Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Lethbridge. I believe that all members of the official opposition will be splitting the time from here on in.
When I heard the opening remarks of the parliamentary secretary I thought for an instant that perhaps the Liberal majority was going to be in jeopardy. The way he was speaking I thought he was going to come over and join us. Then I thought he would not do that but that the light was finally going on in the Liberal government's mind.
The member was talking about such things as “lower interest means more growth” a quote by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance. Finally we have an admission by this government after 25 years, that it finally has realized that debt does not buy your way to happiness and it does not buy your way to riches. Finally and hopefully and completely forever we will not see higher interest. That by his definition will mean more growth. It also means more jobs for Canadians, more jobs for our kids, more future for our young people as they try to find a job after finishing university under a mountain of debt because of the high cost of education, courtesy of this government.
He also said “Lower deficits mean lower taxes”. After 27 years of the Liberals and the Tories managing this country, they have finally come to the realization that a lower deficit means lower taxes, and they have saddled us with $600 billion in debt, $45 billion a year in interest.
They are finally saying “If we could only get rid of that deficit”, and it was their creation. They are finally saying that we can lower taxes. The Reform Party has been saying let us lower taxes, let us create growth, let us create jobs. Obviously the message is finally getting through and I am glad to see it.
The member also went on to say that less taxes create more jobs, which I just covered. He said that high deficits mean lower growth and we are now looking at the first surplus since 1970. What an admission by a government that would allow us to go 27 or 28 years without a single surplus. Every year the debt has been going up and up and up, taxes have been going up and up and up, the interest cost has been going up and up and up. After all that head in the sand style of government the Liberals finally come around and say that the Reform Party has it right and they are endorsing our principles and policies.
The parliamentary secretary said that they will never spend more than they take in. How Canadians wish they had listened to their own advice years ago, many years ago. We would have no debt. We would have $45 billion, $1,500 for every man, woman and child. That money would be in the pockets of Canadians for them to spend every year. Six thousand dollars per family would be in the people's pockets every year. They would be able to buy goods, increase their standard of living and provide better education for their children.
But no, this government because of its folly and insanity, which it now realizes to be folly and insanity, is now saying that it would have been better if it had left the money with Canadians. Think of the prosperity we would have. Think about how much higher the economic growth would have been. We would be one of the most prosperous nations on earth. Our dollar would be on par and our interest rates would be the same as those of Japan. It would be heaven on earth. It would be Shangri-La right here had it not been for this Liberal government.
We can talk in generalities but we have to translate these policies and ideas into workable things that will ensure that government is more efficient. Government should deliver what it says it will with the same degree of productivity and efficiency we expect from the private sector.
As the chairman of the public accounts committee, I am quite often appalled at the way this government allows its senior bureaucrats to mismanage their departments at great cost to the Canadian taxpayer. I have some examples from the auditor general's report, chapter 13 concerning Health Canada.
Page 13-31, paragraph 13.145 states that a limited review of ambulance costs identified cases of potential abuse that had gone undetected. In one such case a client had taken 150 ambulance trips costing over $21,000 during a five month period. It goes on to say that no one had questioned the trips until they were identified by an internal review. Someone was using an ambulance as a taxi, we were paying for it, and nobody in the department was asking what was going on. What is going on here?
Exhibit 13.16 on page 13-29 refers to provision of dental services. One dental provider billed $25,000 for 58 root canal therapies, about 12 times more than the average practitioner performed in the province. Another provider charged $40,000 for 92 crowns, which is six times more than the provincial norm. A dentist claimed $27,000 for 356 coloured surface restoration procedures, about 40 times the average for such a procedure performed by dentists in the province. And Canadians paid.
Canadians pay these kinds of bills each and every day because the departments, the ministers and the senior management do not know how to manage Canadian taxpayers' money. They just pay the bills as they come in because they are quite comfortable with their jobs, their security and their salaries, and yet the Canadian taxpayer has to squeeze out more and more money each and every year to pay for this serious mismanagement and waste of money.
That is the type of thing that goes on each and every day. That is the type of stuff the public accounts committee is trying to stop. That is why we are looking for some serious changes to be made by the Liberal government. As it saves it will look after Canadian taxpayers money. As the chairman of the public accounts committee I will put the Liberals on notice that we will be holding them accountable for the way they spend the money.
We have to compliment the auditor general for bringing these types of issues to our attention. Unfortunately every time the public accounts committee meets it deals with issues of this magnitude and waste of these huge proportions. It goes on and on. It never seems to stop.
We are $600 billion in debt. We have heard people talk about all kinds of scenarios. They talk about what would happen if our economic growth were to slow or stop. It reminds me of the days of the depression. In 1929 the country was going into a deeper and deeper recession. People were losing their jobs. There was 25% unemployment.