Madam Speaker, I have a number of areas that I wanted to touch on but I keep adding as I listen to this debate here today.
One of the areas that I would like to touch on briefly are the comments made by the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood. I listened with interest to his heart warming and somewhat inspiring story of his grandmother. I believe that many people have similar stories. It does show what people are able to do under adverse conditions when the need is really there.
One of the interesting things is that we have gone too far. I think the pendulum has swung the other way. I do not think we want to return to conditions under which he mentioned where there is absolutely no help for anyone under virtually any circumstances. It is very warming that his grandmother was able to persevere in the face of that kind of adversity.
Nowadays we have a different situation. I have one friend as an example who has a son who plants trees. This may be alien to some of the people in some regions of the country but in British Columbia tree planting is a very active profession during the summer months. Someone who is a good tree planter can make a great deal of money during that season; $35,000, $40,000 or more in a three or four month season for those who are very good at this. It happens that his son is one of these who is very good at what he does and he makes very good money.
During the balance of the year under the existing system he collects unemployment insurance. When I talk in terms of the pendulum swinging too far the other way, this particular individual belongs to something that is known in my riding with some satire, with tongue firmly in cheek, as the UIC ski team. He is an avid skier. This particular individual spends a lot of time at the local ski hill and to his credit volunteers a lot of his time to the voluntary ski patrol which is very worthwhile.
The interesting story that his father conveyed to me is the fact that this individual one season was offered a job at the mountain to be on the regular ski patrol and to be paid for it. He went home that night and pondered his situation. He looked at his UIC benefits and looked at what he would be paid as a member of the ski patrol.
He weighed all the factors and he went back to the ski hill the next day and told them that he would be happy to remain a volunteer at the ski hill, but if he took the job he would give up his UIC and his net benefit would be a drop in income. He did not particularly care to do that.
We have improved over the hardships that people like the hon. member's grandmother had to live under and deal with. As I say I think perhaps the pendulum has swung too far the other way and these are the kinds of things we are going to have to look at when we talk in terms of social reform.
One other factor that I want to touch on while still on the subject of the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood is that of women in business. Once again it is something that is moving in the right direction but with a potential problem as well.
We saw recently in the province of Ontario a provincial government ad that said in essence white males need not apply. There is no question that women, whether it be in business or in any other area, have been discriminated against in the past. I hope that time is coming to an end. I am sure there is still discrimination out there but it is being reduced, it is being dealt with and it is something that people are now very much aware of.
However, it is hard to really properly deal with it by introducing various types of reverse discrimination. There is a risk in doing that if you can help a woman to go into a business, to assist her and give her some benefit that is not available to other people. We see this not only in the area of women in business but we see it in many things. It applies in general business without categorization-it might be men to men-but nonetheless we have to take a very cautious look at any area which offers specialized help for any one group no matter what it happens to be.
We obviously have to reduce the amount of money we spend, the payments that we make, as it were, under social programs. It has been said by very learned people that by some time in the next decade the cost of our social programs combined with the interest on our debt-those two factors alone-will exceed the government's income. Obviously reductions can be made in other areas but if you eliminate everything, if you eliminate the departments of agriculture, fisheries, defence, foreign policy and all other departments, totally eliminate them, we still would not deal with our debt problem. Obviously changes have to be made under social programs.
However, before we start reducing payments made under these programs we have to first reduce costs in other areas. These costs have to certainly be in the delivery of social program benefits. Not just under that, we have to look at all the other programs and all the other departments as well.
One of the things that will happen is if we stop removing so much money from people in all the other areas it puts less pressure on the social programs.
Something we might want to look at under agriculture, for example, is grain car allocation so that the farmers are better able to get their grain to market; likewise, the labour disruptions at ports. These are problems that affect the revenues of farmers. Not only that but as we saw in the last labour disruption in the port of Vancouver, it had a spinoff effect that started to shut down factories in other parts of the country that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with farming or grain. It is a matter of problems that tie up the ports and then start to affect people in other areas.
In my own riding Cominco Ltd. had I think about three days worth of supplies left before it had to start providing layoff notices. These are things that we have to look at.
On business subsidies, we are talking in terms of women in business. These business subsidies also apply in other areas. One of the problems with business subsidies is that not all people get them. How do we reconcile the fact that we give a subsidy to one business and not to another? We could end up with a government subsidized business competing directly with a similar business that receives no subsidy.
The hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood had a question after his talk about why there cannot be some form of program that allows people on unemployment insurance to start a business of their own while collecting it.
