Mr. Speaker, I will address a number of issues. The good member has made many constructive suggestions and taken his government to task, but he sits in the farthest corner of the House one possibly could imagine. That is sad because he is a hardworking member of parliament who provides many constructive suggestions in the House. My case in point is taken.
The issue of taxes is interesting. Once upon a time in the era of Brian Mulroney a government decided to lower taxes. In that brief period government revenues went up. If we lower taxes we lower the burden on the private and public sectors. Companies then have money for innovation and research and can compete and invest in their companies. Companies expand and when they expand they generate moneys. Because those moneys are taxed, albeit at a lower level, more moneys come into the public coffers.
The proof of the pudding is if we look at any country that has lowered its tax rates. We will find government revenues have gone up because the private sector has expanded, the economy is booming and there is a larger amount of money to tax.
High tax rates choke off the private sector and damage social programs. We need only look at the bastions of socialism in northern Europe. When they had high taxes their private sectors were compromised. When their tax rates were lower they had more government revenues and their social programs were put on higher levels.
One small point I neglected to address concerns the hardworking public service. The government needs to give the public service free reign and task it to determine how much money it is spending, where it is spending it, what its objectives are and whether it is meeting them.
It is shocking to ask government workers and bureaucrats responsible for government programs how much money they are spending, where they are spending it, what their objectives are and whether they are being met. Quite often the last questions cannot be answered. They do not know what their objectives are and often cannot answer whether they are being met.
The last part of that, and one of the government members had a great suggestion along these lines, is that we should give incentives to the public service. What if we told government workers that if they articulated and met their objectives and saved money a part of the savings would go to the workers and their bureaucracy as a reward for their good and hard work?
The workers would be able to apply their many talents and skills to the public good. Too often the hardworking and intelligent people in the public sector cannot use their talents to their maximum abilities. If we introduced an incentive program more and more of their abilities could be used for the public good. We would have a streamlined and more effective public service that could be an innovative tiger within the country.