Monte Solberg

[Committees Of The Whole, October 29th, 1996]

We are sane, as my friend says.

The Liberal-Tory vision is one that is full of broken promises. We talked a minute ago about the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands who has broken a promise himself, in effect, even though he is pursuing the position of deputy speaker.

He has written, basically, the red book promise to allow deputy speakers to be chosen from the opposition benches but he, himself, is allowing his name to stand, rather unbelievably. That is just a microcosm of the overall bigger problem.

We have broken promises on the GST. I hope my hon. friends across the way have not forgotten that the Deputy Prime Minister was finally hung by her own words last spring and had to run for re-election. It was a national embarrassment.

I could not believe that the Deputy Prime Minister had to take a poll in her own riding to determine whether it was safe for her to finally hand in her resignation after she had been shamed into it by not only this party but Canadians from around the country. Absolutely shameful. That is only one of the broken promises. There are a lot of them.

I could not believe the spectacle, again involving the Deputy Prime Minister, on the weekend. She was running around telling people that it was not her fault the CBC was being cut. She said that it was the finance minister's fault. I believe she is the Deputy Prime Minister. I believe she sits around the cabinet table. I believe there was a red book promise to provide stable funding.

Stable funding does not mean funding enough to run a stable. It means that the funding will be there in the same amounts as it was in the beginning.

That is only another of many promises. I remember during the NAFTA debate how hon. members across the way railed against free trade: "Free trade is going to kill Canada. It is going to be horrible. It is going to be something that steals our sovereignty". We heard it from every single member across the way, and what did they do? As soon as they got in they signed the agreement. They broke both legs to sign the agreement. Again, we see that their actions cannot meet their words and they should be ashamed.

On the issue of day care the Liberals said that when there was growth in the economy of over 3 per cent, or whatever it was, they would create 150,000 day care spaces. That has still not happened. What is going on here? That was a promise that undoubtedly got the Liberals a lot of votes. They told people they wanted to ensure working parents would have some support.

I personally do not agree with their promise but they used it to lever themselves into power, which is absolutely ridiculous. They should be ashamed of that.

I do not want to tie up the whole time talking about the Liberals' poor record. That is too depressing. People need some hope. Let me talk about Reform's fresh start. Let me talk about the new way to do things.

Reformers want to give Canadians a government they can afford, a smaller government, a government with lower taxes, a government that will leave more money in the pockets of taxpayers and the job creators so they can make these decisions, so they do not have big government in their faces at every step, so they do not

have a government in their faces that tells them how they have to raise their children, what they have to do at every turn.

For crying out loud, ordinary Canadians are asked to raised their families. They are expected to fill out their income tax forms. Surely they can decide what to do with their own money. We do not need big government in our faces at every step. No way.

We are going to do more. We are going to provide lower taxes for the people who create the jobs. I cannot think of an economist in the country who has not spoken of the need to lower unemployment insurance premiums. Reform is offering a 28 per cent cut. That would be an immediate surge of energy to the job creators in the economy and we would see a tremendous amount of job creation.

I ask members across the way to compare that to the government approach to job creation. Recently Atlantic Canadian provinces signed the GST harmonization deal with the help of $1 billion to make it a little easier for the premiers to go along with it. But now housing prices in Atlantic Canada are going to go up by $3,000 to $4,000.

[Committees Of The Whole, October 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the courtesy. I am sure I can expect it from hon. members across the way as well.

Taxes are not the only thing that separates the Liberal-Tory vision from the Reform vision. Their belief in big government, high taxes and bloated bureaucracies breeds something perhaps even more insidious. There is no question that it does. I am talking about the record high levels of unemployment in this country.

There is no coincidence that as the debt started to grow in the early 1970s so did the unemployment rate in the country. When Pierre Trudeau took power in 1972 somewhere in the range of 535,000 people were unemployed. By the time he left office in 1984 it was up to 1.45 million people.

The Tories continued that trend and again there was record high unemployment. What kind of unemployment do we have today? There are 1.4 million unemployed.

