Madam Speaker, I am not a Liberal so I guess the member should ask that question of Liberals across the way.
I suppose one reason they raised taxes so often was that they wanted to spend $60 million on an unelected Senate. I know my friend is very interested in the Senate issue in terms of trying to abolish the unelected Senate. We may disagree on what it should be replaced with, but certainly spending $60 million on an unelected Senate is a waste of taxpayer money.
There are all kinds of other waste as well. The member enumerated some of them. I am aware of some of the ones he has talked about, but I do not know about sex changes for soldiers. Maybe he could elaborate on that, but I certainly know about the fountains in Shawinigan and all kinds of other money wasted across the country.
The one I referred to specifically was letting the Bronfman family get away with not paying a penny in taxes on the $700 million in capital gains. The member makes a very good point. If we do not tax certain things then other people will be taxed to fill the gap. If the Bronfmans are not taxed on $700 million worth of capital gains, who will pay the bill? It will be ordinary working people in British Columbia, Saskatchewan or anywhere else in the country. They then pay the bill.
That gets back to my original point that we need a fair tax system based on the ability to pay. It should be a progressive tax system, not a flat tax system because the wealthy people get away with a better deal when everybody pays the same tax rate. A progressive tax system based on the ability to pay is the way to go, with tax reductions for middle income people, with a lot higher exemption that would exempt more and more poor people, and with tax credits for children so that we have a children's agenda to invest in the future.