Mr. Speaker, we are looking at another budget here but probably the wrap up of another parliamentary term. Therefore, I would like to address the House and make some reflections on my 15 years here. In fact, this is my 16th budget. I will try to do that in 15 minutes, so wish me well.
I would like to encapsulate my remarks in thinking about not just a budget or about Parliament but about our lives in general. We are always walking through a series of doors. Life is always comprised of new chapters, whether in our family life, our community or here in Parliament. I guess every budget is a hallmark for that because there are new ideas and new spending initiatives for the government.
I would like to focus my remarks around the whole idea of always moving forward in life. Every door and every chapter presents an opportunity of hope, wonder, adventure, surprise and also apprehension. There are negatives to it as well and sometimes just raw terror.
However, it is incumbent upon all of us, not just as parliamentarians and legislators, but as individuals, family people, community people, to walk through those doors with a sense of confidence, opportunity and altruism that we would make our world a better place.
When I think about some of the doors that we walk through in our life, some them we get to choose and some of them we do not, but we make our choice an attitude. Even if we walk through a door that is difficult, sometimes we do not get to pick what door, for instance, what family we are born into.
I was born into an alcoholic family in Vancouver, July 1, 1952. I did not get a choice about that. I am grateful for that, but I learned some very difficult lessons in my growing up years. I am glad to say this many years later, having grown up in a single parent family, which was certainly not as prevalent as it is today. I admire my mother so much for taking five kids by the scruff of the neck and raising us single-handedly.
I am happy to report many decades later that my father Mansell is sober. I have addressed the topic of drinking and driving painfully and emotionally in the House. I could tie that to budgetary figures about health care costs and how much the health care system is under this increasing burden of the results of drinking and driving. My dad Mansell is sober now and I am so grateful for that. We are able to work on this together; me from the parliamentary side and him out in public being involved with AA.
That door opened to me and I had to choose some lessons in my family situation. I made a realistic and practical decision. I walked through a door at age six, saying that I would never drink. I am grateful for that. Many people across the country know that I get into enough trouble dead sober, so I am very grateful to be an abstainer.
I then chose in my adult professional life to become a teacher. So I walked through that door of making an impact in young people's lives, but also turning all this legislative stuff into real life somehow, trying to help kids understand the way things are in Canada, how legislation affects them, and how budgets in fact affect them when we look at post-secondary education.
I was also a foster parent. That was another door that I chose to go through as a single parent. I recall some of these situations I had, again with reflections from federal budgets, regarding Indian affairs when I had native foster kids for many years from reserves, one of which I taught at and then some surrounding ones as well.
The whole idea of increasing funding, that is, throwing money at a situation is supposed to decrease problems. However, on a first hand basis, I realized that throwing money at the dreadful circumstances which many people face on reserves--this many years later as well, and I fostered almost 20 years ago--would not decrease the corresponding problems.
I am sad to say that in that area, with budgetary increases year after year, the problems have been increasing with the quality of life on reserves. Somehow we need to grapple with that on a human level rather than just give money and hope that it works, because it clearly does not. I think that members on all sides of the House would agree with that.
I walked through that door and then had a neighbour dare me to walk through the door of running for the Reform Party back in 1988. I took that dare and made Canadian history. It was a bit of a surprise to me. On March 13, 1989, I found myself going from my classroom in Dewberry, Alberta, to the House of Commons, my new classroom. That was an interesting door to walk through, to be sure.
I was sworn in on April 3, 1989, and some will remember the deep, dark history as that was the year of the budget leak. I do not know how many people here even remember that. Probably not many; everyone looks like kids around here.
In April 1989, Doug Small, who worked with Global TV, got a copy of the budget before it was released by the Mulroney Conservatives. Of course, the Conservatives were in power then. There was a great hoopla that the markets were going to react to this because they had advance notice. I wonder what Martha Stewart was doing about then, but anyway, when I think about what happened then, I was amazed, not amused, at the behaviour of the Liberals and the NDP members who were sitting here in opposition. They got greatly exorcised about this and they all walked out of the House.
So, for budget 1989, here I was, the kid from Beaver River sitting in my little place back over by the curtains, the only Independent in the House at the time. I was a Reformer but we did not have 12 members. I listened to the finance minister, Michael Wilson, present the budget to me. It was just an amazing experience for me.
The annual budget deficits in those years, the amount of money that was spent more than was brought in, racked up to a total of $42 billion. That is more money out of one's allowance being spent than being taken in. It does not work. I am not good at math. I am an English teacher, but I know that does not work.
So I was interested, because the Liberals always blamed the Conservatives by saying that they got their mess. The Conservatives always said that they got the Liberals' mess. I am going to say two things on this. If we trace the roots, it was one finance minister in the early seventies by the name of Jean Chrétien who started deficit financing in this country. I say shame. Then the Liberals came into office and said that they inherited this terrible deficit from the terrible Conservatives, and all they were trying to do is just save the day.
If I go back to my teaching career, I used to say this to my grade eight students, “I do not care who threw that spitball on the ceiling, I just do not want to see another spitball”.
So, let us quit the blame, quit the accusations that the Conservatives did it or the Liberals did it. Who cares? Canadians do not give a sweet fig. They want to see that a government can live within its means, as their families have to live within their means, and as their communities need to live within their means as well.