It would be bad enough if it were only the 1.4 million unemployed, but that does not take into account the 500,000 to 1 million people who have completely given up looking for work because the Liberal vision of bloated government has not worked for them. There are 2 million to 3 million people who are underemployed. By that I mean people who have an education but who cannot find a job that suits their skills. One in four Canadians is very concerned about losing their job.

Canadians have no confidence in the economy. Too many people have been laid off, too many tax cuts have come down the pike to ever be assured they will have a job for very long.

This is also a key difference between the Liberal-Tory vision where they seem to tolerate high levels of unemployment and can offer up nothing creative, nothing new to give people some hope.

A great concern I have and which I gather has been shared lately by the Prime Minister and the finance minister is their dependence on these make work programs like infrastructure. The Prime Minister and certainly the finance minister in the past have said that these programs simply do not create long term, permanent jobs. But what do they do? They keep coming back to the same old ideas because they cannot bring themselves to face the fact that big government and bloated bureaucracies cannot do it all. The government cannot have its fingers in everybody's business all the time because it kills jobs. Surely by now, after 25 years of social engineering, big government in everybody's face, we have to arrive at the conclusion that big government does not work. It does not create jobs, it kills jobs. The facts speak for themselves.

It is not only about taxes and unemployment but also the tremendous strain this puts on families by both parents having to work, one to simply pay the taxes for the government.

The other issue that we run into when there is a government that spends $600 billion over 25 years, more than it takes in, a deficit last year of $28.6 billion, is that we have interest payments on that debt that this year will be about $49 billion.

The hon. member across the way thinks that is funny. I should point out to the hon. member that the finance minister writes cheques to bankers in Japan, Germany and the United States for amounts that are much larger than he writes to the provinces for things like health care, old age security and unemployment insurance. That is $49 billion.

I do not think that is a laughing matter. I would argue that it is deadly serious. It is deadly serious because of the impact it has on social programs.

My friends across the way have cloaked themselves in the flag of medicare. They have run around telling Canadians how they are going to save it.

The last election campaign I remember extremely well. I am sure my colleagues on this side do as well. I remember how members

over there were engaging in a smear campaign at that time and said that Reformers were out to get health care.

As it turned out, it looks like the Liberals were wolves in sheep's clothing. Not only were they not telling the absolute truth about the Reform Party, they went out and cut $3 billion plus out of health care themselves.

They have closed more hospitals, have put more health workers out of work than any provincial government in this country. The provincial governments combined have not taken a whack out of health care like the federal government has. That is a fact.

It is about time that the Liberals started to face some of the scrutiny falling on the provinces which are taking a lot of the heat for health care cuts.

I would dearly love to see Canadians get on planes, get in their cars and get on trains to come to Ottawa to protest on the lawn of the Parliament Buildings over the cuts to health care. That is where the cutting started. The federal government cut $3 billion and left the provinces no choice.

By the way, I am going to say how the Reform Party would remedy that. Forty-nine billion dollars a year in interest payments has also pinched the federal government with respect to payments to old age security.

I remember in the last election campaign the Liberals went after us hammer and tong: "You guys are going to cut benefits to seniors". I remember it very well.

I hope I run against the same guy I ran against last time. I can hardly wait to confront him with the fact that it was the Liberals who cut seniors' pensions more than any government in the history of the country.

Who was it? It was the Liberals. That is the difference between the Reform vision and the Liberal-Tory vision. We have always been straight with Canadians. We have told people the truth.

I do not know what the members opposite were saying in the last election campaign about social programs. I expect a lot of people are going to be examining those documents as we get closer to the next election campaign.

There is another important way that we differ from the Liberal-Tory vision.

[Committees Of The Whole, October 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand to speak to this motion.

I first want to say that the remarks I am about to make should not be construed as being remarks that are negative toward the hon. member who is pursuing the position of deputy chairman. As everyone knows, the hon. member has done a good job in the House in terms of being able to understand the rules and certainly he is up on the rules. Nobody would quarrel with that.

