Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak in defence of Canadian taxpayers. Bill C-47 is another one of those infamous tax bills. I do not know how the Liberal government has in its head that it simply cannot find enough sources of taxes. It taxes everything two, three, four and five times. One of the things we are addressing in the bill is an increase in the amount of taxation.
As the parliamentary secretary has said, the bill addresses a number of different areas of taxation. One of them is the taxation of cigarettes. I have said this before in the House and I do not know how often I must repeat it until somebody actually hears and understands what I am saying.
Every dollar that is taken by government out of the hands of the people who earn it is a drain on our economy. I have often said as have others in my party, and in fact our founding leader of the Reform Party stated it as one of his themes, that every dollar left in the hands of a taxpayer, an investor or an entrepreneur does way more to help our economy than that same dollar sent into the centrifuge of taxation, the bottomless pit in Ottawa.
When governments take money out of the economy and redistribute it, they do not do anything directly for the people of Canada in terms of improving their ability to get jobs and look after themselves. In most instances it is detrimental. We cannot seem to get this into the head of the Liberal government opposite. In this particular case we have a government tax grab for people who happen to be addicted to smoking. The government wants to increase the taxes that it is applying to that.
We need to look at this very carefully. It is quite interesting that the government has been able, with respect to smoking, to pass legislation that says we cannot advertise it. That is intriguing. Being a person who feels that the rules of society ought to be applied equally, it seems to me that as long as cigarettes are a legal substance then those who manufacture and sell them should not be forbidden to talk about them.
I am one who is vociferously against smoking. I have told stories in the House before about how one time I smoked a part of a cigarette and decided at that time that I would not do this. It was an intellectual decision. Why would one spend money, which in my youth was difficult to come by, in order to buy things that one simply burns up? Add to that the fact that as we burn them, we take them through our lungs which damages them. That does not make sense.
Furthermore it has long term health consequences. I know several people who have died an early death because of their use of tobacco products. Let not anyone say that since I am opposed to increasing taxes on cigarettes that I am somehow willing to promote the use of cigarettes, especially by youth. The answer to that is a resounding no, I am not in favour of that.
I wonder about a government that takes it upon itself to use tax policy to substantially affect social outcomes. I will go out on a limb but personally I would have liked the government to have declared long ago that tobacco ingested into the body either through chewing or through cigarettes was a dangerous substance. This is not party policy so I do not want to be misquoted. Tobacco, for example, is no less dangerous than the small amount of ill effects we get from certain chemicals used to control weeds on our lawns. The government is willing to declare those dangerous substances.
Sir Walter Raleigh said to wrap a bunch of weeds in a piece of paper, put it in one's mouth, set it on fire, and then suck in the results of that burning. I believe that is a dangerous use of a dangerous substance. If the government were to do that, then it would have the moral authority to ban advertising and its use could not be promoted among young people and so on. However the government has not done that.
Tobacco is not only a legal substance but also a substance supported in its growth and development by various agencies of government. We are sending a mixed message to Canadians with respect to whether or not they should be smoking.
Millions of dollars are spent on government ads telling people of the bad effects of smoking and urging them not to do it. At the same time millions of dollars are spent promoting tobacco farmers and helping them ply their trade. This does not make any sense to me. This is like hooking a horse to the front of a wagon and hooking another horse to the back of the wagon and having them pull in opposite directions. The government ought to start thinking about how it is conducting its affairs. We should all be pulling in the same direction.
Bill C-47 would increase the amount of taxes young people and others would be required to pay when they smoke cigarettes. The price would be increased by $2 per carton in Quebec, $1.60 per carton in Ontario and $1.50 per carton in the rest of Canada. The justification the government gives for this is that in order to stop the smuggling of illegal cigarettes some years ago taxes were increased substantially in Ontario and Quebec, the provinces with the largest problem, and less substantially in other provinces. This would bring prices down so taxes would be equal across the country, which I agree with in principle. We ought not to tax one province more heavily than another because of its geographical location.
To say that increasing taxes is a way of reducing consumption is a little disingenuous on the part of the government since it is generating a large amount of income for itself. What will the government do with that income? Who knows what kind of new hotels it will finance with this money. Maybe it will finance some new musical fountains. Perhaps it will think of some other wonderful ways of spending taxpayers' money. We will not know until it happens and then the government will deny it. All attempts to get the facts will be stymied by the government which ran on a platform of openness and accountability. Unfortunately we do not see a great deal of that.
