My friend asks if we support equalization. I made it clear that we do support equalization. However, that does not mean we would not find ways to improve it or even shrink its scope so that it is not three provinces supporting seven, but maybe five supporting five or something like that. Nevertheless, we support it in principle.
Let me go a little farther down the road that I started on. We want to come up with a way that goes beyond equalization that would help all Canadians. We believe the way to do that is to keep government small in a large civil society and in doing that produce the type of prosperity that will leave everybody better off.
We should give Canadians the real security they want. The way to do that is to hold the line on spending, not increase it and go over budget by almost $8 billion like this government did this year and last and which it will again do next year. It has already upped the amount it wants to spend for next year. We think that is completely the wrong approach, especially at a time when the world is so volatile.
We say that we should hold the line on spending. We should reallocate resources from low priority areas like a television production fund or some of the grants that go to big business. We actually have a WTO ruling against Canada because of some of the grants that have been going to big business.
We should take some of the money the government uses to intervene in the economy and give it back to people in the form of more money for health care, as well as an investment in defence because the department of defence has been basically emasculated by this government. There have been examples in the newspapers lately of how the Canadian military has really paid the price for Liberal neglect over the last many years.
We also believe it is time to begin finding ways to reinvest in our justice system. We have a situation now in British Columbia where the RCMP is really in a desperate situation. We need to reallocate money from all of the areas that I have alluded to so that we can have more money for high priority areas.
The second step is to begin using some of the surpluses that are going to be a lot bigger now that we are holding the line on spending, somewhere in the range of $43 billion to $45 billion at the end of three years.
Just so my friends across the way know, many economists around the country have pointed to that sort of approach as the best way to ensure that the Canadian economy is better off. I point to recent studies that come from the C. D. Howe Institute which suggest that massive tax relief is in line for what ails the Canadian economy these days. We agree with that. We think it is the right approach.
We are going to run big surpluses over the next three years if we hold the line on spending. There are two things we think need to happen with those surpluses. First we need big time tax relief. The Reform Party is arguing for $26 billion in tax relief over the next three years. That will mean that many of those single income families that we are talking about will be much better off. In fact a single income family of four earning $30,000 a year would receive $4,600 in tax relief under that plan. It would mean a lot of money in their pockets and really would contribute to giving them the type of security they need.
If people are in recipient provinces like Newfoundland, New Brunswick or even Manitoba, under that plan they would receive much more money in their pockets instead of having all the efforts of the government going to just giving money to another level of government. This money would go directly into the pockets of people who are scraping to get by these days, who really need the help. They have paid the price for successive Liberal and Tory governments that have raised taxes incessantly over the last 15 or 20 years. Now it is time for some real tax relief.
I know my friends across the way will say that they gave them some tax relief in the last budget. But by the time we figure in the increases in CPP premiums and the fact that the government has not bothered to do anything about the deindexation of the tax system, Canadians will actually be $2.2 billion worse off over the next three years. Canadians end up a lot worse off even after the government's tax proposal.
We say let us change all of that. Let us leave Canadians $26 billion better off. We have enumerated a number of ways we would do that. We would raise the basic personal exemption to $7,900. The married exemption would be raised to $7,900 so we would not have the discrimination that we have now against single income families.
We would change the child care tax deduction to a credit that would be extended to all families, irrespective of how they look after their children. That would ensure that some of the feeling which a lot of single income families have, where they feel the government does not value their parenting, would disappear.