Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to enter into debate on the motion of the day by the Bloc Party.
It is interesting that it should use its day for this particular topic. It is illustrative of one of the things which is wrong with the country. The very fact that we have in the House a large number of members whose set goal is to remove themselves and their part of the country from the rest of us shows that there are some problems and that we as legislators ought to be paying attention to them.
There is no doubt in my mind that if this federation were to work properly, we would not be here debating these kinds of questions.
Bloc Members have raised an issue which is on the minds of many people in Canada, fair taxation. They have done it in a very specific case and with respect to an auditor general's observations. The issue they are drawing attention to is a very important one, that there is unfair taxation.
During my short time as member of Parliament, this being my first term, I have listened to a large number of people from across the country, but primarily in my own riding of Elk Island. One thing I hear often is that people are no longer content to allow half of their earnings or more to be spent on their behalf by people who do not listen to how that money should be spent. Over and over we hear individuals and small business people talk about the taxation system and how it is a great detriment to their personal welfare or the well-being of their business. It is onerous. It is too heavy a burden for the people of this country. It is based on a false supposition that there is someone in far away, distant Ottawa, a politician or bureaucrat who knows better how to allocate those funds that they have earned than the people do.
That is the large assumption which has been made by successive Liberal and Conservative governments, and we are shackled by it. We have come to the point where too many of us are struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile our taxes must be paid. We will end up working into the middle of July for this thing called tax freedom day, the day when finally we can begin to earn for ourselves and our families.
I admit that some of the tax money is used for good purposes. I would not deny that. I am very happy to be in this country. I am very grateful that we have a good infrastructure system in this country. Our highways are very good by international standards. We have excellent communication facilities and our taxes go to pay for all of that.
That is not the question. The problem is the large amount of waste, the large amount of money which is spent on programs which do not carry the support of the majority of citizens but are foisted on us by a bureaucrat or politician in a distant city. Consequently, I hear more and more disgruntlement and discour-
agement with the way the government is managing its affairs. People are overtaxed and they are getting tired of it.
How should we react to this? According to members of the official opposition party today taxation should be fair. I agree with that component. There should should be no large amount of earnings which would go untaxed while other earnings are taxed at excessive rates.
Not very long ago someone told me that he is now in some financial and employment difficulty. He said that if had been able to pay less in taxes over the last number of years he would have had a nest egg put away which would have helped him through a difficult time. Instead, because of high taxation over the years his personal nest egg is much less than he would like it to be, and so he is thrown on to government programs. Unfortunately the government, with its continued policy of overspending and borrowing, adds to the load of taxpayers and our taxes keep rising and at the same time we experience the downsizing of the very government programs which were supposed to be provided by the taxes that we are being asked to pay, I should say coerced to pay.
The bottom line is that in areas like the Canada pension plan, UI which is now called employment insurance, premiums over the years have gone up a lot. I know in the last year or so there has been a small turn downward in the UI premiums and that is a very commendable step but it is too tiny a step.
In other areas we are asked to pay a great deal and there is a decreasing assurance that the government programs we have paid into will actually deliver for our needs. I do not believe that this is at all the real nub of the issue for the members of the Bloc in terms of their wanting to separate, but I believe it adds to it.
I believe that if we in Ottawa were to run our fiscal affairs in such a way that government overspending was eliminated so that this government like all other governments in Canada would have a defined goal of living within its means, then there would be much less of a cry by provinces like Quebec that say: "We do not want to swim with you guys anymore, we want to go it on our own". It would be just too expensive for them. Whereas the way it is right now, being part of this confederation is an increasing burden for many of us.
I appreciate the members of the Bloc. I do not know if that will be misunderstood so I need to explain. I am actually very grateful they are here. It is a reflection of the fact that we have a free democracy. I wish they were not here for the reasons they are here, but each one of them as far as we know was properly and democratically elected. They have as much right to be here as any one of the rest of us.
What we really need to do is to get to the root of the problem. Why did the people in Quebec elect them? Why were they sent here? It is inescapable that they were sent here because of the fact that Quebecers increasingly perceive that Ottawa is not doing for them the job they want done.
When we come to this whole question of taxation and government spending, certainly one of the areas is that taxation should be fair. The government has the right to tax us and by common consent to provide programs that Canadians want and the taxation load should be made as equal as possible for all of the members of the taxpaying public. I believe there are some 13.5 million taxpayers in this country. Each one of them has a vested interest. They are shareholders in this country so to speak, in this company called Canada. They deserve and have a right to demand that the money be spent carefully.
In saying something else about the tax system, whether we recognize it or not, taxes and taxation are a very inefficient way of looking after people's needs. Generally when people spend other people's money, the amount of accountability goes down. I have observed that around here since the time of my election. I have certainly seen it by observing the way even senators and members of Parliament spend money. It is easy to spend money which is not your own. It is more difficult to spend your own.
