Madam Speaker, I would start off by saying what I said to the previous member. A good example of people being harassed is people being harassed over the disability tax credit. They are being cut off when they should be getting a tax credit.
The government seems to be spending so much money on hiring so many people to harass ordinary citizens. It is going after a few dollars here and a few dollars there from people who are struggling. That is a wrong priority and the wrong way to go. The question raised about the fellow without a leg is a good example of that. An individual is being harassed for a few dollars a year.
Yet we have huge family trusts outside Canada that evade taxes. We have large corporations that do not pay their fair share. We have huge government expenditures every year in terms of tax expenditures to subsidize the huge multinational corporations. I am not talking about small businesses. I am talking about the really big companies.
If Canadians want a fair taxation system then everybody should be treated fairly and justly based on their ability to pay. The tax system in the last few years has become less fair and less progressive.
A number of years ago we had seven or eight different marginal tax brackets and a more progressive tax system. This has started to disappear as we flattened the tax system.
A reduction in income tax, as is the case in Ontario, and I do not know about the situation in Alberta but I suspect it is the same thing there, often leads to an increase in user fees. User fees in Ontario have gone up in many instances for ordinary people.
A user fee is a flat tax. Whether individuals are rich or poor they pay the same fee when entering a park. If individuals are wealthy or not they pay the same fee when paying a premium on health care as people do in the province of Alberta. That is not the way to go. The way to go is to make sure that we have a very progressive tax system based on the ability to pay. We do not have that in this country.