Debates of Feb. 25th, 2003

The Budget

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for raising the issue specifically of the great city of Vancouver. I have the honour to represent the constituency of Vancouver Quadra.

The Vancouver agreement is a process agreement which the whole country is looking at in terms of urban development and the quality of life in our urban centres. This brings together, concentrating on the urban agenda, the federal and provincial governments, as well as municipal governments. It allows them to integrate the services across their own departments and then co-ordinate them among the three levels of government. This is critical because urban issues are issues of broad governance that effect and demand a response from every level of government.

The Vancouver agreement specifically deals in its first few years of a five year program with the very critical issues of the downtown east side of Vancouver. There are health issues, drug dependency issues and personal safety issues. There is a need for a economic development and a great need to stop homelessness. Our colleague, the Minister of Labour, has led the way in dealing with homelessness in cities.

I will finish my answer by slightly correcting my hon. friend. There was a national urban strategy in the 1970s under a previous Liberal government. There was a minister of state for urban affairs and a deputy minister, Peter Oberlander. He is the urban savant I suppose and central leading urbanist of this country. He has dedicated his time to working with the Government of Canada and other levels of government to develop the world urban forum in 2006 in Vancouver. This will commemorate the 30th anniversary of Habitat, which was held in Vancouver in 1976 and which initiated and developed the UN Commission for Human Settlements. We will continue on with that in 2006 in Vancouver.

[Jim Gouk, Canadian Alliance, Kootenay—Boundary—Okanagan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, given that the hon. member is from Vancouver, I point out to him that there is a very successful company in Vancouver called the Rocky Mountaineer. It is an absolute success story in the private sector. It brings large amounts of foreign tourism dollars into Canada and Vancouver. It probably has an impact in his riding.

The Minister of Transport is now looking at having Via Rail return to the southern route through British Columbia in direct competition with the Rocky Mountaineer, Via having sold this to it in the first place. During the budget the Minister of Finance said that there needed to be a reduction in program spending and was looking to save openly $1 billion. Via Rail has been given $3 billion by the government since the Liberals took office in 1993. Its ongoing operational subsidy is half a million dollars a day.

Given that it would compete directly with a Vancouver company and given that the minister wants to reduce program spending, does he feel Via Rail would be a good place to start, to cut off that subsidy, go to the private sector that said is interested in running Via Rail and let it compete with market forces the way the minister brags that the transportation sector should do?

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite raises the very good example of the entrepreneurialism of Rocky Mountaineer Railtours. This company was given the opportunity to create a tourist service over 10 years ago. It has made a tremendous success of it. It has benefited from the opportunity it was given by the federal government, and has been very profitable. It is a very important addition to the tourism industry in British Columbia and across the western part of the country.

That does not mean that there should not be competition particularly in the commuter rail passenger services that Via Rail provides. Via Rail is not in direct competition with a tourist based service like Rocky Mountaineer Railtours, which is a continuing success and will be into the future.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my remarks today by acknowledging three constituents from my community who are in the gallery today. They have assisted our team on designing and creating an idea that is emanating from the budget related to the green city for sport and culture, Mr. Michael Wong, Mr. Paul Figueiredo and Mr. Stephen Carter. This is important because--

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

I am sorry, the member mentioned that they were in the gallery. On top of that he mentioned their names. I think the member knows full well that we cannot identify anyone in the galleries and I would ask him to refrain from doing so.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it was important to mention their names in my remarks. I have sat in the House since 1988 as a Toronto member of Parliament. Specifically since we took power in 1993, I have worked consistently with members of Parliament from the greater Toronto area. We came through a period in 1993 where we had a very tough economic climate. We had a deep recession and it was a tough period to be here. In spite of all the difficulties our executive and our minister of finance had to face in trying to get the fiscal framework of the country back on track, the members of Parliament from Toronto always ensured the government provided the economic support needed by Toronto, and we continue to do so. This is a critical factor in the economic engine in this country. As members know, a healthy economic Toronto is critical for the rest of the country.

