I could go on at more length about the mother corporation in that case.
In any event, this omnibus bill in support of the budget is of great importance to our nation. As other members have said, it sets the stage for what is likely to happen over the next few years.
Under the Canada assistance plan, as members know, the Government of Canada was to fund generally speaking 50 per cent of the money the provinces must spend in the welfare programs they administered. A few years ago this was changed. The Canada assistance plan payments by the federal government to the three provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta were capped. The net result was that these provinces were
frozen into a situation whereby they were getting less money transferred from the federal government but were really having more demands put on their resources.
The real problem is that we as a nation will go through the trials and tribulations of living within our means. This will inevitably mean cutbacks. Unless these cutbacks are done fairly across the nation and in all sectors of our economy tremendous resentment will be built up.
Let me give an example of what is likely to happen or what is happening with the capping of transfer payments. Maclean's magazine of April 4 speaks to the problems Ontario is going to face because of the Canada assistance plan being capped: ``Through the Canada assistance plan Ottawa paid 50 per cent of the welfare costs of the seven poorer provinces but picked up only 29 per cent of Ontario's 1993-94 tab of $6.3 billion. Quebec got 10 per cent more funds with 43 per cent fewer beneficiaries''.
Let us think about that. If a Canadian is on welfare or in need of funds from the government and lives in Ottawa or anywhere else in Ontario, the federal government pays 29 cents of every dollar of those costs. However, if he or she lives across the river in Hull five minutes from here, the federal government pays 50 per cent of the cost. Is that fair? That might have been fair because of an extenuating circumstance that might last for a year or two, but let us remember that the budget locked in the inequity until 1998. What strains will that put on the budgets of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta?
There is a solution. The federal government could increase the payments to the three have provinces or it could reduce the payments to the three have not provinces to bring them all into line so there is balance and equity.
A further example from Maclean's magazine indicated: ``In 1992 Ontario employers and employees paid $1.67 billion more into the unemployment insurance fund than they drew out in benefits. The province blames UI rules that allow workers in areas of higher unemployment to work for shorter periods for longer benefits''.
Several members mentioned earlier that this was an appropriate means of transferring funds into very depressed areas of the country, that it recognized some parts of our nation were in worse shape than others. Unemployment insurance should be unemployment insurance. When unemployment insurance was brought into being it was not determined at that time that it was to be a wealth transfer. It was to cushion employees who lost their jobs for one reason or another until they found another one.
From that aspect the budget goes a long way in eliminating or at least ameliorating the problem. The government is to be commended for recognizing that unemployment insurance continually taxes those who are working. It really is a tax on jobs and is going to do more harm than good in the long run.
As well, if the words we hear from the task force looking at unemployment insurance are true, that unemployment insurance may in the future be determined as an insurance program paid by employees, it will be another big step to reforming unemployment insurance. It is just blowing the dust off the Forget commission report and implementing it 15 years or so after it was written.
What do we do in the areas of Canada that need the transfer of UI funds so that people can exist? We need to look at it as two separate entities. Unemployment insurance should be unemployment insurance, the purpose for which it was intended. Income supplements should come through some other government function but be accountable. If it ends up being a guaranteed annual income or whatever it might be, so be it, but let us not confuse the two issues so that we end up with nothing.
I would like to give a personal example of how unemployment insurance as it is used today is a disincentive to employment and costs far more than it should. Without the permission of my son I will use him as an example. He is a very fine young man who quit his job just before he was going to get fired because he was not doing a very good job. It was a fairly well paid job. He thought he would not have any trouble going out and finding another one. It turned out that he was wrong. He had a great deal of trouble finding another one.
Every two weeks he got a cheque in the mail for over $600. When the time came for me to say to him "Marry, go out and get a job", he would go out looking but none of the jobs would pay anything like the amount of money he was getting for doing nothing. Unemployment insurance was not tiding him over until he could get a new job. Unemployment insurance at that level was robbing him of the initiative to go out and get a job.
