The same vision, in the same big bed, of where they want to take the country.
This was confirmed a few minutes ago in a surprising way by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance when he was boasting that this is now the smallest federal government in Canada since the second world war. He said it in a very boastful way. I thought he was a progressive Liberal. I thought he was on the left wing of the Liberal Party, but he is not. He is very proud of these Reform Alliance policies about a very small and shrinking federal government, a shrinking violet that is afraid to tackle the issues and problems of the day. That is what the minister said.
I know that even some western reformers like my friend from Souris--Moose Mountain are really concerned about the diminishing role of the federal government in the country because he, like I, wants the federal government to play a more major role in health care, in helping the farmers of the country, in public education and in investing in our economy. What do we have instead? We have the agenda of the Reform Alliance being adopted by the Minister of Finance, and the parliamentary secretary, a so-called progressive, bragging about and endorsing that as the right and proper thing to do.
Instead, the federal government should have a people's agenda and a people's budget and make jobs a priority in terms of reinvesting in the economy. What the minister did last year was to have a $100 billion tax cut over five years, much of it for the wealthy and large corporations. What we should be doing now is injecting into the economy 1% of the GDP, or about $10 billion, in areas that will help people and create jobs. That is the priority.
I went to every single one of finance committee hearings across the country and I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, there are very few people out there, except for some people in the Alliance Party, asking for even greater tax cuts, for even more money to pay down the national debt. What the people are saying instead is that there is a human deficit in the country, a social deficit in the country, and that money should be invested in terms of addressing that human deficit and we should do it in four or five areas.
We should be putting money into infrastructure in the country. We should be putting more money into affordable housing. When a house is built, 2.8 person years of work is created. First of all, housing is needed in the country. Social housing, affordable housing, is badly needed. This would also create jobs and stimulate the economy. We need more money for urban transit. We need more money in terms of environmental cleanup, clean water and water treatment plants. We need more money in terms of transportation in general. We need more money in terms of agriculture.
When the government was trying to address the problem of the deficit, which was extremely important and had to be addressed, it cut back on farm support programs, by almost $2 billion since 1993. That is $2 billion, a cutback that is approaching 50% of what the federal government used to pay to the farmers in terms of support programs across Canada.
The government is doing this in the face of tremendous assistance from the Americans for the American farmer. There is now a new U.S. farm bill that has been approved by the house of representatives and is about to be approved shortly by the senate in the United States. It will put an extra $173 billion into the farm economy of the United States over 10 years. That is $173 billion U.S. of extra money in the American economy to stimulate the American farm economy. That is on top of the $70 billion already spent in the last four years. The same thing is happening in Europe. There are massive amounts of aid for European farmers. Our farmers cannot compete and are going out of business. When farmers go out of business, small towns suffer and die and jobs are lost right across the country.
What we need is a people's budget, a jobs budget that will stimulate the economy. We need a stimulus budget which puts $10 billion in the next fiscal year into the creation of jobs into areas where the jobs are needed, into infrastructure, environmental cleanup, water treatment plants, affordable housing, urban transit and transit in general, and the farm economy. In addition, the federal government needs to put more money into the health system and public education. That is what has to be done.
The other issue is employment insurance. My colleague from Acadie--Bathurst will speak on that in a few minutes. Again many changes have to be made to protect people who are being thrown out of work. The majority of workers do not even qualify for employment insurance benefits now.
Those should be the priorities of the government. Those are very important things the government should be doing.
The other point I want to make in this short amount of time is that I am really concerned about the sovereignty of our country. The government should start to address that in next Monday's budget.
Even the new president of the Royal Bank when he spoke in Regina very recently expressed concern about the loss of sovereignty in our country. He talked about the fact that in the last two and a half years around 20% of the companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange had been sold to foreigners, many of them Americans. He talked about the fact that around two-thirds of the 33 or 35 gas and oil companies on the TSE had been sold to foreigners, again many of them Americans. He talked about the hollowing out of corporate Canada and the fact that the head office jobs are going to the United States. That is where the decisions are being made and where the research and development is being done.
That was from the president of the Royal Bank. He reflected the growing feeling that we are losing Canada, that we are selling out our heritage. More and more companies are being taken over, thousands in the last few years. The chapter 11 part of NAFTA and the national treatment clause have really gouged out our sovereignty in terms of being able to protect Canadian business and Canadian people in terms of a strong and sovereign Canada.
The federal government is giving away our country. A good example of that was on June 30 when the federal government and the Bank of Canada announced that they were privatizing the administration of Canada savings bonds. Imagine that, privatizing the administration of Canada savings bonds. I am sure, Mr. Speaker, it makes you tremble sitting there in the chair that that vestige of our country's sovereignty is being privatized, not to a Canadian firm but to EDS, an American firm based in Texas. Now when we buy Canada savings bonds, we deal with two phone banks, one based in Mississauga and one here in Ottawa. Why would the bank privatize the administration of Canada savings bonds to an American company?
There is example after example of how our country is being taken over and is being sold out. If we do not do something about it, we are going to lose this country of ours in the next few years.
Many members in the Liberal Party, the Bloc and the Alliance Party are talking about the use of a common currency, a common dollar between Canada and the United States. It will not be like the Euro in Europe where it is a brand new currency with a brand new central bank, where there is some institutional accountability to a European government and the European Community and where three or four larger countries counterbalance each other. It will not be that at all. However, if we keep going the way we are going now, there will be one currency. It will be the American dollar controlled by the national reserve in the United States and all the accountability will be with Washington and the United States congress.
If we lose our currency, if we lose our sovereignty, we are not going to have anything left but a shell. That is the way we are going with more and more members of the Liberal Party across the way, some members of the Alliance and the Bloc Quebecois talking about the use of a common dollar and a common currency, the use of the American greenback in this country.
The time has come for the Minister of Finance to make it very clear that we are not going down that road, that we are going to keep our currency, that we are going to have control of our monetary policy. He must make it clear that we are going to have a new fiscal policy and that the priority of that fiscal policy is going to address the human deficit. The human deficit has been soaring since the massive cutbacks by the federal government.
The parliamentary secretary across the way was boasting about the small and shrinking federal government. As the federal government shrinks and gets smaller, the human deficit, the number of people on social welfare, the number of people who are suffering in terms of low wages is getting larger and larger. We now have the highest household debt we have ever had. Credit card interest rates are extremely high.
Those are the things that have to be addressed. That is what the budget should say when it comes down on December 10. I do not think the Alliance is going the right way. It wants even smaller government, bigger tax cuts and it does not even mention the farm crisis. It wants less and less government. The federal government has a role to play. Let us play it on behalf of the Canadian people.