EFEATS CLARK’S BUDGET

no. Is this the kind of price increase that is
going to have an effect, or hurt Mr. Lawyer
Jones? No, he will not feel it or, if he feels it,
he will not feel it as much, and that is the
definition of a regressive tax.

A regressive tax, to putit quitesimply,isa
tax which hurts some people more than
others, and this tax hurts the poor people,
the working people and the middle income
people, far more than it hurts the lawyers,
the doctors, and the accountants.

The Christmas message from St. John’s
West is quite simple. It is an old message; to
them that hath it shall be given.

Perhaps we could put the lesson another
way. If you drink, don’t smoke; if yousmoke,
don’t drive; if you drive, don’t drink; if you
drive, smoke and drink, don’t think, because
if you think you will wonder why you ever
voted Conservative in the last election!

What I have said about Mr. and Mrs.
Jones is so much more true of the farmer,
and is so much more true of the unemploy-
ment insurance payee who is now being
asked to pay more through a completely
regressive tax. It is a tax that is not progres-
sive, a tax that does not get higher as your
income gets higher.

Imagine the effect on a group whom we
ignore in this House far too much, the six
million Canadians who live in poverty;
those people who, because of age, because of
circumstances, because of region, because of
the peculiarities of history, because of the
marvels of the market system, which is the
sine qua non of the party opposite, have
competed in our society, and, when the race
was over, have lost. Those are the people,
and there are millions of them — young and
old — who are, to put it bluntly, getting a
kick in the teeth from the Conservative
Party of Canada through the budget which
was presented last night.

When we look at the over-all effects of this
budget, they include a dramatic redistribu-
tion of wealth toward certain provinces,
redistribution of wealth toward certain
classes, and redistribution of wealth toward
certain companies. That is the nature of this
government’s energy policy. There was a
great deal of comment when my leader got
up today, as we expected there would be, and
pointed out that of this $90 billion which
was being collected $40 billion will go to the
producing provinces, $33 billion will go to
the multinational oil companies, and $17
billion will go to the national government.
Of that $17 billion, asmall fraction will go to
the national energy fund.

The second thing about this budget is that
it is a redefinition or a clarifying of the role
of government in our society. It is a redefini-
tion which ignores the economic, social, and
political revolutions of our time. That
revolution is that people will no longer
accept being treated as commodities in our
society, to be traded, shipped, transferred,
and paid for as though they were another
commodity.

With a reduction in the role of the govern-
ment in the conomy such as predicted over
the five-year period by the Conservative
party, the growth and expansion of large
multinational companies, which will be
subsidized again as they were subsidized in
the past by the Liberal party, will continue.
The Liberal party has presided over the
sell-out of Canada to these multinational

companies. It is something of an irony to
hear these reborn, new born, born again
Liberals, as if that party sprang immaculate
from the loins of the hon. member for
Windsor West (Mr. Gray) on May 28, 1979.

That party has a history which the people
of Canada will not readily forget. Whether
they are left, right, or centre, they have
presided over the economic sell-out of our
country, and that is a lesson which no
Canadian will readily forget.

Finally, the element in this budget which
is the most unacceptable to most Canadians
is the unfairness or the problem of equity.
The challenge of the the crisis of the 1980s, if
there is an economic crisis and an energy
crisis — and we accept the fact that there is
and are not doubting for a moment that
there are very serious problems with energy
and within our economy — and if anelection
must be fought onthis issue then let it be so
— 1s who will bear the sacrifices of the 1980s.
Will it be the members of the Empire Club,
whom the Minister of Finance is so happy to
inform that they will have to tighten their
belts as they dig into another course? Are
those the people who will be making the
sacrifices in our society? I suggest not.

I suggest that the people who are being
asked in this budget to make the biggest, the
most important, and the most difficult
sacrifices, are those who can least afford to
do so.

