Madam Speaker, it is a privilege for me to have an opportunity to say a few words about the 1996 budget. The hour is late and we will soon be voting on the budget. Being the last speaker or very likely close to the last speaker, pretty well everything that could be said about this budget, pro and con, has likely been said.
What I want to do is concentrate on four areas which I feel are of some note. I also want to speak to my constituents about some of the concerns I heard in some of the public forums which I convened in my riding concerning the budget.
If I have a little more time I will talk about a couple of other things, but the four items I want to talk about now are: no new taxes in this budget; reducing the deficit; the goods and services tax and what is going to be done about it; and the excellent credibility of the Minister of Finance.
The first thing I want to point out, as no doubt many others have, is that this is a budget which has no new taxes. It has no personal tax increases, no corporate tax increases and no excise tax increases. This is the third budget in a row in which there have been no personal tax increases.
What that means to me as a taxpayer is very simple. If I spend more money than I earn and put it on credit cards, get a loan, borrow from Peter to pay Paul, et cetera, there are only two ways that I can end up paying back the money that I owe. Hopefully I can either get an increase in pay from my employer and assign that increase to paying off the money that I owe, or I can cut back on my expenditures, or I can do both if I am lucky enough to get an
increase in the salary that I earn from my employer and I can cut back on expenditures.
What the budget states is very simple. There is going to be no increase in my pay because the only way that the government can increase my pay is to increase taxes. Therefore, if there is no increase in my pay and I sit down and look at my family budget and see that I am spending more than I earn and I owe more than I have the capability of paying based on my salary, then I have to tell myself to cut back on something. I have to stop spending some of that money because I am not going to be earning any more money. That is what this budget has stated. The government is not increasing any taxes, therefore it is like not getting a raise in pay.
Consequently, if we are going to reduce the deficit, which we must do of course, then we have to do it in another way. The other way is cutting back on expenditures, spending wisely. This is very important because it dovetails into the second point I want to talk about which is reducing the deficit.
When people spend more than they collect they run a deficit. Debt itself is not a bad thing. For example, very few people in this country would ever be able to own a home if they were not able to go into debt to the bank for a mortgage. Just because they have a mortgage does not make it bad that they have debt, otherwise they would not be able to own a home.
The problem is when one's debt load becomes greater than one's ability to pay back the interest and hopefully some payment of principal on a monthly basis.
What has happened with the Government of Canada over a protracted period of time is that more money has been spent than is coming in for a host of reasons. When the present government took over in 1993, by almost all accounts it took over a deficit of $42 billion or something to that effect. When we talk in that magnitude of numbers it is almost impossible to comprehend what we are talking about in terms of billions of dollars. Whether it is $40 billion or $42 billion, it is still an awful lot of money to owe.
What did we say we were going to do to deal with that problem? I have the red book here and I have read it carefully. I have read it again. I have listened to some of the speeches from the members opposite. A lot of people say they have read this book. A lot of people say they have read it again but I do not believe them. They may have read a press account of what the press says is in the book, but I do not think they have read the book.
For those people, let me quote from page 20: "Any responsible government-and this is any responsible government be it Liberal, Conservative, NDP or Reform-"must have as a goal the elimination of the deficit". That is obvious. That is our goal. This was the Liberal Party speaking when we were running for election as the government of this country. Our goal is the elimination of the deficit. Let there be no doubt about it, it was plainly stated. Of course there are many ways to get to the same goal.
I am absolutely delighted that as we approach the end of this debate there is some activity on the benches opposite. I can actually hear some people listening. It means somebody is listening to what I am saying.