I am being heckled by the hon. member for Markham. A comment he made during his speech was interesting. This new found champion of fiscal rectitude was quoted in the Economist & Sun of Markham on November 25, 1997. I would be happy to table the article. He is quoted as “putting some distance between himself and the provincial Tories as he spoke to Markham high school students” the week previous.
Of the Mike Harris tax cutting, deficit cutting, waste cutting Tories, he says “If they don't get a gentler heart and get a little humanity and sensitivity into it, not only will they hurt themselves but they will hurt us, the federal Tories”.
Do my Liberal friends believe that a party at 12% is saying that the tax cutting champion of Canada, Mike Harris, is going to hurt it when he is at 35% in the polls? I would expect as much from a party that raised taxes 71 times and cut the average after tax disposable income of Canadian families by over $2,900 in their last term of government alone. I would expect it of a party that raised federal revenues to 16.9%, their highest point in history. My friends remind me of their GST, their great glory. They bask in the glory of the GST.
I hope my hon. friends in both parties will listen not to me but to the voice of the Canadian people. Let us look at the most recently released major national poll, released February 9 by the Globe and Mail .
The government promised in the campaign to spend 50% of every $1 billion in a future surplus on debt reduction and tax relief. We did not hear a word about debt reduction and tax relief in the throne speech. We heard very little about them in the November economic statement by the finance minister. Now that the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister are doing their prebudget spin, it is very clear that 75% or 80% of the surplus will be directed to new big government Ottawa programs.
That is not what Canadians want. In that poll Canadians were asked “Do you think the federal government should start to grow again? Should it get bigger?” Guess how many think it should start to grow. The grand total is 15%. Some 44% thought it should stay the same size and 40% of Canadians think the government should shrink further than where it is today. The government is to spend 80% of its surplus on new programs and only 15% of Canadians think that is an appropriate response.
When asked what the priorities ought to be with the surplus we will be facing next week, 45% of Canadians chose debt reduction as their preferred option; 29% said tax relief to create jobs, hope and opportunity for young Canadians to which this motion speaks; and a grand total of 23% said it should go into new program spending like the blow away millennium project of the Right Hon. Prime Minister.
When those 15% who think we ought to spend more were asked what their spending priorities were, they said their top spending priority was to increase transfers to the provinces for health care and higher education. When they asked about a federal government sponsored scholarship fund, it fell so far down the list that I cannot even find it.
They want to repair the damage the government has done by cutting over $9 billion to health care and education. The government wants to take the credit. Instead of co-operative federalism, instead of transferring the money to the provinces where it will be most efficiently and creatively administered, the federal government wants the credit. That is what the $3 billion millennium fund is about.
It is not about the future. It is about a past rooted in the 1960s, a past of big government, a past which offers very little to my generation. We need the tax relief and investment in education and research development which will provide real hope and opportunity. For that reason I am pleased to support the motion.