Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the opportunity to say a few words on Bill C-32. One of my colleagues will deal with the excise tax in the area of tobacco. I intend to cover air transportation and the goods and services tax. I certainly will do that in the next seven minutes.
What I would like to say first deals with air transportation tax. We have to deal with the principle that we should pay as we go. We should look at crown corporations and the aviation industry. If we believe there is a sound principle that we should pay as we go and as customers of the service, we should support the tax and the formula that are in place. We should support the fact that the ceiling has now been raised to $50. We are going to bring in some $20 million more in the current fiscal year and another $40 million in the next fiscal year and try to reduce the deficit in the transportation system.
I understand that currently it costs around $780 million to run the aviation section of the Department of Transport and we take in some $600 million. There is a deficit. Through this change of policy the minister is attempting to move the program to a point where it is on the basis of pay as we go. We in the Reform Party support that. We feel very strongly about that.
I listened to the Bloc Quebecois member who has just taken his seat make the case that we have to worry about the increased cost of tickets. That is certainly a matter we could worry about but if we believe in the principle that we pay as we go, the sort of welfare dependent attitude portrayed by the Bloc Quebecois member just does not hold water.
As Canadians we must start to change our principles and to change our attitudes. It is changing in the nineties. We must move from the attitude of the seventies and eighties where we believed government had to do everything for us. We became dependent on government. We believed government had to subsidize a variety of services that we were using as private individuals, as businesses and as companies.
We have to move away from the 1970 and 1980 mentality of the welfare state and start to move toward a more conservative attitude where people must be responsible for looking after their own welfare. People must be prepared to pay their bills, whether travelling on Air Canada, Canadian Air or any other charter airline in our country. People who wish to travel must make that part of the cost of our lives on a private basis and part of the cost of our business. If we as members of government have to travel
or if members of the public service have to travel then it is a budgeting cost in this assembly.
The bill is more than a change in policy with regard to increasing the revenue available to the Minister of Transport. We are moving over the threshold in the attitude we have as Canadian governments. I hear it in the House sometimes. I would like to hear it more. We talk about governments being independent, being able to run on their own and being able to pay their way. We are starting to move away from agencies, particularly large corporations or companies that get grants from government and become dependent on government, to a point at which people are more independent in the way they behave, in the way they act and in the way they respect public funds.
That primary principle is starting to expose itself and to become more obvious in this piece of legislation. I certainly commend the minister for supporting it in this piece of legislation. I highly recommend to the government that as we are planning for the 1995-96 budget we should look at ways and means the government can move away from creating dependent circumstance or agencies of government that are very dependent on public funds, to a point where the agencies or in many circumstances the private elements of our society look after themselves.
A primary item the government must look at for the upcoming budget is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the same principle. We subsidize that corporation by $1.1 billion a year. It is asking in another piece of legislation-and I know I am walking close to the edge of the rules by referencing another piece of legislation-for $25 million of borrowing power to support its organization. Whether it borrows more money or receives it as a grant from government, the public purse is supporting that agency. It is creating a dependency within our Canadian community and it is wrong.
I highlight that my support and the support of the Reform Party for the section on air transportation tax in Bill C-32 changes a direction and makes the industry more independent and self-sufficient. If we want to move a number of our airports into private management components, I believe this is a start. If we can show-