Mr. Speaker, I wish to say a few words on the budget bill which is before the House. My comments will be fairly brief.
Like every other Canadian, I am pleased that we now have the first budget in 29 years that is balanced from a fiscal point of view. I do of course question some of the methods that were used to balance that budget. I am sure the member who has just spoken is also concerned about the tremendous cutback in social programs to give but one example. He comes from northern Ontario and I am sure that those cutbacks have hit very hard.
In terms of the transfers in education and health to the provinces, his good friend the premier of Ontario, Mike Harris, of course is cutting back radically and severely all throughout northern Ontario. That affects the constituents of my friend from Algoma who has just taken his seat in the House. I am sure he too is concerned about some of the methods that are used to cut back on social programs in this country to achieve a fiscally balanced budget.
I am also concerned about some of the other directions we are going in our society. I want to say a few words about that. I remember growing up in this country and seeing the evolution of activism in terms of the government, when we had very activist governments at the provincial and the federal levels. The Pearson days and the Trudeau days. I can go on to more recent times and talk about provincial governments in Alberta under the premiership of Peter Lougheed. That government was very activist in terms of programs for ordinary people.
That seems to have come to an end. Activism for the welfare state and social programs seems to have come to an end. We have been told by neoconservatives it is very passé and that there is not really a role for governments today. That type of activism is gone.
Thinking about it more and more, there is a certain kind of government activism that is very much alive and kicking, not just in this country but around the world. It is not an activism that creates a welfare state in terms of social programs and more equality for ordinary people. It is the kind of activism that creates a welfare state for the large multinational corporations and creates what might be called the corporate welfare bums of the world.
I think here of the trade deals that governments have negotiated on behalf of capital. The World Trade Organization, the WTO. The free trade agreement with the United States. NAFTA which brings in Mexico. I also think of the multilateral agreement on investment, the MAI. All these things are charters. I guess one could say they are charters for investment or charters for capital, or charters for business in this country.
It is the activism of governments around the world that has provided this kind of strong governmental support for capital in the world. We also see all kinds of other examples where there still is government activism for large corporations but not for people.
Investment houses and bankers around the world are very much in favour of strong central banks that are regulated, that can set interest rates and make all kinds of monetary decisions that are extremely important. They are very much in favour of these banks that are removed from political control, that are almost acting as independent agencies.
This new kind of government activism is not for ordinary people, it is for capital and it is much less democratic. It is also international in nature. That is the kind of evolution we have been seeing. The government is very much part of that.
I remember the campaign in 1993 when the now Prime Minister crossed the country saying “Elect me as Prime Minister and I will tear up NAFTA, I will negotiate NAFTA”. He was saying the free trade agreement was not very good. Back in 1988 the then leader of the Liberal Party was talking about tearing up the trade deal. What has happened to that Liberal Party?
The member from Algoma was here in those days working as a valuable assistant to a friend of mine who was his predecessor. He was very involved in those days in fighting the NAFTA deal and fighting the free trade deal with the United States. He was concerned about the giving up of our sovereignty. But all of a sudden that short distance across the aisle which is two sword lengths away has completely changed the orientation of the Liberal Party. It has taken on the mantle of Brian Mulroney and the Conservative Party. That is what has happened to the Liberal Party across the way.
I saw Mulroney on television a few months ago. He said he was quite pleased with the Liberal government across the way. He said “After all, it has implemented and carried on with most of my policies”. I know you agree with that, Mr. Speaker. The Liberals are sitting back there smiling. They are in total agreement with this.
There is nothing wrong with the Liberals doing that if they had been honest with the electorate beforehand and told the people “We think Brian Mulroney is doing the right thing. We think he is doing a courageous thing. He is a fantastic prime minister in terms of his policies. Elect us and we will do exactly the same thing and we will do it faster than the Brian Mulroney government can do it”. That is exactly what has happened.
The GST is another policy. I remember the Liberals talking about getting rid of the GST, killing the GST. The now Minister of Canadian Heritage was jumping over desks in a committee room going after Conservative ministers for bringing in the terrible GST and talking about the trade deals, that it was a horrible thing that was happening in our country.
Here we are a few short years later. These same Liberals who are now hanging their heads in shame across the way are those who are supporting these Mulroney policies and perpetrating those Mulroney policies on the people of this country.
