Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to follow my colleague from Etobicoke North who gave such an excellent speech. It is a great honour to discuss the motion. For those at home I will deal with two aspects of the motion. These are the simplistic comments that the earlier speaker referred to.
The first states that we can solve the problems of our budgetary concerns if we simply:
(a) reallocate financial resources from low and falling priorities into higher need areas such as national security;--
It is a very simplistic approach to somehow identify the areas of low priorities and reallocate the money. Of course the opposition is not very specific and does not say what the low priorities are. It does not exactly indicate who would suffer because of those cuts. It is a very simplistic approach.
I will then jump to the bottom line of the motion, which is more of the same. It states:
(f) sell non-core government assets and use the proceeds to accelerate debt reduction.
Once again there is no discussion about what core Canadian government assets we are required to sell. However, in previous discussions the Alliance Party has been very specific in some areas. One of the things it talks about cutting is the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. In fact at one time it was very keen about cutting the department of agriculture. It does not seem to be so keen any more. Also there is CIDA, of course, which is the very agency now trying to do some underpinning in Afghanistan and other areas where we have some global problems. These are the kinds of things that the Alliance would cut and gut. As a matter of fact, others have suggested that we are not spending enough in the area of foreign aid and that we have not reached our UN commitments, but not so for the Alliance. The Alliance would spend significantly less. Finally, it talks about the Department of Canadian Heritage which the Alliance presumably also has no particular use for, more specifically the CBC. These are all the things that I understand the Alliance is in favour of getting rid of.
This actually starts to form a bit of a policy platform if we put it all together. The Alliance does not like things involved with Canadian heritage, but at the same time its members talk about creating this great North American perimeter.
By that they mean that they would like to mimic, indeed copy, immigration laws that exist in the United States. They would like to simply have common border points. What they mean by that is, why should we have Canadian customs officials on the border when we could have just one agency, perhaps one that is shared by both Americans and Canadians? I cannot say how we would deal with that because the reality is that the Americans will have always have the upper hand. We are debating softwood lumber, steel imports and so forth. It is not a mystery to me that the reality is that the Americans will control that process. It seems to me that the Alliance is very happy to have that.
I am not trying to belittle our American friends. They have obviously lived through some tremendous times recently. I was fortunate to go to Washington recently to study transportation security. It is surprising. The Americans themselves have no interest in having common border guards. They have no interest in a common immigration policy. I have never heard them refer to the argument of a perimeter for North America, or in other words, having a commonality of Fortress North America.
It seems to me that only the Alliance Party is convinced that by being closer to the United States we will be better off somehow. I do not think the average Canadian feels that way. As a matter of fact, I remember the great debate in the House about four or five years ago when the Alliance, in those days the Reform Party, wanted to put Canadian flags on all our desks. It seems to me what it wants to do today is put American flags on our desks because that is what it seems to represent, the American party.
There are some real problems that we must deal with in the upcoming budget. Some of them will deal with transportation issues. We have been spending a lot of time consulting people in the transportation industry in Canada and the United States.
There are some real problems and there are some lesser real problems. Americans are going through a period of reaction mode. They have a tendency to overact in some areas. The unfortunate part about that is it has a tendency to impact Canadians.
I would like to give the House an idea of the knowledgeableness of some Americans who are involved in the aviation industry. I was chagrined about a week ago when one of my colleagues asked a member from the Federal Aviation Authority just how many hijackers had come from Canada. The member from the FAA said he thought two or three. This gives a clear indication that Americans do not often understand what is going on and quite often do not understand what is going on in their own country.
It is important for us to take a measured approach to how we change our security system so that it is effective. That is important. Canadians at this time want to feel secure in their airlines and in other places but they want to know that it works. They want to know the money that we spend in these areas will be effective in solving those problems. That is why we spent a great deal of time studying that very area.
I prepare my own analysis of the financial statements that the government presents after each budget. I put it all on one page when I present it to my constituents. It is like a report card. It starts back in 1993 and goes through to the 2001-02 budget. It shows a significant change. Back in the 1993-94 period total spending was at $120 billion. By the last budget it was at $121.5 billion. We paid $35 billion off the national debt during this period of time. This is a significant contribution.
I have young children myself. It always bothered me that we had this huge national debt which I thought we would leave to another generation. It is very important that this generation of Canadians deals with that problem and reduces our debt. I was happy to hear from the Minister of Finance that we would not go into a deficit.
The Alliance has been making a number of comments in the last two or three months. It wants to spend more money on defence, to spend more money here and there. When one adds those things up it would put us into a deficit. That is absolutely and totally irresponsible.
There are some people out there in the community, especially some economists, who say it would not be so bad if we were having a small recession. They say that we had a bit of a deficit because that is what government should do. That goes back to Keynesian economics which states that we should be spending money when times are bad.
I do not have to say that most politicians and governments in the west have forgotten the other side of that equation, that we should save during periods of good times. That creates an insatiable appetite among legislators. Once they get into deficit mode it is like printing new money, and they keep on going down that road.
It is imperative that we do not go into a deficit ever, that we try to hold the line. I should not say ever because if there were a national calamity or something of this nature it would obviously require government support.
However, in spite of the doom and gloom from the opposition benches that want to talk about the recession as if it were a depression, it is not. If it were a recession it would probably be one of the mildest recessions in history. As a matter of fact this is an unprecedented period of time of expansion of our economy. It has been the longest period of expansion since the second world war and we have learned to benefit from it.
I will be preparing an analysis of the budget on one page for my constituents so everyone can understand it. I must say that in the past I have given the government an A for its efforts to bring sobriety to our country. Fiscal responsibility will continue to do that, not the simplistic solutions presented by the Alliance today.