Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate on Bill C-90 which specifically enables the government to increase the already high levels of taxation imposed on Canadians.
It never ceases to amaze me the disregard the government seems to have for the intelligence of Canadians. This bill is an outright betrayal of the commitment in the red book or the election platform of the Liberal Party. In addition to the betrayal, the Liberals promised not to increase taxes to Canadians. There is the dishonesty, the deceit and the rhetoric surrounding the cuts that have to come and inevitably will come whoever is the government some day if we are to reach a balanced budget.
We just heard the best example of this rhetoric that we hear all the time. The member for Durham rises to join the debate on Bill C-90, a bill to increase tax levels. In his speech he says there is nothing wrong with the tax system. All that is wrong is the rates are too high, the second highest in the OECD. Yet he is speaking in support of a bill that raises the level of taxes higher. That is rhetoric and double talk and we hear so much of it.
I would like to discuss a couple of other examples of the betrayal of red book promises. The Liberals said during the election campaign they could solve the problems of the country simply by economic stimulation and job creation. They did not need to cut programs. They did not need to raise taxes. They could solve the problems of the nation by job creation and economic stimulation.
It is now two years into the mandate. We have seen lots of cuts in programs and services but we have not seen problems solved through economic stimulation and job creation. We consistently remind the government day after day of the GST fraud which it has imposed on people. The Deputy Prime Minister told us she would resign within a year if the GST was not gone. She is still here. I saw her in the House today.
The government tells Canadians these things during an election campaign because it knows those topics are popular and that it will get votes. The Liberals tell Canadians what they want to hear. After they get elected they abandon their promises and hope Canadians will forget them before the next election.
Another bit of dishonesty is the story the government told the federal civil service that it would not be cut, that it would protect their jobs and honour the job security clauses in their contract. We are only two years into the government's mandate and it is talking about cutting 50,000 civil servants. What happened to the commitment to the civil service? It seems to have been abandoned.
There was the promise to maintain funding for social programs. The government said that it would never slash and burn like the Reform Party proposals would do. It would protect the precious social programs, the fabric of the social safety net system. Only two years into its mandate, the government has cut and cut far worse than what would have happened under what it called our slash and burn policies. The government's measures have been even more draconian than the Reform Party ever suggested they should be. If the $7 billion cut to provincial transfers in support of social spending is not slash and burn I do not know what we could refer to it as.
I do not think Canadians are so naive or so easily deceived that they are prepared to forgive all this before the next election. The Reform Party is here to do everything it can to see the government is not forgiven. I am sure that come next election time it will have some real answering to do to the Canadian taxpayers.
I hear all the time from the other side of the House about how caring the members are, that they are not hard hearted and without compassion like the Reform Party, that they care about the human deficit. I have never heard such arrogant hypocrisy in all my life. They do not have the market cornered on compassion or caring. The very reason I became involved in the profession with the lowest regard in this country-at least outside of this place-was simply because I care and I am compassionate. I care very deeply about the things the Liberal and Conservative governments have done to the future of my children and my grandchildren in the last 30 years. That is not caring and compassion. It is selfishness. It is the me generation saying that not only will the next generation, my kids and my grandkids, have to look after themselves but the next three or four generations will be paying for the greed of this generation. That is not caring and compassion. It is the me generation.
Today we are debating Bill C-90 which is about tax increases. The area I wanted to talk about specifically is the 1.5 cent a litre increase in tax on gasoline. For the last 30 years every time there is a cash crunch, a squeeze, governments have turned to the cash cow, the sin taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and gasoline. It turned in a big way to gasoline in the last budget to make up the shortfall.
The finance minister made a commitment to have a ratio of tax increases to expenditure cuts that was not in the red book. As I mentioned earlier, the red book said no increase in taxation. Now we have moved to a commitment to keep it in balance, so many dollars of cuts to so many dollars of tax increase. That is a serious betrayal of an election promise.
We still have the GST that applies on top of the 1.5 cent per litre tax increase. That is the GST that was supposed to be gone. Therefore, we have a double tax increase on gasoline.
