Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to address this NDP opposition day motion.
It is always a little bemusing to me when the NDP castigates Reform. Quite frankly Reform and the NDP have exactly the same goal in mind, that is to give ordinary citizens a break they very richly deserve. It is long overdue after years of Tory and Liberal mismanagement and taxation of their incomes.
I ask the NDP to listen very carefully to what I am about to say because we have the same goal in mind. We care about the people. It is because the traditional political parties no longer serve our interests that we have a Reform vehicle, Reform members in the House and a Reform vision which we are working hard to achieve. That vision is a strong country with strong social programs, with a safety net that we can count on, and with incomes that are not constantly eroded by government mismanagement, overspending and overtaxation.
We heartily agree with the NDP goal of ensuring that every Canadian has an opportunity to share in a new prosperity. That is what life is all about. It is about creating a strong, vibrant future and life for ourselves and our families. That is important to every Canadian.
The NDP also talks about the future of our youth. The future of our youth is the future of our country. In that I know we all concur. It is the young people who day after day come to us and say they have done everything they can but cannot find a decent job with a decent income. That concerns us very deeply because it is their future we need to be looking after.
What is the NDP solution? It is to rant against the super rich, the bogeymen, like the land owners in some South American countries, like the nobility in eastern Europe, like some evil force is keeping honest, decent, low income people from having the opportunities they need. I appeal to the NDP to get realistic about the problems and the way to achieve the goals we all believe in, instead of creating scary bogeymen and railing against people who are trying their best to create opportunities, employment and income that can be taxed back to help the less fortunate.
We agree that we need to give assistance to people who cannot care for themselves. It is something that we pride ourselves on. We must assist those who cannot meet their own needs in a generous and compassionate manner. It concerns me that we are losing the ability to do that as more and more of our money is diverted into paying interest on a mortgage that we are placing on our children's future and that the NDP wants to add to. It wants to continue to mortgage our children's future by massive overspending and to tax away the income young workers manage to get.
There is a role for government to play in its policies on taxation and spending and in achieving the goal of ensuring Canadians a high standard of living and real prosperity. However, the NDP way of doing this and its proposals to do this have proven over the last 30 years, not just in Canada but in country after country in the world, to do the absolute opposite of what it says it is trying to achieve.
I cannot understand. I have met a number of my NDP colleagues. I have the highest regard for their compassion, for their heart for people, for their desire to do the right thing, and for their competence and ability in the legislative arena. Yet all they can trot out is tired old failed policies of tax and spend and government intervention. This will simply give us more of what we have had over the last several decades. The same old failed policies of the past are being touted by the NDP. It simply will not wash. It will not serve Canadians. I appeal to the NDP to become more realistic about what can be achieved.
The NDP is asking for state planing; big government; high spending and huge bureaucracies that lead to waste and abuse of taxpayer money; high taxes which means less to meet the needs of families; and low incentives to invest and take risk. This means less creation of wealth, a smaller pie, less to share for those who truly are less fortunate and a lower standard of living, which is exactly what we are seeing.
Reform instead says that we need self-reliance and individual initiative. That is the spirit and that is the energy that will give us real prosperity. We need smaller, more efficient government. We need lower tax takes, in particular for low income people who are struggling to give their children the necessities of life.
Instead we have the NDP saying “The government can manage your money better than you can. Just hand it over because we know much better what to do with it”.
The fiscal platform of NDPers will simply give us what they say they do not like. They call for huge increases in spending, which will lock in the current record high tax burden that contributes so much to the poverty they claim they want to address, and higher inflation which eats away at the purchasing power of retired Canadians, causes an increase in interest rates and a slowdown in job creating investment.
NDPers talk about fair taxes. Have they not caught on to the fact that when we raise taxes on business people and service providers they simply pass the cost on to the consumer? That is us. That is Canadian families. That is people who are struggling to make ends meet. There is no way we will be able to strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. It does not work that way.
If the examples of country after country have not shown that conclusively to NDPers, we have to wonder whether they are living in never-never land and are not really prepared to deal with the realities that face Canadians.
The way to create real jobs and to alleviate poverty in a meaningful way is to reduce taxes on low income families to create the conditions necessary for those families to earn employment income, to shore up health and education, and not implement passive welfare programs that encourage dependency and discourage work and independence.