Monte Solberg

[Supply, December 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I think what we really meant to say was that we do not want this Prime Minister who happens to be from Quebec. The real answer is that the Reform Party did not say those things.

The Reform Party wants to see the aspirations of all regions of the country represented when it comes to constitutional discussions. That is one of the reasons this social union is very supportable by the Reform Party. It does represent the aspirations of all the provinces. That is why we are very supportive of it.

I wish the government across the way would be equally supportive. The government turns around and guts health care in Canada. It cut $7 billion in expenditures to the provinces for health care. Then the government stands in this place and says that it believes very strongly in working with the provinces so that we can have national standards for health care.

The government's actions speak louder than its words. I am not surprised that given the government's past actions, it cannot support this motion today.

[Supply, December 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to the motion. The Reform Party believes very strongly it is time that Canada endorsed the social union put forward by the provinces and territories. We are urging the government to do exactly that.

I have listened to some of the pabulum coming from across the way. My colleague from Surrey asked a very straightforward question of the hon. member about the government's commitment to health care. When the Canada Health Act first came into place the federal government made a commitment to fund health care to the tune of 50%.

What did the government do? Now it funds it at 11%. She asked a very straight question of the member and we got back this pabulum about the government believes in fairness, that it wants to build up and not tear down. That does not mean anything. That is not a commitment. It is just rhetoric from the government.

Mr. Speaker, excuse me if I accuse the members of the government of being disingenuous with respect to the answers I have heard from them today regarding their commitment to signing and enacting the social union. We think it is extraordinarily important to do this. It is important for the well-being of Canadians who depend on these social programs, but it is just as important for the unity of the country.

Every time we raise specific questions we get empty answers. It is unbelievable that in the House of Commons when we are debating something that is incredibly important to Canadians, that is all we get from the government.

The member for Mississauga West said that the government believes in the social union. That is great. Then why does the government not sign it? This has been before governments for a long time. Many of these proposals have been before Liberal governments for a long, long time.

I think the answer is that the government does not want to give up its powers. It does not believe in national standards. It believes in federal standards. It believes in standards that it alone sets even though all these areas that we are talking about fall under provincial jurisdiction in the Constitution. The gentleman who just spoke said that we must respect the Constitution. The very fact that the federal government is using its spending power to intrude in areas of provincial jurisdiction shows that its commitment to the Constitution is at best tenuous.

The provinces and the official opposition recognize that the federal government can and should have a role to play in some of these services, but let us enter into them on a co-operative basis. Unfortunately, the government often is not prepared to do that.

We have a situation where the provinces and the territories, many of which are represented by Liberal premiers, are calling on the government to take this initiative seriously. The government has had a chance to regard it since August and it has still done absolutely nothing. We say that the real test of whether or not a government is committed to these things is not whether it says it believes in the principles of them in some debate, but it is whether it is prepared to sign onto them.

There was an election in Quebec yesterday. We know that people in Quebec do want Canada to work. They made that very clear in the way they voted yesterday. We know that the premier of Quebec has signed onto this social union. He wants to make this work.

My question is which party is it that is standing in the way of Canadian unity? It is the federal government that is standing in the way. The Prime Minister indicated before the election how much he was going to stand in the way of this by saying that we are not going to have the flexibility that is necessary to make Canada work as a confederation, as a co-operative movement, a movement that recognizes that not all the ideas have to come from the federal government. Some of them can come from provincial governments or from the private sector.

In Canada most of the time the good things that we do are done through co-operative means. Every day in the private sector people get together co-operatively and exchange goods and services, money and all kinds of things. They do it on a co-operative basis. It creates all kinds of good. It creates prosperity, wealth and a lot of good will.

We also know in this case that the provinces and the territories got together and said “We are going to work co-operatively. We are going to try to get together because this is in the best interests of all of our respective constituents”. That is what they did. They got together and brought forward this social union.

We recently saw securities regulators across the country get together and co-operatively work out a new system whereby they would establish standards that would apply across the country. I point out that the finance minister tried to do this awhile ago and completely and utterly failed. We know that a previous Conservative government tried to do the same thing and completely and utterly failed.

We now know that the securities regulators, driven by the interests of private individuals who need to have economic organization in order to make it easier to invest across the country, got together and said that they could do it co-operatively. In other words, they established national standards without being bound by federal standards.

That seems to be the whole problem here. We have a government that is so stubborn, which is really characterized by the Prime Minister, that it simply refuses to sign onto anything that it did not create even though it is operating in areas of provincial jurisdiction.

It is time for the government to set aside that pride, that vanity and to come to the realization that good ideas which benefit all Canadians do come from lower levels of government. That is exactly what we are talking about here.

I do not know anybody who thinks that the social union is a bad idea, except for the federal government. If it does not think it is a bad idea—and I know it will protest when I say that—then why does it not sign onto it? The government has had months and months to do it. There was the prospect of a Quebec election in front of it and the government still did nothing. In fact, in the face of it, it seemed as if the Prime Minister was trying to derail the whole thing.