This is one of the reasons I am a firm advocate of a free enterprise system and a system which permits us to meet each other's needs through private enterprise and private initiative. I remember way back when I was just a youngster there was not this proliferation of government programs. In fact the generation in which I grew up was one in which most people would deny the help that was offered to them by government because of a large amount of personal pride and self-sufficiency, at least in the part of the country in which I grew up, out in the west.
In those days when someone had a problem we who had the ability to help would help in the way in which we could. I remember as a youngster one of our neighbours was unfortunately killed in a farm accident. My dad was one who helped organize the neighbours. They immediately went to help this newly widowed lady do her harvest. They did her harvest first and then they did their own. They could afford to do that because at that time there was enough money left over despite the taxes. Sure, times were not easy on the farm but they had the financial ability to help someone in need.
I have experienced this personally. Acquaintances of mine have fallen into hard times and I wished that I could have helped them more than I did. Unfortunately, what with the municipal taxes, the provincial taxes, the federal taxes and GST, by the time all these taxes are removed from my earnings and after I meet the basic
necessities of life for my own family, the amount of money I have left to give charitably to people who are in need is greatly diminished.
Now my way of helping people is to say: "Let us go down to the government office and see what kind of assistance is there for you". That is wrong. I am very distressed about it. We have allowed governments at all levels to take over from us as individuals the expression of compassion which we as Canadians value.
I hear expressions especially from the Liberal side that they do not want to cut these social programs because they are compassionate. If that is really true, if the government were to reduce its involvement in those compulsory programs which we have no choice but to support, then each one of us individually could do so much more. We could help people in a much more genuine way than a government department somewhere trying to help people in a wholesale way with reduced budgets.
The last issue I want to talk about in my little time here is the question of debt. I am always reluctant to give the Liberals great accolades when they have not done the job adequately. Usually what I say is when we were elected in 1993 and when all this present batch of Liberal MPs were elected, we understood that the deficit, the amount of government overspending, was around $35 billion or $40 billion a year. It was in that range.
It is interesting how whenever there is a change of government the last year of the previous government is always tremendously bad and then it gets better. I have often wondered how that happens mathematically under accounting rules.
We had a large deficit. Now we have a deficit which has been reduced and everybody is cheering: "We have reduced it to $27 billion". Unfortunately, I do not believe this is being properly communicated to Canadians. There are a lot of people who think that our debt and deficit problems are solved with this Liberal government. Unfortunately, that is not true.
What has happened is that the government has reduced the rate at which we are going into debt. We are still adding $100 billion to the debt during the term of office of this government. We have added approximately $10 billion a year to mandatory interest payments. Those payments are not going down because the debt is still increasing. That means that next year our interest payments are going to be even higher than they were last year. Even though the debt is increasing at a slower rate, it is still increasing. The amount we owe is going up, up, up.
It is becoming urgent that through proper and fair taxation techniques and through the reduction of government involvement in programs which Canadians do not support that we downsize government. It is urgent that we return to the people of Canada the autonomy that comes when they can spend their own money for purposes they themselves choose rather than for purposes that are chosen by someone else.
I encourage the Liberal majority government on the other side, all those individual backbenchers to really exercise the authority they have as elected members of Parliament. I would like to see them throw off the shackles of party discipline and really hold their own government accountable in areas of deficit reduction. It is shameful that after four years we still do not have a definite date on which it is planning to say: "We will not be borrowing next year. No more borrowing". Would that not be a wonderful day?
I should not mention my son, so I will not, but it is as if when he got a speeding ticket for going 80 in a 60 zone he said to the officer that from now on he would only go 75. It would not wash. If the speed limit is 60, he should be going 60. It is not sufficient to reduce it just by a little bit. It is the same thing with the borrowing. It is not acceptable until our borrowing has stopped, until our budget is balanced and our deficit is zero. That is the only acceptable goal.
I do not know why this government has been so unwilling to state a definite target date to aim for on that and to actually reach a goal that it has set instead of these wishy-washy, floating, moving targets that the government may reach if everything goes well and if it does not go well it will happen more slowly. I am distressed with that and the politicking that goes on while Canadians in general are going into debt and are being asked to pay $500 a month per taxpayer just for interest. That is not acceptable.
In conclusion, I am someone who is committed to doing my part in government. It is incumbent on all of us to spend the taxpayers' money as though it were held in trust, to spend it as though it were our own, to be careful and frugal. It is incumbent on all of us to do everything we can in order to eliminate the deficit, to stop the borrowing, to start reducing the amount we owe, reducing the amount of interest that is payable, reducing taxes and giving that boost to the economy that would provide jobs and dignity to people who are currently unemployed. Our country would be in so much better shape.