Mr. Speaker, thank you. I appreciate that.
The Minister of Transport indicates that I am reading my speech well. I have no notes before me. I am simply telling him and the government what the people of my riding are telling me. They are telling me that they are sick and tired of high payroll taxes. Those payroll taxes are the taxes that are stopping them from hiring more employees. It is those payroll taxes, which the Minister of Transport seems not to be aware of, that are causing employers in his riding and in my riding to work very long hours because they cannot afford to hire more staff to do the job. I have talked to a number of such employers in my riding. If he had any interest in the small businesses in his riding, he might do the same.
The government is currently overcharging employees by $350 on their EI premiums. Businesses are paying a whopping $500 more for each employee than they need to. That means in a company with 10 employees, each are paying $350 too much. If they could keep that money they could spend it in the local economy and stimulate that economy even further. With the current premiums and the 10 employees, the employer is paying an extra $5,000 per year. If it were a larger company with 100 employees, the government would be overcharging it by $50,000. That is wrong. It kills jobs.
We know, and the Minister of Finance has said this himself, that high payroll taxes are a cancer on job creation in Canada. Yet he goes ahead with these policies. He barges ahead. He defies the auditor general who has said that these accounting practices are not ones that he can agree with.
There is also the issue of high CPP premiums. We know that those premiums have had to be increased because of the government's mismanagement of the CPP fund. We know that those payroll taxes are also increasing. They are going to increase by 73% over the life of those increases, over the six years that this government has implemented its plan of grabbing back more money from Canadians.
What this government could do is take note of these types of payroll taxes and work to lower them. It could do that. It has the power and the ability to do that. We see other bills being brought forward by the government. However, issues that Canadians and small business people are talking about in lowering their taxes are being ignored. It is quite unbelievable.
We saw that again today in question period when the Minister of Finance said that it is okay for the government to do that kind of thing, that it is well within the government's purview to do that. The Minister of Finance is saying to Canadians and small business people that it is okay for him to extract extra cash from them, which is not needed for the EI surplus because there is already a large surplus there. He is saying that to working Canadians. He is saying that to small business people in Canada.
Those are the kinds of things the government should be addressing. We would encourage it to address those issues. Those are the things that really strike at the heart of working Canadians and small business.
If the government were really concerned about small businesses it would go about making changes and implementing policies and plans that would get the bureaucracy and red tape out of small businesses and allow them to flourish.
When I was talking to small business owners in my riding I was quite surprised by the number who told me that they would like to hire more employees. I know I mentioned this earlier but I do not think the government was listening. They would like to hire more employees but they have such an incredible amount of red tape right now and are paying such high payroll taxes that they just cannot do it. A number of them told me something very shocking and surprising. They were on the verge of selling their businesses and going back to work for someone else. They simply cannot put in the long 18 hour days any more. It is beyond their capability to do that.
That is sad because what that means is that those individuals who are creating the jobs are being saddled with such high taxes that the government is providing them with a disincentive to do better. Of course the better they do, the higher their taxes are. The more employees they hire, the more payroll taxes they pay. In fact they are overcharged for every employee, as I mentioned earlier. That is hurting them. It is simply not an effective policy. It is the kind of thing we and small business have been asking the government to address for a very long time.
We do not see responses from the government. We do not see it moving in this direction. We see it moving in other areas that are not effective. We have to assume then that the Liberal government is devoid of any new ideas, of any practical implementation of things within its power to put in place. It would be very simple for the government to do that. It is a shame it has not taken the time to put those policies in place.
It is for that reason I cannot support the amendment or the bill. I would encourage the government to focus on lowering payroll taxes and making life easier for small businesses because they generate the jobs in this country.