Mr. Speaker, a member from British Columbia is talking about my leader while I am talking about taxes. Let us talk about taxes for a change.
We have problems. We have a problem with education. Post-secondary education is a problem. Small business people are facing problems. CPP premiums have gone up. Of course the government claims it has reduced the EI. In the overall taxation problem people do not see any hope.
The auditor general has stated that the underground economy has increased. I do not agree with the underground economy. When the government provides services we have to pay for those services. Why is there an underground economy? For the simple reason that people feel they are not getting back what they have been paying to the government. That is why there is an underground economy.
Ours is a voluntary system. We are supposed to declare what we earn. In a voluntary system there must be trust, trust between the government in what it is doing and those who are paying. If that trust is broken, we will get a situation where people will say that they will not voluntarily comply with it. This is what is happening. Over the past years the trust has been broken.
The trust was broken when the Conservatives brought in the GST. The GST was supposed to be paid toward the debt but instead it went toward spending. That was the start of the breaking of the trust between the Canadian public and the Canadian government. Up until now Canadians have not regained that confidence to pay taxes voluntarily. Canadians should pay their taxes. They should not break the law.
We as parliamentarians can tell the government that it is wrong, that it has not addressed the issue of what Canadians are saying. Everybody is tired. The burden on single parents raising children is so heavy yet the government refuses to recognize that. Canadians brought this issue up and now the government has a committee to address the issue. Mothers at home have not been recognized. Again the government said it would study this issue.
The minister of state for the status of women met a lady who had taken Canada to the United Nations. That lady had the impression that this government or the minister herself looked more favourably on women who went out to work and less favourably on those who stayed at home to raise their children. I do not see the logic.
Those who want to stay home to raise their children are equally important to this society because they are raising the young. They are equally important as those who are working and who come home in the evening to raise their children. It is a choice they have made. One choice is not better than the other. They both have the same objective of raising good Canadian citizens. But our current taxation system does not address that and this budget did not address that.
Let us talk about health care. I said on Monday that a constituent had phoned me. She said that she was afraid of what was going to happen with health care. She did not see that this government had addressed this issue. Despite the fact that this government has said it is going to pour money back into health care and despite the fact that this government is going to give money to health care one time, it does not bring confidence. The government has taken more since it came into power in 1993 than what it is putting back in.
The province of Ontario is going into an election. The Progressive Conservative Party has come up with its platform for the election. One of the points in its platform is it is going to uncouple its taxation system from the federal government. What does this do? This is the second province to do that. Alberta has already given its intention to do that and now Ontario is going to do it. Why? Neither of those governments have any confidence and do not see that the federal government is doing enough to reduce taxes. They want to get those taxes.
One of the reasons the provincial government was not initially reducing taxes was the fear that if it reduced taxes the federal government would increase taxes because it was tied into the system. Now the provincial government is uncoupling so it can address the concerns of its own citizens. It is uncoupling from the federal government so that it has the freedom to do what the federal government is refusing to do.
The other factor is both Alberta and Ontario have come up with tax reductions for their citizens. Yet Alberta is in the same situation as the federal government where there is no operating deficit. Why is the federal government unable to do that? It will claim it has done something. It will claim it has taken away the 3% surtax. The surtax is for whom? It is for those who earn high incomes. They pay the 3% surtax.
However even any relief that the government has put in this budget will not kick in this year. It will kick in starting in the year 2000. And the government claims it is giving Canadians tax relief now. The Liberals say they are giving tax relief now. No. Their own documents say when they are giving tax relief. It is next year.