Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-76, the budget implementation act.
I have been here all day listening to the speeches of my hon. colleagues. I get an uncanny feeling that we are seeing the results of the Peter Pan school of economics at work. You remember Peter Pan, Madam Speaker. He was the person who said: "If you really believe you can fly, you will fly". What I am hearing from countless members is that if we cut deeper, if we lay off public servants and if we dismantle all kinds of social and economic programs, watch Canada prosper. That requires an awful lot of faith in something.
I see across the aisle my hon. colleague from Notre-Dame-de-Grace. He was one of the few government members who had the courage to say that the kind of programs that decade after decade of parliamentarians on behalf of Canadians have struggled to build are being dismantled in a matter of hours by the government.
It is no mistake that Canada is the number one country in the world in which to live and raise families. However, the reason for that is the whole set of very progressive social programs that the government is in the process of dismantling as quickly as possible.
Today reminds me of a story I read when I was a kid. I think it was Robert Louis Stevenson who wrote The Wreckers . This book was about a group of people who lived on an island in the South Pacific. On one side of the island was a rocky shoal out in the
surf. At night they would often put lanterns out on the rocks to give the impression to passing ships that it was the harbour entrance. As the ships entered this so-called harbour, which in fact was a shoal of rocks, the ship smashed up into pieces and these unscrupulous pirates and others went out and looted the ships. They misrepresented the harbour entrance.
I have a feeling this is what we are doing here. I cannot believe what I am hearing my colleagues say. For example, I heard a number of my Liberal friends say that the red book set out a whole number of promises and they have kept them. I remember the red book stating: "This NAFTA deal with the United States and Mexico is not good for our businesses and our working people and we will dismantle this program unless massive changes occur". There were virtually no changes at all. Now the Prime Minister has not only signed us into NAFTA, he is trying to sign us into an extension of NAFTA with countries like Chile and others. It was one of the major commitments that was made to the Canadian people and was the basis on which they gave the Liberals their support.
The other crucial one was the GST. I remember my Liberal opponent in Kamloops saying: "If you elect me as a Liberal representative we promise to abolish the GST". As a matter of fact, the deputy leader said: "If that GST is not abolished I will resign my seat because I am so committed to doing this". Here we are, 18 months into the Liberal term of office, and nary a whisper about the GST's abandonment. As a matter of fact they did suggest we change the name. Maybe that was their version of abolishment, to abolish the name of the GST because we are sick of it.
Those were two major promises given to the electorate. Another one was child care. I remember the hon. member from Winnipeg on countless occasions standing up in the House of Commons saying that child care was crucial to the economic development of the country's future. With increasing single parent families and two spouses in the workplace, child care is not a luxury or a social program, it is critical to economic development. Was there even one mention of child care in the budget? Nary a mention. When I put the question to the Minister of Human Resources Development he said: "We will be working on that as long as all of the provinces agree". I can predict the outcome of that.
Then the environment was going to be a priority. That was critical because we all agreed that all of these other programs were essentially irrelevant unless we really came together and worked hard to preserve the quality of the Canadian environment. What have we done? Wait and see. I bet that in a matter of weeks we will be dismantling the environment department. It has been virtually gutted of any consequence, therefore we might just as well toss it out. I can see that announcement coming.
I could go on and on about broken promises but I think they are well known and I do not have to keep it up.
However, government members have been saying: "We had a balanced, just and fair approach". Fair for what? I remember my friends opposite giving a standing ovation to the Minister of Finance on budget day. I will read from the budget: "First, the existing large corporations tax will be increased by 12.5 per cent effective immediately in order that big companies contribute more to help bring the deficit down". People rose to their feet and applauded because the Liberals were getting tough on the big companies, on capital.
Let us look closely at that. The capital tax is 0.2 per cent. It is going to skyrocket from 0.2 per cent to 0.22 per cent. Now 0.22 per cent is an increase of 12.5 per cent, but it is infinitesimal. It is virtually meaningless. You can imagine the big corporations snickering when they heard that. However, the impression was that there was balance because the government was hitting big corporations hard.
The government also said in the budget it would take on the banks. The government imposed a temporary tax for one year. What does that mean, a temporary tax for one year? Nobody in the House would dare to stand and suggest that the banks were getting a tough ride, so the government said that it would get tough and impose a temporary tax which would only last one year.
Where is the balance? I do not think there is a single person who would not admit that the victims of the recession are the hardest pressed today. Where are the major cuts coming? The major cuts are coming from training programs, educational programs, health care programs and all social service programs. Who benefits from those programs the most but the victims of the recession, the unemployed and the poor people of the country. Those are the people who the government is hitting. A little tap on the nose for the big corporations, a little tap on the head for the big banks, and everyone else will get whacked.
We have a deficit problem. We have a serious debt problem. However, let us ask the question. What was it that caused the debt? How did we get into this bloody mess? We have to go no further than to ask Statistics Canada. In 1991 Statistics Canada conducted a major study into the cause of the debt. The study indicated that our $560 billion debt was caused by three items.
Fifty per cent of the debt is the result of compound interest, in other words, monetary policy. The government set a certain monetary policy which we heard about the other day when it became clear that the Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Bank of Canada had entered into a sweetheart deal. The Minister of Finance promised that he would not allow inflation to rise above 3 per cent. He said he would do anything to keep it down, which meant high interest rates. Today we have one of
the highest interest rates in the industrialized world. Fifty per cent of our accumulated debt is the result of that.
Forty-four per cent of our accumulated debt is the result of tax exemptions. There are all sorts of tax exemptions, tax programs, tax loopholes, et cetera. $38 billion a year is lost through that sieve. Again, $38 billion has not been collected as the result of a whole set of tax breaks. I am not going to suggest for a moment that none of them are any good. However, virtually none of them do the things that we want them to do. Forty-four per cent of our accumulated debt comes from tax breaks.
Let me ask my Liberal colleagues across the way if they really support the notion that escort services should be a legitimate tax deduction. If they do not they should stand up and say it. Do they really believe that luxury boxes should be written off as a tax exemption? If they really do not believe that they should stand up and criticize these things. There are huge holes in the tax system which allow $38 billion to remain uncollected year after year.
Now we come to the crunch. Six per cent of the government's accumulated debt since the mid-1970s is as a result of government programs like the armed forces, the RCMP, health care, pensions, et cetera. If we only look at social programs it comes to 2 per cent. What did the government do? It focused on the 2 per cent that caused the debt as opposed to the other 98 per cent.
The government has actually got it reversed. Rather than dealing with monetary policy and tax reform, it decided to take on those who have been victimized by the recession. I say to my Liberal friends: Shame on you. To my Reform friends I say: Double shame.
