Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak on the prebudgetary consultations. It is fair to say that we have heard a lot of comments in the House today, a lot of it rhetoric. At the end of the day what is the government's responsibility with respect to budgets? It is to ensure that we live within our means and that we do not spend more than what taxpayers give to us.
Some would believe that we just throw money at a lot of nice projects, that we spend on a wide variety of things, but no government can do that. If we were to do that, we would go back to the dark days when government spent more than it took in and, as a result, compromised the very social programs, the very economic stability and the bedrock of our nation.
When we look at those countries that have spent more than they take in, we see how that behaviour by a government erodes the fabric of its country and how it affects all members in that country, particularly those in the lowest socio-economic groups who are the most vulnerable.
What does that do? If we deficit spend and build up a debt, we take money out of the money received from taxpayers to pay the interest on the debt. It carves out and takes away the amount of money we would have to spend on social programs. It also puts a burden on the private sector because it often forces governments to raise taxes in the false belief that raising taxes somehow engenders more money in the short and long term to pay for what we ask.
Raising taxes and having an ever increasing tax rate actually puts a depressive effect on the private sector. In doing so, it chases private sector firms away from a country, reducing the number of jobs. Raising taxes and engaging in deficit spending hurts an economy and causes one's tax base to be contracted. It therefore leaves less money for the social programs that we need and want to help those who are most vulnerable in our society.
In short, our government has always held up to the notion, and has lived up to it for seven years, that we have to get our house in order. For seven years we have managed to reduce a trend of deficit spending which would have critically hurt our country and turned Canada into a basket case.
When I was first elected in 1993, it was a serious problem. It was one of the reasons why many of us ran so we could change that. Over the last seven years Canada has had a surplus budget, the only country in the G-7 to do so. If we look at all the G-7 countries, Canada has had the best economic performance of any of the G-7 nations.
Translated into what really counts, which is what Canadians care about at the dinner table, it means more jobs. As my colleague mentioned, we have three million more jobs in the country. It provides us with the resources to pay for health care, the number one issue on the minds of Canadians. It provides us with moneys for a wide area of social programs that will help those who are least advantaged in our society.
That is the balance we have tried to create and that has happened over the last seven years. It has been a balance between living within our means, making tough choices, but on the other hand providing the economic groundwork so the private sector can thrive and so we have the resources to invest in the social programs about which Canadians care.
It is important to understand and not minimize this feat. No other country in the G-7 has managed to accomplish that. Some people, particularly in certain opposition parties, would criticize us for the decisions that have been made. Being in government entails making tough decisions. It is very easy to sit down and simply criticize. It is a lot harder to make tough decisions and to provide solutions that are sound, effective, equitable and fiscally responsible. That is what we have tried to do, that is what we have done and that is what we will continue to do.
On the financial side, first, our objective with this budget is to continue with surplus budgets. Second is to provide research and development moneys, which we will engage in and partner with the private sector to accomplish. It is to provide the private sector with the investment that it needs in order to invest in new technologies, which will enable our companies to lead the world in their respective areas.
Also, we have tax relief. We have engaged in $100 billion in tax relief. We have managed to remove one million Canadians from the tax rolls, those in the lowest socio-economic areas. Is that enough? No. We can do better, and we will do better.
A personal issue I have been fighting for is to remove everybody who makes under $20,000 a year from tax rolls. If we can ultimately accomplish that and enable people to keep more money in their pockets, particularly in the lowest socio-economic areas, then we will have truly accomplished something. Rather than money going from the tax base into government and back to those who are in the low socio-economic grounds, why do we not enable those people to keep those moneys in their pockets? That would be a worthy effort.
On the social side, the government has invested money into early learning. Why is this important? I used to work in a jail. Let us look at an array of social problems, from youth crime, to challenges such as teen pregnancies and poverty. We find that in those populations a lot of the individuals, if we look back in their history, in their first early years were marred by environments that were likely less than acceptable. Many have been subjected to sexual abuse, violence, neglect, improper nutrition. In other words, they did not live in a secure, loving environment. They were subjected to poor parenting. Look at studies that have been done by a number of pediatricians. Then look at this population and ask, what can we do to change that kind of environment in order to have a positive effect on the future? That has happened.
My colleague from New Brunswick, with her husband, was a world leader in the head start program in the early 1970s. Programs like the Ypsilanti head start program in Ypsilanti, Michigan has been around for more than 25 years. What did those programs do? They tried to ensure that parents had the skills to be good parents and that children lived in a loving, caring, secure environment where their basic needs were met. This was not a function of income. This was something that went across the whole socio-economic domain. Some children in low socio-economic grounds did not have poor parenting and some children in families that had a lot of money did not have poor parenting. However, they teach parents to engage their children in a loving, secure environment. Reading to children is critically important. Spending quality time with them is important, not putting a child in front of a computer screen or in front of a television set. Engaging their minds intellectually is important. The first few years their brains are like sponges and at that time neuro connections take place that will set them on a certain road that will largely be irreversible.
What happens when the parent-child bonding is improved? We find is that the life can be quite different for that child. In fact, the head start program reduced youth crime by 50%, teen pregnancies by 80%, kept kids in school longer, less demand on social programs and a $7.00 to $8.00 saving for every dollar that was invested. I submit that was a superb investment.
That is what the minister is doing now. Our government has engaged and will engage with the provinces for an early learning program that will strengthen the parent-child bond and will have a profound impact upon those parameters that can determine the future of a child.
On the issue of accountability, our government has introduced a comptroller system that will improve the way in which we spend taxpayer money. It is critically important, and many of us have said this time and again, that one of our chief responsibilities is to ensure that taxpayer money is spent wisely, effectively and responsibly. That is why the Prime Minister started the process of introducing the comptroller system, which we hope will go a long way to ensuring that the moneys that the people of Canada give us to spend responsibly will be spent responsibly.
