Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-32.
Right off the top I want to say that it is interesting that the hon. member across the way did not say that it is important to pass this legislation because it will give Canadians hope, because it will give them new opportunities or provide the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are necessary to help out people on the low end of the income scale. He simply said that some benefits will be increased.
The speech which my hon. friend across the way just gave speaks volumes about the approach of this government. It is always “Let's try to manage the problem”. It will not fundamentally fix it. It will not provide people with opportunities. Instead, it is “Let's manage it. Let's get it off the boil and put it on to simmer on the back burner”. That characterizes the whole approach of this government.
Having said that, I want to talk about Bill C-32 in the context of something the Prime Minister said the other day in Germany. He said that the Canadian Alliance has an agenda of greed. That is a serious accusation and I want to address Bill C-32 in that context. If we asked ourselves what exactly does that mean, it becomes pretty apparent very quickly that there is a huge irony taking place.
What is greed? What does it mean to be greedy? It means taking something that one is not entitled to, something that one did not earn. Thinking about it that way, that perfectly describes the government. It is absolutely true that over the last six and a half years since it has been in power it has taken more and more money from people's pockets, money that does not belong to it. Truthfully, it belongs to the people who earned it. They earned it by working hard. What does the government do? It now confiscates 50% of their income and, in some cases, at the margins people face a tax rate of 60%. That is shameful, but it is what occurs under this government and it is completely unapologetic for it. That is the agenda of greed that we see in Canada. I would argue that when this government taxes $7 billion a year away from people earning less than $20,000, that is an agenda of greed.
What have those people done that they deserve to have that much money taxed away from them? They have worked hard. They may not have skills or education. In some cases they may have fallen on hard times. That is their crime. For that they are punished by paying $7 billion a year in taxes. It is absolutely unbelievable. That does not include the taxes they pay in Canada pension plan premiums, which are going up, and EI premiums. CPP premiums are going up far more than employment insurance premiums are going down. People are paying more and more.
What about brain drain? One of the factors which drives people out of the country is heavy taxation. I would say that is an agenda of greed, of which this Liberal government is guilty. The government is taxing people to the point where they are saying that the government obviously does not appreciate the fact that they work 50, 60 and 70 hours a week, creating, in some cases, hundreds of jobs.
The government taxes the life out of people until they say “Why should I pay these high taxes?” They do not mind paying taxes that are maybe a quarter or a third of their income, but why 50% or 60%? That is what happens to some people at the margins in Canada today. That is greed. It is greed when the government takes money that it is not entitled to.
I think it is greedy when the government puts people in the position in which both parents have to work. How many times have we in this place heard people say “If I had a choice, I would stay at home with the kids. That is what I would prefer to do. That is a choice that I would like to have”. The government taxes people so heavily today that both parents have to work, one just to pay the finance minister.
That is the definition of greed. If the Prime Minister wants to look for an agenda of greed, he should look at his own agenda. It is an agenda of greed when people are taxed that heavily to support the government. It is not like people are getting great services for the money they send to the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister. Consider the human resources development scandal. What happens?
We have $7 billion a year that comes from people making less than $20,000 a year. A good chunk of that goes to a department like human resources development, and a good chunk of that money goes to things that are, to be charitable, questionable activities. Consider all the money that is poured into the coffers of people who are great political supporters of the Prime Minister.
It is not like there is some objective process that people have to go through to get this money. We know, for instance, that in the Prime Minister's riding, because of political pressure, all kinds of grants to friends of the Prime Minister were approved. These people then gave money back to the Prime Minister for his campaign. Now we have four police investigations in the Prime Minister's riding.
That is an agenda of greed. The government takes $7 billion from the lowest income Canadians and then gives it to its political cronies, who then give it back in the form of campaign contributions. That is an agenda of greed. If there is anyone guilty of greed, it is the Prime Minister and this government.
It is about time that we pulled the mask off and revealed the Prime Minister and government members for what they are. They are people who too often use the tools of government to push their own political ends. That is fundamentally wrong. Many of us were sent to this House to change that, to turn it around. It is absolutely disgusting how the Prime Minister can say with a straight face that the Canadian Alliance has an agenda of greed. That is ridiculous.