I think the quarrel that the people in the Reform Party have and anybody who has read the red book has is that this is completely contrary to what the government promised it would do. The great irony is that the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands who is pursuing the position is the one who wrote the policy for the red book. There is a great inconsistency here.

We do not need to hammer too much on that broken promise. I think it has been done fairly sufficiently this evening. It is pretty obvious for anybody who wants to have a good look at it. The fact is the hon. member himself wrote the red book promise and is breaking it himself. People can judge for themselves whether that is integrity. I would say it is not.

I want to follow up on some of the comments I have heard tonight and perhaps talk a little bit about the two fundamental visions we are hearing about in the House. One of course is the Liberal-Tory vision and the other is our vision.

Before I do that I feel compelled to follow up on the smear campaign that we are hearing. Certainly the member for Carleton-Gloucester was going on calling us all kinds of names. That is fine. I do not think that carries much weight with ordinary Canadians.

I do want to make reference to his point where he said that he thought the Bloc Quebecois members were very rational thinkers. He seemed to agree with them a lot. He is certainly entitled to his opinion, but I am surprised at his comments. I would be surprised if the people in Carleton-Gloucester really agreed with him. We are talking about the people who are proposing to break up the country. The hon. member for Carleton-Gloucester seems to be supporting them. That is quite shocking. In a sense, when we consider how close the government came to losing the last referendum campaign, within 50,000 votes, perhaps it is not so surprising after all.

I do want to talk for a moment about the two fundamental differences which really relate to this whole issue. This whole issue is a microcosm of the two fundamental differences in visions of the country between the Liberal-Tory regime and the Reform Party regime. The best way to explain the differences is to look at the history.

An hon. member back here is continuing the smear campaign that was started earlier in the day. Hopefully they will find out that it is futile.

Let us look at the record. With the Liberals and Tories in power, going back to the early seventies the debt has gone from about $13 billion to about $600 billion. I will do for my Liberal friends across the way what I often do for high school students. I will point out to them how much money that is. If I had a stack of hundred dollar bills about two metres high, that would be a million dollars. If we stacked our debt in one hundred dollar bills, it would be 1,200 kilometres high. That is an astounding amount of money.

Only a few weeks ago the finance minister made a presentation to the finance committee. It was a sort of state of the nation address with respect to the economy. I was quite surprised when, knowing that we had this huge debt problem, the finance minister came in and announced that the deficit for last year was only $28.6 billion. Only $28.6 billion. And what happened? The Liberal members began to clap. They said: "Is that not wonderful. It is only $28.6 billion".

As my leader pointed out, only in the never never land of Ottawa would $28.6 billion in the hole be applauded. There they were lined up like crows on a telephone wire applauding away as if this were some great accomplishment. However, I can assure the people across the way that back home in the real world there was no applauding because the people back home know the only place that money comes from to pay for these deficits is out of the pockets of ordinary Canadians.

I think this is a fundamental difference between the Liberal-Tory vision and the Reform vision. The Liberals and the Tories have for years and years piled up the debt, ran up taxes. Hon. members across the way have probably heard over the last few days, because we have mentioned it once or twice, that in the three years they have been in power the average Canadian family has seen its purchasing power go down by $3,000 per family per year; a national pay cut courtesy of the Liberal government.

The Liberal member across the way is laughing. But I can say that the people who do not have incomes of $64,300 plus all the expense money that MPs have are not laughing because they have to pay for that out of their savings.

[Liberal Party, October 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has a lot of gall lecturing us on the GST.

When the Prime Minister went to China, we did not accuse him of supporting summary executions in cavorting with the leadership of that regime and that is something they believe in. I want to point out the little inconsistency here.

My question is a follow-up to the question of the caucus chair of the Reform Party. Will the Prime Minister commit to meeting the leader of the Reform Party in a one on one debate out of this place where we can have a full fledged debate on the issues, not on a bunch of smear campaign ideas from the Americans?

[Liberal Party, October 29th, 1996]

For the record, Mr. Speaker, this government has closed more hospitals than any government in the country with $3 billion in health care cuts. It is time that was on the record.

