Mr. Speaker, many people have spoken to the bill today and in past days and many will speak after I do as well. Rather than dwell on its specific details, I would like to talk about the whole concept of government budgets, how governments spend their money and for that matter why they spend their money.
In this country there is far too much government, particularly at the federal level. In order to deal with that we need to look at why we even have government. I recognize we need to have government, there is no question of that, but what exactly is it that government should be doing for us?
Government should exist for the purpose of doing things for people that must be done, which they either cannot or will not do for themselves. That is the sole purpose of government. What government should not do is be in business. Especially it should not be in business to compete against the private sector.
We need to reduce government to do only those things which people must have done that they either cannot or will not do for themselves. Having reduced it to that, we next need to bring the government as close as possible to the people it serves. People should have the best access possible to their elected representatives. If an issue can be handled at the provincial, regional or local level, that is where it should be handled. Only those things which are best done at the national level should indeed be done here in Ottawa by the federal government.
There is a role obviously for the federal government. There are things that are best done at the federal level, but the federal government is involved in far more than that. That is why there are such huge and wasteful budgets. That is why there have been such overwhelming deficits in the past. That is why there is still such an outstanding debt. The interest payments on it are eating up a lot of the money that taxpayers send to the government.
If we took this to its ultimate conclusion, we could quite conceivably reach a point where it no longer became necessary or indeed practical to pay federal income tax. I know there are a lot of people out there who think the federal government does not even have the constitutional right to collect income tax but in actual fact it does. I have read this. It has been brought up a lot in my riding. As a result of that I did check into it and I can sadly confirm that it does indeed have the right to tax Canadians, and tax them it does. If we reduced government to doing only those things that governments should be doing, then we may come to a point where it would not be necessary to collect federal income tax.
Obviously if the government still had a role at the federal level, which it would, it would have to have the money to fulfill that role. What is the alternative to the government taxing the residents of the various provinces and territories? It is simply this. Taxes would be done at the local level and the federal government in essence would bill the provinces for services rendered.
The bill would be based on the provincial GDP. Each province would pay a different amount of money for that service. That in essence would become the equalization payment. A province that was richer and had a stronger GDP would pay a little more for the service than a province that was having a little trouble with its economy. That would be adjusted constantly. It would actually work a lot fairer than the system we have right now.
Right now there is an incredible amount of waste in the government. It is almost inevitable that the waste will continue as long as there is a government which is spread so thinly over so many things and which is breaking in on areas of provincial and local jurisdiction. At times its departments are tripping over one another. The justice minister is trying to hand off the white elephant called the firearms registry program to the solicitor general. There are so many glitches between the departments he has not yet figured out how to do that. It would be a whole lot better if he simply shut it down.
As a member of Parliament I am often asked by people, particularly in my riding, how I like the job, if I enjoy the job, if there are things I do not like about it and whether I find it frustrating. I tell them that yes, it is frustrating and that the most frustrating thing is coming to Ottawa and seeing all the problems that confront this country. There are far more than the average person would realize. It is frustrating to realize we could either correct or at least put on the road the solutions to almost every one of those problems in 12 months but there is not the political will to do it. That is incredibly frustrating.
Anytime I speak about government spending and budgets and everything else, I would be remiss if I did not mention my favourite ultimate boondoggle for the federal government and that is VIA Rail.
VIA Rail is an example of why government should not be in business. Aside from the fact that VIA competes directly against all modes in the private transportation sector, the phenomenal waste in VIA Rail is astounding. VIA Rail is subsidized by taxpayers, and those taxpayers include all of us in the House, subsidized to the amount of half a million dollars a day. Each year for just the operational subsidy of VIA Rail, the taxpayers of each individual riding send, on average, over $600,000 to Ottawa for the government to give to VIA Rail to fund its operating deficit.
Since 1993 when the Liberals took power, VIA Rail has been subsidized by the Liberal government to the tune of almost $3 billion. That is three times the amount of money it wasted on the firearms registry and we know how outraged people are about that. It is time that people started realizing how much of their money is actually going into VIA Rail.
With 301 ridings in this country, this means that, on average, taxpayers of each riding have sent to Ottawa $10 million for the government to give to VIA Rail. Members should think about what they could do in their ridings with $10 million. I am sure that in their ridings, like mine, they probably have some hospitals that are underfunded and need some modernization or some new equipment. I am sure there are roads and highways that are in disrepair. There is a variety of different problems, including housing and others. Members should think about how many of those things could be dealt with if they had the $10 million that taxpayers have sent to Ottawa in order to fund VIA Rail.
The firearms registry is yet another example. The Auditor General said that the Liberal government has now spent $800 million on a program that was supposed to cost $2 million. That is 400 times the estimate. If the program worked the way the government claims it works, some people might scratch their heads and say that $800 million is a lot of money but if some good can come out of it then perhaps, no pun intended, it is a bullet we need to bite and we need to spend that money.
However, let us think about the two things the government claims. The government claims that the gun registry it is going to prevent crime. Really, how is causing law-abiding duck hunters to register their long guns going to prevent crime? Criminals, by definition, break the law, so all the government has done is give them one more law to break and I am quite sure they are quite willing to do that.
Aside from that, after over 70 years of a strict handgun registration system, handguns are still the weapon of choice of criminals. Criminals have chosen to use something that has been subject to strict registration while all other firearms have not been registered even though this meant breaking the law. Those who are going to rob the 7-Eleven or the local bank do not stop to think whether or not they are breaking the law by having an unregistered firearm.
The whole concept that the gun registry will prevent crime is absolute nonsense and absolutely unsustainable.
The other claim is that it is going to save lives. The government likes to throw figures around. It has said that the registry will save lives in a variety of ways. I have never heard one real, substantive explanation of how that will occur. The government says it has prevented people who should not have firearms from getting permission to buy them. We had a firearms acquisition program before, one that we supported, one that the firearms community supported. We support the registration of the owners; it is the firearms that are questionable because of the cost and because of the uselessness of that particular program.
The government says the registry will prevent domestic violence. How? It is not going to prevent anything. First, any number of things are used in cases of domestic violence. The mere fact that someone has acquired a weapon legally and the fact that the weapon is registered is not going to make it any less deadly or any less threatening for someone who would break our laws. Whether it is a firearm, a kitchen knife, or a rope, or whether it is burning down a house, it does not matter in terms of registration. That does not stop a thing.
Had it cost the $2 million the government said it would, perhaps we could say that even if it saves only one life it is worth it. By the end of this year the cost will be close to $1 billion and an end is nowhere in sight. Now the government admits that the program, which was to cost only $2 million, is going to cost between $60 million and $80 million a year just to sustain it once it is up and running.
These are the kinds of things the government is doing in wasting taxpayers' dollars. It then comes forward with a budget and says, “Look how good we are and all the wonderful things we have done”.
There is a tremendous amount of increased spending in that budget. Instead of increasing the amount of spending, the government should have diverted some of the money currently being wasted on things like the firearms program and VIA Rail. These are the kinds of things for which the government has to start reining in its spending. If it wants taxpayers' support and wants taxpayers to understand why they are sending that money to Ottawa, taxpayers have to understand that the money is being spent responsibly. At this point it is not, and there is no indication that it will be anywhere in the near future, at least not before the next election.