None of us like the fact that the Liberal
party has left us with a. gigantic deficit. as a
result of the extraordinary tax policies they
followed, the incredible expenditures they
allowed, and the pork-barrelling which was
the defining quality of the Liberal party.
When the tomb of the Liberal party is built, a
large statue of Mirabel will be placed on it.
That represents the worst form of public
spending that we have seen.

There are alternatives to the policies of
this government, Mr. Speaker. This is the
last time we should be taking Canada ona
forced march to a reduced deficit of $4 or $5
billion in 1984. On the government’s own
figures, this will lead to unemployment of 7.5
per cent, which is an increase. Inflation will
remain at exactly the level it is at now, but
next year will be higher. We have to ask
ourselves what we are getting. We are
getting Herbert Hoover and R. B. Bennett,
but I do not see any advantage to the policy.

This minister says that we have terrible
unemployment and terrible inflation in
Canada and that we need a five-year plan to
deal with these horrendous problems. But
with this five-year plan we find we have
exactly the same inflation and the same
unemployment as there is now. If that is the
kind of long march the minister now wants
to take us on, I suggest he put on his
mukluks and head off by himself. He will
not be followed by the rest of the Canadian
people.

In closing remarks, the minister men-
tioned his grandfather, I should like to
mention my gransfather. Seventy years ago
he came to Canada as an immigrant,
worked hard, fought in a war, suffered
through a depression. Were he alive today, I
doubt very much that he would find any-
thing has changed in the sonsecutive
budgets produced by Liberal and Conserva-
tive governments.

I should like to recite to hon. members a
poem by T. S. Eliot which goes as follows:

Though you have shelters and institutions,
Precarious lodgings while the rent is paid,
Subsiding basements were the rat breeds

Or sanitary dwellings with numbered doors

Or a house a little better than your neighbour’s;
When the Stranger says: ‘‘What is the meaning of
this city

Do you huddle close together because you love
each other?’

What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together
To make money from each other’? or ‘This is a
community’?

I see the minister with his usual knowledge
and common sense has a comment. I should
like to tell him where I first saw this poem. It
was in a United Auto Workers’ hall in Port
Elgin, Ontario. If he wants to go and see it
himself, he can. The message that came from
that union movement is one with which Iam
not the least bit ashamed to associate myself.
It is:

What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together
To make money from each other’? or ‘This is a
community’?

Let me suggest that there is a very clear
alternative to the policy of this government,
which is about to be defeated, and that
alternative is a policy which recognizes that
Canada is a community — not acommunity
of communities only, but a community. Itis
a community in which the critical question
in the 1980s will be: are we simply here “‘to
make money from each other” or are we here
to do something different?

In the policies which this party suggested
during the election campaign, such asacost
of living tax credit, the need for an indus-
trial strategy, the importance of-providing
jobs for Canadians and looking at the real
health of the economy, and not some
abstractions which so upset hon. members
opposite, we have suggested that there is an
alternative to the policies of the govern-
ment. That alternative is the social demo-
cratic alternative.

Let me suggest that between the new
conservatism and the new democracy there
is no middle ground. It has something which
my friends to the far right in the Liberal
party are quickly going to discover, that
there is a message in this budget — the
government has thrown down the gauntlet,
the government has waved its flag and said,
“We dare you in these trying political times,
with the resignation of the leader of the
Liberal party, to oppose the policies with
which we want to take Canada into the
eighties.” We accept that challenge,Mr.
Speaker. We accept it happily. We accept it
with confidence and with vigour, because
we are convinced that the message con-
tained in this budget is a message of injus-
tice. It is a mean message, not a generous or
compassionate message; it is a message
which will be rejected by the Canadian

people because it is so mean and not
compassionate.

Mr. Speaker, I therefore move,
seconded by the Hon.member for Winni-
peg North Centre (Mr. Knowles):

That the amendment be amended by
changing the period at the end thereof
to a comma, and by adding immediately
thereafter the following words:

and this House unreservedly con-

demns the government for its out-

right betrayal of its election prom-
ises to lower interest rates, to cut
taxes, and to simulate the growth
of the Canadian economy, without

a mandate from the Canadian peo-
ple for such a reversal.