1991-03-04

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Friday, March 1, consideration of the motion of Mr. Wilson (Etobicoke Centre) that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government; and the amendment of Mr. Gray (Windsor West) (p. 17722).
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paproski):: When debate ended on Friday, March 1, the hon. member for Surrey North had eight minutes remaining in debate, plus ten minutes of questions and comments.


Mr. Jim Karpoff (Surrey North):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to resume the debate I started on Friday concerning the cutbacks in the budget.
On Friday, I spent most of my time looking at the impact of the cuts to Established Programs Financing, particularly the impact it was going to have on our medicare system, which is now under grave threat from successive budgets by this government.
Today, I want to take a few minutes to talk about the Canada Assistance Plan, which again was a partnership between the province and the federal government. It was a partnership very much like medicare, in which the province and the federal government agreed to share 50 per cent, with the object of alleviating poverty and dealing with child abuse and neglect, and the causes thereof.
In most partnerships, the agreement is that both parties must agree before there are significant changes. However, we have seen in the last two years that this government has unilaterally decided it is going to abandon the concept of partnership with Canadian provinces and abandon the kinds of goals and aims that are set out in the Canada Assistance Plan. It has said that it is going to limit the growth of funding to three provinces: Alberta, B.C. and Ontario.
I think that the Speaker and the House should be aware that this involves just under 50 per cent of the people who are in need of assistance and 50 per cent of the children who are in need of protection in this country. The government is suddenly breaking up the partnership, which affects a large percentage of those who have been assisted by the Canada Assistance Plan.
The government has indicated that the cuts may be as low as $75 million to $80 million a year. The provinces of course have calculated that the significance is going to be dramatically higher, in the area of $400 and some million this year and $600 million next year.
Part of this increase is caused by the dramatic increase in unemployment, which of course is caused by the fiscal monetary policy of the government. But the provinces are being told that they have to pick up the consequences of higher income assistance case loads and more people becoming dependent because of unemployment, and that the federal government is not going to be involved in the cost of that. It is going to dump it on the provinces; it is going to break up the partnership.
A week ago the Minister of National Health and Welfare, with great fanfare, announced his family violence program or initiative against family violence: $136 million spread over five years. There is $23.6 million this year, out of which the minister himself said only $15 million was new money. At the same time, the cost to the provinces is going to be $400 million.
What does the Canada Assistance Plan fund? It funds investigation of child abuse. It funds counselling of family problems. It funds the operation of shelters,

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including shelters for battered women. It funds the treatment of children who have been sexually abused. It funds alternate care for children.
On the one hand, with great fanfare, the minister announced a program with $15 million or $22 million in a year and at the same time takes away from the provinces $400 million that is designed to do that very thing. No wonder the provinces are beginning to ask: Where is the partnership? Where is the trust that is normally involved in a partnership?
It simply is not good enough for the government to try flimflam financing, to try this shuffle the peas concept of moving money around and announcing that it is starting new programs when in fact the very core or heart of the ability of the provinces to finance the services that would go a long way in dealing with family violence has been reduced.
The other area of this budget that impacts very much upon families is the reduction in social housing. There is another 15 per cent reduction per year in the commitment toward new social housing; $86 million for all of Canada for a year. My own riding could easily take the whole budget for social housing in Canada and still have a backlog and still have a need.
There seems to be a deliberate, two-pronged attack in this budget. One is the erosion of all social programs: social housing, medicare, and the Canada Assistance Plan. It is the type of erosion people talked about during the free trade debate, that one of the goals of this government was to Americanize our social security and health care systems, to Balkanize it, to fractionalize it, to privatize it, and to make it equal to the United States.
Most of us know that it would be disastrous for working Canadians and Canadians with limited income if the government were able to achieve its goal of harmonization with the United States.
The other goal of this government, as seen in this budget, seems simply to be to dump the problem on to the provinces. It seems simply to say: "We do not understand fair taxation. We do not understand how we can bring in and maintain our social programs. If only we had a proper monetary policy so that high interest rates were not driving up the deficit. We do not understand how we can have fair taxation for profitable corporations
to pay at least a minimal tax. What we will do, because we do not understand or have no will, is we will simply dump the problem on to the provinces and let the provinces try to figure out how they are going to deal with the financial consequences".
In my own municipality of Surrey I know how the province is going to deal with it. Unfortunately, it is simply going to say that the necessary additional beds for Surrey Memorial Hospital are not there. They can no longer afford to finance them. They will not worry about the fact that we only have 1.1 acute care beds per 1,000 population, compared to the average of 3.3 beds across the province or the goal set by most organizations and medical people of about 3.4 acute care beds per 1,000 population. They will simply not be in a position to finance any additional medical facilities. They will simply dump the problem further down on the community. It is the same with post-secondary education. The cutbacks mean that the provinces are going to have less money, which simply means that they are going to say to a municipality like mine that we cannot expand Kwantlen College, that we cannot worry about the fact that there were thousands of students turned away this year; that they simply do not have the money.
In summation, this budget, particularly in the area of social services and health care, means that the federal government has abandoned its partnership with the provinces in providing services to the people of Canada.


Mr. Lyle Vanclief (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who was just speaking was making some comments throughout his speech about health care. I note with interest lately that the newly elected premier of Ontario has realized that it is a lot harder to produce than it is to talk. Comments are already being made about the benefits of health care, that maybe there should be a type of clawback tax put in place for those who benefit from health care services in our country.
I just wonder if the member would care to comment on that. Is this his view, that a Canadian who receives the benefit of our medical services and health care services should be taxed as a taxable benefit and therefore have a clawback type tax in place? Is that the member's view?


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Mr. Speaker, I think the premier of Ontario is beginning to realize the financial shambles that the previous Liberal government left them in. He
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was told during the election that there was a $23 million surplus, and now he finds out there is a three-quarter of a billion dollar deficit. And, yes, he is having to make some hard choices.
As far as comments that there should be a clawback are concerned, the only people I have ever heard talking about a clawback are the Tories and the Liberals. Certainly the New Democratic Party has always stood against any type of fee for service, any type of two-tiered health care system, anything that prevents accessibility to our health care system.
It has been proven time and time again that if those kinds of systems are brought in, the only people who are hurt are the poor. It does nothing at all to assist in the curtailment of costs. It does nothing to rationalize properly our health care system or services. Therefore, I would certainly reject any type of clawback system in terms of health care.


Ms. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague to comment on the Canadian unity aspects of this budget.
To me it is a great tragedy that this budget is a strong blow to Canadian unity, at the very time when we should be building our pride in being Canadian. It seems to me universal medicare and our social programs and our post-secondary education programs are being undermined. When we ask Canadians what makes them proud to be a Canadian, those are the very things they will mention first. This government in this budget is undermining them.
I would like to ask my colleague if he would comment again on the consequences of the federal government withdrawing financing and, in effect, withdrawing any kind of national power in the development and the ensuring of universal medicare and social programs.


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: I think there is a great threat to unity in this budget. The Conservatives feel that the whole question of how you build a nation is simply a matter of dealing and tinkering with constitutional problems. Most citizens in this country are much more concerned about the unifying forces that they understand as their rights and obligations within the country.
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They are very proud of medicare. They feel it is one of the things that has held this country together, that we do have a national program, that we do have national standards, and that Canadians do not fear illness in the same way that Americans do. Americans always fear they will become totally bankrupt if they get a major illness and are under insured. Even the ones who carry insurance find that a year later they will not be reinsured in the United States.
One of the more interesting programs which I think people should watch is a documentary which Walter Cronkite did, comparing the American and Canadian health care systems, because it showed that we do have problems. Those problems are mainly not enough financing to keep up with the increase in technology. However, it did show in terms of the well-being of Canadians and their ability to cope and deal with health problems, we were far ahead.
There are many things in this budget that I am concerned about not only from the program point of view, but also their impact on unity. This is a step towards this term that my finance minister in B.C. Mr. Couvelier likes to talk about, disentanglement. What it means is that the federal government is starting to, without even negotiating, throw up their hands and say to the provinces, "We are going to get out of certain areas. We are not going to be partners in certain areas. We are not going to even wait for a constitutional conference or constitutional change. We are simply going to abandon medicare. We are simply going to abandon our obligation to social programs".
In the fundamental sense, that is probably going to have more impact on the unity in this country than any other significant matter.


Mr. Brian L. Gardiner (Prince George-Bulkley Valley):: Mr. Speaker, I want to make a brief comment and ask the member who made, I think, some very important and reasonable comments about how this budget is going to help destroy medicare in Canada.
He had just started touching on the question I would like to put to him when he made reference to the finance minister in British Columbia, our home province and the current premier of B.C., who I believe the member has had some experience with in local governments when

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Mr. Vander Zalm was a Liberal. My constituents are asking me questions and perhaps there is some good political advice I can get from the member.
Mr. Vander Zalm in B.C. on the one hand talks about how the federal government has to pull back out of health care, perhaps do away with the fledgling forestry department and cut federal spending. Yet at the same time, when the federal government does cut funding to the province of British Columbia, he is taking the federal government to court, challenging the actions of the federal government.
The question I would like to put to the member is this. What kind of political approach is this from the premier of British Columbia? Is there some kind of consistent argument we might be able to see in what Mr. Vander Zalm is saying or is it a case really where Social Credit, Conservatives and Liberals are really talking about of the same thing, and that is the destruction of much of what we have come to know as Canada?


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: I have a tendency to try to forget my experience with the premier when he was the Liberal mayor of Surrey and I was an alderman on Surrey Council. At that time he was very erratic. I guess over the years he has continued to be very erratic.
Certainly I do not really look at his statements where one day he says that the federal government should get out of medicare. The next day when the federal government starts to withdraw he says: "No, that's wrong". That type of erratic behaviour certainly does not show any consistent leadership.
I guess I am not surprised after being involved with him for 20 years, and knowing his style and his erratic approach to politics and social problems and issues that that is true. However, I am more concerned about the inconsistencies we see evolving in Canada from the government in terms of policy.
At one time the sharing of costs was 50-50. The provinces paid 50; the federal government paid 50. Now the provinces are paying 63 per cent of health care costs and the federal government 37 per cent. With the budget that was brought in last week, I am sure this figure will go down to much more like 65-35. That, of course, is the end of any equal partnership.


Mr. Ken Hughes (Macleod):: Mr. Speaker, I would really like to bring this debate back to a sense of reality
rather than the sense of mythology that has been built up by my colleagues opposite from over the mountains.
In that vein I am pleased to speak on the budget presented in this House last week by the Hon. Michael Wilson, Minister of Finance. This is an important blueprint for the economic health of Canada, both over the next year and in years subsequent.
The people of Macleod have told me that they want fiscal responsibility from the federal government. We want a bright financial future for our children, not one that has been mortgaged away. Whether I am in Vulcan, Red Deer Lake, or in the Crow's Nest Pass, the message remains the same: "Let's get Canada's financial house in order".
This budget sets out an achievable plan which will meet these concerns I so often hear from fellow Albertans in southern Alberta. It puts in legislation for the first time-this is a historic moment-the requirement for government to restrain spending. It is a major milestone.
When I was first elected to this House in 1988 I brought an important message from the people of Macleod: Restrain government spending and get the deficit under control.
Thoughtful southern Albertans tell me above anything else, their biggest concern is Canada's deficit. They realize that our country has been living well beyond its means and governments have to be ready to say: "Enough is enough".
The finance minister has made it abundantly clear: "Enough is enough".
Our national debt will soon reach $400 billion. That is $15,000 for every man, woman, and child. Interest on this debt is now the single largest expense faced by the government. Interest on the debt alone will cost more than $43 billion next year. That is more money than is spent on old age security, on unemployment insurance, and family allowances combined. It will take tough, determined action to solve Canada's fundamental economic and fiscal problems.
Our government has declared all-out war on the deficit. We have listened to Canadians who have told us to use the GST as a tool to fight the deficit and just as in Alberta we used the Alberta Heritage Savings and Trust Fund for surplus funds, now at the federal level we have
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created and are using the Debt Servicing and Reduction Fund to manage the debt.
I must give credit to my colleagues from Lethbridge, from the neighbouring riding to mine, because he has been working away on this, I know, ever since I have been in the House and I know he worked on it before. As an important means to ensure that next time there is an election, and the time there is an election after that, that spending does not become the way to go, that restraint continues to remain an important objective of this government. I give my colleague from Lethbridge full credit for determinedly pursued this question. I know other members worked with him as well.
All GST revenues will be used to bring the public debt under control. Also flowing into that fund will be revenues from the sale of Crown corporations and contributions by individuals and organizations.
The people of Macleod have made it loud and clear that they do not want the GST to be a cash cow to be milked by any government. They do not want revenues from the new tax, the replacement tax, to be used for new and expensive programs. I have been told countless times by constituents at public meetings, coffee shops and on the street that the GST should be used to fight the deficit. It is good advice, and the government has heeded that advice.
With the creation of the Debt Servicing and Reduction Fund, Canadians are now reassured that GST revenues will not be used for new program creation. Legislation will be introduced with that very goal in mind. Of course, as is the case with all government accounts, this fund will be reviewed annually by the Auditor General. Revenues going into the fund will be applied first against the cost of servicing the debt, that is, the interest, and as revenues grow over time, as the economy grows, these revenues will be used to reduce outstanding debt. This is further evidence of the commitment to fight the deficit and the national debt.
To ensure that this spending track is met, the government will legislate expenditure limits on annual program spending for the next five years. Of course, some flexibility will be provided to meet a very limited set of contingencies. This will change significantly the way
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government manages its expenditures. While new programs to meet new needs will be possible, they will have to be funded from the total legislated spending ceiling.
This government is the first in Canada's history to legislate a ceiling on its spending. It is an historic development and a critical step which helps the House of Commons and the elected government place restraint upon and give political direction to the bureaucracies and the bureaucrats that serve the government and the people of Canada. Of course, this will be of interest to students of public policy because I believe it is a good policy.
But the achievement is also critical to those who serve as elected representatives of Canada. The people have been calling for restraint and through these measures the government of Canada, the House of Commons, is meeting those demands. Much of the nation is now facing recession and this government is going to ensure that the will of the people of Canada is reflected in the federal system. That is only appropriate and it is only fair to all Canadians.
Canadians have told us to control federal spending. We have responded. Legislation will limit growth and total federal program spending to just 3 per cent per year after 1991-92. This is proof positive of the government's commitment in its fight against the deficit.
If you were to talk to people on the street in Longview or Fort Macleod or other communities in southern Alberta within my riding, you would quickly realize that fiscal restraint is what they want. Incidentally, I might note the hon. member for Kamloops sent me a note recently, as he did to all western members, encouraging them to vote against this budget, create an election. This is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard. Well, the hon. member should grow up. He was bom, in all places, in High River, Alberta. He grew up in Longview, Alberta. Both communities are in my riding, and let me tell you, the folks back home do not want an election. The folks back home do not want us to vote against this budget. They are saying get on with the business of government; get on with the business of restraining expenditures. I do not know where the member from Kamloops has been for those many years since he left Longview, Alberta, but he has wandered a long way.

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Macleod residents do not want to be bought with their own money. Nothing offends them more. They do not want to see lavish government expenditures at the expense of their children. Legislated spending controls provide all Canadians a guarantee of restraint.
Now, if we are to succeed in reducing the deficit, we must practise sustained spending restraint. The government took further action in this budget to restrain program spending and spending on government operations to ensure further reduction of the deficit. The Expenditure Control Plan was announced in 1990 and has now been extended for three years.
This plan affects a wide variety of government spending, but it makes some important exemptions. Those exemptions include: income support programs for seniors, families and veterans; unemployment insurance; equalization; Canada Assistance Plan payments to lower income provinces; and Indian and Inuit programs.
These are all important programs where, quite clearly, this government is demonstrating its commitment to social programs in this country. In fact, the best social program we can provide is a strong economy, employment for Canadians, and the opportunity for Canadians to build their own future. It is through these strong measures that we provide a guarantee of a strong future for all Canadians.
The Expenditure Control Plan will restrain spending growth in a number of areas after 1991-92. For example, these include Canada Assistance Plan payments to the fiscally stronger provinces, funding for science and technology and official development assistance. Other areas of spending will be frozen, such as per capita transfers to the provinces under the Established Program Financing. Even so, total transfers continue to grow with provincial populations.
In all, programs exempt from the extension of the Expenditure Control Plan account for about 60 per cent of program spending and will grow at an annual average rate of 3.9 per cent from 1991-92 to 1995-96. All other spending will grow at an average annual rate of 1.7 per cent. These are tremendous commitments to the need for restraint.
The cost of government operations has been closely controlled since 1984. In real dollar figures, they have actually declined. We intensified this effort in December
1989 with the announcement of several new cost cutting measures.
Canadians want the burden of restraint to fall equally on everyone. My constituents often tell me that they are willing to do their part, but elected officials, civil servants and others in the public sector must be willing to do their share as well. The restraint and efficiency measures introduced to government management are proof that the government has again listened.
The Prime Minister and his cabinet will have their ministerial salaries frozen for one year. Salaries of senators and members of Parliament which currently increase at the rate of inflation minus 1 per cent will be limited to the lesser of that or the average public service settlements.
My constituents want the burden of a weaker economy shared by the civil service. Public servants have not felt the pain of this recession in the same way as do private sector employees. While many people have lost jobs in the private sector, there have been no recent job losses in the public sector, and this is an important question of fairness to all Canadians.
I agree strongly with the government's position not to contemplate civil service wage increases of over 3 per cent a year for the next three years.
I also support the salary limitations placed on executive level bureaucrats and the intention to reduce the number of senior level officials. All Canadians must share the strengths and weaknesses of our economic performance.
These measures will protect jobs, maintain service levels and aid and fight against the deficit. Over the next five years, the government will realize savings of $3.6 billion through these measures.
The government has looked at other areas to reduce its spending as well. I strongly support the government's reconsideration of several large expenditure decisions. The government has looked at a number of questions and has decided it is time to put some of these issues on the back burner and consider them down the road.
I saw newspaper reports earlier last week quoting members opposite, asking the government to increase spending substantially and to ignore the deficit. For example, the member for Essex-Windsor urged the

Minister of Finance to "abandon old Tory deficit cutting policies".
The member for Windsor West said: "The priority at this point has to shift to dealing with the recession." The story goes on to say that "Mr. Gray would not specify how much of an increase in the deficit he would be willing to see".
The last time we were in a recession, the Liberal government of the day ignored the deficit. The deficit doubled from $14 billion to $28 billion per year during that period. That is truly offensive. We cannot afford to do that now. We are still paying the price of those misguided policies of the early 1980s.
The opposition seems to believe that spending more money will make the world's problems go away. It did not work in the past and it is not going to work now. Canadians are telling all politicians that they cannot continue spending that they do not have. Canadians are right.
The people of Macleod have stated clearly that they want the deficit tackled. Our deficit targets are right in line. Despite recessionary pressures, despite the tremendous difficulties of keeping the deficit to where it is now, down to $30.5 billion, there were tremendous pressures to increase that deficit. I commend the Minister of Finance for his tremendous achievement in keeping it at that level.
In 1992-93, with recovery and with lower interest rates, the deficit will fall below $25 billion for the first time in a decade. The need for new federal borrowing in financial markets, the need for us to go out and ask to borrow money from others in other parts of the world or from other Canadians, will be eliminated in 1993-94. That will be a great day for Canada.
The deficit is the government's number one priority, but we have to remain mindful, and we do remain mindful, of the current recession. The government has allocated extra money to where it is needed most. Program spending will increase by $7.5 billion in the next fiscal year.
The majority of this increase will go to three areas: $3 billion will go to the assistance of the unemployed, an important contribution in that area; $1.6 billion will go to the elderly; and $1.3 billion for farmers who face tough times.
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This budget allocation for agriculture is critically important in my riding of Macleod as it is based primarily on agriculture, much of the riding. The $1.3 billion commitment in the budget is the government's recognition, yet again. We have done this year after year after year under this government, the recognition of the importance of agriculture in the Canadian economy and the social fabric of so much of rural and small-town Canada. It is good news for agriculture, it is good news for the small communities that depend on agriculture and so it is good news for the whole riding of Macleod.
Farm leaders across Canada were quick to offer their praise for the budget. Alex Graham, chairman of the Prairie Wheat Pools said; "It's a real positive sign of government's commitment to agriculture". Don Knoerr, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture said: "You obviously have to be pleased that the need of farmers, though desperate, has been recognized by the federal government". Harvey McEwen, president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association said: "It's an extremely good sign. The funding has bought us time to dig ourselves out of this."
There can be no doubt of the importance agriculture plays in Canada's economy. The government has recognized this in this budget and it is supported by the agricultural community. I might add that it is something that is critically important across western Canada.
As a member of Parliament from western Canada, I am heartened once again by the commitment shown and the leadership shown by the Minister of Agriculture, and to the commitment of this government to follow through, to support our farmers in the midst of this, particularly, the international trade war between the Americans and the Europeans. This has been a problem for all grain producing countries for years and we are all optimistic that through the negotiations at GATT over the next year or two that we actually will get to a point to deal with some of these issues in the international context.
In the meantime, this government stands by agriculture.
In conclusion, the 1991-92 federal budget, I think, can be best described as tough but fair. The government has confronted the deficit head on, but all Canadians will share the burden. The budget is a financial blueprint to brighter economic times and a more secure future for

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our children and grandchildren. More important, it is what Canadians want.
As I said earlier, the people of Macleod sent a message with me when I was elected in 1988. One of those messages was to restrain government spending and get the deficit under control. This budget reflects what my constituents have requested.


Mr. Fred J. Mifflin (Bonavista-THnity-Conception):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question as well as a comment on some of the figures that were quoted by the hon. member for Macleod. He talked about the extra spending by the government, and I believe he mentioned a figure of $3 billion for unemployment insurance payments.
I want to make it clear to those who are listening to that statement. It sounds as if this is coming directly on behalf of the largesse of the government. It is not quite that simple. The government, as the hon. member knows-and I see him smiling over there-is not lashing out with $3 billion to the unemployment insurance fund. Indeed, I am sure the hon. member will recall, as will other members in the House, that Bill C-21 effectively took the government out of the unemployment insurance business. It was my understanding that, previous to this, the government paid about 25 per cent-in fact, I think it was 26 per cent-of all of the unemployment insurance money. In the days when the unemployment insurance fund was worth around $13 billion, the government contributed around $3 billion.
That $3 billion that it used to contribute is not the $3 billion that it is contributing that is referred to by the hon. member. Indeed, I do believe that there has been some recanting on the part of the government, or change of heart, if you like, in how that money has been collected.
The Minister of Finance in his budget speech last week said that there were no new tax increases. A tax increase comes in many forms-and I do not want to talk about the cigarette tax. But an area that really appalled me and indeed has a lot of my constituents, and I am sure Canadians all across the country, in a bit of an uproar is the bizarre increase in unemployment insurance premiums, to the tune of 24 per cent, on both the part of the employee and the employer. Taken in itself, I think that
is pretty terrible. But when you add it to the percentage increase that had occurred as a result of Bill C-21, raising the unemployment insurance premiums for the individual essentially 50 per cent in about a year and a half and the same for the employers, then we have a number of things happening. We have the employees paying tax money so that they can get it back in the form of unemployment insurance; and the employers have to pay more. So, what we have is a tax increase for the individual employees, who in many cases cannot afford another cent from their pay cheques; and indeed the businesses, many of which are small businesses, have to fork over more payments as well.
This, I can assure the hon. member, may be given by the government, but it is given by the government because it is received from the government by those people who are paying the extra unemployment insurance premiums to make up in the next year or two, depending on how you count it and depending on how many we have employed, between $2 billion and $3 billion. So, that equation is about right.
I would like the hon. member, in all fairness, to clarify that.


Kenneth Gardner Hughes: I thank my hon. colleague opposite for his very thoughtful intervention. But he knows as well as any other member in this House that what the government has asked for is an additional $2.70 a week. He knows as well as any other member in the House that what is required in this country is an unemployment insurance program that is going to be fully funded, that is going to be able to provide the benefits to Canadians who are unemployed. He knows that the people who are going to be able to pay for this are the Canadians who are employed, and that it is only fair that that should be the case.
I think he recognizes that the goal here is to provide for real unemployment insurance. "Insurance" is the name of the program. The burden falls fairly on Canadians who are employed, and the benefits fall fairly to those Canadians who are temporarily unemployed before they get back into the market. I think the hon. member would like to paint this from a certain perspective and that is his prerogative as a member of the House. I see him smiling. We all recognize that that is what he is trying to do.
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Realistically, you have to deal with questions like this in a real world. Who is going to pay for additional money if it is just going to be going into the deficit? It is going to be the hon. member's children, my children and the children of our constituents today. You cannot continue to force the deficit off into the future where somebody down the road is going to pay. You have got to start dealing with the question now and here today.


