Mr. Speaker, it is a great opportunity for me to continue my debate. I will not say I was rudely interrupted by question period because I think question period is a very important part of the role of parliament. For us to stop and hold the government accountable for the things it is doing incorrectly or failing to do is a very important. I wish when such a great speech like mine is interrupted by question period that we would also have an answer period as well. But that is for another time.
I was talking about the fact that we have double taxation in Canada. We have this wonderful bill, Bill S-16, before us. It is a great bill. It is long overdue. It is time we start recognizing there is a global economy. We need to not only trade with other countries but compete with them. For us to have an agreement on taxation will help the businesses from Canada that are dealing with these foreign countries and the foreign countries will benefit.
Undoubtedly there is an advantage to when Canadians take their expertise and investments to other countries. But there is also an advantage to us in the sense that we can help, on the international scheme of things, to make these different countries financially strong. This does a couple of things. It helps the people in that country. It gives them goods, services and expertise that they would otherwise not have. It helps Canadian people and Canadian businesses. It gives them an outlet for their creativity and for their investment dollars. It is a good return but we must make sure the tax regime is good.
As I said earlier, I believe in the principle of fair international taxation. Why can we not have that same principle enacted in Canada? We have the statistics. Over the last five years since this Liberal government has been in power the real take home value of the average Canadian family has gone down by $3,000 a year. Meanwhile taxes have gone up.
The Minister of Finance will say we have decreased taxes. He can point to one or two little examples where they have reduced the rates marginally. I commend him for it. Why should I withhold a compliment for the Minister of Finance? He is worthy of so few that when I do find an opportunity I should give it to him. So yes, it has been great that he has taken a few little taxes down a bit. But the big picture shows the opposite. Collectively we are paying more taxes than ever.
I am thinking of thousands of families I am speaking for right now, not only farm families in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, but families in farms, working families, union people, all kinds of people right across the country who every month have difficulty paying their bills.
Yet we extract taxes from them at every turn.
We take the GST, the HST. We take the excise tax and the income tax. We take the UIC tax. It is a tax because by very definition money that is extracted from one citizen which goes to someone else is a tax. It is a function that governments in Canada have assumed. Governments believe it is a proper role for them to take money from the person who earned it and give it to someone who did not earn it.
Do not get me wrong, there are many instances where that is good. It is perfectly fine for us as a society to reach out in compassion and care for those who cannot look after themselves. That is why I became a Reformer. I am interested in making sure Canada's finances are run in such a way that we can do the things we truly value.
Let us make sure we look after those who are ill and cannot work. Let us make sure we look after those who are in dire straits. Let us make sure we have health care for people who need it.
The principle is sound and it is supported by the majority of Canadians. No Canadian should be denied needed health care because of lack of financial resources. I am deeply committed to that, notwithstanding the misrepresentations of that belief given often by people on the other side. I am deeply committed to that.
But what do we have in this country? We have three levels of government, in some instances four, and they tax and they tax and they tax on tax. I gave two illustrations before I was interrupted. One was the illustration of the tax on the tax on the tax on gasoline. The second was property tax.
This has nothing to do with the federal government but I sometimes think it would be a good thing for municipalities to say that when they have taken taxes from a property that over the years accumulate and reach the original value of the property, then we have taxed 100% and surely that is good enough. I have sometimes thought that might be a limitation.
I would like to see municipalities, provinces and certainly the federal government have some sort of curbs on their relentless grabbing of our dollars because Canadians have to work for those dollars.
Many of us get up early. I worked at NATE, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. In order to do my work and stay ahead of my students and the rapidly changing technical field, I often got up at 4 o'clock in the morning so I could get to work. I would work on the equipment before the students arrived so I really knew what I was doing so I could act authoritatively.
I got up at 4 o'clock in the morning and sometimes, in order to supplement our income, I would teach night classes. I used to say I work on Tuesday nights for me and on Thursdays for Mr. Trudeau because our marginal tax rates are about 50%. We are taxed to death.
I taught those evening classes because I enjoyed teaching adult students who came for night courses. I had some wonderful experiences and great relationships with some of those people. But we also needed the money in our family because it was more and more difficult to make ends meet.
It is worse now than it has ever been. We have families whose disposable income is down by $3,000 a year since 1993. The government keeps taking it.
The example I was using was property tax. I remember several years back when I did a calculation. I earned $4,000. Right off the top the Government of Canada and the Government of Alberta extracted from my earnings let us say 40% as a nominal number. The marginal rate is 50% but of course there are some basic deductions.
Of my original $4,000, 40% of that is $1,600. I am now left with $2,400 which I deposit in the bank. Then I take out my cheque book, go to the county office and pay my property tax. In that year my property tax was $2,400. So I wrote a cheque for $2,400. Now the municipality can say it only taxed $2,400. But the fact is that I had earned $4,000 to pay the $2,400 bills because we have taxes on taxes. Bill S-16 is right in principle because it says an investor should not have to pay income tax in Vietnam, or in Croatia or in Chile and then when he brings that money on his investment home pay income tax here again. There is an agreement here that we should avoid double taxation. The same thing is true for pension funds and other earnings. This is a very good agreement.
However, I wish we could apply that principle of avoiding double taxation. Though I have not discussed this with anyone else in the party I have talked to other people about it. They think perhaps we should have some deductions for Canadian families that are struggling. Perhaps we could have a deduction for interest on their mortgages as in the United States. Perhaps they could have a deduction for their property taxes so that they do not have to pay their taxes with after tax dollars and avoid that double taxation. This is an urgent need.
