Mr. Speaker, I am interested in many of the comments which were just made by the Bloc member who sits on the finance committee. I am hesitant to dignify some of his comments with my own because of what his leader said yesterday. I wrote down the quote.
I saw his leader say on television that the Bloc are "a superficial event in the political landscape". That out of the mouth of his leader gives us an idea of the commitment of the Bloc to this whole budgetary process. When the member uses the terms barbaric measures and retrograde and he uses other words outside of the House that are not particularly helpful or constructive to the debate I think it does a disservice to something that is so desperately serious for this nation of Canada.
He did make a comment in his long and rambling speech about the fact that even the Conservatives did not apply such cutbacks. Well he is right and that is exactly why we are in the position we are right now. The Conservatives did not have the courage to cut back the tremendous debt that was left to them by the Liberals.
We thought $180 billion left over by the Liberals from the last time they were in power was a terrible debt. The Conservatives did not have the courage to do the cutting. As a consequence this country is now faced with a debt of over one-half trillion dollars.
However I just cannot leave alone the comment the member made that somehow there are difficulties with numbers. I have no idea where in the world he would be able to say that the accounts receivable to national revenue have suddenly gone from $6 billion to $8 billion in the Auditor General's report. That is not factually accurate.
If the member has taken the time to read presumably the French version of the Auditor General's report, I am assuming he is referring to the reference made by the Auditor General to the fact that some of the accounts receivable are getting on to being two years old. As they form part of the $6 billion his concern was that they were not collectable.
It probably falls much in line with the member's constant going on in committee about the fact that there is an average of $42 million in each and every family trust. He just did not take the time in committee to listen and understand that the report he was referring said that the average assets in the firms reporting were $42 million. It was simply a quantifier in order to determine the type of firms that were replying to the survey. As a consequence the Bloc has been telling us, telling us and telling us that there is an average of $42 million in the family trusts.
It is not just the Bloc. The member for Gander-Grand Falls also feeds into some of these misconceptions that there are these tax loopholes and tax havens and tells us about all these millionaires who are collecting UI. For many Canadians they want an easy way out. Don't we all? Many Canadians are looking for some justification for not making the cutbacks. All of us as politicians have to be very careful. We must make sure what we are saying is factually accurate and that it does not feed misconceptions.
I challenge the Bloc member on his comment that direct subsidies to the business sector of $3.3 billion somehow do not include the subsidies going to business through things like ACOA, western diversification and the funds going through to Quebec. He seems to have classified these as being direct subsidies to the business sector.
The bottom line is I look forward to debating with people who will take the time to read the numbers and if they do not clearly understand the numbers will take the time to receive advice. Then we can share our opinions based on fact instead of some of these things that are simply made up.
In the 20 minutes allotted to me to speak to this issue the people of Canada should know that we will go $1.4 million further into debt. Every day Canada spends in the neighbourhood of about $460 million. Of that $460 million we have to go to the marketplace and secure $110 million. It works down to $1,700 per second that we are borrowing.
Why is that important? It is important because even under the Liberal plan we will be going further into debt by $25 billion every year. Even under that anemic plan Canada will slip a further $100 billion into debt in the time the Liberals are in office. That is absolutely monumental. We do not know what the interest rates will be but at a 7 to 10 per cent interest rate on that $100 billion we will be paying $7 billion to $10 billion extra in interest at the end of their administration.
That number is very important when we consider that the federal government transfers $2.2 billion to the provinces for education. Let us understand and compare that $7 billion we are going to go further into debt to the $2.2 billion we are presently providing for education.
Before I get into the Reform proposals I will make one more comment. Of the $110 million we are going to go further into debt today, approximately $45 million of that will be borrowed from foreign markets in this 24 hour period. That means one year from now because we are going $110 million further into debt we are going to be streaming $3 million more out of Canada to foreign capital markets.
What could we do with $3 million? There are people in my constituency around Cranbrook who want a CAT scan machine. It will cost in the neighbourhood of $100,000 and the funding for staff and training perhaps will take the same amount of money.
However we are prepared to let $3 million for this one 24-hour period on interest leave the country. If we want to talk about barbaric and retrograde, we can apply those terms to what we are doing in the intergenerational transfer of debt to our children, our grandchildren and our great grandchildren.
It is easy to apply labels to certain aspects of this whole process which is unfortunate. As the committee chairman so aptly said in his presentation earlier, there is absolute commitment. I believe there is commitment from the Liberals, as I am sure there is from the Bloc and I confirm the Reform Party is committed that the people who have the least ability to look after themselves must be looked after. They must be protected.
Therefore, why is the Reform Party recommending that we go to zero instead of going to 3 per cent or approximately $25 billion? Precisely for the reasons indicated by the chairman. We are currently in a very strong period of economic growth. It has been very clearly illustrated that the difficulty and the reason we are having problems in getting any real job recovery along with the economic recovery is that people are being taxed out of business, taxed out of existence.
There are some differences of opinion between us and the Liberals. In making our presentation to the Commons committee it was interesting that we managed to flush out what some of those differences were. In the judgment of the Reform Party, there must be a very serious look at the whole issue of taxation and how it is done to make sure that inequities are ironed out, that there is more fairness and that any loopholes are corrected. In spite of that and as a matter of principle we believe no more tax dollars are available from Canadians.