Mr. John Manley (Ottawa South):: Mr. Speaker, it is very illuminating to hear a speech from the hon. member in which he talks about the hardships, that the deficit is causing the need for cutbacks. We are ready to slash those civil servants down in Ottawa. The fact that there is the same number as there were back in 1974 is not mentioned. But when it comes to $1.3 billion for agriculture, that is okay. That is really important that we get money to those farmers.
We do not worry about spending money on job creation. After all, our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay for that because it is going to be added to the deficit. It is okay if 1.5 million Canadians are out of work. It is okay if we lose 288,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector, half of them permanently. But send that $1.3 billion out to Macleod, Alberta, because that is where we need it.
I would like to ask the hon. member what he thinks of this. This is what the present Minister of Finance had to say about governments devoting money to job creation during the last recession when the government at that time put $500 million into job creation. This is what he said, and I quote: "The minister announced a $500 million job creation program. I guess we have to say, Mr. Speaker, it is a step in the right direction. They have addressed the problem of unemployment in this budget, but it is a very small step. Five hundred million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but it is $300 per unemployed worker and amounts to some one-quarter of 1 per cent of the total size of our economy today".
Does the hon. member agree with the present Minister of Finance when he expressed the view in 1982 that governments should devote resources to job creation, or does he agree with the Minister of Finance today who says: "Let the unemployed just sit out there and stew without jobs"?
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Kenneth Gardner Hughes: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to respond to that interjection. I hope that my hon. colleague is around long enough to have words thrown back in his face eight or ten years after the fact as well, when times are different, when times are changed, when circumstances are different.
Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, times are very different between now and the way they were in the early eighties. Let me give one example. The first example is the level that interest rates achieved in the early 1980s and the difference that we have been able to achieve through restraining the supply of money in this country, through fiscal matters and monetary policy instruments. We have been able to ensure that the interest rates did not get anywhere near the levels that were achieved by the Liberal government in the early 1980s when they were so irresponsible.
My hon. friend says that we should not support agriculture.


John Paul Manley: I did not say that. I said we should be spending money on agriculture.


Kenneth Gardner Hughes: He said, we should not be spending money on agriculture. Now, wait a minute. What are we doing in agriculture? What we are doing in agriculture is we are investing to ensure that we have an agricultural system left, that we have the family farm left at the end of this downturn in the international economy. We are investing in a sector that is fundamental to the social and economic health of this country.
I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, this is the most outlandish statement I have heard this member make so far, questioning what is wrong-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On a point of order, the hon. member for Ottawa South.


John Paul Manley: I think the member for Macleod, when he examines the "blues" will discover he has misquoted me. I am simply putting his comments with respect to funding for agriculture in juxtaposition to his comments on funding for other job creation.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. member for Macleod has one minute remaining.


Kenneth Gardner Hughes: Mr. Speaker, far be it from me to misrepresent any suggestions the hon. member has made in the House. I simply want to assure him that I will do everything I can to ensure that farmers in western Canada are supported when we are in tough times. Clearly, it is a tough time that is going to stretch for a

March 4, 1991
The Budget
few years. We have been through this for three or four years already and it is probably going to last for a couple of more years.
We have taken the incredible step of having put in place a safety net for farmers across western Canada to which they contribute a very large percentage and which will help them predict in the spring how much money they are going to have in the fall. This is a tremendous example of the kinds of support we are putting place. We are not just handing money out the door. We are not just shovelling money out the door. We are putting a system in place that puts the responsibility on the farmer to take steps to protect themselves in what is a very difficult international marketplace. That is a fully justifiable system of support for agriculture.
I see my time is up.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, last year when I had the opportunity to address this House on the subject of the federal budget, I compared the Minister of Finance to the emperor who had no clothes. I said that, lurking in the budget document of one year ago, could be found a tacit admission of failure on the part of the minister.
While he was not prepared to admit until the month of October that Canada was enduring a recession, it seemed plain enough to me at the time, that the minister's empty rhetoric signalled a recession under way or about to begin, as well as the realization that past policies had not worked.
Well, the made-in-Canada recession of 1990-91 is now beginning its twelfth month. Almost 1.5 million Canadians are unemployed and unlike last year when it was necessary for the minister's deception to be pointed out, this year it is plain for all to see that this is a minister and a government that have no ideas, no vision for the future, no compassion for the unemployed and homeless and nothing to offer the people of Canada at this time.
Many Canadians now feel that they do not have much to which they can look forward and, regrettably, with the presentation of the 1991 budget, the Conservative government has, if anything, contributed to the despair and discontent that plagues Canada at this time.

So we have to add this to the tragic list of a record 5,991 bankruptcies recorded in January. The Tory government has no vision for the future. Theirs is a vision that will bankrupt the country. This Budget smells of despair.

In his own presentation to Parliament, the finance minister has as much as admitted that the economic crisis he brought on is now beyond his control. While the minister says that this budget is designed to give Canadians confidence, that it provides leadership and direction, his own projections quickly make it impossible to share the optimism inherent in the rhetoric. His so-called road to recovery is absolutely meaningless for the
1.5	million Canadians whom he says will stay unemployed for 1991 and 1992.
His recent conversion to concern about high interest rates provides no prospect for relief for mortgage holders and small businesses that will still be confronted, according to the minister, with interest rates around 10 per cent and real rates of about 7 per cent. These projections indicate that the Canadian dollar will remain high and, therefore, Canadian exports will continue to be at a competitive disadvantage.
Furthermore, the government treats the deficit problem in this country as strictly a numbers game with no apparent appreciation for the need to invest in people.

Once again, the Tories prove they don't know what they are doing. The 1991 Budget shows they are as lost as they have been for the past seven years.

In the final analysis, they have allowed Canada to drift into engagement in fierce competition in an unforgiving global economy without being equipped to meet the challenge.
Worse still, much of the current economic hardship faced by Canadians was deliberately planned by the government. In the Prime Minister's own words: "We have induced an economic slowdown".
March 4, 1991


Mr. Speaker:: It being two o'clock, the House will now proceed to Statements by Members, pursuant to Standing Order 31.


STATEMENTS PURSUANT TO S. O. 31
Mr. Mac Harb (Ottawa Centre):: Mr. Speaker, the shelters for the homeless across Canada are full and overflowing. The best estimate of the number of homeless is vague; somewhere between 130,000 and 250,000 people.
The recent budget has sent another crippling blow to these homeless Canadians. The government has drastically reduced the effectiveness of the federal housing program by cutting new housing initiatives.
According to the Canadian Housing Renewal Association, the 15 per cent cut will result in the loss of more than 3,000 desperately needed housing units. By extending those cuts into 1995-96, we will have lost more than $400 million from the housing budget and thousands of homes for Canadians.
When will the government recognize the problem of the homeless in this country? When will the government devote the necessary time and resources, first, to find out exactly how many Canadians are homeless and, second, take a leadership role in co-ordinating the efforts of all levels of government and the private sector to ensure that adequate housing is available to all Canadians?


CANADA GAMES
Mr. Guy Saint-Julien (Abitibi):: Mr. Speaker, although they lost the Canada Games flag by one point, Quebec athletes behaved like winners at the closing ceremonies in Charlottetown yesterday. They were the first to rise to give Ontario a standing ovation when it was awarded the games flag.
Claude Hardy, who headed Quebec's delegation, said that to win the flag, they had to stay up there, and that is what they did.
Quebec athletes won 150 medals, including 63 gold, and set two new games records. Quebec finished one point behind Ontario, losing 256.5 to 257.5.
Three cheers for our Quebec athletes!


FISHERIES
Brian L. Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, year after year the fishing fleets of the European community have taken more fish than they agreed to take. The word for this is theft. The Europeans are stealing from the fishing families and communities throughout Atlantic Canada. While this federal government imposes severe cuts on Canadian fishermen, it has proven itself incapable of stopping the Europeans from overfishing year in and year out.
In 1990, the Europeans took five times more fish than they agreed to take in the area beyond Canada's 200-mile limit.
From Dr. Les Harris in his report on northern cod, the Fisheries Council of Canada, fishing communities and provincial governments the call has been the same: stop foreign overfishing and extend jurisdiction.
It is time to put the Europeans on notice. It is either stop overfishing or next year find themselves fishing inside newly claimed Canadian waters.
It is time for this federal government to start protecting the interests and futures of Canadian fishing families and communities.


THE LATE HELEN HUNLEY LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF ALBERTA
Mr. Doug Fee (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, this is the final week in the term of the 12th Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Alberta. As an Albertan and as a friend of Her Honour, it is appropriate to pay tribute to Her Honour Helen Hunley.
Ms. Hunley has had an outstanding career, serving first as a lieutenant in the Canadian Women's Army Corps in World War II, a successful business person, a counsellor and mayor of Rocky Mountain House, and later a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.

March 4, 1991
She served in our provincial cabinet as Solicitor General and Minister of Social Services and Community Health. She retired from active politics in 1979 but was prevailed upon to accept the position of Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta in 1985.
Her Honour tackled this position as she has everything else in her life, by committing herself completely to the role. She has done absolutely everything that could be expected of a Lieutenant-Governor and has done it well. She has fulfilled her vice-regal duties with dignity and dedication and has earned the respect and admiration of all Albertans.


IMMIGRATION
James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Mr. Speaker, on humanitarian grounds, I call upon the Minister of Employment and Immigration to issue Arthur and Helena Gras and their two children a permit to remain in Canada.
Mr. Gras, a Polish sailor, and his family are now under threat of deportation after being in Canada seeking refugee status for three years.
Humanitarian grounds are based on the fact that both children are Canadian citizens. One child suffers from a rare medical condition that doctors have verified cannot be adequately treated in Poland. Mr. Gras, if he had not been caught in the refugee backlog, would have been deemed a political refugee when he first arrived in Canada in 1988. Mr. Gras has been able to secure employment and the family has adjusted well to Canada.
I ask the minister to show compassion and common sense and stop the deportation of the Gras family.


GOVERNMENT OF CHINA
Mrs. Beryl Gaffney (Nepean):: Mr. Speaker, in June 1989 the world watched in horror as the Chinese government brutally crushed a pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square.
That same government has now quietly stepped up its trials and sentencing of participants of the pro-democracy movement, perhaps because the world's attention continues to be focused on the situation in the Persian Gulf.
There is almost total secrecy surrounding the trials in China. Observers from Canada and other western nations have been thwarted in their efforts to monitor this further oppression by the Chinese government.
The war in the gulf is over and, as we work for a new world order, let us not forget there are hundreds, perhaps thousand, of young people in China behind bars and facing an uncertain future, all because they wanted their government to move more quickly toward democratic reform.
We in Canada can and must stand up for the principle of free expression and oppose the use of force against unarmed demonstrators. The Chinese government must be made aware, in no uncertain terms, that Canada is watching.


UNITED NATIONS
Mr. Blaine A. Thacker (Lethbridge):: Mr. Speaker, the success of the United Nations military action against Iraq will act as a precedent and deterrent to other bullies who attack legitimate nations.
However, there is another benefit less obvious. It will no longer be necessary for countries to spend billions and billions of dollars for weapons to protect themselves from others. In short, they can now choose to spend money on economic development and social programs and rely on the United Nations to defend their legitimate borders.
I am sure you will agree, Mr. Speaker, that this is a legitimate concept for Canada to promote at the United Nations and elsewhere.


SPICER COMMISSION
Mr. Gilles Rocheleau (Hull-Aylmer):: Mr. Speaker, Keith Spicer's statement that Canadians could not care less how the Spicer Commission is administered is outrageous, at a time when the government is making Canadian taxpayers pay for its own administrative incompetence.
Taxpayers do care how the Spicer Commission is administered.


Taxpayers do care about the $25 million they will have to pay for a so-called commission that has lost all credibility.
Quebecers do care about Robert Normand's statements that the Spicer Commission has trivialized Quebec issues.
Mr. Spicer has shown poor judgment and a lack of openness, both to an unacceptable degree.


Mr. Young (Acadie - Bathurst):: You are right!


Gilles Rocheleau: He should resign immediately, and the government should suspend the proceedings of this commission and order an inquiry to clear up what we could already call the Spicer Commission scandal.


CANADIAN ARMED FORCES
Mr. Eugene Bellemare (Carleton-Gloucester):: Mr. Speaker, during the conflict in the Persian Gulf, troops from our Canadian Forces played a major role. Canada did its fair share with all coalition countries in supporting the UN Security Council's resolutions.
During the conflict, many other members of our Forces worked long hours here in Canada to co-ordinate our activities in the Middle East.

I am sure all members of Parliament will agree with my request to have the Minister of National Defence strike a commemorative medal for our members of the Armed Forces. Such a medal would show the appreciation of all Canadians for these dedicated men and women.

Now is the time to show how proud we are of our troops, and I think a medal would be appropriate.


OFFICIAL RESIDENCES
Mr. Ian Waddell (Port Moody-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, this government purports to cut the deficit by saving money, by cutbacks in health, education and the environment.
As a Scots Canadian, we learned a long time ago that you can save money on little things and then you build it up so it becomes a big thing.
I want to suggest to the government that it can save waste in government in little things. I am not just talking about the Minister of Communications' trips and institutions, although it could save on those.
Let us take a look at the official residences: $500,000 was spent on housing in the last six months for the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. For the Leader of the Opposition, $27,000 was spent on furniture so he could move in; $17,600 to paint the place. That is a little bit more than they pay in Beausejour. For linens, $11,000, and at 24 Sussex Drive, $629 was spent for slush matting and $1,080 for pest control.
Who is that? The Bloc Quebecois? I don't know.
My Scottish grandmother once said that if you really want to save money, you add up all the little expenditures and you get a big cut in expenditures. The government should cut this wasteful expenditure in Stornoway and 24 Sussex Drive.


THE BUDGET
Mr. Geoff Wilson (Swift Current-Maple Creek-As-siniboia):: Mr. Speaker, the recent federal budget is right for the times.
Indeed, as the Treasury Board minister said, the present cost and complexity of government operations can no longer be justified to Canadians. Accordingly, this government will legislate mandatory program spending limits. These should have been in place 20 years ago, but it is not too late.
For the first time there will be in place a law putting ceilings on the amount that politicians can spend. Canadians concerned about GST revenues being used to fund new programs will applaud the establishment of the debt servicing and reduction fund, guaranteeing that those revenues will be solely dedicated to deficit reduction.
The Public Service wage cap, reductions in the layers of bureaucratic management, the 10 per cent cut in senior management, and cuts in grants and contributions send welcome signals to Canadians who are sick and tired of the costs of big government.
This government provides the reductions and reforms that are absolutely necessary if government is to have the funds necessary for essential safety net programs and services. It provides the impetus for lower interest rates

Oral Questions
and greater confidence essential to economic recovery for this country.


WORLD SUMMIT ON ARMS CONTROL
Mr. Walter Van  De Walle@St. Albert: Mr. Speaker, Canadians rejoiced with the announcement of the ceasefire in the gulf and the removal of Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait.
Now that the hostilities have ended, we can focus our attention on rebuilding a safe and secure environment for all the peoples of the world, including the Middle East. Canada has shown leadership in proposing a world summit, under the auspices of the United Nations, on the control of instruments of war and weapons of mass destruction. The agenda should include conventional arms, chemical weapons, missile systems, nuclear and biological weapons.
I wish to commend the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for External Affairs for the initiatives they have taken today in proposing a world summit on arms control. This is paramount in establishing a new world order for lasting peace.
This is the time to deal with arms control. This is the time to strengthen the United Nations.


CANADA WINTER GAMES
Mr. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan):: Mr. Speaker, Prince Edward Islanders joined with all Canadians in a celebration of sportsmanship this past Saturday in the co-hosting of the 1991 Canada Winter Games. The closing ceremonies marked the end of two weeks of healthy competition in individual and team sports.
The main theme of the 1991 Canada Winter Games was participation. This year, a record number of athletes showed up, proving that Prince Edward Island could host such an important event. Thousands of spectators, Islanders and visitors alike, came out to enjoy the sporting events.
The sporting events were complemented with the cultural festival called "The Colours of Canada".
The Canada Winter Games were made possible through the dedicated support of Prince Edward Islanders. Over 5,000 volunteers worked to make the Canada Winter Games a great success. In 1991 Prince Edward Island said: "Welcome home, Canada!". Thousands of Canadians responded with overwhelming enthusiasm, and to these people: "We hope to see you again soon".


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Greg Thompson (Carleton-Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, whose words are these: "Governments must conduct themselves like private citizens. Borrow, if necessary, for capital assets such as a new home, but pay as you go for current expenditures, like the groceries"?
He went on to say:
The leaders of the 60s and 70s have placed a first mortgage on the future of Canada. The leaders of the 80s and 90s are placing a second mortgage on the same asset. There is no equity left. We must once and for all put an end to the suffocating debt-load we are placing on the backs of our children.
Who spoke those words? The Minister of Finance? The Prime Minister? No, Mr. Speaker, it was the premier of the province of New Brunswick, Frank McKenna. It sounds as if he agrees with us.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Ms. Sheila Copps (Hamilton East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
On December 3, the Minister of National Health and Welfare stated, and I quote: "No changes to the Canada Health Act are currently being contemplated".
Last week we learned on page 71 of the budget that medicare cutbacks have created a situation where the current Canada Health Act will no longer be able to protect universal health care. This government is already planning new legislation to withhold funds from other areas.
My question for the Prime Minister is: On December 3, did the minister of health misstate the facts, or has he
March 4, 1991

only recently knuckled under to the hack and slash medicare approach of the Minister of Finance?


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, the answer that was given on December 3 still remains. The intention is not to amend the Canada Health Act but to amend other legislation which will protect the Canada Health Act.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, on Friday, the Minister of National Health and Welfare accused the Quebec Minister of Social Affairs of wanting to abolish medicare and destroy our national health care system. Could the Prime Minister inform the House wether he agrees with his Minister of National Health and Welfare, or does he realize that considering the cuts at the federal level, the shoe is actually on the other foot?


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, my comments on Friday were made in reference to the position of the minister from Quebec that the federal government should simply transfer at least $3.6 billion to the province or $14 billion across the board to the provinces and have no say whatsoever in maintaining national standards.
My question to the hon. member for Hamilton East was: Is that the position of the federal Liberal Party of Canada, in view of the fact that she had cited the minister from Quebec as her authority on medicare and federalism.


Sheila Maureen Copps: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.
The Minister of Health and Welfare has made a very serious accusation. He has charged the minister in Quebec with destroying the national health care system.
I would like to ask the Prime Minister whether he agrees with the statements made by his colleague in this House or whether he at least understands that it is the federal cuts of over $1 billion this year that in fact are leading to the death-knell of medicare.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, let me put the question back to my hon. friend.
Oral Questions
Does the hon. member and does her party believe that it is appropriate the federal government should simply transfer $14 billion this year for medicare to the provinces and should have no ability whatsoever to have any voice in the use of that money in the maintenance of national standards with regard to universality, portability, public administration or any of the other standards in medicare? Does she believe that medicare would still exist as a national health insurance scheme?


Hon. Herb Gray (Windsor West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
Yesterday in Montreal the Minister of Finance, after a meeting with provincial finance ministers, apparently speaking of provincial health care programs said, and I quote: "There are going to have to be some changes made".
I ask the minister: Exactly what kind of changes is the Minister of Finance talking about? Is he talking about creating user fees for health care, the shutting down of hospital beds, the elimination of certain medical treatments from coverage from medicare?
How are these kinds of changes consistent with the Canada Health Act? Why is this government trying to destroy medicare by the back door?


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question should bear a consumer warning: "Caution: Listening to these statements may be hazardous to the truth".
Nothing could be further from the truth than the suggestion that the federal government wants to destroy medicare. One thing that is clear, however, is that Canadians are spending some $2,000 per citizen, per year on health care. Looked at in terms of percentage of gross domestic product, only the United States among the western industrialized countries spends a higher percentage of GDP than Canada does on health care.
The real challenge for us in protecting medicare for the future is not simply to continue to inflate the system, but rather to ask ourselves whether the dollars that we are spending are as wisely spent as could be the case.

Oral Questions
For example, I would have hoped that the hon. member would have strongly endorsed the position that was taken by the Minister of Finance, which will reduce by probably 100,000 the number of young Canadians who are smoking and, along the way, save literally thousands of lives and tens of millions of taxpayers' dollars on medicare.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Mr. Speaker, the minister has characterized as being untruthful a direct quote by the Minister of Finance which many of us heard on CBC radio this morning. I will leave it to the Minister of Finance to settle with the Minister of National Health and Welfare on this, but this is an exact quote.
The Minister of Finance laid out the blueprint for the phasing out of federal transfer payments for health care in his own budget document last week. The National Council of Welfare, the government-created advisory body to the Minister of National Health and Welfare, has said, speaking about these cutbacks: "Without federal leverage, provinces could impose user fees-a backward step that would deter poor people in particular from seeking the care they need".
Why does the minister and his government want the provinces to take this kind of backward step?


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, I did not challenge what was said by the Minister of Finance. I challenged what was said by the hon. member for Windsor West when he suggested that the federal government's goal was to destroy medicare by the back door, a view I might mention that is not shared by Madam Begin, the former Liberal Minister of National Health and Welfare. In an article on Saturday in The Globe and Mail: "Medicare will survive," Begin says. "Former health minister says federal cuts not threat to system".
Once again we have the members of the Liberal Party being confused about the total amount of transfers being made between Ottawa and the provinces. At the very same time as they are complaining about reductions in the amount of cash being transferred, they ignore the fact that tax points, which have exactly the same net effect to the federal treasury and to the provincial treasury, are increasing and that the growth in transfers
from the federal government to the provinces will be more than 1 per cent for EPF this year.
If hon. members wish to protect medicare, it is important we put the federal government's finances in place so that we can ensure the stability of Canada's social programs for the future.


THE BUDGET
Mr. Steven W. Langdon (Essex-Windsor):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. Today, leading indicators continued to drop dramatically. The recession continues. However, according to the Budget, all is well, as the government says on page 52: "-consumption is projected to rebound vigorously in the second half of the year-".
How can the government expect consumption to get us out of this recession, when the Budget projects that one out of ten Canadians will be unemployed, and when the government is attacking people's salaries and the GST is taking billions of dollars out of the pockets of people across this country?


Hon. Gilles Loiselle (President of the Treasury Board and Minister of State (Finance)):: Mr. Speaker, the indicator to which the hon. member referred does not give us any new information. I think everyone in this House was quite aware of the situation we had in December.
I agree it is a difficult situation, and that is why it is so important for us to take steps to get out of this situation. In this respect, I would say that the latest Budget brought down by my colleague, the Minister of Finance-who would have liked to be in the House but was held up by the storm, on the highway between Montreal and Ottawa-creates exactly those conditions the economy will need to recover.
Of course we must act, but we must deal with the real causes of the problem and create an economic climate that will allow interest rates to go down and be conducive to economic recovery and thus increased employment.


Steven W. Langdon: Mr. Speaker, I say to this government; let's get real. The leading

indicators continue to drop sharply right across this country. This means more people without jobs; it means more children without enough food; it means more families struggling just to make ends meet.
On Saturday the Minister of Finance said he had made mistakes in past budgets. Will this government admit that this budget this past week was a mistake? Will it help the jobless instead of hurting the jobless? Will it cut the big gap between interest rates in the United States and interest rates in Canada? In short, will it do something about this recession instead of trying to make this recession worse for people?


Gilles Loiselle: If the hon. gentleman were to look at his desk he would see a dark piece of metal sticking up. This is a microphone, and through the magic of modem technology it brings his voice to me clearly. He does not need to shout.


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Gilles Loiselle: This government is very concerned with job creation. As a matter of fact, in the history of Canada it is the government which has created the largest number of jobs-one million and a half-which has improved productivity. True, after seven years of record growth the economy was over-heating; bungalows worth normally $80,000 were being sold for $300,000, $400,000; the economy was thrown off course. So we needed to act to prevent inflation from making it a continued reality.
To do that, you need to bring down the inflation pressure. And, Mr. Speaker, as you all know in this House that for-I do not know how many weeks, following each other, one after the other-the interest rates have been going down-again last week.


