Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion tonight. We are talking about bringing increased transparency and accountability to parliament. The motion would create a special estimates committee of the House of Commons.
I have been in this place since 1994, but my federal political awareness really came into effect in 1992. I believe, and I think so do many of my constituents, that the primary duty of this place is to look after taxpayer dollars.
It was clear to me in 1992 that the mechanisms in this place were inappropriate to the task, and everything I have experienced since 1994 has done nothing but reinforce what I believed to be true before I got here. That is a sad statement.
This is a genuine attempt at reforming the system and one that should be encouraged. We have an opposition and government initiative with this co-authored report. Therefore, when we vote on the creation of the estimates committee, there is a reasonable opportunity, chance or probability that we may create this very important oversight committee. This committee could perform some very effective roles.
We need fiscal discipline and we need to get away from the kind of politics which the country can no longer afford, such as spending promises politics. What we now have is a Byzantine process at best. It needs to be modernized.
There are two things about which I want to talk. One-third of our expenditures are scrutinized by the House in committee of the whole, which is not an effective oversight. We do not look at a lot of things such as the kinds of government guarantees on all fronts which create liabilities.
When the government of New Zealand faced a bad fiscal situation in the 1990s, it added up all the guarantees made over the years, and which were still current, and discovered that the country had a negative net worth. That was the point at which it hit the wall and had to impose a complete new fiscal regime on the country.
We are not quite there, but we do not know what our liabilities are or what guarantees have been made and so on. That is what motivates the official opposition and that it is what motivates me. That is also what has motivated much of our policy development, which is the basic framework and architecture of the party I represent.
We brought a discipline to this place that did not exist before we got here. The $42 billion deficit that the current government inherited from the previous government required a form of discipline and that was aided and abetted very much by the actions of the Reform Party of the day. I can honestly say that I am very proud that we had that kind of an impact on things because it was a net gain for the country, the citizens and the taxpayers.
We have gone from a balanced book position into a new era which means we need a new discipline driven by new needs and that requires some new mechanisms. We have a whole new set of security concerns, new spending requirements and a government that, up until now, has been adept at creating new spending but very poor at re-prioritizing spending. There was always new spending while the old programs tended to continue. The committee could assist in shedding that kind of baggage. We need to get away from that kind of thinking.
We must create the circumstances required to have all the things we not only want but actually need if we are to retain any semblance of sovereignty and the ability to retain our best and brightest. That means we must continue to lower taxes and continue to pay down the debt.
We must also spend on new areas of major concern that we have allowed to lapse, such as in the area of security. That includes the Department of National Defence, the RCMP, CSIS, new technology at our borders and addressing security issues surrounding the way our refugee determination process is often abused at our borders. In order for these things to be effective they require a new philosophy and new scrutiny. We need to get there and this is one way to help us reach that goal.
I talked about the $42 billion deficit we had in 1993. We were getting very close to being internationally insolvent in a sense. That was the stimulus that got us to change our ways. We now have an obvious need to re-prioritize. The last time it was a lot easier than it will be this time because the last time the federal government did not really change its internal behaviour. What it did was cut transfers which affected health care and the provinces much more than the federal government itself.
I do not think we can get to where we need to go without the committee. It is not that this is a nice thing to do but it is essential. We will all be better off if we retain control of our spending. If we do this, we will all be earning our pay cheques in this place.