We fast forward to this budget where we are finally back on track. In the last year alone we have sent over $24 billion from the treasury of Canada to the greater Toronto area. That is a lot of money, yet two days after the budget, I opened my Toronto Star and I saw a headline “Arrogant Liberals need to learn the hard way”. This journalist, Royson James, said:

As much as I respect the party of the late Pierre Elliott Trudeau, this bunch, under this anti-city leadership, will not get my vote as long as there is a living, breathing Alliance, Tory, NDP, Green Party candidate.

And given the choice between a Liberal and a White Supremacist in the next election, I would be forced to--forgive me please--forced to spoil my ballot.

Then today in the Toronto Star , the editorial page editor Robert Hepburn said:

This region sent 41 Liberals to Ottawa in the last election. Clearly, some of them have been there too long. They are arrogant, ineffective and seemingly couldn't care less about the needs of the GTA. They must believe that because they won in the year 2000 with huge majorities, they don't have to worry about re-election in 2004.

The reason why the people of the greater Toronto area voted for the Liberal team in the last election was because they recognized, unlike the Toronto Star editorial board writer and unlike Royson James, that the Toronto team has represented our city well. What has to be put on the table here is that we in the greater Toronto area not only have a responsibility for our own community, we have a responsibility to share the rich economic resources that we have with the rest of the country.

That is what national politics is all about. It is not just thinking about one's own community. If we do well, we want to ensure we share some of those resources with those parts of the country that do not do well. The reality is that the people in the greater Toronto area send close to $32 billion a year to the treasury of Canada and we receive back, in economic activity, $24 billion. The difference goes to remote regions. It goes to equalization payments. It goes to our share of deficit and debt. That is the responsibility of a national government. It is not just thinking about our own backyard.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this current executive of the largest, most successful newspaper in our country believes that the Toronto MPs should only be thinking about Toronto. They sent us to Ottawa not just to think about our region but to also represent them on the national stage.

We have a responsibility to make sure that the wealth that is generated in our city is shared with the rest of the country. I know there are other people in the House who do not share that view. They think a dollar to Ottawa, a dollar back. I have never taken that view. It is interesting enough whenever I have talked about the principle of sharing with the rest of the country through equalization payments for other regions that are not doing too well and where we have to share, I have never ever had a single voter say to me that is the wrong attitude.

The only people who say it is wrong are at the Toronto Star . What drives me crazy about the Toronto Star is it is this thick paper. There are members here who are not from Toronto. If they ever came to Toronto and saw the Toronto Star on a Saturday they could hardly pick it up. Sometimes it is close to 200 pages. That paper is so thick because of the advertisements in it from small businesses that benefited from the budget, from medium size businesses that benefited from the budget, from large corporations that buy full page coloured ads.

The most successful and biggest beneficiary in the media from the budget has been the Toronto Star and here it is saying it is not enough. I say shame on the Toronto Star . It should go back to where Mr. Honderich used to put the Star . It was supposed to be an organ that made sure that we shared the richness of Toronto with the rest of the country. I think what is going on at this rich paper from Toronto right now is really unfair.

It is unfair to project an attitude that the members of Parliament from the greater Toronto area should only think about themselves, their own communities, their own city. The people of Toronto who are way ahead of the Toronto Star send us here to represent them, not just in our own backyard but on the national stage.

Regardless of the pipsqueak Royson James who said that he would rather vote for a white supremacist or whatever than vote for a Liberal, I say shame on him. The Liberal Party will continue to make sure that we care and share not just in our own backyard but in the rest of the country. That is the way it will continue.

[James Moore, Canadian Alliance, Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of the member for Toronto--Danforth, a passionate speaker.

I agree completely with him that it is difficult for members of Parliament. We often get skewed into thinking that we represent just our localities and shovelling pork back to our localities or just representing our provinces. We are members, each of us, of a national legislative body. Whatever we decide here does impact every region of the country on a level playing field. That is true.