HEALTH CARE
James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: I wonder whether the minister can hear the cries of help from the people in the food bank line-ups and the people in the unemployment insurance line-ups.
I have a question for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. His government has frozen funding for medicare for two years, now for five years, yet the cost to the provinces for medicare are increasing at double the rate of inflation.
Oral Questions
Will the minister tell this House how he can expect anything from forthcoming provincial health budgets but hospital bed closures, lay-off of health care workers, cancellation of equipment purchases and cuts to all health services, none of which he can control by the Canada Health Act?
Hon. Perrin Beatty (Minister of National Health and
Welfare): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member should be aware of the fact that over the next four years transfers to the provinces across the board will be increasing by some 3.7 per cent per year. In contrast, the federal government is holding its own program expenditures to 3.2 per cent. We are asking the provinces to do nothing that we are not prepared to do even more stringently in areas under exclusive federal jurisdiction.
In terms of the amount of money involved in transfers to the provinces, the savings involved amount to about one half of 1 per cent of provincial revenues.
What I would ask the provinces to do is exactly what is being done by Ottawa; to look at priorities, to set priorities and to decide where they believe that money must most importantly be spent. Certainly health care is one of those key priorities. That is why we are committed to ensuring the existence of a national medicare program.


SOCIAL PROGRAMS
Ms. Catherine Callbeck (Malpeque):: My question is for the Minister of Finance.
Robert Hamilton, executive director of the Hospital Association of Prince Edward Island, said last week that the measures to cut social spending in the budget could lead to bed closures, staff lay-offs and longer waits for surgery. Mr. Hamilton went on to say that Island hospitals have no more fat left to be cut.
Is the minister not aware that his budget is going to damage the quality of our health care system, not only in Prince Edward Island, but across the country?


Geoff Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I think my hon. friend has to balance the pressures on our health care systems, our education systems, as well as the pressures on the total finances of the country, federal, provincial and municipal. If we do not take the appropriate steps to get our deficits and our debts under control, then it is going to lead to much more lasting damage to both the economy as well as to

March 4, 1991
Oral Questions
these important programs. That is the essential direction the government took in the budget I delivered last week.
I met last night with the provincial finance ministers from across the country and we discussed these things. There was very strong agreement it was important that this government take the necessary steps to control the deficit and the debt for the simple reasons I have just elaborated.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is for the same minister.
I have served in Prince Edward Island as provincial Minister of Health and Social Services. I know that the responsibilities of governing require tough choices. But I have to question the judgment and the sensitivity of any government that would try to reduce the deficit on the backs of the sick.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Catherine S. Callbeck: Mr. Speaker, why will this minister not admit that health care will be adversely affected by the measures taken in his budget?


Geoff Wilson: Mr. Speaker, this is not what we have done. We have simply asked the provinces to accept a lower rate of growth, but a more significant rate of growth than what we are accepting for our own programs.
I told the provinces last night that we would be spending $183 billion over the next five years on transfers to the provinces. It is up to the provinces to decide where those moneys should be spent. Whether they are spent on health care, whether they are spent on post-secondary education, whether they are spent on highways or whether they are spent on salaries and wages of the people who work for the provincial governments, that is their choice. That is their jurisdiction.
Health care is a priority of this government. It has always been a priority and continues to be one.


OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY
Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Labour.
Given that this House voted in favour of restoring funding for the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, and given the need for preventive health care services for workers, how can the minister justify slashing the centre's budget by another $110,000, adding insult to the $80,000 injury he inflicted on the CCOHS just last November?


Hon. Jean Corbeil (Minister of Labour and Minister of State (TVansport)):: Mr. Speaker, I was delighted to hear that the hon. member for Hamilton West will be at the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety next week, since we are organizing a conference of occupational health and safety authorities, to stimulate public interest.
As far as the Budget is concerned, as the Minister of Finance just said, all federal ministers have been asked to do what they can to alleviate the enormous deficit a legacy of the government to which the hon. member belonged-and the $110,000 the Centre will be asked to cut from its overall budget of $11.5 million will, I am sure, be expertly absorbed by the centre's administrators who are competent people and who, I am sure, will find ways to continue to do their excellent work with the funds at their disposal.


Stan Kazmierczak Keyes: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for his public service announcement for next week and ask the minister when the government is going to start taking responsibility for its own mistakes in policy when it comes to economics in this country.
I am not only speaking on my own here, but also for the president of the CCOHS. He is asking "that this government give us a break". That is his quote. Let us hold to the original terms of the agreement, he is asking.
This government must understand that by increasing funding and access to the centre, it will save money in the long run by promoting health care and safety for Canadian workers.
Injuries to workers costs Canada $29 billion every year. Because of the $1 billion cut to medicare, the government needs to address the issue of preventive health care.
March 4, 1991

Would the minister not agree that it would be in the best interests of Canadian workers to restore funding to the CCOHS?


Jean Corbeil: Mr. Speaker, the recipe of the Liberals has been tried in this country for many years. Whenever there is a problem, they throw money at it and the problem disappears. This is not the philosophy of this government.
Over the years, we have fully supported the CCOHS. Every time they have asked us for bridge financing, we have given it. This year, we have asked the CCOHS to be equal to the other departments of this government and to find ways to continue doing an excellent job with a little less of financing. We are sure they are prepared and are capable of doing so.


FORESTRY
Brian L. Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, thousands of forestry jobs in British Columbia and northern Ontario have been lost, due in part to the 1986 Memorandum of Understanding on the softwood lumber tariff.
Last week, the minister of trade met with B.C. Premier Vander Zalm to discuss a strategy to fight the tariff. In fact, representations are being made today in Washington, D.C. about the regressive impact that deal is having on Canada.
My question is for the Prime Minister. This tariff is a major trade irritant between Canada and the United States. I would like to ask the Prime Minister if he has raised this matter with President Bush and expressed Canada's concerns over this aspect of trade between our two countries.


Hon. John McDermid (Minister of State (Finance and Privatization)):: Mr. Speaker, the negotiations that the Minister for International Trade is carrying on are ongoing, both with provinces, premiers and ministers of trade from the various provinces as well as the United States.
There has been no decision, no conclusion as yet concerning these discussions but it is high on the agenda of the Minister for International Trade. He is continuing those negotiations.
Oral Questions


Brian L. Gardiner: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary is for the same minister.
In a news report today, for the first time the B.C. Minister of Forests is acknowledging some concern over Canada's sovereignty as it relates to forest policy.
Given these concerns about our political sovereignty, and in view of the fact that the U.S. administration has already asked and used the Memorandum of Understanding on the softwood tariff to question such internal decisions as the setting of Canadian freight rates for the transport of Canadian lumber products, will the minister advise this House what other Canadian policy decisions have been affected or questioned by United States authorities under the aegis of this Memorandum of Understanding?


John Horton McDermid: The Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the two governments and lays out very clearly the terms and conditions of that understanding.
There are areas where the United States has the right to look at certain charges and so on to make sure that the Memorandum of Understanding is being upheld. That is the same way as Canada would look at agreements with the United States and undertakings that they have taken such as questioning some of the subsidies they are providing for farmers today in the United States in competition with Canadian farmers.
We are questioning the agreement that they made with Canada. That goes on all the time. As I said earlier, the minister has this at the top of his list. He is in the process of negotiations with the provinces and will be discussing this with his counterpart in the United States in the veiy near future.


THE BUDGET
John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. Analysts with the Toronto Dominion Bank say that the Minister's Budget has an Alice in Wonderland perspective. Unfortunately, Canadians do not share the Minister of Finance's fairy-tale view of things.

March 4, 1991
Oral Questions
Now that Statistics Canada has announced that the composite leading indicator has dropped by 0.6 per cent and that the U.S. leading indicator has dropped 0.7 per cent, why won't the Minister of Finance admit that he has lost control of his made in Canada recession and why won't he introduce measures that will put Canadians back to work?


Geoff Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I think the projections in my Budget are identical to those of the majority of economists in the private sector, i.e., the recession will end by the middle of this year and the economy will show an improvement of 3.5 per cent in the second half and also throughout next year. I think these projections are very realistic and that they are identical to those made by the majority of our economists.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, the minister forgets that the measures he took in his budget have actually changed the projections of some of the private sector economists.
But, in any event, I think Canadians want to know why the Minister of Finance seems to have a tendency to change his mind. Back in 1982, when he wanted to be Minister of Finance, he thought that the government's decision at that time during a recession to increase job creation programs by $500 million was, and I quote: "A step in the right direction, but a very small step". He clearly thought more should have been given.
In cutting $100 million from the Canadian Jobs Strategy, the minister should explain to Canadians why he no longer feels that the government should be helping to create jobs.


Geoff Wilson: Mr. Speaker, there is a fundamental difference between the picture that we are looking at today and what we were looking at in 1982.
In 1982 there was a significantly less burden of debt on the federal government than is the case now. As I made very, very clear in the House last week, if we were to be increasing the size of the deficit, as I have heard my friend and his colleagues, plus colleagues from the New Democratic Party all saying, spend, spend, spend, what we would see is an increase in interest rates and that
increase in interest rates would do far more damage to the economy.
I should also point out to my friend that we are still very much committed on this side of the House to training and the importance of training to Canadian people, particularly to those out of a job. That is why we have transferred a considerable amount of the passive income support moneys in the unemployment insurance fund to active job training. It will amount to some $550 million in this current fiscal year, rising to about $750 million in the very near future.
So the commitment is very clearly there to help people get training.


CITIZENS' FORUM ON CANADA'S FUTURE
Mr. Don Boudria (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. It concerns the administration of the national forum on Canada's future.
Last week, Mr. Robert Normand, a member of the forum, alleged that other commissioners were racking up scandalous bills for per diems and expenditures.
Now that these charges have been denied by the chairman over the weekend, will the Prime Minister, in the interest of protecting the integrity of his own forum, table immediately in the House of Commons a list of all disbursements, per diems and expenses paid to each member of the forum? If not, why not?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to inform the hon. member that tomorrow, while tabling my Supplementary Estimates (C) for last year, he will have the numbers pertaining to that particular commission.


Don Boudria: Each member?


Gilles Loiselle: Well, as the Prime Minister has indicated in this House before, there are procedures followed by these royal commissions. There are ways that these commissions have to be handled and need to be handled so that they maintain the autonomy that one desires them to have.
So I will be introducing that tomorrow and, of course, all of the expenditures will, in due course, be submitted to the auditor.
March 4, 1991


Mr. Mark Assad (Gatineau-La Lievre):: Mr. Speaker, I assume that on the weekend, the Prime Minister was able to consider the allegations made against the Spicer Commission, and my question is this: Could he give the House the assurance that he asked for and, in fact, received assurances that no irregularities had taken place? That is what we want to know.


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I may remind the hon. member that the commission member who more or less started all this, if I am not mistaken, but who did so almost involuntarily-


Mr. Lapierre:: He talked to his own reporter!


Gilles Loiselle: I think we should let people speak for themselves. It is very easy to make allegations, but Mr. Normand said that as far as he was concerned, he was going to stay.
In any case, there are a number of important rules, and I am sure the hon. member will realize that. When we set up a royal commission of inquiry, the government cannot start interfering and try to run the commission instead of the people who are there.
There are people on the commission like Mr. Normand and Mr. Spicer, and many other entirely responsible people, and I am sure they will see that the commission is properly run. In any case, tomorrow the amounts spent will be tabled and, at the appropriate time, the Auditor General will be able to review those expenditures and report to Parliament.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Saskatoon-Humboldt):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Agriculture, perhaps the Prime Minister could help me with the answer to this question, since we understand he was involved pretty directly four years ago with a similar problem in Saskatchewan or on the prairies.
The Canadian agriculture ministers met in Regina on the weekend to finalize the details of the government's farm income safety net program. We understand that they also discussed the emergency interim payments to
Oral Questions
farmers, allowing them to continue farming until GRIP and NISA are in place.
Can the Prime Minister confirm that the Canadian grain farmer will in fact receive an emergency cash payment or some other form of bankable commitment from the federal government this spring before seeding, and will the Prime Minister tell us what the amounts of this emergency payment will be?


Hon. Pierre Blais (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture)):: As my
colleague says, Mr. Speaker, the federal and provincial Ministers of Agriculture met in Regina on Friday and Saturday. Given the difficult agricultural situation they agreed on procedures to set up the two GRIP and NISA systems. Negotiations will continue over the next few days to finalize that part.
As to the rest, Mr. Speaker, before that long-term system can be set up to meet the needs of the farming community, the Minister of Agriculture said publicly that he would take temporary measures to help them. When the budget was tabled last week you saw that despite the difficult financial situation the government did manage to set aside an extra $1.3 billion for Canadian farmers. That is a commendable effort in these trying times and in the coming weeks we will decide how these funds are to be expended.


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Mr. Speaker, my question specifically was whether or not that $1.3 million in the budget would be used for the cash emergency payment or a bankable commitment to the farmers before spring work. That means now.


Pierre Blais: As it
has done over the past six years, Mr. Speaker, our government will come to the assistance of farm producers. But I would also remind my colleague that, as we did in recent years, we will see to it that the measures to be taken will have a long-term impact. As other members have pointed out, the days of carefree spending are over. Mr. Speaker, we have to be sure that program funding will solve the problem in the long term so that the neediest producers will get that money and stabilize their income for years to come. We will not be acting alone,

March 4, 1991
Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, for we will seek the co-operation of the provinces, as we did in the past.


THE ENVIRONMENT
Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. Since 1989 when the government unveiled the $250 million five-year federal-provincial shared-cost program, nothing has been signed by Ottawa and Quebec City to clean up the so-called orphan sites at Joutel, Cadillac, Dupar-quet and others in Quebec. My question is this: Since you have been appointed we know you are prepared to sign that agreement in the interest of the people of Quebec, so is the Quebec government prepared to enter into a Canada-Quebec agreement concerning the so-called orphan contaminated sites?


Hon. Robert de Cotret (Minister of the Environment):: As a government, Mr. Speaker, we concluded the negotiations with Quebec at the end of last November. We have the draft of a bilateral agreement which has been approved by my provincial counterpart and which was submitted to the various committees of the Quebec cabinet for approval. We have every indication that Quebec is prepared to sign the agreement by the end of this month.
Therefore I am hopeful that the agreement will be in force within a few weeks.


IMMIGRATION
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
While the minister was out propagandizing and promoting her new immigration strategy program, the reality is that the English language training programs for new immigrants across Canada are being undermined and dismantled. In Manitoba, over 2,100 immigrants presently enrolled in the English language training program are now having those positions put in jeopardy
by the change in federal funding and the lay-off of close to 68 teachers.
Rather than this kind of dismantling and restructuring, will the minister meet with her Manitoba colleague, the provincial minister, to restore the existing funding so that the 2,100 immigrants who are presently in language training programs will not have them jeopardized and have them ended at the end of this month.


Hon. Barbara McDougall (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, the money we have put into language training has over time been increased. Actually, we are doing a lot more by way of settlement and teaching of language than was done by the former government, as the hon. member well knows. We will continue that commitment to make as much available as we can under the current economic conditions and by doing it in less expensive ways, moving through NGOs and other organizations which can deliver the service more effectively.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, as the minister well knows, if you do not have a job or if you do not presently speak the language, you do not qualify for those programs. There are thousands of new immigrants who are not eligible for the minister's new programs. They cannot learn the language, therefore, they cannot get a job. If they cannot get a job, they cannot get into the program. It is a total catch-22.
Considering how generous the minister has been in the funding of language programs in other provinces, will she not at least consider restoring the funding in the province of Manitoba so that the people who are presently getting training under those conditions can have their rights restored and can go on and become valuable members of our society?


Barbara Jean McDougall: Mr. Speaker, this government does provide language training for people who are not destined for the labour force. I would remind him that we are the first government to have done so. In terms of where the dollars go across Canada, they are spent in the regions as they are required. This department and this minister have been stronger on language and settlement programs than, I think it is fair to say, any former government and, certainly, other Liberal ministers.
March 4, 1991


PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Mr. Sergio Marchi (York West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport.
While the new Terminal 3 at Pearson airport is operating, it is completely irresponsible and unacceptable for this government to continue to have a veil of secrecy surround the entire deal that this government signed with the private consortium.
I ask the minister, since every Canadian taxpayer has a full legitimate right to know every single detail about the agreement, to inform this House how much of a profit the private consortium is expected to make. What is the share of that proposed profit with the federal government? Will the Canadian taxpayer ever be expected to pick up any shortfall during the duration of this sweet agreement with the private consortium?


Hon. Doug Lewis (Minister of TVansport):: Mr. Speaker, in February 1988, the media and all MPs, I believe, were provided with a press kit. I quote from that press kit: "There is going to be a $2 million payment to Transport Canada on signing the ground phase. A further $28 million was paid on the opening of the terminal. Transport Canada receives, on a sliding scale, 3 to 5 per cent of gross revenue for the first five years, plus $1 million minimum guarantee", and so on.
All that information was made available three years ago. I am surprised it has taken my friend this long to catch up with it.


Sergio Marchi: Mr. Speaker, the minister continues to stonewall. While he may be able to read a press release, he is having trouble listening to the questions that are being asked on this side of the House.
I return to the minister on a different matter concerning the same agreement. The minister has admitted that the government made a serious error in dealing away the rights of limousines and taxis to the private consortium in the agreement.
Can the minister confirm that the government has negotiated, or is currently negotiating, to buy back that particular clause; and if so, what is the expected price tag to the Canadian taxpayer for this monumental blunder made by this Minister of Transport?
Oral Questions


Philip Derek Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I never at any time admitted that we made a blunder with respect to the taxis. When we got into taxi and limousine service, I made it very clear that I wanted every traveller passing through Pearson International Airport to get the same service at all three terminals. That is what we have decided to do, and we have renegotiated it so that that will occur. I am sure that all travellers going through Terminal 3 especially-the terminal that the Liberals do not like-will enjoy it very much.


SPICER COMMISSION
Gilles Rocheleau: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister and relates to allegations made by Mr. Normand, editor at Le Soleil, regarding the Spicer Commission. They call for immediate action, especially after Mr. Spicer stated yesterday that the Canadian people could not care less about how the Spicer Commission is administered.
Mr. Speaker, how can the Prime Minister remain silent after such allegations were made by his friend, Mr. Normand, and after $25 million were squandered to pay the members of the commission $18,000 each per 30-day period when in fact they work only five or six days? Will the Prime Minister commit before this House to ask Mr. Spicer to resign, to adjourn the proceedings and to institute immediately an inquiry?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the hon. member just the same for his concern for this Commission and thus, I imagine, the future of this country.
Regarding the management of the Spicer Commission, Mr. Normand brought out some important finer points. I would caution the hon. member against making somewhat unfounded assertions. In any case, I will remind the House-I was taking for granted that everyone was aware-that commissions such as this one is subject to certain rules, generally Treasury Board regulations on hiring, contracts, rental. They work under what I would call soft supervision because they need to maintain some autonomy. I am sure the hon. member will be bitterly disappointed when he finds out, as the Auditor General will reveal, that everything was done properly after all.

March 4, 1991
Privilege


Gilles Rocheleau: Mr. Speaker, is the President of the Treasury Board telling this House that the Spicer Commission was given a blank cheque and that there is no concern about what is going on, at a time when an additional load is put on the Canadian people and a crippling blow is sent to the neediest as well as to smokers and when the UI premiums are going up? Is that your vision of national unity?


Gilles Loiselle: That is not what I said at all. If that is what the hon. member heard, he heard wrong. Quite the contrary, I said that there are rules for managing Royal commission enquiries. We do not have a laisser-faire policy. There are rules, but they allow a measure of autonomy. That is not only necessary but desirable, as I think everyone will agree. As for the rest, the rules followed by the Spicer Commission in the adjudication of contracts across the country to respond to its needs are based on Treasury Board standards, as I am sure all this will be confirmed in due course. Tomorrow, when the Estimates (C) are presented, the last ones for the current year, that is 1990-1991, you will see what amounts are involved.


EQUALITY
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Prime Minister.
Five years ago today, his government responded to the unanimous report of the Special Committee on Equality Rights by promising to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that sexual orientation is a prohibited ground of discrimination in all areas of federal jurisdiction. The government has failed for five years now to live up to that commitment, including a fresh commitment made by the Minister of Justice at this time last year.
Members of Parliament have received many letters on this matter, and I want to ask the Prime Minister: When the government will live up to that commitment?


Gilles Loiselle: Mr. Speaker, I think that the hon. member is aware that my predecessor, the then President of the TVeasury Board, came forward with a very valid proposal which we consider to be fair, a proposal which was established in full consultation with Public Service unions. We feel that we stand on good ground.
This was appealed to a board. Therefore I cannot discuss its value. We will wait for the decision of this tribunal and, when it comes, we will see where we are at that time.
 * *


PRIVILEGE
Mr. Speaker:: I have an application on a question of privilege from the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam, of which he has very kindly given me written notice.
I point out to the hon. member who is a skilled advocate that he has indicated that this will be with respect to a certain Mr. Glen Kealey. I want to indicate to the hon. member that I want to know right at the start and very early in his submission just exactly where the question of privilege is.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I almost put it as a supplementary question to the Prime Minister, but I will put it as a question of privilege.
The question of privilege is that I have attempted to communicate as a member of Parliament with Mr. Kealey. He is now behind barriers-


Some hon. members:: Oh, oh.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Well, he is in front of the House. Hon. members are laughing, Mr. Speaker. This is a man who has been here for two years alleging the government is corrupt, exercising his civil rights as an ordinary Canadian, and they are all laughing over there. They think it is very funny.
March 4, 1991


SPEAKER'S RULING
Mr. Speaker:: I indicated to the hon. member that I was going to have to be fairly definite with respect to this particular matter.
The hon. member knows that as a consequences of the hostilities there were barriers put up in order to maintain crowd control and security at the immediate doors of the buildings of Parliament.
As I understand it, and from what I have read in the paper, for whatever reason Mr. Kealey got into some difficulties with respect to those barriers.
However, there is nothing that has indicated that Mr. Kealey or anybody else cannot demonstrate on the other side of those barriers and within relatively close proximity to the buildings, but the hon. member has to persuade me-and I am afraid he is not going to be able to-that somehow whatever has happened to Mr. Kealey infringes his privileges or the privileges of other hon. members.
I think that the hon. member's complaint, whatever it may be, does fall short of privilege. The hon. member, of course, can pursue this at Question Period at another time if he wishes.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: No, I am not taking a point of order to extend the point of privilege. I think the hon. member has made his point. I have to indicate to him again that I do not see this as a question of privilege.
I think the hon. member may very well have a complaint, but there must be another way to bring it to the attention of the House.
The hon. member on a point of order.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Of course I respect the Speaker's rulings completely, but I do feel that I never really had a chance to at least offer, perhaps in one or two sentences, what I thought was my point because of some loud heckling-


Mr. Speaker:: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member again. I understand perfectly well what the hon. member's point is. It is not a point of privilege. It may well be a complaint.
I do know what it is, and it was not because of any noise on the other side of the House. It is not a question of privilege. I am not hearing it further.
Routine Proceedings



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Pierre Blais: for leave to introduce Bill C-98, an Act authorizing agreements between the Government of Canada and the provinces to provide for protection for the income of producers of agricultural products and to enable the Government of Canada to take additional measures for that purpose.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Shall the minister have leave to introduce the bill?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the first time and ordered to be printed.

Mr. Jim Jordan (Leeds-Grenville):: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to present again a petition. It is one on behalf of the volunteer firemen of Canada. As you may or may not know-and you probably do not if you live in an urban centre-rural areas depend very often on volunteer firemen.
They serve a very useful purpose. They are not paid a lot. In some cases they are not paid at all, but one way is to issue them with an income tax receipt. They get one for $400. That was raised back over 10 years ago from $300 to $400 and has not been raised since.
This petition is an appeal to the government to look at the allowance it has given for tax deduction purposes to volunteer firemen across Canada. They very often serve as the service club in the community and do a lot of useful work.
They are making another appeal to have the government look at that provision in the Income Thx Act, and I would recommend that the government do so.

March 4, 1991
The Budget


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. Albert Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons):: Mr. Speaker, Question No. 442 will be answered today.


Mr. Simmons: Since September 1984, for the ridings of (a) Charlevoix (b) Manicouagan, what have been the costs of (i) repairs (ii) improvements (iii) construction of recreational marine harbours?


Hon. Bernard Valcourt (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: The costs for the fiscal years 1984-85, 1985-86, 1986-87, 1987-88, 1988-89, 1989-90 and 1990-91 (projections):
(a)	Charlevoix
(i)	$102,862
(ii)	$1,155,850
(iii)	$153,493
(b)	Manicouagan
(i)
(ii)	$8,946
(iii)


Mr. Speaker:: The questions as enumerated by the parliamentary secretary have been answered.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, would you be so kind as to call Starred Question No. 434.
I ask that it be printed in Hansard as if read.


