Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and debate Bill C-32, an act to implement budget 2000.
I say to my friend across the way who has just spoken that if he has a conscience, not just a social conscience, he must feel a little twinge after what he said. He said some things that really need to be responded to. I shall respond to them first and then I shall deliver the body of my speech.
My friend across the way suggested that the official opposition, the Canadian Alliance, did not ask questions about the budget the day following its introduction in the House by the finance minister. That is very telling; in fact, it speaks volumes about the government, because during that question period the day after the budget was introduced, every single question we asked was about waste in government and about the scandal in human resources development. Somehow my friend across the way thinks that is not part of the budget, that the money which is allocated, $15 billion a year toward grants and contributions, somehow is not part of the budget. I guess the Liberals assume it is part of Liberal play money.
Canadians pay a lot of taxes to fund the $15 billion which the government uses so unwisely. I would suggest to my friend that he may want to consider his definition of what constitutes questions on the budget, because I would argue very strongly that Canadians who have to pay those taxes, I can guarantee, feel that it is part of the budget.
I want to comment in an organized way on budget 2000, on Bill C-32, and I am about to do that. My friend across the way said that we should pass this piece of legislation with haste. I would argue that if we did that, we would be passing it with waste. As I mentioned a minute ago, there is a lot of waste in what the government does, and I am going to elaborate on that in a moment.
I am going to argue that to support the government on Bill C-32 would simply be to entrench the terrible habits the government has: the habit of underachieving, the habit of not addressing huge problems which stand in front of it every day. Instead the government tries to paper them over and throws some money at them. It spends all kinds of money on reports and studies to give people the impression of action, when that is not the case at all.
Let me remind my friend across the way of the huge problems that face Canada today. We have a crisis in health care. Canadians across the country are required to line up, queue up to get basic services. This is ridiculous.
We are a country that spends a lot of money on health care already. However, do we hear the government talking about making some basic reforms so that we can ensure the money gets down to the patients, that we have patient centred health care? Absolutely not. Do we see a government that is willing to be upfront and honest about how much money it actually delivers to the provinces for health care? No.
In fact my friend just spent a long time talking about what they have as done for health care. The simple fact is that in 1995 the cash transfers for health care were $18.8 billion. In the next several years it will rise to $15.5 billion. In the interim they cut it down as low as $12.2 billion. They cut the heart out of it.