As the transport critic for the official opposition, I want to ask him a specific question. The transport minister is from Toronto and he seems to me, and the member can correct me if I am wrong, to be completely focused on the interests of Toronto vis-à-vis transportation. We see this with regard to constantly favouring Air Canada over WestJet and other companies. We see this with the proposed rail link between Windsor and downtown Toronto and then on to Quebec City. We see it with the proposed rail link from downtown Toronto to Pearson airport.

There does not seem to be anywhere near the same level of care with regard to transportation focused in the rest of the country that is focused with regard to Toronto. I wonder if the member could comment on that.

I wonder if he could comment also on the inverse relationship that seems to be represented, that he and I share as members of a national legislature, that is being put forward by Jack Layton.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to deal with the issue of our national transportation system.

I am a passionate believer in our national carrier, Air Canada. One of the reasons our national carrier faces such fiscal stress is that our regulations force our national carrier to go into all kinds of remote regions with a certain number of flights a day. That is part of its responsibility. It is a quasi-crown company. It could not dare run on its own. It could not run without the support of the treasury of Canada. I am sure we all realize that.

I want to go back to the point about rail. I believe that the rail system in all major urban areas is a challenge for the House in the future. We are going to have to dig deep. Even though we have a finite amount of resources, I think in our major urban areas we are going to have to really dig deep and support these rail systems even more than we are currently supporting them.

[Myron Thompson, Canadian Alliance, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the speech from the member. I understand his passion for good reporting and bad reporting.

I want to be specific to Toronto. As a starting point, over the 10 years that I have been here, I spent several nights in Toronto in the back seat of a police car. I was not under arrest; I was touring and observing what was taking place in the city. All through that 10 year period, there was a big cry for additional police officers because they were so short staffed. They were devastated to have to let so much crime go because they had to pick priorities and how to deal with it.

The one issue that is bothering me more than anything today is that the unit there is doing a fantastic job in trying to address child pornography which is huge in Toronto. They have been crying loud and clear for a national strategy to deal with this awful thing that is happening to our children across the country. Other police officers are doing the same thing in other cities.

I searched the budget. I cannot see anything in it where the government is going to address the national strategy on child pornography as the police have requested. Could the member find that figure and tell us when this is going to happen? I just talked to the front line officers a few minutes ago and nothing is happening. Why?

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first of all the metropolitan Toronto police force is one of the finest in the country. None of us in the Toronto caucus would ever debate trying to get them resources. We have done it indirectly with the repeat offender program enforcement unit. We have obtained the money through the Solicitor General. We are with the member on that.

I must point out to the member for Wild Rose that in this budget, there is under “justice” an additional $75 million for youth--

[An hon. member]

For the gun registry.

[Dennis Mills, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

No, it is not for the gun registry, it is for youth at risk. It is defined as youth at risk in the budget.

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam.

It is my pleasure to speak to the budget. I will start by saying that probably the most surprising thing coming from the perspective of my riding is that we talk about a surplus. Where I come from, when people's credit cards are at their maximum and they have $100 in their pockets, they do not have a surplus. What they should do is put the $100 on the credit cards to help pay them down.

The government talks constantly about this surplus. By underestimating its budgets of course it builds these surpluses. By overtaxing people it builds these surpluses. But it still has a $563 billion debt. It still pays $43 billion a year in interest payments.

It is really difficult for people in my riding to understand how we have a surplus that we must find a way to spend. They think of that as being irresponsible. They think of that as not thinking about our kids and our grandchildren. They think of that as a total spend and tax, kind of berserk planet Ottawa mentality.

We do not see that there is a surplus. We do not see that we should be spending all of this money. We instead see that we should be very carefully evaluating, making the spending of money accountable and emphasize two things: leaving money in people's pockets and trying to get rid of some of the waste that is here so that we can put the money toward the debt and ultimately get rid of it.

We do not understand either how the government can collect $45 billion from EI and throw it into general revenue. That was supposed to be an insurance program, not a slush fund. We do not understand how it can charge $24 for airline security and nothing changes, that the money is not spent on that. We do not understand how it takes gas taxes and does not spend it on roads, that it goes into general revenue.