[Stage Direction]
*
Mr. Arseneault: Concerning the Secretary of State's Assistance Program to Community Radio Stations (a) are there funds allocated to the operating budget of this program (b) does the government intend to reallocate funds to this budget and, if so, what amount will be earmarked?


Hon. Gerry Weiner (Secretary of State of Canada and Minister of State (Multiculturalism and Citizenship)):: (a) Yes, expenditures under this five-year program will total approximately $5 million by the end of the program. For 1991-1992, the last year of the program, the budget is $500K.
(b) The program expires at the end of 1991-1992. An evaluation of the program will be undertaken in 1991.


Albert Glen Cooper: I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions be allowed to stand?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Wilson (Etobicoke Centre) that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government; and the amendment of Mr. Gray (Windsor West) (p. 17722).
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: When the debate was interrupted, the hon. member for Ottawa South had the floor. The hon. member has 17 minutes left, and he may now proceed.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives alone are responsible for failing to control the public debt during seven years of unprecedented economic growth; for having on more than 30 occasions levied regressive taxes on taxpayers who were already
March 4, 1991

strapped financially; for managing to create a made-in-Canada recession; for practically strangling employment opportunities in the manufacturing sector as a result of their policy of maintaining high interest rates and a high dollar; for introducing the GST, an expensive and very complex tax both for small business and for consumers.

Since 1984, the Conservatives have attempted to convince Canadians that only they could successfully manage the public purse. But, after almost seven years in office, during which Canada has shared with the rest of the western economies almost unprecedented economic growth and despite having resorted to over 30 different tax increases paid largely by middle and lower income Canadians, the Minister of Finance has failed in bringing the deficit under control. In fact he has managed to double the federal debt while at the economic controls.
The minister is always eager to talk about the bad old Liberals who supposedly started the problem. This is typical of a government that never seems able to take responsibility for anything. The deficit? Blame the Liberals. Interest rates? Those are the fault of those crazy consumers and their excessive credit demands. Inflation? That is caused by the Public Service wage increases. National unit? Blame that one on the Leader of the Opposition. Whatever the problem, it is someone else's fault.
When is this government going to grow up and start accepting responsibility for the problems that it has created? Surely, after seven years in office, the government now owns the deficit. The debt was below $200 billion when the Tories were elected in 1984. Soon it will exceed $400 billion. The only thing that this government has finally admitted is that Canada is now in a recession and that the recession was induced by government policy.
The Conservatives' home-made recession is no ordinary downturn in the economy. As a direct result of policies pursued by the government, job producing industries have been driven out of business and in many cases driven right out of the country, never to return. Many of the 288,000 jobs that were lost between April of 1990 and January of this year are lost for good. People in
The Budget
other countries are now employed in jobs that until recently provided a means of livelihood for Canadians.
To make matters worse, the imposition of the costly and administratively complex goods and services tax has taken more money directly out of people's wallets and made life more difficult for small businesses.
This budget should have offered Canadians some reason for optimism, hope and vision.

This Budget should have provided a sound basis for getting Canada out of its economic hornets nest and getting Canadians to work. Nowhere in the Budget is there any indication of how this government intends to help Canadians.

In the 1988 election campaign the Prime Minister claimed that to elect the Liberals would put Canada's economic growth in jeopardy. I quote:
The damage of a Liberal win to economic activity in southern Ontario would be swift, dramatic and powerful.
He also said:
Earlier in this decade Canadians suffered through the worst recession in post-war history. Do Canadians want to risk a return to that?
By electing a Conservative government Canadians got more than a risk of recession; they got the real thing.
But the most damning thing about this budget is the lack of hope for the million and a half jobless who, with their families, are the real victims of this recession.
Despite predictions of economic recovery in the second half of this year and strong growth in 1992, the jobless rate is not going to improve by the government's own predictions. There is nothing in the budget about job creation. There is only a cut of $100 million from the Canadian Jobs Strategy, and there is the implicit acceptance of an unemployment rate of almost 10 per cent.
When he was in opposition, the Minister of Finance understood the importance of keeping people at work. For example, in 1982 he said:
The government must begin to realize that it is individual people who are being hurt. It is not the political game that we are playing here in the House of Commons that is important; we must deal with the real

March 4, 1991
The Budget
world. We cannot stay here in an ivory tower in Ottawa; we must deal
with individual Canadians who are losing their jobs and businesses.
Further he said:
-when people are struggling for survival, when people fear that they will lose their jobs or that their children cannot find that first job, there is not much trust and generosity. Rhetoric will not produce the harmony we all want, but a healthy economy will.
If only the Minister of Finance still believed those same principles. He has produced a budget of no jobs, a budget of no hope, and a budget of no vision.
The government in the past has talked a lot about creating the conditions for economic growth. Even in this budget, the indication is that all that needs to be done is to lower inflation and bring down the deficit and economic growth will follow. But these measures alone will not bring economic growth and prosperity.
Without a strong sense of national consensus and the force of national will, Canada's future prosperity is not ensured. The failure of the Mulroney government to promote national unity is closely linked to the severity of the problems confronting us on the economic front.
At a time when national consensus has never been more essential and possibly never harder to achieve, the government's cuts to transfer payments and Canada Assistance Plan payments will only further aggravate stresses on Canadian unity.
The Allaire report in Quebec includes an attack on the federal imposition of national standards, while simultaneously withdrawing federal financial support. Because such criticism is not unfounded, the erosion of national standards and the corresponding sense of nationhood may well result.

The Tories heavily penalized the provinces by reducing transfer payments, and they deceived Canadians. However, Canadians are well aware there is only one taxpayer: the Canadian taxpayer, who pays all taxes, whether they are federal, provincial or municipal.

Shifting the deficit from the federal level to the provincial level does nothing for the over-all economic well-being of the nation. If anything, it is the steady
withdrawal of the national government from so many aspects of Canadian life that is causing Canadians in Quebec and other regions to begin to question whether Canada is really worth the struggle any more.
Then there is the attack on labour in general and the government's own employees in particular. The budget proposal to impose a freeze on Public Service wage budgets typifies the approach of this cynical government to try to pin the blame for inflation on a group of Canadians which the government thinks will gamer little public sympathy across Canada; this after boasting that the federal government had been keeping Public Service wages below inflation in past years.
According to Labour Canada, federal government workers' wage settlements were 5.3 per cent in 1990 compared to 5.9 per cent in the private sector and 5.6 per cent in other public sectors. Where is the flexibility that the Minister of Finance himself demanded back in 1982 when he said that there should be different treatment for low income employees and those who merit some increased remuneration because of good work.
This attack on the Public Service will result, I predict, in a further deterioration of service to Canadians who rely on federal programs and services. The delivery of income supplements, the provision of air traffic control services, the processing of immigration and refugee claims and so and so on. Canadians can expect that these services will continue to deteriorate as the government induces the best of its employees to leave the Public Service and increases the work load on those that remain.
It has been said that in a democracy the people get the government they deserve. I do not believe that Canadians are getting what they deserve from this government. Canadians deserve from their government a financial plan that demonstrates a commitment to invest in our most important resource; our people. This entails not just support for post-secondary education but for continuing training and retraining for adult workers, ensuring that Canada's workforce is versatile enough to face the challenges of globalization.
This would address our growing people deficit. Instead of living up to his self-proclaimed title, "the education
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Prime Minister", this Prime Minister has reduced transfers to the provinces in support of post-secondary education four times since 1984.
A responsible government would have demonstrated a strategy to deal with the fact that at least 90,000 of
180,000	manufacturing jobs lost during this recession are permanently removed from the Canadian economy according to Laurent Thibault, president of the Canadian Manufacturers' Association. Such a strategy would address our widening science and technology deficit.
A wise government would have shown Canadians that it understood the relationship between the quality of a nation's transportation and communication infrastructure and the share of the world's wealth it will possess. A caring government would have offered hope to its unemployed that they will get back to work. Instead the Conservative approach to a job strategy consists of a $100 million cut from the Canadian Jobs Strategy.

What does the Budget have to offer Canadians who lost their jobs because government policies forced their employers to move elsewhere? What does this Budget have to say about the government's role in ensuring that Canadians are competitive on world markets? What does this Budget and its predecessors have to say about the value this government sets on education, research, development, training and development? What message does this government have for entrepreneurs who have the knowhow to increase productivity but lack the capital?

Perhaps the most succinct and damaging critique of the budget of all is that contained in the budget analysis provided by the Toronto Dominion Bank. They say: "The main problem of this budget is that it addresses none of Canada's major economic problems".
Very simply in conclusion, this is a budget of no jobs, no hope, no vision, but more pain. Truly the emperor has no clothes.


John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I listened as usual with great interest to my colleague's speech.
In listening to the budget debate of members of the opposition from both parties-not only from the Liberals but from the New Democratic Party as well-I cannot
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help but hear a message loud and clear that the government should be spending money and spending more money and spending more money. Not once in any of the speeches do I hear that the government should live within its means.
The hon. member said there is no message in the budget. There is one very clear message in the budget; if we as a country are going to survive, if we as a country are going to continue to provide the programs that are so necessary and that the public wants, then somewhere along the line a government has to take cognizance of the expenditures and the income and the amount of money being borrowed.
Liberal members of Parliament talk a great game. They have picked programs one after another that should be supported with more money. The hon. member talks about cutting here and cutting there. This government has done that, has made it very clear that we are transferring one-third of the income of the federal government to the provinces, and we have a financial problem, they are part of that problem and they have to be part of the solution.
I want to ask the hon. member a very direct question, because he is one of the financial critics of the Liberal Party. We know what they are against. We understand fully that they want money thrown at this, that or the other thing. I have a couple of specific questions. The first is, are you concerned about the deficit of this country? Second, what would the Liberals-if they were ever elected-do about the deficit and how would they cut that deficit? I would like to hear some positive suggestions from the Liberals which, to this time in this debate, have not been forthcoming.


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy these exchanges with the Minister of State for Privatization. I must say that I am pleased that there are ministers here for this debate today. It is regrettable that when the finance critic for the opposition spoke, he spoke to a Chamber devoid of ministers.
The question is an important one and I acknowledge that these are issues which need to be addressed by parties on all sides of the House. I take exception to the characterization, of course, that the minister has put both on my remarks and on the remarks of some of my colleagues because clearly, if he had been listening he

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would have understood my concern about the deficit and the debt.
He is well aware of what the deficit was in 1984 when he was elected and how the present Minister of Finance managed to run it up before the end of the first fiscal year in which he was in office so as to establish an extremely high base from which to then describe his later reductions. He is also aware that after seven years of growth in the Canadian economy, the annual deficit continues to be over $30 billion a year. He is aware that the Minister of Finance this weekend, in an interview with Southam News, acknowledged that he had made the wrong policy choice in 1987 when he introduced tax reductions, thereby contributing to the deficit, instead of being honest with the people of Canada and facing the deficit before the election. So he has managed to build it up into a bigger problem than it should be.
I would suggest to the minister, if he wants to seriously make some progress on this, two things. Before he looks too hard and long at what programs to cut, he needs to look at how he is building for the future. What kind of country are we going to have in the future and how are we going to meet the challenges of the future? Any good businessman knows that if he is going to meet the challenges to come sometimes he has to borrow to invest.
What this government does not make a distinction about is the difference between spending and investing. In cutting investing, they are really cutting its lifeline for the future. When it fails to meet the spending requirements for education, for infrastructure, for science and technology, it is really hurting our ability in the years to come to meet the requirements that Canada will have in order to compete in the global economy.
All of that being said, I wonder why it is that this government seems to have money to move operations of government without gaining any particular efficiency. In this budget it has decided to throw millions of dollars at moving the National Energy Board. Now, there may be good reasons for that on an operational level, but we do not know of any particular reason why at a time of recession it needs to throw that money in. We know they have almost $250 million to build a space agency in St. Hubert, when the same functions are being carried on
quite well without that expenditure being made. They do not seem to be willing to cut back.
We know that they have ministers of state with limousines that sat outside here on budget night, burning gasoline. I suspect that the minister who posed the question was not included in the number of people who let his limousine sit out there idling, but others did. It is an outrage and it is a disgrace. Why not cut back the number of ministers of state? There is a suggestion for you. Why not look at the tax expenditure account and see what tax expenditures can either be reduced or, perhaps, postponed. Maybe that is too innovative an approach for the government.
Why does the government insist on a cumbersome and lengthy refugee review process to actually effect the elimination of very few false refugees from Canada? It spends close to $100 million a year in order to eliminate a couple of hundred people from Canada. Why is the government not looking at any of these suggestions?
Why is it that the level of corporate profits over the last number of years has remained at roughly the same percentage of gross domestic profit? In spite of that, why is it the contribution of corporate income tax to the government revenues has gone down? Why is it that the percentage of income in the upper income category, while remaining the same, has seen a lower burden of income tax, looked at as a percentage of GDP on one side and as government revenue on the other?
I cannot answer these questions for the government, perhaps they can.


John Horton McDermid: Well, the answer is to cut about $10 million of expenditures, as he is suggesting in his speech, for a $30 billion deficit. That was his suggestion. Also he suggests we increase the deficit because he said we should borrow more. I heard him say that. We should borrow more. We should invest in the future.
The Liberals tried that. They borrowed $16 billion in 1984 just for programs, not to service the debt or anything else, just for programs. This government now has a surplus in program spending. We collect more than we spend on programs. We have a huge deficit to service.

The hon. member talks about the deficit increasing. That is right. But all from interest payable on the huge debt that we inherited. I remember what it was when we took over. It was $200 billion. I remember it very clearly.
I want to understand the hon. member perfectly. He wants to borrow more at this particular time and increase the deficit. That is exactly what he said.
I want to ask him one other question. His leader, who I am pleased to learn is coming along well and is feeling much better and will be back with us soon, has been reported as saying he would cut the universality in social programs to save money. I wonder if that, in fact, is Liberal policy? Is it a suggestion from the Liberal Party that the new leader of the party made recently? It was reported that he is prepared to change the universality of those programs in order to cut the deficit?


John Paul Manley: Mr. Speaker, first of all let me say that I do not think the minister is adding up my numbers very accurately, if he has only come to the number he referred to. I think I suggested to him that he could even save almost $100 million on the refugee program alone, if he were to redirect the intention of the government on that.
The point is, in listening to this government, if their financial methods were applied in private business, Robert Campeau would still be in business today, because his only problem was that he could not cover his debt charges. But these people have been in office for seven years. They have been in office longer than it took to defeat Adolf Hitler in World War II, and they are still coming out crying about the deficit after all the time they have had to confront it and fight it.
I think it is time for them to surrender and let somebody else take on the battle.


Hon. Gerald S. Merrithew (Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate because I want to very clearly state my position on Canada's economic future.

I am pleased to take part in this budget debate, Mr. Speaker, because this is a rather historic occasion. It is a
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time for elected officials to stand before their constituents, and the country, and declare where they stand on Canada's economic future.

I stand unequivocally behind the plan for economic recovery delivered in the House of Commons last week by my colleague the Minister of Finance. It is a blueprint for renewed prosperity and economic growth.
It recognizes that Canada must continue to sit at the table with other industrialized nations as an equal. Today, international capital travels along a fibre-optic cable seeking the best country in which to invest. The budget continues to lay the groundwork commenced in 1984 by the same Minister of Finance for making Canada an envied investment location in the international marketplace.
How exactly are these noble goals to be achieved? One, reducing the annual deficit and the national debt, two, eliminating our need to borrow on foreign markets, three, reducing inflation, and four, reducing interest rates are the keys to creating an economic environment where Canadians can prosper.
This budget, this plan for economic recovery, will do all of those things. It establishes targets for inflation. It will cast in the laws of the land limits to the government expenditure growth. It will create the Debt Serving and Reduction Fund, a tangible example to all Canadians that we are serious when we say that this deficit will be eliminated. If the government of Canada ignores the deficit, disregards the debt, and throws a bucketful of money at our problems in an effort to buy our way out of this recession, we will all be sorry.
Living beyond our means is a recipe for disaster. It will return us to an era called by a well-respected journalist "the nightmare years", the years between 1975 and 1984, when a profligate, fat and wasteful federal government spent its way into the mess Canadians currently endure. No longer can Canadians wilfully spend dollars they have not earned and expect our children and our grandchildren to pay it back.
Of crucial importance is the decision to place government finances on the road to a balanced budget. The operations of government will be restrained. The Canadian people must know that we are doing our share. We have the responsibility of leading Canada; we therefore

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must lead by example. In fact, a recent poll suggested that 70 per cent of Canadians recognize and support the need to reduce government spending and to reduce the deficit.
And now a bit about my own portfolio. I see that we have one veteran in the House today. My portfolio cares for a very special group of men and women: Canada's war veterans. One in three males over the age of 65 in Canada is a veteran. There are more than 38,000 female veterans. They constitute a sizeable and influential component of this country. Altogether, Canada still has almost 600,000 veterans of World Wars I and II and Korea. They have done their part for Canada, and we are now returning their favour. So, I say to all veterans today that your valuable programs are untouched by this budget. Our level of commitment to you is undiminished. Canada will continue to have the most generous and compassionate veterans' programs and benefits of any country in the world. Do not let the critics make you think otherwise.
In my portfolio, we have viewed the fiscal constraint as an opportunity, a management challenge. It provides an opportunity to improve our efficiency, to re-evaluate the way we do business, and to identify ways that we can enhance our service. In Veterans Affairs Canada we will without a doubt rise to any challenge that confronts us.
Some hon. members may have read a recent report published by the C. D. Howe Institute in Toronto that implied our department was costly and administratively inefficient. The media picked up the story and the word spread. It was a message of course in direct disagreement with the corporate culture at Veterans Affairs Canada. That report was wrong.
I cannot and will not allow such statements to circulate without challenging them, which I did. Unchallenged, these claims do a disservice to our hard working staff and are unfair to our valued clients. The President of the C. D. Howe Institute personally apologized to me and to the department. Recently in the Vancouver Sun the author admitted she was wrong.
For the record, administrative costs at the Department of Veterans Affairs are less than 10 per cent of the total cost. Ninety-one point seven per cent of our budget will be delivered in the form of economic support and health
care directly to our veterans. We are surely one of the leanest operations in government.
The plan for economic recovery as laid out in the 1991 federal budget establishes the framework for government operations for years to come. It is the new reality and we are ready for it.
In addition to my portfolio responsibilities, I continue to have a strong and a passionate commitment to Atlantic Canada's regional development. For my home province of New Brunswick, the plan for economic recovery announced last week will be an important economic development tool, a stepping stone to renewed economic prosperity and growth.
I prefer to think that the Minister of Finance presented not a budget to Canadians, but a blueprint for the future.

I am committed to the belief that the best regional development tool is a lower deficit, a lower national debt, lower inflation and lower interest rates. A truly competitive national economy demands these things.

Lower deficit, lower interest, lower debt, lower inflation, lower interest rates, those are the items that we need for regional economic development in Canada. A truly competitive national economy creates opportunities, economic and otherwise, for all Canadians living in all regions in this country.
This new era of fiscal responsibility which we started in 1984 has an especially pronounced impact upon our relationship with the provinces. Because this debt is a national problem, it will demand national solutions. All levels of government must learn to live within their means and the tide of rising expectations of what governments at all levels are capable of doing must be tempered.
Governments must be imaginative and ingenious in how they use the resources that they do have. Just as the average Canadian must pay the bills, so must all levels of government.
The 1991 plan for economic recovery restrains the growth of transfers to the provinces. It limits this growth to an average of 3.7 per cent per year. Meanwhile federal government program spending will be limited to just 3 per cent annual growth. So you see, Mr. Speaker, we are
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not asking from the provinces any more than what we ask of ourselves.
In New Brunswick, my home province, this economic blueprint is most encouraging. There are no caps on transfers to my province from the Canada Assistance Plan. There are no caps on the equalization payments to the province of New Brunswick. The per capita cap in the Established Programs Financing payments to provinces was announced in last year's budget and will continue for a further three years.
Since transfer payments constitute 20 per cent of all federal program spending, it is reasonable that they too must reflect prudent constraint. Let me put this in perspective. Federal transfers to New Brunswick represent 39 per cent of that province's revenues. Transfers are expected to increase at a yearly rate of more than 4 per cent. The CAP and EPF, Established Programs Financing transfers will account for only .2 per cent, that is two-tenths of one per cent, of the provincial revenues in 1992-93 in my province of New Brunswick.
The impact upon the provinces is negligible. Any protests to the contrary are being deceitful. Any complaints that the province will be unable to afford quality health care and education is untrue. Worse, it is fear-mongering. It is taking advantage of the frailties and the uncertainties of the poorest and least educated citizens.
I believe that the premier of New Brunswick is in full support of our plan for economic renewal. In a recent speech delivered in Toronto, Premier McKenna stated:
-borrowing money on current account is a fool's game. The leader of today enjoys the popularity of dispensing bought favours. The leader of tomorrow must devote all of his or her energy and ambition to paying the bills.
Premier McKenna goes on to say:
- the leaders of the 60s and 70s have placed a first mortgage on the future of Canada. The leaders of the 80s and 90s are placing a second mortgage on the same asset. There is no equity left. We must once and for all put an end to the suffocating debt-load we are placing on the backs of our children.
It is gratifying to see that a Liberal premier is not enamoured with the notion that government spending cures all ills. Premier McKenna is not the only Liberal premier who shares these views.
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Governments at all levels must treat their financial dealings in exactly the same manner as the average Canadian citizen must do. Like any householder, we should only borrow for big ticket items like our homes or major appliances, but on a day-to-day basis we must pay as we go.
The major difficulty the Canadian government faces today is that we must pay 36 cents on every dollar that we take in just to pay the interest on money previous governments borrowed in the past. For the provinces that figure is 11 cents on the dollar. We are strangling ourselves with debt and if we continue bad financial management, governments at all levels, like ordinary citizens, will face bankruptcy.
Many Canadians fail to comprehend the serious situation we are in today because of bad spending practices in previous times. Well, Canada has a huge collective debt burden totalling almost $400 billion. As most people find difficulty in comprehending such enormous sums, let me clarify what this means in simpler terms.
It means that every man, woman and child in Canada owes as part of the federal debt about $15,000. If we add on the collective debts of all the provincial and the municipal governments, then each and every Canadian owes about $20,000 for past profligate spending by previous governments at all levels.
Truly, we have spent money we have not earned and this practice cannot continue. To do so threatens the economic and financial future of those we love so dearly, our families and, indeed, their families.
Ordinary Canadians have a difficult time comprehending what a billion dollars represents, let alone our cumulative debt of $400 billion. What we all do know is that it must be paid back just as ordinary Canadians have to pay back money they borrowed in the past.
Let me explain the enormity of the problem that 26 million Canadians face in paying off our $400 billion debt. If Canada had set aside each and every day $500,000 since the birth of Christ, we would still not have enough money to pay off our public debt.
This budget recognizes the horrendous debt problem Canada faces if it continues down the road to uncontrolled spending-an annual deficit reduction.

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Opposition members and others suggest we should have more make-work projects and spend even more money we have not earned. They would have us spend our way out of the recession. Well, previous governments tried this and it simply did not work. It only compounds our deficit and debt problems by adding more debts which we will expect our children to pay.
I fully support the 1991 federal budget which will inevitably control inflation and subsequently bring what this country really needs-lower interest rates. The budget will set out clear, achievable inflation targets, reaching a low of 2 per cent by the mid-1990s. The budget will put government finances firmly on a course to a balanced budget. The budget will severely restrain the operations of our own government, as a model to be followed by provincial and municipal governments. The very best thing we can do as Canadians is to set this country on the road to economic and fiscal recovery. A strong and competitive economy means prosperity, and prosperity in Canada means wealth creation and new jobs for our people.
To fail to set Canada along this path to prosperity is to fail in our responsibilities. I have no intention of abrogating my responsibilities as a parliamentarian, and therefore I will be supporting this 1991 economic recovery plan.


