CHAIRMAN'S FOREWORD
This is the third report on pre-budget consultations prepared by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. These consultations have marked this Parliament in a unique way, opening the budget process in unprecedented fashion to the contribution of all Canadians. In those three years, we have travelled and listened. We have been stimulated, provoked, enlightened, moved and impressed by the ideas, emotions, passions and concerns of Canadians. Most of all we have learned and what we have learned most is about the basic common sense, the decency and the commitment of Canadians.
Each consultation has had a different character, reflecting the time and region in which the Committee's public consultations took place and the prevailing mood of Canadians when we met them.
In the first of these reports, prepared in the autumn of 1994 prior to the Government's February 1995 budget, the Committee found Canadians in the midst of a crisis, fully seized of the need to confront it but fearful nonetheless that perhaps Canada had been allowed to go too deep into debt.
In the second, prepared prior to the Government's March 1996 budget, we found Canadians less beset with a sense of crisis but worried about their country, unsure of success but less fearful and prepared to stay the course and knuckle down to working through the problems that needed to be solved.
In this, the third report, for the 1997 budget, we again report what we found in our consultations during October and November.
What we found was a country caught Janus-like in the midst of a work in progress, able to look back now and see the progress that has been made, but able also, for the first time since recession began this decade, to look ahead again to the possibilities of Canada.
It has been a long, hard pull to get this far. A long, hard pull remains ahead.
But Canada is now a country possessed of something it has lacked for some time-- a consensus, deep and broad and powerful, on both the problems we have and the way to solve them.
Listening to Canadians, one cannot help but wonder at the people we are.
These have been tough times. Difficult measures have been required. The sacrifices have been immense. But as a people, we have been as tough as the times. We have shied from neither difficulty nor sacrifice.
But there has been something else that has marked our response. If our difficulties called for toughness of mind and discipline and imposed on all Canadians a measure of sacrifice, some in greater measure, some in less, the response has been neither mean-spirited nor even blame seeking.
To the contrary, we have observed, in three years of consultations, a flowering of the voluntary spirit among Canadians, a willingness to search for new ways to help our compatriots, to innovate, to make do with less, to reach out in new ways to those in need, a reassertion, in other words, of the traditional values that have always marked this country.
We did hear, of course, some witnesses who were mean-spirited and ungenerous and who sought to seek out villains for a situation we all created and all will have to solve. To suggest otherwise would be denied by the public record of our work.
But Canadians, even in the period when the sense of crisis was at its height, did not respond in great numbers to these sentiments and the ideas that flowed from them and, in the time since, the response has been attenuated even more and the attitude of those appearing before us has been increasingly positive, anxious to contribute to a better country, willing to accept what is necessary but not what is wrong.
In three years, then, we have seen the diminution of fear and the restoration of hope. We have seen despondency replaced by a new economic and social energy.
When he appeared before us in October, the Minister of Finance recounted the progress that has been made during these past three years in restoring the fiscal health of Canada.
He spoke of how, by impressing financial markets with our commitment to the goals we had set and our success in meeting them, we had been able to regain in considerable measure what we had lost in the preceding years -- a broader range of choices, more freedom of action, the chance to worry less about the opinions of markets and more about how to solve our nation's problems. We had made considerable progress, in brief, in restoring the economic sovereignty of Canada.
In our consultations we found our progress was well recognized. But we found something more. We found that, not only have we made progress in restoring the fiscal health and the economic sovereignty of Canada, but the last three years have restored something even more valuable -- the promise of Canada.
Because of this, the will is there to finish the job begun three years ago. That is the principal concern of this report, to finish the job of cleaning up from the past but also to begin concentrating more on opening up our future and fulfilling the promise Canadians once again see.
Throughout our report, readers will find a constant concern that we finish the job we have begun, that we do nothing to jeopardize the progress we have made and the confidence we have built.
But the success of the past three years has been such that the Government now has more capacity than at any time in its mandate to deal with problems that have been too long neglected. That capacity is still very limited. Canadians know we must continue to meet and surpass our deficit targets and then start to pay down our enormous debt. But they also told us we will be better able to meet these challenges in the future if we start rebuilding some of our enormous potential today.
Within this framework of having to finish the job, Canadians made clear their priorities for addressing problems that have been neglected and building new potential for a more prosperous future.
They want us to help the poor children of Canada who have too long been left in need. They want those with disabilities to be able to make a greater contribution to their own lives as well as the country's progress. They want more Canadians to acquire the literacy skills that jobs of the future demand. They want our students to be better educated and to have much greater access to world class opportunities for research, science and technology. And they know governments have had to cut spending, but they are eager to find new ways and are prepared to be part of them, to protect and nurture the institutions and way of life they value. They want new incentives to help our voluntary and charitable sectors do the job that governments have not been able to do.
These are the priorities of Canadians. They are ours.
The Government, in the Committee's view, has some room now to act in these areas, not a great deal of room, but room. And within the room it has, it should act.
The Committee, reflecting what Canadians have proposed, suggested and testified, has set out its view of where the Government might act and how.
We hope and expect that the coming budget, like previous budgets, will reflect the views of Canadians that we have distilled from consultations in which we all felt privileged to participate, from written briefs and supplementary material, and from verbatim transcripts of our public hearings in Ottawa and throughout the country.
We are grateful to and thank the 317 witnesses who appeared before us and the 227 Canadians who prepared written submissions for us.
I am grateful to and thank committee members from all parties who have responded to long hours, dense schedules and short deadlines with unfailing co-operation and goodwill.
Committee members and I are most grateful to and thank those who have worked with us on a daily basis. We are particularly grateful to our Clerk, Martine Bresson for her patience and professionalism, as well as Bev Isles and Caroline Martin, and House of Commons staff; to our Researchers Marion Wrobel and Richard Domingue; and to David Ablett who advised on the text.
Finally, I owe much to Liz Yong-Laflèche of my Ottawa office for bearing a double work load with unfailing good spirit and especially to my Legislative Assistant Lou Riccoboni for his dedicated leadership and all he has given me.
All of you have made this report possible.
Jim Peterson
Chairman