My friends across the way say shame, and so they should.
On the weekend I was walking up a street in Kamloops when a fellow ran out of a little Chinese restaurant and said “Mr. Riis, come and have a tea with my friend and I” I said I would be glad to. We went in and poured out some Chinese tea; it was just after Chinese new year.
He said “I want you to explain why the government has done what it has to me”. I said “What is that?” He told me his name was Russell and his friend's name was Gary. They were probably in their mid-forties. They had both lost their families through divorce and their kids were living with their mothers. They were living on their own and were both on disability pensions of some kind. They were former drivers of Greyhound buses before it was changed. They had lost their jobs, were on disability pensions and were both living on just under $800 a month.
They asked “How can a family live on $800 a month?” How could they as individuals live on $800 a month? They said “When you get back to Ottawa ask the Minister of Finance that question”. Rhetorically I am asking the Minister of Finance to explain to Canadians who are left with $800 a month to live on how he would recommend they do that.
It is impossible to live a life of dignity with an income of $800 a month. It is impossible to provide adequately for oneself or one's family on $800 month. Yet that is what these two individuals, as an example of tens of thousands of others, are forced to do these days.
When Reform Party members say that transfer payments should be cut back even more I wonder what planet these folks are living on. Do they actually mean we should be cutting more transfers to provincial governments for health care, education and social programs? Perhaps my friends will answer that later today.
Do they actually think we should cut more to the Medical Research Council? Basically 85% of the requests for funding for pure research are now simply rejected. Of the few funded, the funding accounts for less than 75% of the funds required to do the job.
What is happening is that we have a brain drain. Some of our best scientists in the medical field feel they have to go elsewhere if they want to continue their careers as scientists and researchers. This is pure science that will lead inevitably not only to better health and health opportunities for Canadians but to jobs in Canada. Pure science inevitably leads then to further research and development that results in jobs being created, businesses being struck and so on.
The government has drastically cut that area back and members of the Reform Party are saying that it should be cut even more. This scalpel knife approach to trying to do something for the people of Canada has to come to an end.
Then Reformers talk about needing more tax cuts. I listened carefully to what my friends in the Reform Party suggested. They said that people who made money by capital gains should get a better deal and should not be taxed as much on their capital gains. I guess they are really saying that we should tax working people but if someone makes money in the stock market or speculates on real estate they should get a tax break. It is an interesting view but I certainly do not share it.
If we are to give a tax break to Canadians, which I feel is overdue, let us give a tax break that will benefit everybody and not just the people who receive incomes from capital gains. For example, let us cut back on the GST. It was introduced because we had a deficit problem. Now that we do not have a deficit problem, presumably, we should start cutting back on the GST, which would put money into the pockets of Canadians the next day. If Canadians had extra money in their pockets they would go out and spend that money, which at the same time would assist the local neighbourhood economy, increase economic development and create jobs.
If we are to have a tax cut, let us have a tax cut that will actually result in some action as opposed to assisting people who speculate on the stock market or in land.
Today when we go into a bookstore the most popular books we see are those advising us on how to avoid paying taxes. Canadians know that our tax system is corrupt. It is blatantly unfair. It is unjust. It is biased. Some people do not pay any tax and other people pay more than they should. Big corporations are not paying what they should and small businesses are paying more than they should.
Let us get back to building integrity into our tax system rather than having 464 pages of legislation dealing with tax tinkering. Will that restore confidence in our tax system? No, it will not. It will make it more convoluted, more complex and more biased.
We have to reform our tax system. We have to sit down and look at every tax exemption on the books and ask one fundamental question: Is it in the best interests of Canada? Most tax exemptions and loopholes will not be viewed as beneficial to Canadians generally and therefore should be scrapped. Those which make sense should be kept.
Let us get away from simply tinkering year after year with a word, deleting a word or adding a phrase to an already complicated system. It is so complex it is beyond comprehension.