Mr. George Proud (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, I listened very intently to the hon. minister's reply to the speech on the budget. I listened as he talked about the need for us to pay our bills and to reduce the debt. I cannot say that I agree with him totally on everything he said; there are some concerns I do have in listening to him speak about one of the particular areas within the area he is responsible for.
I know and hope that the veterans of this country will not bear any burden as a result of the steps taken and those going to be taken by this budget.
I have had much correspondence in the last number of months from veterans' groups and veterans individually about Veterans Affairs Canada. One question they asked was, what is the future of it? I know the minister has spoken on the budget debate and I would like to put that question to him.
The future of the Department of Veterans Affairs has caused great concern in some areas. Rumours have been circulating, of course, for a number of years. This is nothing new.
I would like to pose the same question in a different manner than I did the other afternoon, and this is regarding the veterans of the just-concluded war in the Persian Gulf, as to their benefits. There was one area of concern to me and that is the availability of housing for these veterans. I know that veterans of other wars were able to qualify for housing. It was a great way for these people to obtain houses.
I wonder if the minister could reply as to whether the government is looking into this in any way, making these people who have served in the gulf able to qualify for these houses. I know the Veterans Land Act has been wound down in the last year, but I wonder if he could inform me and this House today, if there is a possibility that these people will be eligible and, therefore, would be able to say that, yes, these people are going to receive the same benefits as all other veterans of wars.


Gerald Stairs Merrithew: In response to the hon. member for Hillsborough, he asked two questions. I would like to address the first one; what does the future hold for Veterans Affairs Canada?
Naturally, it has been 45 years or better since the end of the second war and about 40 years or 35 years since the end of the Korean War. One might think that as our veterans pass on, and the hon. member knows that the average age is 70 years of age, that all of a sudden the work of the department would be decreasing. Quite the contrary is true.
As veterans get older the kinds of problems, the aches and pains and the hardships they endured during those times in fighting for our country have now come home to roost, if you will, and very often they are in more need, in fact they are in significantly more need, as they grow older. They need more health care. They need more home care.
Let me put that in perspective. During the month of January, and the hon. member for Hillsborough will appreciate this, my department and the Canadian Pension Commission in Charlottetown handled 2,200 cases of first decisions. That set a record in history for the number of first decisions made by the Canadian Pension Commission. I think it is an indication that while the numbers may be declining, and that is true, the problems
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and the health care problems that these veterans have are increasing.
Naturally, I cannot comment on the future of the department. The Prime Minister, the agency of government, the machinery of government will look at those kinds of things. Certainly I do not feel that my job, and I am sure my department does not feel that our job, is getting any easier. In fact, with the kind of new programs that we have brought in, particularly the Veterans Independence Program, and TAPS, and many of the other programs our jobs are getting even harder.
On the second point, I guess we can thank God that the war has finished in the gulf-we hope it has-and that Canadians can return home. We can take some comfort in the fact that Canada suffered no casualties in that conflict, despite the fact that we had 2,500 people there, some of whom were at the sharp point.
Let us first analyse the nature of the people who are serving. This is not like the Second World War where we had 1.1 million Canadians, basically civilians. It was a volunteer army who came out of the factories and out of the fields in Canada and formed the Canadian active service force. These people were going immediately at the cessation of war in 1945 right back into civilian life, unlike the service people who are fighting in the gulf today. They are professional servicemen and servicewomen. They will go directly back into the service and will, therefore, be assured of all the benefits and services that they get from Canada's armed forces which are very, very significant and indeed, much better than what was given to them in the Second World War and to veterans subsequently.
The hon. member asked particularly if we are going to provide the benefits. Yes, we are. We are going to provide significantly all of the benefits. The two big ones that count the most of, course, are disability pensions and treatment services for those people who might have had a disability incurred while serving in a special duty area like the gulf.
The housing aspect is quite different now than after the Second World War when previous governments wanted to do something very significant for those veterans who gave up such a big piece of their life to fight in World War II. There was a definite program to set up more veterans housing.
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This time these people are coming back to their old service jobs. Of course, there will not be the need to set up special programs, but that does not mean that we do not have veterans housing. We have a lot of veterans' housing. I think in my home city of Saint John, New Brunswick, that we have the largest number of veterans' housing units in Canada. Those will continue. There are new ones being opened at various times. We just opened one in Winnipeg, one in British Columbia and, of course, there are a number of Legions and other non-profit groups that want to do things for our veterans. I think we are doing fairly well by that.
The need is not quite there like it was when our vets returned home from World War II.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, this is a very important time in Parliament because it is one of those debates in which the people of Canada have an opportunity to be heard.
Perhaps one of the most important responsibilities of any member of Parliament is to use this budget debate as the occasion when he can express the hopes, fears, concerns, anxieties and attitudes of his own constituents. The one thing the budget does is crystallize those views and gives people a sense of what the blueprint for their lives will be for the future.
Over the last four or five days, in talking to people in my riding, this is a time when their voices have a certain common and disturbing ring to them. There is not confidence. There is not optimism. There is not a sense of hope. There is real despair.
The thing I find quite disappointing-in fact, it goes beyond disappointment; it becomes almost a question of amazement-is that a government brings in a budget and during the entire presentation and debate does not express the slightest iota of concern about the tens of thousands of people who have lost their jobs in the last four, five, six weeks. I do not know if somehow or other they live in constituencies where people are not losing jobs, but I do not hear any Conservative members talking about that problem.
The Minister of Finance, in his own paper, his own presentation, talks about a million and a half Canadians. And whenever he is questioned about that enormous

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figure, he says: "Well, it is not quite as bad as it was in 1981-82". But what he forgets to say is that the difference is that we are now dealing with a situation made specifically for Canada and not shared by other countries. Certainly, in 1981-82 we had a recession, but it was something that the entire world had to face. This is our own unique invention.
During the weekend in my constituency, people could not believe that with the recession now going apace, with every single statistical indicator showing a downturn, the only comfort is that the Minister of Finance says that it may get better a year from now, but there is nothing to offer any hope. Thlk to the small business people, Mr. Speaker, as I am sure you have. What do they tell you? Consumer spending is down 30 per cent, 40 per cent, 50 per cent. There is no question that there has been an enormous drop in consumer confidence and reaction.
In my riding there are stores that have been stable, well running businesses for years. They now have to go to their banks for new lines of credit and they are not sure that they will make it to the end of the year. Again, the budget is silent on this issue. There is not much in the way of sympathy, response or any kind of compassion for the undermining of that backbone of our economy, particularly when you consider that it has been self-induced. We have taken our own arsenic. As the shopkeepers in my riding tell me very clearly, it is a culmination of the recession but also the GST. We know that GST is pushing the inflation rate up; we have already seen the numbers.
But what is happening is that they are also beginning to see a serious unwillingness of people to buy. The psychology of it has become a major deterrent to engaging in the normal marketplace transactions. People are just staying at home or they are going across the border. They are heading south across the border to get the deals and sales, and all the other kinds of opportunities. I forget what the figures are, but I think it is about a 40 per cent increase of purchases in the United States in the last year or so. Again, the budget was silent on that issue: no care or concern.
In the last weeks my mailbox has been filled with letters from senior citizens who all of a sudden are realizing that the combination of Bill C-69, which started the capping of our social security program, is now
reaching a point where we are looking at a full scale federal pullout within a matter of five, six, seven years, depending on which province one is in. It is unacceptable for the Minister of Finance and the Minister of National Health and Welfare, each day in this House, to try to camouflage and put up a smoke screen about what the meaning of that is.
We can talk about the transfer of tax points to the provinces that took place under the original funding of the EPF, but there was never any intention under that program to eliminate federal participation. As a result, the ability to have any kind of national system of education and health care now stands in jeopardy.
The Minister of Finance said today that he was going to put $28 and some odd billion in the next five years. Add that up. Look at the figures. In 1997, no more transfers at all to Ontario and Quebec, and the rest of the provinces by the year 2000. That means any ability to continue with national standards will have to be brought about, as the minister says, by special legislation which I am sure will be challenged constitutionally and probably thrown out of the courts. They know that. They are fully aware of that.


An hon. member:: I hope so.


Lloyd Axworthy: I hope so. That is probably part of the game plan. That is part of the large devolutionist theory that we have been receiving from this government for so long.
We are not talking now about dollars and cents, we are talking about people, understanding that the very fundamental institutions on which they depended are now being dismantled.
Mr. Speaker, did you hear anywhere in the speech from the Minister of Finance or the Minister of National Health and Welfare, acknowledging that this year there are over one million children living in poverty in Canada? And that we have one of the worst records of the western industrial world? I think that represents about 60 per cent of the cohort of children, compared to Norway or Sweden where it is about 5 per cent.
I just heard the Minister of Veterans Affairs say: "Hey, do not bother me with those kinds of spending programs". It is not a spending program we are talking about. We are talking about children. Close to 200,000
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children go to food banks. We are talking about single parent families who are substantially dropping below the poverty line and cannot afford to maintain their rent or their housing any more.
The problem is that I do not think the Conservative government understands the basic and essential importance of a social contract in this country. We hear a lot about free enterprise and the market system from Conservative caucus members. But what they have never been quite able to understand is that the market system only works when there is an underlying base of social programs to give people some sense of security. There is a social contract in this country which we spent many years building up that underlies the operation and the entire economic system. If you begin to undermine the social contract, then you are going to undermine the market system along with it. They have never been able, in their ideology to understand that there is a clear, unmistakable integration and connection between maintaining a sense of security and stability amongst working people, seniors and young people. To allow them to participate in the market and to say: "I will take my chances and I will work around". Our whole attitude is, we turn it totally over to the private market system and then undermine the foundations upon which it is built.
That is part of the tragedy we face.
I would like to read from one of Canada's more insightful analysts, Michael Ignatieff, a brilliant writer who has looked at this question and the connection between them. He says that the whole basis, the establishment of an elaborate system of publicly supported social services, social integration and collective responsibility, becomes the hallmark of citizenship. He says that the whole idea of a social welfare state was intended to undergird formal legal rights with entitlements to social and economic security so that citizenship could become a real, as opposed to purely formal experience. Now we are seeing that basic social contract being ejected, being forgotten, in fact, deliberately being taken apart.
I suggest as a proposition, that any opportunity we have as a country to compete abroad, to deal with our problems, our interests on a national level, the kinds of stresses and strains we are facing, the lack of productivity, the increasing divergences between views from
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region to region, a large, contributing cause in the last six years has been the undermining of that social contract. That withering away of those rights of citizenship, the abandonment of the idea that individual citizens regardless of their money or their income or their place, could depend upon a certain basis of security.
If you take it away from them, of course they are going to react by drawing inwards, losing commitments, not being able to identify with the nation state called Canada. And it is hollow rhetoric for the Prime Minister to get up as he did a few weeks ago in his speech and say: "I am going to stand up for Canada". When, in fact, he and his government are clearly, deliberately, self-consciously taking apart the very fundamental ingredients that made this country work for many years.
Rather than building upon it, rather than recognizing that with free trade, with global competition and all the rest of it, you have to improve the social contract to give people a greater sense of security. In fact, we are taking it away.
Look what the budget does beyond that. We are now talking about further eliminations. The attack on the Public Service. I could see the cabinet sitting back and consulting with the great poll and saying oh, yes, public servants are not popular, let us go after them. Let us in effect eliminate collective bargaining in the Public Service. Let us dictate now what they will get and we will be the arbiters of what is fair or just and equal, to take away the whole notion of collective bargaining. And they say yes, people will see the screens and the angry faces and not pay attention. Again in my riding I have school teachers and nurses and social workers and air traffic controllers, public servants in Veterans Affairs. They are hard working, serious minded, contributing citizens of our country and they just had a right taken away, a fundamental right that is available to virtually everybody else. And it is done with impunity, indifference, no apology, not even saying we will try to find some way to make it fair. It just disappears. It is done with the kind of cynicism that they know. As one incumbent here says, almost to provoke a public strike if they can, as a basis of trying to improve popularity.
So once again we have a disappearance of one of those ingredients that made our society more civil, gave people a greater sense of commitment, a greater sense that they could be treated fairly.

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The Budget
Public servants are not the culprits in this country, they are not responsible for the problems we get into. And yet at the same time that they are pointing their fingers and saying there is only going to be a 3 per cent cap and if you are going to go up to the 3 per cent cap you have to fire people to do it, this government has the gall to spend $179 million on a refugee board populated entirely with appointments of the government, most of them former candidates or something else, at $80,000 a year and they call that fairness.
When we left government, we spent $5 million on the refugee board. Five million, not $200 million and the same problems are being addressed and they had a report from their own committee in which their own members of the Commons addressed a solution that would have made it much easier, but no they had to do it their own way and their own way now costs taxpayers $179 million. I do not see that being cut back. I do not see that being restricted. I do not see the minister of employment saying I made one helluva mistake, I am going to go back to the drawing boards because all I am doing is paying for a bunch of Tory friends to get $80,000 a year plus expenses and may be more. And yet the refugee rolls grow larger and larger, the problem gets worse and worse and taxpayers spend more and more. I do not see that being hauled out as a sign of waste or duplication or inconsistency.
Oh, no. That is fair game. No one talks about that. I have not heard a Conservative member of Parliament yet mention that travesty. Why? Maybe they are hoping that sometime in the future they will get the same kind of perk. Instead, we zero in on the public servants.
Let me also, if I might, talk for a moment about the deficit. Everybody sort of says that the reason we are doing all this is that we have to deal with the deficit. I agree. The deficit is a serious issue, as much a serious issue for Liberals as it is for Tories. But the question is how do you respond to it.
Is it written somewhere in natural law that the only way you deal with a deficit is to cut back on social programs? Is it written that the only way to sort of bring the government fiscal framework into line is to cap programs for children, or education, or health care, or whatever?


Mr. Milliken:: It is in the blue book.


Lloyd Axworthy: It may be in
that little blue book that is carried around, but I will tell you. I do not hear anybody talking about the excesses of a capital gains system which gives vast amounts of money in write-offs to very, very wealthy Canadians. I do not hear them talking about the tax expenditures.
Even the Business Council on National Issues, perhaps the most devoted of Conservative friends in the country, has said openly: "Look, business gets hard to make grants and subsidies. We are giving away too much money. Cut it out".
I have seen nothing in this budget to do that, not one line of real change that is going on. But if we are talking about $6 billion or $7 billion of loopholes, of tax expenditures, surely a Minister of Finance who had some kind of imagination would have found that as an area in which to cut back, not the area of scarce social resources.
The fact of the matter is that when we look at the agenda index of countries we are in the lower percentile of industrial countries in our social spending, not in the upper percentile. But where we are sort of right up at the top is the kind of giveaways we offer. How many sort of big projects? I would say right now stop them, get rid of them, we do not need them any more. If we are looking for some answers let us look at things like real public investment in education, research, infrastructure in this country.
We do not need those kinds of major handouts any longer. I do not think they work any more. I fully expected, especially when many of the large corporate businesses are saying it is time to get rid of them, that they would have done so.
Finally, in budget terms, I want to spend just a moment talking about the fundamental issue that we have all been concerned about in this House, war and peace. Mr. Pearson once said that we prepare for war like bloated giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies. He must have had this budget in mind when he said it because we are quite prepared to substantially increase the cost of paying for a war, but when you get down to the question of whether we are prepared to pay for the damage of the war, the reconstruction in the Middle East, the environmental problems, what do we do? We cut back further on our ODA programs, make no offer of
March 4, 1991

any new assistance. We know what the problems are. We know that there are billions of dollars of reconstruction. We know that the Third World countries have had to pay excessive costs. I spoke to one ambassador of an African country just last week, $800 million have been taken out of their budget simply by the increase in oil prices.
But what does Canada do with all its rhetoric about how we are going to be a new international player, how we are going to build the peace? They cut back their commitments.
I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, you do not have peace if you do not have social and economic justice. You do not get social and economic justice when the disparity between rich and poor grows wider and wider. You are only going to eliminate that disparity when the industrial countries start making some serious commitments in how they overcome the gaps.
But there is nothing in this budget to show it. In fact it contradicts everything the minister of external affairs or the Prime Minister have said about their hopes for the future. The Minister of Finance has the real message of what this hope is, cutbacks, restraint, limitation, no commitments.
We are prepared to lecture everybody else about what they should do but when it comes down to really helping in a very concrete real way there is nothing on the table.
Mr. Speaker, I say to you let us look at the budget and the message it has. I thank you for your time and indulgence and I say to you that it was a time that Canadians were looking for some creative, imaginative, sympathetic, responsiveness to both the problems internally and domestically and all they got was the same old Michael Wilson.


Mrs. Dorothy Dobbie (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, I was listening with a great deal of interest to my colleague, the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre, talking about how the government might be able to do a better job in terms of its budgetary exercises. He mentioned a lot of what he called excesses in terms of government boards, commissions and so on.
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I have a couple of questions. First of all though, I might comment that I do notice that the hon. member takes his pay cheque home every week and with it, all of the expenses and perks that are accorded to all members of Parliament. I do not hear him suggesting that his own salary be cut.
He also says, as I mentioned before, boards, commissions and other political appointees should somehow be cut back, but he does not tell us how much that would total and how that would directly affect the deficit problem we have. Would that actually reduce our deficit significantly? He does not tell us about that because I think that he knows that in fact it would not, that it is really a very insignificant amount in terms of the over-all problem that we are dealing with.
He also refers to grants to businesses and suggests that it is time that the government cuts back on grants to business. Well, if he had read the budget or listened to the budget speech he would understand and he would remember that there was a promise of a $75 million cut of grants to businesses and other interest groups this coming year and another $125 million to follow that.
I would suggest that the government appreciates the hon. member's kind advice, but it has already tackled that issue in the budget that we have just heard a week ago.
Finally, the hon. member mentions that we can somehow get social and economic justice or suggests that somehow this government is lacking in providing a road map to social and economic justice, but the hon. member does not tell us how we are going to arrive at that goal by expanding the deficit and refusing to tackle the debt.


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that the member for Winnipeg South was able to come in for the last 20 per cent of my speech. Too bad she missed the first 80 per cent because many of those questions were already answered.
The first question was about members' salaries and perks. The last I heard the member was a member of the governing party. If that caucus had wanted to do it, they could have told the Minister of Finance and brought it in. We are not the government. So perhaps the member should answer the question herself because she is a member of the party that makes those decisions. If she wants to do that, then I give her full rein and licence to

March 4, 1991
The Budget
convince her colleagues to do it, and the Minister of Finance has the full opportunity to do it.
I do not write the budget. The hon. member for Winnipeg South helps write the budget and if she wants to make those voluntary, that is okay with me. But I will say to her, if she wants to go ahead and make voluntary reductions herself, I think we would be glad to hear it, if that is what she is prepared to do.
The fundamental issue is this, it is how you go about doing it. She said that we would like to make the right cuts. The point I was making is that the only language we hear from the Conservatives is cut payments to single parents, to children, to the health care system, to education. That is the problem. I gave her an example, $179 million for the refugee board. Well, there is a $100 million cut for job training, for the Jobs Strategy Program.
I will make a proposition. She and I will go together to the Minister of Finance and say, "Look, if you want to get rid of total waste, then cut your friends off all those boards, come up with a refugee program that works, take the $100 million and put it back into job training so we can put people back to work in this country, so that we can start training people who are being thrown out on the street, so we can provide them with some real understanding of what is real public investment."
The public investment in this country is not in a bunch of people who are making $80,000 on the refugee board, the real public investment would be to put people into training programs and to give them the skills they need rather than cutting $100 million of the program.
If the hon. member for Winnipeg South wants to do that, then let her stand up on her feet and say she is prepared to support the elimination of that board and its proper restructuring and to put the money where it really belongs, on people, to' help them get back to work and get the training they need. Those are the kinds of real decisions.
I will compliment the Minister of Finance totally on this. Thank God he had the sanity to stop the insanity of the Minister of Communications who was out doing institutes on cultural relations in Montreal and other places. At least someone got to him and put some sense of sanity back into his head.
But those are the kinds of extravagances, those are the kinds of excesses we are talking about and they are a legion under the Minister of Communications. We have not even begun to count up how many little pet projects he has been able to author. There is nothing wrong with the project itself if it creates something of value. If the government is really interested in helping the cultural community, recognizes its economic and social value, and puts money into it where it really works, then the artists will develop and expand their product and get their work performed. It is an important part of our society, but it is not the Thj Mahal that he wants to build. That is the problem, and those are the kinds of things that we are trying to raise.
There is a wonderful book by Sinclair Lewis called Elmer Gantry. It talks about a fundamentalist evangelical preacher who is always out-it reminds me very much of members on the other side- preaching about what is needed for salvation. Finally, someone came along and said: "That preacher is so busy telling us what is right, he forgets what is really good."
This is a government that is always preaching what is right and forgets what is really good.


Kenneth Gardner Hughes: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member this question.
I was very intrigued to hear him speaking of excesses, extravagances and pet projects. We all know that when this member was a minister he was in that business himself in a particularly outstanding manner as it affected the community of Winnipeg.
Clearly members from Winnipeg would not want to raise this, but those of us in the rest of the west certainly were quite aware of the fact that when this member was minister he was quite deeply involved in extravagances and excesses in the city of Winnipeg. They were not particularly strong on being economically viable and they were not particularly strong on contributing to economic development. Nonetheless, I am delighted to see that the member has come around. I would just like to ask him one short question.
How many billions would you like to add to the deficit this year?


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I think the observation of the member for Macleod just shows how this is a government that is unable to tell the difference between exaggeration and excess, like we have with the refugee board or a proper public investment as we made in Winnipeg, such as the Air Canada Computer Centre.
It provides a major technological advance for that city and provides employment for several hundred people as well as one of the most modem reservation systems in the country.
Is the member for Macleod saying that a major computer centre for an airline is an exaggeration? Is he saying that the investment in a major national research centre on industrial technology is an excess even though all westerners get to use it? It is the only way that small business in western Canada is able to undertake major improvements and innovations on industrial design.
Of course, the Tories would not think of that. No, they are much more interested in getting those old former Tory candidates on the Refugee Advisory Board. Now there is a sound investment. There is really good economics for you. Get your friends hired. That is how you really improve the economy of the country.
I want to come to the so-called simple question. The point I am making is that this government made no mention anywhere in its budget about the value of taking a look at a large number of those tax expenditures, the lack in the tax system that, for example, watches an orgy of takeovers, amalgamations and mergers because it does not tax that kind of foolish use of capital which totally undermines our economy.
It creates a paper economy which allows billions of dollars of capital to escape in this country to help buy companies in the United States or in other places and which adds no wealth to the country itself. That is the kind of real, I would hope, insight and real serious analysis that this government might some day try to make.
Frankly they will never get a chance because they will not be around that long.
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: On debate, the hon. member for Jonquiere.


