Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the opening session of this new parliament and begin by thanking the constituents of Calgary Southeast for their renewed confidence in my representation here. I was honoured to receive an increased majority. I would also seek permission from the Chair to split the balance of my time with the member for Peace River. It is a particular honour to come back here with a larger majority.
I will address the balance of my remarks to the question of the lack of real economic vision presented in the throne speech. Economic and fiscal questions at a time of increasing economic uncertainty were unfortunately excluded from any serious discussion in Her Excellency's speech. That reflects a general attitude of carelessness from the government when it comes to the economic prospects we face.
I cannot help but note in the recent exchange I had with the honourable and esteemed member for Mount Royal that he failed to address my second question. I hope that at some point, when it is appropriate, he will do so.
This is not the right place for us to completely rehash the last election. However, issues and comments that are raised during an election campaign which are of profound importance to the tone and tenor of public discourse should be addressed.
I hope he will agree with me that it was very regrettable that a member of his caucus and a member of cabinet who continues to be supported by the Prime Minister engaged in the most foul, defamatory and scurrilous sort of remarks that are possible in public discourse.
At the outset of this parliament I for one want to put on the record how deeply hurt I and many of my colleagues were by those remarks made by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. I furthermore want to say that a substantive and not merely rhetorical commitment to human rights and civil rights such as that expressed by the member for Mount Royal is a tremendous thing and a great value to this place. However, members opposite would have greater credibility in addressing such issues if they were to identify the kind of language which frankly is hateful in itself and inflammatory.
I want to put on the record that I think the member for Thornhill stepped beyond the bounds of anything close to civil discourse and impugned herself as somebody who is willing to direct frankly hateful thoughts toward honourable, civil and tolerant members of this place and many who participate in our national politics.
Having addressed that regrettable matter, I turn to the issue of the growing economic uncertainty which we now face. Yesterday we heard reports from Statistics Canada that manufacturing orders and production will be declining even further in this quarter. This matches the reduced output being seen in the United States in reduced consumer demand. This also comes at a time when the principal economic authority in the developed world, the U.S. federal reserve board, has decided to reduce its prime rate by 100 basis points in three weeks, an unprecedented action.
All of this gives credence to those very credible voices and economists who suggest that our largest trading partner is now likely in the midst of a recession and that Canada may very well be headed into a similar recession. I note on the front page of one of our national newspapers today an economist being quoted as saying that we are in at least a brief recession.
Recession means two successive quarters of negative growth. We asked the government what it plans to do, how it plans to respond and whether it plans to act on this very troubling new economic development which will inevitably impact the standard of living of all Canadians and the fiscal projections and incoming revenues of the government. The government refused to do so. It is back to the don't worry, be happy theme which the Prime Minister is so adept at striking.
Last October the government introduced not really a budget but a statement, really a political statement, which had been done very quickly. Finance department officials were given very short notice by the Prime Minister to produce an election statement that was not able to take anything into account with respect to the recent developments in the U.S. and Canadian economies. The government is planning to maintain a fiscal plan right through to March of next year based on an outdated political document.
I know that some of my Liberal colleagues, those who came of age in the 1960s, still have a strong streak of anti-Americanism and they still do not appreciate the degree to which we are reliant on the American economy. Let me explain that we export to the United States more of our manufactured goods than we consume domestically, so when consumer demand goes down in the United States, manufacturing output will go down in Canada. That will inevitably affect our economy.
When our economy is negatively affected and we see a reduction in growth, according to some projections, of .1%, which is substantially lower than that projected in the fall statement, or potentially negative growth according to some economists, we will see government revenues decline. When government revenues decline, especially when the government is increasing spending in all sorts of unidentified areas, the conditions exist for potential deficits. That is precisely what the second most heavily indebted country in the OECD does not need to incur at a time of economic uncertainty, yet government members put their heads in the sand.
At the outset of this parliament we call on the government, not out of a sense of partisanship but out of a sense of prudence, to introduce in the spring, as is our convention, a comprehensive budget that takes into account all of these factors.
Let me suggest some things the government might want to introduce in that budget. First of all it might want to review the $52 billion of new spending outlined in the fall statement, much of which was not identified. It may care to identify the costs, which it has so far refused to do, of the 14 specific new spending commitments outlined in this week's Speech from the Throne and of the 51 other vague commitments to and promises of new spending programs. It may also wish to outline precisely how it intends to accommodate the Prime Minister's red book commitment to spend 50% of future surpluses. This is a figure clearly not accounted for or anticipated in the finance minister's fall economic statement.
We have contradictory directions. We have the old spending, welfare state, Trudeau Liberal in the person of the Prime Minister, who is promising to spend, spend, spend. We have the finance minister suggesting continued fiscal prudence. We have a potential recession coming on. With all of these contradictions and this atmosphere of uncertainty, there is no action. There is no precision. There is no response. The government cannot even tell us how much it plans to spend.
It is an important question, because as spending rises and a recession comes on we will continue to see our productivity gap grow. As my colleague, the Leader of the Opposition, reminded us the other day, our standard of living, which is measured by real disposable income per capita, has declined from 70% of the U.S. average in 1990 to just over 63% in the year 2000. We have moved to the rank of 24th out of 25 OECD countries in the last decade in terms of growth in per capita GDP. Ireland has doubled its per capita GDP in a time when we have seen ours shrink.
We do see a diminishment in our standard of living. We see it in the fire sale prices of Canadian companies, such as the recent purchase of the Montreal Canadiens. We see it in the continued impoverishment of the Canadian currency, which affects our standard of living. We see it in the brain drain, with tens of thousands of bright, mostly young, talented Canadians leaving this country to pursue brighter economic opportunities elsewhere. We see it in the fact that Canadian taxes are on the whole one-third higher than they are in the United States.
All of these issues need to be addressed. The opposition has, and will outline through the course of this parliament, its comprehensive plan for tax relief, debt reduction and spending restraint. We invite the members of the government to do just that.
