Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to debate this motion. I congratulate the member for Capilano-Howe Sound for the work he has obviously put into his proposal. I know he is a very reflective person, one who has studied these matters deeply, being an economist. Being a lawyer myself I will refrain from the usual economist jokes about the gloomy profession and I am sure the member will be pleased that I am so doing.
Perhaps he will forgive me if I start by saying I had some problems with this bill from a technical perspective when I first looked at it in terms of how it would work. Having heard the member introduce it I now have some profound problems about where it is coming from.
I was listening to the member and I wondered why he did not propose we go back to the gold standard. It might have been about the same sort of proposition to achieve the same ends, to create a
rigid system within which governments cannot function, cannot move out of straight-jackets and which is generally to the benefit of the moneyed classes, generally to the benefit of those who have large investments because they can be guaranteed that governments will not impinge on them by inflation or other measures which the member referred to.
The member began by reminding us, and quite appropriately so, that we in Canada have become familiar with the fact that deficits are dangerous things, that we are mortgaging our children's future if we spend unwisely and put it into debt. I respect what the member had to say on that.
However, the conclusion he came to was rather startling for me coming from the Reform Party. Its members day after day in the House hesitate to say how they are voting because it must be made very clear that they wish the appearance at least to be there that whenever they vote they are reflecting the immediate wishes of their constituents. How often have the member's colleagues stood in the House and told us "I am not voting on this, my constituents are voting; I have consulted my constituents and I am the representative of direct democracy"?
The member introduces the bill by telling us he does not believe in democracy. The bill is an anti-democratic bill. The member wants to introduce a constitutional change which will inhibit his constituents, my constituents and every other Canadian from voting for individuals or governments that intend to address economic problems in a way that would be inconsistent with the bill. It would put a straight-jacket around government functions in a way that is quite extraordinary. That this is coming from a party which pretends to be in favour of democracy is quite extraordinary.
This party will not vote a change to the human rights code to prevent discrimination against a class of individuals based on their personal characteristics, but it will propose a bill which would make it impossible for the government to affect the economic well-being, the money they have in their pockets.
The member is assimilating the bill to the charter. The member does not even know about the charter. The charter contains in it a notwithstanding clause. Did the member for Capilano-Howe Sound not realize that? It has a provision whereby if Parliament wishes to deal with something outside the constraints contained in the charter both the federal and provincial houses can do that.
He does not even propose that in his bill. His notwithstanding clause is a narrow technical clause which gives war, acts of God and revolution an opportunity to get around the provisions of the bill, and I will come to that when I move into problems with the way the bill operates.
I start by fundamentally pointing my finger to my real philosophical problem with the bill. It is totally and utterly inconsistent with every precept of government and democracy that I have heard advanced by the members of the Reform Party so far in the House.
That being as it is, it is passing strange but it often happens in politics that people propose inconsistent measures. It is curious that inconsistency from that party comes when it comes to a question of protecting money but there is no inconsistency when it comes to protecting basic human rights of human characteristics.
The second problem I have with the bill is its inspiration is, I believe, fundamentally American in nature. This is an American concept. One can understand the American concept of government. In the congressional system one can understand why members of Congress have proposed such a bill. They are trying to constantly deal with that struggle between the legislature and the executive as represented in the president. The bill which has been introduced in the United States is a part of that dynamic of the constant fight between Congress and presidential authority. Congress is seeking a way to impose its will on the president and on the spending of the president as well.
That may make sense in the American system but it does not make sense in a parliamentary democracy like ours where we function under very different rules.
Those are my basic problems with the bill. I now will deal with the recognition by the member that such a strait-jacket could never be automatically applied. Even the member has said we could not lock a government in completely. I recognize his intellectual honesty in that. Then we have to be straightforward and honest about it. We have to look at the nature of exemptions which he has provided in the bill. War is an obvious one.
I suggest that in an international interdependent world in which Canada presently lives creating a bill as simplistic as this does not recognize the problems that will come. The Mexican currency crisis was one. There will be others like that. We will be called on to be involved in many international events that will be imposed on us.
I am not suggesting we as Canadians wish to adventure outside the country into foreign adventures. The integrated world we live in will be imposing things on us which are unforeseeable and unforeseen in the bill. They will then require expenditures. They may involve peacekeeping. These are large expenditures of billions of dollars in order to preserve the integrity of Canada. Whether we are talking about its security, its environment or its health, these expenditures will be necessary.
Because the bill imposes a strict limit on the expenditures of government the inevitable consequences will be that this will be paid for out of the domestic side of the economy and the social programs of Canadians, their health, their unemployment insurance. The guarantees they have for a healthy productive society will be threatened because we have not been able to deal flexibly with the immediate challenges which are bound to come in 21st century.
I leave it with the member that my other problem with the bill is I do not think it is adapted to the modern world in which we are entering. I do not think it is adapted to the enormous complexity of the new international world into which we are moving which will require a great deal of flexibility on behalf of Canadian governments.
Another problem I have with the bill is that it fails to recognize, if I may go back to its anti-democratic roots, the nature of the Canadian people.
In electing this government with the promise it made to reduce the deficit to 3 per cent, by efforts it has been making to do so, it is clearly foreseeable that within two years Canada will be the lowest deficit country of any of the G-7. We are on the deficit reduction track.
Canadians have, through the course of this lesson, learned what are the consequences of overspending. All of us are pulling in what we are doing. In my riding of Rosedale, which is a downtown riding in an urban centre, there are enormous problems of social housing, crime and issues that require a lot of government action and attention, most of the citizens there have willingly recognized that we have to rein in what we are doing.
We wish to discipline ourselves in an intelligent way. We do not just wish to discipline ourselves automatically. The member from St. Paul's called it hitting the nail with a hammer because you happen to have a hammer in your hand and nothing else.
What we need in today's social circumstances is a surgeon's scalpel and not a hammer. The member has provided us with a hammer. In so doing, he will not allow us to adjust in a way in which the government is already indicating governments can adjust and will adjust.
I will conclude by saying that the government has a different approach. It was shown in the last budget, and I am sure that future budgets will show it as well.
In conclusion, this proposal is fundamentally undemocratic and impracticable, and serves only the interests of the richer members of society, not those of average citizens.