Mr. Speaker, before I address Bill C-5 I would like to encourage all occupants of the chair to continue to maintain the decorum that we have had in the House and continue to set the high standard that you are. I would even encourage you to elevate this standard as need be. So please pass those comments on.
As I understand Bill C-5 this bill was actually prompted by the co-operative associations themselves. They recognized the need for change in its industry. They recognized the need to be increasingly competitive. They are competing against larger entities with smaller management hierarchies, with less bureaucracy. They are competing with large entities that are very customer focused and front line driven. They have to achieve some measure of increased efficiency if they are to survive.
They also realized they needed access to investment, investment dollars and capital. They also realized that in order to eliminate some of their redundancies in their operations they had to amalgamate, consolidate and knit themselves together so they could be more efficient to survive.
The co-operatives through all of this were dealing with reality. I want to speak about dealing with reality for a minute. I would really like to encourage our government today to take a lesson from what the co-operatives have been doing and start dealing with reality.
Recently the finance minister toured the country celebrating that soon we would have a balanced budget. It is wonderful to celebrate that, but it has been more than 27 years coming.
He presents it as if we are there, we have arrived, everything has been done. He is not dealing with reality. We have a $600 billion debt in this county and many of us do not realize it but we are sitting on an interest rate time bomb that could go off at any minute.
I can remember a day in Canada when interest rates were almost 20%. When they came back down to 12%, we all breathed a sigh of relief. We have a debt that has an interest rate of around 7% or 8%.
I think the likelihood of those interest rates going down is very small. The potential for them to go up is real. I read recently that there is already pressure to move in that direction.
Here we are celebrating almost having a balanced budget and yet we are sitting on an interest rate time bomb that could blow away that balanced budget in a second and we will never see the days of surplus. But we are not dealing with reality. We are celebrating an almost balanced budget.
How much is the interest on a $600 billion debt? It is $45 billion a year. How much is that? I cannot conceive of that much money but let us put it into perspective so that Canadians can understand.
We talk so much about the importance of secondary education. Forty-five billion dollars would pay for 4 million young people to go through a four year degree program. That is how much that is and we pay that out in interest every year.
We talk about the need for health care. There is a lot of talk from the other side of the House about how we do not want two tier health care. The best way to achieve that is to make sure there is a very strong basic health care system.
Forty-five billion dollars in interest on this huge debt, if we did not have to pay that, that amount of money would pay for every hospital in Canada including the ones that are being forced to close to operate for two years.
That is how much this is costing us, yet do we have a government that is dealing with reality like the co-ops are? No, we get a throne speech with 29 new spending initiatives. I heard lately it is 31.
Canadians are crying out for less government, not more government. We are asking the government across the floor to hear this.
There is something else that the co-operatives demonstrated. They demonstrated they have the ability to plan for the future. They realize that they need to gain capital so that they can build a secure future for themselves.
The government should allow Canadians the same privilege. Again I do not see it listening. Instead, what do we get? We get a Canada pension plan that has been there for 30 years that people have been paying into for 30 years. Where is the money? Nobody seems to know where it is.
The money that goes into that plan by young people and people working today is the same money that goes out of that plan to people who are collecting. It is a flowthrough system. There is no pot of money available. There is a $560 billion unfunded liability there. It is a flowthrough system.
Canadians are even losing faith in this system. For all the great rhetoric we are getting from across the floor, a recent study done in Maclean's magazine showed that 66% of Canadians said this program will not be there when they need it. They have lost faith in this program. What is the government's answer? Its answer is to give us more of a plan that did not work, not just a bit more but 73% more.
It will go from taking 5.85% from our cheques to 9.9%, effectively 10%. That is a 73% increase in a plan that has proven to not work. That is the largest tax increase we have seen. That is 10% off the income of every Canadian, your money flowing into a system that does not work.
What troubles me about this on top of everything else is that the young people of our country who have become trained and are eager to work and build a future for themselves are faced with 16% to 17% unemployment. We have a government that increases payroll taxes by 73%, further shortcircuiting the chance for these young Canadians to build a future in Canada.
