Madam Speaker, I know some people are anxious to get home for Christmas and I guess they are trying to negotiate as I am speaking. However, I am quite happy to keep going.
I read in what I think was the Ottawa Citizen this morning, or one of the other newspapers, that some leaders in another country have all been arrested because they spent some money on airplanes that they could not justify. Here we have $9 million in Canadian heritage grants given out without application forms being filed. How can that happen? We ask but we are not getting answers. I am sure that every member of the House, no matter what their party, must wonder why. However, we have not received any answers to that. I can assure everyone that over the next few months we will ask those questions.
I am sure the auditor general must have some good ideas as to how we can stop this problem. I think every Canadian wants to know, in detail, the list of those grants, who they went to and why they went to them.
The auditor general found that $100 million was given to Downsview Park Inc., in the riding of the Minister of National Defence, without parliamentary authorization. I do not have my notes with me to see when he got that, but I know we just had an election a year ago. I would not doubt that it was sometime prior to that. Perhaps it was not, but it is good for the next election.
How does anyone get $100 million without parliamentary authorization? If we asked that question in this House, we would hear some answer that it was in a budget and that it was all approved, then the government would sit down and say it is wonderful. However the auditor general has said that $100 million went out without parliamentary authorization. It should shock every member of the House that any minister would have that kind of power to get that kind of money without parliamentary authorization.
The auditor general found money for aboriginal policing being spent to pay for officers who were not even hired. I go back to a nice announcement of $185 million for fetal alcohol syndrome, but money for aboriginal policing was paid for people who were not even hired. It is time we have accountability in these areas of government waste to ensure that all taxpayer dollars are being properly spent.
All this waste was found in her audit. She did not even dig into many other departments in that $16.3 billion of mismanaged government grants. There is waste and mismanagement galore here. If the government insists on putting money toward its pet projects, it should at least get serious about reviewing and cutting some of the pet projects of past years and past ministers, which are happily being carried on without any accountability.
Even before this budget was tabled, the Canadian Alliance identified $6 billion to $7 billion of low priority spending which could have been reallocated to pay for national security and health care or to tax cuts and debt load. We did that with a fairly modest budget to run a whole party, certainly a lot less than the auditor general has, with a research department that works very diligently. The auditor general has found $16.3 billion.
There is no reason to have an increase in spending this year. We could have decreased our spending, paid down the debt and still have been ahead of the game if we managed this business properly.
The government gives out $1.2 billion in corporate welfare grants every year. It gives out $1 billion a year in regional development schemes like western economic diversification. There is a $1 billion annual subsidy to the CBC to fund a television network that competes directly for viewers and advertisers with the private sector. It could probably thrive if it were allowed to raise private sector capital itself.
I was at CPAC last night during one of its political shows. What a great job it is doing. In this day and age of satellite dishes, we are still subsidizing another network which should be competitive and out on its own. It is great that the government sponsors CBC Radio because it serves every little corner of the country. However, as far as my party and I are concerned, CBC television should be sold. It should be competitive with all other networks in Canada and in the world. We would all be better off for it.
There is a massive waste in Indian Affairs. There is a half billion dollar registry for duck hunters.
As well, the government still owns a $2 billion stake in Petro-Canada and Hibernia, even though it promised years ago that it would sell its shares in those ventures and even though the finance committee urged it to get rid of Petro-Canada in its recent report.
I do not know for sure, but $2 billion off the debt might bump our dollar up a couple of pennies. Most politicians agree with their constituents that government should not be in business. It should be running the country the best way it can. We should not be in the oil and gas business nor any other type of business where we compete. Why does the Prime Minister not tell the Minister of Finance to sell Petro-Canada and get it off the books and put that money against the debt of this country?
Instead of reallocation and making tough choices, instead of choosing between low priority spending and high priority spending, the Prime Minister and the finance minister refuse to choose. This is why the government will run a $1.9 billion cash deficit next year, which the American congress would call an actual deficit. That is why, using its own accounting standards from previous years, the government has a planning deficit of $6.2 billion over the next three years. In the words of an official in the Toronto-Dominion Bank, that is why the government has to use fancy accounting footwork for its deficit plan. Talk about hidden agendas.