Incredibly, the tax hike on cigarettes would give the government approximately $250 million per year. I am not good at math in my head on a Friday afternoon so I must do a little calculation here.
The government would get an increased revenue of some $657,000 a day. It would be taken from people who are addicted to cigarettes. Maybe some of them will quit; many of them will not. Many people who are addicted to cigarettes are not well off partially because they must expend a great amount of their income in order to feed their habit. Here we have the government taking money from people who are generally poor at the rate of $657,000 every day.
The government thinks that is the right thing to do. I guess it will go ahead and do it. I hope this increased tax would persuade some young people from not taking up the habit. I hope there would be some who would say that it is an optional tax that they do not have to pay.
I encourage Canadians right across the country not to smoke. I know there are up to three people right now watching CPAC and paying close attention to this. Here is an optional tax that one does not have to pay. I know it will be tough. It is difficult to break one of the most addictive substance uses and that is cigarettes. I know this from observing a number of my friends who have gone through the throes of quitting the habit. It is very difficult. Here is a chance for all the people out there in CPAC land to say to the finance minister that here is some money he will not get. We will keep it. We will not pay this tax. In that sense I am mildly in favour of the outcome, however I do not know whether I am in favour of the way this is being done.
I would also like to point out another thing about cigarette smoking. I know we cannot talk about this without sounding as though we are moralizing. We are told we cannot impose our morals on others. Absolutely. There was a saying “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”. No, we cannot impose a morality on a person. I guess I am not trying to do that. However, I said that I smoked a part of a cigarette one time when I was young. I found a pack that was not totally used up and smoked a part of a cigarette and decided that it was not for me.
People should be encouraged to not start something that ends up controlling them. I recall one speaker on this topic say a reason why he had never taken up the habit of smoking was that he had never in his life had a person over the age of 30 who had smoked for more than five years recommend to him that he start. That is a powerful testimonial.
I would say the same thing. I have a number of friends who smoke and, frankly, some of them say they cannot quit because they need it, they like it, or they enjoy it. They all have various reasons and justifications. Yet I have never had one of them say to me that I am getting on in years and I am missing one of the joys of life and that I take up smoking. I have not had a single one do that. If no one who smokes is ready to recommend smoking, then we ought to listen to that. That is a powerful argument.
We are talking about Bill C-47, a tax bill. I have talked about the increase in taxes to the government. I would briefly like to talk about the change in prices in the use of alcohol. Here again I feel unqualified to speak on this topic from a personal point of view. I have avoided paying the alcohol taxes in this country. I grew up in a home where alcohol was not part of the furniture. We did not use it. For my parents I believe it was partially a religious belief thing.
I did not espouse my parents' beliefs when I was young, but I also made a conscious intellectual decision that I would not use alcoholic beverages. I did this based on the observation of some of my friends who claimed they were having a great time but unfortunately did not know they were having it. I always thought it did not make any sense to take part of one's nervous system and shut it down by whatever means. Most of us can use all the intellectual capacity we can manage to muster up, so as a very young person I made that decision.
I should perhaps not tell the House this because people will say I am a weird guy. Maybe I am. However we were very poor when I was young and my source of income, believe it or not, was to go up and down the ditches out in the country, pick up cast away beer bottles and sell them. If I remember correctly I received 20¢ a dozen for them which was big money. All I had to do was get five dozen of them and I had a dollar, and a dollar was big money to a young kid my age at the time. That is how I made some money.
Frankly, one of the reasons I never took up drinking was because I could not stand the smell of the stuff. Later one of my friends explained to me that there was a huge difference between a nice cold beer out of the fridge and a beer that has been sitting in the hot sun in a Saskatchewan prairie ditch for a week or so. I guess I did not have a fair sample of the product, but I decided I was not interested in it and would not use it. Over the years I have avoided paying a whole bunch of taxes on liquor products.
I have not suffered. I have not put other people at risk on the road, which is one of the hazards. It is a huge hazard. Many people get injured and killed every year because of drunkenness on the road. I know we are not talking specifically about that. However like many other things, drinking alcoholic beverages when taken to excess becomes an evil instead of a good.
