Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak in opposition to Bill C-90. This is a Liberal taxation bill. I want to comment on how easily the words "Liberals" and "increased taxation" flow together; they seem to be a naturally united phrase.
This bill amends the Excise Tax Act and the Excise Act in order for the Liberals to bring in the increased taxes they proposed in their budget last February. Mr. Speaker, I am sure that you and probably every other working Canadian will agree that this country simply does not need any more new taxes. Canadians are probably one of the most overtaxed people in the entire world, and we have a government in power that is intent on continuing to make sure we do not lose that mantle of taxation.
Taxation ultimately drains the lifeblood out of our economy. This is something Canadians are very aware of and very concerned about, how the high taxation levels in our country have such a devastating effect on the economy. We will talk about two areas of harmful effects of taxation, which probably account for 90 per cent of how we build and keep our economy buoyant, and that is investor confidence and consumer confidence.
High taxation levels have delivered a tremendous level of uncertainty to the investors, the people who would build and expand businesses in our country, who would hire Canadians to run their factories and operations, creating jobs in the country. Because of the rising taxation levels there simply is no certainty of the future for these investors, who have no incentive to increase their investments.
The average working person in Canada probably has less disposable income than ever before. There is no certainty that disposable income will not continue to shrink. Therefore consumer spending has been drawn back, thus creating a harmful effect on our economy.
The Liberals respond not with a plan to decrease their spending, to decrease their deficit spending, not with a plan to offer some tax relief to Canadians, the two things that would probably serve in more ways than any other measures to restore some buoyancy to our economy. No. The Liberal Party does not respond with these two natural solutions. Instead, they implement more taxation in
their February budget. Now they are seeking the authorization to put that into force.
Prior to the election in 1993, the Reform Party said that if the Liberal government were elected, using their own red book predictions on the financial aspect, over the term of this 35th Parliament the Liberal government would add $100 billion to our national debt and would increase the annual interest payments on that debt by some $10 billion. That is $100,000 billion and $10 billion. The Liberal Party is right on target.
By the end of the 35th Parliament our national debt will have increased by $100 billion, our interest payments on that debt will be up somewhere in the neighbourhood of $50 billion to $52 billion, and all because the Liberal Party has not taken what could be considered a common sense solution to the financial crisis in this country, which is to reduce taxes and reduce its deficit spending. Instead the Liberals chose to increase taxes. Bill C-90 gives them authorization to implement, for example, the 1.5 cent a litre tax on gasoline, which is going to add $500 million more taxes on the middle class alone.
While the government talks about tax fairness, in its last budget it in fact raised taxes by over $1 billion. In fact if we look at tax increases in the last two government budgets, the Liberals have increased taxes by about $2.5 billion, with another $500 million in user fees or hidden taxes.
Canadians should be pleased that these increased taxes have in fact been put to good use. I would like to give some examples of Liberal good use. The U.S. Department of Energy-and this is small potatoes, but there are about 5,000 of these, I understand-received a $35,000 grant from the Canadian government. The United Steel Workers of America received $116,000 from the taxpayers of Canada via the Liberal government. Here is a good one: the Prison Art Foundation received $51,000 from the Canadian taxpayers, compliments of the Liberal Party. And the Feminist Literacy Workers Network received another $57,000 from the taxpayers of Canada, thanks to the Liberal government. This is only part of about 5,000 or 6,000 of these grants that have gone out.
This type of money does not fall down from the sky in some miraculous manner. We do not pick it off a tree, as some Liberals would like to believe. This kind of money comes from the pockets of hard-working Canadians, who are among the most highly taxed people in the world.
It is said that the average middle class Canadian worker in this country in all forms of taxes pays about 63 per cent of their gross income in taxation. In a country as rich as Canada is, with the potential and the opportunity Canada has, the fact that Canadian workers are paying this much taxation out of their gross income is absolutely obscene.