Our purpose in this place is to allow people to keep more of the money they earn. That is why we are promoting the tax proposals we are pushing today like solution 17. We are saying that people should be able to keep the huge majority of the money they make and send in enough to ensure that we have a good health care system in Canada and that we can provide for pensions and things people really value.
That is what we should be using government for, not ripping off taxpayers to push the blatant political ends of people in government. That happens all too often. I resent very much the Prime Minister saying that we have an agenda of greed when it is so clear that everything the Liberals do is calculated to take more money out of people's pockets to further their own ends.
I believe in a concept of justice that says we are entitled to what we work for and obtain honestly. That describes 90% of the people in the country. The massive majority of people in Canada work hard, are honest and are willing to pay their fair share of taxes. They do not want to pay a whole bunch of taxes for unscrupulous activities. We have seen that too often in the government. It is time for it to come to an end. People may say it is fine for me to say all this but that I should back it up and explain what I mean.
I do not know for how many months we have been pursuing the human resources minister about the boondoggle in human resources development which is obviously guilty of gross incompetence, political pork barrelling and patronage on a scale that is without precedent. I do not think we have seen anything this bad before.
Let us consider the transitional jobs fund or the Canada jobs fund. The Liberals change names to try to hide what they are doing. If that is not one of the most obvious examples of milking taxpayers to fund political patronage, I do not know what is. Even the human resources development committee has said that this program does not seem to have any criteria. It seems to have a pot of money that allows the minister carte blanche and members across the way carte blanche to fund their ridings, their friends and the projects they personally support in an attempt to lever themselves back into power. It is disgraceful. It has reached the point where even the Liberal chair of the committee brings down a report saying that it has to come to an end and recommending breaking up the department.
The parliamentary secretary says that Bill C-32 is good because it will enhance a GST credit and do this and that. Those guys do not get it. There is a much bigger picture. There is no vision across the way. The Liberals simply ad hoc their way through parliament. It is time for some fundamental changes.
People will ask if we are really in bad shape. Yes, we are and I want to talk about it for a moment. Three weeks ago a report came down from Standard & Poor's DRI Canada which had the audacity to point out a pretty startling fact about which the government should be embarrassed.
The report pointed out that the people in the poorest U.S. state, Mississippi, have more disposable income per capita than the people of Alberta, the wealthiest Canadian province. I would think that would be something government members would be concerned about. If they want to talk about an agenda of greed, how is it that Canada, with its human and natural resources, can be in a position where the amount of money people have left over after the government is done with them is lower than that of the poorest American state, Mississippi? How did that happen? Is it right that it should happen? The money that people have left over to pay for food, shelter and clothing is diminished to the point where there is less in our wealthiest province than in the poorest American state, Mississippi.
That speaks volumes about who really has an agenda of greed in Canada. It is the government across the way. The only reason that happens is because of public policy decisions. The government has decided that the best approach is to tax the hide off people. Then it will decide what is good for folks. With half the income people earn and the government gets to keep, it will decide what is good for them. It will spend it for them. We see it spent on all kinds of foolish projects. We see it spent ineffectively. We see it spent on things that people do not want. We see it spent on things that are contrary to the values of the people it takes the money from in the first place.
We are in a situation today where people in Canada are seeing their standard of living eroded and eroded and eroded. I have given many speeches in this place on this point. It has a lot to do with the government's contempt for people who are entrepreneurs, who risk their life savings to start businesses and who are innovative. I believe it is contempt.
The Prime Minister talked in Germany about the superior values of the Liberal Party and how it cares more. That is a joke. It is ridiculous. As I just pointed out, we are in a situation where the government takes $7 billion a year from people making less than $20,000. How can it say that it cares more? If it wants to have an election on that issue, I say bring it on. Let us have a contest, an election on that. Let us let the people decide if it is compassionate and caring to take $7 billion from people who make less $20,000 a year.
Is it really compassionate and caring to tax people so heavily that both parents have to work, not because they want to work? According to every poll I have seen, 70% of two income families today said that if they had their druthers one parent would be at home with the children. They do not have the option.
Is it compassionate to entrench in the tax system a double standard when it comes to taxation of families? A two income family pays a lot less taxes than a single income family earning the same amount of money. That is the government's approach. It is doublespeak. It hopes that people will simply look at the sound bite and not observe what it really does. As a result, people get more and more cynical about politics, and the government wonders why fewer people come out to vote.