Generally speaking when we look at that and we hear the government say, “We do want to keep taking more money because we know how to spend it”, we could evaluate that very clearly. In my riding, what would come first to mind is that the government said that the gun registry would cost $129 million, that it would collect $127 million in revenue and the total cost then would be $2 million. It turns out now that it is $1 billion. That really is not very good management, not very good budgeting and certainly not a very good business plan.

We look at the ad scandal where money was spent for things we did not even get. In fact we spent it two or three times over for things we did not get. We see HRDC where $1 billion was spent and there was not even any paperwork done, where cheques went out but nobody knows why or to whom they went out. We see Shawinigate. We see all of those things and we cannot believe that the money is in good hands by sending it to Ottawa.

What we really need is a long term vision for this country, one that encourages innovation, one that shows a genuine desire to reduce that debt, to get it down, as my Chamber of Commerce points out. They would like to see it at 25% of GDP. The government in fact does not have any goals like that.

They would like to see us refocus government programs to reduce the duplication and waste that occurs here. They would like to see us reduce EI and make it a true insurance program so that we collect only what we need to spend.

They would like to see the capital tax gone now, immediately. It was put on by the former government in order to cover deficits. That government has been gone for a long time and now we are phasing it out over five years. That is irresponsible.

They would like to see income tax reduced, simply because they feel they can spend it better.

As the chief environment critic for our party I must emphasize the environmental package today. We have $3 billion that I feel we could spend, and more. We could cooperate with the provinces and the municipalities, and probably do some pretty innovative good things that Canadians would support. However, when I examine this and I look at the spending that is in the budget on the environment, I cannot help but ask some serious questions.

For example, I look at $175 million over two years for contaminated waste sites, like abandoned mines and that sort of thing. Today, I read a report out of Sydney, Nova Scotia, where it says the tar ponds would take $440 million and 11 years to clean up. We have already put millions of dollars into that problem. We could go to northern Saskatchewan or we could go right across this whole country and find government-responsible brown field sites, private ones and so on.

When we look at that $175 million, we cannot help but ask where will that be spent? Will it really make a difference? If it does, we want to see that, and we want to support that, but we want that to be accountable. That is the big concern that I will keep repeating.

We see $40 million for air quality in the B.C.-Washington state and the Great Lakes air sheds. We have just identified the two most polluted air sheds in Canada, namely southern Ontario and the Fraser Valley. So there is $40 million without any real detail of what we will be doing.

Having been an intervener in the Sumas 2 project in Washington state and having been refused intervener status in the examination of the project in Canada, I wish to announce to the House that I have gained intervenor status, not through any help of the government but by other means, in both level one and level two. I will be able to intervene on behalf of Canadians.

It is interesting that the B.C. and Alberta governments had intervener status, but I was turned down because I did not live in B.C. That is kind of interesting, but that is an aside.

The government will be spending $40 million on clean air. We have the second most polluted airshed in B.C. What has the federal government done there?

As much as the minister likes to say he is a good friend of Mr. Locke, the governor of Washington state, and as much as he likes to say he has golfed with him and so on, when I met with representatives in the governor's office I was told they would not even come and talk to us as long as the sewage from Victoria was washing up on Seattle's shore.

To say that we are on great terms or that the federal government is doing something is not accurate. My observation, and the observation of the people of Abbotsford in the Fraser Valley, is that the federal government is not doing a thing about this whole issue. What will this $40 million be used for and will the federal government finally intervene on behalf of those Canadians?

I must also look at the $1.7 billion that will be used for climate change. The minister says we should set up a committee of ministers who would not be interested in spending that money. I do not know many ministers who would not be interested. I would think there was something wrong with them if they were not interested in spending part of $1.7 billion.

How will it be spent? Who will have their hand in the cookie jar? Which ministers will administer it? Does one have to be a Liberal Party member to access that money? How accessible is it? How will it be used? This budget just does not tell us that.

While there are some good things there I must question the accountability of the government when it comes to this budget.

[Paul Bonwick, Liberal, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I listened to the member articulate what he considers to be shortfalls in this budget I cannot help but have an extremely high level of frustration.