The government has an answer for us. The answer is another government appointed investment board to manage the money that is contributed. If it is consistent with the track record of most government appointed investment boards, I can see why Canadians do not have much faith in it.
The question that should be asked by the members on the opposite side is whose money is this. This money is earned by Canadians. It is not a tax. It is meant to be there when they need it at retirement age. Let them own it and manage it. Within successful private financial institutions that are professionals at managing money, they cannot do worse than the government has done in the last 30 years. It is not possible to do worse than that. Even modest evaluations with conservative interest rates prove out that there is a three to fourfold greater benefit derived by going through private institutions than going through a government run investment board, taking the critical moneys that Canadians earn and further shortcircuiting the hopes of our young people to obtain a job in this country.
The concept of Canadians owning their own investment plan, owning their own pension plan, having title to it, is not something radical or unheard of. This concept is being applied around the world with outstanding success. Countries and governments are allowing their citizens to plan for their future, like the co-operatives are doing.
I am asking the government to allow Canadians to do the same thing instead of going back to a plan that does not work.
There is another dimension of the co-operatives bill. The co-operative management group had the foresight to implement measures with this bill that will protect it and allow it to survive in the long term. That seems like a reasonable thing for Canadians to expect from their government. That is continually what the government says it wants to do and yet we continue to be faced with too much government, too much intrusion in our lives, huge debt and huge interest rates, as I have spoken to.
We have the highest tax to GDP ratio of any of the G-7 countries, and the government comes back with 29 new spending initiatives on top of all that. Even as I speak it in this House I am overwhelmed again with the facts. Surely the light is going to come on one of these days.
Ten per cent off every paycheque of every Canadian, another government appointed board, the litany goes on and on. Behind all this, as we are celebrating a balanced budget finally wrestled to the ground, there are some facts to be looked at.
The $7.5 billion that went toward balancing the budget was actually a surplus paid into the unemployment insurance program. It is not really savings. It is intended for a totally different purpose but has gone off somewhere else. It is misleading Canadian people.
The youth unemployment rate is 16.5%. Today I was at a presentation for some gentlemen who were receiving the Order of Canada. I had the opportunity to talk to one senior scientist being recognized about his son who had recently graduated with an honours engineering degree and sought work in Canada.
We have all heard the story. Members know where I am going and where he went. He left Canada to get a real job, not a government job, because he could not get one here. This passionate Canadian who received the Order of Canada was hurt that his own son could not apply what he had learned in Canada. Brain drain to the max, and it is happening.
It is not more government we need. Canadians are burdened with government, taxes and all that comes with them. They are carrying a heavy load. Canadians are a stoic bunch. We tend not to be complainers. We tend to buck up and do it. We have a government that continues to take another brick and put it on top of the load. It continues to weigh us down one more brick at a time, one more brick at a time.
I do not want to depress everybody here although this is a depressing topic. I want to give Canadians some hope and to inspire members across the floor. There is a bright note in all this. The government actually listened to the co-operatives when they came forward and said what they needed. The government actually listened and put together the bill. That proves to me when the heart is willing and they really want to do it Liberals can listen. They allowed co-ops to plan for their future.
Along with the members of my party I am earnestly requesting the government to do the same for Canadians. It should deal with reality and the realities of the debt. It should allow Canadians to plan for the future and to keep the money they have earned. It is their money. Let us emphasize that. It should set us on the road to long term viability and allow for an environment where young people can hope for real employment in their own country.
Canadians do not want more tax and spend governments. They want a government that does a few key, important things well for less cost instead of a lot of things poorly at great expense. It is simple. That is what they are pleading for and demanding. It should stop crushing them with the weight of government adding bricks to the load.
The government has demonstrated that it can listen. It should now listen to Canadians, listen and deal with reality. We have waited too long. It is almost too late. It is a critical time. We have a window of opportunity today to make changes but it is only here today.
I encourage all members of the House to deal with the realities and capitalize on the window of opportunity. Whatever we do let us not miss it or future generations will judge us and indict us.