Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the hon. member's speech, in particular toward the end when he got into fiscal policies. The only thing that is even more incredible in the outrageous claims that he has made on behalf of the Liberals is the fact that he actually seems to believe all this stuff.
He talked of how the Liberal government wants to find creative ways of raising new highway funds. He talked about either paying for it from the public purse, coming from the taxpayer by way of government payment or collecting it directly from the taxpayer. If anybody knows of creative ways to extract money from the taxpayer it is the Liberals.
He does not seem to recognize or accept that there is only one taxpayer. When the Liberals talk about making payments it does not matter where they get it from, it is coming out of the taxpayers' pockets. He talked in terms of user pay and that the user should be paying for this highway system, not the government. Obviously in the end it will be the taxpayer one way or the other.
Let us go directly to the user. He suggested in the course of his speech that the highways are primarily a provincial responsibility. I do not disagree with that.
I have actually two questions for the hon. member. First, what is his reaction to the concept of making the provincial government responsible for 100 per cent of the highways? The federal government will bow out. But before it does, let us also recognize that the federal government extracts from the taxpayers, the driving public, a 10 cent a litre federal fuel tax originally which it brought in and called a highway tax. The tax amounts to $5 billion a year but in the entire country the government spends about 5 per cent of that back.
User pay? The user is paying 2,000 per cent of the cost of the federal government to maintain the national highway infrastructure. What about turning controls of highways 100 per cent back to provincial governments? But first tell them: "If you accept this responsibility we will give you at least half" and that is being generous. That is allowing the federal government to continue to extract from the Canadian driving public $2.5 billion a year and not put anything back. However, it would turn the other five cents over to the provinces with the explicit requirement that it is spent on highway infrastructure within their provinces.
If he is prepared to do that, I would suggest that the provinces are prepared to accept. British Columbia spends $1 billion on federal fuel taxes and the government spends $200 million for the entire country. If it wants user pay, great. But first account for the money that the user is already paying.
Second, he talked about highway transportation here in Ontario, his province and how necessary it is for his area.
Let us look at bus transportation in the province. VIA Rail officials came before the transportation committee and in response to my question of how VIA could possibly justify taking an already hugely subsidized passenger rail fare and cut it in half, the response was: "We want to increase our ridership and have a greater business volume so we are cutting our fares in half to take business away from the bus companies". Those bus companies are tax paying, non-subsidized, private sector operators trying to make a living, trying to transport tourists to the hon. member's area, that he talked about being so necessary for his local economy. How can we possibly justify VIA Rail taking a fare that is already hugely subsidized and cutting it in half to take passengers away from the private sector?