The consistent negativity espoused by the Alliance Party is wearing thin not simply on members in the House, but on Canadians. Those members have changed their position more times than they have changed their party name.

In 1997 members of the then Reform Party made a commitment to structured debt reduction and said that ours was less than theirs. That party made a commitment to structured debt reduction and we exceeded it by a massive amount of money.

In 1998 or 1999 when that party was the united alternative party, it came out with a new structured approach to debt reduction to decrease it even more and we exceeded that. When that party became the Canadian conservative-reform-alliance party, it came out with a new structured debt reduction repayment plan and again, we exceeded that.

I wonder if the hon. member might just once stand up in the House and recognize the excellent job the government has done regarding debt reduction because by God he is taking down the confidence of Canadians and he should be standing up and giving credit where credit is due. Canadians have--

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

The hon. member for Red Deer.

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is great to hear a lecture from that party about staying with a position. Let us talk about the GST position that it came here with as one example.

Let us talk about that debt. Back in the early seventies the debt used to be about $18 billion. By 1984 that debt was about $189 billion. A guy was elected who said he would reduce it, and in fact, that debt then went to $489 billion. That is why there was a Reform Party and an Alliance Party. Our position has always been to reduce the debt.

What has the government done? The government has taken the debt from $489 billion to today's debt of $563 billion. The government is leaving that debt for our children and grandchildren. That is not what we are here for. Our position has always been to cut that debt and pay it down.

[Myron Thompson, Canadian Alliance, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the words of the hon. member for Red Deer because he was right on.

The fact remains that there have been 30 or 40 years of laying on of debt in this country. First it was the Liberals and then the Conservatives, then back to the Liberals and then to the Conservatives. That is why the Reform Party was brought into being: because there was a constant demand that this be stopped. We were sent here to help get it stopped. I think the member would agree with that.

I would like the member to comment on something else. In 1993 the first budget reported that the government would deal with the one million children who were living in poverty. Does the member remember those speeches over the years? What is the latest one? The government is now saying that it will deal with poor children because there are over one million living in poverty. The government has not accomplished a thing.

How many things has the government promised it would do but has failed to do, and does not comply at all?

[Bob Mills, Canadian Alliance, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, after 10 years of being here we have learned that the government rides the rails, rides the fence, never stands for a real position, talks a lot, throws out all kinds of things, says the GST will be gone, says this will be done or that will be done, and never does anything.

The government has been promising the people of Sydney for 30 years that it will get rid of the tar ponds and it is still talking about it. It is throwing in $1 million here and there, but nothing really gets changed.

That is what the government is all about. It is middle of the road, does not stand for anything, and does not have any principles. We know what we stand for. We stand for less government, lower taxes and getting rid of the debt.

[James Moore, Canadian Alliance, Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on the issue of the budget. It is always interesting when the debate is more fierce and when the microphones are not on at the designated speaker. However, that is just the way it goes sometimes when we have the cameo appearance by the member for Simcoe—Grey in the House.

There is one thing I did want to comment on and that was the issue of the debt. It was mentioned by my colleague from Red Deer. It is a fact that the net debt has been revised up by $27 billion in this budget to $563 billion from $536 billion.

I would like to point out that I am the youngest member of the House, I was elected at 24, I am 26 years old now, and the Canadian Alliance is the youngest political party in the House of Commons with the youngest members of Parliament in the House. The fact that the debt continues to climb under the Liberal government is a serious problem for young Canadians.

Debt is a serious reality for young Canadians when they graduate from university and they owe $15,000 or $20,000 in student loans and other associated debts from going to university. They owe their family, Visa or MasterCard. On top of that the provincial and federal governments hit them in the face and say here is another debt that they have to swallow and deal with. It is a huge problem.

The member for Simcoe—Grey was saying that the federal Liberal government enjoys some sort of balance. That is true. There is a balanced Liberal approach to fiscal policy. The balance is that since 1993 taxes have gone up, debt has gone up, and the size of government has gone up. That is a balanced record. The government is bigger today, personal freedoms are less today than they were before, taxes are going up and this is not a good way as we go into the future.

