That is right. If the government would listen to the voice of reason from all sides of the House, even in some cases from the government's own backbenchers when they are trying to represent the interests of their constituents. Perhaps then the government and the cabinet would put forward better legislation from the various departments which would have genuine grassroots support across the nation.
One of the interesting issues I heard loud and clear during the last election campaign, in consultation with constituents and in letters, e-mails and faxes that come to all of us as members of Parliament, which really angered the general public is the whole issue of payroll taxes. When we talk about taxes we cannot just talk about income tax in isolation.
The GST is another tax which has angered many people ever since the Mulroney government brought it in a number of years ago. We have debated as to whether there was a commitment made by the Liberal government in the 35th Parliament to actually end that tax, to abolish, scrap, get rid of the GST. We have had that debate. Very clearly the average Canadian understood that there was a commitment. Yet the GST is still in place even though we have now achieved a balanced budget.
Canadians are desperately seeking genuine tax relief and they are told once again by the government to wait a little longer and perhaps they will have some tax relief. Once again we see broken commitments, broken promises.
Look at the Canada pension plan and the huge increase Canadians are facing. There will be a 73% increase over the next five years in their Canada pension plan premiums. We see this government stand up and brag about what we feel and the average Canadian feels are relatively minor cuts to the EI, the employment insurance premiums. The Liberals say it will create more jobs and it is their way of offering some genuine tax relief to overtaxed Canadians. That is going to be more than made up for by the increase in the Canada pension plan premiums.
The government is not fooling anyone. In travelling throughout the riding of Prince George—Peace River and in talking to my colleagues as they continuously consult with their constituents on this and other issues, I can say that average Canadians are not fooled by this. The wool has not been pulled over their eyes on the issue of taxation. They know full well what they can expect in the future, which is more of the same. Canadians are fed up with being taxed to the extent that they are.
There is a huge social cost to the whole issue of the debt and taxes which by and large this government for whatever reason is missing. It is missing the social cost.
The Liberal Party and the Liberal Government of Canada constantly hold themselves up as the defenders of the downtrodden. They have tried to perpetuate this Liberal image that they are there for the poor, they are there for the handicapped, they are always there defending the rights of the less fortunate in society. In actual fact the exact opposite is true.
It is this government's overspending that has threatened the very fabric of the nation. There is a huge social cost. Even as we speak today we really do not understand all the ramifications of this policy of continually raising taxes and until this year continually increasing the national debt and the interest we pay out every year on that debt. There is the inability of this government to make a firm commitment in this year's budget to put forward a concerted plan on how to deal with the debt.
We heard the finance minister and the Prime Minister make statements about the $3 billion contingency fund which as I pointed out a number of years ago during the last Parliament in communications with my constituents is simply a slush fund. It is a $3 billion fund set aside for the use of the finance minister. If the interest rate rises unexpectedly or something goes wrong, or there is an act of God and commitments have to be made, the finance minister has this $3 billion set aside. During the budget debate the government quite generously said that if it does not need the $3 billion, it is going to put it toward the debt.
Most Canadians are capable of doing the arithmetic. This country is almost $600 billion in debt. When I talk about billions of dollars, I always try to bring it back to what most of us can understand. A billion is such a huge number. We throw it around all the time in this place, a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, a $3 billion contingency fund. What does it mean? For us to really understand that, we have to remember that a billion dollars is a thousand million dollars.
I am getting up in age. I am certainly well aware of that today after the hockey game last night. The MPs played against the pages and we were really reminded about how old we are getting. I can remember when $1 million was a lot of money and it does not seem like that long ago. When we talk about a debt of almost $600 billion, that is six-hundred thousand million dollars.
Imagine winning a lottery. The 649 wins are now around $10 million. At one time $1 million generally was the first prize and it seemed like a lot of money. To me $1 million still seems like a lot of money. We used to think about becoming a millionaire. Imagine. Our debt is the equivalent of 600,000 Canadians, and there are not anywhere near that of course, winning $1 million. Then they could pay off our debt. That puts in context the size of the debt, the burden we are soon to hand over to the younger generation, to our children and our grandchildren.
