Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time this morning with the hon. member for New Brunswick Southwest.
I feel very privileged to represent the riding of Kings—Hants in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia. Living in Kings—Hants, we understand the power of tides. We have the highest tides in the world in the Bay of Fundy and the Minas Basin. The Liberals felt the force of those tides in the last general election. There was nothing in the throne speech that will reverse those tides in the next federal election.
The government says that the fundamentals are strong when speaking about the economy. It is very important to remember the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, the Canadian economist, who said that we should beware of governments who say that the fundamentals are strong. The fundamentals that are important to Canadians are simply not strong under the leadership of the government.
One of the most important fundamentals is the issue of brain drain. The choice that each of us has, particularly young Canadians, in pursuing our lives and careers in Canada or in other countries, particularly with the mobility of populations that exists today, is very important. Whether or not we are attracting the best and brightest to the country, and particularly whether we are maintaining and keeping the best and brightest here, is a very important fundamental.
The fact is that in 1986 we lost 17,000 young Canadians to the U.S. through the brain drain process. In 1997 that number had grown to 98,000. Those are 98,000 of our best and brightest people with the education levels to contribute, to pay taxes, to prosper and to help provide the social infrastructure that in the future would allow for more economic growth and the type of caring society that Canadians want, but more importantly the type of caring society that we can afford in the future.
Another fundamental is the Canadian dollar. Under this government the Canadian dollar has dropped from 77cents in 1993 to the 67cents range currently, with the dollar being as low as the 64cents range a year ago last summer. The currency of a country represents in many ways the share value of that particular country. Under this government, the share value of Canada has effectively dropped from 77cents to the mid-60cents range. Those are very important fundamentals.
Tonight we are going to have an opportunity to see the screening of the documentary film about the former Liberal prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, and it is called Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the '70s Generation . Part of that was Mr. Trudeau's response to the FLQ crisis at that time and the question of how far would he have gone.
I suggest that if we were to ask the Prime Minister how far he would go in pursuing the types of economic policies that are aimed at the next election, at the expense of Canadians in the long term, he would probably respond “Just watch me”.
The dollar issue is a direct reflection of the high debt levels we have in Canada, the 50% tax levels, the intrusive regulatory system and things like interprovincial trade barriers which reduce the competitiveness of Canadians and Canadian enterprise globally.
Ironically, a Canadian economist, Robert Mundell, just last week received the Nobel prize in economics for his studies linking currencies to fiscal and monetary policies. He identified the structural impediments of debt, tax levels and the regulatory burden. Again the government has refused to listen to even a great Canadian economist in Robert Mundell, who has been recognized internationally. The government continues to pursue the types of policies and, in this speech, has promised to expand on the same types of negative policies that have us in the mess we are in right now.
There are 32 pages of spending in the speech, spending tax distortions and regulatory spider webs but really very little action on the tax side. It could be said that there may have been a thimble of tax reduction in a sea of new spending in the government's return to the unfettered, wanton spending of the 1970s that got us in the mess we are in right now. That, frankly, is where the government is heading.
The government is now focusing on expanding program spending. Unfortunately, the expansion of spending is not focused on the real needs of Canadians. I did a survey in the spring of my constituents and asked them directly what their priorities were and tax reduction was a major priority for my constituents, as was health care investment.
In the last budget the federal government made a symbolic commitment to health care by reinvesting some, and just some, of what it had taken from the health care system since 1993. I think it was a reinvestment over the period of six years of $11.5 billion when the government had in fact taken $18 billion from the health care system since 1993. By the year 2005, the government will only have reached, under its plan, 1995 levels of health care investment which does not take into account inflation or population growth. The government is big on symbols but has really not addressed the health care crisis.
My constituents are also concerned about defence spending and the government's lack of effectively investing in the defence of our country and in our national defence system. We are increasingly being called on to participate in an increasingly complicated global scenario, whether it is Kosovo or East Timor, with a very fixed or reduced commitment if one looks at it in real terms to spending.
In my riding that means CFB Greenwood is facing significant challenges now with the reduced level of government commitment. The government is now turning its back on the full functionality of CFB Greenwood.
The government is ignoring one of the other concerns that Canadians have and that is our national infrastructure system, in particular our highway system. Highway 101 in my riding is one of the most dangerous highways not just in Nova Scotia but in Canada. There have been 38 deaths on the untwined parts of highway 101 over the past several years. The government has not made the necessary commitment to highway funding. The government only spends 5% of the money it takes in federal gas tax revenues on highway taxes. It is the lowest of any industrialized nation. Again the government has not addressed a real concern of Canadians.
Sadly, the government is now talking about pursuing a new children's agenda which is ignoring one of the most fundamental difficulties that Canadian families and children face. With the ever increasing tax burden under the government, Canadian families and individuals have faced a personal disposable income decline of 8% since 1993. During the same period, Americans have enjoyed approximately a 10% increase.
The government is expanding its taxation. It states that it will bring forward $16 billion of tax reductions. Those are the tax reductions that the government has given through the front door. What the government fails to remind Canadians is that through the back door, through, for instance, bracket creep, the government has actually taken in more than that, about $18 billion. The government has actually continued to plunder Canadians through the back door while pretending to provide some level of tax relief through the front door.
The concern we have is that the government is engaging in almost a corporate re-imaging effort aimed at trying to convince the international community that somehow it is addressing some of the structural deficiencies in the Canadian economy. However, it is doing very little to actually change those structural inefficiencies and impediments to actually put Canada on a growth track where we could have a strong dollar and a strong economy.
The government is trying to devalue its way to prosperity. I remember a couple of years ago when the dollar hit about 65 cents the Prime Minister said that a low dollar was good for the Canadian economy and good for tourism. Now the logical corollary of his argument would be that a dollar trading at zero, if we reduced it to zero, would be excellent for Canadian exports. We could give away our goods. We would be the greatest exporting nation in the world. However, the Prime Minister's economic logic is not really that sound in this area.
We could have a strong dollar and a sustained economic growth if we allowed Canadians to actually enjoy some of the prosperity that other countries are enjoying and actually took the initiative to provide significant tax reform and tax reduction and also address some of these other structural issues, the types of issues which were addressed under the previous government.
The previous government had the guts to pursue policies like free trade, the GST, deregulation of financial services, transportation and energy. They were not always popular, but they were the right decisions then and have proven to be the right decisions since then. We just wish that this government would now have the vision, the courage and the guts to pursue those types of policies that would allow Canadians to enjoy sustained economic growth into the next century.