Mr. Speaker, there is a benefit to having sat through a Conservative government as an opposition member and watching what the Conservatives did and then watching them bring forward a motion like this one. For the five years I listened to Tory budgets in which they increased the deficit, increased interest payments and reduced the capacity of the Government of Canada to invest in Canadians, to invest in dealing with issues such as poverty.
Let me tell the House what they did on the issues brought forward in the motion. The motion says the government should increase the basic income tax credit to $10,000. It was a Conservative government that deindexed the tax brackets and therefore allowed more and more Canadians to become taxable at very low income levels. They suggest we should index the tax brackets. It was a Conservative government that deindexed the tax brackets and therefore created a heavier burden on Canadians as time went on.
I find it a little ironic to be debating with a Conservative member a motion to undo those measures which the government of the party she represents put in place. That is what she is asking us to do. I guess that is the luxury of moving from government to opposition and being able to forget the actions of one's government when it was in a position to take some positive measures instead of the negative measures which the member now wants us to undo.
By contrast, let me tell members of some of the things of which I am proud that our government has done. Last year's budget was the first time we have had the opportunity and the luxury of looking at reinvesting. We chose to use some of the benefit of our first surplus to deal with very low income Canadians. I applaud that. I think that should be our priority.
We chose to increase the basic exemption from any income tax. That was a modest increase, but it took 400,000 very low income Canadians totally off the tax rolls. It reduced taxes for millions of more Canadians. We also took off the 3% surtax but not for everybody. We took it off for very modest income Canadians and left it on for higher income Canadians.
I think those are the right priorities. We should leave the most money we can in the hands of those in the country who have the least. It also makes economic good sense because those people who have the least spend what they do have on essential goods and services. If they have a bit of additional money it gets spent on essential goods and services produced by other Canadians and it helps substantially in our efforts to further reduce unemployment.
Despite the constraints of the last few years we also initiated the first new national social program in a long time, the child tax benefit, with an expenditure of close to $2 billion. We know that has to increase. We know it has to go up and it will as fiscal resources are available. It was a very important initiative that will help every child across the country.
What does the Conservative member want us to do? She wants us to increase the basic income tax credit to $10,000. That would help a lot more low income Canadians. I hope we are able to do more in that direction in the budget that is coming out next week. It also reduces taxable income for somebody making $100,000, $150,000 and $300,000. Guess who benefits most from that reduction? It is not the lowest income Canadian who pays tax at a low rate but the highest income Canadians.
We are not prepared to do that. If the Minister of Finance is listening, I would certainly hope that giving greater tax relief to high income Canadians than to low income Canadians is not something that will be in his budget.
I really do not want to talk partisan politics but I think we are heading in the right direction. The whole issue of poverty is too important to leave superficially with the issues brought forward in the motion. Health care needs more money. We have to look at that in the budget. There is no secret about that. It needs different approaches as well. This is an extremely important issue for low income Canadians.
Poverty and health are inextricably linked. We know that poor children are much more likely to become seriously ill. So it is important that we do the kinds of things in health care such as the community action program for children's health, the prenatal nutrition program and other investments in our young children to ensure they will get a healthy start in life and remain healthy.
It is important for us to support the health and service centres which link social problems with health problems and which deal with the whole family and the whole health of the community so our children do have a better chance to grow up strong and healthy.
Money is important. A good friend said a long time ago “when the problem is poverty I cannot think of anything better to throw at it than money”. However, there are other things we have to do. Our investments in health care and education are extremely important.
One of the things I am currently concerned about is young children growing up in poverty who are entering school without any access to the technology that their better-off peers will have as soon as they get into kindergarten. Our government has done a number of things to make sure that every child has access to those skills of learning, which are now basic skills of learning in our schools, so that one barrier between well off and poorer children is eliminated or at least alleviated.
There are so many other issues involved in poverty. While this motion would have us give tax breaks to poorer people, and I hope we will do that, it also gives tax breaks to very wealthy people. It ignores completely the need to also invest in other areas of our society and our economy to alleviate the problems of poverty.
I represent a lot of poor families and a lot of them would not be helped one bit by this motion. The motion is aimed at working Canadians not women who are living on extremely low incomes of social assistance. The attitude and emotion about people becoming self-reliant and self-sufficient ignores totally the fact that those women with two or three children are also working parents. The only difference is they do not get paid for it.
I find the motion narrow. It would deliver more tax relief to well off Canadians than to those who most need it. I also find it ignores the need to balance tax relief against the other areas that we need to invest in. If we truly want to help those who have been hurt most by hard economic times and by, I will admit, decisions of governments, we need a supportive society and a budget and programs that help them to deal with their situation and create for all of us a healthier society.
