Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-32, the Budget Implementation Act, 2000.
I have spoken in the House in the past about the government's failure to embrace the realities of a globally interconnected, hypercompetitive economy that is writing new rules for the game of economics. We do not write those rules. In fact we ignore those rules at our own peril.
The government continues to play by yesterday's rules and to foster the types of programs that were dubious 20 years ago but today are recognized as being downright wrong. It refuses to embrace some of the elements of tax reform and deregulation that are necessary to prepare Canadians to embrace these realities, not just to compete globally but to succeed globally.
I will speak to some specific elements of the Budget Implementation Act, Bill C-32. The first is the increase of the basic personal amount. In the budget the government is proposing to increase the basic personal amount by $100 this year. This works out to be a tax cut of about 33 cents per week or $17 per year. That is about four cups of Starbucks coffee over the next year for Canadians. I am sure Starbucks and all Canadians are grateful to the government for this grudging, belittling, ridiculous insult of a tax relief.
The plan we are looking at would effectively raise the basic personal exemption over a period of time to $8,200. The fact is that in the U.S. the basic personal amount at which one begins to pay personal income taxes is not hit until about $11,000 Canadian. We are taxing the poorest of the poor in Canada. We call ourselves a kinder and gentler nation, but the fact is that in the U.S., our neighbour to the south, the greatest economic superpower in the world, there is actually more compassion extended to lower income Americans relative to the tax system than what is afforded to Canadians by our tax system.
The Progressive Conservative Party task force which reported in January would raise the basic personal amount to $12,000. We would like to see that amount raised further, but there is a huge difference from $8,200 to $12,000. It would liberate a number of Canadians from the Liberal tax regime which is attacking them at the very lowest levels of income.
One of the greatest disappointments in the budget was the failure of the government to commit significantly to increasing Canada's health and social transfers.
I do not need to remind anyone in the House that the Liberal government devastated health care in Canada by making draconian slashes to health care, by reducing health care funding and by putting health care in a crisis in every province in the country.
For the government, the finance minister and the health minister to be condemning provinces as they try to work creatively under the stress created by the government's draconian cuts to health care and social transfers is hypocritical at best.
The government has been the Dr. Kevorkian of the Canadian health care system. Through its indifference to the provinces and its failure to fund properly health care in Canada, the government has effectively almost euthanized the Canadian health care system or the capacity of the provinces to provide the type of health care system Canadians need in an increasingly expensive health care environment. If the federal government wants to play a meaningful role in working with the provinces and determining the future of health care in Canada, it had better come to the table with its chequebook.
There was a time that health care funding in Canada was shared 50:50. The federal government would provide 50% and the provinces would provide 50%. At that time there was a real partnership between the federal government and the provinces. There was some legitimacy to the notion that the feds and the provinces could work together on seeking new and innovative solutions to health care.
Currently some estimates are that federal government contributions are down to as low as 13%. It is very difficult if one is only paying $1.30 of $10 worth of gas to tell the driver where to take the car. The government is refusing to step up to the plate and provide adequate funding and leadership to address the complexities of health care in this very complicated period.
When the Canada Health Act was first introduced, health care realities were fairly simple. Since then pharmaceutical costs have increased to about 30% of total health care costs in Canada. Most pharmaceutical costs are covered privately. With the rising cost of pharmaceuticals and the increasing rate at which the pharmaceuticals are comprising our overall health care spending, we already have a two tier health care system. The federal government is not addressing the rising cost of pharmaceuticals and the composition of total health care costs as comprised by pharmaceuticals.
The federal government is not addressing the biotech industry. Increasingly there are very advanced and complex approaches to health care, almost to the extent that miracles are possible. However the cost of these health care miracles is immense. We have to address what could actually be considered ethical issues and work with the provinces on them.
Is it possible to have universal access to all new and advanced therapies and treatments? Has the federal government worked with the provinces to estimate what the cost would be to provide to each and every Canadian with the total and utter extent of treatments that are available to them in today's global health care environment? These types of things have to be considered.
Currently our health minister is sounding less like a health minister and most like an electioneering politician. Unfortunately, until we see some real movement of the federal government on the part of both the finance minister and the health minister on the health care funding issue, I would suggest that Brian Tobin, Premier of Newfoundland and former Liberal cabinet minister in this House, is correct when he says that the government has missed the boat by not reinvesting significantly in health care.
Across Canada the medical associations, nurses associations and provincial governments all agree that the federal government has to take a more proactive and aggressive approach to health care in Canada. It has to either butt out or butt in with more money for investing in health care. Clearly the budget missed the point on that.
In terms of the government's failure to embrace the importance of general tax reform, it is important to point out that our competitors in every country in the industrialized world are using tax reform and tax reduction as a vehicle to greater levels of economic growth and opportunity for their citizens.
Over the past 10 years Ireland's GDP on a per capita basis has increased by 92%. During the same period of time the American GDP per capita increased by around 20%. Canada's GDP per capita increased by an anaemic 5%. Clearly, as citizens in other countries are getting richer, Canadians are getting poor.
Productivity is the currency of the economic environment. If we are allowing Canada to fall behind, effectively we are reducing the standard of living of all Canadians not only now, but well into the future. The Royal Bank of Canada's chief economist, John McCallum, predicted not so many weeks ago that under current trends Canada's standard of living would be approximately half of that of the Americans, that within 15 years our standard of living would be reduced to half of that of Americans.
The brain drain is a damning barometer of the performance of the government. Over the last several years the number of people leaving Canada to seek opportunities elsewhere in other countries has gone from 16,000 per year to approximately 100,000 per year. That is happening under the stewardship, or lack thereof, of the government.
It is not just a matter of tax tinkering based on Liberal focus groups and short term political polling. We need significant levels of tax reform focused on doing what is right for Canadians well into the next century, not simply poll monitoring focused on Liberal fortunes in the next election.