Mr. Speaker, any time I have the opportunity, I will stand up in defence of Canadian taxpayers.
Those poor, beleaguered people are attacked at every turn by government after government after government. It boggles the mind to think that Canadian taxpayers give up over half of their earnings just to fund their levels of government.
I have often said that if someone came into my house and took half of everything I owned, I would probably phone the RCMP. I would tell them to come and get this guy, take him away and lock him up. Let us have some justice here. Probably most Canadians would say, “Yes, you are entitled to do that. That is fair. That is in defence of your property. That is stuff that you bought with money you worked for and earned. The guy who went in at night has no right to take it”.
The taxman comes in the daytime. He comes and takes everything I earn. If I do not help him load the truck, I am the one that goes to jail. If I do not co-operate with him loading up and taking my stuff, I am considered to be some sort of a lesser citizen because I will not take part in the scheme.
I guess should put this into balance. I suppose I should not always talk about taxes like that, because it is a privilege to pay taxes. I concur with what many people say, this is a wonderful country. It is a privilege to live in Canada. I believe it is a privilege to be a member of parliament in the country. It is a privilege and an honour to stand in this place in defence of the people who elected me and who are paying the bill.
I hear from a lot of people in my riding and across the country who say, “You know, I would not mind paying a fair amount of taxes, but the taxes we pay are too much. We keep on paying taxes on taxes”.
Mr. Speaker, I am sure you are aware that we pay a lot of taxes on taxes literally. For example, if we go to the gas station to buy $10 worth of fuel for our cars, in the end that $10 actually includes a portion of the federal gasoline tax and the provincial gasoline tax. That price of $10, although I cannot remember the last time I only bought $10 worth of gas at one stop, but that $10 already contains a bunch of taxes.
What do we then get here? The government says that it wants to charge GST on it. The GST is our famous gouge and screw tax. It is added to everything, even to the tax portion of that gasoline. Here we have money that we have earned and on which we have paid income tax. We then take the part that is left and pay the gasoline taxes. On those taxes, GST is added. When I say taxes on taxes on taxes, it is literally true that we end up paying taxes on taxes.
I am getting very close now to talking about municipal grants because we want to talk about taxation collected by municipalities. It is also true that when we pay our municipal property taxes, in most instances the money we use to pay that tax we have already paid income tax on.
We work like slaves, get some money and the federal and provincial taxman keeps about half of it, on incremental income for most Canadians these days. With the half that we have left over we have to pay our municipal taxes. This is the reason I introduced my private member's bill that says that people who pay property taxes should be able to deduct that amount from their taxable income. I do not think it is right for Canadians to have to pay taxes on money they earn for the sole purpose of paying taxes. It is enough already, as my grandmother would say. It is just too much.
Today we are talking about Bill C-10. Bill C-10 is also a bill which has to do with how to distribute and move around money that has been collected from taxpayers. It also has to do with municipal taxes and other fees and charges that are paid by different levels of government, in this case, the federal government. I find it absolutely incredible that the money that the taxpayer sends to Ottawa is used for all sorts of different things.
Among other things, the Canadian government operates a number of vehicles. We have thousands of dollars of real property. I suppose that is a necessity, although sometimes I wonder whether we have allowed that to get out of hand as well. It seems to me that our government is larger than it ought to be because there has not been any real accountability on the part of government on how it spends money.
Obviously, when the federal government uses part of the facility in a municipality to operate its buildings, it should also pay a fair share of the municipal taxes. One could argue that there is only one taxpayer. However, the fact of the matter is that this is a way of relieving, at least partially, the burden of property taxes on people in the municipalities. That is, in order to provide the services and the infrastructure which also supports the government facility, as it supports other businesses and homes and apartments, this money is also used for these government buildings and government services.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is fair that the Canadian taxpayer should pay a fair share of the municipal taxes because there is an increasing burden on municipalities to pay for all of the things that are being downloaded by the government.
This is a bill that will amend the Municipal Grants Act. It has to do with how the federal government makes grants to municipalities directly in lieu of taxes that it should be paying.
Mr. Speaker, I know you had some anxiety as to whether or not I was on topic, but I was indeed giving my preliminary lead-up to the topic at hand today. I think I can probably promise you, Mr. Speaker, that at least 95% of the time I will open my speech with some sort of a statement that says it is time to cut taxes in the country, so my preamble was most appropriate.
In this particular bill, there are a number of things which are needed and are justified. It is a case where we have a number of items that are probably worth supporting. We know, and this has been the case for quite some time, that supplementary payments can be made to municipalities in lieu of taxes. In other words, in this country we do not permit one level of government to tax another.
There are some exceptions to this. I have noticed lately that federal government vehicles carry provincial licence plates. Agreements have been reached on that, which is fair since those vehicles utilize the roads of the province in which they are stationed, for the most part.
There are other things that have been permitted for quite some time. The federal government, however, cannot be levied a tax. If a municipality says that we have a federal court, a federal taxation building or an EI office that is owned and operated or leased by the federal government, normally if that were any other lessee it would assess property taxes against that property. The federal government, in order to be fair, has for a number of years voluntarily paid a fair assessment to the different municipalities. By doing this, it gets around that little rule that one level of government may not tax another level of government.
