Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the President of the Treasury Board's tabling of the estimates this morning. I think that we have to point out that not everything is as clear as he would like us to believe. I refer to his speech in which he said "we will exercise unwaivering discipline in controlling federal spending". That is a wonderful statement.
When I looked at the Globe and Mail last week I happened to see an article that said ``next week's government spending estimates will prove the ad hoc and very political nature of the heritage minister's eleventh hour $10 million gift for CBC because the money won't be there''. Guess what, I checked the estimates and the money is not there. There is a little column for last minute add-ons for the political changes made by cabinet and sure enough we find that the heritage minister at the very last minute, after the estimates were printed, was able to squeak in another $10 for her little favourite programs. So much for the unwaivering discipline in controlling federal spending. Obviously it is completely and totally subject to the whims of the people who have power around here. Therefore we have to take a look at the political nature of the rest of the documents to see what else we have found.
The President of the Treasury Board goes on to talk about the fact that the percentage of program spending is going to be the lowest in GDP for almost 50 years, but again he completely fails to tell us about how much money in addition to program spending we are paying in interest. Canadians have to take out $45 billion to $50 billion a year of their pockets to pay for interest for the past mistakes of this government and the previous government. The Tories and the Liberals combined for the last 25 years have been spending with abandon. Now Canadians have to come up with $50 billion a year or the better part thereof just to pay for these mistakes. They were not their mistakes, they were the government's mistakes but guess who gets to pay. And that is the shame of these estimates.
What else did we find in the president's speech: "Over the last few years the federal public service has grown too large and therefore we have to make it smaller". A wonderful statement but what do find? Let us take Nav Canada. Again in his speech he referred to the fact that he has transferred 6,000 former federal employees into this hybrid crown corporation, not for profit organization, hid from the auditor general organization; 6,000 federal employees and he claims he is reducing the public service.
Not one person lost their job. It was a transfer from one department into a not for profit agency. Nothing changed. Yet he would have us believe that he is downsizing the federal civil service, that we are getting more efficient and that we can manage our money better. Wrong. Completely wrong.
We saw the Minister of Finance stand up in this House and heard him boast about his accomplishments, how he has brought down spending, how he has brought it under control and how we are finally getting the federal government's fiscal house in order.
When we look at it, we find that the federal government is getting its house in order again at the expense of somebody else. Remember how I said that the taxpayers have to pay for the government's mistakes. We are also finding that provincial governments are now paying for the federal government's saying it is getting the job done. The health and social transfer to the provinces is how it is doing it.
Last year the federal government transferred to the provinces $14.9 billion for health, education and social services tax. This year it is only going to spend $12.5 billion. That is a reduction of $2.5 billion right there that did not reduce the size of the federal government one inch.
It did not reduce the number of civil servants by one. It was a case of passing the buck to the provinces and saying "you will do with less in order for us to balance our budget". Is that responsible
government? Is that the way we want to manage our federal government, by passing the buck to the provinces with $2.5 billion less while Canadians are saying "what about my health care, it has fallen to pieces"? Does it care?
It cares about the Minister of Finance's being able to stand up and boast about his accomplishments. We read in the paper and I see in Edmonton, where I come from, that people have been denied emergency services, that people have died because they have had to transfer from one hospital to another in an emergency. They died in the process because there was not a bed available for them.
This government is cutting $2.5 billion in cash from health and education. It says it is a good job. The other day the Minister of Finance stood up and said "Boy, am I good. I am going to throw another couple or three hundred million dollars back into health care. Is that not good news?"
Compare that to the cut of $2.5 billion from health care in one year. That is terrible news. Canadians ought to know what is really going on when it comes to this government's management of health care for Canadians. Abysmal. Downright abysmal.
We have also heard the Minister of Finance tell us about how interest rates have come down and how he is saving all kinds of money. Let us recognize that interest rates are down right around the world. They are down in Japan. There are practically non existent there. They are down in the United States. They are down in the United Kingdom. They are down all through Europe.
I wonder if the minister is taking credit for all that, too. The reality is he just happened to catch the benefit of a wave that was going around the world. Let us remember that interest rates came down not because the Minister of Finance caused it. He just happened to get the benefit of it.
This year we are going to see a reduction, finally, in the cost of our debt. It is going to drop by $1.8 billion, the prediction is, down to $46 billion. Let us remember that it was not the management of this government and it was not the management of this Minister of Finance that caused it.
Thankfully Canadians who have mortgages and loans with taxes to pay are getting the benefit of it. Again there are the seniors who would rely on their investment to give a little enhancement to their quality of life on top of the pittance this government gives them. What happened to their incomes?
I did not hear the Minister of Finance say seniors are going to be better off because interest rates are coming down. While he was boasting that someone with a big mortgage would save $500 a month, he did not say that the senior who has a $100,000 investment is going to lose $500 a month. I did not hear him say that, but that is what happened.
My hon. colleague is going to be retiring after the election. He is going to have to suffer because his investments are going to bring him less money. Does the Minister of Finance care? Perhaps not.
The point is there are hundreds of thousands of Canadians across this land who are being squeezed by the reduction in interest rates, squeezed by taxes going up, squeezed because health care is not there for them, all because the Minister of Finance says "boy, am I doing a great job". Canadians know he is not doing a great job. They know that their jobs are potentially in jeopardy. One in four Canadians is concerned about a job. There are 1.5 million unemployed who are looking for a job, and high taxes are destroying these opportunities.
University graduates are asking how to get a job. The Minister of Finance is saying they will have an extra six months to before they have to start to repay their student loans. Let me assure the House that each and every one of them would rather have a job opportunity than an opportunity to defer the payment of a student loan. But these are the types of things that are going on that we do not hear about. We did not hear it in the government's tabling of the estimates.
I refer to the people in power seeming to be able to get what they want. In a stack of documents I have here there is a little interest in what is going on in the department of heritage. If I remember the numbers clearly, while the Minister of Finance says: "I am squeezing everybody, everybody is having to do with less", does anybody get more? Yes, the Deputy Prime Minister and the minister of heritage gets more. I think she gets about $90 million more, an 8.4 per cent increase in her budget.