There will be a day of reckoning. I hope we have an election campaign on the issue of Liberal values or social values. The record of the government is reprehensible. It has done more damage than just about any government I can think of in recent memory in Canada. I do not think there has been a government that has damaged the public more.
Let us consider that over the next five years we will probably run a surplus of about $150 billion. The government's approach is to jack up spending even higher, with more and more money going into more programs even though they have huge problems, not only in human resources development but in other departments like industry where there are billions of dollars in corporate welfare.
Let us look at the department of Indian affairs which is full of problems. I see the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is here. We send billions of dollars into Indian affairs every year, and what do we get for it? We get 70% unemployment on Indian reserves. We see suicide rates that are through the roof. There are substance abuse problems that are unbelievable. Very little money gets beyond the band council level to rank and file natives.
The government will continue to drive spending through the roof. It will take more and more money from people to fund all kinds of programs that do not work. I would say that is an agenda of greed. When people take money that does not belong to them, when they take more than their share of the pie, that is greed. That is unjust. We see it over and over again from the government.
Bill C-32 nods a bit toward things like reducing taxes, but on the other hand the government is ripping more money out of people's pockets. It gives back a little with one hand and takes more and more with the other. It is this duplicitous approach that makes people cynical.
Some people are probably wondering about Canada's position in the world after six and a half years of this approach to government. People say that the economy is moving along fairly strongly and that unemployment is down to under 7%. That is pretty good, but why is it not good enough?
I make the point that we should not be mesmerized by the recent strong growth in the economy. While we all welcome strong growth in the economy we must remember there are two types of growth. There is the type of growth that is premised on strong productivity. There is also the type of growth that is premised on a workforce that is producing more and more and generating more opportunities. Then there is the type of growth that we get by allowing our dollar to sink to ever lower values by basically cheapening ourselves to the point where we in that way attract more investment into the country. That is the approach the government has taken.
Over the last 25 years we have seen a decline in the Canadian dollar. There is no better indicator of the health of an economy than the strength of its dollar. It tells us how we are doing relative to the rest of the world, and certainly in this case relative to the United States. We measure ourselves, I think rightfully, against the United States. We used to have a superior standard of living than that country. According to just about everyone, including the government's own industry minister, our standard of living has now fallen dramatically as against that of the Americans. I encourage people to remember we are a country that is blessed with uncommon resources. We have tremendous resources, human and natural.
How is it that we have seen this decline in our standard of living and this decline in our dollar? It has a lot to do with the sanguine approach of Liberal governments over the last many years and their rah-rah attitude: “We are number one in the world. We will spend our way out of this problem. Let us wrap ourselves in the flag. The other guys are bad because they want to cut taxes”. We have seen that over and over and over again.
The result is that investors see through all that stuff and ask what is really being done to keep the economy competitive. They look at the statistics. They see that our disposable income continues to fall relative to that of the United States. Now, as I pointed out, our wealthiest province has lower after tax income than the poorest American state. They look at things like our productivity. What is happening with Canadian productivity? We know that it has improved a bit lately. However we also know that it is falling further and further behind that of the United States.
We must remember there is only an imaginary line between Canada and the United States and its public policy differences. That is what explains why the U.S. economy is doing so much better than ours. Why is it that in Canada today manufacturers and people in the industrial sector are investing about 30% less on equipment and machinery than they are in the United States? Why is it that we are in a situation today where we have much less spending on research and development in Canada than in the United States? Why is it that we are in a situation where the new economy in Canada is producing fewer opportunities for people in terms of high tech start-ups?
One of the striking facts of the last year was that in Canada there were exactly four initial public offerings for Internet companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange. At the same time in the United States there were 165. It has 10 times the population. I could understand if it had 40, 45 or even 50 more IPOs, but there were 165 IPOs in the United States.
The situation is we are falling behind in that new wealth creating sector that is symbolized by the Internet. Canadians are leaving the country in droves to go to the United States. A recent report from Statistics Canada said that many of the people who we educate here are going to the United States, particularly in the medical field. It talked about doctors and nurses leaving in droves.
