Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar on his maiden speech in the House of Commons. He follows in the great tradition of prairie social democrats such M. J. Coldwell, the second leader of the CCF in Canada; Alf Gleave, a former national president of the Farmers Union and member of the House of Commons for six years; and the honourable Chris Axworthy, attorney general and justice minister of the province of Saskatchewan, his immediate predecessor. I welcome him to the House of Commons.
I was quite struck by the majority report of the finance committee. I see my Liberal friends are probably even astonishing you, Mr. Speaker, because they are recommending that $46 billion or about half of the $95 billion surplus should go to tax cuts.
My good red Tory friend from Nova Scotia talked about hypocrisy tax in the red book promises. Perhaps that is why you are in the chair today, Mr. Speaker, because you can remain neutral on the breaking of a great Liberal principle of balance. Half of it was to go into program spending and half into deficit reduction and tax cuts. Now, afraid of the Leader of the Opposition, the Liberal Party has become a very right wing Conservative Party and is advocating putting half the surplus into tax cuts primarily for wealthy people.
Who in the country has paid for the fight on the debt and the deficit? Is it the Conrad Blacks of the world? Is it the wealthy people of the world? Is it the wealthier banks or the big firms in Canada? No. It is the ordinary people of the country who have paid for the fight on the deficit through cutbacks in health care, through cutbacks in education, through cutbacks in our social programs, and through cutbacks imposed on farmers. That is who has paid for the fight on the deficit. That is who has paid for the debt. Now that we have a surplus it seems to me the people who paid the price should reap the reward of a fiscal surplus, the ordinary people of Canada.
The Liberal Party is afraid of the Reform Party and the Leader of the Opposition and the tax cut agenda. I see across the way the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke who is shaking in his chair in fear of the Reform Party. It is the same with the Minister of Finance who is implementing the Reform Party policy in terms of massive cutbacks in social programs like we never saw from any Conservative Party in the history of Canada including Brian Mulroney's.
That is exactly what has happened and there is no better example of that than the 60% cutback in support to farmers by the Liberal government across the way when their competitors in Europe and the United States have not been cutting back but indeed have been increasing support and subsidies to their farmers.
As the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar said, 56 cents of a dollar in Europe will come from the treasury in Brussels and in the United States 38 cents will come from the treasury in Washington to support farmers. What is it in our country? It is 9 cents on the dollar.
The Reform Party has called for the end of all farm subsidies. Now it is the Liberal Party that is implementing the Reform policy to get rid of subsidies and support prices for our farmers. Farmers are leaving the land. Farmers are going bankrupt. We have heard time and time again that on the prairies we need $1.3 billion of immediate aid, a trade equalization payment to farmers to allow them to survive which would not even bring us up to the American levels or the European levels. What has the Liberal Party done? This message has fallen on deaf ears.
We had in parliament in Ottawa a few weeks ago the premiers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, supported by all three political parties in Manitoba, three political parties in Saskatchewan, the farm organizations, the chambers of commerce and the trade unions, with a joint position of solidarity in support of $1.3 billion for farmers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. What did the Liberal government say? It said nothing in terms of extra assistance to farmers. No wonder the Liberals are hanging their heads in shame.
There was a throne speech back in October. I looked at it very carefully and there was absolutely nothing in it, not even a reference to the farm crisis. Where do these people live? They do not know the real poor people who are facing problems.
Then a month later we got this media show by the Minister of Finance. He flew to London, Ontario, to make a media statement. Again many of the Liberal members are wondering why all this money was spent for him to fly to London. A big schedule was worked out for the Minister of Finance and he made a statement on national television. In a 45 minute speech there was not one reference to the farm crisis despite the suffering, the pain, the demonstrations, the protests, the writings and the calls by the united front across Saskatchewan and Manitoba for extra assistance.
The Minister of Finance and the parliamentary committee on finance are more Conservative than anything I saw with Brian Mulroney or Conservative governments in the past. It is not just the farm crisis. Let us look at what they have done to health care. It is enough to tear our hair out. We have had the biggest cutbacks in health care in the history of the country. The cutback in federal funding to the provinces for health care is causing problems today in hospitals and emergency rooms from one part of the country to another. The closings of hospitals and the lineups for surgery are because of the cutbacks by the Minister of Finance.
Why is there silence on the backbench? The minister from the Northwest Territories never gets up to defend health care. I have never seen her get up to say that the Minister of Finance should put more money into health care. She should be ashamed of herself. She represents ordinary people and knows that people are in lineups because of cutbacks in health care by the federal government.
We have the farm crisis and the health care problem. Where are the recommendations in this report for money for health care? We have a $100 billion surplus, and what has been recommended for health care? Nothing. Even the Canadian Medical Association is saying that we need an extra $1.5 billion per year in health care.