Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to talk about the vision of one's own party and to try to communicate to people in this forum and in public forums across the country the kind of things we think Canadians are going to rally around in the next election.
That is always a debate and it will be a debate for another election. Several themes can be found that Canadians will rally around. One increasingly is going to be the fiscal issue.
They will say “What does the future hold? What are you going to offer me? Is there any prospect of tax relief down the road? Can I see that there is a package of ideas? What are you going to do with the surplus? Are you going to continue to create more new programs? Will you lower our taxes and reduce bureaucracy and pay down some of that debt while we have this surplus so that our children and our grandchildren will have some prospects of even lower taxes and less government interference?”
By the next election, people are going to be saying that a $15 billion or $20 billion UI surplus is too high. It is way too high. It entails job-killing payroll taxes. Increasingly parties on this side of the House are saying that that surplus is too high. It hurts jobs. It hurts families. It hurts entrepreneurs. It has to be cut back. There is the whole fiscal package.
Second, I have talked about some of the democratic and parliamentary reforms I think Canadians are more than willing to embrace. I talked earlier about the Senate and the fact that Canadians do not believe there is any legitimacy to that other place.
Besides Senate reform which is obvious, people are going to look for the democratic and parliamentary reforms that will give them the faith that change is possible. For a change they will hold the reins on the politicians they send to Ottawa.
That is going to involve things like the use of a referendum when people want to bring that forward so that they can have an actual say on these issues. It is going to mean freer votes in the House of Commons where people do not lose their jobs or lose their positions just because they happen to vote against the government or for a piece of legislation or defeat a bill. It does not have to defeat the government. There will be some democratic changes.
People are going to ask what is going to be done with the thousands of appointments. I looked through the Gazette the other day and I saw as bold as brass the name of the person I defeated in the 1993 election. He is now the chairman of the board of referees of the UI fund in my region. He was defeated in 1993. He is a Liberal. He was defeated. Of course all Liberals were defeated in my area. They get used to it. As a payoff for this fellow the Prime Minister says “Who have we not looked after lately? That guy who was defeated back in 1993 has not done any work lately so how about we give him a job as chairman of the board of referees?” And they just did it.
I think Canadians are right to ask why is it that all the defeated Liberal candidates get jobs at taxpayers' expense. “I turfed that guy out. I did not give him a job. He did not have my confidence and now he has got a job”.
Third, when we talk about the vision of the country, people are going to ask what is it that we can offer to Canadians from coast to coast that they will rally round when it comes to the division of powers and the future of our country. How are we going to handle the provincial, federal, municipal power structure in this country. How are we going to handle that to help us to bring us together as a country yet not cause division between provinces like we have had too often over the last few years? That is a legitimate question.
One of the first things we would do is recognize municipal governments as one of the first levels of government closest to the people. We should bring those people in when we have federal-provincial talks. We should have representatives, not thousands, but representatives of municipal governments at those tables.
For example we say we are going to have this new interprovincial-federal agreement that has to do with some kind of distribution of some sort of services, maybe a CAPC program, some sort of program that has federal dollars involved, organized by the provinces and administered by local governments. The CAPC program is a perfect example.
Rather than give the late night phone call to the municipalities, somewhere along the line we should have them in at the start and ask “How can we make this program work for you? How can we tailor it so that it has flexibility for you?” Let us get the municipalities involved in the big picture as well as just in the administration of the local fire hydrants. They need to be part of that and I think we can help there.
The whole process of the division of powers between the provinces and the feds is a big issue that can unify the country. We can say we are going to make this place focus on a fewer number of chores but we are going to do them well. Then we will give over to them a whole bunch of other packages including control of culture, language and health care. All those things are going to be left with the provinces because constitutionally that is where they should be.
We are going to do fewer things but we are going to do them well. We are going to do national defence. We are going to make sure that interprovincial trade barriers are struck down. We are going to have international trade. We are going to have international agreements, WTO and GATT and their successors and so on. We are going to look after this, they are going to look after that. We will not tromp on their territory, but they should respect that ours is going to be held firmly as well.
Those are the kinds of things that when people ask if it will help them get a job, we can say yes it will. It will help to secure their future so that not every level of government is interfering with them. We will help them do that. It will lower their taxes so that they can look after their families, so that they can start and keep a business going. We will make it more democratically accountable so they can have confidence that the people they send to Ottawa will have a real impact and that they will be able to give them direction. They will not have to just salute the flag and obey the party line.
When I talk to people. those are the kinds of things they say they like. They ask to be convinced that we can pull it off, but at least it is a vision different from what we have now. In the next election, if we are able to get the discussion on to those big issues, the Reform Party will do perfectly well. More important, the country will do well because those issues need to be settled so that people can move forward with confidence in the future and not just say it has to be the same old way it has always been because that is just the way it has been and how could we ever change it. We can change it. It can be better. All political parties would do well to make those positive changes rather than say the status quo is the way it has to be.