Mr. Speaker, before I begin my comments on the budget, I would like to take a moment to correct the record.
Last Thursday Reform had an opposition day on transportation. During the debate, the Reform critic for transportation made a comment that some information he was provided was covered with marginal notes written by one Moya Greene. He was making the comment that this was a tragic leak of information, implying complicity on the part of Ms. Greene. I want to state that, at no time, was Moya Green ever involved in the preparation of the draft report.
The marginal notes he got on the draft sent to him were those of the researcher. For him to slander Ms. Green, who is a very valuable member of the finance community and who made a very strong contribution to the work of the round table, is quite inexcusable. I do not know why the Reform Party has chosen to take this tack and I am rather saddened by it.
There is not enough time in the few minutes I have to do justice to the budget, so I want to focus on three or four points. The first is just a pick-up on the remarks of the previous speaker from the Bloc.
One of the things that has given me real delight in the work leading up to this budget has been the involvement of a great many members from all sides of the House. The Minister of Finance and cabinet have allowed members to get involved in a variety of committees that have spent a great deal of time working on specific problems that ended up as policies.
The clearest example of that is the work by the member from Fredericton. I served with that member on the first HIV committee, when we looked at the changes to the Canada assistance plan. At that time, a concern was raised about what would happen to people with disabilities. The result was the establishment of the committee he chaired. He undertook, as is his personal style, to consult and consult. He worked with people in his community and across Canada in order to formulate policy that truly represents the wishes of people. This is a stellar example of that.
He was in my riding. We had a little meeting in my office where we brought together people from the community. I know this community well as I have worked with it over the years. Canadians with disabilities were strongly supportive of the work done by that committee and are delighted with the announcement in the budget. They look forward to seeing what the member from Fredericton will do next on their behalf.
Another area that underlies this attitude on the part of the government of collaboration and involvement is the work done by the member for Peterborough, who co-chaired a committee that worked on support for post-secondary education.
We have a terrible problem with our universities which have been the recipients to all sorts of offloading by provincial governments and diversion of federal government support to the point where many of our great institutions are in serious trouble. Their infrastructure is crumbling. They have difficulty providing the kind of labs and support to students to give them a quality education. For organizations that are such major economic engines, as a country we have allowed them to fall into a rather sorry state.
During the last election the Liberals made the second largest financial commitment to provide over the course of four years $1
billion in new money for research and development. I am delighted to see with this announcement that the Minister of Industry, who has long advocated this, and the secretary of state for science and research have finally been able to deliver not just what was committed but well in excess of that. For the first time we will be able to offer to universities and labs across the country a strong infusion of new capital to help them do the work that in the end is will support all of us. It is going to provide jobs and the intellectual property that will fuel growth in the next few decades.
One of the problems that arose with universities was the tendency on the part of provincial governments to divert funds that the federal government was providing in support of post-secondary education to other uses. In fact the only province in the country that can argue that it provided 100 per cent flow through of those funds from the federal government to the universities is the province of Quebec. In all other cases those funds were diverted to other uses and the resultant shortfall offloaded on to students.
In fact one of the most shameful acts of the provincial government in my province is the way that it has disguised its withdrawal of support from universities and handed over responsibility to students.
We made some changes to the student loan program a few years ago designed to raise the limits and give students a bit more flexibility in the management of their debt, only to have the provincial government immediately cancel its grant program and transfer much of its responsibility for supporting students on to the federal government. The net result was to put students even further in debt and give them fewer options for managing that debt.
I am delighted the Minister of Human Resources Development has taken strong steps to provide direct support to students and some greater flexibility in the management of their debt load to right what has been a fairly serious problem that has been created by provincial governments across the country.
I am a little saddened that we have not yet been able to move to an income contingent form of repayment. I trust we will continue to look at that. I know the student associations, certainly in western Canada, strongly support that and see it as a way of helping students manage what are to be very large debts on leaving school.
The announcements on child poverty and health are very welcome. They are important additions and reflect an important shift in philosophy, from a social service network that many have challenged as being excessively paternalistic to one that is more empowering. By putting resources directly in the hands of families and expecting them to act in the best interests of their children, we are giving people who are working and trying to get ahead and build a future for their children some real tools with which to work.
Finally, I want to thank the Minister of Finance for his assistance with the work of the committee that I chair, the committee on transport, in dealing with another form of deficit. This is perhaps best described as the infrastructure deficit.
This country has a national highway system some 25,000 kilometres long comprised of the Trans-Canada Highway and a number of major routes that carry goods between the provinces and between Canada and the U.S. and to the major ports. It carries 45 per cent of our exports south to the U.S. It carries almost 80 per cent of tourism which is predicted to grow to be the third largest industry in Canada by the turn of the century, an industry that runs on rubber tires.
The highway system is in desperate shape. The entire network has been studied and studied and studied, to the point that the provincial auditor in Ontario got involved in looking at the desperate condition of our major trade routes. In the last year that we have been working on this topic, every single person who came to the table said that we needed to do something about that network of roads. But in a time of restraint the costs are enormous, some $18 billion to $20 billion to bring the entire system up to standard.
I have been very encouraged by the Minister of Finance and the President of the Treasury Board. They have worked with the committee to help us examine some alternative ways in which to fund infrastructure renewal.
Our infrastructure program has been an enormous success. This was brought home to me when I met with the Trans-Canada West Association, a group of mayors from small communities all along the Trans-Canada Highway in the prairies. They made the point that when mayors and reeves from across the country gather together, one thing they talk about is how they spend their little portion of the infrastructure program in their communities. It is an activity which has the benefit of putting people to work and also bringing us together.
That is the same kind of effect we will see when we get to the work of twinning the Trans-Canada Highway across the country, of renewing the 25,000 kilometres of roads that tie every community in the country together. It is work that needs to be done. I was pleased to see recognition of this by the Minister of Finance in the budget.
The committee has proposed some innovative ways in which we could use public and private partnerships to fund the renewal of the highway system and that we could do it within the existing levels of expenditure. However, it requires some important changes in the way in which government does business. That is one of the odd benefits which can come out of a deficit. Sometimes when there is
such enormous fiscal pressure, we are forced to look at innovative ways to get the work done.
We cannot allow this infrastructure deficit to continue. We have to begin to solve the problem. These highways are important. The highway in Newfoundland and through New Brunswick is important to the economy of Manitoba. The highway in Saskatchewan is important to the economy of Ontario. The entire network is important to the country.
It is estimated that in addition to the work that would be created by rebuilding this network of roads, there would be over 200,000 new permanent, long term jobs created in Canada by the existence of a more efficient system of delivery.
I know the Minister of Finance believes as I do that this is an important issue. I expect in a future budget we will see a creative solution to the problem.