Mr. Jean-Pierre Blackburn (Jonquiere):: Mr. Speaker, as I listened to the Budget Speech in this House on February 26, I suspected it might not contain very good news for the Canadian people. I think that is understandable, since, with interest rates around 10 percent, a debt or savings will double within a seven year period. That is what happened to us in Canada between 1984 and 1991. While the accumulated deficit we inherited when we came to power in 1984 was roughly $200 billion, it has now reached nearly $400 billion. This means enormous amounts must be expended from our Budget to service this debt.
For the current year, 1991-1992, the debt charges will total approximately $43 billion, which translates into $118 million a day for the taxpayers.
In this context, it is clear that any responsible Finance Minister from whatever government has no choice but to do his or her best to cut expenditures and try to avoid raising inflation. To improve our economic situation and get out of the recession, it is very tempting to increase expenditures. That would make a good impression. Theoretically, we could think that by increasing quickly our expenditures, we will increase employment and put the bad times behind us.
Allow me, to illustrate this point, to quote statistics from previous governments. Interest rates in 1981 stood at 22.75 per cent. As we speak today they are down to something like 10 per cent. Inflation in 1981 peaked at 12.7 per cent compared to roughly 5 per cent now. The unemployment rate in 1983, shortly before we took office, was 14 per cent, today it has gone down to about
10.5	to 10.9 per cent.
Of course we are aware of the current recession. We know that bankruptcies are on the rise throughout Canada-over 54,000 in the last year-and we can see that some people are having a hard time getting through.
So what options did we have in such a situation? I believe the Minister of Finance is steering the proper course under these circumstances. Among other things it is clear that the decision to freeze our expenditures or

March 4, 1991
The Budget
freeze the growth of our expenses at about 3 per cent until 1995 is an excellent option which should enable us to get a handle on inflation.
Mr. Speaker, you know that last year we chose to levy the goods and services tax and, from a political standpoint, that is not a paying proposition. There is no political return in implementing a 7 per cent tax on goods and services. Not one single Canadian is glad about or appreciates such decisions. But they were made by a responsible government that must take action not to become more popular or gather more votes but to administer a country which is experiencing trying times. We have to manage the country in such a way as to be able to pull ourselves out of the duldrums and control the debt.
Mr. Speaker, if we can control inflation and keep it down, by the same token we will lower interest rates and pave the way for future economic growth.
I would like to draw the attention of Canadians to some of the points in the Budget that I found particularly interesting. Perhaps I should explain, Mr. Speaker, that it would be very convenient for the government to decide that it could use the additional income from the Goods and Services Ikx to add new programs and take measures that are politically attractive. However, that is not what the government has done. It has decided to take the revenue from the GST and use it to reduce the deficit.
Another important point, and this is another innovation on the part of the government, is the decision to legislate spending limits. In other words, Mr. Speaker, if the government wants to set up a new program, it will have to respond to needs that did not exist before, and any programs that no longer respond to those new needs must first be removed, so that is another way in which this government has innovated and shown that it is serious about this Budget.
Of course, although I am a member of the Conservative Party, I am perfectly able to come out and say that I don't agree with everything in this Budget. It happens occasionally that members see things they do not particularly like, and for instance, as Chairman of the Standing Committee on Labour, Employment and Immigration, and right in the middle of a recession, I would have preferred to see an increase in the budget for the
Canadian Job Strategy. However, the Minister of Finance decided otherwise, and the budget will be cut by $100 million.
On the face of it, this does not make sense, but we must see this as part of the general picture, as part of the unemployment insurance reform.
Mr. Speaker, you will recall that this Budget provides for nearly $500 million to be used for training workers this year. That amount will be added to the job strategy. The strategy's overall budget has varied between $1.5 and 1.6 billion annually since 1984. So now we have $500 million as a result of unemployment reform that will be added to the amount I just mentioned.
On the whole, Canadians will get more out of this Budget, even if, as far as the job strategy is concerned, there will be $100 million less. This week, during the Quebec caucus, I asked the responsible minister a number of questions to ensure that the regions will not be penalized as far as the strategy is concerned. On this basis, we have been assured by the Minister of Employment and Immigration that the various regions would not be affected. We will be in a position to provide more detailed information on this over the next few days.
Having said that, Mr. Speaker, I refer again to the $159 billion in expenditures, including $43 billion in debt servicing and $115 billion in programs spending. In view of such major budget, we have made a decision concerning the equalization payments to the provinces as well as the Established Programs Financing.
The provinces are always seeking a bigger share of the Federal government's tax revenues. However, we have to let the provinces know that they will have to administer their finances more wisely because we are compelled to make cuts. We just cannot impose such unpopular taxes as the GST and then give away the revenues to the provinces.
While dealing with equalization and transfer payments, I wish to remind the House that we are facing a Constitutional crisis and that, as such, they should be part of the forthcoming discussions with the provinces. I myself am a member of the joint committee currently visiting various parts of Canada to try and find solutions to the current Constitutional deadlock and I should like to emphasize that Constitutional problems are not likely to help putting the economy again on the right track.
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We must live with that. We must tiy and find a way out of the deadlock. Together with my colleagues, I must find a way to remove the current Constitutional amending formula which requires unanimity. It is important, Mr. Speaker, for if we should fail, Canada would not survive. We must find a way to get rid of this straighjack-et which requires unanimity, so that Quebec may get some of the basic powers it needs, such as the protection of its language and culture, the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court, etc.
Of course, I refer to that in connection with the budget because indirectly these Constitutional problems have an impact of the budget of our country and they affect our economy. We want Canadians to realize that what is forthcoming is serious. If we can get rid of that unanimity provision I sincerely believe that Quebec will be able to sit again at the table and score some very crucial points concerning the protection of its language and culture, because unanimity will no longer be necessary. The new formula may require the support of seven provinces with at least 50 per cent of the population-this will have to be determined-but this is one of the assignments we are currently working on with my colleagues and the two co-chairmen, Senator Beaudoin and Mr. Edwards.
Mr. Speaker, I will not deal any further with this budget. We must keep in mind the two important measures concerning the GST. The money is there and the revenues will be used for debt reduction purposes. We also promise to pass legislation to limit the growth of our expenses, so that subsequent governments will pay as much attention as we do to efficient management of public funds.
I wish to thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to participate in this debate. In conclusion, I would like to quote a couple of paragraphs from an article written by Mr. Frederic Wagniere, and published in La Presse. It says: "An Honest and Far-Seeing Budget. Michael Wilson tabled yesterday an honest budget which should answer many concerns expressed by Canadians. The Minister of Finance showed that the government understands how serious the economic and financial situation is in Canada and has decided to respond. The
The Budget
policies he is suggesting may seem simple, but that is not to say they will not be tough. You cannot hope to come out of a recession and reduce an enormous budget deficit without asking everyone to do his or her share. This Budget is simple insofar as it deals directly with problems and does not put our economic future in jeopardy."
I think this is an appropriate description of the responsible steps we have taken and will continue to take in order to control inflation and reach our goal of 2 percent by 1995. We also want interest rates to keep or going down as they have been doing since last May; they have dropped by 4 points. That is the direction we want to follow to allow our businesses to invest and our country to grow. We want to see the employment rate increase in every region in Canada and our people to do well.


Mr. Rey Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member from the government side, the member for Jonquiere, for his speech on the budget. I would like to pose a few questions to him.
He indicated that the interest rate in the 1980s rose to 22 per cent and today is at 10 per cent. Yet early this afternoon the finance minister indicated that the debt was not as substantial in the 1980s as it is today. We also heard that there has been a period of good economic growth since the election of 1984.
My question is: Who made the substantial debt today? It is obvious it is this government.
Then he spoke about not having any choice today. Well, he had a choice. The government had a choice in 1988, and that was to avoid the pre-election free spending that happened only to buy the votes of Canadians.
The member indicated that the income from the GST would help reduce the deficit. We have opposed the GST, but should revenue emanate from that and reduce the deficit it will, of course, be welcome. However, I would like to say he has forgotten the deficit of people, the basic needs for housing, shelter and education among the poor. Why will he not be prepared to consider reducing the deficit of people as well?

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Does the hon. member not make a distinction between deficit and investment? Deficit is when nothing comes out of it; expenditure on something that nothing good comes out of it, of course, is a deficit. But when you spend money for the future of our children, would he also call it a deficit? I would say it is an investment, to make them more competitive in the future.
He spoke about national unity. Would he agree that the strengthening and not the weakening of our social programs will be the national glue that will truly maintain the country? Also, would he agree that this budget will melt that glue?


Jean-Pierre Blackburn: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments.
My answer to that, Mr. Speaker-and I want to repeat this because he may have been out of the House for that part of my remarks-is that if you have savings in the bank earning interest at about 10 per cent your money will double in seven years. The same thing happens if you are indebted: in seven years at an annual interest rate of about 10 per cent you will owe twice as much.
That is precisely what happened in Canada since 1984 when we took over and were confronted with a debt or a deficit amounting to $200 billion. Now it stands at $400 billion. These are the $400 billion which are costing you close to $43 billion in interest this year or, to put it another way, every day you are taking $118 million out of the pockets of Canadian taxpayers for interests alone.
I would point out to my colleague that when we took office in 1984 the government was spending $1.33 for every tax dollar collected. That is like spending more than you earn. At the time the government was giving Canadians $1.33 worth of services for every dollar it was taking in.
With that in mind you can understand that one simply cannot erase the debt overnight. That is not possible. There is no way we can rise tomorrow morning and say that the $30.5 billion deficit we had the night before-as we will have for 1991-92-has been reduced to zero. What a crisis we would have on our hands! We have to act more responsibly and more reasonably just so that gradually we can manage to bring our program expenditures in line with our revenues and eventually regain
control and reduce the $400-odd billion debt we are carrying now.


Rey D. Pagtakhan: Mr. Speaker, since nobody wants to seize the opportunity, I cannot let it pass.
In his reply, the hon. member said that perhaps I was not here. I never left my seat. I was listening intently and, of course, I was disappointed in his analysis. That was the problem and he has to admit that.
With respect to the question of spending of the capital and the interest, the fact remains that we have had good economic growth over the last six years and this government has not been able to decrease the deficit. Now it says "You cannot eliminate it overnight." Well, it has had six years. It is not overnight. I think he is trying to defend a defenceless position. I think he has to admit that the government has lost credibility and does not have the capability to hold on the deficit and it must resign so that we can have a new mandate and lead Canadians to greater prosperity.


Jean-Pierre Blackburn: March 4, 1991

very difficult to bring down. We will gradually reduce our spending by 1995. Our program expenditures will not rise by an average rate of more than 3 per cent by 1995. To indicate clearly that we intend to hold our course, we want our revenues to grow as much as possible and our spending to go down to finally be able to start paying the debt.


Mr. John R. Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to welcome all of those who are watching here this afternoon to what I will call "Parliamentary Pursuit". If you think you have the answer, I want you to bang the table as hard as you can, and the first one gets to answer the question.
Are we all set? Are all the Tories ready? Are all my colleagues behind me ready? Are all those Liberals over there ready?
Here is the question: Who was selected by Euromoney magazine as "The World's Worst Finance Minister"? I will give you three choices: (a) Michael Wilson of Canada; (b) Otto Stich of Switzerland; or (c) Li Peng of China?


Margaret Anne Mitchell: Michael Wilson.


John R. Rodriguez: I hear the name Michael Wilson. I want to tell you that if you had picked all three, you would have been correct. These are the three worst finance ministers in the world.
Poor old Li Peng has been retired for recycling, so he does not have his job any more. But Otto Stich, who led Switzerland into stagflation, is still holding on to his spot. And we still have Michael Wilson as finance minister.
What was it that qualified him for this award as the worst finance minister in the world? Look at the accomplishments. In two years, this finance minister has made projections. He made projections on the deficit, and he was wrong. He made projections on the inflation rate, and he was wrong. He made projections on the unemployment rate, and he was wrong. He made projections on the interest rates, and he was wrong. He was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. This is the wrong minister in the wrong government at the wrong time in the wrong country.
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Look at the accomplishments. Can you believe this? This is a real accomplishment. Here we are in the middle of a recession. It was started as a made-in-Canada recession. We have a recession and we also have high inflation. So, we have an inflationary recession. This is quite an accomplishment.
The other day I saw a very interesting movie, Edward Scissorhands. After seeing that movie and reading the budget, I came to the conclusion that what we have here is Michael Scissorhands. Now, for those who have not seen this move, Michael Scissorhands is a character whose hands were all scissors. At first, Michael was loved by the community because he could cut the hedges in interesting ways, he could cut your hair in interesting ways and everybody loved him. But, there was an unfortunate thing. Even in this beauty of cutting and cutting and cutting, he inflicted some scars on himself. He cut himself.
Then something happened to Michael Scissorhands, he fell in love. Is that not marvellous. Nothing that we can attribute to our own finance minister, but Edward Scissorhands fell in love. Unfortunately he was used. The story goes on that he was used by tfie boyfriend of the girl he fell in love with. Then poor Michael Scissorhands, unfortunately, had to return to his castle in the sky. Have I got the story more or less right?


Some hon. members:: Yes.


John R. Rodriguez: So it was cut, cut, cut and, eventually, he went up to his fictional palace in the sky.
I look at our own finance minister and I ask: "How is Michael Scissorhands like that?" I mean, look at what he has done. He started out cutting, cutting, cutting and cutting. I would suggest that his cuts are really putting slashes on the body corporate of our country.
Tories are groaning, Mr. Speaker, but it is fact. Now, let's go through the budget. Let us take a look at what the Conservatives, under the present regime, are projecting as economic nirvana. Notice that all of these projections are going to happen after 1993. We know what is going to happen. That is an E-year, and all of these things will be in Tory heaven. If this is an example of Tory hell, can you imagine what Tbry heaven is like? All of this economic nirvana will come after 1993.

March 4, 1991
The Budget
Tory heaven is a place where there will be have an average of 2.2 per cent inflation, not 3 per cent and not 4 per cent, but 2.2 per cent. Tory heaven is going to be a competitive place. Tory heaven is going to be a place where people will have to become predators to survive. It will be a place where unemployment will be 10 per cent or more on average. It is a place where the federal government is going to transfer the responsibility for the erosion of social programs to the provinces. It is a place where the wages earned in this country are going to be wages of fear and insecurity. It is a place where in their struggle to keep their share of shrinking government funds, provinces are going to be pitted against provinces, workers are going to be pitted against workers. It is a place where the government's main function will be efficiency and not public service.
Michael Scissorhands, the Minister of Finance for Canada's corporate welfare state, is promising that nirvana to Canadians. It will all, he says, happen in 1993, after the election.
Under the Liberals, we saw them turn Canada, our country, into a corporate servant. These Tories are turning Canada into a corporate slave. We have seen all the tools of public policy gradually captured by Bay Street and the BCNI. Why is it that in all of this budget it is working people, it is the working poor, it is the working middle-class who are making all the contributions to the attack on the deficit? Why is Michael Scissorhands being used by his friends? That is the similarity with the Edward Scissorhands movie. He is being used by the corporate sector.
Look at the projections for corporate profits in 1993. Look at the corporate profits and where they are going. This minister, Michael Scissorhands, did not lay scissors on the corporate sector; not one pair of scissors was laid on the corporate sector, not one.
I think the people in my riding and the people across the country asked the question: "I do not mind making a contribution to bringing the deficit down, but why do I have to make a total sacrifice? Where is the contribution from the corporate sector which gets so much out of this economy? Why aren't they making a contribution?"
These are the new functions of Michael Scissorhands' corporate welfare state. The government's sole role shall
be to enforce the laws of the marketplace as interpreted by the BCNI. They are to use the power of the budget and interest rates to implement the corporate agenda.
I think that we have been misled. This is a shell game. When we have been thinking all along that the government really was out to fight the deficit and the debt and that everybody was focused on that, I think the real agenda was to put in place what I call the corporate agenda; in fact to put in place certain processes, certain laws to remove the government from any interference in the marketplace, so that in fact this market can deal with all the problems of Canada.
While we are focusing on fighting the government on the debt and the deficit, very quietly it is putting in place the other part of the more important agenda. It is putting in place, for example, deregulation. It is putting in place privatization. It entered into a free trade agreement.
Anything that enters us into and locks us into a continental agreement, whether it is energy, whether it is trade, the fact of the matter is whatever government takes office would find it very, very difficult to extricate itself.
These stories can go to their reward knowing full well that nobody-no socialist government, no Liberal government, no whatever other government after-can interfere with the agenda that it has achieved for its friends.
What are the new functions of the corporate welfare state? Cut budget expenditures and subject the people of Canada to artificial scarcity. Michael Scissorhands sends a clear signal to financial markets that the value of their future earnings is safe.
Look at what else they tell us. We have to be competitive. In other words, we have to dampen the demand of workers for a fair share of the wealth that they produce, so workers should take a buck an hour because we have to compete with Thiwan or we have to compete with Mexico or any other country that does not offer their workers the same benefits for their labour that we offer in this country and for which many of them fought over many years to establish or to win.
I have never seen a sumo wrestler corporation having been built up by this government. I have never seen any
March 4, 1991

of them out of the goodness of their heart-I have got to correct that. That is not true. The Blue Jays just gave Dave Stieb a nice big increase and he did not ask for it. Of course, there is no collective bargaining there. There is only arbitration. I have never seen it.
I ask the member from Westmount, if he has ever experience a corporation that came along and said to the workers: "Oh, you have done a great job. You have help us to become large, healthy, wealthy and wise. We are now going to give you a 10 per cent increase because you have done so". Never, Mr. Speaker. That is not the pattern.
What this government is doing is establishing certain criteria for the corporate welfare state, that is to cut wages and Canadian purchasing power.
The next thing they want to do as part of that agenda is to cut the Public Service force and replace them with Revenue Canada arm-twisters, so they can get more taxes out of them, collect more GST, and so we move away from public servants who actually serve people to ones who are going to take money out of their pockets. That is what we see. Look at the work force to collect the GST. That is expanding, that is expanding.
It seems to me that this government is changing the nature of government so that people will have a good reason to hate it. All that we have seen Michael Scissorhands do is cut, cut, cut.
Now the Tories say: "Brothers repent, salvation is at hand". What is salvation to attain Tory heaven? What is salvation to attain this Tory heaven? I hear somebody say: "What is it?" I will tell you since you asked. It says salvation will come through international trade, international trade. We have to be globally competitive. Have you not heard that? Salvation is there.
What do we have to do? The middle class and working poor in this country must go on a diet so that in fact we cut the social programs and we raise the taxes. What we have to do is we have to build those of our corporations that can compete internationally. In other words, we have to develop sumo wrestlers. No Hulk Hogans for this government; salvation rests with developing sumo wrestlers, because it is these sumo wrestlers who will provide us entry into the Tory nirvana.
The Budget
But these sumo wrestlers are never satisfied. They always want more and more and more. They are always saying to their lackeys in government, the Tories, run up, run up. Doc, I have the spot here for you, right here.
What have they done? They have turned over government. They have built up the power of these international corporations that have got to go out and compete for us.
So I ask: What is inflationary and what is not? If workers get an increase beyond 3 per cent, that is inflationary. That is inflationary. Here are some figures. Why are these not inflationary? Why are these not inflationary? What about the chairman of Imperial Oil? He is treated to $1.2 million a year. That is his salary. Is that not inflationary?


Dorothy I. Dobbie: That is the private sector.


John R. Rodriguez: The chairman of Magna, $1.2 million; the president of Corona, $1.7 million; the chairman of BCE, $1.2 million; the chairman of Varity, $1 million plus.
The member says: "That is the private sector". Those are the sumo wrestlers. A lot of those companies I have named have not paid one penny of income tax. They have not made one contribution, not one contribution, to help reduce the deficit of the country.


Mr. Crawford:: They have.


John R. Rodriguez: What contribution are they making? Yes, brother, they have made. Yes, they have made. I know how they have made.
Statistics Canada produced the figures, which I read recently, that showed in the recent recession who benefited from the recession. It was not the middle class. It was not the working poor. It was all those in the upper wealthy classes of this country.
Why? Because they had the money to invest to take advantage of the high interest rate. They are the ones who could afford the Treasury bills. They could afford all those kinds of certificates that returned nice interest rates.
And this Minister Scissorhands did not even put a surtax on the wealth they achieved; not even a surtax to try to get back some of the money, to let them make a little contribution, a little contribution, to reducing the deficit.

March 4, 1991
The Budget


Dorothy I. Dobbie: There are surtaxes.


John R. Rodriguez: There are surtaxes but given the very wealthy in this country you have to make choices. Why go back to poor people to hit them again? You are dead when you increase the unemployment insurance premiums by 25 per cent. Why not go to the people who have got money? Why is it that this Scissorhands always goes to the people who do not have money? Why go them them? Why do you go to people who do not have money? It seems to me you should go to people who have money. You know you go to the Desmarais and the people like that. You get them to pay some share of the deficit. After all the corporations have gained so much from our country.
Or, what is inflationary? What is not? The returns for these large sumo wrestlers, chief executive officers, or the single mother, part-time workers, cashing their $250 paycheque and struggling to make both ends meet?
Well, Mr. Speaker, I see you have given me the finger. I only accept the finger from you. You are the only person I will accept the finger from.
But I ask: What is inflationary, what is not? An over-priced Canadian dollar which boosts the price of our exports and destroys employment and resource industries? Who pushed the interest rates up? It is not the Governor of the Bank of Canada. It is not the government.


An hon. member:: Who?


John R. Rodriguez: It is Michael Scissorhands, the boss.
Mr. Speaker, I see you have given me the finger. I want to tell you that if Michael Scissorhands can make forecasts, I am looking into the crystal ball. I am looking into the crystal ball and I see a number. I see a number. It is one-one. And I see another number: it is nine. And another number: it is nine. And another number: it is three. It is 1993. Thank God salvation will come and we will remove Michael Scissorhands and send him back to his palace. God help us.


Some hon. members:: Hear, hear.


Dorothy I. Dobbie: Mr. Speaker, I have never heard of Eurofinance magazine. I think that is what the hon. member mentioned.


An hon. member:: It is Eurofinance.


Dorothy I. Dobbie: I do not know if anybody else in this House has ever heard of this wonderful journal either, so I am not sure how much credence we can put in its particular comment.
I also want to mention to the hon. member that the sumo wrestler class in Japanese history was there to protect those who were unable to protect themselves. Perhaps the hon. member's analogy is an appropriate one because obviously if we do not have good corporate citizens to produce well we will not have the wealth we need to protect people who are less capable of looking after themselves.
I must commend the hon. member on for once in his life making a little bit of sense in his fine analogy about sumo wrestlers. We do need protection for people who cannot look after themselves in this society and the Conservative government certainly understands and recognizes that. That is why its budgetary measures have been so appropriate to the needs of the people who are underprivileged and who really do need a helping hand once in a while.
I also want to mention that we heard a lot about how the NDP would somehow turn around this problem that we have in Canada vis-a-vis our deficit. In fact, in terms of my own experience with the NDP which is a long one in the province of Manitoba, I do not see anything to support that.
For example, when the NDP was in government for many years in Manitoba they turned the province into a virtual corporate desert. There are very few of the major corporate offices still in existence in Manitoba which we at one time enjoyed because they were taxed out of existence through the very strange sort of economic policies of the NDP when they were in power.
I do not quite understand how the hon. member would suggest to us that NDP policies would somehow cure the ills of Canada, that by taxing corporations we would somehow generate more wealth to spend on the people who really do need help.
I suggest that the hon. member has a veiy twisted view of how economics work in this country, or in any country indeed in the world.
In fact, we know that the NDP does not believe in the deficit. It thinks that if we owe money to ourselves

therefore no deficit exists and no debt exists. That is not exactly the way the rest of the world views the situation.
Also the hon. member talks about nirvana. Nirvana, he says, is something that this government strives for through using budgetary measures, which I suggest will probably have a very profound effect in getting us to nirvana if we are given enough time and opportunity to let our measures take effect.
We do know that the NDP idea of nirvana is something that you get to by spending other people's money. The NDP never understands that you have to generate wealth by doing something productive, by manufacturing things, by making a little wealth, by making a profit. That is the way to generate the kind of wealth that can then be used to create the kind of Utopian kind of society we hear about all the time from members like the hon. member opposite.
I would suggest that when hon. member talks about nirvana he has a very short-sighted idea of how to get there. He would get there by spending my money, your money, the money of the taxpayers of this country, for his ideas rather than what is really necessary and good for the corporate body of the country.
Finally, I wonder whether members of NDP would tell us where they base their wonderful projections, on what experience? Do they base it on the experience of Russia, communist Russia, socialist Russia? Perhaps they base their economic theories on the wonderful experience of communist China, socialist China. Oh, no, I am sure they are going to hold up the example of Sweden, that great social democratic society which has just introduced a goods and services type tax at 24 per cent and which is in terrible trouble.
I do not know where members of the NDP are getting their secret plans for the future of this country, but perhaps the hon. member would take a moment to share with us just on what he bases his profound conviction that they have the right economic policies and plans for the country.
He talks about recession. I do not want to take all the time here, but he suggests that somehow the rich do well out of recession. I wonder if the member would tell me just who benefits when interest rates come down. That is one the effects of recession. Perhaps he would share some of his wisdom with us.
The Budget


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, first of all let me say to the member that I have never lived in Manitoba. I do not know the political history and all the ramifications in Manitoba, but I can tell her of a province that I know, a province where history is unfolding, and that is the province of Ontario.
The Ontario government took over with a deficit. The Ontario government had choices to make. One of the choices it made was that it was not going to reduce any deficits on the backs of the working people of the province of Ontario. It made the choice that it was not going to cut back the services to the people of the province of Ontario. People pay for services and they are those services such as health care, education and social assistance that we cannot cut back. There are services that people are entitled to such as child care.
I used poor old Edward Scissorhands, who was a lovable character in the movie. What I tried to characterize with Edward Scissorhands is an unlovable character of Michael Scissorhands, the finance minister of this country. The sumo wrestlers in the present context certainly do not have that philosophy of protection any more. We have changed that image of sumo wrestlers, in terms of corporations being compared to them, in the fact that they want to get bigger, larger and heavier so that they could in fact compete in their class. That is the comparison.
Now we get to the corporations. If I look at the projections in the budget on page 44, I see the projections in the Thble 2 of incomes. Real personal disposable income is projected in 1992 to go up 1.3 per cent. Corporate profits before taxes will go up 29.1 per cent. Already the revenues collected from corporations have been declining as compared to revenues collected from individual Canadians.
What we have been arguing with this government about is that there ought to be some fairness. If you are going to wage a war on reducing the deficit and the debt, fine, but there has to be an element of fairness. In other words, if you are asking ordinary, average, middle income Canadians and the working poor to bear the brunt of reducing the deficit, they ought to be able to look at examples of where the corporate sector is bearing its fair share of reducing the deficit.
We on this side of the House said: "Look, how do you think this deficit kept increasing?" It is because this

The Budget
government followed a high interest rate policy. Why? Because John Crow said there were fires of inflation.
Where were the fires of inflation? The fires of inflation were not in Alberta. They certainly were not in Atlantic Canada. They were not in northern Ontario. Those fires of inflation were in Toronto. To diffuse the fires of inflation in Toronto we followed this government.
This government followed a high interest rate policy. For every 1 per cent the interest rate went up, the deficit went up $2 billion. We kept saying to the government that it ought not be following this policy.
Many others in this country said: "You ought not be following this policy." The fact of the matter is that the government brought on this recession. We are in the middle of a recession. What do you have the government doing? Slashing and cutting. Michael Scissorhands is at work cutting and cutting. This is not the time to cut.
We should be spending money. She asked how we would deal with this. I say to the minister that we would deal with this question. Where is the money that we put into research and development? If anything at all, down the road ought to be able to put us in a competitive world position.
There is no money being spent on research and development. There are cutbacks. We are spending less than the other industrialized nations as a per cent of our GDP on research and development.
The government is cutting back on post-secondary education so what we are going to hand down to future generations of Canadians are post-secondary institutions that are falling apart. Programs have been raped and destroyed, so I say to the hon. member: You are wrong, wrong, wrong and the course you are following now is still wrong.