During the last election campaign the Tories ran attack ads and the Liberals could not believe it. They went ballistic at some of the ads. The entire country went ballistic. We spoke out against it. Now they are doing exactly the same thing. How can the government justify that hypocrisy?

[Liberal Party, October 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that the Prime Minister and the Liberals are defending the sleaze and the American-style smear campaign-

[Employment, October 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I wish the hon. member would go to the 1.4 million unemployed people out there and ask for a mark from them on their record of creating jobs, jobs, jobs.

Despite recognition earlier this year that infrastructure and other make work programs failed to create real jobs, the Prime Minister stood up in front of his Liberal cronies this weekend and promised to return to this boondoggle form of governance.

Can the Prime Minister tell Canadians why now he is talking about spending any future budget surplus on bloating the size of government rather than giving consumers and job creators the tax relief they need to create the real jobs that people are demanding?

[Employment, October 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, while the Prime Minister and his Liberal cronies sipped wine over the weekend and said no to lower taxes, ordinary Canadians were trying to figure out how they were going to pay for next week's groceries.

Here is the story. Disposable income is down $3,000 per family, 1.4 million Canadians are out of work, another 1 million have stopped looking for work, 2 million are underemployed and one in four workers is worried about losing their job.

Will the Prime Minister admit that his unwillingness to shrink and focus his government and leave more money in the pockets of taxpayers and job creators is the real reason he and his government are failing to fulfil their promise to create jobs, jobs, jobs?

[Supply, October 24th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it was a rather incoherent question but I can guarantee that the people of Alberta do want to see Quebecers stay in this country. The best way to show that is for the federal government to create an environment for economic growth on the one hand, and on the other hand provide a decentralized Canada that will allow Quebecers and all Canadians to realize their aspirations within the broad framework of what constitutes Canada.

[Supply, October 24th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am certain the hon. member did not mean to say that Montreal was the capital city of Quebec; I think he meant Quebec City.

One thing I want to point out to the hon. member is that it was the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce who pointed out that Montreal is not the city it used to be.

The hon. member has to acknowledge that over the last 25 years Liberal governments have been in power in this country, with the exception of the horrendous Tory government. It did almost as much damage as the Liberal governments have done over the many years they have been around.

The member talked about cuts in services and cuts to staffing in the revenue and immigration departments. I do not hear complaints about those cuts nearly as much as I hear complaints about cuts to health care.

Government members campaigned as being the saviours of medicare. Then they turned around and cut $7 billion out of transfers to the provinces, over $3 billion of which went to health care. I sat before the finance committee today and heard all kinds of health care professionals pound on the desk very forthrightly because they are so frustrated. They know that on the one hand the federal government is saying that it is the saviour of health care and do not dare try and break the Canada Health Act. Then the Liberals turn around and cut every cent they can out of it and tell people to go and do what they can. That is blatant hypocrisy.

People from Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Manitoba who protest in front of legislatures about cuts to hospital funding should get on a plane and come and protest on the lawn of the House of Commons because this where the problem began. There is the duplicity of the government which on the one hand says it is the saviour of health care and on the other hand cuts the heart out of it.

On the question of how we would deal with Quebec, the member is absolutely wrong when he says that we bash Quebec every day. That is completely false. We are very, very upset about the Bombardier deal. However we are the ones who propose to give Quebecers the tools in the form of lower taxes. One-quarter of all taxpayers in the country come from Quebec. We are going to give three million people in Quebec lower taxes. A tremendous amount of stimulus will go into the economy of Quebec, $2,000 per family by the year 2000 in the province of Quebec. They will create a tremendous amount of their own jobs.

I am sure the member has said when he is speaking to his constituents that small business creates jobs in this country. Then let us give the people who create the jobs the tools to create them.

On the political side, we say let us give the people of Quebec and the Government of Quebec the tools they need to chart the future of Quebec. The people of Quebec do have a unique language, a unique culture and a unique history. Let us give them the tools and give them the jurisdiction to determine the future of the people of Quebec. That would go over well if every province had to do that.

That is how we are going to deal with the people of Quebec and the Quebec government.