It was interesting that the member for St. Paul's said: "Your comments on taxation are rather anemic. There is a bit of a throw away line about not objecting to the principles eliminating inequities in the existing tax system. We have heard much testimony. Did you hear nothing that piqued your interest, that led you to say yes, there is something that should be examined on the tax expenditure side for instance? Was there nothing that caught your fancy?"
In a second intervention he said: "I am in rare agreement with the member from the Bloc then perhaps because the vision that you present is a vision that is far different than I have for this country and the role we have to each other as Canadians".
The vision of the Reform Party in terms of its responsibility to the country is to get the government off the backs of Canadians and once and for all straighten out the situation so that it is no longer grabbing, grabbing and grabbing capital from a very weak and anemic capital market. It is absolutely accurate and correct to say that taxation is simply the confiscation of working capital; that is all it is. Taxation is simply the confiscation of wealth.
If we take more wealth, more capital, out of either businesses or the hands of ordinary people they will have less to put back into generating more activity in the economy. I underscore then that we believe there should be no net increase in taxation.
We established our program on five basic principles. The first one is that the people at the top of government must be the first to make significant and visible sacrifices.
I was asked by a member of the House why we spent last Tuesday, our opposition day, on a motion to get the pensions of MPs into line with ordinary pension plans available to all other Canadians. It was really interesting, by the way, because every one in the Chamber voted against the motion to get the pensions of MPs into line with ordinary citizens, save the 41 Reform MPs who initiated the motion. That pension plan must be reformed as of a year ago.
Also there should be implementation of across the board budgetary restrictions of 15 per cent to high level government institutions. We saw this last week the appointment of people to the Senate, the appointment of the Governor General, and therefore the traipsing out of what these people do in their public lives. People have started to take a look at that, have started to focus on that and ask themselves: "Just a second, isn't this the same government that is asking me to cut back?"
Next is eliminating excessive travel of federal officials and reducing the number of ministers of state and associate ministers. People are looking for leadership, but unfortunately for many political commentators they seem to leave it at that as though somehow it might be a solution to the problem. It is a solution to the problem only in the respect that people are looking for forceful and aggressive leadership. They are looking for us to take a step forward and to take the cutbacks necessary ourselves.
I have already indicated that funding must be maintained for high priority items. There are two high priority items in my mind. First is enforcement particularly with the departments of justice and the solicitor general. Second, every effort must be made to ensure that those who are least capable are able to be provided for. Third, there must be a cutback and elimination of the duplication of efforts among respective departments.
There is also something very interesting here. Part of the problem is that we do not seem to have an understanding on the part of many people, many reporters and many commentators in particular in the news media. We certainly do not have an understanding on the part of many people on the back benches of the Liberal Party of the aspect that there must be substantial cutbacks.
I noticed in the Ottawa Citizen over the weekend an article written about a program put on by CTV called ``Due South''. It was interesting. It asked people if they had seen the program. Some people had seen it and hated it; other people had seen it and loved it. The point is that it was done without tax dollars.
The commentator was basically asking why we should be celebrating the great commercial success. Why should we be celebrating that we have people employed in Toronto in the film industry putting the thing together? Why should we be celebrating that it is a commercial success because it has 20 editions on the CBS network? Why should we not be celebrating the programs that are truly Canadian rather than just commercially viable programs?
I will tell that person why. In this 20 minutes we will be going $1.4 million further into debt. That is why we must take steps to ensure that things like the film industry are privatized. We must reduce subsidies to national museums and galleries as worthy as they may be. If you haven't got it, you shouldn't be spending it. That is exactly what has been going on. There are $450 million available there.
I would like to make another comment about the Department of National Defence. The member of the Bloc was raising the issue of the Department of National Defence. My own personal position is: for people to risk their lives, whether it is in helicopters off Labrador, in the former Yugoslavia or on a barricade wherever it may be in Canada, do we expect them to be given the tools and the training? If they are putting their lives on the line they must be properly supported.
We combined the spending cuts that had already been put forward for the Department of National Defence, together with the $300 million that had been recommended by the joint committee and came up with a figure of $1 billion. I say to the House as an individual that if we want to cut more from the Department of National Defence the first thing we must do is establish our priorities, our objectives for national defence. I for one will never stand for anyone making arbitrary cuts without first determining there will be a rollback in the services the Department of National Defence will perform.
We believe a dollar in the hands of a taxpayer is more productive than in the hands of government. The finance minister said very specifically that subsidies build dependence. I do not know whether members happened to see the front page of the Financial Times a couple of weeks ago. It showed that for every dollar a person in British Columbia puts into UI he or she gets 70 cents or whatever out. Whereas for every dollar a person in Newfoundland puts in he or she gets something like $3.70 out. Even within UI there is a transfer of wealth. These things must be looked at. Am I suggesting this should not be? I am simply raising the issue that at the moment there are transfers of wealth that build dependency.
We have specifically said, for example, that we should reduce the subsidy to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation by $365 million. It was interesting on CTV over the weekend that there was some speculation the government was also considering that. It is a simple thing to do. Mr. Speaker, you may be aware of the fact that my tax dollars, the tax dollars of Canadians and the tax dollars of CTV were used by the CBC to outbid CTV on the rights to the Olympic games. That was absolutely bizarre.
All sorts of cuts must be made, but the bottom line to the exercise is that there are no simple answers. It is up to all of us as politicians and to the news media to take on the responsibility of acquainting the people of Canada with the fact that there is no easy way. It is going to be tough but there is a light at the end of the tunnel if we are prepared to get aggressive on the debt.
