Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to participate in this extremely important debate.
Being a budget debate, it gives us the opportunity to have a fairly wide ranging discourse about the affairs of the country. It gave me an opportunity in preparation for this discourse to consider some of the reasons that brought me into politics in the first place.
I am sure that my reasons were really not very much different than the reasons of my colleagues opposite or those with whom I share this side of the floor. Most of us are here because we want to make our country and perhaps even in a greater sense the world a better place for our children and for our grandchildren.
My motives are not necessarily any more pure or pristine than the motives of my colleague opposite. It is clear that I would prefer that we addressed our problems in a much more forthright manner than members opposite.
I am reminded of the words of Ayn Rand. These words help me very much in my life and I have tried to share them with people
whenever I can: "You must deal with problems as they are, not as you would wish them to be".
It seems to me that all too often we in politics tend to deal with problems not as they are but as we wish them to be or, worse, given a particular situation, we will try however we must to justify the status quo. If we have made a mistake, rather than fix the mistake we will somehow try to make it right without addressing the core problems.
In politics, the higher a person is on the food chain, the less likely it is that any utterings of that person will be seriously challenged by anyone in this place.
In "The Rights of Man" Thomas Paine wrote that each generation has the right and the responsibility to govern for its times. The greatest insolence and tyranny of all is the presumption of ruling from beyond the grave.
Particularly to young Canadians who might be watching this debate, how does this enter into the budget debate? What do the words of Thomas Paine have to do with our budget debate over 100 years later? Why are his words germane?
They are germane today just as they were then for this reason. If we in our generation and in the generation that preceded us saddle our children and our grandchildren and their children with a debt that is not of their making, then we are ruling from beyond the grave. When we are no longer of this world, what we have done will be paid for by our children and by our grandchildren.
I am sure I speak for many parliamentarians here and in provincial legislatures across the land. When I wrestle with the problems that we have of debt, we must do so bearing in mind that we have a sacred obligation to future generations to leave our country and our world in better shape than we found it in.
That is what brought me into politics and I would expect that is what brought a lot of my colleagues into politics. Some of us choose to achieve these goals by different avenues. That does not make them necessarily right or necessarily wrong. However, it does suggest that there are different priorities attached by different political parties.
The Liberals came into this thinking that if we are able to change the name and move things around a little and fudge it we will not really have to address the core problems facing our country. The core problem facing our country has not been revenue. Being the most highly taxed of the G-7 countries, of any industrialized nation in the world, revenues are not a problem. As a matter of fact, in the government's revenue documents, the budget documents, it clearly makes the point that government revenues are going to increase from the 1994-95 fiscal year to the 1998-99 fiscal year by $20 billion.
That is virtually the entire growth of the gross domestic product of the country. What is happening is that the lifeblood of the country is being sucked out of the pockets of individual Canadians. We do not have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
Over the same period of time again from the government's own documents it shows that government spending will decrease $15 billion but fully $7.5 billion of that government spending decrease will be part of the Canada health and social transfer.
So then what are the components of the Canada health and social transfer? They are transfers to the provinces with respect to payments for health, post-secondary education and welfare. Where are the provinces under most stress in their budgets? Health, post-secondary education and welfare.
The federal government has changed the name of the departments, combined them into a global budget and then said it will reduce transfers by $7.5 billion. That $7.5 billion represents a decrease from $19.3 billion to $11.8 billion.
I do not know what the percentage is and I apologize, I should have figured it out, but it is pretty dramatic. The provincial governments have had to make up and take up the slack.
It is a little difficult for the provincial governments to do so because in order to be eligible for the transfers from the federal government for these programs the provincial governments must abide by rules established by the federal government.
Here we have the situation where the federal government is making the rules but the provincial governments have to pay for it. It does not seem right to me. It does not seem right to me not that the government does not have the responsibility to get its finances in order but how can it in good faith and good conscience slough off the responsibilities to other governments and call this doing the job?
At the same time that the government is reducing transfers to the provinces in support of health, education and welfare it has all kinds of resources to subsidize business such as Bombardier, such as a hotel in the Prime Minister's riding for millions of dollars, to business all over the country with the notable exception of the west. How can we find money to subsidize business but we cannot find money to transfer to the provinces for health, post-secondary education and welfare?
It seems to me that the government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth when it says that its concern is for post-secondary education, understanding that the future of young Canadians is built on knowledge and at the same time it cuts transfers to post-secondary education.
I invite my colleagues opposite to stand and perhaps we will have an opportunity to explore some of these issues.