Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for that question. I am very sincere when I say we need to direct our help to low income families.
When I started farming in 1957 I think the national debt was something like $16 or $17 billion. I was able to buy a farm by borrowing the money. I did not have a cent at that time. I paid 6 per cent interest at the bank. The government at that time had brought in a program that gave me 4.5 per cent financing over 29 years. That is what helped me get started.
I was able to expand. On a half section I grew enough product to pay my bills and put a few dollars aside for a rainy day if something went badly wrong because we did not have crop insurance at that time. I was able to raise my family and still have a fairly comfortable livelihood.
Then, all of a sudden, we started to live beyond our means. We needed things we never dreamed we would need. We needed a pickup truck. We needed a car also. Then all of a sudden we realized we were losing implement dealerships and we had to go further and further. Why? Because taxes kept increasing. Taxes went up, up, up.
The amount of taxes that today have to be paid by a young family running a half section farm is unbelievable. They have to have an outside job or they cannot survive on a half section farm. They need at least a two section farm to make it viable.
If you cannot raise half a million dollars today you cannot start farming because of over taxation, because of all the government programs.
In 1957 I needed $10,000 to buy a farm which my dad put up for me. That is all I needed. Today you cannot even buy a garden tractor for that. Why? Tell me why. We have the same land, we have the same natural resources but we have lived beyond our means.
Canada's debt is $600 billion. It will never be paid in my lifetime or that of my children or my grandchildren. That is debt we borrowed on the backs of future generations. We must give the consumer some buying power.
In 1991 a family could buy an average sized car with 28 weeks of work. In 1996 statisticians tell us that it takes 36 weeks to buy the same type of car. How are consumers supposed to be able to buy the products that they need? Sixty per cent of the domestic economy is still driven by consumer spending.
When the prime interest rate is at 3.5 per cent and consumers cannot afford to spend, something is wrong in the country. The buying power is gone to a few elite people. That is why we are directing this tax credit to the lower income families because an $850 tax credit to that family buys a lot of stuff for them as compared to the elite.
The other thing that has happened is that today a lot of high paid people are running corporations. These multimillionaires do not pay a cent of tax. They do not even need this tax credit. However, our $600 billion debt has to have the interest paid on it. Who is paying it? The middle income earners, the low income earners.
With our new fresh start program we will take almost one million people out of that tax bracket, or at least lower it for 89 per cent to give them some buying power. When they have buying power then the economy is going to start booming again like it did in the fifties and the sixties.
We have to realize that we have had 40 years of Conservative and Liberal governments that had a lot of good ideas and we are bankrupt. If a farmer or a businessman had that debt load compared to his income as the government has today he would be foreclosed on.
I see the hon. member wants to ask another question, so I will give him some time.