Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and debate Bill C-71 today. I will start by addressing the amendment from the Bloc Quebecois.
I appreciate the concerns expressed by my colleague from the Bloc but I simply do not know of any fairer way of dispersing the CHST other than on a per capita basis. While I understand his concerns, I must disagree with him and say that per capita is the way to go.
Having said that, I certainly have grave concerns with Bill C-71. I think it is an example of the failure of the government to understand the real legitimate concerns of Canadians. To put this into context, I simply have to refer to the remarks by the Prime Minister that we read in the newspaper this morning. He said that Canadians did not need to have tax relief in a big way any time soon, that he would basically take his time reducing taxes and that what we really needed was bigger government. He said that we needed to spend more money on making government bigger.
I do not think I can find words to express how much I disagree with that whole approach that the government is taking. We see it again in Bill C-71 where we have a piece of legislation that is absolutely bereft of tax relief at a time when Canadians have made it very clear that we need to have tax relief.
I want to back up for a second. Last year we saw the government go about $3 billion over budget in its program spending; this year it was $7.6 billion roughly. At every turn, the government is taking steps to ensure that the surplus never gets big enough that there is money to actually give back to Canadians in the form of lower taxes. It is critical that starts to happen.
Across the hallway in the finance committee right now, we have experts from around the country who are coming to talk to us about the issue of productivity. Again, the government seems to think that we can make the country more productive by spending more on social programs and by having a children's budget in the next budget. We reject that.
We say that the way to make everybody better off, the way to make children better off is to start lowering taxes. If we do that, people will not only have more money in their pockets directly because taxes will have come down, but we will have all this increased activity in the economy. When that happens, there will be more jobs created, more people actually paying income tax and ultimately more revenues coming into the government for important things like paying down debt and even reinvesting in health care.
Government members seem to think it is a better approach to take that surplus. They assumes it belongs to them and not the taxpayers, which I think is crazy. It is standing on its head the idea of delegation to the federal government from the people. They take that money and spend it in a way they think is best, not realizing that 30 million Canadians have different priorities they want to spend that money on.
I emphasize the government's approach is wrong headed. The degree of tax relief it proposes to offer is of such tiny magnitude that it could not possibly have the impact it hopes it will have. It is a question both of direction and of degree.
I also want to refer to a red herring which the Prime Minister tossed out in his remarks as reported in this morning's newspaper. He said that we do not want to be like the United States and if our taxes are cut to the degree of the United States we will somehow be like the United States and have all the problems it has. I want to tackle those comments head on.
I reject the idea that prosperity is purely a United States phenomenon. It is ridiculous. It is a red herring. The Prime Minister is desperately trying to create the spectre of a U.S. style economy with U.S. style health care and all the things Canadians have made very clear they reject, simply so he can get out of lowering taxes.
I suggest to the Prime Minister and to the government across the way that it was not very long ago when we were the economic betters of the United States. We had taxes that were lower but still had our own country. We had our own set of values and we were not at all like the United States. We had prosperity that equalled and was even better than that of the United States. Why can we not have that again? I think we can. We can have our own priorities and be prosperous.
What does the government have against an improved standard of living? After all, the industry minister pointed out that our standard of living has fallen behind that of the United States. According to the industry minister our standard of living fell behind those of the poorest deep south American states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.
The official opposition believes we can have prosperity and still be uniquely Canadian. Because we have low taxes we do not need to be exactly like the Americans. The Prime Minister is dragging this issue out so he can avoid the whole debate about tax relief, simply because he would much rather spend that money and have his bureaucrats and people in government spend that money as opposed to leaving it in the pockets of individual Canadians who desperately need it.
The standard of living of Canadians is being eroded every day. Canadians have made it clear they would like to see that money used to redress some of the inequalities in the tax system.
We had a debate in the House not long ago brought on by questioning of the junior finance minister by the official opposition. We pointed out that single income families were discriminated against in the Canadian tax code. We should be using that surplus to give some tax relief to single income families that are struggling to get by. They have seen their standard of living eroded. They want to give their children and ultimately their grandchildren a better life than they have had. I think that is exactly what all parents aspire to.
They will not get if if the surplus is used to build bigger bureaucracies, big social programs, and make government bigger at a time when government is full of waste and continues to misspend that money. Government is not omniscient. It does not know what people will use that money for in their individual private lives. People should be allowed to make those decisions for themselves.
For all their talk across the way about compassion, I must point out that we could be using that surplus to reduce the unbelievable levels of taxation on Canada's poor.
Believe it or not, the government takes $6 billion a year from Canadians earning less than $20,000 a year in taxes: every year $3.7 billion in income taxes and $2.3 billion in payroll taxes.
The Liberals talk a good game about cutting taxes and trying to help the poor but at the end of the day they tax the hide out of Canada's poor. That is unbelievable. It is time to reverse that trend. It is time to start to push up those basic exemptions a lot further than the piddling tax relief they obtained from the government in the recent budget. It is time to lower rates. It is time to eliminate the inequalities in the tax system to get rid of bracket creep, the inflation tax the government has profited by over the last several years at the expense of taxpayers.
Bill C-71 is inadequate. I do not think it addresses the priorities of Canadians. It continues to tax at ridiculous rates. It is time to reverse that trend and use that surplus to start to ease the burden of long suffering Canadian taxpayers.