Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak for a few minutes to Bill C-25. Primarily what I want to do in the few minutes that I have is to debate some of the misconceptions that are out there.
First of all, when I asked the Minister of Finance a question the other day about a plan for debt reduction, he went on and on about how the debt is in fact going down as a ratio to GDP. However, he failed to answer the real question, which is, why not reduce the debt itself, because it is not going down.
The budget documents of the last couple of years indicate very clearly that the Liberal plan is to keep the debt constant in terms of dollars and to hope that the GDP goes up and the ratio of debt to GDP goes down, which in fact it is because our economy is growing, so the GDP is going up.
As my hon. colleague from the Conservative Party just said, the debt is a huge load on our country because of the interest payments required.
My second point concerns the misconception about our solution 17. NDP members in particular keep talking about this as being a tax reduction for the rich, saying that it would be unfair to poor people. It is really quite the opposite. I find it very difficult to defend against what they are accusing us of, because what they are accusing us of is exactly the opposite of what it is.
This plan would be more progressive than the one we have now, which, because of its steps and different rates, takes huge leaps. In some instances Canadian citizens who earn more money actually take home less because of the change in the rates as they go from one category to another. There is a tremendous disincentive to being successful, to working and earning money.
The one rate plan which we are proposing would make a smooth transition and would be truly progressive. By example, a single mom with one child, under the present Liberal government, pays $1,700 in taxes. Under our plan she would pay $170. In other words, she would get a 90% tax break, a 90% reduction.
For the many Canadians who are making less than $20,000, the government takes between $6 billion and $7 billion from them in taxes. Our plan would take them off the tax rolls completely, giving them a 100% tax break.
Compare, for example, another single mom, this time a rich mom who has an income of $240,000 instead of $24,000. Ten times as much income. She would pay $36,890 in income tax. In other words, 10 times the income, but 217 times as much tax. That is progressive. The Liberals have their system going so that it is even more abrasive than that.
The final point I would like to make is that it is not tax rates that pay for things like health care. There is this misconception out there that if the tax rates are cut, there will be less money for health care. That is not true. NDP members keep saying that we will take it away from the middle class or we will have less money for programs. That is not true. Anybody who knows any economics at all has heard of the Laffer curve, which shows that there is a maximum rate of income which is produced at certain percentage rates of income tax.
We are past that point. Reducing the tax rates would almost certainly increase total government revenue, giving us more money. That is the misconception that I wanted to correct.