Thank you, Mr. Chair, and committee members.
On behalf of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Canada's largest, oldest, and noisiest taxpayer advocacy group, I thank you for the invitation to appear today.
We recently surveyed our supporters and had nearly 6,000 responses to the survey, which was asking what the priorities should be for the Government of Canada in the years ahead. Interestingly, 53% of this sample of nearly 6,000 Canadians said that paying down Canada's debt was their top priority for what to do with the surplus, while 44% favoured tax cuts and 2% wanted to see more federal spending.
So we strongly urge the committee to urge the government to include a debt repayment schedule in the 2015 budget. Nobody's expecting the debt to be repaid overnight, but over the course of 11 surplus budgets leading up to the financial meltdown in 2008, over $100 billion of federal debt was repaid by governments of all stripes, the lion's share of that by a Liberal administration. We hope the Liberal caucus and the official opposition will take note of the desire amongst Canadians for lower debt.
Our supporters also indicated a preference for fewer tax brackets, lower rates, and fewer boutique tax credits. When it came down to a straight-on request for input as to how best to deliver tax relief to families, the most popular option was increasing the child care deduction and allowing stay-at-home parents to benefit from the child care deduction. We believe that if special relief is going to be afforded to Canadian families, then a child care deduction of $10,000 per child that is available to stay-at-home parents, whereby a parent in the workforce could pay a stay-at-home parent, is an affordable, flexible, and effective way of getting that tax relief to Canadian families.
We continue to call for the government to reduce employment insurance premiums and to ultimately implement an employment insurance savings account, whereby Canadians who never use the employment insurance fund and who work all their lives could roll their own employment insurance premiums into their retirement savings at retirement. This year, a working couple earning the average industrial wage—two spouses earning approximately $50,000—is going to see $4,300 docked from those paycheques on behalf of the employer and the employee and sent to Ottawa. We think that's far too much money benefiting far too few Canadians. We strongly urge the committee to urge the government to begin comprehensive reform of employment insurance.
We have a whole bunch more in our brief, but if I keep talking my friends won't have a chance, so I'll once again thank you for the invitation.