Mr. Speaker, at the outset we oppose Bill C-43. It is a pleasure to speak on the bill and on Group No. 1 motions.
There are good things in the bill. No doubt, as my colleagues have mentioned, there are good things about reducing duplication, about improving the efficiency within the tax system, with having one agency to collect taxes. In my province of British Columbia we have a mess.
We have a mess in the tax system, particularly on the provincial level, where it is so complex that it is costing businesses to pay and implement the provincial tax structures. They would prefer to have a flat system where everything was taxed, believe it or not in some cases, than have the system they have now that is costing them an extraordinary amount of money just to implement it.
We support those elements in Bill C-43 that will streamline the system. However, if we are to a Canada customs and review agency that will be a super agency, the Canadian public must have the assurance the agency will be transparent and accountable to parliament and therefore to the Canadian people.
We insist therefore that a couple of significant provisions be made in the bill, provisions we feel are essential if the bill goes through. One is to ensure we have a taxpayer bill of rights. This taxpayer bill of rights is a check. It is a balance. It is an assurance to Canadians that they will be protected from an agency. Canadian do not mind paying fair taxes but they do not want to be ripped off.
Some of the elements in the taxpayer bill of rights would include tax laws in plain language that are understandable to Canadians as opposed to the system now where even a person with a Ph.D. finds it very difficult to understand. Taxpayers should be treated properly, fairly and with honesty and have an avenue to complain where the complaints are heard and not merely swept under the carpet. They should be informed of overpayment in a timely fashion.
One of the complaints I am sure we all get as members of parliament is that even though Canadians are asked to pay their taxes on time, and if not they are made to feel like a criminal, if somehow they overpay it can take a month of Sundays before that money is paid back.
Penalties ought to be applied fairly to all individuals. The right to record any and all meetings with Revenue Canada should be there on the part of the taxpayer. The taxpayer should have the right to appeal any Revenue Canada rulings and that CCRA should waive penalties and interest wherever possible where taxpayers have acted in good faith in their payment of taxes but for circumstances perhaps not in their control or due to an unfortunate oversight they happened to pay less than they should have.
Canadians are overtaxed. Most Canadians do their best to pay. Sometimes they run afoul of the payment schedule. We beg and we ask that taxpayers are not made to feel like criminals, that amendments can be made on compassionate grounds to make sure they will pay their taxes in a way that is fair to them.
We want a fair tax system, not a tax system sitting there like a cudgel over the heads of taxpayers and is used to bash them over the head like a group of bovines.
That is not what Canadians want. They want a fair tax system. They do not mind paying their tax, but they do not want to be treated as slaves to a large system that can be created.
It is for those reasons that we want to ensure a taxpayer bill of rights is put forward. The other thing we want is an office for taxpayer protection. This office of taxpayer protection is another element of adding transparency, another check and a balance and a protection for the Canadian people.
We want this taxpayer protection office to report to parliament each year on the state of the CCRA. A chief advocate can be used to present this to parliament and that chief advocate can present 25 of the most serious problems in the system to the House so they can be acted on in a timely fashion rather than what usually happens where it is ignored or tossed under the table.
Also, this office can be used to assist taxpayers in resolving disputes with the CCRA and can act as an advocate for last resort for the taxpayer. This would be a very constructive role by the government. We hope the government listens.
If the government instituted those two solutions then it government would have the support of the Reform Party in passing this bill. We will not support this bill unless those checks and balances are there and unless the Canadian public is protected from the CCRA.
Let us talk on the larger issue of tax cuts. We have been accused of somehow favouring the rich. We have been accused of instituting a plan that will destroy social programs.
If that were the case we would not support tax cuts. The cold hard facts that have been seen across the country and around the world are that tax cuts improve the health and welfare of people and can generate more money for government to save social programs.
That is one of the reasons the Reform Party came here. We saw the degradation of our social programs. We saw the destruction of our health care, our education system and the social safety nets that are there, thankfully, to help those who through no fault of their own are unable to work.
It has been sadly 20 years of overspending by governments that has caused the mountain of debt and that has caused such a huge amount of interest payments that have eroded into the spending capabilities of government to support the social programs we have all come to be fortunate enough to have in our blessed country.
Let us look at the facts. What do taxes do? Let us look at the tax burden briefly for a second. If we look at individuals, if we look at ourselves versus the United States, we can see that personal taxes have increased over the last three decades 136% in Canada personally compared to 31% in the United States of America. Those are the facts.
In the OECD Canada suffers the highest personal income tax burden of any major economy as a revenue proportion of GDP. Our ratio is nearly 18%. In the U.S. it is 11% and 10% in Britain. Britain lowered its tax rates. Ireland lowered its tax rates. It decreased the complexity of its tax structure, decreased the complexity of the rules and regulations that choked the private sector. As a result, its economy is booming.
Lessons can be learned. Let us take a look at the tax increases by the government. The government likes to say it has decreased taxes. Au contraire. They have actually increased although they have been nibbled away at the tax burden a little bit.
Tax brackets and credits have not been indexed to inflation, therefore we have had bracket creep that has increased taxes 18%.
The CPP tax increase of 73% has actually increased the total tax burden on Canadians by over $1.3 billion in excess of what the government has actually decreased. I challenge any member from across the way to refute that argument.
On the issue of the benefits of tax cuts, if we look at the 10 states in the United States with the lowest taxes they have had a 20% higher amount of money and a growth rate in jobs far in excess of those 10 states with the highest tax rates. The lowest tax rate states have had a much higher rate of income for their average citizens. If we compare Ohio, Michigan and Ontario the job creation to the marginal tax rates in the United States is much lower than Ontario and as a result the job creation rates were much higher than what we found in Ontario.
If the government wants to do something constructive and productive for Canadians it can restore full indexation to the inflation of federal tax credits and income brackets, eliminate the 3% and 5% federal surtaxes and reduce each of the three federal income tax rates by 2%. The government should listen to that. If it listens to that Canadians will be wealthier, healthier and have social programs and will be better off.