Specifically, I want to talk about a few of those spending increases. Overall spending over one fiscal year has increased in this one budget by 11.5%. In fact, program spending has increased 31.5% since the Liberals balanced the books in 1997-98.

The year 1969 was the last time prior to the 1997-98 budget that the federal government of any political party balanced its books. In 1968 there was Trudeaumania and Pierre Trudeau was elected with a mandate to implement his “Just Society”. He had a mandate to do it. The vast majority of Canadians regret the fiscal portion of that reality.

The fiscal reality of the Pierre Trudeau legacy was again massive tax increases, massive inflation of the civil service, huge spending increases and a massive debt. The debt in the 1980s came up against a wall of increases in interest rates. The cost of interest rates on the accumulated debt and deficits caused the debt to go through the roof. That caused the federal Progressive Conservative Party to implement the goods and services tax in order to replace the manufacturers tax.

The Liberal government said that it would control spending and get rid of the GST. The fact is the Liberal government has done neither. We still have the GST on the books. It is still ripping off Canadians, hurting middle class and low income Canadians, and spending has not gone down. In fact, it has gone up. Spending has gone up in this particular budget, the one we are debating today, the budget of the member for Ottawa South, the finance minister.

This budget goes up more than any budget since the days of Pierre Trudeau. This is the largest budget in a generation. This is not good for young Canadians nor is it good for the future of the country.

Some of the spending is totally going in the wrong direction. Let us look at some of the spending that the Liberals are putting into corporate welfare and channeling to projects that do not make any sense at all. Here are some specific numbers. Transfers to businesses, read corporate welfare, are totalling $6.3 billion in the budget. That is up 12.5% since the Liberals first came to power in 1993.

New funding for the Business Development Bank of Canada has gone up. Transfers and subsidies of over $2.6 billion to various crown corporations and a host of other regional development sustainability programs has gone up. Spending is going up in areas that do not make sense. However, spending in areas where it is needed is not happening.

I will give an example of where spending is needed and it is not going up. I raised this in the House today when I delivered my Standing Order 31. The city of Coquitlam, the largest city of the five in my riding, spends $17 million per year on policing. This is because of the tragedies that have happened in my riding. The Robert Pickton case and the massive investigation that is happening there is in my constituency.

We have had the murder of a 17 year old girl who had a physical disability. Some guy preyed on her, stripped her down, beat her, killed her and threw her into a river. We have had the case of a 17 year old high school student who was beaten, shot and killed in an Internet cafe in Coquitlam.

My riding has been hit hard by the realities of crime. The City of Coquitlam has $17 million for policing. It cannot police some of the small and petty crimes. Just in the past six days, two masked men with bear spray and a gun held up a McDonald's in my riding. A student who was on her way to school in Port Moody was grabbed by an attacker. Fortunately she got away, but unfortunately the attacker got away. An 18 year old woman might be losing her eyesight because she was assaulted by some teenaged guy. Thieves broke into four homes in Port Moody on Jane Street, just behind my constituency office. This was in just the last six days.

The City of Port Moody, the City of Coquitlam and the RCMP do not have the resources they need in order to enforce the laws against crime, in order to punish people, catch people and run proper investigations to convict people after they have been caught.

We can think about it in this context. The City of Coquitlam is one of the larger cities in the Province of British Columbia, which is the third largest province in Canada. The City of Coquitlam spends $17 million a year on policing. In the budget, the federal Liberals found $114 million for a new official languages initiative, like we needed other ones.

I am bilingual, I speak both official languages, but not because the federal government gave me or my school money. I speak French because, when I was young, my parents told me that it was important to learn both languages. It was my parents, not the federal government, who forced me to speak French and learn another language.

Yet the federal government says to throw $114 million into official languages. Again, we can contrast that with the $17 million for policing and the problems we are having in some of these suburban ridings that are sprawling out.