Instead of suggesting that somehow this motion is not helpful when obviously it is and is bringing before the House of Commons one of the most important initiatives in the country today, why do members across the way not start thinking about ways to endorse it? Why not look for ways to get behind this instead of fighting it at every step? Unfortunately that is not the way the government operates.

One thing strikes me when we talk about issues like health care. The hon. member who spoke just a minute ago talked about how the government wants to build. That is very laudable and those are nice words. However, I want to review what has happened in the last five years in Canada with respect to health care. I think this really does put the lie to some of the words we have heard from across the way where the government was saying that it believed that we need to work together.

Health care is an area of provincial jurisdiction. Did the provinces have the benefit of being consulted by the federal government when the federal government decided to essentially eviscerate health care in Canada, when it cut $7 billion from health care, when it drove 188,000 people onto waiting lists in Canada? Is that the government's co-operative approach? I do not think so. That is not co-operative.

Here is an area of provincial jurisdiction and what did the government do? It marched in and said it was not going to cut the size of government or pare down its own departments. It was going to cut health care by 35%. I would argue that is much of the reason the provinces finally said they had to get together, irrespective of their own differences, to fight the federal government because it was standing in the way of giving Canadians proper health care.

The government goes ahead and guts health care because it thinks it is more important to find savings gutting health care than to gut for instance subsidies to big business.

Although the words we have heard from the other side sound very nice and warm, they are completely insincere. We do not buy it for a minute. We think the real test of the government's commitment to a social union is action, not more warm words, not more discussions.

We urge members across the way to join with the Reform Party and with other opposition parties today and to vote in favour of what is being proposed so that we can truly unite Canada.

[Agriculture, November 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has known for a year that this problem was coming. What is he doing today by going to cabinet to say all of a sudden we have problems? What took him so long to figure things out?

Why was he talking to farmers last weekend instead of over the last year? Why does he not come up with some long term solutions for farmers? What he is proposing simply is not good enough. We need long term solutions.

[Agriculture, November 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, when this minister left the farm, I would say he also left farmers behind.

Farm incomes in Canada have dropped 46% in the last year. We have seen user fees go up 28% in the last three years because of the finance minister and the agriculture minister. We see foreign subsidies going up. We see taxes going up.

When is the ag minister going to get tough with the Europeans and with the finance minister and make sure that those European subsidies start to go down and that Canadian taxes go down for farmers?

[Employment, November 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, blah, blah, blah. That is not the right answer. That is not the answer at all.

Statistics Canada has the answer. It says that at least part of the problem is high payroll taxes in Canada. The minister takes credit for interest rates that are set in the United States. When is he going to start to take the blame for high payroll taxes that he has direct responsibility for?

[Employment, November 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, Statistics Canada reported yesterday that the number of full time jobs in Canada has declined by 230,000 during the 1990s.

Meanwhile, the jobs that were created were either part time jobs or jobs that people had to create themselves after they were laid off. In the U.S. employment grew at almost twice the Canadian rate and those were full time secure jobs.

How can the finance minister be proud of his job record when the job creation record is so much better in the U.S.?

[Balanced Budget Act, November 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to seek the unanimous consent of the House to make this a votable bill.

[Balanced Budget Act, November 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak on Bill C-375. It is a good bill and I think the Reform Party can support it.

I am very happy to see that my colleague, who calls himself a social democrat, can agree with somebody like me or I can agree with him as somebody who is a fiscal conservative on the need to have balanced budgets and to put some limits on government. Limited government is what we are talking about here.

My friend across the way spoke a minute ago about the government's great political commitment. Its political commitment had nothing to do with balancing the budget. The fact is government took the easy way out.

In the last five years this government has raised revenues by $37 billion. It dramatically cut transfers to the provinces by $7 billion. It is talking about its commitment to health care. There is no question this government has slashed health care more than any government in Canadian history.

To hear the rhetoric coming from the other side is pretty hard to take. I cannot believe the parliamentary secretary stood up with a straight face and shamelessly said his government has a deep commitment to health care. What a joke. It is unbelievable.

I want to talk specifically about my colleague's Bill C-375, a balanced budget act. There are some key points I want to touch on. Effectively the bill serves to prevent the government from producing budgetary deficits as of April 1, 1998. A deficit of less than $3 billion in one financial year must be followed by a surplus equal to that amount the following year. I think that is quite reasonable.

A deficit exceeding $3 billion may be occurred over more than one year but only in the event of a natural catastrophe, economic collapse or military conflict. All that is very reasonable.

Deficits for any financial year would have to be estimated during the debate on the budget. I think that makes a lot of sense. We need some frank talk about just how big deficits would be or even surpluses.

For deficits incurred under the provisions which are required to be made up over a maximum period of six years, I think the first 75% of that has to be made up in the first three years. There are other great points in this bill.

