Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address Bill C-72. The title of the bill is sort of scary in itself. Bill C-72 is an act to amend the Income Tax Act and implement measures announced in the February 1998 budget.
It scares the pants off me whenever the government starts talking about income tax changes and implementing its budget proposals. What was even more frightening was when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance talked about the fact that this was just not a one year approach, that the government's approach back in 1993-94 was going to be a continuing approach. It certainly has been.
We saw the tax increases by the Liberal government start in 1994. At that time we gave it the benefit of the doubt. We thought maybe just for that year we would see the income tax increases the government was proposing, but in fact we have seen them every year since the Liberals have been in power. The parliamentary secretary has certainly given credibility to the tax increase plan the government had back in 1994 when he said that it was not a one year approach.
I am sure the Canadian people have a little bit of a problem with the income tax increases that have been brought in by the government since 1994. As a matter of fact, there has been almost $40 billion of increased taxation since the government came in. That was brought about by some 38 or 39 individual tax increases.
To see the members of the Liberal government stand and talk about tax decreases or tax relief is a shock in itself. It makes one wonder what kind of horror movies they have been watching that would demand this huge turnaround in their thinking, which we cannot take with much credibility anyway.
The other frightening thing the parliamentary secretary said this morning was that the government has eliminated the deficit and that it is not borrowing any more to balance the books. The Liberal line is “We do not borrow any more; we have eliminated the deficit”.
The real story is the Liberals have raided the EI premium surplus fund to the tune of well over $20 billion. They have simply taken the money despite the fact that the current premium of $2.55 per $100 of earnings has been described as being far too high by their own people within the EI commission. The EI commissioner has clearly said that a premium of $2.00 per $100—