Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his astute question. I agree with a lot of what he says. I too believe that children ought to have a pretty good head start in their lives. I think it is primarily the responsibility of the parents to make sure it happens and the responsibility of government to get out of their faces so they can do it.
That is true for most of them. Then there are some who need assistance from the larger community, be it the municipal, the provincial or the federal community. Tax dollars are involved in giving grants and helping people in genuine need. I have some reservations about that, but I do agree with it in principle.
I regret, as I said in an earlier speech, that one of the things that has happened is that the Liberals, trading on the fact that as Canadians we are indeed compassionate, have instead taken away from us the fiscal room to be compassionate as individuals. They are taxing us to death, such that now when I see a needy person I am more likely, not speaking for myself personally but as an average citizen, to see whether I can help get them on some government program rather than simply ask them to come to my house for help in getting a job. That is what we did when I was a younger man. It worked well, because there was some personal accountability and mentoring. It works much better than a government program which unfortunately in many cases produces dependence.
With respect to the dollar, it is like driving along in my car in an 80 mph zone and my speedometer is telling me I am going 30. I say to myself that I had better get a new speedometer. No, the speedometer is showing my actual speed. I do not need a new speedometer. I need to step on it so that I can get with the program and get to the speed the traffic is moving at. To a large degree, I believe that is what our Canadian dollar is like. It is simply an indicator of our economic health. It should be of huge concern to the government that right now our economic indicator is showing that we are running at about 65% efficiency vis-à-vis the Americans, our next door neighbours. We are only about two-thirds as productive.
There is no excuse for that. We have a land that is rich in resources. I could list them all. We have a tremendously energetic population and we need to have to survive in our climate. There is no reason in the world why we would not have the capacity to be above the Americans on a true measure of standard of living, yet we know that our standard of living is way lower than theirs on many measures. It is indicated again by the value of the Canadian dollar.
Again, it is an indicator. I do not think one should fiddle with the indicator. Rather, one should try to correct the factors that have produced that particular measure in our productivity and economic efficiency.