When the government talks about using the $3 billion contingency fund, it is laughable. As I said, just about anybody can do the arithmetic. If the government is serious about that, at that rate it is going to take almost 200 years to pay down the debt. I do not call that much of a plan to attack the huge burden of the national debt. It is a grave disservice and an insult to the upcoming generation that is saddled with the highest taxes, as we are, in the G-7 on personal income tax.
My eldest child is in her second year at university. My two younger children are growing up quite rapidly. I am trying to imagine them looking at the situation in this country and what hope there is for a future for them and for all the thousands of other young people. It is an embarrassment quite frankly for our generation. We should think about that. We should be ashamed of the mess our generation has made of this country.
Look at the country that was handed to us by our fathers who came through the second world war and into the 1950s and 1960s. The opportunities I had when I graduated high school in 1970, almost 30 years ago. The world was at our feet. We had all sorts of opportunities. There were very reasonable levels of taxation for the services that were available. There were all sorts of job opportunities. Anybody who really wanted to get ahead certainly had the opportunity to do so.
Today the future does not look that great for young Canadians. My hat is off to them that they are as optimistic as they are. Talking with the young pages here, their optimism and enthusiasm about the future is incredible when you see the obstacles that we as a generation and governments have placed in their path for the future.
I want to tell a story about my riding of Prince George—Peace River. This story relates to the high burden of taxation not only at the federal level but also at the provincial level. Part of the riding of Prince George—Peace River is the B.C. Peace River area which geographically is east of the Rocky Mountains. It is cut off physically from the remainder of British Columbia. It is kind of an anomaly. I do not know who was responsible. A lot of people think we are from Alberta.
Ironically, there has been a recent initiative, largely because of taxation levels, that the people of the B.C. Peace would like to join Alberta for some obvious reasons. It really highlights this whole issue. People can only be taxed to a certain level, then we are going to have some open rebellion in one form or another.
A dear friend of mine in my riding, Short Tomkins, a good Reformer but also a duly elected regional district director, had put forward a motion to circulate a petition to try to generate a referendum for the people of the B.C. Peace to secede from British Columbia and join Alberta. That northeast corner of the province generates billions of dollars in taxes for the federal government and the provincial government. Yet in many regards it is a forgotten corner of the country.
It is virtually ignored. We hardly have a decent road to drive down in the Peace River district despite the fact that all the oil and gas industry in the entire province of British Columbia is in the B.C. Peace. There is a large forestry sector there, pulp mills, sawmills. We have two very large hydroelectric dams that provide power to the rest of British Columbia. We have natural gas with the gas pipelines providing the heat for the lower mainland of British Columbia. We have two large coal mines at the town of Tumbler Ridge providing coal for export. It is a very resource rich region.
Yet what we see in that area is that the infrastructure is failing because the taxes are being drained out of the area to Ottawa and Victoria and very little is ever put back. We forget about that. It is treated like a colony in the old days where we just take and take and never put anything back.
It is very indicative of a lot of the problems inherent in Canada today. This huge taxation is what is causing a lot of our problems.
I talked early about the social costs. I am reminded that as we address the issue of crime in the country today we often think of it in isolation. We try to think of what the problem is. What are the root causes of criminal activity and some of these horrendous crimes we hear about? Today we are all aware of the recent tragedy down in the States where school children were shot and murdered by two other young people, an 11-year old and a 13-year old.
When we look at the issues of crime, instead of looking at them in isolation, I have often remarked that one of the reasons I believe we see an increase in violent crime is we have a breakdown of the family structure in this country. One of the reasons we have that breakdown in the family structure is directly attributable to the insatiable appetites of governments at all levels for taxes.
The reality is more and more families, regardless of whether one of the parents would like to stay at home to raise the children in the home, find they cannot. If they are going to provide any semblance of a decent standard of living, with our high taxation, both parents must go outside the home to work.
There are exceptions. I am encouraged by the increase in at home businesses. Many parents, in particular women, are developing their own niche markets for certain products so they can work from home and try to balance the responsibilities of parenting and providing a higher standard of living.
The reality is the high taxation policy of this and preceding governments is failing the Canadian people. It is contributing to the horrendous social cost for all of Canadian society. We do not fully understand the price we are paying and the price future generations will be paying for the high tax policy of this and other governments.