Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure as the chief finance critic of the official opposition to respond to the federal budget today, introduced by the finance minister yesterday.
I must say at the outset that the budget read more like a fairy tale than an honest accounting of the government's financial position. I want to explain what I mean by simply pointing out one thing. As I went through the budget documents yesterday I found it absolutely amazing that nowhere in those documents was I able to find the number that told us how much the government was prepared to spend this year; $104.5 billion was the number.
I think we need a much larger debate in this place about how we report on the government's financial position. Sadly I think the government has taken to using the budget as a propaganda tool instead of an accounting of the government's financial position.
The official opposition has many particular concerns with this budget but these can be summarized simply by saying this budget will mean that Canadians will pay much more in taxes and receive far less in health care. Pay more and get less. Members may have heard that theme but we will continue to say it because it is absolutely true.
I ask the House to consider this. In 1999 the average Canadian taxpayer will pay over $2,000 more in taxes than they paid in 1993. It is logical to expect that if we pay $2,000 more in taxes per taxpayer we would get more services. While that is logical, it is absolutely not the case under this government.
In 1999 the government will spend $450 less in health care per taxpayer than last year. Put another way, the total cuts to health care this government has delivered over the last three years per taxpayer amount to about $1,500 per person. This is coming from a government that claims to be so caring about health care, a government that claims that health care is part of our national fabric. I do not believe the government even believes its own rhetoric anymore.
Let us examine how this whole thing happened. The government argues that it had to keep raising taxes and slashing health care in order to eliminate the deficit. I will argue the government did not eliminate the deficit at all. All it did was transfer it on to the backs of taxpayers. It transferred a big chunk of it to taxpayers in the form of $2,000 a year more in taxes every year.
I see the hon. member from London is speaking in House. This is great to see because as far as I know he has never delivered a speech in this House before. It is good to hear him at least heckling.
The other chunk of the deficit was transferred to people who needed health care. This came in the form of a $1,500 per taxpayer reduction, as I pointed out a minute ago. I do not think that is the proper approach that this government should take if it truly cares about the citizens of Canada.
What is the alternative? I think the government had some alternatives and did not follow them. In the first place, going back to 1993 when this government took power, it should have acted a lot faster. It waited a full 18 months before it brought in a substantive budget of any kind. When one is carrying a debt of over $500 billion, time literally is money.
Did this government act right away to save money for Canadians? No. It took its merry time. In the meantime, it cost Canadians literally thousands of dollars per taxpayer in the form of higher taxes and thousands of dollars per health care patient in the form of less services for health. The government really should have acted faster.
Secondly, the government should not have cut our most important services while maintaining our least important services. As Goethe once said, those things that matter most should never be at the mercy of those things that matter least. However, this government does not seem to understand that.
Consider that while it cut $20 billion out of health care over the last several years it did not touch a lot of the wasteful spending. It cut the things that make us healthier, smarter and more productive but did not at all touch many of the things that many Canadians consider to be extraordinarily wasteful. I want to talk about some of those things.