Mr. Speaker, a close examination of the budget reveals to Canadians that this budget fails point by point and initiative by initiative to live up to the expectations and the needs of the Canadian people.
In education, providing only 7% of the nation's students with benefits of the proposed millennium fund, which will be administered by the CEO of Chrysler, for industry to train people for industry ignores the role that education plays in our society.
Instead of reinstating funding for post-secondary institutions, the Liberals have chosen to dole out some money which is desperately needed to a few students who are cash starved and then to offer advice to them on how to manage their debt. They are ignoring the student debt crisis and advancing our educational institutions at an alarming rate.
Even the Yukon, a very poor area of Canada, has recognized the importance of investing in education and for over 20 years has provided approximately $5,000 for each of its graduating students accepted at an accredited institution. Part of that is for travel and part is for tuition and books.
This is a really poor area of the country that through thick and thin has provided that amount of funding for students. I believe the federal government should match that as well as provide funding for the institutions to make sure that our students and our young people have a place to go and be educated.
The modest increases in transfer payments to the provinces and territories do not begin to restore the cuts made in 1994. The Liberal government is only giving back a small portion of what was taken from Canadian people.
Saddest of all, this budget ignores the poor people of our country. It has nothing for the poor and the minimal tax breaks announced will for most families amount to less than $500 in tax relief a year.
It will not take the elderly poor off the tax rolls. Over and over members of my community ask why, when they get so little, they have to pay so much in taxes. That is income taxes and the GST. People are struggling to make ends meet. Gone are the days when the single income would support a family.
This budget is a reflection of free enterprise government, a government willing to transfer responsibilities for governing this country to large, private corporations or business associations.
The Liberals have created fundamental shifts in the building blocks of this Canadian society. Canada is running toward a society where the protection of profits and corporate rights are paramount to the protection of our individual rights, our culture, our health, our social and our educational institutions.
This budget confirms the direction of policies that select a few to thrive and prosper while the rest sink and suffer. An important aspect that we are missing in the debate is the original causes of the huge government deficit.
The finance minister stated that never again will we let old habits return of defining bigger government as better government or believing that every problem requires another program.
What is happening is the denying of anything more than a minimal role for government in the economy and a minimal role for governing our country, a government that believes only private companies and market forces will bring employment and prosperity to Canadians. This is not true. It has brought only poverty, not prosperity.
The liberal Conservatives or conservative Liberals running the government are believers in high unemployment but low in stable inflation and low in stable interest rates as the tools for profit oriented companies looking to take over the role of government in society.
The Minister of Finance is preaching a misleading hypothesis that deficits have been caused by extravagant, big-spending government and the only cure was to cut back. Who was cut was the poor and middle class.
The deficit came from high interest rates, overspending and support for very big business and high unemployment. A Statistics Canada study indicated that the rise in deficits came mainly from high interest rates to a Bank of Canada obsession with zero inflation.
An Alberta former civil servant explanation of the deficit is government overspending on business support while slashing health and education that was the real cause of the deficit.
Montreal economist Harold Chorney argues that high unemployment with its loss of revenues and social costs has created far more debt than social spending. The above explanation seems to be shared by the finance minister who said that only a quarter of the savings that cut the deficit came from program cuts. Far more were due to low interest rates, growth and raiding the UI funds.
There is no balanced budget with the present government policies. There was a drastic shift of federal government deficit to the provinces through federal transfer cuts, then to municipalities and finally to individual Canadian families. We see the consequences of these policies in our health system, our education system, in UI benefits that are no longer available, in housing that is no longer there and in the total loss of a whole generation of young Canadians.
Canadian priorities and the priorities of the NDP are being ignored by Liberals. There are no new job strategies, no support for education or health infrastructure and no indication of a fair tax system. Our priorities for the federal budget are to make full employment the primary goal of government and to make a real commitment to addressing the cost of education. It is not a sustainable policy to provide a student with small financial relief if the universities are not being funded and are forced to increase tuition costs to counter government cutbacks.
We want strategic investment to rebuild health care and targeted direct tax relief. This government must stop taxing the poor and the elderly who live below the poverty line. We want targets for the elimination of child poverty as many countries do not accept the level of poverty we accept. Our country is wealthy and we do not have to accept poverty in our midst. We want to rebalance taxes to achieve greater fairness and advance broader goals. We want to see government bring the people of Canada to the centre of government policies.
Between 1993-94 and 1996-97 government budgetary revenues increased by $24.9 billion. Of this increase, 48% was due to personal income tax. Corporations through corporate income tax paid $7.6 billion or just 30%, a clear indication that the federal government is squeezing the people of this country.
To reward Canadians for their individual contributions to the reduction of the federal deficit, the government reduced federal cash transfers to the provinces for health care, education and social assistance from $18.7 billion to a floor of $12.5 billion.
The Yukon has already faced a reduction of 11% in just one year which comes at the very time of a major closing of a mine in the Yukon and absolutely devastates its economy. The federal government is not willing to do anything to recognize the hardship and strife of Yukoners. This is compounded by changes to the EI system where people are not eligible and will not be relocated out of the north to places where they can work.
Canadian living standards are falling. An ever increasing slice of the family budget is consumed by income tax. Twenty-two per cent of Canadian families spend their budget on income tax. The federal government has been taking a bigger slice of Canadians' income but there are still hundreds of rich Canadians who are very good at not paying taxes.
Recent figures indicate that 230 individuals who earned at least a quarter of a million dollars did not pay income tax. Another 1,520 who earned between $100,000 to $250,000 a year did not pay any tax. These figures provide a very good picture of the growing disparities in our country. It is clear that the Liberals are not reinforcing the foundations of an egalitarian society at all.
The minister needs to look back to students with high debts and no jobs, back to those waiting for surgery, back to working Canadians who are slipping economically and socially, to those who are not working and who cannot even get UI. The federal government says that it has won the war on the deficit but its policies are based on the need to make corporations profitable while the social and economic costs are not a concern.
Let history record that the Liberals tore up the just fundamentals of our society and that the deficit was defeated on the backs of Canadian people and the fundamental tenets of a caring society.
Numbers and words say this budget is balanced, but is our country balanced? Poor regions are sinking into poverty and they are taking the young and elderly with them. This budget makes sure it will stay that way.