On the issue of Canada and the world, we are at a propitious moment. The world has a number of challenges that we could not possibly have envisioned 10 years ago. The world changed post-9/11, as we all know. What the world is looking for is true leadership to address those challenges we face.
Terrorism is a multi-headed monster. The military option must be used under certain circumstances, but it will require much more than that. I am very pleased to congratulate General Hillier who will be the chief of defence staff. He is an individual who gets it. He understands very clearly that we need to address these challenges, from the soft skills, which our Canadian military is good at, to the sharp, hard, killing skills, the lethal sharp pointy edge that we must have as a military. He understands that in today's challenges we must have an array of those capabilities, in which our Canadian Forces are superb and very effective.
The goal of the government is to give our Canadian Forces the tools to do the job, personnel, equipment and training. The Prime Minister has said that we will increase the number of personnel by 5,000 in the regular forces and by 3,000 in our reserves, and that is good news. Our Canadian Forces members have worked very hard. They have had a very high operational tempo. We need to give them and their families a break. By having extra personnel, we will be able to carry out our duties internationally. We will also be able to ensure that our personnel do not burn out. We need new resources to do that and the Minister of Finance is working with many of us to accomplish that.
In looking at the world, the challenges are vast. To achieve the political, economic and social emancipation of people, this must be done through education, trade and diplomacy. That is the route to peace. If we use the array of tools we have, we can begin to address the antecedents and underlying problems that exist. I will give an example.
It is wonderful, in fact truly outstanding, that Canadians from coast to coast have donated so much to the disaster in southeast Asia. However, let us also not forget other areas of the world. As an example, in the eastern Congo alone, 31,000 innocent civilians die every month as a result of conflict. In January I was in South Africa. Day in and day out the equivalent of two 747s fully loaded with people crash into the ground; 670 people die every day from HIV-AIDS. I have spoken about this before in the House. There is no threat to our species greater than that disease. While we have spent a lot of money internationally on this, the amount of money pales in comparison to the larger challenge with which we are faced.
However, is not only how much money we spend, but how we spend it. If we look at the continent of Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa where the majority of failed or failing states are, while the countries themselves are very poor, the people are impoverished. Sub-Saharan Africa has 40% of the world's natural resources: oil, gold, diamonds, minerals, semi-precious materials, timber, hydro power. The list is endless and yet curiously those countries that have the most number of resources have the greatest amount of poverty. The Sudan has vast oil wells, but two million people are dead and four million people homeless. People are being slaughtered right now. People live in abject poverty. I have been in refugee camps and it is a sight that is beyond belief.
A central theme in all of that is not in ignorance or in the lack of engagement on the part of the world in terms of aid. It is the lack of engagement on the part of the world in terms of leaders who are willing to abuse their positions, kill civilians and destroy decades of social development by their countries and the international community because they are corrupt, venal dictators. A case in point right now is Zimbabwe, a former breadbasket of the world that exported food to the world food program, which is now prepared to suffer the potential deaths of two million of its civilians by starvation. Why? Its leader, Robert Mugabe, is killing his people in order to retain power.
The point I am trying to make is that this is not an issue of a lack of aid money getting to countries. It is a lack of interest and engagement by the international community in holding these leaders to task.
The Prime Minister's new initiative, the L-20, is one that has hope for the world. By using these 20 leaders who represent the east, the west, the north and the south, we can develop and embrace a critical mass of leaders who are prepared to say no to the past, yes to the future and yes to breathing life into the multiple array of treaties that we have all signed on to, to save children, to prevent genocide, to stop torture and everything else in between.
Last week was the 60th anniversary and commemoration of Auschwitz where the death of more than six million Jews and other minorities in western Europe took place. The world once again said that we would never again allow this to happen. However time and time again, day in and day out, year in and year out, genocides occur. Why? It is because we have not learned our lessons. We have not developed a multilateral framework to prevent these disasters, and they are eminently preventable. These are not acts of God. These are acts by a small number of venal, corrupt, ruthless, murderous individuals who have power in countries and who are prepared to exercise that power at the expense of their civilians and in a way that causes the mass deaths of innocent people.
The L-20 is a new way of working with the international community to develop, embrace and implement those solutions.
The other solution is Canada Corps, a brilliant suggestion by the Prime Minister and our government to send abroad the best that Canada has to offer. It is a work in progress but what will it look like? We have something called Canada Executive Services overseas which is a group that takes retired people to places where they can use their expertise abroad. What if we were to ask Canadians throughout the country who had a certain expertise, such as agronomists, hydrologists, engineers, physicians, nurses and teachers, if they wanted to go to a developing country? We would pay for them to go to those countries and teach people to teach themselves and to teach health care workers on the ground. We could help those countries rebuild their social and economic infrastructures by exporting the best that we have to those countries.
Imagine if Canada Corps were made up of individuals like that in our country who were prepared to serve, not only here but also abroad. What a wonderful legacy that would be and how practical that would be because many of these countries have incredibly talented people who need a bit of a hand up. If we engage them we can go far.
One part of that might be the element of good economics and a reasonable tax system. For a lot of developing countries, if they want to get their feet on the ground and they have a lot of resources, good governance and an appropriate tax structure that will enable the country to reap the value of those resources and help the people of their country, it would be an enormous benefit.
Our government has put forth a number of innovative solutions that will help Canadians from coast to coast to deal with things that people care about at the dinner table, such as putting food on the table, getting jobs, their health care and other social benefits. We aim to continue to do that under the umbrella of living responsibly and by economically putting forth a plan that involves surplus budgets in the future.
Sound economic management and responsible social development are the cornerstones of this government. We will continue to adopt that stance.
