Madam Speaker, some days the debate in here is better than other days. I will be sharing my time with the hon. leader of the Canadian Alliance.
As we talk about what was and was not in the budget, one thing we ask Canadians to do is to check their pay stubs. Compare those of January this year with those of January last year and those of January next year, and then factor in just what kind of a tax cut they are getting from the Liberal government. It will not add up to very much.
I want to touch on the concerns that people have brought to my attention as we talk about the country and the well-being of Canadians in general. The number one issue that keeps coming up is health care. It has been on the table for a long time.
Canadians fear that the health care system is not going to take care of them when they need it. They are worried that family members who become ill will not get the care they need and that it will not be available to Canadians on a universal basis.
We need to put into perspective what has actually happened. While the government was cutting billions of dollars out of health care since it was elected in 1993, the grants and contributions to departments like HRDC were going up. We need to keep in mind that the waiting lines are growing, that 212,000 people are on waiting lists for health care in this country because of cuts that the government has made. All the time it was doing that, it was increasing the grants and contributions to departments like HRDC. That is not the way Canadians expect their government to act.
We are looking for solutions to the health care problem and we have heard a lot about Bill 11 in Alberta lately. I do not believe we have seen legislation that is going to solve Canada's health care problems. We have not seen it yet.
We and other Canadians have to allow ourselves to open up our minds and get into the debate. Our country has a huge resource of very knowledgeable people in the health care field, people who know how to deliver it properly. We have to open our minds and allow ourselves to create a system that is sustainable and universally available to all Canadians. If we do not allow that to happen, if every time someone comes up with an idea that is a little different from the status quo, we jump on them and try to beat them down, we are going to end up perpetuating the trouble we have now forever.
Let us allow ourselves to have that debate and come up with some sustainable solutions. Health care must be put at the top of the priority list. Canadians want that. They are demanding it. It is a concern to everyone.
As our population ages, as the seniors who helped create this country need more and more care, it has to be available. As people of my generation age, there will be a huge bubble of people to take care of. All of these things have to be factored in when we are looking at solutions.
I mentioned the trouble we have seen at HRDC with the unaccountability of the government in handling taxpayers' dollars. One thing Canadians are extremely disturbed about is that the government takes money out of their pockets, takes it to Ottawa and then mismanages it. We cannot have that.
We are hurting. We are paying the highest taxes of the industrialized countries. The government takes the money and mismanages it and we cannot track where it went. Grants were given when there were no applications. No follow-ups were done to see if jobs were actually created.
Day after day the HRDC minister stands in the House and drags into this debate hardworking, honest, volunteer organizations in all of our communities. She drags their names into this debate. They are not the problem. The hardworking organizations that do a great job are not the problem. The problem is the government and the minister that is mismanaging their money. I feel sorry for the groups that have been mentioned by the minister. She is bringing them down to her level instead of raising herself up to their level of accountability and hard work.
A little earlier I asked a question of the member opposite about the debt.
Again today the finance minister said the debt is being paid down. However in the five year projection that was in this year's budget documents, the debt does not go down; it stays at $576.8 billion. It takes over $40 billion a year in interest payments to service that debt. In a five year period that is $200 billion just for the interest. According to the document I am looking at which was produced by the government, the principal does not go down one nickel.
When we think about the $40 billion that is being spent on debt charges, what happens if the economy turns a bit and interest rates go up a couple of percentage points? That will cause a change in a hurry and it will hurt every program. Every worthwhile need that citizens in the country have will be affected.
The high cost of fuel is a huge issue from coast to coast to coast. Certainly in my riding it is. A group of people has come together to raise the awareness of the cost of fuel. There is a tax component both provincially and federally in the cost of a litre of fuel. That should have been addressed in the budget. Where is the break for people who are on fixed incomes who try to get by when their cost of living keeps going up?
On transportation, our highway system has degenerated to the point where doing trade east and west is becoming difficult. It has been run down. There are $4.5 billion collected in fuel taxes and only a small percentage of that is put back into the highway system. We have to do something about that.
Concerning our airports, the local municipality in the county of Lethbridge negotiated with this government to take over the operation of the airport on one condition, that the expense of the on-site fire services be taken away. That was done. The county took it over and now there is talk about putting that back in. That is a $300,000 expense that was negotiated in good faith by the local municipality with this government and now the government is turning its back on it.
The whole air transportation industry is in turmoil. We have not seen any solid answers from the government on that.
On the grain transportation system we have had the Estey report and the Kroeger report. There have been many hours of debate across the country by many organizations. The grain transportation system on the prairies has to be reformed and it has to be done immediately in order to bring some relief to our beleaguered producers. Where is that? It is tied up somewhere. The minister has not made an announcement on that.
We could go on and on. Recently programs have been announced over and over by the government such as money for the disaster in agriculture on the prairies and across Canada. Of the money that was put aside to service the disaster component of the problem that agriculture has right now, only 26% has got to the farmers. Sixty per cent of the people who applied, who felt they needed help, have been rejected. The system has failed.
We have held meetings across the country with farmers and farm groups. These are quotes from people in Unity, Saskatchewan: “AIDA created hope and then it slam-dunked us. AIDA takes your figures and then invents its own and disqualifies you”. These types of comments about a program that this government developed are coming from people who are on their last legs struggling to keep their heads afloat.
My colleague from Elk Island did say he had a small bouquet for the folks across the way. I would like to give them one on bracket creep.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce lobbied hard and we have lobbied hard for years to get the tax brackets indexed with inflation. Finally it has been done. But what the government did with that figure is it took the savings that we will realize from bracket creep because our taxes will not be going up and said it was a tax cut. That is not a tax cut. It is just money the government will not get its hands on. That has been factored into the figures it has used in this tax cut of $58 billion, or $85 billion, or whatever it is. It does not add up.
I will end my comments with that.