Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak in support of Bill C-28. This bill very much defines the heart of our country. It concerns the social pillars of our nation, our shared identity, our shared human values and our shared aspirations as Canadians.
I would like to hear from members opposite who debated earlier where they in fact stand in terms of support for the bill. Are they supporting the bill? Is the NDP supporting the bill? I hope so. Is the Reform Party supporting the bill? I hope so. Are the Bloc and the Tories supporting the bill? I hope they all do at the end of the day. They can of course share their concerns with us, but at the end of the debate I hope they can support the shared identity, human values and aspirations of Canadians.
Why is this bill about the soul of our nation? I see two or three major components to this bill. The first one is the Canada health and social transfer which covers the areas of health care, education and social assistance for Canadians. The second one concerns the registered education savings plan which relates to post-secondary education. Third, but not limited to these three, is charitable donations.
Speaking about charitable donations, Canadians should note, and opposition parties should also convey this message, that we are increasing the charitable tax credit from 50% to 75% of net income. My constituents in Winnipeg North—St. Paul, my constituents in Winnipeg North before it was changed, told me that we should increase the tax credit and we are now doing that with this bill. I hope this will be taken very positively by the members on the opposite side.
For the first time we will see that donations to charitable organizations will be the same for all charities and not limited to donations to crown corporations or crown foundations. By increasing the tax credit for charitable donations, we are encouraging even more the Canadian spirit of gift giving among our fellow Canadians and for those in need. This is truly a reflection of our social conscience.
The bill also deals with increasing the contribution to the registered education savings plan from $2,000 to $4,000 a year. This is certainly a big amount that can be earmarked for the education of our youth in our families. For parents who fear that their children for any reason may not want to go to college or university, this bill will ensure that contributions made to registered education savings plans will be transferable to the parents' registered retirement savings plan. Therefore nothing will be lost and savings will be gained.
Although our youth may only represent about 20% to 25% of Canadians, they truly represent 100% of our future. We need to ensure that the cost of education becomes more and more affordable for our youth.
I will move on to the heart of this bill, the Canada health and social transfer. This is a compilation of what used to exist, the transfer payments for health and social assistance. Provinces in the past have told the federal government that they should be allowed more flexibility in the delivery of programs. That is in our Constitution. The delivery of health care and social assistance programs is within the constitutional jurisdiction of the provinces. Out of respect for the provinces and to give them greater flexibility in defining how best to deliver this system, we have allowed for great flexibility with this kind of Canada health and social transfer.
However even as we have allowed this flexibility in terms of the administration of these programs on the part of the provinces, the federal government has seen to it that the five principles of medicare which include portability, universality, comprehensiveness, and non-profit public administration of the system will be maintained. While we have ensured these standards of medicare, we have allowed for flexible federalism.
In addition to the five principles to which I have just alluded, including the principle of accessibility, I remind members opposite that there is another principle in the bill which we may forget, that is no user fees on the part of institutions which may apply them. My colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, has alluded to the fact that when Alberta tried to impose user fees we withheld the transfer payments until the province of Alberta complied with the provisions of the Canada Health Act. Another principle relates to no extra billing on the part of physicians. We have one of the most beautiful health care systems in the world.
We have guaranteed a cash floor of $12.5 billion a year until the year 2003. The government has seen to it that it will be instituted one year earlier, commencing in 1997. In total it will represent six years. Instead of getting only $6 billion over a five year period, actually $7 billion in transfer payments will be made to the provinces for the CHST. This represents the largest single pledge which the government has made to date in terms of our social programs. Certainly it reflects the commitment of the government to the social institutions of the country.
Because our transfer payments include not only the cash floor but equally the tax points, it is important to note that as the economy grows tax transfers will increase. However, because the total transfer ought to have subtracted from the tax transfer, we have ensured in the bill that the cash floor of $12.5 billion will remain constant and will never fall below that level. That is what we call stability. It is stability in terms of the amount and it is stability in terms of the period of funding for the next five to six years.
When we combine the cash floor and the tax transfer, by any simple arithmetic calculation the actual amount—and the opposition parties ought to admit this—will increase to as much as $28.6 billion by the year 2003.
In addition to this program we have also established the health transition fund to pilot health care delivery systems in the country. I hope to see, as per the commitment we made in the 1997 election, the future of home care and pharmacare in Canada.
