Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to this supply motion from our friends in the fifth party caucus. We are pleased to support this motion even though it is a conversion on the road to fiscal Damascus as it were for our friends in the fifth party. Late conversions are welcome ones nevertheless.
I must commend the hon. member for Kings—Hants and his colleague from St. John's West for their eloquent remarks on this subject. Later on in my remarks I will address the extent to which their party and their colleagues contributed to the problem.
Let me begin at the outset by saying it has been remarked many times that the government opposite will have to increase the federal chiropractic budget because of the amount of back slapping that is going on over there. It truly is remarkable. They should take up yoga. Such flexibility is required.
This government has applauded itself for its fiscal rectitude, a government that has added a $100 billion to the national debt in three and a half or four years, bringing our debt interest costs up to $47 billion a year. We spend more on debt interest as a percentage of our federal budget, as a percentage of our national accounts and as a percentage of our gross domestic product than does any other G-7 country.
That is money that does not go to post-secondary education. It does not go to support students or higher education. It does not go to help health care or those less fortunate. It goes to line the pockets of bondholders and those to whom we owe this money here and abroad. It is an enormous waste. It is a sinkhole of resources and economic potential. It costs the average Canadian family $6,000 a year in taxes just to finance the $47 billion in debt interest payments.
The party opposite, and occasionally the party to my literal right and my figurative left, sometimes argue that it is cruel and hard hearted to talk about tax relief, that we are misplacing our priorities, that what we need are more big government programs like the Prime Minister's $3 billion endowment fund.
To put it in context, the reality is that $47 billion is almost equivalent to the entire budget of the Government of Ontario for all of its health care, welfare, social programs and everything. It is also equivalent to what the provinces of Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan, the five smallest provinces, spend annually on their budgets for all of their programs. That is how much is being flushed down the Liberal-Tory sinkhole of debt financing.
We believe there is a need for radical, dramatic policy change to offer hope and opportunity to younger Canadians, those who are presently struggling to get into university, those who are in university and struggling to get out from under their debt, and those who are out of university struggling to get into the labour market but who are unable to do so because of the 17% youth unemployment given to them by this and the previous government. They need economic opportunity and it is not available to them today.
It is no accident that we find in this caucus—and I will grant in the Progressive Conservative caucus—a number of younger Canadians, people like myself who are not very long out of university, people who have faced economic challenges in a very real and concrete way.
We will not find among the younger members of these two caucuses professional politicians who have been shifting between municipal councils, provincial legislatures and federal parliaments that have been legislating taxes, tuition increases and cuts in transfer payments for higher education.
We will find people who know what it is like to graduate with $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000 of debt and to try to find their first leg up the ladder in a labour market which offers so little opportunity to young Canadians.
That is why we will find in this caucus, and to some extent in the Progressive Conservative caucus, an appetite for a different approach. Not more big government, Ottawa style programs administered by bureaucrats; not more back to the future of the 1960s and 1970s. We want to move ahead to the 21st century, a 21st century not characterized by a family tax burden which consumes 47% of what the average family earns, not burdened by $600 billion of public debt and not limited in opportunity with a 17% youth unemployment rate.
Imagine a future where tax freedom day comes on April Fool's Day as opposed to the end of June. Imagine a tax burden which only takes 25% or 30% of the average family's income instead of 45% or 50%. Imagine a country which only spends a few billion dollars on debt interest and is able to spend the rest on tax relief, job creation, health care and higher education. That is the kind of country I want to live in. That is why I ran to be in this place.
Speaking of the tax burden, I will run through some of the numbers, but before I do so let me say that the brain drain of which my hon. colleagues speak has a very personal meaning for me. It is not simply an economic concept. I will speak of the experience of my family.
Some of my family are fifth and sixth generation Canadian. I have ancestors who like yourself, Mr. Speaker, descent from the United Empire Loyalists. Mine is a Canadian family which goes back 250 years. I am in a sense ashamed to say that today my entire immediate family—my parents and both of my brothers—are now working and living abroad because they could not find the economic opportunities in Canada they were able to find overseas. They are not happy about the fact they had to leave the greatest country in the world. I am not happy about that fact.
I would like to tell a personal story about my father. My father served in the Royal Canadian Air Force for 11 years as a jet fighter pilot and as a squadron commander of CF-100s at various air force bases. He then went on to teach and become headmaster of several fairly well known Canadian private schools. Those who know about the private school industry will know it is not a very compensatory vocation. People earn far less there than they do in the public school system.