Mr. Speaker, currently the provinces have not demonstrated a significant interest in having Ottawa collect or have more authority over taxes beyond what Revenue Canada does currently.
Ontario is looking to attain greater authority over its tax levers. It cannot simply be said to the provinces that someone will have more authority over their spending without providing them with more direct authority over tax policies.
Some of the provinces feel this agency may ultimately lead to less. If the provinces are not interested, obviously the agency will not save money or lead to greater efficiencies.
While we are on the subject of privatization, I draw to the minister's attention Bill C-54 which essentially deals with electronic privacy. This bill was tabled by the Minister of Industry for a very important reason. Canadians by and large do not have a sufficient degree of trust in the level of privacy accorded by the Internet. Without privacy legislation which Canadians are willing to buy into, electronic commerce would be a whole bunch of wishful thinking.
The same thing applies here. The combination of privatization, taxation and privacy is a very interesting dynamic, one which leads to great anxiety for Canadians. The question that needs to be answered is if most Canadians are unwilling to give personal information over the Internet, why should we suppose that they are prepared to have a large, faceless private agency with access to their most sensitive, personal information? Quite frankly Canadians are not interested in such a situation occurring. We can offload a lot of things but we cannot really offload leadership. That is what the government has tried to do.
Other than the issue of privacy Canadians also have traditionally expressed their frustration with the complexity of our income tax regime. There quite simply can be no justification for the fact that Canadians need to hire accountants to fill out their personal income tax forms. The notion that somehow a privacy agency will succeed in simplifying this process in a way that our present system cannot is completely without merit.
If we create incentives with all our public agencies or departments that recognize and award excellence as opposed to encouraging mediocrity we introduce market incentives without the existing agencies. We can achieve economies without necessarily creating new agencies.
In conclusion, the bill will not lead us toward a simpler tax system. It will not help us develop a fairer tax system. It will not achieve the goals of a flatter tax system. It is bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy, and that is the kind of legislation whose day has passed us by.