What we are hearing from the Reform Party is that we need to cut taxes. We also believe in tax relief for Canadians, but our approach is more balanced. When we have a surplus we will see to it that half of it will go toward tax relief, beginning with those Canadians who need tax relief the most, and as well toward debt reduction. In contrast to Reformers and Tories, we would like to spend the other half on social programs and economic investments so we can continue to sustain the economy and develop it even more, and as well to ensure that our vital social programs such as medicare and support for post-secondary education remain.
The NDP, on the other hand, will say that is not enough. I think that we need to inject a dose of realism. It is not enough, but we do not have enough money in the country. There are competing demands on the amount we have as a nation.
Thanks to the government we were able to reduce the deficit from $42 billion in 1993 to what perhaps in the upcoming budget will be almost, if not quite yet, a balanced budget. That is a significant success in restoring order to the fiscal house of the country. That in all humility must merit the commendation of Canadians.
Speaking of fellow Canadians, I would like to add at once that the success of the federal government has not been because we did it alone. In fact, we succeeded because Canadians across the country joined us in the fight to reduce and eliminate the fiscal deficit.
Now that we are nearing that success, now that we are close to balancing the budget, we have to respond to the sentiments of Canadians. We must give back now to social programs and economic investment although not to the point that we go back, as the NDP is suggesting, to an era of deficit spending.
We would like to spend more on post-secondary education. We would like to increase the infrastructure of the country, including not only roads and bridges which we would like to repair and build, not only repair of the sewer system in the country which we would like to do, but actually addressing the challenge of this current century and the new millennium. We must invest in the infrastructure of high tech technology. We must invest in research and development such as increasing the grants to our granting councils, to the Medical Research Council and to the Engineering Research Council, including support for research in the humanities.
In this way we will be able to include the social, the medical and the technical needs of the country that the current century and coming millennium challenge us to do.
I heard remarks during earlier debate that there had been cuts to transfer payments. That we said we did. In fact it was necessary and it was the sacrifice I was speaking to earlier when we had to cut transfer payments.
Not to have done that may have meant at this point we could not be speaking about fiscal surplus. In a sense we took that bold step and for that bold step Canadians gave us a renewal of the mandate. That we cannot dispute.
In contrast to what others say, that the transfer payments have decreased by about 35%, if we include equalization payments which are also part of transfer payments, the amount of decrease was not as much as 35%.
Let us support the bill. Last November or December I consulted with the constituents of Winnipeg North—St. Paul. To them I posed the question very explicitly. I asked whether they would like us to continue as we had pledged, that any surplus would henceforth be spent half for debt reduction and tax relief and the other half for social programs and economic investments. Or, would they like us to change the pledge? Everybody present in that community forum said that we must keep our pledge. That is what we are doing.
Bill C-28, as I said earlier, is about the social conscience of our country. It is about the generosity that we have for each other as Canadians. The government reflects that social conscience in Bill C-28.
We would like to have a peace of mind when we get ill by sustaining our medicare system. We would also like to secure the future of Canada by ensuring that the cost of education remains at all times affordable to our youth.
Earlier in the debate an NDP member quoted Mr. Tom Kent saying that there had been some sort of betrayal. The NDP member went on to say that what we were seeing here was an illusion. Then she said that this was about a bill of tricks. Use of those words can be very beautiful, but when we analyse them very carefully we can ask whether the NDP is happy or is the NDP a hypocrite. Is $1.5 billion not real money? Is $1.5 billion only an illusion?
The amount of $1.5 billion is being added to the $11 billion that was supposed to be. The increase that will now amount to $12.5 billion did not just come from the air. This was an amount recommended by the National Forum on Health chaired by the prime minister himself. This was an amount that was deemed essential and the government made a positive response to that recommendation.
The recommendations of the National Forum on Health and others were supported by the NDP, by the Reform and by the Tories. Yet how could it be that when we are discussing a specific recommendation implemented in the bill we are hearing these questions of betrayal, of tricks and of illusions? We must come down to reality. When a bill indicates funding that will not go below the floor of $12.5 billion for the next five years, that is stable funding by any definition.
This amount was recommended by the National Forum on Health after wide consultations in the country. That is a realistic amount. When we give $12.5 billion for the Canada health and social transfer, by any definition that is a significant amount. I hope I have addressed the concerns of the NDP that wanted to hear that we have stable, realistic and significant funding.
I end with a key message. Because of the fiscal progress the country has made since 1993, we are now able to reinvest in the priority areas closest to the government's heart: medicare and education, research and development, and continuing support for the economy. We have responded very well to the National Forum on Health. I hope at the end of the day, at the end of debate, we will have unanimous support for the bill which is in the best interest of Canadians irrespective of their walk of life.
