That would be extremely unwise. However here we bring in an airport tax without an economic impact study to see what the impact of that tax will be on communities, on the country and on the travel industry. I do not think it makes any sense.
The last point I want to make concerns a new vision of taxation in the country or in the world. I refer to the whole area of the Tobin tax. The Tobin tax was an idea suggested by Professor James Tobin who passed away about four or five weeks ago. He suggested a very small tax on the trade of currency in the world. Today in the world we have about $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion a day of currency being traded and exchanged. About 90% of the currency trading that is going on is strictly for speculation and mostly done by the large investment banks.
What Professor Tobin had suggested was a very small tax of 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.25% which would slow down some of the speculation in currency that creates havoc in currency around the world. It was done with the Mexican peso and the Japanese yen and many other currencies of the world over the years.
As these investment banks play around with people's currencies they in effect play around with people's lives, throw people out of work and cause all kinds of poverty and despair in the world.
If we had some kind of small international tax it would not affect the ordinary people of this country at all. We could have an exemption on that of $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 or whatever we wanted. If we had a tax of 0.1% it would only be $1 out of $1,000. We would slow down some of the speculation and create a bit more order in the financial markets.
A consequence of this kind of tax would be to create a huge international development fund of several hundred billion dollars to fight world poverty, the AIDS pandemic in Africa and to do environmental cleanups. A lot of that money could go back to the countries that collected the tax to help pay for health care, social services and the fight against cigarettes and smoking that I referred to earlier in my comments.
Three years ago in March I had the honour to introduce a motion in the House of Commons asking parliament to endorse the principle of the Tobin tax or the tax on the speculation of currency in concert with the world community. It passed in the House of Commons by a vote of 164 to 83. We became the first parliament in the world to endorse the idea of a Tobin tax. We had people from all five political parties who actually supported the bill.
Since then we have seen a lot of movement in different parts of the world. The French have actually introduced legislation to participate in a Tobin tax or a currency tax regime once we reach a critical mass in the world community to make this tax effective. Studies are now going on in the European community. The idea of the Tobin tax is being endorsed by many different countries and politicians around the world. There is a growing movement for a global approach toward taxation.
We now have trade deals that are basically charters of rights for international co-operation or charters of rights for investment in the globalized world. These are now very lopsided. What we need is an international global vision where we also would have some rights for the ordinary people in terms of international labour and social standards and goals and objectives, environmental standards and financial institutions that would have the ability and the power to levy a tax against the speculation of currency.
That is the kind of international vision that I think more and more people are supporting, certainly the churches, many of the NGOs and many of the people who live in various parts of the world.
These are some of the things that I believe we should do. We need this new international vision, a new and a modern day global plan to develop many parts of the world that are today suffering from hunger and famine.
Sadly speaking, hundreds and hundreds of people have died of starvation in the last 15 minutes. I think about 20,000 people a day in the world die of starvation. Every hour of the day, hundreds and hundreds of people die of starvation, yet we have this great disparity of wealth around the world. We have the ability through a currency speculation tax to build up an international fund where people of the world could be fed, where there could be the development of agriculture, food production and processing around the world. The technology is there to feed the people of the world, to develop the world and to clean up the environment. We have those abilities. What we lack is the vision and the political will to make it happen.
When we debate a bill like Bill C-47, when we support a bill like Bill C-47, which I do, which I certainly do, we should also look at other parts of taxation such as the unfairness of the levy of employment insurance, the EI fund, which is sitting now with a $43 billion surplus of ordinary people's money. All the time fewer people qualify from the fund. Some 64% of the people who now do not qualified for the fund earn less than $20,000 a year, yet they have to pay premiums.
We should be looking at the unfairness of the airport security tax, this new GST that has been imposed on us and that the government now is using as a tax grab on ordinary citizens. We should look at some new vision in the future in terms of international stability and funding of international programs. The idea here, which is getting momentum around the world, is that of a small tax on the speculation of currency which is causing havoc in so many countries of the world.