Madam Speaker, after listening to the member for Charlevoix who dealt with many subjects, I will come back to the issue of taxation, because that is what we were discussing this morning.
He talked about the need to reform the tax system. Of course many people have called for that. The hon. member is on the finance committee. Last night, I had the opportunity, as a member of Parliament, to testify before that committee and talk about the need for tax reform. In the brief I presented, I spoke of the need to reform the tax system.
There is something we can refer to. Twenty-five years ago, maybe more, there was a well-known royal commission of inquiry on the tax system, the Carter Commission. Twenty-five years later, the Carter Commission's recommendations are still valid today. The tax system must be improved to make it fairer and more equitable. We need consider only a few figures to realize that in the past 15 or 20 years, the tax system has worked against the welfare and interests of the middle class, which for all practical purposes is the backbone of any modern economy.
Of course, in a society like ours, when the middle class has disposable income, the economy is moving. But as the years go by and taxes are so high that incomes go down, we see the problems that we have in Canada now. These are only some indications of the reform that must be made to our whole tax system, including the GST, of course, which was a disastrous error for the country.
I would like to draw your attention to some figures and show you how unbalanced our system is. Back in 1980, the richest 1 per cent of Canadians at that time held 16 per cent of all the wealth and income in the country. That is just to give you an idea. Ten years later, only ten years, which is not much in the history of a country, in 1990, the same top 1 per cent held 26 per cent of all the income and wealth in our country.
Did those people invest? Did they make wonderful investments in the country? Not at all. They used the tax system to their advantage. Please note that everything they did was not illegal, far from it; it was legal, they were protecting their own interests. They used the tax system; they found loopholes in the act to protect as much as possible their wealth and revenue. This gives you an idea of the imbalance which prevails.
Another figure also shows that problems exist. Everyone agrees that the accumulated deficit is enormous, but 44 per cent of that deficit is due to compound interest. This means that 44 per cent of our accumulated deficit is not due to any actual spending. That part of the deficit is the result of compound interest. As you know, interest rates were very high for a period of 12 years. Even our interest rate was one third higher than the American average for 12 consecutive years. You can see the damage caused by that situation to an economy.
Is my time up, Mr. Speaker?