Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to be able to stand in Canada's Parliament and talk about the one issue which is probably more important to Canadians than almost anything else.
Canadians are concerned about the justice system and its failures. They are concerned about the fact that these days they are not represented in Parliament by their MPs because the rules of the party do not permit that to happen. Undoubtedly what hits people the most across the country is the problem of jobs, of balancing their budgets and paying their bills. With that comes that greatest of all expenses for most Canadians, the largest single expense that they incur, their monthly tax bill. That is the biggest item in family budgets.
We are in this House today debating on behalf of the Canadian people whether or not their money should be spent wisely or foolishly and how it should be allocated. I am somewhat appalled that there is little accountability here.
I do not know exactly how to put this. I need to stay within the rules of debate. I will studiously attempt to do that. It is totally unconscionable for individuals, for citizens of this country, to go around during an election campaign laying out their plans so that the voters can presumably make a decision on who to send to Ottawa to represent them while during that campaign, the words they use cannot be trusted. We have heard so much rhetoric these
past days about what we meant, about we said and about what we wrote. Frankly, those three should coincide.
We should write what we intend to do. We should communicate what we intend to do and we should intend to do what we say and write we intend to do. How can the voters during an election make an informed decision if they cannot trust the words that are being used?
That is really the crux of the matter. There are 295 members of Parliament. I am very honoured to be one of those. We have that awesome responsibility of being, in essence, the board of directors of this giant corporation called Canada.
Some people say that government cannot be run as a business. I am afraid in some areas there is no choice but to run it as a business. That is when it comes to budget.
We can certainly debate what we want to spend our money on. That is a legitimate debate. How much should we spend on welfare? How much should we spend on health care? How much should we spend on education?
I am appalled that the governments of the past 30 years have arranged our affairs so that right now Canadians from coast to coast to coast are being cut down at the knees. There is no longer sufficient money to support education. There is no longer sufficient money to support a proper level of health care. There are cutbacks all over the place.
Every week I get letters and phone calls from people who say that my son cannot get a job, therefore he will not be able to continue his education. I get others who say that mom is in the hospital and if we were not there to care for her, she would have no care at all because all of the nurses have been let go. That is not acceptable.
Our predecessors in this place over the last 30 years have not been honest with Canadian taxpayers. They kept telling them election after election: "We will do this. We will do that. Elect me and you will have this in your community especially if I become a cabinet minister. There will be all sorts of grants and special privileges available. If I am already a cabinet minister, be sure to re-elect me. Those goodies will continue if you do".
Meanwhile the government is spending $1,000 each second more than is taken in. That is unconscionable. To add the greatest insult of all to Canadian taxpayers, at election time, when their candidates say that they are going to do this and this with taxation, that they will eliminate the GST or whatever the issue of the day is, the word, eliminate does not mean eliminate.
Usually in the English language, we have come to a consensus. I am sure it is the same in French. There is a consensus on the usual meaning of words. In the fall 1993 election campaign not once did I hear the Liberal candidate for Elk Island tell the people in our constituency that if elected the Liberals would harmonize the tax. I do not recall hearing that word once, yet the Liberals are now saying that eliminate means harmonize. A new synonym. A change to the dictionary.
The poor taxpayers do not have any input which is not right. It has happened year after year. The taxpayers are given a choice, but once elected the people sent to this place do whatever they want. There is no accountability. I do not want to hang my head in shame because I have done everything I could to resist this. I will have to exclude myself, members of my party and frankly, some members of the other parties in the House.
I have spoken to some government members in private conversations. I will not divulge names but they have said: "Keep hammering the budget. You guys are right on". Liberal members have said that to me, yet they are not permitted to rise in the House of Commons to speak against the budget or to move amendments.
How can taxpayers, through their elected representatives, ever get control of the spending of their hard earned money if we are not going to permit members of the House to speak and to vote according to their own conscience and according to the wishes of their constituents? If that does not happen, I do not hold out much hope for Canadians. It has to happen.
I am very proud to be a member of the Reform Party of Canada which, since its inception, has endorsed this as part of its principles. In fact it is one of the things which drew me to the party. I will stand here and try to communicate as forcefully as I can for as long as I can that what this country needs is a system whereby, like in the Reform Party, members not only have the right to represent their constituents when they debate and when they vote, but they also have the obligation to do so.
I would be out of step with my party if I went against the wishes of my constituents. I do not know whether my party would kick me out of the caucus; we have not discussed that. I really doubt it. Although it might because I would be breaking a very fundamental principle of what Reform stands for and also what is right for the country.
I will say one more thing about the budget and the fact that the government is overspending so greatly. The government proclaims how wonderful it is because it has brought the amount of overspending from $40 billion to $35 billion, from $35 billion to $30 billion, and down it goes. The present number it is projecting is somewhere in the area of $17 billion. Some Canadians, because of the way the words are spun and because some people do not bother to explain the difference between the debt and the deficit, really think that the debt is being eliminated.
I do not wish to embarrass him, but it just so happens that last week I hauled out the campaign literature from my riding and I looked at the Liberal literature to see what that candidate said. Believe it or not, in the brochure which he distributed to the voters of Elk Island, his statement was that a Liberal government would bring down the debt to 3 per cent of gross domestic product. The debt. Of course, the official platform of the Liberal Party was to bring the deficit, the amount of overspending per year, to 3 per cent
of the gross domestic product. I will forgive him. I think it was a legitimate error. He did not know any better. However, I think it is unconscionable.
When there are deficit budgets it means the debt is still growing. I want every member of the House and every Canadian to understand that the debt is not decreasing under this government. The debt is still increasing. Admittedly it is increasing at a slower rate than it did before. If I can give any commendation to the government I will give a reluctant one on that issue. At least it is not putting us into the hole as fast as it could.
When the government continues to add to the debt, right now at $17 billion per year, that is premised on a very important assumption. Those who have lent Canada the money it is borrowing, whether they are foreign investors or domestic investors, all expect their money back. That is based on the assumption that sometime in the future we will have a surplus of over $50 billion a year for 25 years in a row before we can pay off that debt.
Mr. Speaker, you do not know how much I regret that my time is up because I am just starting, but thank you.