Mr. Speaker, this debate is reminiscent of any budget debate. It always amazes me to listen to the government side. The Liberals have this institutional memory but it is a very selective memory when they talk about what they have done in terms of the management of the economy.
Of course the Liberals refer back to the government I was a part of. They blame the ills of the world on that previous government. It is true that I was a member of that government. We did not do everything wrong and we certainly did not do everything right. But I remind the House that in the timeframe of the Trudeau era, between 1968 and 1983 when the Liberals left office, the federal debt increased by 900%. That is not a lot to be proud of.
The Liberals fail to mention another statistic. It is a memory lapse. It is a selective institutional memory I am speaking of when I speak of the Liberals. They forget to remind the Canadian public that program spending increased by 800% in that same time period. It is important to put that on the record.
The government does take credit for some of what it has done and maybe we could give it a little credit. It is talking about a balanced budget which at first glance is pretty good. No one will argue with that. It is something we would all like to see, and apparently we have one.
This really confuses me. When the Liberals talk about this balanced budget, they never talk about the $22 billion brought in by the GST. I know why. Because everybody sitting on that side of the House, with the exception of a few, were brought in on that promise to scrap the GST. What happened to that promise? I guess it got lost in the red book. I suppose the red books have been recycled and are now compost. Maybe they are growing tomatoes or something else with the remains of those old red books.
The Liberals conveniently forget that $22 billion. Where would their balanced budget be today without that $22 billion? They would be far short of the mark. I can even see some government members nodding in agreement.
There is another thing that is really interesting. Where is the $26 billion in the employment insurance fund? Does that show up somewhere in the books? My guess is that it does. The government is effectively taking it out of the hides of employees and employers. It is a hidden tax the Liberals are using to balance their books.
Every time I speak on budget measures in relation to the government, I am reminded of the old Mark Twain expression “lies, damned lies and statistics”. I always question into which category the minister's figures fit. It is probably the latter category. There is also the old expression that liars figure and figures lie. The minister is a master at manipulation of the figures. The truth is they have balanced the budget and they have done it on the backs of ordinary Canadians and on the backs of the provinces.
The Liberals take great pleasure in calling it the health care budget. The sad reality is that after putting back $11.5 billion, which is a lot of money if that is what they are putting back, over the course of the next four or five years, in the year 2005 we will be back to the same spending levels in health care that we were at in 1995. Can that by any measure be called a success or an accomplishment? I would not call it that. There is nothing to brag about in this budget when it comes to health care.
I have a clipping regarding the health care budget. It comes from the province that runs the Daily Gleaner . It was in the April 12 edition of the Fredericton Daily Gleaner . It refers to the 122 recommendations contained in a report for the long term recovery of the New Brunswick health care system.
There were 122 recommendations. Why so many? Because health care was destroyed in every single province. Because premiers like Premier Thériault in New Brunswick stood in silent agreement as funding was ratcheted away from health care. Now they are scrambling to pick up the pieces.
The premier is quoted as saying they cannot afford to do it. They cannot afford to do it because it is going to cost the little province of New Brunswick in the vicinity of $400 million.
A lot of that $11.5 billion that was announced as going back into health care, is going to pay off previous debt incurred over the last number of years since this government took office. It is nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
We have a crisis in the country and it is called health care. It is quite interesting that the Liberals call it the health care budget, but why not? Last year they called the budget the education budget. That was the same year that 12,000 students declared personal bankruptcy because of their inability to pay off student debt and get a job. If this is the same type of budget in terms of health care when compared to the so-called education budget, then it is going to have a very short shelf life indeed.
It does not stop there. Another difficulty we have in the Canadian economy, which all goes back to the budget and the management or mismanagement of the present government, is in terms of productivity.
We have the lowest rate of productivity in the G-8. That is not just me speaking. The government has been told this by a number of people, including Sherry Cooper who is the chief economist with Nesbitt Burns. If we do not believe her, how about Michael Marzolini who is the Liberal Party's own pollster? He says that Canada has the lowest rate of productivity among the G-7.
What is the difference if it is the G-7 or the G-8? Productivity in this country is extremely low and it is costing us. The only way we can compensate for that is with a low Canadian dollar, but that is not the way to do it. What the country needs is sound fiscal management. Unless we have that, our standard of living is going to continue to decline year in and year out, which it is doing.
The question we would ask ourselves is: What would happen in Canada if the Canadian dollar suddenly rose? I know where we would be. We would be in a heck of a lot of trouble, because the government has paid scant attention to productivity. We are relying on a low dollar to move our goods into the marketplace. At the end of the day, we are all going to be poorer because of it. There will be a day of reckoning.
The government does not want to talk about this. When it does talk about it, it tries to remove itself from its own very words, as did the Minister of Industry not long ago when he actually gave a speech and spoke about our dismal productivity levels in this country.
All I can say with the little bit of time I have left is that I am pleased to take part in this debate. I think what Canadians want is some real information from the government so we know exactly where we stand in terms of the Canadian economy, in terms of taxation and in terms of productivity.
Let us get real about some of those numbers. I see them always hacking away at that so-called inherited $42 billion debt. Let us talk about the 900% increase in that federal debt in the period when the Liberals were in power from 1968 to 1983.