He grew up in a home where industry and initiative were the bywords and the watchwords. Let us just imagine what the richness of the program has done all across the nation to hundreds of thousands of people who are milking the system, who are using the system as it was never intended to be used.
The steps the government is taking with regard to UI are in the right direction. However it must be coupled with some other program to ensure that people on the bottom end of the totem pole are able to exist and move themselves out of poverty, recurring poverty.
I would like to spend a few minutes talking about the wage freeze which is a good idea. It is a particularly good idea in the House because we are the leaders of our country. The people at the top of the heap in any circumstance, especially a difficult one, should be the first to take a hit. A wage freeze in the House is entirely appropriate. It is entirely appropriate in the upper echelons of the public service.
However we have to do more than just say we are going to freeze the wages. We have to look at how we could get the most efficiency out of the money we are spending. We can bet that people in any organization including the Public Service of Canada lay awake at night trying to figure out how they can get around whatever particular obstacles are in their path and make a few more bucks.
If we were to look at it we would see that the only people who are really suffering a wage freeze are the people who are on the bottom rung of the ladder in the public service because they cannot reclassify their jobs.
For example, right here on Parliament Hill employees of the lowest order of employment had to restructure their employment base, come in on weekends and change things around so that they could no longer make overtime because there was no more overtime. They cannot come in and work on a weekend and get paid overtime. Yet other people in the hierarchy here have reclassified their jobs so that they can then get an increase by reclassification.
Another example that was brought to my attention during the recess was in the weather stations across the nation. A person from the public service brought to my attention the fact that we have replaced weather recorders who used to be paid in the region of $30,000 with a machine that costs about $250,000.
These machines have a life of about five years and require one person to maintain them and travel around. Bonuses are paid in the public service for anyone who is able to reduce the person years of employment in their sphere of influence. What happens is that if one gets rid of five weather observers and replace them with a machine, one would get the bonus for reducing one's payroll. However, the expense of the five machines goes to one ledger and the expense of the maintenance person goes on another ledger. We still have to pay it but we are really no better off than we were when we started or perhaps a little further away from where we wanted to be.
It also does not do any good in terms of employment. What we have to do as a country is not just say we are going to have a wage freeze, but we have to go through our books line by line just as we would in the private sector and ask how we can make everything that we do more effective, more efficient and work better rather than just saying willy-nilly, we are going to put a freeze on this or we are going to put a freeze on that. While it sounds good, it really does not accomplish anything.
In conclusion, I would like to spend just a couple of minutes addressing the question of Quebec and the fact that this has come up for those who have been following this debate. Every time a member of the Bloc stands in this House, at least in my experience, it has been to cry how badly off the Bloc is treated financially by the rest of Canada and yet it is to request more money from the Government of Canada.
I hope that when this great national debate takes place in this House and in the rest of the country we talk honestly and openly and fairly about who gets what out of Confederation. Speaking for myself and for many of my colleagues here, speaking for the people I represent in Edmonton Southwest we do not mind because we recognize that we are better off than most paying money into Canada that is used as equalization going to other regions of Canada to help them along.
However, we really resent it when we are paying this money into an equalization pool and the people who are on the receiving end of it just ask for more and never say thanks. As this debate over the next few months unfolds, I hope we will talk honestly about whether we are together as a nation because we want to be together or because we are together as a nation only because we continually pull out the wallet and throw money at the problem. I can guarantee that if that is the only reason that we are together as a nation it will not last.
This budget in some aspects is a step in the right direction. Certainly to be fair it is better than anything the Conservative government came up with over many years. Let us not kid ourselves, it is merely the first tentative step. The very difficult and hard decisions are yet to come. They must come because not one person here, not one Canadian anywhere in this land has ever spent their way into prosperity.
The only way that we as a nation can make our futures better is if we live within our means. It is not morally right for our generation or the generation that preceded ours to live beyond our means at the expense of generations of Canadians yet unborn. We are going to have to bite the bullet, live within our means and make the tough decisions necessary.