The Minister of Finance quotes other people. He can always find somebody because there are always lots of Liberals out there who can write nice reports. I do not find that offensive. What I do find rather disturbing is people of the calibre of the Toronto-Dominion Bank talking about hidden agendas and fancy accounting footwork.
Canadians do not want fancy accounting footwork. They want no debt in this country. They want proper management of their tax dollars, and the auditor general has proven this year that they are not getting that. That is why we are on the brink of a real deficit. A sharper economic turndown or a slower recovery could push us back into another string of Liberal deficits, and we certainly do not need that in Canada.
The government has missed the potential to save at least $50 billion over the next four years because of its reckless spending. That is $50 billion that could have gone toward powerful tax relief or debt reduction for all our grandchildren. I know not all members have grandchildren, but I have eight with another one on the way. I do not like the fact that they will have to bear this debt and will perhaps ask me someday why they are paying high taxes for debt and why I did not ensure that our finances were handled better in this country.
That estimate is based on the almost universal recommendation by the private sector made up of economists and business groups that the government limit its program spending increases to the rate of inflation plus the growth in population or about 3% per year.
The finance committee reiterated its longstanding recommendation that the government limit spending increases to inflation and population in its most recent report. I said that earlier, but it is worth repeating.
We cannot afford to let the government dig a $50 billion hole. We cannot afford to let this country slip back into deficit. We cannot afford to keep our national debt at a staggering $547 billion and pass these costs on to our children and our grandchildren.
The government must cut waste and mismanagement and reallocate from within existing spending to finance priorities like defence, security and health care. It is the only way we can be assured there will be money left for tax and debt reductions, which this country so badly needs.
Now that I have outlined where the government went wrong, where it spent too much and where it could have and should have cut waste to pay for higher priorities, let me talk about what some of these priorities are.
The first and foremost responsibility of any federal government is to defend national sovereignty and to protect the safety and security of its citizens. That is why the Canadian Alliance, and before it the Reform Party, consistently called for adequate resources for our police, intelligence and defence services. These were calls that went unheeded. We have done this even though we are a party that believes in smaller and less costly government in almost every other area. We believe that freedom is not something we can take for granted. It was worth the price to pay for the defence of freedom.
With this Liberal government and even in this supposed security budget, national security seems to be a low priority, almost an afterthought, for a government that cannot seem to say no to spending in other areas. It is amazing and unbelievable the amount of money allocated for the CBC which could have gone to defence and health care.
Over the last few years the government has routinely dismissed our calls for necessary spending to enhance national security and defence. We made those calls long before September 11. Since September 11, the government response has been too little and too late.
Since 1993 defence spending has been cut by $1.6 billion, a massive 23% reduction in real terms. We have heard the defence minister get up and say that they just put in $1.2 billion or that they have just put that in. The facts are defence spending has been cut by 23%. I do not think that is what Canadians want. They want a good defence, something of which they can be proud. We are proud of our soldiers.
The government says that we are hammering our military people. We are not doing that. We are working for them. We are trying to get the government to live up to what it should be living up to, which is to ensure we have the best trained. Our helicopters are a bit of a joke. All our airplanes are in terrible shape. Equipment is lacking. These reports are from the auditor general. The auditor general herself has said that the military needed a minimum of $1.2 billion this year just to bring it up to scratch. What did we get? We got $250 million.
Why do we have an auditor general, if the government is not going to pay attention? Why do we have an opposition? The government wants to operate like a dictatorship. The government goes along, makes the stories and gets the spin doctors. There are probably more spin doctors hired by this government than by any other government in Canadian history. I thought the former Conservative government was bad on that. Today the Liberals hire the best PR people in the world to spin their stories out there and make them sound wonderful. The facts are our military spending has gone down way too far.
Our troop strength has declined from 90,000 to 58,000. The Conference of Defence Associations, which is the major amnesty group on military issues, said in its recent report that there was a $1.2 billion annual need just to maintain ongoing operations. Similarly, as I said before, the auditor general said there was a $1.3 billion annual shortfall just to maintain existing equipment.
How can we feel proud for our service people when the auditor general says that there is a $1.3 billion shortfall just to maintain the equipment? How can we stand in the House and have a minister of defence tell us nobody will go anywhere unless they are well equipped. We must not be going anywhere. It was the auditor general and not the opposition--