It is important for members of the House to remember where the excise tax on gasoline started. It was back in 1975 when a Liberal government placed the excise tax on gasoline. It was a special tax. It was the first time an excise tax was applied to gasoline and was to be a one-time tax. How many times have we heard that before?
This one-time tax was to cover the gap between oil import compensation payments and the oil export charge revenues. In turn, this compensation system was as a result of the 1974 decision to maintain domestic oil prices at levels below world prices.
In essence, the federal government of the day had adopted a made in Canada oil pricing policy which saw the proceeds from an export tax used to protect consumers of imported oil from the full impact of the international price. A noble intent I am sure. As we so often experience with taxation, we are shown that taxes which are meant to be one time or special or temporary, quickly have a habit of becoming permanent.
One must only refer back to the imposition in 1917 of a temporary income tax and see where that has gone, how temporary it was and how complex and expensive it has become.
The same is true in every sense about the excise tax on transportation fuels. The excise tax has remained in place and its revenue objectives certainly have changed. The tax is no longer used for what it was originally intended but the tax remains and continues to be increased by 2 cents, 1 cent, 1.5 cents every budget that is presented in the last number of years. Obviously it has changed from a special tax for a specific purpose to a general tax for a source of general revenue.
In the last session of Parliament, in the natural resources committee of which I am a member, the members of the NDP introduced a proposal for the committee to study gasoline pricing in Canada. They thought there was some bogeyman causing the price of gasoline to be so high when we were facing a surplus of oil on the international market and low prices for crude oil.
It does not take a genius to look at this. There have been numerous studies over the last number of years that the bogeyman in this scenario is the government. If we look at the price of gasoline in Vancouver at 59.6 cents per litre, 28.9 cents goes directly to provincial and federal taxes. That is not oil royalties or corporate income tax, that is simply gasoline taxes hidden at the pump. The 28.9 cents leaves the remaining cost of that litre of gasoline to cover the cost of exploration, production, marketing and refining and only another 3 cents to the dealer for his costs and overhead.
We can example after example of a gasoline price. The figures provided by the government's statistics for Calgary shows the price of gasoline is 52.3 per litre; 22.4 cents of that goes directly to governments in taxes, leaving only 3.5 cents for the dealer to cover his costs, with the remaining going for exploration, refining and marketing. I have example after example of almost 50 per cent of the cost of a litre of gasoline everywhere across the country being the tax on gasoline by government.
We continue to have these kinds of tax increases rammed down our throats with no choice. Because they are hidden they are often put in and the consumer does not realize the taxes have risen. The cost increases which we have seen so dramatically in the last number of years are not the result of the oil companies' getting together to fix the price of gasoline. It is the result of governments starved for cash continually coming back to that cash cow.
Members can ask their constituents if they realize what percentage of the cost of a litre of gasoline is government taxation. I will wager very few consumers realize the level of taxation. If we are to continue to tax Canadians in this way it is time we were up front and open and let Canadians see where their dollars are going.
When we look at these increases in taxation levels and what they are doing to us internationally there is an important implication of these tax increases as well. Gasoline is one of the things that gives our natural advantage which allows us to be competitive in the global marketplace to compensate for the huge distances and the expensive transportation costs we face in getting our products to market.
It is very important that we are able to take advantage of that natural advantage to compensate for other disadvantages. Our natural advantage is being seriously eroded when the Americans can come to Canada with a $1.30 dollar, buy our crude oil, take it home, refine it and sell it at almost half the price we have to pay. I do not think that is what Canadians want. I do not think that is what the government wants, to simply become and exporter of raw natural resources.
This is not the way to create jobs, to create wealth, to stimulate the economy. It is time we support Canadians industries and manufacturers and allow them to take advantage of the natural advantage we have in our abundance of natural resources.
Instead, the government seems to stick to its historical way of raising revenue, that cash cow. I suggest this poor cash cow is milking at capacity and is in danger of dying from mastitis from forced overproduction.
I can go on about the unfairness of this endless taxation. The government should seriously look at what it is doing to the economy through high taxation and what the debt and deficit are doing to the country.
I ask the Prime Minister and the finance minister to heed the words of F.J. Clarke that a politician thinks only of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.