Mr. Stan Wilbee (Delta):: permanent investment and eventually higher unemployment. It would strictly be that band-aid solution that we were talking about.
Our plan for economic development takes a different path. Its goal is not only to end the recession but to restore strong, continuing growth that leads to renewed prosperity. This path is the more difficult one at present but I firmly believe that the finance minister has made the right choices at this time.
As the minister outlined in his budget speech, the key to recovery is lower interest rates. This will be achieved through concrete actions which he outlined for us. First, clear achievable inflation targets issued jointly by the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Minister of Finance to reduce inflation to 2 per cent by the end of 1995. Second, government finances will be put firmly on course to a balanced budget. The existing expenditure control plan introduced last year will be extended and backed up with legislated program spending limits. All revenues from the goods and services tax and privatization will flow into the Debt Servicing and Reduction Fund, something which Canadians have been crying for for a long time. Third, and very important, the operating costs of government including wages and salaries will be severely restrained.
As well, a number of recent expenditure decisions have been reconsidered, such as the previously announced contribution of $88 million to the Toronto ballet and opera house; there is the provision of financial support for the construction of concert halls in Edmonton and Montreal; and just recently the cultural research institute in Montreal. In my riding these limitations have been widely applauded at this time of severe financial restraint.
It is important also to note that we are not asking anyone else to do something which we as a government are not willing to do ourselves. We will be setting an example by reducing our own spending. Starting right at the top, the Prime Minister and the cabinet ministers will be taking a pay freeze this year. New restrictions will be put also on the members of Parliament during this coming year.
Government departments will have to absorb any wage increases within the existing budgets. The government
The Budget
will also be eliminating layers of bureaucratic management and reduce the number of senior managers by 10 per cent. Again, this is something which people have been asking for in Canada for a long time.
As a result of these very concrete policies, key fiscal goals will be achieved. The Canadian economy will recover in the latter half of this year. Over-all we recognize that there will be a 1 per cent shrinkage in 1991 or this year, but it will rebound next year with a 3.5 per cent growth, a tremendous improvement and certainly something that we are anticipating very much.
New federal borrowing in financial markets will be eliminated in 1993-94. This is going to be a day of great celebration for all Canadians. Program spending growth will be limited to an average of 3 per cent per year after 1991-92. The deficit will be held to $30.5 billion this year and next despite the effects of the recession in this country. In 1992-93 with recovery and lower interest rates, the deficit will fall below $25 billion for the first time in a decade, a real accomplishment with all the various programs that have been assisted and developed.
The budget will result in a better balance between fiscal and monetary policy and this will provide the lower interest rates and greater confidence essential to economic recovery. At the same time, the budget reflects sensitivity to current economic difficulties. In other words, in spite of all the number crunching, we have not forgotten the human factor, the people who have lost their jobs, the elderly, the farmers who are struggling due to problems beyond their control in the global market.
In 1991-92, we will increase program spending by 6.9 per cent. My personal preference would be to see no increase, but we recognize again, in these difficult times, that there are people out there who definitely need help. This will mean a total increase in spending of $7.5 billion, which will be spent when it is needed and, indeed, where it is needed. Of this, $3 billion will be going for assistance to the unemployed, $1.6 billion to the elderly, and $1.3 billion to help our farmers.
In addition, our defence spending was increased by $600 million to help with increased responsibilities we are all aware of in the Middle East situation. Of these

March 4, 1991
The Budget
four areas, these will account for 80 per cent of the increase in our program spending.
As well, exemptions will be continued for income support programs for seniors, for families and veterans, unemployment insurance, as well as the equalization program and the Canada Assistance Plan payments to lower income provinces.
Again, a very important point, that Indian and Inuit programs will also be exempted as will defence spending. These programs account for 60 per cent of program spending and will grow at an average rate of 3.9 per cent from 1991-92 to 1995-96.
All other program spending will grow at an average annual rate of 1.7 per cent.
This budget, of course, also contains important new tax measures to benefit the disabled. These measures constitute just one element of the government strategy to promote equal opportunities for Canadians with disabilities. They build on an impressive series of initiatives to improve the quality of life of Canadians with disabilities and remove the barriers to their full participation in our society.
For example, the government has, first of all, appointed a minister responsible for the status of disabled persons. It has passed the Employment Equity Act to promote the hiring of Canadians with disabilities. It has broadened the eligibility for the disability tax credit while increasing its value and providing for greater transferability to family members.
There have been increased Canada Pension Plan disability benefits. The new measure announced on Tbesday will have a value of $70 million a year to Canada's disabled and their families. As part of the new measures, the disability tax credit will be raised from $575 to $700 annually.
The definition of expenses eligible for the medical expense tax credit will be broadened. This will now include the cost of part-time attendants in the home. We recognize how essential it is to give families relief from the constant care of those who are severely disabled. It will also allow for specially trained service animals such as seeing eye dogs, modifications to the home, widening doorways, this type of thing, and incontinence products which, as we know, are tremendously expensive and, up
until this stage, have been a severe burden on those disabled who required them.
Also, any costs that are acquired by employers in modifying their places of work to accommodate disabled persons are fully deductible in the year in which they are incurred. Allowances provided to employees for taxi fares, Para Transport and parking will no longer be considered as taxable benefits.
Having a disability is no longer a reason to be kept out of the mainstream. By assisting both the employees and the employers, these new tax measures will help ensure that disabled Canadians have equal opportunities to participate in the workforce.
As I stated at the beginning of my remarks, I believe that the measures being taken in this budget will lead our nation forward to continuing growth and renewed prosperity. We must plan for the long-term.
Many of my constituents have written to me, they have phoned me, they have stopped me on the street and very frequently they compare the nation's finances to their own household finances and they say, "You just use common sense, spend only what you can afford. Set a budget and stick with it. Do not live on credit." I firmly agree with these remarks and, I think, as a government, we are beginning to see this developing.
That is why I am pleased that future program spending will be managed tightly and expenditure limits on program spending will be imposed by legislation for the next five years. This will allow Canadians further assurance that their money is being spent wisely. These limits will be set in law to ensure that the budget's program spending track will be met. This law will be a significant and a welcome change to the way the government manages its expenditures.
I am pleased that the budget will address public concerns that revenues from the goods and services tax might be used to finance new spending instead of reducing the deficit. Time after time I have people come up and talk to me and say: "The only reason you guys want more money is so that you can spend it somewhere else." So, I am veiy pleased that that we can assure them that all of the revenue from the goods and services tax will be used to reduce the debt and indeed the deficit.
This will be done through legislation, to establish the Debt Servicing and Reduction Fund, into which all GST revenues will flow, as well as privatization revenues and contributions from individuals and businesses. I am sure

we have all had constituents who have come to us and offered money to help reduce the government debt because of their deep concern for what it is doing to their country.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would like to read into the record a letter written in November, 1990 by Richard C. Halverson, Chaplain of the United States Senate. Mr. Halverson wrote:
Dear Friend:
In my ten years as Chaplain of the Senate, I cannot remember a time of greater frustration among members of Congress and their staffs, or more expressions of anger from the people.
Several years ago, there came to my attention a quote from the book written by Alexander Fraser Tytler. Mr. Tytler lived at the end of the 18th century and the early part of the 19th. He wrote a book entitled The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic.
Amazing, is it not, that the following quotation from that book, written about an ancient democracy, long before American democracy had really been tested, is so timely.
Mr. Tytler wrote:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It
can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves
money from the Public Treasury.
And I think that is a very significant factor in our discussion today.
From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence -
And I would just remind hon. members that this was written 200 years ago. The sequence is:
From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back into bondage.
Mr. Speaker, I would suggest today that if we are to keep Canada out of bondage, if we are to keep the Canada of the future free, if our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren and beyond are to enjoy the freedom and the quality of life that we enjoy today, we must do the honest thing, we must do that which is right and live within our means today, rather than mortgaging and placing into bondage future generations of Canadians. I believe that this budget is just one more step in the return to fiscal responsibility demanded by thoughtful Canadians everywhere, and it is the only way
The Budget
to maintain the good things that we all appreciate so very much.


Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken: Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the hon. member's speech, and I noted that he was praising, of all things, the rather silly proposal by the Minister of Finance to introduce a bill to limit future governments so that they cannot spend money that is not included in the estimates. I presume that in his over-all figure, he is going to put a cap on government expenditures by legislation.
I assume that this rather ridiculous proposal is put forward in order to constrain his colleagues, who are such spendthrifts, and have been for the last six years of mismanagement that the country has had to endure. I wonder how he thinks in the first place that this bill can restrain Parliament from passing bills that approve further expenditure. It is perfectly obvious that this Parliament can change any act that it has already passed. This particular piece of legislation strikes me as a fine piece of talking material but nothing else. I suspect the minister included it in his budget so that the members opposite could run about the country saying how they had finally done something about the debt after six years of ignoring the problem.
The second question I would like him to answer deals with a similar proposal, and that is this debt reduction fund. I am delighted that the Minister of Finance has announced that the revenues from the GST will be applied to the deficit. After all, he is finally admitting that he has got to pay the interest on the national debt on a yearly basis. In his budgets he has bleated for the last several years about how he has got an operating surplus when we all know, an operating surplus when you do not pay your interest costs is not really a surplus at all, but the minister keeps insisting that he has discovered this and that he has got one. No other business in the country that I know of claims it has an operating surplus before it pays the rent or the mortgage except the Government of Canada under this minister.
Having said that, he now says that he is going to put this money from the GST toward deficit reduction, which I am sure all Canadians would applaud. But I am sure the hon. member would admit that the creation of this fund, as it is called by the minister, and trying to establish

March 4, 1991
The Budget
a separate set of books for it, and all that silly nonsense is nothing more than a fraud on the taxpayers of Canada. Really what he is doing is saying: "I am only going to get $24 billion or so a year from the GST and my interest costs are $43 billion, so I am happy to apply all the money I get from the GST to the interest on the national debt".
Indeed, the hon. member for Delta knows as well as I do that he is going to have to put a good deal more than the money from the GST toward the national debt in order to balance the books. Perhaps he could tell us, and admit to the House, that these two proposals by the Minister of Finance are nothing more than window dressing designed to deceive the public.


Godfrey Stanley (Stan) Wilbee: Mr. Speaker, I thank the member very much for that important and probing question. I think that he is as aware as I am that Canadians have said that there is nothing that has controlled government spending in the past. As is mentioned in that letter from Mr. Halvorsen, once people learn that they can vote themselves goodies out of the public treasury, it means the loss of fiscal responsibility.
What the minister has done in this situation is tiy to re-establish fiscal responsibility, not only for the term of this Parliament but also in the future. Of course, the hon. member who asked the question is a constitutional expert and we respect his wisdom, but we need to recognize that any government that starts to spend as wildly as the previous administration did is going to face the wrath of the public. What we are hearing today from Canadians everywhere is to cut spending, not increase spending.
Again, I am sure that he heard as much as I did people saying: "We don't mind paying the GST as long as it is going to be used to reduce expenditures rather than starting new programs". This is exactly what the finance minister has attempted to do.
I am waiting as expectantly as the hon. member to see exactly the form of the legislation which he is proposing to bring forth. At this stage, this is what Canadians, I believe, want to hear. They do not want new programs as long as we cannot afford to pay for the ones that we
already have. We need to get our finances in order so that indeed we are paying our way.
As I mentioned, we have mortgaged our children's future and many generations beyond that already. To continue on that path is complete irresponsibility. I think what the minister has done is try to tell Canadians that we are indeed a responsible government, that we have taken the right path, that we indeed are providing guidance for those who will follow us. We certainly believe that the citizens of Canada recognize that although the choices this government has made may not be popular, they are the right decisions. By the time the next election comes around and the spendthrifts would seek office again, the citizens of Canada will say: "Hey, we did not like it at the time, but these guys really knew what they were doing and they stuck to it even though people did not accept it."


Geoff Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I have a comment and a question. I first want to congratulate my colleague from Delta on a solid and substantial contribution, a good common sense contribution to this debate and one that was most necessary.
It is quite evident to virtually every Canadian that the problem we face today is one which built up through the 1970s and indeed, through the 1980s, as a result of consistent government failure to take in enough revenue to cover programs and the continual shortfall. The deficits added up to the national debt we have today and the requirement to service that debt, to pay interest on it, which today is consuming something in the order of 35 to 38 cents out of every revenue dollar that comes in. Well, it is quite clear that leave perhaps 65 cents or less out of every revenue dollar to provide the services and the programs that Canadians have come to expect. Small wonder they are upset.
The problem is that for a number of years, through the 1970s and the early 1980s, perhaps Canadians were getting, whether they wanted it or not, $1.20 to $1.25 worth of government largess for every dollar of tax revenue that was contributed. The difference, of course, was being funded through endless borrowing. The credit card has run out. The spending has reached its limit.
March 4, 1991

What I am hearing from opposition members by way of criticism now is that somehow government today should ignore the realities, should ignore the experiences of the 1970s and the 1980s and continue to borrow more. Somehow we are supposed to go out and borrow even more money so that even more of the government's taxation revenue will be taken up in service charges, in paying interest on government debt.
In Question Period today, an opposition member said: "Let's get real". I just heard an opposition member suggesting that the caring and compassionate provincial government in Ontario was going to, undoubtedly, run up a huge deficit, and in doing so would not be looking after the problems of today on the backs of ordinary Canadians, or words to that effect.
I would like to ask my colleague from Delta, in light of past experience, how on earth can spending more and borrowing more today, be helpful. How in the world could that attitude be helpful, given the experience of the past.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. member for Delta, one minute.


Godfrey Stanley (Stan) Wilbee: I certainly agree with the hon. member's preamble about the lack of cohesion on the opposition benches. It was very interesting being home this weekend to hear the remarks of the people as they said: "What in the world are the opposition doing? I have not heard them talk favourably about reducing the deficit. They want to spend more money continually. They do not want to make any cuts anywhere. How in the world can we return to sound fiscal responsibility that is going to get our country out of this?"
I would certainly agree 100 per cent that there is no way that we can increase our spending and at the same time cut our income, reduce our taxation level, without getting deeper into the hole.
There was an interesting cartoon in one of the papers this morning of the Prime Minister on a cliff with a digger, and it said: "Dig deeper. Dig deeper". The hole represented the deficit. This is exactly what our opposition is doing, saying: "Dig deeper, dig deeper. Do not give us anything that is sound for the country".
The Budget


Mr. David Berger (Saint-Henri-Westmount):: Mr. Speaker, in his budget speech, the Minister of Finance, quite understandably, tried to make the case that there is no alternative to the government's economic policies. It is the government's way or the profligate spending of the opposition, just as had been suggested by the speaker who preceded me. It is this question which I wish to explore, namely, is there an alternative to the government's policy?
We, in our party, share the view of many Canadians that the federal fiscal deficit is a serious economic and political problem. Our leader notably did not make a single spending commitment in the leadership campaign last year. And I know that in the election campaign, which will come up in a year or two, he will present to Canadians a program that is fiscally responsible.
So we agree that the federal fiscal deficit is a problem. We also agree that achieving low levels of inflation is an important objective. There is no disagreement with these objectives.
The first question we must ask ourselves then is what is the government's record with respect to these objectives? The inflation rate today exceeds 7 per cent, compared with less than 4 per cent when the Conservatives first took office. The deficit is forecast to be $30.5 billion, which is $2 billion higher than the deficit forecast in last year's budget. Contrast this with the statement of the finance minister in his first budget in May 1985 that he would reduce the deficit by the end of the decade to $18 billion. He missed the mark by the small sum of $12.5 billion.
It is precisely because of the government's failure to achieve its objectives that many Canadians are having increasing doubts about the ability of the government of the Conservatives to manage the economy.
Our responsibility as an opposition is to remind Canadians that this government has failed to achieve its objectives to reduce the deficit and to control inflation and to suggest where the government may have erred.
To reduce the deficit, an appropriate balance is required between reduced expenditures, increased taxes and economic growth. It is generally recognized that the government did not do enough to cut spending in the years where the country enjoyed reasonably strong growth. On the contrary, the government relied heavily on tax increases. For example, in the April 1989 budget,

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The Budget
of the $9 billion in deficit-reducing measures introduced for the fiscal year 1990-91, $7.2 billion or four-fifths were tax increases and only $1.9 billion or one-fifth were spending cuts. It was these very tax increases that contributed to inflation.
In its 1990 Annual Report, the Economic Council of Canada observes:
The main source of upward momentum in the rate of inflation since mid-1989 has been regulated prices, especially in the service sector. Included in this category are prices that are directly influenced by federal, provincial and municipal policies. The largest increases since early 1989 have affected gasoline prices, vehicle registration fees, tobacco and alcohol, public transportation and water rates.
In short, by persistently raising sales taxes, the federal government has been directly responsible for much of the inflation we are experiencing today in Canada.
A further point. Doug Peters, Vice-President and Chief Economist of the Toronto-Dominion Bank has also explained how monetary policy, rather than reducing inflation, has caused fiscal policy to increase inflation. As monetary policy tightens, as interest rates rise, fiscal policy eases and the deficit rises because of increased interest payments. In sum, high interest rates contributed to inflation and, of course, high interest rates have greatly increased the debt and the deficit.
Yet, despite this abysmal record, the government, in this budget, tells Canadians that it is staying the course with the policies that have failed so miserably in the past. The finance minister proposes to keep real interest rates at the historically high levels that we have seen in recent years.
On page 52 of the budget, Mr. Speaker, and I invite you to read this, the finance minister says that in the medium term, that is through 1996, and I quote:
The real interest rate-the nominal rate adjusted for inflation-is expected to average about 4-3/4 per cent. This is similar to the average of the 1980s and about three percentage points higher than the average of the 1960s and-1970s.
It seems obvious to me, if it is not obvious to the finance minister and to the members of the Conservative party, that with real interest rates of 4.75 per cent we will not get the deficit down. This is not only because such high real rates increase interest on the debt, but because it will be impossible for the economy to grow with interest rates that high.
We must recognize that the whole budgetary policy of the government is premised on high economic growth, led by exports. High growth is required for the government to meet its deficit targets, reduce unemployment and raise living standards.
But nothing in the budget will promote that. Have Canadian exporters not been telling us that they cannot compete with the dollar at 88 cents U.S.? Yet the government says that it will keep the dollar at 88 cents U.S. by maintaining high real interest rates. How are we going to get increased exports? How are we going to get export-led economic growth?
It is time to recognize that the government has failed to achieve the objectives it has set for itself, namely reducing the deficit and controlling inflation.
To summarize the reasons for this failure: One, it failed to cut spending when it had the opportunity to do so; two, it relied far too heavily on tax increases, which in themselves were inflationary; three, monetary policy has been too tight, which has also contributed to inflation and the growing debt; and, four, tax increases, high interest rates and the high dollar have hurt our ability to compete and strangled exports.
Is there an alternative to this approach? That was the question I asked at the outset.

In its most recent annual review, the Economic Council of Canada explains that price stability should not be the only economic objective of the Bank of Canada and the government. There should be two objectives: price stability and full employment, and three means: a monetary and fiscal policy and a labour force policy.
According to the Council, if there is a lesson to be learned from the 80's economic policies, it is that fighting inflation exclusively through the monetary policy is very costly.
The Council emphasizes the experience of a number of European countries that have succeeded for close to twenty years in defeating inflation without creating unemployment.
The Council says there is no magic formula. However, those countries have certain things in common. First,
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they committed themselves to full employment. Second, governments, employers and unions work hand in hand. The Council thinks it would be possible in Canada to co-ordinate better the economic policies of the federal and provincial governments and to bring employers and unions closer together. The Council's recommendations, I suggest, offer an alternative to the present policies of the Conservative government.
Mr. Speaker, it bears repeating that the Council has found in a number of European countries a commitment to full lemployment. That is particularly significant for us, Canadians. This government seems to be resigned to high unemployment. Indeed, he predicts an unemployment rate of 10 percent for this year and of 9.8 percent for next year.
I want to add a few words on the particular position of Montreal. The biggest concentration of unemployed in Canada is in Montreal, Mr. Speaker. They are 207 000 this year compared to 169 000 last year. And unemployment and poverty cannot be dissociated. Montreal has become the Canadian capital of the poor. There is more poor in Montreal than in all of the Atlantic Provinces combined, Mr. Speaker. It was recently said of Montreal, which was quite striking, that it is no longer possible to talk of it in terms of pockets of poverty but in terms of pockets of wealth since the whole city has become poor.


Mrs. Finestone:: That is true.


David Berger: What I am saying, Mr. Speaker, is that we must deal with the plague of poverty and the plague of unemployment. So let us add full employment to our economic objectives as suggested by the Economic Council of Canada. Obviously, the conservative budget completely disregards that recommendation of the Council.
In the budget, the finance minister announced that the government will "launch a national effort to build a new partnership for prosperity". He said: "As a first step, the government will release a discussion paper in the spring to help focus public debate about the problems we face and to try to develop solutions".
The Budget
Mr. Speaker, you will forgive me if I say that these words ring rather hollow. It is now seven years since the Prime Minister made his commitment to double Canada's R and D effort by the end of the first mandate. He made that commitment in a speech to the Chambre de commerce in Montreal in March 1984 when he was Leader of the Opposition.
It is now seven years since that speech when, again, he committed to double Canada's R and D effort by the end of the first mandate.
As well, we remember the Prime Minister's words in his book, Where I Stand. He said: "Research and development and the resulting innovations are the lifeblood of a successful economy and country". The Prime Minister asserted that if the percentage of Gross Domestic Product allocated to research and development were increased by just 1 per cent, we would create in Canada one million jobs and $20 billion in additional sales of manufactured products.
In an effort to protect consumers, I suggest the publisher of the Prime Minister's book change the title to Where I Stood. That is because we know what has happened since 1984. The government talks a good game. It has introduced with much fanfare a number of high profile initiatives, but let us look at the other side of the ledger.
Total support for Canada's research and development efforts have actually declined, and I want to highlight a number of examples. First, the Conservative government has reduced support for research and development in industry. For example, highly successful procurement programs have been cancelled and the National Research Council's Industrial Research Assistance Program has been starved for funds.
This is the same program which is perhaps the most highly touted government program. It was even recommended by the Nielsen report for its effectiveness. It has been starved for funds.
Second, the government has cut transfer payments for post-secondary education and reduced over-all funding for vocational training.
Third, the government has decimated Canada's premier research organization, the National Research Council, and cut funding for government based research on the environment and alternative energy.

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The Budget
Fourth, it has cut the staff of the Science Council of Canada by half.
Fifth, with respect to university research, the government established the Centres of Excellence program but at the same time froze funding for the main sources of university research in Canada, the Federal Granting Council. It has ignored the recommendations of the Prime Minister's own blue ribbon committee, a committee which he chairs and announced with much fanfare several years ago.
He has ignored the recommendations of his own National Advisory Board on Science and Technology to double the funding to these granting councils.
Sixth, applied health care research is the last area to be cut by the Conservatives. This includes research into preventive health care, health promotion, disease prevention, workplace hazards and cancer prevention.
The government seems to have forgotten the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. They tell us that health care costs are rising too quickly. At the very same time, they cut funds for applied health care research and research into health promotion and preventive health care.
What is the bottom line of all these actions? It is the internationally recognized indicator of scientific activity that the Prime Minister referred to, namely the percentage of Gross Domestic Product allocated to research and development. Such spending in Canada has actually gone down since the government took office from close to 1.4 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product to 1.3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.
The Prime Minister seems to have forgotten what he said in his book, Where I Stand, that just a 1 per cent increase in research and development spending would create in Canada one million jobs and $20 billion in additional sales of manufactured products. That percentage of scientific activity has gone down by 1 per cent, not gone up, not doubled as the Prime Minister promised in his speech in March 1984. This is at the same time that our major competitors continue to invest twice as much as we do in comparative terms and are increasing their spending.


