Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to enter this debate on the budget. In some real ways, this is the culmination of how I ended up here. Indeed, I spent many years wondering how it was possible that Canada can continue to go so close to the abyss of financial ruin. It was clear to me that we needed a new way to do government.
That is why the week before last it was my great pleasure to listen to the Minister of Finance bring in the first balanced budget that this country has seen in over 30 years.
One thing that is very noticeable about this budget is that it talks about education. One thing I have always believed, and it is very important, is that a country educate its people.
We talk about Canada being a resource based country and, indeed, we are but our best resources are the resources between our ears. Finding better ways to use those resources is what is going to make Canada a better country in the 21st century.
I would like to talk about productivity. Some people think this is an economic concept. What it basically means is the ability of people to use their surroundings, to use their resources in an effective way to produce products.
We have been changing our economy so that we are moving away from the resource based industries of the past and we are moving towards a service sector orientation.
For that reason, it is very difficult sometimes to measure productivity. Why am I talking about productivity? The problem of Canada and Canada's economy is that we have been lagging many of our competitors in the area of competition.
In the area of productivity, Canada lags our chief competitor, the United States, by something like 30%. Why is that? What is it going to mean for our economy? It means that our competitors are able to use technological advances quicker, more rapidly in their production capabilities as well as in their service sector than are Canadians.
Some people suggested that the decline in the value of the Canadian dollar is directly related to our decline in productivity.
The Conference Board of Canada has made a tremendous number of reports basically stating that while Canada has one of the highest per capita spending in the western world on education, we are still very much scorned in the mid-term in the areas of science and math.
Indeed, our illiteracy rate in Canada is mid-term. It is really quite a disgrace for a modern nation like ours to have illiteracy rates as high as we do. That is why I was very proud to be part of a government that brought in an accentuation that, while we have been able to manage our debt and deficit so that we have a balanced budget, we have been able to accentuate those things that are going to empower ourselves to be a better and more competitive nation in the future.
In those things, exclude that we look at the education area. I was very happy to see a restoration of funding for NSERC and the Medical Research Council. These are ways that governments can support our institutions and create more opportunities for technological advancements in our universities and colleges.
I should mention I was very proud when the Minister of Finance mentioned a college in my riding, Durham College. Indeed at the same time, the president for Durham College was in the gallery listening to that.
The next morning, I gave a post-budget breakfast in my riding for basically all the business community. I can tell this House that those people were all very happy and supportive of the budget we presented.
I can remember back in 1994 it not being that way, that there were very ugly meetings sometimes when people wanted us to move fast on this or that envelope. It has been very much that the Canadian people have come to the realization that this government brings sound, good management.
Some of the areas that this budget talked about were registered education savings plan. My background has been one of an investment adviser and accountant. When I used to practise, these registered educational savings plan we basically shunned. The reason was that they were very much a gamble on behalf of parents who wanted to save money for the support of their children going for post-secondary education, because the mean factor was that if one's kid did not go one lost the money. The benefits were great because 50% of the people did not actually go so the people who stayed in the plan of course got good rewards.
Most people are not into gambling, they are into saving for some positive returns. What has happened with these plans is that we have now made them so that if a child does not go on for post-secondary education, parents can roll them back into their registered retirement savings plan.
The government has gone one step further by providing a 20% grant. The federal government is going to put that money directly in that plan as well. There is a partnership arrangement going on between parents, their children and the federal government. I think that is a very healthy attitude. The only comment I heard from people I talked to was why did we wait so long.
It is unfortunate that the baby boomers—me with three children in post-secondary education—are not going to be able to get the benefit of that, but the reality is that it allows people to put money aside. It is a great trepidation for a lot of parents to have young children who are going to go to university which will possibly cost as much as $10,000 a year to place them there. This gives them a way in which to see that their children do get adequate education.
Another area that I found very interesting was the ability of people to withdraw up to $10,000 in any one year and a cumulative of $20,000 from their registered retirement savings plans for their own education.
It is obvious that we are living in a society of continuous learning. We have to try to find ways to encourage people to go back and learn in new and better productive facilities in which to upgrade their skills. These all come back to my original theory of increasing Canada's productivity and making us a very competitive nation as we go out to fight it out with our neighbours and other countries in the world for our share of economic development.
I once suggested that we should use the employment insurance this way. In other words, we should provide certain funding through the employment insurance system to allow people the discretion to go out and re-educate themselves. This is another way to get at the same thing.
I was listening to the radio the other day and I heard a financial planner criticizing this plan. His criticism was that the government was scheming to reduce people's RRSP savings so it could get them out and tax them. In other words, if people took out those moneys that were in their plans and went back to school, of course they would not be appreciating and therefore the government would be able to tax that money sooner. I do not think anything could be more ludicrous. The way to solve that problem is simply by reducing the benefits of RRSPs or the premium contributions.
There is no question in my mind that the government's prime purpose is to make a down payment on the whole concept of continuous learning.
As an aside, there is one other little thing here that is not about productivity that I thought I would mention, the home givers tax credit. I was in a seniors home the other day and I mentioned this credit. Everybody's eyes lit up because the government was now recognizing how we are going to have to do health care differently in this country.
We cannot continue this process of institutionalizing people at great cost when in fact many people are at home taking care of their loved ones. They are often women who need that little extra break, the $400 care giver tax credit, a down payment on a different way and a better way to health care.
In conclusion, I am very happy to be part of a government that has brought in such a sensible budget. Unfortunately it has taken us a number of years but we are going to continue on that track of reducing our deficit and debts in the future.
