Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member for Surrey Central for his excellent maiden remarks in the House. His constituents should be proud to be so well represented in the House.
I would like to tag on to the comments the hon. member just made to the question by the hon. member for Qu'Appelle.
The Reform Party believes that all Canadians pay more than their fair share. When we have a tax burden that now consumes over 40% of our gross domestic product, all Canadians are paying more than their fair share.
I want to make one thing clear for the record that the hon. member for Qu'Appelle in his lusty reliving of his sixties class warfare days may not understand.
The federal Department of Finance statistics show that the top 10% of income earners in Canada report about 32% of the income earned and pay 48% of total Canadian taxes. The top 10% pay nearly half of the income taxes. Before the hon. socialist member for P.E.I. stands up, I would like to remind him that this statistic comes from his Department of Finance which also tells us that the top 1% of income earners who report 9% of the income earned pay 18% of the taxes collected in Canada. The top 1% pay nearly 20% of the taxes. The top 10% pay nearly half the taxes. If this is not paying more than their fair share, I do not know what is.
The solution for everybody, whether it is a poor member of Parliament like the member for Qu'Appelle or a Canadian like Mr. Black who is creating jobs, is tax relief so we can have more jobs. Or we could try to tax people out of this country like the hon. member's friends in the NDP in Saskatchewan were so successful in doing in destroying the wealth creation machine in that province by taxing them all into Alberta.
Hopefully we will not do the same thing. Hopefully we will not launch into the same kind of class warfare campaign the hon. member is recommending.