Mr. Speaker, I rise to say a few words in the debate on the budget implementation bill before the House. We have had a budget before the House for quite some time. When we deal with the implementation bill, we have to ask ourselves what kind of a society we want and what the goals and objectives should be in terms of the budgeting process for the Government of Canada.
For the first time in a long while we have a surplus with which to work. The minister said in his budget update in November that he thought there would be a surplus of around $100 billion over five years. It will probably be more than that. It may be $110 million or $120 billion or perhaps even more, because in general the economy is doing pretty well.
If we look at the growth rate in this country compared to that in the United States, it is actually quite high. Revenues to the government are increasing. When the growth rate is high fewer people are unemployed and fewer people draw unemployment insurance and welfare. There are fewer costs in the social services system and therefore the coffers of the government continue to expand and expand.
We have no idea for how long this economic expansion will last. We have no idea how long the expansion of government revenue will last. In many ways it is very difficult to project into the future. We have to work with the numbers we have. For the first time in many years we have a budget surplus that will go on for quite some time. This is different from the last part of the 1980s or throughout the 1990s when we had to talk about how we deal with debts and deficits and how we deal with valid programs that could not go ahead because of the fiscal crunch.
We now have choices before us and we have to decide what kind of an agenda we want. When I think of the agenda of the future I think what should motivate us is doing the most we can for the common good of the Canadian people in terms of creating a society in which there is more equality of condition and more equality of services. People should be empowered through a better democratic system. We should build a society on co-operation and play an international role in terms of development in the third world and the promotion of world peace. Those should be the goals and the objectives.
If we are to fulfil a goal that speaks to doing the best for the common good, it seems to me we should start now by reinvesting in programs that were cut back by the government a few years ago in the fight against the debt and the deficit, namely our social programs.
If we look at the last number of years and take health care as an example, a tremendous sacrifice was made by the health care sector to fight the deficit. About $30 billion have been taken out of the health care system. That is an awful lot of money, and we have problems in health care today.
We all know that the only problem is not money. The big problem is that $30 billion are missing. Another way of putting it is that when the Minister of Finance decided to radically cut back on health care and social programs in his budget of 1994-95 the payments made at that time compared to the payments now show a deficit of about $4.2 billion a year. To get back to 1994-95 levels it would mean an increase in spending on health care of around $4.2 billion a year. That extra money would go a long way in terms of making sure that we address our health care problems.
Another thing about health care is that even in its most recent budget the government decided that health care and social programs were not priorities. Indeed the priority for the Minister of Finance was a tax cut of some $58 billion over four years. In other words, for every dollar in tax cuts the government will put two cents into health care. That is not the right priority.
The right priority should be to reinvest once again in our social programs, in particular health care, to build a strong health care sector and make sure that we serve people so that they can go to hospital or to a doctor and obtain equal service regardless of income or background. That is not the case.
Because of this some provinces like Alberta are introducing a bill like its bill 11 to set up a partially privatized health care system. I disagree with bill 11. I disagree with that direction. Under the NAFTA if Alberta does that and allows a privatization of health care or a two tier system in health care, it will have to go right across the country because the corporations in private health care have the right to do it not just in one province but across the country. Therefore that is a dangerous precedent to set.
One reason that is happening is the big cutbacks in health care to Alberta, to every province in the country. In my province of Saskatchewan about 13 cents on the dollar come from Ottawa and 87 cents on the dollar are paid by the province of cash injection into health care. In Ontario about 89 cents are put up by the Ontario taxpayer and about 11 cents are put up by the federal government in terms of health care.
At one time the federal government paid 50 cents on the dollar in terms of funding health care when medicare was founded back in the 1960s. After the seventies it started to pull back, to withdraw. Now that we have a fiscal surplus, a fiscal dividend, a major part of it should go into health care to make sure we have a public health care system for each and every Canadian citizen. If we do not do that and the provinces start to privatize, we will lose health care and end up with a two tier American system that is unfair, unequal and very expensive.
A greater percentage of the GDP in the United States is spent on health care than in Canada. We have a public health care system in this country. In that country there is a mixed system. Some 48 million Americans do not have any health care. Those who do not have health care are mainly the poor people, particularly the black people in the United States because of the socioeconomic condition that they find themselves in.
It is extremely unfair to have a health care system that is built on the size of a person's pocket book or bank account and not on treating people as equals. That is the way we are going unless we convince the Minister of Finance and the government across the way that the time has come to put cash on the table and make sure that we build once again toward Ottawa paying up to 50% of the cost of health care in Canada. That should be our number one priority.
In addition, we have the whole question of education and the federal government withdrawing money for post-secondary education. There is a need to reinvest in young people for post-secondary education, for skills, for training and for research and development. If we are to build a strong society and a strong economy in the years that lie ahead, knowledge becomes extremely important. Knowledge is extremely important in terms of building a strong economy. We need a strongly motivated, highly knowledgeable and highly educated workforce. It is the obligation of the federal government to put up more money to make sure we have a workforce that is highly trained and highly skilled.
Those should be the major priorities of the government across the way, but it seems to me that the government has been intimidated by what we used to call the Reform Party. I am sure the Chair would agree that the Reform Party has had a great impact on the agenda of Canada which calls for smaller government, cutbacks in health care, cutbacks in education, cutbacks in the powers of the Canadian Wheat Board, and cutbacks in anything that has to do with the common good or the sense of community. It wants to cut back, cut back, cut back and reduce the role of government, to the point now where the size of government spending is 11.6% of the GDP, the lowest level since the second world war.
I do not know why the Liberal government is afraid of the Reform Party in terms of setting the agenda. The government across the way is the real Conservative Party. We have a more Conservative government now than we had with Brian Mulroney in 1984 and 1988 till 1993.
That has been the agenda, but that is not where the people of the country want to go. In poll after poll after poll they are saying that health care is number one. We need a public system of health care. It should not be privatized. We do not want a two tier American style medicine. That is what the Canadian people are saying. For that we need more federal money going into health care.
My Liberal friends across the way should not be intimidated by this reborn Reform Party, the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party of Canada. The last time I looked at the Gallup poll it is still sitting at 9%, so why be afraid of it? Why have an agenda that is going to the right and is more conservative than the Conservatives?
We need real progressive change. We need some social democracy. That is where the Canadian people are at and that is what the Canadian people want.