Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak to Bill C-71. This is the third time that I rise to speak to this bill. I rise to speak because I feel strongly about what is happening in our country, especially in the past couple of years when we have seen taxes going up, our financial house not being in order and the burden that ordinary Canadian taxpayers are carrying.
I have been a small businessman and an accountant. In the last 10 years that I have been a businessman there is just one area where I could not control the cost which dug into my profit, and that one area was government taxation. Government fees, government taxation, UI, EI, all kinds of taxes, from the cities to the provincial governments to the federal government, have been hampering the growth of small businesses.
This started with the Conservative government. Now the Liberal government is claiming that it is working well to bring its financial house in order. That is not what I hear from Canadians who are coming into my office. That is not right. Despite the claim made by the federal government that it has been reducing taxes, that it has balanced the budget and that good times are around the corner, those who walk into my office cannot vote for that. They cannot say that good times are around the corner because their take-home pay is still going down.
Why is their take-home pay going down? Costs are going up, rents are going up and service fees are coming in. With all of these things they just cannot seem to make ends meet. How can this government stand and say that happy times are here?
Now we see a new debate going on. Businesses have finally started speaking out. They are saying that enough is enough. We hear Nortel talking about losing the brightest people in Canada. We spend money to train them and then we lose them to other countries.
We have free trade with the U.S.A. Now we have free trade with Chile. We have free trade with Israel. As we go on we will have more and more free trade, which gives Canadians the opportunity to go to other countries where there are better conditions and better take-home pay. They will do that and we will lose them.
While I am on the subject about losing our brightest, I want to talk about something that is very dear to me, the student debt. Let us talk about that for a little while.
In the past decade the average Canadian university tuition has risen by 119%. That is a substantial increase. However, transfer payments for post-secondary education have already been sliced by 18%. The government has sliced this money, part of which would have been used by the provinces for student loans. Now the Liberal government is coming up with a band-aid solution. The government has created the millennium scholarship fund which will only address 300,000 students.
Today I read a press release in which the government said that it had come to an agreement with the Government of Ontario. The Government of Ontario will be administering Canada student loans. From a cost and efficiency perspective I think that is great. It is a good initiative on the part of the federal government. However, that does not address the main issue of the high cost of tuition.
I will talk about the University of Calgary for example. This university has charged more and more for tuition fees because it does not have funds coming from the provincial government any more. The federal government has refused to meet its obligations despite the fact that it talks about the great transfer of money it is giving to the provinces to address their educational needs for the future.
We are at the dawn of the new millennium. Is it not important that we look at what our students need? Is it not important to ensure that Canada has an educational force that can challenge others and make Canada prosperous?
I am the international trade critic for my party. I have travelled around the world on behalf of Canada. I have seen how competitive Canadians are. We can rise to the challenge. What is curtailing us? High taxes are curtailing Canadians. Despite what the Liberals say, the facts speak for themselves. More and more Canadians are leaving.
On Monday I pointed to an example which I will repeat today. I visited an institution in Toronto where they are teaching high tech to students. I was told that IBM hired six students and took them to the U.S.A. We trained them and we lost them. The reason is high taxation.
In committee yesterday the Minister for International Trade sent his message out to the government. I hope the minister is listening to this. He sent a very subtle message to the government; he was afraid he might get slapped. His chain was yanked. He said there is a need to reduce the gap in taxation between the U.S. and Canada since we are losing our brightest to the United States. The minister has admitted there is a need. Of course he had to say the politically correct thing so his chain would not be yanked. The minister said that the Prime Minister and the finance minister were working toward this. When will they work toward it?
The cost of education is rising. I have repeated this many times in this House. I have two daughters attending university and I know firsthand that the cost of education is going up and up and up. And what is happening? A millennium fund, a legacy of the Prime Minister, but that legacy is not going to work.