I have no problem with people who like to have a nice wine with a meal and so on even though I personally do not. I say let them if they want to. Let them pay the taxes. It is a voluntary tax. I say let them pay the taxes to the government, as Bill C-47 provides for, and enjoy it with their meals if they wish.
However I have also said I do not believe in drunkenness. I do not care if people drink but I think drunkenness is wrong. The only way a person can avoid drunkenness is by saying no to a drink. Being a person who is somewhat weak I decided it was easier to say no to the first one than to any subsequent ones. That is how I came to that conclusion.
I will say something about the whole issue of taxation on alcoholic beverages and cigarettes. One of the reasons we have taxes on these products is because we think we can somehow reduce overconsumption of them. It is to achieve a social outcome. We would probably be surprised if we thought about this and its long term ramifications.
I read not long ago that approximately 100 people every day in Canada lose their lives due to the effects of smoking cigarettes. I am talking about heart disease and lung cancer that is directly attributable to the use of cigarettes. Around 35,000 to 40,000 people a year in Canada lose their lives prematurely because of the use of that product.
I have often thought of it this way. We members from the west are required to get on an airplane pretty well every week to head out to our ridings. Most of the time the airplanes have about 100 people on them. If one of those airplanes were to go down every day I would be going by train. I would decide the probability was not in my favour. If 100 people in Canada every day were losing their lives on a particular kind of airplane I would not go on that kind of airplane. I would find another means.
Yet people across the country are quite willing to smoke cigarettes recognizing that 100 people every day in Canada lose their lives because of that choice. It is a strange thing. The same is true for the overuse of alcoholic beverages. Every year literally thousands of people are injured and killed because of the abuse of alcohol.
This is an appropriate time for us to say to Canadians that there is no excuse for drinking and driving. It should be an automatic that if one drinks one should make other arrangements for transportation. It is not right to risk other people's lives, health, safety and property.
I will get back to the taxation issue. We have had a bit of controversy with respect to taxation of alcoholic beverages. I did a few calculations which are rather interesting. Bill C-47 would continue to tax breweries in Canada according to a formula. I am not sure whether it would increase or reduce the amount for small breweries. However in the notes someone gave me it says there are speciality brewers in the United States who get a 60% reduction on a certain amount of production every year to account for those who are small operators.
We recognize and use that principal in Canada when it comes to personal income taxes. People here are quite willing to say persons with low incomes will earn a certain amount of income before they pay any tax at all, persons at the next level will be taxed at a low rate, and persons past a certain threshold will pay an increased rate. We have what is called a progressive tax system. I will not diverge today into the merits of a tax system where the rates are closer together, but we accept this system for individuals yet we do not want to accept it when it comes to small businesses.
The numbers are quite astounding. It says in my notes that small brewers produce less than 300,000 hectolitres per year. I do not know whether many Canadians are yet into the hectolitre form of measurement. I did a little calculation to bring it down to where we can recognize it. I found that 300,000 hectolitres per year works out to roughly 82,000 litres per day. A small operator is one whose production accounts for less than 82,000 litres per day. There are people who think it would be justifiable to give those in the small business bracket a lower rate of taxation or even a total exemption.
We should go beyond simply being competitive with our American neighbours in this regard. We should make sure industry and all sectors have an advantage by being in Canada. We should be better than our big American trading neighbours. People should be eager to do business in Canada and stay here. They should not want to go afield and take their business out of the country to the United States, Mexico or wherever else.
The Liberals have shown they not only push and pull at the same time with respect to the tobacco tax. They also seem to be all over the place from time to time. In 1994 they were busy increasing the tax. In 1995 they cut the tax. Here we are again increasing the tax. Maybe it is a grand experiment and we do not know we are part of it. The Liberals love playing with taxes and changing them.
We ought to recognize the fact that the government has an insatiable appetite to reach into the pockets of Canadians be they rich or poor and take as much money as it can. The Liberal government has a bleak record in terms of recognizing and respecting the collective wealth of people in the average or below average income brackets. They are taxed to death.
We can add to that the horror of watching the government take billions of dollars away from the thousands of workers who contribute to the EI program, as they call it, and roll it into general revenue. I do not know if members are aware of this, but the total amount the government has applied to the debt reduction it likes to crow about is no more than the amount it has taken out of the EI fund. The government has said to poor people and members of the working class who must pay into EI that they are the ones who will pay down the debt.