Mr. Speaker, today we are debating a supply motion by the official opposition. The official opposition gets to pick the topic of debate about seven to nine times a year and only some of those are votable. We take supply day motions very seriously. We put a lot of thought into them and we try to come up with something we feel would be a help to Canadians. Today we have seen something happen that concerns me a bit.
This is our day to pick a topic for debate, to pick the wording, to put it on the floor of the House for all sides to have a chance to go at it.
This morning after our first two speakers spoke, the government tried to implement an amendment but we had already made an amendment to the motion, so it could not be done. The government asked for unanimous consent. This is our day. This is our chance, one of very few. The government can pick the agenda every other day of the year, but on this day let us have ours. To try to confuse the issue by doing what it did today is not being straightforward with Canadians.
The people who have been phoning my office complaining about the price of gas and the tax on gas are farmers, people on fixed incomes, seniors, single parents and families struggling to get by. They are looking for a break from government and members of parliament and here we are going around and around over some foolish issue that is not getting to the gist of the problem.
People have been watching this debate today hoping something will come out of it to help them out at the end of the month. What have they learned? What have they seen? I do not think they appreciate very much what they have seen here today.
Our party is asking for two simple things. One is to take off a temporary tax that was put on to eliminate the deficit. Thanks to the same hardworking Canadians who phone my office asking for a tax break, that deficit has been eliminated. Why is the tax still there when there is a $12 billion surplus? Why is the tax there when the revenue from tax on gasoline this year is going to be $13 billion? We are talking about billions of dollars flowing around and we cannot give hardworking Canadians a 1.5 cent per litre tax break on a tax that when implemented was to be temporary. This I am sure does not add up in their minds.
The other thing we are asking to be done today is that the compounding tax on a tax on a tax, the GST on the tax portion of gas, be moved down so it is only put on the portion of the gas from supply and production. Do not be compounding tax. In the early days when the government tried to sell us the GST back in our other world, we said no. The government said it would not be compounded and here it is.
Those are the two things we are asking for today. I have no idea where all this other stuff came into the debate today. That is the gist of our motion. We were hoping for support from all sides of the House for Canadians who get up every day and wonder where the heck they are going to get an extra $10 a month to fill their tanks.
With regard to gasoline, we are talking about diesel fuel that truckers use to haul the supplies around the country, the supplies that feed us, clothe us and house us. Every time the price of fuel goes up, every commodity that travels on a train, in an airplane or on anything that burns fuel goes up in price. Would it not be nice if we could take the temporary tax off and give consumers a break, but here we go around and around in some wrangling way to try to confuse the issue.
I give full credit to the member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge. He is a member of the House for whom I have a lot of respect. A lot of people on all sides of the House have a lot of respect for him because of the stance he is taking. He has taken on a lot of issues. This is a real good piece of work that he and his colleagues have done. After what I have seen today I am starting to question that kind of action on a simple straightforward motion such as we brought forward today.
A year ago in a minority report that we attached to the report on the safety net programs for farmers that the agriculture committee was looking at, we asked the government to lower the input cost to farmers because again there is a compounding effect. It raised the price of all the products produced. It raised the price of shipping grain, shipping the products to market, the retail aspect of it and moving them around the country. We asked if the government could do that to help lower fuel costs to help reduce farmers' cost.
Yesterday I read an article that was in the Western Producer . Statistics Canada said that in total 26,200 fewer people are working in the agricultural industry in western Canada on the prairies this fall than there were last fall. Why is that? That should be of no surprise to anybody. The farm community is hurting and it is not only the farmers. I am talking about the farm community and the industries in the cities that support the agriculture industry. For that to get shovelled by is wrong.
We have been telling the government there is a crisis in the agricultural community that it has to address. It has to lower the input cost to producers. This is just one example of what the fuel tax is doing. The government has not done that.
Some 26,200 fewer people are involved in farming this fall than last fall. That is a crime. I am a little embarrassed to say today that I was involved in the House when all this wrangling was going on, when Canadians were looking for a solution and did not get one.