The federal Liberals spend $172 million on an aboriginal cultures centre and $150 million more on top of what they are already spending for television production in Canada, but not a single dime went to new policing initiatives to help small and medium sized communities or even larger communities like mine. My constituency is actually the third largest in Canada in terms of population. But to help us with policing realities?

There is a lot of corporate welfare. Taxes have, net, gone up. The debt has, net, gone up. Spending has gone up. That means the debts that are going to be paid by my generation are larger than they have ever been before in Canadian history. I appreciate that the Liberals are proud of their record, but the blunt reality is that long after most members in the House are gone, young Canadians like me and like the pages in the House will long be paying the debts that the Liberal government is foisting on young Canadians. The Liberals are doing it with good intentions. They are doing it because they want to help people. They are doing it because they are compassionate. I respect that and I respect that the Liberals believe they are doing what is in the best interests of the country.

However, they are not, and young Canadians are going to be paying through the nose. And we will be paying for a very long time. It is a destructive legacy of high taxes, high spending and the biggest spending budget since the mistakes of Pierre Trudeau.

[Paul Bonwick, Liberal, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have two questions for the hon. member across the way, but just before I ask those two questions I would like to clarify the record. I am under the assumption that he has been provided inaccurate information based on his assertion that the debt is actually going up as opposed to going down. Just to clarify, since 1996-97 the debt has actually been reduced in hard dollars by $47.6 billion, a fact that Canadians all across the country recognize, and the debt to GDP ratio, which was 66.4% in 1997, is now 46.5%. That is just some accurate information.

More to the issue with regard to funding police services across the country, I have two questions for the hon. member. First, does the member believe that municipal councils should be investing in such things as what we would typically call soft infrastructure, recreational facilities, baseball fields, soccer pitches, and the list goes on and on, as opposed to investing in one of the responsibilities they have, which is that of delivering police service at a local level?

Second, could the member tell me how, constitutionally, we can create a mechanism to deliver federal funds to a local police service to help offset their operational costs?

[James Moore, Canadian Alliance, Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Certainly, Mr. Speaker, the easy way that the government could do it constitutionally is to do what the Canadian Alliance has been proposing for a long time, which is to return gas tax dollars to provinces. Provinces can then in turn return gas tax dollars to municipalities.

[An hon. member]

Guarantees?

[James Moore, Canadian Alliance, Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

This can be done. The member from Simcoe says there are no guarantees of that, that it could happen but there are no guarantees. The fact is that there is zero chance of this becoming a reality under this Liberal government. We know that. Its track record is there. It has not been giving this money to provinces.

Here are some facts for the member from Simcoe. Of the 100% of the cost of a litre of gasoline, half of it is taxation. Half of the taxation is federal and half is provincial. Some 97% of the gas tax revenue collected by Ottawa goes into general revenue. It does not go to roads. Also, 91% of the gas tax revenue collected by the provinces does go to roads.

So what the Alliance has been arguing is that rather than continue the current status quo, which is intolerable in terms of transportation infrastructure, we say let the federal government choose one of three alternatives. We have our preference, but it should choose one of three alternatives to the status quo, which is not tolerable. The three alternatives are: first, dedicate gas taxes to roads; second, work hand in hand with the provinces in a clear way, listing how much money is being collected for roads and work on projects; or third, eliminate gas taxes and give the gas tax room to the provinces so the provinces can then delegate gas tax dollars to the municipalities and the municipalities can put the money toward police services. That is precisely what should happen.

I see that the member from Simcoe is scoffing. His annual cameo appearance in the House is a rather energetic one, but what he does not seem to understand is that what the federal Liberal government can do is fund the RCMP properly--

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

I am sorry to interrupt. I let the first one go but this time around I just cannot accept it. The member knows full well that he cannot refer to the presence or absence of a member in the House so I would ask him to be careful. There is another member who wants to ask a question, so if you want to make it brief, you can have the opportunity to answer two of them. Right now you are answering the hon. member for Simcoe—Grey.

[James Moore, Canadian Alliance, Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not have much time left, but he asked specifically about what the government could do with regard to police services.