Madam Speaker, for working families in the riding of York—Simcoe the rising gas prices pose very real challenges. If we think of some of the communities there, Keswick, Alcona, Bradford, Holland Landing, Mount Albert, many people travel great distances to work every day and they have to depend on the automobile. If we think of the rural parts of that constituency, the farmers who rely on gas for their input, the people who have to transport goods, cattle and so on, there is a real impact and it is hurting their lives. Typically those families, the husband and wife both travelling and commuting to work, are budgeted tight. They are trying hard to get ahead, pay the mortgage, make a brighter life for their families, and they cannot accommodate this unexpected giant jump in gas prices. It is a big part of their budget and they cannot afford it.
There are no public transit alternatives open to most of them and thanks to the NDP-Liberal budget deal, there will not be, because in that NDP-Liberal budget deal the transit money was based on ridership. Toronto, where the riders already are and the infrastructure is, got all the money. York region or Simcoe County, where the population is growing and they need the public transit investment, got shortchanged because the formula was skewed against them getting the public transit money.
When we talk about, as the Liberal member before me did, having money from the excise tax for the municipalities, if the rising prices go up and consumption goes down, we know that portion of the revenue that is available for municipalities will actually go down as well. The municipalities will lose out as well from the higher gas prices.
It is hurting families, it is hurting municipalities, it is hurting everyone, but we do not hear any answers from the government on the simple things it could do. We have a tax on a tax. It is the excise tax that has the GST charged on top of it. There is an excise tax on gasoline and then the government charges GST on the tax. It would be as if we sent in our property tax and we had to add on 7% for the federal government, or if when we filled out our income tax and we had to send in $12,000 to the government and then we had to add another 7%, another chunk of money, close to $1,000, just for the GST on our income tax. That is an offensive form of double taxation. The government could do something about it. I would like to hear from the member what he intends to do about it as part of that government.
There is a temporary excise tax that was introduced to deal with the deficit. The deficit was wiped out years ago. That temporary tax was introduced in 1995. It has not been removed. That, too, is an offensive form of taxation on gasoline that could be wiped out.
The fact is that the government is addicted to taxes and any solution that involves reducing taxes is one it rejects.
The Liberal member for Mississauga South just spoke. His concern about tax is to think of all the money the government would lose. That is how the government thinks about taxes, not as money coming from constituents, but as money that goes to the government. It does not realize that people work hard to earn that money.
Finally, we need to see some real competition in the industry. I would like to hear the proposals from the government. It has had a decade to work on that. It has not delivered any solutions. We need to see real solutions for the constituents in York--Simcoe, such as wiping out the tax on the tax and eliminating the temporary excise tax that should have been eliminated years ago and seeing some real competition. I have yet to hear that. I would like to hear that now, a commitment from the government to do those things.