I think one of the most important points is the one that my friend from the Bloc alluded to near the end of his speech when he talked about the need to have a report from the minister to the House annually on the impact of changes to accounting. I completely support my colleague from the Bloc on this.

What has happened over the last several years is that the finance minister and the finance department have broken the generally accepted rules that have been laid down through consultation with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants and the auditor general simply so that they can run surpluses they can use for their own political ends.

What we have here is the government in a fundamental conflict of interest position. It is time to end that. We need accounting rules that are binding on the government so that we do not have situations where the government uses the finances of the country for its own cynical, manipulative ends, and that is what is happening here.

My friend across the way was talking about the member criticizing the government for being too cautious. That is completely untrue. We are criticizing the government because it has been calculating and manipulative with the public's finances. We think that is completely unacceptable.

The Reform Party does have a long history of promoting this type of legislation. We do believe in limited government. We do believe there need to be restrictions on government. We do not have blind faith in the government. We know that governments of all kinds are typically stupid. The governments that are the most stupid are the ones that do not recognize how ignorant they really are. Therefore we feel we need some limits on what they do so they cannot go stumbling into areas where they do not belong. We do not want them to stumble into deficits. We do not want them to blow the public's money, which has been the situation for many years in this country.

My friends across the way talk about how they have been successful in balancing the budget. I remind them that they have done it by raising taxes and in doing so they have lowered disposable income for Canadians. We think that is the wrong way to handle it.

While we support this legislation coming from our colleague from the Bloc Quebecois, the Reform Party has called for another companion piece of legislation to go with this which would place a limit on expenditures. We do not want to see governments balancing the budget by continually raising taxes as this government has done. Taxes have gone up. Revenues have gone up by 32% since it came to power. They have gone up by some $37 billion. That is not growth in the economy. The economy has not grown by 37% over the last few years. Far from it. It has been very sluggish. But the revenues have been growing because they are coming out of taxpayers' pockets and that is not acceptable.

We would support companion legislation or an amendment to this legislation that would require the government to introduce legislation mandating government spending limits. That is from the Reform Party policy book, the point being that not all balanced budgets are equal. We believe that we must balance them not by forever increasing revenues through higher taxes, but by putting a limit on spending.

In the last parliament, in 1996, a very learned colleague of mine, Dr. Herb Grubel, who was the member of parliament for Capilano—Howe Sound, brought forward a private member's bill calling for a constitutional amendment that would have entrenched balanced budgets. There is a tremendous amount of merit in that idea. It is difficult to get any kind of constitutional agreement in this country, let alone on a piece of legislation like Dr. Grubel was proposing. But having said that, it is the right thing to do.

I want to touch on a couple of the points he made. He said that if we have a constitutional amendment it is more difficult for governments to tamper with it. Specifically, he called for the government to balance its budget every year. That is what he was proposing. His argument was that we could have a contingency reserve attached to that so that if there ever was a need to increase spending for some unforeseen reason we would be able to do that.

Second, the spending would be limited to today's levels and only increased to reflect population growth and inflation. That was the spending limit aspect of that legislation. It is a great idea. There is no need for spending to grow beyond population growth and inflation once we get to the point where we have the proper amount of spending.

The final point was that if either the budget is not balanced or spending limits are exceeded then those MPs who supported going beyond those spending limits, or supported spending us back into a deficit position, would be financially penalized. That makes a lot of sense. That is what they do in Manitoba. The entire cabinet faces financial penalties if the government runs a deficit. It is a wonderful idea.

We must remember that at the end of the day this is taxpayers' money we are spending. We cannot continue to tax people into poverty like we have done in this country over the last 20 years and especially over the last five years. It has to come to an end. We need to impose some real penalties to ensure that people do not continue to run deficits and that governments like the one across the way do not continue to raise taxes forever and ever.

The Reform Party also calls for a referendum on any tax increases. We are saying no more tax increases. If a government wants to increase taxes it should have to go to the public in the form of a referendum.

We support this private member's bill. We wish it was votable. We would go a step further in a couple of areas. But having said that, we find it eminently supportable. It is a real positive sign that members on all sides of the House understand the need to have balanced budgets and that balanced budgets should be entrenched in some kind of legislation. We have to place limits on government. Government is not all knowing. It is not omnicompetent. It is not always working in the best interests of the country. One way to ensure that we prevent the government from doing wrong is to put limits on it and this proposal would do just that.

[Points Of Order, November 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to seek unanimous consent of the House to table the labour force update I made reference to in question period.

[Unemployment, November 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, today StatsCan issued a scathing indictment of this government's job creation record. It said that since 1989 the government has given up 228,000 full time jobs and that the only job growth has come from part time employment and the self-employed.

What is the big reason? The big reason is high payroll taxes.

When is this government going to get the message? When is it going to obey the law and cut EI premiums by $7 billion? When are they going to wake up over there?