The government uses the soothing balm of saying yes, but people are coming in from outside Canada to fill some of those slots. This is where its thinking is so short term and superficial. Instead of replacing those people with people who in some cases are fleeing horrible regimes elsewhere, would it not be better if we were a net winner of brain gain instead of suffering from brain drain, where we are losing all those people in the first place?
How much sense does it make to educate people at huge expense to the taxpayers only to see them go to the United States and other countries around the world? It is crazy and ridiculous that the government says it is not a problem, do not worry about it. It speaks to the sanguine, carefree and even careless attitude of the government.
We could point to so many other things to demonstrate that the government is reckless and careless when it comes to managing the economy. There is the falling dollar and falling productivity relative to the U.S., the falling standard of living and the output per capita.
One of the most amazing statistics I have come across is the one that indicates our output per capita between 1988 and 1998. Canada's output per capita over that 10 year period grew by 5%. What is the significance of that? What is output per capita?
Output per capita is how much on average each person produces for the economy. Why is that important? That is what determines our standard of living. The more we produce per person in an economy, the better the standard of living, the more money people will have, the more money people can use to look after things that are important to them and their families, the more money ultimately that people pay in taxes to the government to fund things that people care about, such as health care and higher education, those sorts of things.
During that 10 year period ours grew by 5%. That is all. In the same period, France saw its standard of living, its output per capita, grow three times faster. Most people would say that France really does not strike them as a country that is at the leading edge when it comes to wealth production but it grew three times faster than Canada.
Australia grew four times faster. The U.S. grew four times faster. Norway grew six times faster. And Ireland? It grew 18 times faster than Canada. Why was that? Is it because Ireland has more resources than Canada? I do not think so. Is it because it is in a situation where it has much better educated people? Hardly. I think we are fifth in the world for spending on education.
We produce some of the best educated people in the world. The fact that we are so often raided by the United States and other countries to pick those people off is a testament to that. What is the difference? Why are we falling so far behind relative to the rest of the world?
One of the big reasons is that in Canada the taxes are way too high. Taxes basically shut down initiative. They send a message to people who are really ambitious or who are prepared to risk a lot of money to get their ideas off the ground, the government tells them to get out of here, that they are not wanted. People will be punished for the crime of trying to create jobs and produce new products and come up with new ideas. People are fleeing in droves.
That is why our output per capita is so pale compared to that of our trading partners around the world. That has to turn around.
The Prime Minister uses a balm and medicates himself with such slogans as the Canadian Alliance has an agenda of greed, when it is precisely the government that has the agenda of greed. Nothing will get better as long as those guys are where they are. Things have to turn around. The government has to be replaced. The Liberals have to be thrown out.
People have to get the message that the Canadian Alliance will allow people to keep more of the money they earn. That is not greed; it is justice. That is being a government that is respectful of the work, effort and risk people take simply to make a living, to try to get by.
It is time to throw off some of the ridiculous slogans we hear from the Prime Minister and really look at the record. How do we do that? How do we turn things around?
The first thing is to have some honest discussion with people. We do not try to medicate the public with slogans about Canada being number one and attack people who have other ideas simply because he chooses not to agree with them. We sit down and address the hard issues.
What are the hard issues? We have to ask how good a job is being done with the money the public already sends in. Is a good job being done? The answer is no. The government is doing a lousy job. Health care is broken. Human resources is broken. Indian affairs is broken. Transport is broken. Defence is broken. Justice is broken. They all have to be fixed. Let us go in there, take the money that is currently being spent and use it more wisely so that people get good results for the money that is being spent. That is the first thing.
Second, what do we do with the $150 billion in surpluses that will come our way over the next five years? The first thing is to recognize that Canadians are among the highest taxed people in the western world. Income taxes are around 50% higher than the G-7 average. Those taxes have to come down.
The people at the low end who are taxed to the point where they can hardly feed themselves should not be paying taxes. People at the middle should get a huge tax break. People at the upper end should get a big tax break too because we want them here. We want to keep them here. We do not want to drive them out. We want them here. They will pay taxes and put people to work. But the government loves to engage in the demagoguery that suggests if people at the high end of the income scale get some kind of tax break, it is bad.
I would submit that the real agenda of greed is the one that comes from the government. It seems to want to tax every loose penny it can find in everybody's pockets.