We have before us a bill which goes in the right direction on an international agreement. It is correct in principle and I support the bill. I presume most of my colleagues will vote in favour of it when vote time comes. Meanwhile the principle we are dealing with here is very important. We need to start applying it to Canadians who earn money in Canada. Let us stop taxing them to death.
I sometimes think Canadian taxpayers, and I am one of them, feel like 500 pound governments are using us as a trampoline. Of course I would be rather bouncy and it would work not too bad but there are a lot of other people who would not be able to take the crush. We have right now thousands of families really struggling to pay their bills yet the taxman is relentless in his demands.
This is a little off topic, but I am being given parliamentary immunity from relevance right now since everyone is very tolerant. I appreciate that. I need to say something about government policy in the long run.
Here we have a government making a policy. But it just happens to be true that the area in which I live and which I represent is suffering immensely these days from long term, wrong headed policies of the federal government. I am speaking about the government's policies on agriculture. With its monopoly in the wheat board we have guaranteed to farmers almost consistently the lowest price is the law instead of the highest price. International buyers wait until the Canadian Wheat Board announces its floor price and then that is the price they offer and it becomes the price. It is absolutely crazy the way it does this.
Instead of holding out for a good price the Canadian Wheat Board claims its only obligation is to sell the farmers' wheat. It is not accepting its responsibility to sell the wheat at a reasonable price and perhaps to withhold it when it is being sold at a loss.
Instead the farmers are forced by legislation to give their wheat to the wheat board whether they want to or not. They cannot find another market for it. It is against the law, unless they happen to live in Ontario or Quebec. Then they do not have to. They are free of the wheat board. But in western Canada where farmers are suffering so much that is one of the factors.
The other factor of course is taxation. I spoke to a number of farmers in the last couple of weeks over this issue. They are saying taxes on taxes on taxes. I had one farmer this week say to me “When I make a deposit into my NISA account in order to spread off my income in years of loss, why does the government take taxes off that? Why is that deduction not tax deductible?” It should be.
I hope the finance minister and the agriculture minister start waking up on policy needed in Canada right now. If we would provide these farmers with a tax regime and a system of selling their grain at a reasonable market price, at least something above cost, whether it is grain, animals or whatever, then we could survive internationally. We could compete with the best of them.
The government has to start applying the principles domestically that it is using in Bill S-16 and recognize that it is 20 years of bone headed Conservative and Liberal policies with respect to agriculture that have brought us to the place where now we are on our knees begging and pleading for disaster relief.
This is a manmade disaster. It could have been avoided. The crops in western Canada were generally not that bad this year. There were areas where they were not good. It is despicable in a year when a farmer has a good crop that he still cannot make it. He might as well get out of the business and that is what is happening.
When I was in farming a number of years ago we took some animals to the market one day and came back with more than we went with. The animals did not sell at the auction. When we went to take the truck back home, somebody had thrown a few calves into our truck.
We went there with six calves to sell and came back with eight because the farmer could not afford to keep them. He figured I would take them. Of course I could not bring myself to kill these young calves. We kept and fed them. I used my mate's income to subsidize the farm.
That was 15 years ago but those policies are still in place. While the Liberal government comes out with good things in Bill S-16 now and then, every time it has a good principle it applies it in only a narrow fashion. I ask the Liberals simply to consider applying those same principles to Canadian businesses, to Canadian families, to Canadian farmers. Let us get the country up and strong like it should be.
There is not a country in the world that has the wealth we have. If everything is added together such as our natural resources, our agricultural capabilities, our manufacturing capabilities, our mines, minerals and resources, what a wonderful country to travel to.
Canada is a safe country. People here are not generally worried about crime because Canadians care for each other. We do not go around beating each other on the head.
We have an excellent industry of tourism. We have a vigorous population. No one can live at this longitude and not be vigorous. Winter comes every year. We are good, hardworking and dedicated.
I am typical of Canadians who get up at 4 a.m. and do a job. When I grew up on the farm, my dad used to say the Lord put the sun in the sky as a light for us to work and it is wrong for us to waste it.
In summer when the sun came up in Saskatchewan at 5 a.m., we were out in the fields. That is what the light was there for. We worked hard. It is a shame that government policies over the years have basically stolen from us what we have worked so hard to earn.
I think of the family farm where I grew up. What a shame government policies put the continued ownership of that family farm at risk because the government cannot get it right. The government had better start getting it right. We will have a good debate Monday on this.
When people get on a roll they see things clearly. I commend the government for what it is doing in Bill S-16. I hope it spends this weekend studying. I used to say to my students on Fridays “There are no classes tomorrow. Sunday is the day of rest. You can go home and study”. I hope the Liberals study this bill on the weekend.
The bill will probably come to conclusion and pass today. It has some good principles on taxation. I hope the members go home and study it tomorrow. I would like not just every Liberal in the House but every Liberal in the country to go home and contemplate.
Tomorrow morning when they wake up contemplate how they are killing the country with excessive taxation and with bone headed government policies. Let them fix it. Let them serve Canadians like they say they are serving them. Let us see them do something tangible for farmers as they are doing for investors with this bill.
I drifted far from Bill S-16 on occasion but have always kept it as my goal in the distance. I have always come back to it.