My friend across the way on the Liberal side said it is not true, but I am simply saying that is how people feel. My friend may say that he does value parenting and that is fine, but actions speak a lot louder than words. As my friend knows because he is a parliamentary secretary for finance, we have had people come before the Department of Finance for years to say that it is time to end discrimination against single income families in the tax code. We agree. It is time to do that.
It cannot end there. We have to lower the tax burden on two income families because they pay way too much in taxes. Our proposals would do that because, again, we want to lift the exemptions. We want to eliminate the 3% and the 5% surtaxes. The government has started on the 3%. We want to completely eliminate those and we also want to start to lower the marginal rates. In fact we would eliminate the top marginal rate of 29% and take the 26% rate and start to lower it as well so that ultimately everybody would be better off. We want to end the deindexation of the tax system which takes $1.1 billion a year in a secret tax increase from people's pockets. That would end under this plan.
We have offered a whole bunch of ways that, through the personal income tax system, we would leave people better off. But we would also take the money that is currently paid into the EI fund, the huge overcommitment that employers and employees make every year, which is about $7 billion, and give it back to folks because it is their money in the first place. We think it belongs to them. That is the other area where we would help people.
Finally, we would cut the capital gains inclusion rate in half because we believe that we need to give an incentive to investors in Canada. So often today in Canada people buy, for instance, a revenue property. When they do that they are essentially ensuring that there are rentals around the country for people on lower incomes. Right now there just are not enough rentals, so we need to give people incentives to do that. But what happens is, if their property only keeps up with inflation in terms of the amount of money they get back from it in the form of a capital gain, for instance if they make a $1,000 on a property and it is all inflation, they still have to pay a capital gain on it. We say that is wrong.
If we want to help people in Atlantic Canada who get equalization today, the real way to help them is to ensure that their tax burden goes down. Our proposals would leave about $1.5 billion a year in the pockets of people in Atlantic Canada alone. That would really help folks a lot.
We encourage the government to consider that the debate is much broader than equalization. If we really want to help people we think it is important that the government find other ways of doing it.
The good news does not end there. In this plan we would also start to pay down the debt. There would be $17 billion in debt repayment over the next three years. We point out that this is a complete departure from the government approach. The government approach is to ad hoc it. The government's own budget documents show the debt being static at $579 billion over the next three years. It says that if it has any money left over, if it does not blow the contingency reserve fund, it will use that to pay down a bit of the debt.
I think Canadians really want to pay down the debt in a serious way. They understand in their own lives that having a lot of debt threatens their ability to fund their household. In Canada today we have debt payments of $40 billion a year. The single biggest cheque the finance minister writes every year is for interest on the debt. We argue that to help folks we should not make them pay so much every year out of their tax dollars to go simply toward servicing the debt. If we start to pay down that debt people will have more money in their pockets and they can make decisions about their lives.
Our program would pay down $17 billion over the next three years. We also have a longer program that would see $240 billion paid down over the next 20 years. We believe the debt issue is that serious that we need to pay it down in that manner.
Equalization is a program that is necessary in Canada. We wish we did not need it, but unfortunately it is necessary. It is also in the Constitution. We think it could be changed quite a bit to make it a better program, but the debate really cannot end there. If we really want to help people there is a much better way of doing it than simply throwing money at it through equalization.
The best possible way to help people is to leave more money in their pockets. Let them make decisions about their own lives. I guarantee that if we allow that to happen they will make far better decisions than the government. Who knows better what is best for their families? Is it the finance minister, the heritage minister or the prime minister? I do not think so. I think it is individual Canadians. They understand better what is important to their families. So leave the money with them.
In that we see the complete departure of the Reform Party from other parties in this place. We believe that money belongs to the people who have earned it in the first place, and it should stay there.