This particular bill has a couple of good features in it. It will extend the ability of the federal government to make these voluntary payments in other areas. For example, it would extend it to making payments of interest in the event that the payment was late.
I do not know if members have heard this rumour, but there are some government departments that are continually late in their payments. The Minister of Defence is here and maybe he can give me a wave if I am wrong, but I have heard rumours that the Department of National Defence spends millions of dollars every year on late payments through the normal billing of expenses. It is late in paying, so the supplier of the commodity that the defence department has purchased just adds the usual carrying charge to the late payment and the government pays it because it is a legitimate payment. If it would be on the bit and pay its bills promptly it would not have those interest payments.
In the case of municipalities, they also assess charges for late payments, whether it is late payments for municipally owned utilities or whether it is late payments on property taxes.
This particular bill would extend the ability of the government to make voluntary payments in lieu of interest on payments which are late. Again, I cannot really be against that. I think it is fair to the municipalities, the ratepayers and the property taxpayers in those particular municipalities where this applies.
There is another thing that happens. Sometimes the federal government owns a property but does not use it all. Even though it is owned by the government, it leases that same property out to another third party. Almost always, those particular contracts for lease include a clause that says that the lessee must pay the property tax on that property. Sometimes these people who lease the property are not diligent in their payments. As a result, they go late. This particular bill will now, I guess, stiff the taxpayer for the inability of the government at whatever level to collect the rent and tax payments from the individual or business that is leasing the property.
At any rate, it is a transfer of tax dollars from one location to another. In this case, it is from the federal government to the municipality. If the taxes are delinquent, this bill will allow the federal government to voluntarily make that payment.
There are some kinds of structures that have been added to the list. I would not disagree with that. Also, we now have a committee of appeal.
However, I would like to bring to the attention of the House that the Reform Party has a very good policy with respect to this type of thing. I would like to read a page from the book. It states:
The Reform Party will insist that all laws pertaining to individuals and the private sector apply equally to the Government of Canada, its personnel, its agencies and Parliament.
Mr. Speaker, you will be totally amazed at how I am going to weave the MP pension plan into this story. That principle applying to the fairness of municipal taxation is a principle that extends right across the board.
I draw to the attention of members and anyone else who is hearing or reading these words that in the pension plan for members of parliament and senators, legislation is in place which specifically exempts members of parliament from certain provisions of the Income Tax Act. I meet many people who would love to defer an additional 2% or 5% of their income for taxation in some future years.
This is a violation of the Reform principle which says that all laws which pertain to individuals and the private sector will apply equally to individuals as well as to governments, as well as to members of the government, including the employees, members of parliament and senators. We have here a violation of that principle. The MP pension plan is one of the most blatant violations. Specific legislation was passed in this place to exempt members from a law that applies to every other Canadian.
How could the Liberals have the gall to do that? I cannot believe Canadian voters continue to send members to this place who would do that type of thing. It boggles my mind.
The government is maintaining a special position in this bill. Even though the Government of Canada will voluntarily pay taxes to some municipalities on behalf of its buildings and structures, it will not necessarily do it all the time.
One objection we have to the bill is that Canada Post is not included. It is very much an arm of the government. The Canadian mint, a crown corporation, is not included as having to participate in this program. We think that is wrong. It should apply to everyone equally.
The payment of grants in lieu of taxes is a very good program but every once in a while a dispute arises. How would we solve a dispute? There are a number of ways to resolve a dispute when two people disagree. The best way is to sit down, talk about it, negotiate it, figure out who is willing to bend which way and come together on it. Every once in a while disputes become serious and the federal or provincial courts become involved. We try to resolve our differences at the court level by having a judge and in some cases a jury look at the situation to try to bring about justice.
There is a serious flaw in this bill. Even though when there is a dispute there is a mechanism to solve it, lo and behold we find that the board that is supposed to do this is appointed by the minister. It is like getting into a boxing ring and finding out that the opponent is also the referee. It does not bring a great deal of fairness to the situation. This flaw should be corrected before the bill is passed.
A second flaw is that board members make recommendations to the minister. Is that not a surprise. First the minister appoints the board members and then they make a recommendation to him. The bill is clear. The minister may or may not accept their recommendation.
If a municipality disagrees with the payment level or the promptness of the payment being made by the federal government and challenges it, the matter goes to the the board which hears the case. The board may give some very good advice or it may given rotten advice, we do not know which, but we hope the board would try to be fair.
I suppose the Prime Minister would hasten to tell us that just because they were Liberals who were appointed to the board does not mean that they will always make a wrong judgment, and I suppose that would be a fair statement. They probably would not always make a wrong judgment. In any case they make a recommendation to the minister and then the minister has the choice to take the recommendation or not.
In all fairness the minister and his officials would probably read and study the recommendation. I would hope they would. I hope the decision would not be arbitrary and capricious, but there is nothing in the bill or the act that would prevent that from happening. The minister could take their advice or he could decline their advice and do whatever he wants. He would then unilaterally say, “Sorry, we are not paying” and that would be the end of the matter. There is no further appeal.
Those are some of the very serious flaws in the bill that should be corrected. There should be some fairness built into this. Arranging the affairs so that the person one is fighting with in the boxing ring is also the referee is just not a very good way to plan success.