projections.
And if we add the $5 billion coming from the unemployment insurance account surplus, which in actual fact belongs to the employers and the workers and which the Minister has appropriated, the real deficit for this year remains close to $38 billion, and the one for last year was $42.5 billion. This is the same deficit level that we saw during the last year of the mandate of the Conservative government. At that time, the Liberals condemned the deficit.
To justify rolling the surplus of the unemployment insurance account into the consolidated revenue fund and reducing the deficit accordingly, the Minister says that if there is a shortfall in the unemployment insurance account during the next recession or during the next major the increase in the unemployment rate, the government will make up the shortfall in the account.
Imagine the burden the minister is placing on the unemployment insurance account and future government deficits. What is even more disquieting about the minister's deficit projections is that we are currently in full economic upturn; recovery is under way. The U.S., for example, recorded over 700,000 new jobs in February, the highest since 1983.
What will happen to the deficit in the next recession, which the economists are predicting for around the end of this decade? The Liberals place much emphasis on the last two Conservative deficits, which hovered around the $40 or $42 billion mark after the recession at the beginning of this decade.
It must be kept in mind, however, that in 1990-91 and 1991-92 the deficits inherited from the Conservatives were in fact $32 and $34 billion, the same as this year's deficit. In the good growth years from 1987 to 1990, this deficit was $28 or $29 billion, even less than the current figure.
Even in the Conservatives' day, the deficit was under $30 billion in the growth years, and around $40 billion in the recession years. The Liberals have done no better, even after raising taxes and pillaging the unemployment insurance fund.
The next recession is, therefore, liable to plunge us back into a vicious circle, into a deeper whirlpool than before. Debt servicing will be close to $50 billion next year, and a 1 per cent variation in interest rates adds $1.3 billion to the deficit. Worse, in the medium term, it has a $3 billion impact on the debt.
The Minister of Finance has no room whatsoever to manoeuvre, given the size of the debt accumulated so far. The impact of any change in interest rates is far too great. There is but one solution: what should have been done was to clean up business taxation right away, instead of striking a committee of experts to examine the question. Clean up by fighting waste throughout government
machinery and by cutting the defence budget much more substantially.
The deficit should have been reduced to $35 billion last year, $25 billion this year, $15 billion next year and $5 billion two years hence so that there would be a surplus in 1999 of $5 billion that could be applied to the debt creating the financial manoeuvring room that is so lacking now.
This is the only consistent program needed, and the government was incapable of instituting it.
The Liberals created the debt in the 1970s and early 1980s. In the 1990s, they are going at indebtedness with renewed vigour. They have no budget sense and will never be able to manage a budget.
We have to get rid of this government before it becomes the cause of our demise. Ask our international creditors about the scope of the real political instability we all talk so much about. Ask them whether it comes really from popular consultation or the inability of our political leaders to balance the budget.
In terms of jobs, the budget tabled by the Minister of Finance is just as pitiful as it is in terms of the deficit and the debt. There is no major job creation measure. The budget for student jobs is increasing we are told from $60 million to $120 million, although it was already at $84 million before the Liberals reduced it.
So they double the budget for little summer jobs, but because the Liberals reduced transfer payments for post-secondary education by $450 million in two years, the provinces will have to double tuition fees. At this rate, many students will be unable to continue their studies and will have to keep for much of their life the little summer job created for them. This is what is commonly called dead end jobs.
There is always a double standard. The government gives with one hand what it takes away with the other. In the budgetary reallocation game, the President of Treasury Board makes up in new expenditures all that was saved in government cuts. All the savings should have gone to balance the budget. The whole accounting exercise of cuts and reallocations translates this year into a real net increase in expenditures of $34 million and barely $200 million in savings next year.
This government, therefore, is still far too interventionist, and the measures put forward in the Minister of Finance's budget fail utterly to resolve the problems of the deficit and employment.