Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, our efforts in the last almost four years clearly show that by 1998 and 1999 net borrowing requirements will be zero.
That is how most countries define a balanced budget. So what we can now say is that we have the deficit under control. As well, the debt is starting to fall as a portion of GDP. In only four years we have been able to clean up the mess left behind by nine years of Tory incompetence and mismanagement.
What are the results of all this hard work by this government and quite frankly by Canadians as it relates to some of the pain that Canadians have had to go through in order to deal with the Conservatives and their rule and of course some of the people on the right wing who have suggested that they have all the answers?
We have the lowest inflation in a very long time. We have interest rates at their lowest level in almost 40 years. We have massive savings for home owners and consumers and economic growth is strong. In fact, we have led the G-7.
Of particular interest, because of course this is an election year and everybody likes to make predictions, the private sector forecasters predict we will continue to have the strongest economy in the industrialized world.
Since our election more than 715,000 new jobs have been created. As has been said in this place by the Prime Minister on a number of occasions, that is more than Italy, France, Germany, Japan and Britain all put together. That may not seem like a lot to some members but in fact based on the mess that we inherited from the right wingers in this particular scenario that I mentioned, I think it is a job well done indeed. I suspect that some forecasters like John McCallum from the Royal Bank are predicting we will even better that this year with the creation of up to 350,000 more jobs.
That is on the fiscal side. Those of us who were here under the Mulroney rule have to remember that now we have the little brother of the Conservative Party called the Reform Party whose members were so embarrassed about their leader under the Conservative Party they decided to start their own.
None of us is fooled by that. It is the same right wing Tory ideology. That is why we see the lack of interest by the voting public in supporting the Reform Party, which is no different than when it supported the Mulroney years because of the tax policies, the vision and the values it holds for Canadians and which the majority of Canadians do not support.
I want to talk a bit about those particular values. Before I do that, I want to lay a few issues on the table for the public watching today. The opposition and certain parties in the provincial jurisdictions are suggesting that we in the federal government have been able to clean up our finances by downloading to the provinces.
I want to talk a bit about Ontario because I am an MP from north western Ontario. What we are living through is almost identical to what I would envision under a Reform government if it were ever to occur in this land. We are seeing a slash and burn policy. We should look at the facts in Ontario to give us a sort of preview and a picture of the future if another right wing party like the ones in this House would form the government.
Because of Mike Harris' irresponsible tax cuts he has had to cut $1.3 billion out of hospitals, $.5 billion from roads, $400 million from post-secondary education, $2 billion from social assistance and I understand $1.3 billion from municipalities, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.
I want to give people some information this afternoon that may bring to light just why it is difficult for federal members of Parliament to accept where Mike Harris is going and that he is in fact trying to blame the federal government for the slash and burn and all the different headaches that he is causing people from northwestern Ontario and Ontario as a whole.
Payments to Ontario's government will drop from $10.3 billion in 1993-94 to $9.1 billion in 1998-99, a decline of $1.2 billion or 11.4 per cent. This represents at most 2.5 per cent of Ontario's revenues. We cannot, after the list I have just read, suggest that this cut made to transfer payments to the Ontario government and the Ontario people is the reason why Mike Harris and his Tories are cutting all the services in Ontario.
Let me give the real reason why. It relates to the opposition, especially the right wing opposition parties, both the Tories' and Reforms' interest in across the board personal income tax cut. In Ontario this particular government has suggested that it would cut 30 per cent out of our personal income tax. That works out to $4.9 billion per year by 1999. That is the reason we are closing hospitals, why we are reducing payments to school boards and why we are increasing the size of our classrooms and why we have to reduce transfer payments to the municipalities.
Anyone who has spent any time looking at what is going on in Ontario would know that it is not the transfer payments from the federal government to the provincial government, but it is the silliness of having a tax cut across the board when there is still a major deficit to deal with and in fact you cannot afford to do without those revenues. For the life of me I cannot understand why this blind right wing ideology is even being considered by Canadians and Ontarians when in fact those of us in this place know that we cannot do without that revenue until we balance our books.
I am proud to be a Liberal for a number of reasons. Even though we have had to make some tough decisions on the deficit we continue to maintain our values of looking after our social programs, putting them on a good footing. The agreement that we signed with the provincial governments on CPP is a perfect example of that. Putting money toward health care, putting money toward youth, putting money toward innovation and technology, that is what Liberalism is all about. That is why this government is popular in the polls. It is not because some of the members opposite say that we have played some number game.
People are more intelligent than that. They know we have made tough decisions but we have been fair and equitable. That is the reason why when we go to the people with this particular budget and our record they will agree with us that we have gone a long way down the road to improving our chances in the next millennium.