The old saying is that the more things change, the more they remain the same. All we have are different personalities and in many ways a government now that is more conservative than the Brian Mulroney government of 1984 to 1993. Many of the things that the Liberals are now doing the Mulroney government could not have done politically. The Liberals in opposition at that time would have risen in the House and organized an opposition that would have prevented the government from acting.
This is the kind of trend which is happening. We see this trend toward more and more government activism for the large corporations and large capital in this country at the expense of many small business people. We see this trend toward activism for large corporations in the way they are starting to structure some of their programs.
An example is the Foundation for Innovation. It is handing out some $800 million worth of grants to companies for research and development and for innovative projects. Again, who is doing that? A board of unelected business people is making the determination as to who gets that money.
There is the millennium fund. Again a board primarily of business people will be determining who gets the $2.5 billion.
There are the changes to the Canada pension plan and the setting up of an independent investment arm of that pension plan that will soon have assets of over $100 million. Guess who will be on the board? Again, members of the big business community will make determinations about those investments. Once again it is activism on behalf of large corporations in this country and around the world. That is what is happening in Canada.
We are not seeing that same kind of activism when it comes to ordinary people. We have Liberals across the way who used to be progressive. The member from Toronto used to be very progressive at one time. But I do not see him up in the House talking about tax fairness for example and looking at a Tobin tax on international currency transactions. Those are the things the Liberals used to talk about in their opposition days.
The Tobin tax is named after James Tobin, an economist who won a Nobel prize. He had an idea that we should have a small tax on international currency transactions. This should be discussed among the leaders of the G-7 or the OECD. Yet where is our Minister of Finance and where is our Prime Minister in terms of leadership, in terms of trying to bring about this kind of a financial transaction?
We are seeing a real evolution in the world. Maybe for the first time we can do some of these progressive things. The Europeans have finally thrown off this yoke of conservatism, of Thatcherism and Reaganism. They have elected social democratic governments, like Tony Blair in Great Britain and Lionel Jospin in France.
Lionel Jospin is the long-time leader of the Socialist Party in France.
He is not a liberal; he is a democratic socialist leader. There is a social democratic alliance in Italy. I predict in September of this year for the first time in 17 years that great friend of the Liberal Party, Chancellor Kohl in Germany is going to lose to a social democrat.
For the first time in European history there will be social democratic governments in the four largest countries in Europe, all of them with 60 million people or more. Those progressive governments are being elected in Europe.
I say to the government across the way, why does it not take the initiative now and start talking with our allies around the world about an international tax on currency speculation and currency transactions, the Tobin tax. That is a way of getting billions of dollars around the world to distribute to poor people, to create more equality, to look after disasters like the one in Chernobyl, or big floods, and to help take pressure off some of our social programs.
That is something we can do, but we can only do that internationally. There has been a great change in the world in the last 10 or 15 years. The power of the nation state is diminishing very quickly. In its place are international agreements which are basically there for capital and for large investors.
The same kind of government activism and government intervention that is creating a haven or a charter for international capital should be done in terms of creating a covenant for people and a covenant for social programs that is international as well. We can do that if we have the political will and the political determination.
We can do it in terms of a minimum standard for social programs around the world and in terms of labour standards and in terms of environmental standards. We can do it on the revenue side by looking at the possibility of a Tobin tax which is a tax on international currency transactions. These are the kinds of things we could do if we had a more progressive government that was interested in intervention and activism and a positive role on behalf of ordinary people and not just on behalf of its friends like Conrad Black and the huge investors in the multinational corporations around the world.
That is the main point I wanted to make. We now have in our country a balanced budget. We are now going to be turning another leaf. We are now going to be opening another chapter of the book of Canadian history. What we have had in the last few years is the transformation of the Liberal Party of Canada into the great Conservative Party of Canada in terms of the legacy of Brian Mulroney and his Conservative government.
The books are now balanced. There was a Liberal convention in the city just last weekend. Rank and file Liberal delegates are concerned about the right wing conservative direction of the government across the way. They want to make health care a priority. They are concerned about the MAI. They are concerned about the proposed merger of two of our three largest banks. They are concerned about this right wing drift of the Liberal Party.
I am sure there are Liberal backbenchers who feel the same way. Why do they not get up in this House and start talking about a progressive agenda for the people of the country? An activist government once again that will be an activist government for ordinary people and not just an activist government for multinational corporations.
I am interested to see whether or not Liberals across the way might have some comments or questions and whether or not they will have the courage to question the leadership of the Prime Minister who all of a sudden has changed from red to blue and is dressed in Conservative clothing.