An hon. member:: Short-sighted promises.


David Berger: We come back to the budget in which the Minister of Finance says that more needs to be done to assure our future prosperity. I quote from the minister's speech again: "We need to look hard at the quality of our investments in infrastructure, machinery and equipment, training and education, and research and technology". "There are signs," he said, "that in some areas, such as private sector spending on training and research we are not doing enough".
My reaction on reading the budget was, this is news to the Minister of Finance. For years, members of Parliament have heard from countless sources that we are falling behind in all these areas. From university teachers, university presidents, from students, from high school teachers, from business executives and workers, from union leaders, from the government's own advisory committees, the case has been made consistently and eloquently. Seven years after this government took office, it proposes to focus public debate on these issues.
Where has the government been for the past seven years? Has it not been the government's responsibility to take action in these areas, to show leadership, to do something about it? The debate the government proposes to engage Canadians now in is an admission of failure, an admission that we have lost seven years when this government should have taken steps to ensure that all Canadians receive quality education and that Canadians businesses do enough R and D. On the contrary, we have seen that all of their actions have defeated those very purposes.
On the very first page of his budget speech the Minister of Finance said:
-we must deal with the world as it is, and not as we might wish it to be.
I have two comments to make about this. Again, it is now almost seven years since this government took office. It is responsible for the world as it is. The Canada of today is what it is in part because of the actions of this government. It is time, therefore, that the government assumed responsibility for the difficult economic circumstances we are experiencing in Canada today.
Second, when I heard the finance minister say, "We must deal with the world as it is", I could not help thinking that Bobby Kennedy put it somewhat differently. He said, as if we need to be reminded, that "Some
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people see things as they are and ask why. I dream things that never were and ask why not". What a contrast. When the finance minister of Canada says to Canadians is: "Don't dream, don't be ambitious, accept the world as it is with all of the calamities that this government has visited upon you".
Liberals have a different view of things. We believe that we can build a better world. We believe that we can build a better Canada. Canadians believe that collectively we can build a better world and a better Canada. This is what we should be setting our sights on doing.


Geoff Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my hon. friend and indeed appreciate the position that he put. I think all Canadians would wish for more funds for education, more funds for R and D, and indeed more funds for many worth-while causes. 1 do not think anyone would seriously quarrel with those suggestions.
What I would like to ask my hon. friend is: How can we manage to achieve these things, given the mountain of debt that we have and the requirement to pay interest on it? There is no use going back into the why and the cause of that. We know what the amount was in the spring of 1985, at the end of the last fiscal year of the previous Liberal government, and we know the effects of compound interest on that.
The fact is that interest has to be paid on it and, to the extent that it is, it takes away from the ability of any government to have the funds necessary for those other things which we would all like to have.
The hon. member refers to dreams. It is good to have those and it is good to have wishes, but we cannot simply wish away the debt and we cannot wish away the requirement to pay interest on it.
In order to fund all these things that the hon. member would like to have, what other programs would he cut out and, if he is not going to cut out any programs and reduce spending at all, what increases would he bring forward by way of taxes? What tax measures would he introduce in order to be able to find the funds necessary?
The Budget


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. He asks me how we would provide more funds for education and research and development, how we would find these funds.
I find it somewhat perplexing that a member of the government is asking a member of the opposition how to find more funds for education and research and development.


An hon. member:: With a straight face too.


David Berger: With a straight face, as my colleague reminds me. It seems to me that this government should have some ideas about how we could find funds for education and research and development or how we could stimulate the private sector to put more money into training.
While I am on it, there was the de Grandpre commission which had to look into the question of adjustment to the free trade agreement and made a whole number of recommendations which this government have ignored. If he wants to find some answers, he might look at some of the recommendations of the de Grandpre commission.
I would like to suggest to the member that he was not listening really to my speech, because in it I said that to reduce the deficit we need a balanced approach which combines spending cuts, tax increases and economic growth. This government seems to have forgotten that one way to reduce the deficit is to make the country grow. I want to put it to him that the budget tabled in this House last week by the Minister of Finance will not accomplish those objectives.
I would like to read to him from a budget analysis prepared by the Toronto-Dominion Bank, Department of Economic Research: "The main problem of this budget is that it addresses none of Canada's major economic problems. Spending cuts and major tax increases such as the 25 per cent rise in unemployment insurance premiums for both business and employees will not only prolong this recession but will themselves defeat Mr. Wilson's deficit reduction objectives".
What I am saying to the member is that it is time that he and the members of his party and the Minister of Finance owned up to their failure to achieve the objectives that they set for Canadians, namely to reduce the deficit and the debt and to control inflation.

The Budget


James Capsey (Jim) Karpoff: Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker mentioned that there were three ways of dealing with the deficit: cutting spending, increasing taxes, and stimulating growth. I would not disagree with those but I think he has missed a couple of very, very critical ones. One, is stopping the tax loopholes for the large corporations, the tax concessions which are a major part of the reason we are into debt.
If the Tory government has not reduced the tax load for its friends, had not left the loopholes that the Liberals had put in place, there would be substantial reduction in the debt.
Also the member forgot to mention interest rates. My calculations are if there was a 4 per cent difference in interest rates on $400 billion that would be a saving of $16 billion right there.
I would like the member to comment on those two additional areas, the fiscal policy of this government that I think is responsible for a large percentage of the current deficit, and what steps they need to take to ensure that we are not simply compounding it with continued high interest rate policy.


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, the member who I believe is a member of the New Democratic Party, if I am not mistaken-


An hon. member:: Yes, he is.


David Berger: -talks about stopping tax loopholes. It is really remarkable how the NDP talks out of both sides of the mouth on this question. They say that they are interested in promoting economic growth, yet rail against tax incentives which have as their purpose to encourage businesses to invest in research and development, or training of workers, or capital investments of one kind or another.
I do not think the member recognizes or remembers that this government has indeed cut out some tax incentives which stimulated economic growth. Several years ago they passed a law which, for all intents and purposes, meant that companies that invest in R and D could no longer deduct the cost of buildings in which they do their research for tax purposes.
Can you imagine that, Mr. Speaker? A company has got to do research and development and they have a lot of sophisticated equipment, computers, et cetera, and they cannot put them anywhere because the Income Tax Act which the Conservative government has passed does
not allow them to claim an expense for the building that they have to have this equipment in.
I remember the reaction of Jean de Grandpre who, at the time, was president of Bell Canada Enterprises which is the parent company of perhaps Canada's only multinational company doing world-class research, namely Northern Telecom and Bell Northern Research. He said that this tax change initiated by the Conservative government would result in Northern Telecom doing research in the United States. This is exactly what is happening.
Is that the kind of tax loophole that the member for the NDP wants to see eliminated?
I get the impression from listening to the New Democratic Party that they want the Conservative government to continue cutting tax incentives which would stimulate economic growth and provide jobs to Canadians. It would seem to me that one of these days they have to fish or cut bait and tell Canadians where exactly they stand on these questions.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Resuming debate. The hon. member for Abitibi.


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this budget debate. To begin with, I would like to say concerning transfer payments, that the federal government is trying to increase its control over its own program spending. It is not always easy. For instance, the Canada Assistance Plan is administered by the provinces as long as they satisfy certain conditions. The federal government has to match the provinces' contributions, and has consequently no control over these outlays.
One of the things we noticed in this year's federal budget is that Val-d'Or, in Abitibi-Temiscamingue, will be the site of a research centre called CANMET. No one has ever seen liberal members, nor the NDP, or members of the Bloc Quebecois-members from the province of Quebec-try to obtain the establishment of such a mining research center in the province of Quebec.
What has been done these last few years, especially the last two? It is with the help of economic and political representatives of our region, like the development corporation, CERDAT and the mining association of Quebec that we won the battle. I am proud of it because
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this project will bring 15 million to the region over 5 years, starting this year.
Mr. Speaker, the spending control plan announced in last year's budget will be extended for the next three years. The Prime Minister's salary as well as that of all Cabinet ministers will be frozen. New limits-limits only-will be imposed on the salaries of the members of Parliament and senators. As far as I am concerned, they could have been frozen as well, I would have been glad to oblige.
Mr. Speaker, we bandy about a lot of figures. In all the speeches we heard, everyone, in the government as well as in the opposition, threw in a bunch of figures on the budget. I would like to tell the Canadian people, and more particularly the Quebec people, what I have done to try and reduce my expenditures as a member of Parliament. Often, in Abitibi, we attend social functions with senior citizens or young people who tell us how we should cut expenditures in Parliament. As we know, they total about $240 million for this House and another $40 million for the other place. Tonight, my speech is directed at all members of Parliament: conservatives, liberals, NDPers and members from the Bloc Quebecois. I guess we could call it, as the members from the Bloc Quebecois would say, a non-partisan speech.
Before issuing this release following the presentation of the Estimates on February 26, 1990, I had communicated some information to the media and said that, I for one, would be ready to restrict my privileges as member of Parliament. Members of Parliament are entitled to four free householder mailings a year to their riding. I checked what could be saved by applying mainly the restrictions imposed in 1990 by the hon. Robert de Cotret on the printing of the documents for such mailings, when he was the President of the Treasury Board, but the saving was insignificant.
For example, in 1989, I mailed a 44-page calendar which cost $9,000 for printing alone. Preparation and photomechanical reproduction costed $1,000 and mailing through Canada Post, $2,500. The total cost of this householder mailing to my riding was $12,400. Following the February 20, 1990 Budget, I had told a radio announcer from Radio-Nord, in Val-d'Or, that the Minister of Finance of Canada should, among other things, cut the number of free householder mailings
The Budget
Federal members of Parliament are allowed to make from four to a one only a year. The savings to the Canadian people would be $8.8 million if all conservative, liberal and new-democrat members joined in this effort. Personally, as a Conservative member from a northern riding, I decided to inform my constituents that I would send only one householder a year, not because I don't feel like sending four, but I say we have to cut expenses. People are told they have to pay taxes, and the government is cutting programs. For instance, at the time they cut a program that enabled students to travel across Canada. I told my constituents I was going to cut down to one householder and that I would no longer be sending 2,000 Christmas cards every year, and there would be no more birthday cards for my constituents. My message was: The government is asking Canadians to tighten their belts. I think it is only fair that as the federal member for Abitibi, I should cut my own spending and set an example for my constituents.
In May 1990, a new directive was issued concerning our 64 points for travel in Canada. We have a points system. Instead of money, we have a certain number of points for travel to our ridings. A directive issued by a committee said that spouses would be allowed the same number of points to go anywhere in Canada. That was one of the privileges, and I immediately objected. I wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons, Mr. Fraser, and he said the following:
I understand that this new provision will help ease some of the professional and family pressures on members. In the case of large ridings without easy access, members and spouses will be able to travel more readily and more frequently within their province, while formerly such trips were designated as special travel.
That is one of the measures to which I objected. However, to show my constituents what my expenses were as a member, I told them in a statement in the House of Commons on November 22 1990, about my travel expenses in the riding of Abitibi, which is quite considerable and covers 554,000 square kilometres, from September 1984 to March 31, 1990:
-my travelling expenses in Abitibi and elsewhere in Canada amounted to $180,804, or $32,382 a year on average.
If I had applied all 64 points within my riding, to go to the northern part of the riding, it would have cost me $2,500 each trip, or $160,000 a year. I refer also to householder mailings, how much it cost me since 1984,

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for 26 mailings: $155,000. And I explained how I proceeded to send my Christmas wishes to my constituents, by making a statement in the House of Commons, for a saving of $15,000.
On December 12, 1990,1 wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons asking him to change the Members' Manual of Allowances and Services. I wrote:
There is no doubt that Canada is going through difficult economic times and it is essential to ensure good management of the expenses in the House of Commons as well as in Canada.
We must take measures to reduce substantially the expenses (privileges) of the federal Members of Parliament in Canada and to cut by 20 per cent the estimates of the House of Commons in Ottawa for 1991-92.
We all know that for several months budget cuts and even total cuts have been made which have affected various programs and caused difficulties to many organizations.
The example I was referring to earlier:
(student exchange programs, women's issues, etc.)
Since the federal government is committed to spending restraint, members must do their share even if this creates some difficulties.
I know that some changes have been made already but I think sincerely that more can be done, including in allowances and services to members.
My suggestions to the Speaker of the House of Commons were the following:
The system of the 64 travelling points allowed to members. Each member is allowed, by periods of 12 consecutive months, a total of 64 points which he or she can use as follows:
I suggested to come back to the old system and not give the 64 points at large, which means across Canada. I told the Speaker: "Let us come back to the old system and keep the 64 points directly for the return trips to constituencies."
Allocate 15 of the 64 points to dependent children for return trips between the constituency and Ottawa.
Allocate 9 of the 64 points to his or her staff for return trips between the constituency and Ottawa.
2) Special trips
Members can use 20 of these 64 points for return trips between Ottawa and the constituency or any other destination in Canada for a direct flight with short stops to the destination city (which means that they cannot have several stopovers on their way there, except in case of emergency).


B-DESIGNATED MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY
[Stage Direction]
Members who want that some of their relatives enjoy those travel as provided by the 64 point-system can do so by designating one of the following categories to that end: children (son, daughter), parents (mother, father)
And most of all, I wanted to do away with the designation of all other family members and the printing of householder mailings; I wanted to substitute the following for Chapter F-3 of the Members's Manual of Allowances and Services, that is, the printing of only four householder mailings and/or letters, foldout format brochures, postal cards, questionnaires be allowed to be mailed within the riding of the hon. member, that such four householder mailings be printed and sent at the rate of one (1) every three months for a total of four mailings a year to prevent the sending of two or three newsletters the same month.
Concerning another chapter on printing, I proposed to allow the mailing of only 10 per cent of a householder within the riding of a member.
As for Christmas and New Year greetings containing a message from Parliament, instead of allowing the printing 2,000 cards, I proposed to limit that number to 500, and that any overrun be applied against the member's budget.
In a letter to Speaker Fraser about stationary and office supplies, I said that quotas should be applied on all stationary and desk supplies, as of January 1 1991, and that once these quotas were used, any requisition for stationary or office supplies would be charged against the Main Estimates after a review by the Board of Internal Economy of the House of Commons (quota for the office of members of the House of Commons).
Financial reports to members: That the travel summary-64 points system-mention the travel costs for each trip and that it be cumulative. One other thing: That the funds allocated to subsidies and contributions to parliamentary associations and delegations be further reduced by 10 percent each year in 1990-91,1991-92 and 1992-93. All members should coordinate their efforts towards such a reduction for a period of three (3) years.
I have received a response to my letter dated December 13 to Mr. Speaker, who always answers to me promptly, and here is what it says: "I want to thank you for your letter and your suggestions concerning some modifications to be made to the Members' Manual of
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[Stage Direction]
Allowances and Services in order to reduce the House of Commons expenditures. The Board members studied your proposals and agreed to ask members of the Standing Committee on Management and Members' Services to examine them and to give their comments and recommendations." That was back in December, but since that time, I did not receive anything from the Committee on Privileges and Elections. It has been silent. I did not receive any letter from that committee.
I have a really important thing to say: when I started examining that matter, Mr. Speaker, what I really liked was that, immediately after Tbesday December 18, Bill C-79 was tabled before the House of Commons and one of its clauses that many of us are aware of read: Disclosure of expenditures. After thoughtful discussion, the committee recommended a more detailed disclosure of expenditures directly related to members of Parliament. Canadians are entitled to know just how elected MPs spend their tax dollars.
In a spirit of financial openness and transparency we will therefore have to tell the public what use we make of these funds. However the committee is still not sure what is the best way to proceed. What is known is that we will have to strike a proper balance between the principle of financial transparency and the principle of parliamentary independence. The information has to be sufficiently detailed, but not to the point of losing sight of the basic issue. We will also have to respect the right to privacy of the employees and the privileges of hon. members. We ought to give serious consideration to every facet of the release of these data and to the procedural aspects of the discussions.
Mr. Speaker, on January 11 of this year 19911 held a press conference in my riding and told local media representatives that I, Guy Saint-Julien, Member of Parliament, will make public all expenses incurred in 1991 in the discharge of my parliamentary duties, including my privileges as a member.
I said that I had tabled a letter in the House of Commons, that I had told the Speaker that I would make a quarterly report to my constituents so that indeed Canadians and Quebecers would know about all my
The Budget
privileges, that is all the expenses for my Ottawa office and my riding offices, and all the expenses incurred for my work as a Member of Parliament such as parliamentary travels, travels as member of parliamentary associations or parliamentary and government delegations, trips paid for by Canadian or foreign promoters and all the expenses allowed by my privileges; I would disclose them every three months, four times a year to my constituents. I wanted to take these steps for the purpose of reducing the many privileges granted to hon. members, as I did last year after Michael Wilson tabled his Budget on February 20, 1990. I said in my statement:
It is essential for him to control expenditures out of public funds, in view of the Federal Government's sustained commitment to limit its expenditures in departments, Crown corporations, programs, etc.
Abitibi men and women have the right to know how their elected representative spends the money they give him.
In a spirit of financial openness and transparency, following the tabling by Hon. Marcel Danis on December 18, 1990 of the Sixth Report of the Special Committee responsible for looking into Bill C-79 on the Parliament of Canada which deals for instance with the disclosure of expenditures.
That is what I had decided to do for my constituents a long time before last week's budget.
I wrote to the Speaker to know how I could find out about all my expenses both in this place and in the Senate. I asked the Speaker concerning the production of an expenditure report:
The Comptroller of the House advises me that he is not in a position to provide such financial information as requested in your letter.
Beside the expenses incurred directly by your offices (Ottawa and riding), the House of Commons is not responsible for keeping data about the various costs of each hon. member. Translation expenses are paid by the Secretary of State without going through the House. Likewise, most of telecommunication costs paid by the House are provided to all hon. members. It would be impossible, therefore, to provide you with the total expenses incurred by your offices, or to ensure their correctness, because organizations outside of Parliament pay some of these costs.
Then he referred to the Act of Parliament and so on and so forth. I still continue my efforts with a view to finding a way to obtain data concerning all my expenses which I want to disclose every quarterly to my Abitibi constituents.
[Stage Direction]
March 4, 1991
The Budget
There is another point I would like to make, Mr. Speaker which is not mentioned in the Budget. It concerns mostly one of the issues contained in bill C-79, that is, the joint services offered to both Houses.
While examining the House of Commons administrative machinery, the committee realized that there is a lot of duplication between both Houses. Most services this House needs are also needed by the Senate. The committee believes that we could save public funds if we rationalized administrative services with a view to a better coordination. The committee however recognizes the importance of safeguarding the independence of each House. Within the scope of its proceedings, the committee will discuss the process needed to ensure consideration of these matters.
Mr. Speaker, before January 30, I wrote to the chairman of the Committee who had this to answer:
I appreciate your interest in the proceedings of the Special Committee on the Review of the Parliament of Canada Act.
He added:
Unfortunately, I cannot give you a list of joint services offered to both Houses. I do not know if such a list exists. For more information, I suggest you write to the Administrator of the House of Commons, Mr. Ed Riedel, or the Clerk of the Senate, Mr. Gordon L. Barnhart. Both of these gentlemen or at least one of them should be able to provide you with a complete list of these services.
Finally, members of this Committee seem convinced that better coordination of services offered to both Houses would improve our administrative efficiency. However, our Committee did not look into this matter in detail; instead, we called upon the experience and knowledge of our members and personnel.
I see, Mr. Speaker, you are telling me I have two minutes left. One more point about joint services. I went to the basement once to buy some stamps and I stopped at the wrong counter. I was at the Senate post office. As a member of this House, I do have to buy my own stamps in order to pay my bills. They would not let me buy stamps. They told me I was at the wrong counter, to go to the members post office. If we were to combine these two services in one, we would save money. Messengers of both Houses, production, publications, maintenance, cleaning, security, translation, distribution, postal service, general works, purchasing branch, transportation, nobody can produce a list, but I just did. I have given you the list. That is where we should save. We would save millions of dollars. If all those services were put together, we could save maybe $20 million between the two Houses.
I am pleased I have one minute left, Mr. Speaker. I wrote the two persons concerned and asked one thing. On February 19, I wrote the Speaker the following:
-I ask that a joint committee be struck as soon as possible to establish a joint administration of both Houses for the services they have in common -
And so on, all the services I will mention to you.
Mr. Speaker, I conclude in saying that I acted that way because I felt it was important. The people of Canada, the people from my constituency are told to tighten their belts. Companies, since a few months, are cutting their expenses, and wherever they can, they are imposing quotas. My speech tonight, a non partisan speech, contained two points to remember, namely the quarterly publication of members' expenses, starting in 1991 and continuing in the following years, and then a joint committee, of the House of Commons and the Senate, to coordinate the services of these two houses, thereby allowing savings of public funds.
I hope that all the members have understood my message.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBIois):: Questions or comments. The hon. member for Saint-Leonard.


Mr. Alfonso Gagliano (Saint-Leonard):: Mr. Speaker, I see that my colleague is very keen on cutting expenditures. I am sure that his suggestions will be studied by the various committees, like the Management and Members' Services Committee and the Board of Internal Economy.
However, Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the budget, because that is what we are debating today. I would like to ask my colleague from Abitibi, who is so keen on cuts, whether he did the same exercise with the government and its Estimates. The Estimates, tabled two days after the budget, show $3 billion spending for the government, including advertising, public relations and the like. Three billion dollars. At a time when we are asking Canadians to cut on health care, when we increase unemployment insurance premiums, when we cut on housing for the homeless and on education, it seems to me that we could have cut in these three billon for advertising.
So, I was wondering whether the hon. member for Abitibi also wrote to the Minister of Finance to ask him to do something about that. Mr. Speaker, rich or poor, you don't know when you are going to require health care. When you are sick, you are sick. So, if you curtail health care for the poor, you should also be able to curtail the advertising budget of the government. Millions of dollars are being spent on promoting the GST and on a number of other programs.
March 4, 1991

So, for all that, I will leave time to my colleague in order that he can answer. I know there are a few minutes left, but it is time any way, Mr. Speaker. If the government claims that cuts must be made, if it begs everybody to tighten one's belt, it must not do it at the expense of the needy, but rather begin by doing it to itself. I know the government needs advertising since it is so low in the opinion polls, but I am under the impression that even if it doubled the sum it spends on advertising, that is $6 billions instead of the $3 billions now available, it would not be better off, since the government itself is finished. So, maybe it could cut the $3 billions in advertising expenditures. That would allow it to reduce the debt of an amount of $3 billions and would leave untouched the social programs which are necessary for the poor.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: The hon. member for Abitibi has one minute and a half left.


Guy St-Julien: Mr. Speaker, it will be a pleasure to respond in one minute and a half. I knew he would not ask any questions about what I said.


George Albert Proud: Do all members of the Quebec caucus agree with you?


Guy St-Julien: I will let you speak if you want to. About members from Quebec, I said what I had to say quite frankly. You do not even have the courage to ask me questions about what I said in my speech.
The hon. member asked me questions about cuts in publications. He should start by doing that himself in his constituency. As I said earlier, I did it in my riding: householders were cut from four to one. I want to say that I already wrote to Treasury Board about that. All members receive in their offices nice glossy brochures from Petro-Canada, nice colourful folders from government departments, et cetera. I wrote to Treasury Board to ask them to do as they do in Quebec, in two colours, with the Quebec flag and the Canadian flag. But you did not dare-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Order, please. It being 6.45 o'clock p.m. it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 84 to interrupt the proceedings and put forward every question necessary to dispose of the amendment before the House.
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The question in on the amendment of the hon. member for Windsor West.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?


Some hon. members:: Agreed.


Some hon. members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: All those in favour will please say yea.


Some hon. members:: Yea.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: All those in favour will please say nay.


Some hon. members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: In my opinion, the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. DeBlois):: Call in the members.


Mr. Speaker:: I declare the amendment lost.
It being 7:15 p.m., this House stands adjourned until tomorrow, at 11 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).


[Stage Direction]
The House adjourned at 7:15 p.m.
[Stage Direction]
Tuesday March 5, 1991