There is such a program called SEAP, the self-employment assistance program, which does exactly that. One has to be on unemployment insurance in order to apply for it. The benefit that one gets is one year from the point of time that one's program is approved one gets to remain on unemployment insurance for one year while one starts his or her business.
That has some potential but again it is one of these things where one cannot just arbitrarily say what a wonderful program. I have had cases come up in my riding recently in which people who were on unemployment insurance were given the opportunity to start a business and had their unemployment insurance benefits continued while they did this for one year. However, two cases have come up in which they are in direct competition with existing businesses.
The latest case that has come up has resulted in the person getting this assistance dropping his prices to carve his niche into the market which will result in the other competitor who is already there and did not get assistance before and is not getting
assistance now probably laying someone off. Our program in this particular instance does not work.
We also have to look at such things as interprovincial trade barriers. The Atlantic provinces, for example, receive economic development grants as do other regions of Canada. Just to put it into perspective, the cost to the Atlantic provinces of interprovincial trade barriers exceeds the benefit they get from the economic development grants. Obviously we have some changes we could make there that will enhance the prosperity of the region and take the pressure in some areas off of the social programs.
We have the salmon fisheries on the west coast. The salmon fisheries are now headed down the road that many of the Atlantic fisheries have already travelled. We have a problem out there and this problem has to be dealt with. It has to be dealt with openly and quickly or we are going to have the same kind of problems in the west, at least in the fishing industry, that Atlantic Canada has experienced for many years.
We then have the firearms legislation. We are now talking it seems about the registration of rifles and shotguns, anywhere from seven to twenty-one million of these rifles and shotguns depending on whose figures one uses. Let us say it is probably somewhere in the middle between those two figures. The expected cost of that could run as high as a billion dollars or even more. That is a cost to the taxpayer.
Even if we charge an amount for each registration that is equal to the cost of the government registering them, it is still removing a billion dollars out of our economy that is doing absolutely nothing to resolve any of the other pressing problems of government or the deficit and debt problem.
RRSPs are probably one of the most dangerous things that the government is playing with right now because it is trying to get some revenue out of possibly attacking RRSPs, the cost of which will be future problems down the road. If we have a shortage now because we are trying to pay pensions and other benefits to people who in some cases do not need it, think of the problems we are going to have further down the road when we are telling people they have to be more responsible for themselves, they have to look after themselves if they are able to do so when we potentially may set in force legislation today which will affect their ability to look after themselves somewhere down the road.
On the unemployment insurance commission, before we can go out to industry and start attacking industry that we feel may not be acting in the country's best interest, the government has to get its own house in order. The minister responsible for UIC specifically singled out the automotive industry. Maybe he should. Maybe there is a problem there. I am not an expert in that area but what I do know is that there is five times the cost that the auto industry causes the unemployment insurance program right in the government to the point that it is costing some $400 million a year because of seasonal benefits in the government. The government cannot attack industry until it has its own house in order.
Under the question of consultation there is a problem that I have seen. I realize that this is my opinion and the government is free to counter it. I have seen a lot of instances in different bills in which the government loves to have a long list of all those groups it has consulted with. When we see this list of businesses, organizations and individuals who have been consulted with, we are supposed to assume that the government then automatically has listened to the input from these people it has consulted with and drawn its legislation based on that.
We know the reality is that does not happen. The most prime example is the Minister of Justice again. The Minister of Justice has been quoted as saying with regard to the firearms lobby: "I will not produce legislation on the basis of head count. I will do what I believe is the right thing". This could be very easily interpreted as: "I do not care what you want, I know better".
Reform consultation is ongoing on this particular thing as it is with the Liberal members in their various ridings. We are going to great length in trying to consult with people to find out what changes they will accept, what alternatives they have to suggest and how they see we should deal with the problem. The question is will the government consider our input after we have had this consultation or will it continue with its own agenda?
I am having quite a number of meetings in my own riding. I am setting up to meet with pension groups, medical professionals, education professionals, labour groups, employer groups and student associations. In addition, to get a feeling of the general constituents in my riding I am holding ten town hall meetings over the winter break.
With regard to dealing with student groups, I have a particular concern that we do not make significant further cuts to transfer payments in support of post-secondary education. We talk about government spending in the past. Whether it be Liberal or Conservative does not matter. We are here now and that is what happened in the past. Nonetheless we are in a situation in which we have mortgaged our children's and grandchildren's futures.
When we start dealing with student groups we have to recognize that we have already placed a huge penalty upon these people. Let us not add to that by placing another obstacle in their way to their getting the implements they need to deal with the legacy of debt we have left them.
